This chapter contains sections titled: “How can these things be?” Reason's Transcendental Climb Where Were We?

continent. 1.1 : 3-13. / 0/ – Introduction I want to propose, as a trajectory into the philosophically weird, an absurd theoretical claim and pursue it, or perhaps more accurately, construct it as I point to it, collecting the ground work behind me like the Perpetual Train from China Mieville's Iron Council which puts down track as it moves reclaiming it along the way. The strange trajectory is the following: Kant's critical philosophy and much of continental philosophy which has followed, (...) has been a defense against horror and madness. Kant's prohibition on speculative metaphysics such as dogmatic metaphysics and transcendental realism, on thinking beyond the imposition of transcendental and moral constraints, has been challenged by numerous figures proceeding him. One of the more interesting critiques of Kant comes from the mad black Deleuzianism of Nick Land stating, “Kant’s critical philosophy is the most elaborate fit of panic in the history of the Earth.” And while Alain Badiou would certainly be opposed to the libidinal investments of Land's Deleuzo-Guattarian thought, he is likewise critical of Kant's normative thought-bureaucracies: Kant is the one author for whom I cannot feel any kinship. Everything in him exasperates me, above all his legalism—always asking Quid Juris? Or ‘Haven’t you crossed the limit?’—combined, as in today’s United States, with a religiosity that is all the more dismal in that it is both omnipresent and vague. The critical machinery he set up has enduringly poisoned philosophy, while giving great succour to the academy, which loves nothing more than to rap the knuckles of the overambitious [….] That is how I understand the truth of Monique David-Menard’s reflections on the properly psychotic origins of Kantianism. I am persuaded that the whole of the critical enterprise is set up to to shield against the tempting symptom represented by the seer Swedenborg, or against ‘diseases of the head’, as Kant puts it. An entire nexus of the limits of reason and philosophy are set up here, namely that the critical philosophy not only defends thought from madness, philosophy from madness, and philosophy from itself, but that philosophy following the advent of the critical enterprise philosophy becomes auto-vampiric; feeding on itself to support the academy. Following Francois Laruelle's non-philosophical indictment of philosophy, we could go one step further and say that philosophy operates on the material of what is philosophizable and not the material of the external world. [1] Beyond this, the Kantian scheme of nestling human thinking between our limited empirical powers and transcendental guarantees of categorical coherence, forms of thinking which stretch beyond either appear illegitimate, thereby liquefying both pre-critical metaphysics and the ravings of the mad in the same critical acid. In rejecting the Kantian apparatus we are left with two entities – an unsure relation of thought to reality where thought is susceptible to internal and external breakdown and a reality with an uncertain sense of stability. These two strands will be pursued, against the sane-seal of post-Kantian philosophy by engaging the work of weird fiction authors H.P. Lovecraft and Thomas Ligotti. The absolute inhumanism of the formers universe will be used to describe a Shoggothic Materialism while the dream worlds of the latter will articulate the mad speculation of a Ventriloquil Idealism. But first we must address the relation of philosophy to madness as well as philosophy to weird fiction. /1/ – Philosophy and Madness There is nothing that the madness of men invents which is not either nature made manifest or nature restored. Michel Foucault. Madness and Civilization. The moment I doubt whether an event that I recall actually took place, I bring the suspicion of madness upon myself: unless I am uncertain as to whether it was not a mere dream. Arthur Schopenhauer. The World as Will and Idea, Vol. 3. Madness is commonly thought of as moving through several well known cultural-historical shifts from madness as a demonic or otherwise theological force, to rationalization, to medicalization psychiatric and otherwise. Foucault's Madness and Civilization is well known for orientating madness as a form of exclusionary social control which operated by demarcating madness from reason. Yet Foucault points to the possibility of madness as the necessity of nature at least prior to the crushing weight of the church. Kant’s philosophy as a response to madness is grounded by his humanizing of madness itself. As Adrian Johnston points out in the early pages of Time Driven pre-Kantian madness meant humans were seized by demonic or angelic forces whereas Kantian madness became one of being too human. Madness becomes internalized, the external demonic forces become flaws of the individual mind. Foucault argues that, while madness is de-demonized it is also dehumanized during the Renaissance, as madmen become creatures neither diabolic nor totally human reduced to the zero degree of humanity. It is immediately clear why for Kant, speculative metaphysics must be curbed – with the problem of internal madness and without the external safeguards of transcendental conditions, there is nothing to formally separate the speculative capacities for metaphysical diagnosis from the mad ramblings of the insane mind – both equally fall outside the realm of practicality and quotidian experience. David-Menard's work is particularly useful in diagnosing the relation of thought and madness in Kant's texts. David-Menard argues that in Kant's relatively unknown “An Essay on the Maladies of the Mind” as well as his later discussion of the Seer of Swedenborg, that Kant formulates madness primarily in terms of sensory upheaval or other hallucinatory theaters. She writes: “madness is an organization of thought. It is made possible by the ambiguity of the normal relation between the imaginary and the perceived, whether this pertains to the order of sensation or to the relations between our ideas” Kant's fascination with the Seer forces Kant between the pincers of “aesthetic reconciliation” – namely melancholic withdrawal – and “a philosophical invention” – namely the critical project. Deleuze and Guattari's schizoanalysis is a combination and reversal of Kant's split, where an aesthetic over engagement with the world entails prolific conceptual invention. Their embrace of madness, however, is of course itself conceptual despite all their rhizomatic maneuvers. Though they move with the energy of madness, Deleuze and Guattari save the capacity of thought from the fangs of insanity by imbuing materiality itself with the capacity for thought. Or, as Ray Brassier puts it, “Deleuze insists, it is necessary to absolutize the immanence of this world in such a way as to dissolve the transcendent disjunction between things as we know them and as they are in themselves”. That is, whereas Kant relied on the faculty of judgment to divide representation from objectivity Deleuze attempts to flatten the whole economy beneath the juggernaut of ontological univocity. Speculation, as a particularly useful form of madness, might fall close to Deleuze and Guattari’s shaping of philosophy into a concept producing machine but is different in that it is potentially self destructive – less reliant on the stability of its own concepts and more adherent to exposing a particular horrifying swath of reality. Speculative madness is always a potential disaster in that it acknowledges little more than its own speculative power with the hope that the gibbering of at least a handful of hysterical brains will be useful. Pre-critical metaphysics amounts to madness, though this may be because the world itself is mad while new attempts at speculative metaphysics, at post-Kantian pre-critical metaphysics, are well aware of our own madness. Without the sobriety of the principle of sufficient reason we have a world of neon madness: “we would have to conceive what our life would be if all the movements of the earth, all the noises of the earth, all the smells, the tastes, all the light – of the earth and elsewhere, came to us in a moment, in an instant – like an atrocious screaming tumult of things”. Speculative thought may be participatory in the screaming tumult of the world or, worse yet, may produce its spectral double. Against theology or reason or simply commonsense, the speculative becomes heretical. Speculation, as the cognitive extension of the horrorific sublime should be met with melancholic detachment. Whereas Kant's theoretical invention, or productivity of thought, is self -sabotaging, since the advent of the critical project is a productivity of thought which then delimits the engine of thought at large either in dogmatic gestures or non-systematizable empirical wondrousness. The former is celebrated by the fiction of Thomas Ligotti whereas the latter is espoused by the tales of H.P. Lovecraft. /2/ – Weird Fiction and Philosophy. Supernatural horror, in all its eerie constructions, enables a reader to taste treats inconsistent with his personal welfare. Thomas Ligotti Songs of a Dead Dreamer. I choose weird stories because they suit my inclination best—one of my strongest and most persistent wishes being to achieve,momentarily, the illusion of some strange suspension or violation of the galling limitations of time, space, and natural law which forever imprison us and frustrate our curiosity about the infinite cosmic spaces beyond the radius of our sight and analysis H.P. Lovecraft. “Notes on Writing Weird Fiction” Lovecraft states that his creation of a story is to suspend natural law yet, at the same time, he indexes the tenuousness of such laws, suggesting the vast possibilities of the cosmic. The tension that Lovecraft sets up between his own fictions and the universe or nature is reproduced within his fictions in the common theme of the unreliable narrator; unreliable precisely because they are either mad or what they have witnessed questions the bounds of material reality. In “The Call of Cthulhu” Lovecraft writes: The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age. Despite Lovecraft's invocations of illusion, he is not claiming that his fantastic creations such as the Old Ones are supernatural but, following Joshi, are only ever supernormal. One can immediately see that instead of nullifying realism Lovecraft in fact opens up the real to an unbearable degree. In various letters and non-fictional statements Lovecraft espoused strictly materialist tenets, ones which he borrowed from Hugh Elliot namely the uniformity of law, the denial of teleology and the denial of non-material existence. Lovecraft seeks to explore the possibilities of such a universe by piling horror upon horror until the fragile brain which attempts to grasp it fractures. This may be why philosophy has largely ignored weird fiction – while Deleuze and Guattari mark the turn towards weird fiction and Lovecraft in particular, with the precursors to speculative realism as well as contemporary related thinkers have begun to view Lovecraft as making philosophical contributions. Lovecraft's own relation to philosophy is largely critical while celebrating Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. This relationship of Lovecraft to philosophy and philosophy to Lovecraft is coupled with Lovecraft's habit of mercilessly destroying the philosopher and the figure of the academic more generally in his work, a destruction which is both an epistemological destruction and an ontological destruction. Thomas Ligotti's weird fiction which he has designated as a kind of “confrontational escapism” might be best described in the following quote from one of his shortstories, “The human phenomenon is but the sum of densely coiled layers of illusion each of which winds itself on the supreme insanity. That there are persons of any kind when all there can be is mindless mirrors laughing and screaming as they parade about in an endless dream”. Whereas Lovecraft's weirdness draws predominantly from the abyssal depths of the uncharted universe, Ligotti's existential horror focuses on the awful proliferation of meaningless surfaces that is, the banal and every day function of representation. In an interview, Ligotti states: We don't even know what the world is like except through our sense organs, which are provably inadequate. It's no less the case with our brains. Our whole lives are motored along by forces we cannot know and perceptions that are faulty. We sometimes hear people say that they're not feeling themselves. Well, who or what do they feel like then? This is not to say that Ligotti sees nothing beneath the surface but that there is only darkness or blackness behind it, whether that surface is on the cosmological level or the personal. By addressing the implicit and explicit philosophical issues in Ligotti's work we will see that his nightmarish take on reality is a form of malevolent idealism, an idealism which is grounded in a real, albeit dark and obscure materiality. If Ligotti's horrors ultimately circle around mad perceptions which degrade the subject, it takes aim at the vast majority of the focus of continental philosophy. While Lovecraft's acidic materialism clearly assaults any romantic concept of being from the outside, Ligotti attacks consciousness from the inside: Just a little doubt slipped into the mind, a little trickle of suspicion in the bloodstream, and all those eyes of ours, one by one, open up to the world and see its horror [...] Not even the solar brilliance of a summer day will harbor you from horror. For horror eats the light and digests it into darkness. Clearly, the weird fiction of Lovecraft and Ligotti amount to a anti-anthrocentric onslaught against the ramparts of correlationist continental philosophy. /3/ – Shoggothic Materialism or the Formless Formless protoplasm able to mock and reflect all forms and organs and processes—viscous agglutinations of bubbling cells—rubbery fifteen-foot spheroids infinitely plastic and ductile—slaves of suggestion, builders of cities—more and more sullen, more and more intelligent, more and more amphibious, more and more imitative—Great God! What madness made even those blasphemous Old Ones willing to use and to carve such things? H.P. Lovecraft. “At the Mountains of Madness” On the other hand, affirming that the universe resembles nothing and is only formless amounts to saying that the universe is something like a spider or spit. Georges Bataille. “Formless”. The Shoggoths feature most prominently in H.P. Lovecraft's shortstory “At the Mountains of Madness” where they are described in the following manner: It was a terrible, indescribable thing vaster than any subway train – a shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self -luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and un-forming as pustules of greenish light all over the tunnel-filling front that bore down upon us, crushing the frantic penguins and slithering over the glistening floor that it and its kind had swept so evilly free of all litter. The term is a litmus test for materialism itself as the Shoggoth is an amorphous creature. The Shoggoths were living digging machines bio engineered by the Elder Things, and their protoplasmic bodies being formed into various tools by their hypnotic powers. The Shoggoths eventually became self aware and rose up against their masters in an ultimately failed rebellion. After the Elder Ones retreated into the oceans leaving the Shoggoths to roam the frozen wastes of the Antarctic. The onto-genesis of the Shoggoths and their gross materiality, index the horrifyingly deep time of the earth a concept near and dear to Lovecraft's formulation of horror as well as the fear of intelligences far beyond, and far before, the ascent of humankind on earth and elsewhere. The sickly amorphous nature of the Shoggoths invade materialism at large, where while materiality is unmistakably real ie not discursive, psychological, or otherwise overly subjectivist, it questions the relation of materialism to life. As Eugene Thacker writes: The Shoggoths or Elder Things do not even share the same reality with the human beings who encounter them—and yet this encounter takes place, though in a strange no-place that is neither quite that of the phenomenal world of the human subject or the noumenal world of an external reality. Amorphous yet definitively material beings are a constant in Lovecraft's tales. In his tale “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadatth” Lovecraft describes Azathoth as, “that shocking final peril which gibbers unmentionably outside the ordered universe,” that, “last amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blashphemes and bubbles at the centre of all infinity,” who, “gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time”. Azathoth's name may have multiple origins but the most striking is the alchemy term azoth which is both a cohesive agent and a acidic creation pointing back to the generative and the decayed. The indistinction of generation and degradation materially mirrors the blur between the natural and the unnatural as well as life and non-life. Lovecraft speaks of the tension between the natural and the unnatural is his short story “The Unnameable.” He writes, “if the psychic emanations of human creatures be grotesque distortions, what coherent representation could express or portray so gibbous and infamous a nebulousity as the spectre of a malign, chaotic perversion, itself a morbid blasphemy against Nature?”. Lovecraft explores exactly the tension outlined at the beginning of this chapter, between life and thought. At the end of his short tale Lovecraft compounds the problem as the unnameable is described as “a gelatin—a slime—yet it had shapes, a thousand shapes of horror beyond all memory”. Deleuze suggests that becoming-animal is operative throughout Lovecraft's work, where narrators feel themselves reeling at their becoming non-human or of being the anomalous or of becoming atomized. Following Eugene Thacker however, it may be far more accurate to say that Lovecraft's tales exhibit not a becoming-animal but a becoming-creature. Where the monstrous breaks the purportedly fixed laws of nature, the creature is far more ontologically ambiguous. The nameless thing is an altogether different horizon for thought. The creature is either less than animal or more than animal – its becoming is too strange for animal categories and indexes the slow march of thought towards the bizarre. This strangeness is, as aways, some indefinite swirling in the category of immanence and becoming. Bataille begins “The Labyrinth” with the assertion that being, to continue to be, is becoming. More becoming means more being hence the assertion that Bataille's barking dog is more than the sponge. This would mean that the Shoggotth is altogether too much being, too much material in the materialism. Bataille suggests that there is an immanence between the eater and the eaten, across the species and never within them. That is, despite the chaotic storm of immanence there must remain some capacity to distinguish the gradients of becoming without reliance upon, or at least total dependence upon, the powers of intellection to parse the universe into recognizable bits, properly digestible factoids. That is, if we undo Deleuze's aforementioned valorization of sense which, for his variation of materialism, performed the work of the transcendental, but refuse to reinstate Kant's transcendental disjunction between thing and appearance, then it must be a quality of becoming-as-being itself which can account for the discernible nature of things by sense. In an interview with Peter Gratton, Jane Bennett formulates the problem thusly: What is this strange systematicity proper to a world of Becoming? What, for example, initiates this congealing that will undo itself? Is it possible to identify phases within this formativity, plateaus of differentiation? If so, do the phases/plateaus follow a temporal sequence? Or, does the process of formation inside Becoming require us to theorize a non-chronological kind of time? I think that your student’s question: “How can we account for something like iterable structures in an assemblage theory?” is exactly the right question. Philosophy has erred too far on the side of the subject in the subject-object relation and has furthermore, lost the very weirdness of the non-human. Beyond this, the madness of thought need not override. /4/ - Ventriloquial Idealism or the Externality of Thought My aim is the opposite of Lovecraft's. He had an appreciation for natural scenery on earth and wanted to reach beyond the visible in the universe. I have no appreciation for natural scenery and want the objective universe to be a reflection of a character. Thomas Ligotti. “Devotees of Decay and Desolation.” Unless life is a dream, nothing makes sense. For as a reality, it is a rank failure [….] Horror is more real than we are. Thomas Ligotti. “Professor Nobody's Little Lectures on Supernatural Horror”. Thomas Ligotti's tales are rife with mannequins, puppets, and other brainless entities which of replace the valorized subject of philosophy – that of the free thinking human being. His tales such as “The Dream of the Manikin” aim to destroy the rootedness of consciousness. James Trafford has connected the anti-egoism of Ligotti to Thomas Metzinger – where the self is at best an illusion and we plead desperately for someone else to acknowledge that we are real. Trafford has stated it thus, “Life is played out as an inescapable puppet show, an endless dream in which the puppets are generally unaware that they are trapped within a mesmeric dance of whose mechanisms they know nothing and over which they have no control”. An absolute materialism, for Ligotti, implies an alienation of the idea which leads to a ventriloquil idealism. As Ligotti notes in an interview, “the fiasco and nightmare of existence, the particular fiasco and nightmare of human existence, the sense that people are puppets of powers they cannot comprehend, etc.” And then further elaborates that,“[a]ssuming that anything has to exist, my perfect world would be one in which everyone has experienced the annulment of his or her ego. That is, our consciousness of ourselves as unique individuals would entirely disappear”. The externality of the idea leads to the unfortunate consequence of consciousness eating at itself through horror which, for Ligotti, is more real than reality and goes beyond horror-as-affect. Beyond this, taking together with the unreality of life and the ventriloquizing of subjectivity, Ligotti's thought becomes an idealism in which thought itself is alien and ultimately horrifying. The role of human thought and the relation of non-relation of horror to thought is not completely clear in Ligotti's The Conspiracy Against the Human Race. Ligotti argues in his The Conspiracy Against the Human Race,that the advent of thought is a mistake of nature and that horror is being in the sense that horror results from knowing too much. Yet, at the same time, Ligotti seems to suggest that thought separates us from nature whereas, for Lovecraft, thought is far less privileged – mind is just another manifestation of the vital principal, it is just another materialization of energy. In his brilliant “Prospects for Post-Copernican Dogmatism” Iain Grant rallies against the negative definition of dogmatism and the transcendental, and suggests that negatively defining both over-focuses on conditions of access and subjectivism at the expense of the real or nature. With Schelling, who is Grant's champion against the subjectivist bastions of both Fichte and Kant, Ligotti's idealism could be taken as a transcendental realism following from an ontological realism. Yet the transcendental status of Ligotti's thought move towards a treatment of the transcendental which may threaten to leave beyond its realist ground. Ligotti states: Belief in the supernatural is only superstition. That said, a sense of the supernatural, as Conrad evidenced in Heart of Darkness, must be admitted if one's inclination is to go to the limits of horror. It is the sense of what should not be- the sense of being ravaged by the impossible. Phenomenally speaking, the super-natural may be regarded as the metaphysical counterpart of insanity, a transcendental correlative of a mind that has been driven mad. Again, Ligotti equates madness with thought, qualifying both as supernatural while remaining less emphatic about the metaphysical dimensions of horror. The question becomes one of how exactly the hallucinatory realm of the ideal relates to the black churning matter of Lovecraft's chaos of elementary particles. In his tale “I Have a Special Plan for This World” Ligotti formulates thus: A: There is no grand scheme of things. B: If there were a grand scheme of things, the fact – the fact – that we are not equipped to perceive it, either by natural or supernatural means, is a nightmarish obscenity. C: The very notion of a grand scheme of things is a nightmarish obscenity. Here Ligotti is not discounting metaphysics but implying that if it does exist the fact that we are phenomenologically ill-equipped to perceive that it is nightmarish. For Ligotti, nightmare and horror occur within the circuit of consciousness whereas for Lovecraft the relation between reality and mind is less productive on the side of mind. It is easier to ascertain how the Kantian philosophy is a defense against the diseases of the head as Kant armors his critical enterprise from too much of the world and too much of the mind. The weird fiction of both Lovecraft and Ligotti demonstrates that there is too much of both feeding into one another in a way that corrodes the Kantian schema throughly, breaking it down into a dead but still ontologically potentiated nigredo. The haunting, terrifying fact of Ligotti's idealism is that the transcendental motion which brought thought to matter, while throughly material and naturalized, brings with it the horror that thought cannot be undone without ending the material that bears it either locally or completely. Thought comes from an elsewhere and an elsewhen being-in-thought. The unthinkable outside thought is as maddening as the unthought engine of thought itself within thought which doesn't exist except for the mind, the rotting décor of the brain. /5/ - Hyperstitional Transcendental Paranoia or Self -Expelled Thought Weird fiction has been given some direct treatment in philosophy in the mad black Deleuzianism of Nick Land. Nick Land along with others in the 1990s created the Cyber Culture Research Unit as well as the research group Hyperstition. The now defunct hyperstitional website, an outgrowth of the Cyber Culture Research Unit, defined hyperstition in the following fourfold: 1-Element of effective culture that makes itself real. 2-Fictional quantity functional as a time-traveling device. 3-Coincidence intensifier. 4-Call to the Old Ones. The distinctively Lovecraftian character of hyperstition is hard to miss as is its Deleuzo-Guattarian roots. In the opening pages of A Thousand Plateaus Deleuze and Guattari write, “We have been criticized for over-quoting literary authors. But when one writes, the only question is which other machine the literary machine can be plugged into”. The indisinction of literature and philosophy mirrors the mess of being and knowing as post-correlationist philosophy, where philosophy tries to make itself real where literature, especially the weird, aims itself at the brain-circuit of horror. The texts of both Lovecraft and Ligotti work through horror as epistemological plasticity meeting with proximity as well as the deep time of Lovecraft and the glacially slow time of paranoia in Ligotti. Against Deleuze, and following Brassier, we cannot allow the time of consciousness, the Bergsonian time of the duree, to override natural time, but instead acknowledge that it is an unfortunate fact of existence as a thinking being. Horror-time, the time of consciousness, with all its punctuated moments and drawn out terrors, cannot compare to the deep time of non-existence both in the unreachable past and the unknown future. The crystalline cogs of Kant's account of experience as the leading light for the possibility of metaphysics must be throughly obliterated. His gloss of experience in Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics could not be more sterile: Experience consists of intuitions, which belong to the sensibility, and of judgments, which are entirely a work of the understanding. But the judgments which the understanding makes entirely out of sensuous intuitions are far from being judgments of experience. For in the one case the judgment connects only the perceptions as they are given in sensuous intuition [....] Experience consists in the synthetic connection of appearances in consciousness, so far as this connection is necessary. Here it is difficult to dismiss the queasiness that Kant's legalism induces upon sight for both Badiou and David-Menard. Kant's thought becomes, as Foucault says when reflecting on Sade's text in relation to nature, “the savage abolition of itself”. For Badiou, Kant's philosophy simply closes off too much of the outside, freezing the world of thought in an all too limited formalism. Critical philosophy is simply the systematized quarantine on future thinking, on thinking which would threaten the formalism which artificially grants thought its own coherency in the face of madness. Even the becoming-mad of Deleuze, while escaping the rumbling ground, makes grounds for itself, mad grounds but grounds which are thinkable in their affect. The field of effects allows for Deleuze's aesthetic and radical empiricism, in which effects and/or occasions make up the material of the world to be thought as a chaosmosis of simulacra. Given a critique of an empiricism of aesthetics, of the image, it may be difficult to justify an attack on Kantian formalism with the madness of literature, which does not aim to make itself real but which we may attempt to make real. That is, how do Lovecraft's and Ligotti's materials, as materials for philosophy to work on, differ from either the operative formalisms of Kant or the implicitly formalized images of Deleuzian empiricism? It is simply that such texts do not aim to make themselves real, and make claims to the real which are more alien to us than familiar, which is why their horror is immediately more trustworthy. This is the madness which Blanchot discusses in The Infinite Conversation through Cervantes and his knight – the madness of book-life, of the perverse unity of literature and life a discussion which culminates in the discussion of one of the weird's masters, that of Kafka. The text is the knowing of madness, since madness, in its moment of becoming-more-mad, cannot be frozen in place but by the solidifications of externalizing production. This is why Foucault ends his famous study with works of art. Furthermore extilligence, the ability to export the products of our maligned brains, is the companion of the attempts to export, or discover the possibility of intelligences outside of our heads, in order for philosophy to survive the solar catastrophe. To borrow again from Deleuze, writing is inseparable from becoming. The mistake is to believe that madness is reabsorbed by extilligence, by great works, or that it could be exorcised by the expelling of thought into the inorganic or differently organic. Going out of our heads does not guarantee we will no longer mean we cannot still go out of our minds. This is simply because of the outside, of matter, or force, or energy, or thing-in-itself, or Schopenhauerian Will. In Lovecraft’s “The Music of Erich Zahn” an “impoverished student of metaphysics” becomes intrigued by strange viol music coming from above his room. After meeting the musician the student discovers that each night he plays frantic music at a window in order to keep some horridness at bay, some “impenetrable darkness with chaos and pandemonium”. The aesthetic defenses provided by the well trained brain can bear the hex of matter for so long, the specter of unalterability within it which too many minds obliterate, collapsing everything before the thought of thought as thinkable or at least noetically mutable on our own terms. Transcendental paranoia is the concurrent nightmare and promise of Paul Humphrey's work, of being literally out of our minds. It is the gothic counterpart of thinking non-conceptually but also of thinking never belonging to any instance of purportedly solid being. As Bataille stated, “At the boundary of that which escapes cohesion, he who reflects within cohesion realizes there is no longer any room for him” Thought is immaterial only to the degree that it is inhuman, it is a power that tries, always with failure, to ascertain its own genesis. Philosophy, if it can truly return to the great outdoors, if it can leave behind the dead loop of the human skull, must recognize not only the non-priority of human thought, but that thought never belongs to the brain that thinks it, thought comes from somewhere else. To return to the train image from the beginning “a locomotive rolling on the surface of the earth is the image of continuous metamorphosis” this is the problem of thought, and of thinking thought, of being no longer able to isolate thought, with only a thought-formed structure. [1] One of the central tenets of Francois Laruelle's non-philosophy is that philosophy has traditionally operated on material already presupposed as thinkable instead of trying to think the real in itself. Philosophy, according to Laruelle, remains fixated on transcendental synthesis which shatters immanence into an empirical datum and an a prori factum which are then fused by a third thing such as the ego. For a critical account of Laruelle's non-philosophy see Ray Brassier's Nihil Unbound. (shrink)

The scientist’s toolkit counts at least three practices: real, thought and numerical experiments. Although a deep investigation of the relationships between these types of experiments should shed light on the nature of scientific enquiry, I argue that it has been compromised by at least four factors: (i) a bias for the epistemological superiority of real experiments; (ii) an almost exclusive focus on the links between either thought or numerical experiments, and real experiments; (iii) a tendency to try (...) and reduce one kind to another; and (iv) an excessive attention to the outputs of these types of experiments, more than to their processes. In this paper I support an unbiased triangular comparative analysis that focuses on the processes involved in real, thought and numerical experiments, and claim that all three types of experimentation are fundamental to scientific research. I do so by clarifying different notions of experimental processes, and by introducing a distinction between two varieties of mental simulation that play a role in them (i.e., mental models and imaginings). I then compare real, thought and numerical experiments in light of this distinction, showing their similarities, but also fundamental differences, which suggest that none of them is dispensable. (shrink)

Like Kant, Foucault challenges us to rethink the way we relate freedom and truth by stressing the idea of "maturity" understood as a release from the "self-incurred tutelage" (the expression is from Kant) that otherwise characterizes so much of our lives. Though, rather than linking freedom and truth via the concept of autonomy (or lawfulness), as Kant does, Foucault outlines a possible experience of ethics as an individualizing ideal that contrasts with the model of establishing codes within a conception of (...) moral order. Foucault's project can be read as attempting to decouple ethics from the epistemological concern with the objectivity of a moral order in order to reconnect it to the formation of a political sensibility that sees truth(fulness) in a certain practice of freedom, as opposed to seeing our freedom confirmed or granted by a certain kind of (mode of relating to the) truth. I call this reading of Foucault's investigations into ethics the "methodological/prescriptive" approach (asking and responding to what we can do, ethically-speaking) and contrast it with the sketch of an alternative reading which I call "ontological/historical" (asking and responding to what we are, ethically-speaking). This reading, instead of pushing beyond Kant in the direction of a Nietzschean sensibility, rather challenges Kant's moral law from the space of a Hegelian insistence on the (historical) realization or actualization of freedom in and through the normative constraints structuring existing power-relations. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has generated an imbalance between the clinical needs of the population and the effective availability of advanced life support (ALS) resources. Triage protocols have thus become necessary. Triage decisions in situations of scarce resources were not extraordinary in the pre-COVID-19 era; these protocols abounded in the context of organ transplantation. However, this prior experience was not considered during the COVID-19 outbreak in Spain. Lacking national guidance or public coordination, each hospital has been forced to put forth independent (...) and autonomous triage protocols, most of which were, nonetheless, based on common ethical principles and clinical criteria. However, controversial, non-clinical criteria have also been defended by Spanish scientific societies and public institutions, including setting an age cut-off value for unilaterally withholding ALS, using ‘social utility’ criteria, prioritising healthcare professionals or using ‘first come, first served’ policies. This paper describes the most common triage criteria used in the Spanish context during the COVID-19 epidemic. We will highlight our missed opportunities by comparing these criteria to those used in organ transplantation protocols. The problems posed by subjective, non-clinical criteria will also be discussed. We hope that this critical review might be of use to countries at earlier stages of the epidemic while we learn from our mistakes. (shrink)

This chapter reviews four elements of David Lewis's account of materialism and experience. These elements include: materialism for which Lewis gave a distinctive and well‐known characterization; an account of what experience is; an account of the source of the tension between experience and materialism; and a strategy for resolving the tension. Lewis did not just give a distinctive and well‐known characterization of materialism, he gave two: one in terms of fundamental properties, and one in terms of supervenience. The chapter considers (...) two recent objections to that account. The first argues that knowledge‐how is a certain kind of knowledge‐that and in consequence Lewis's well‐known “ability hypothesis” fails. The second argues that if Lewis's contextualist approach to epistemology is correct, his rejection of the identification thesis is impossible. The author suggests that Lewis has the resources to answer both objections, but he ends by stating the real problems for Lewis's lie. (shrink)

The role and influence of Modernism is the focus of this article. Modernism’s lasting and unforeseeable influence is due to its key importance to the development of the general conditions of art within modernity. Along with Modernism, the implications of the modern system of art became visible for real. Modernism produced the necessity of rethinking the distinction between “art” and “the aesthetic,” based on their original foundations in the 18th century, respectively – a call for a “divorce” after the (...) long-lived marriage between the two, installed by Romanticism. Furthermore so-called postmodernism and today’s contemporary art have in fact not, as often assumed, really broken with high Modernism. What we see is rather a transformation of a time-based modus into a more spatially defined approach. The interpretations of Modernism itself are thus being altered, when regarded with a postmodern awareness of its surrounding enunciative space. The interrelationship between the modernisms, and what followed, is therefore achieving the character of an entanglement rather than that of a straight and clear development. Modernism’s influence, it is finally asserted, is seemingly not at its conclusion, but rather at its reoccurring beginning. (shrink)

The central theme of this paper is the dispositional/categorical distinction that has been one of the top agendas in contemporary metaphysics. I will first develop from my semantic account of dispositions what I think the correct formulation of the dispositional/categorical distinction in terms of counterfactual conditionals. It will be argued that my formulation does not have the shortcomings that have plagued previously proposed ones. Then I will turn my attention to one of its consequences, the thesis that dispositional (...) properties are not susceptible to intrinsic finks. This thesis was first advanced by me and has ever since stirred up a big controversy, endorsed by some philosophers like Handfield, Bird, and Cohen but rejected by others like Clarke and Fara. Against this background, I will remedy my defense of the impossibility of intrinsically finkable dispositions and then refute some of apparently powerful criticisms of it. And so the upshot is that it is much more reasonable to hold on to the thesis that dispositions are intrinsically unfinkable. This will have the effect of putting the dispositional/categorical distinction on firmer and more secure ground. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Commentary on “Spiritual Experience and Psychopathology”Anthony Storr (bio)Many psychiatrists, including myself, are deeply dissatisfied with current psychiatric taxonomy. Grossly abnormal people like multiple murderers are often deemed sane in law, because they do not happen to exhibit the symptoms of recognized mental illnesses like schizophrenia or manic-depressive psychosis. In contrast, some of those who do exhibit such symptoms, and who therefore risk being labeled psychotic, cannot be considered to (...) be “ill,” and are in fact mentally robust. There is considerable overlap between experiences which psychiatrists call psychotic, and experiences which are generally called spiritual by those who have them.In order to illustrate this overlap, the authors quote three cases of people describing a variety of delusions and hallucinations which would certainly prompt the diagnosis of psychosis—usually some variety of schizophrenia—were it not for the fact that all three claimed that their experiences had been of considerable benefit to them.It is noteworthy that, in each case, the psychotic/spiritual experiences followed a period of stress. The first subject was threatened by legal action; the second had surmounted an episode of depression, but was questioning whether she could continue her career in business; the third was unemployed, in debt, and suspected that he had multiple sclerosis. The first subject developed both grandiose and religious delusions; but the revelations which he claimed were a sign of God’s special grace toward him enabled him to win his law case and set up a charitable institution. The second heard the voice of Jesus summoning her to work for him. She became convinced that she was specially gifted in various parapsychological fields, and became a religious counselor. As the authors point out, “Her experiences, if delusional and hallucinatory, were overwhelmingly positive in their content and fruits.” The third subject also experienced hallucinatory voices which were intensely reassuring, gave him new insight into the nature of reality, and guided his further progress. As a result, he believed that he had such support that “nothing in this world can worry me.” In each case, the psychotic experience proved to be a solution to the subject’s problem, rather than a breakdown ending in admission to a mental hospital. This raises a variety of intellectual problems.The authors suggest that psychotic phenomena may be good or bad, and label the good phenomena “spiritual” and the bad phenomena “pathological.” According to this point of view, psychotic experience need not be considered pathological, especially if consideration is given to the structure of values and beliefs professed by the individual concerned. [End Page 83]I am not happy with this distinction. I entirely agree that psychotic experience may be a solution to a subject’s problems; but whether it is considered spiritual or pathological depends partly upon the nature of the experience, and even more upon the social setting in which it occurs. A grandiose delusion that one is especially selected and addressed by God may cure the depression of someone who has so far considered himself a nonentity if it is accepted by others. In my study of gurus, Feet of Clay (1996), I make the point that a guru seeks disciples because they reinforce his delusions and may, in some instances, keep him out of hospital. Of the three cases described in this paper, the first told “various friends and ministers about them.” The second confided in her priest and was told that her experiences were authentic within their shared Christian belief system. The third did not apparently share his hallucinatory experience with friends; but, when he responded to the invitation to write to the Alister Hardy Research Centre, wrote, “It is fascinating to find I’m not on my own in this. I have naturally queried my own sanity, and generally don’t discuss it....”Medical diagnosis and psychiatric diagnosis are not strictly comparable. If I as a doctor find that X is suffering from diabetes, I can treat X as an isolated entity displaying symptoms and signs of a well-known disease. I cannot do this when X is displaying “psychotic” symptoms; for whether or not those symptoms are regarded as pathological depends upon the social setting in which they... (shrink)

The efforts to prove God's existence in the history of thought have been one of the fundamental problems of philosophy and theology, and even the most important one. The evidences put furword to prove the existence of God constitute the center of philosophy of religion’s problems not only philosophy of religion, but also the disciplines such as theology-kalam and Islamic philosophy are also seriously concerned. When we look at the history of philosophy, it is clear that almost all philosophers are (...) interested in the evidence in favour of and against the existence of God. Especially in recent times, religious experience has often been regarded as evidence of the existence of God. Studies in the field of religious and mystical experience have put forward many arguments concerning the use of religious experience as evidence. However, this study has been limited to experience of sense and pure consciousness claims rather than examining all of these arguments. In this study firstly, the analogy between experience of sense and religious experience will be deal with, and then claims that conciousness can be emptied by a number of methods which are defended by mystics. In addition, it will be tried to defend the opinion that the mystical experiences which are the common point of the two approaches are valid. The main emphasis of the article will be that these arguments can be used as evidence for the existence of God.Summary: Religious experience - which has not been considered as one of the classical evidences regarding the existence of God before being popular by recent studies – is started to be called one of the arguments. The most important reason for not arguing religious experience among the evidences of God’s existence is that it is a personal experience and therefore contains subjective perspectives. However, many researchers, who refuse to accept the criticism raised against religious experience with restricting to subjectivity, emphasized the importance of religious experience by highlighting the objective aspects of such experiences. This emphasis was not only on its significance, but also on the fact that it had a cognitive feature and thus it could provide evidence for the existence of God. The argument of religious experience is generally defined as an effort for demonstrating to existence of God with reference to several feelings such as spiritual experiences of human in face of creator and sacred Being, encounter with God, uniting, and annihilating selfness in Him. The emergence of such efforts, especially after the XVIIIth century, indicates that the history of the evidence does not go back much earlier. However, even if notas evidence, it is possible to extend the traces of religious and mystical experience to the history of religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism. Considering a great amount of the previous literature focused on religious experience in the West, It is easily seen that such research is still new. The main purpose in addressing such a controversial issue is to make the argument on the religious experience more current and to show whether the religious experience would be able to use as evidence for the existence of God.First title of this study comprises many different claims such as Walter T. Stace’s The Argument from Unanimity Richard Swinburne’s The Principle of Credulity, William P. Alston’s Perceiving God, John Hick’s Experience-as. However, instead of briefly giving out very different claims, the study chooses to focus on two arguments which are less discussed and can be given in more detail. The first is the argument based on the analogy between the religious experience and the sense experience. The fundamental point of this argument is sense experience. With reference to the similarities between the sense experience and the religious experience, it can be argued that religious experience is also cognitive and may function as an evidence for the existence of God. In other words, being perceptual and noetic, namely cognitive, of sense experience is addressed as a similar side of religious experience. Whether it is imaginary or real, eventually, it is necessary for an experience to have an object and being experience of something. Therefore, the religious experience includes the perception of a Transcendent Being that is beyond and in excess of the individual who experiences. Perception of the sense experience will definitely be different from the perception of religious experience. Researchers who think that the five sense organs do not run the perception of Sacred Beings, identified broader and various meanings for the perception. Thereby, in this approach, where the semantic field of perception is expanded, it was contended that human beings were able to perceive the transcendent, eternal, and unlimited God, and this can be explained in the epistemological sense. In order to use religious experiences as an evidence for the existence of God, it is necessary to determine whether such experiences are caused by God rather than something else. This raises the issue of the validity of religious experience. The researchers in this area have propounded various criteria to identify whether religious experience is existed or not. Experiences, which do not meet the criteria, are not considered existed even if they claim to be religious experience.The second is the argument that discusses whether it is possible to suggest an evidence for the existence of God by utilizing pure consciousness events. In general, this argument claims that the consciousness gets clear, and thus, mystic or Sufi experiences the Divine One with pure consciousness by discharging consciousness from all sensual contents and removing it from secular desire and wishes. The argument, which claims the experience of Divine One is direct, therefore uninterpretable, and experienced by pure consciousness, believes clearing the consciousness of mystics from sensual qualities such as seeing, hearing, and tasting. It is stated that it is possible for mystics to empty their sensory images and get rid of them, and thus, their desires and wishes could be lost. Especially, the thinkers who are connected with the philosophy of perennialism and defend this approach, thought that people, who have distinct religion, culture, and beliefs in different parts of the world and in various time periods, had the same experience and considered such experiences were universal by suggesting that this similarity could be called as common essence.Even though the claim which offers that the events of pure consciousness are the same everywhere have been criticized in many respects, the advocates of this approach have argued that the experience has the common essence, but the interpretation is different. This relationship, which was tried to be established between experience and commentary, caused a lot of work for both the thinkers who put forward the claims of pure consciousness and the researchers who opposed it. However, examining the relationship between experience and interpretation requires serious studies in socio-psychological, cultural and religious fields. Therefore, in order not to exceed the limits of the article, the relationship between experience and interpretation is briefly mentioned.While discussing two arguments, the main claims of the arguments were addressed, and the criticisms directed to this argument were not discussed as much as possible. However, some fundamental criticisms have been mentioned shortly for a better understanding of the discussion. Since such western-oriented claims mostly were deployed in a western context, the study excluded the comparison of the claims across different cultures. (shrink)

David Atkinson asks whether nonempirical constructions can lead to genuine knowledge in science, and answers in the negative. Thought experiments, in his view, are to be commended only insofar as they eventually lead to real experiments. The claim does not rely on a general study, conceptual or historical, of thought experiments as such: the range of the paper is at once narrower and broader. Atkinson views thought experiments as commonly understood as just one kind of episode in the development (...) of physics in which real experimentation is bypassed, and he believes that such episodes are justified only inasmuch as they are transitory stages on the way to genuine empirical inquiry. Atkinson wants to kill with one arrow what is usually regarded as two different birds: the notion that thought experiments proper can be persuasive in themselves, and the thesis that theories which cannot be brought to the tribunal of experience can nevertheless belong to science. He thus implicitly opposes three views which are commonly, albeit not universally, held: (i) some thought experiments are conclusive; (ii) some theories belong to science despite not being evidently and concretely amenable to empirical corroboration; (iii) the two issues are largely independent. The standpoint from which Atkinson operates is a rather strict form of empiricism, one which relies on a fairly sharp distinction between the conceptual and empirical dimensions of inquiry. My outlook is rather different: the conceptual and empirical seem to me to be intertwined, both conceptually, as suggested by Quine’s critique of logical positivism, and empirically, as revealed by the evidence provided by science itself in its daily and historical reality. Rather than take the high road, I propose to focus first on the critique to which Atkinson subjects Galileo’s thought experiment, and the lessons he draws from his analysis.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 23 (2003) 143-145 [Access article in PDF] Catholic and Buddhist Monastics Focus on Suffering Thomas Ryan Paulist Office for Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations Approximately twenty Benedictine, Trappist, and Camaldolese men and women monastics met from April 13-18 with an equal number of Buddhist monastics at the Trappist Gethsemani monastery in Kentucky for five days of dialogue on the causes of suffering. The encounter, Gethsemani II, was a (...) sequel to a similar 1996 meeting at the monastery made famous by the monk Thomas Merton, a noted twentieth-century contemplative and peace activist who died in 1968. Merton's friendship with the Dalai Lama served as seminal inspiration for these two Buddhist-Christian dialogues. In a ritual at the opening of the Gethsemani II meeting, the participants, joined by a few advisors and observers to the dialogue, hung a wreath of flowers around the cross marking Merton's grave.Each day speakers from both sides initiated a conversation on a particular cause of suffering, such as greed and consumerism, personal and structural violence, sickness and aging. "I do not do well at conferences, and I came prepared to be bored," said John Daido Loori, abbot of the Zen Mountain monastery in Mount Tremper, New York, on day three, "but the level of honesty and depth of sharing in these exchanges has ripped open my heart."It is not possible in this forum to synthesize the penetrating reflections and stories on suffering offered by the participants.What may be even more important is the window offered by this dialogue into the dynamics of interfaith encounter no matter where it takes place.By sharing times of prayer, talk, meals, and rituals appropriate to each tradition, the participants became friends. They came for one thing, to talk about suffering, and in the process found another: an experience of community. They began each conversation with the musical and meditative interlude of a recorder, but the openness and sensitivity of the conversation itself became the real music. They didn't solve a single problem, but they kindled a vital force—friendship—with which to confront problems together in the future. Each brought passion for their own tradition—the gospel on the one hand and the dharma on the other—and each ended by recognizing in the other a powerful resource for healing the world.Evident in this dialogue was the emergence of a Euro-American Buddhist voice, [End Page 143] deeply respectful of the Asian tradition inherited, yet willing to think creatively about possible bridge points of understanding, of comparison, of ways of reformulating set patterns of saying things so as to better get at possible common meanings.One example of this will suffice. Suffering is at the heart of the Buddha's teachings in the Four Noble Truths, the first teachings he gave after his experience of enlightenment. First, all existence is dukkha, unsatisfactory and filled with suffering. Second, dukkha arises from tanha, a craving or clinging, which means a constant effort to find something permanent and stable in a transient world. Third, dukkha can cease totally, and this is Nirvana. Fourth, Nirvana can be reached by following the Eightfold Path described as "right" or samma: right understanding, right directed thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. In short, the first three wisdom sayings relate to the existence, the cause, and the cessation of suffering. The fourth offers a clearly laid-out plan for liberation from suffering.The Christian approach could be typified in Pope John Paul II's 1984 Apostolic Letter "On the Meaning of Christian Suffering," which was distributed to all the participants. In reflecting on Jesus nailed to the cross, the pope observes that "in this weakness there is accomplished his lifting up, confirmed by the power of the resurrection. This means that the weaknesses of all human sufferings are capable of being infused with the same power of God manifested in Christ's cross. In such a concept, to suffer means to become particularly susceptible, particularly open, to the working of the salvific powers of God offered... (shrink)

KANT ARGUES AT GREAT LENGTH in the Critique of Pure Reason that the existence of God cannot be demonstrated by means of theoretical reason. For after dividing all traditional theistic proofs into three different kinds—the ontological, the cosmological, and the physico-theological—Kant argues first that the cosmological and physico-theological implicitly assume the ontological argument and then that the ontological argument is necessarily fallacious. By restricting knowledge in this manner Kant notoriously makes room for faith, that is, in this case, for a (...) practical proof of the existence of God, which he develops in the Critique of Practical Reason. Kant’s reasons for rejecting theoretical proofs of the existence of God have received considerable attention. In particular, Kant’s objection to the ontological argument, namely that existence is not a real predicate, still seems relevant in contemporary philosophy of religion. What has not received much attention, however, is the relationship between Kant’s rejection of theistic proofs in his critical period and his views on the matter in his pre-critical period. For throughout his pre-critical period, but especially in his The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God, Kant believes that there is a theoretical proof of the existence of God. One would naturally expect Kant’s criticisms of theistic proofs as developed in the “ideal of pure reason” to apply in straightforward ways to his earlier attempts at a theistic proof. However, Kant rejects the three traditional arguments in The Only Possible Argument just as he does in the first Critique. Further, his reason for rejecting the ontological argument in particular is identical to the one presented in the first Critique: “Existence is not a predicate or a determination of a thing.” Accordingly, Kant understood himself to be developing a theistic proof in The Only Possible Argument that is distinct from the three traditional arguments and is also not subject to the objections he raises against them. Given that Kant rejects all theoretical proofs of God’s existence in his critical period and given that he did not take his critical objections to the traditional proofs to apply to the theistic proof developed in The Only Possible Argument, what is his justification for rejecting his pre-critical argument for God’s existence? (shrink)

This study investigated whether and how a person's varied series of lexical categories corresponding to different discriminatory characteristics of the same colors affect his or her perception of colors. In three experiments, Chinese participants were primed to categorize four graduated colors—specifically dark green, light green, light blue, and dark blue—into green and blue; light color and dark color; and dark green, light green, light blue, and dark blue. The participants were then required to complete a visual search task. Reaction times (...) in the visual search task indicated that different lateralized categorical perceptions of color corresponded to the various priming situations. These results suggest that all of the lexical categories corresponding to different discriminatory characteristics of the same colors can influence people's perceptions of colors and that color perceptions can be influenced differently by distinct types of lexical categories depending on the context. (shrink)

In this issue we include contributions from the individuals presiding at the panel All in a Jurnal's Work: A BABEL Wayzgoose, convened at the second Biennial Meeting of the BABEL Working Group. Sadly, the contributions of Daniel Remein, chief rogue at the Organism for Poetic Research as well as editor at Whiskey & Fox , were not able to appear in this version of the proceedings. From the program : 2ND BIENNUAL MEETING OF THE BABEL WORKING GROUP CONFERENCE “CRUISING IN (...) THE RUINS: THE QUESTION OF DISCIPLINARITY IN THE POST/MEDIEVAL UNIVERSITY” SEPTEMBER 21ST, 2012: SESSION 13 MCLEOD C.322, CURRY STUDENT CENTER NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY, BOSTON, MA. Traditionally, a wayzgoose was a celebration at the end of a printer’s year, a night off in the late fall before the work began of printing by candlelight. According to the OED, the Master Printer would make for the journeymen “a good Feast, and not only entertains them at his own House, but besides, gives them Money to spend at the Ale-house or Tavern at Night.” Following in this line, continent. proposes in its publication(s) a night out and a good Feast, away from the noxious fumes of the Academy and into a night of revelry which begins, but does not end, at the alehouse or Tavern. continent. proposes that the thinking of the Academy be freed to be thought elsewhere, in the alleys and doorways of the village and cities, encountered not in the strictly defined spaces of the classroom and blackboard (now white) but anticipated and found where thinking occurs. Historically, academic journals have served a different purpose than the Academy itself. Journals (from the Anglo-Fr. jurnal , "a day," from O.Fr. jornel , "day, time; day's work," hence the journalist as writer of the news of the day ) have served as privileged sites for the articulation and concretization of specific modes of knowledge and control (insemination of those ideas has been formalized in the classroom, in seminar). In contrast, the academic journal is post-partum and has been an old-boys club, an insider trading network in which truths are (re)circulated against themselves, forming a Maginot Line against whatever is new, or the distinctly challenging. All in a Jurnal’s Work will discuss (in part) the ramifications of cheap start-up publications that are challenging the traditional ensconced-in-ivory academic journals and their supporting infrastructures. The panel will be seeking a questioning (as a challenging) towards the discipline of knowledge production/fabrication (of truth[s]) and the event of the Academy (and its publications) as it has evolved and continues to (d)evolve. Issues to be discussed will revolve around the power of academic publishing and its origins, hierarchical versus horizontal academic modules (is there a place for the General Assembly in academia?) and the evolving idea of the Multiversity as a site(s) of a (BABELing) multivocality in the wake of the University of Disaster. STAGE NOTES AND/AS/OR TRACK CHANGES: INTRODUCTORY REMARKS AND MAGICAL THINKING ON PRINTING: AN ELECTION AND A PROVOCATION Isaac Linder “Of course most people don’t think of editing/publishing as theatre but as something boring or parasitical (vis-à-vis a ‘source’ text), a textual backwater populated by people with glasses. But I think publishing a book today is theatre, socially networked theatre…. Facebook and Flickr are our era’s administered and generic version of sixties happenings!” — Tan Lin 1 ELECTING A MASCOT: THE BARNACLE GOOSE After pitching the idea for this panel with the editorial help of my continental cohorts I became fascinated with the image of the goose—dead and roasted as it may be—and its relationship to the space of the printing press. For a long while after proposing this gathering I was seriously under the sway of delusions of grandeur, imagining that we might roast a goose (or goosefu) and, preparing a meal as one prepares a text for publication, feast in something approaching a warm and well-nourished revelry. I should note, by way of introduction, that a substantial part of my undergraduate experience involved learning to typeset and work as a devil, as typesetters mischievously call it, in a letterpress studio. This accounts in part for my fascination and helps to explain the fact that, when I began to leaf around in medieval beastiaries in lieu of being able to procure a goose, I was almost immediately struck by a fantastic monster that I hereby elect to be the mascot for our so-called para-academic practice(s) the relatively famed, but no less fabulous for it, barnacle goose. The barnacle goose is a creature that first makes its way into 12th century manuscripts with Giraldus Cambrensis in 1186. Phenomenologically speaking the monster is a tree, a tree which, when approached closer is seen to be birthing geese budding from the buds that hang like ripe fruit from its branches. As the story goes these trees were found over water; the fledgling geese, once wrested from their pods would take off in flight or fall to their watery death, where they would be transformed into driftwood. In retrospect we presume the barnacle goose was posited as a consequence of the fact that geese born in more northern regions, migrating to Ireland and western Europe at large, were never seen to give birth. And I should note that this is far from the only other animal posited to be born from trees at around this time, my other favorite being medieval accounts of Moroccan tree-climbing goats. 2 In particular I’ve thrown up the mascot of the barnacle goose and singled it out from the quires of its beatiaries because its thoroughly hybrid origins lead us to name two very real creatures we can find point to in abundance; discrete materialities of the world cobbled together in textual fancy: on the one hand, the modern day barnacle goose , a common species of goose and, on the other, goose barnacles , a particular type of crustacean with incredible feathery tendrils and—I can't help but mention—one of the largest body mass to penis size ratios of all of the animals in the kingdom. Why is this bit of genital trivia relevant? Because they’re all hermaphroditic and in rare cases have been found to reproduce just with themselves—to inseminate themselves and give birth to their kin. So I think it must be stressed, as a symbol for what we’re really here to talk about, it's not a boy’s club thing so much as a very queer thing and, I contend, para - in every perfect sense of the word... Alongside the natural world, a monstrous imaginary concatenation; Alongside the hulls of so many institutional structures, funding sources and resources, Serresian parasites in all manner of mutualist, symbiotic, or properly parasitic positions; migratory and adrift; The tree, center stage in the 21st century adaptation of Waiting for Godot that is unraveling in ateliers across the world, is a barnacle goose birthing a flurry of miscegenous texts beyond medium and genre. PROVOCATION 1: CHAOSMOSIS “Genre is obsolete.” — Ray Brassier 3 And so, here I was getting carried away in daydreams about this generative and genealogical symbol under which to think all of the diverse projects we are all involved in as architects of the dressed word, (well dressed, bespoke, mansy, butch, careless, or roguishly punk attired as those words may be), when it also dawned on me, mid-flight here from Denver, that we are, even in lieu of being able to roast geese together, very much so literalizing what was never just the metaphor of the wayzgoose—a tradition, as you know, celebrated to mark the crepuscular turn into fall—as we are poised here, tomorrow being the first official day of fall on our calendars in the US marking the seasonal change from at which point it will no longer be possible to print without the aid of candlelight. A beautiful thought, that tipped into magical thinking on account of a little quick math I was able to do to come to the conclusion that we can all be delighted to know that as we proceed into the autumn with our printing projects always ahead of us and still to be set, we will tonight be bathed not only by the artificial candlelight of our screens, but also in part by photons raining down on us at 186,282 miles per second—photons from an aspect of 9 cyg, a stereoscopic binary deep within Cygnus, the swan but not-so-distant-relative of the goose, with a distance of 572 Light years away; photons that are raining down on us, will rain down on us all winter, have been raining down on us all year, and which had their origin in the combustion cores at a center of 9 cyg 572 years ago, in 1440, the year which we point to today as the common year in which, as we all know, Gutenberg is said to have brought the movable type to the western world, inaugurating an era that stretches farther into the past and future than McLuhan could justify; the proliferation of so much ambient text; insurrectionary coups on (and re-crystallizations of) genre—perceived amidst so much ambient light—enveloping this campus, just now. So, with that thought, and perhaps a new mascot, Nico Jenkins... NOTES “ Writing as Metadata Container, An Interview with Tan Lin ,” Chris Alexander, Kristen Gallagher, Danny Snelson, Gordon Tapper, Tan Lin, Jacket 2. January 20, 2012. To explore Lin’s notion of ambient textuality, plagiarism, and parallel, cross­platform publication in the 21st century, also see Lin’s sampled novel, “ The Patio and the Index ,” Triple Canopy 14, October 24, 2011, as well as the Edit event, organized at the Kelly Writers House at the University of Pennsylvania, April, 2010 . For a fascinating and fecund exploration of medieval plant­animal hybrids in relation to media ecology, see Whitney Trettien, “ Becoming Plant: Magnifying a Microhistory of Media Circuits in Nehemiah Grew’s Anatomy of Plants (1682) .” postmedieval 3.1 (2012):97. See also the crowd­review version of the essay. “ Genre Is Obsolete .” Compléments de Multitudes . 28 (2007). (shrink)

The Sixth Meditation deals, as its title proclaims, with ‘the existence of material things, and the real distinction between the mind and body of man’. In this paper, I want to start by examining Descartes' argument for the existence of material things—for the existence of an ‘external’, physical world around us. Next, in section two, I shall use this argument concerning the external world to bring out an important general point about the ‘dialectical’ way in which Descartes presents his (...) reasoning in the Meditations. This will lead me on to the third section of the paper, which will analyse the concept of ‘nature’ and the role it plays in Descartes' reasoning, particularly in the Sixth Meditation. And this in turn will bring me to the fourth and final part of the paper, which will focus on what is by general consensus the most fascinating part of the Sixth Meditation—Descartes' account of the relation between mind and body. What I shall try to do in this final section is to highlight a curious tension between Descartes' recognition of the facts of human experience on the one hand, and on the other hand his doctrine that we are essentially incorporeal or non-physical substances. (shrink)

Background Nurses are challenged with many situations that require them to solve ethical dilemmas and make moral decisions based on professional values and a sense of accountability and responsibility. To support their decisions, it is important to know how they perceive and relate their ethical ideology, professional values, and clinical accountability in their workplace. Purpose The study’s aim was twofold: to investigate the ethical ideology and perceived importance of professional values and accountability among nurses. Further, explore the relationship between each (...) of ethical ideology and professional values with nurses’ work accountability. Methods A correlational study was conducted in an Egyptian hospital. All nurses were invited to participate = 192, and 150 nurses (78.3%) completed the study questionnaires. The Ethical Position Questionnaire, the Professional Values Scale, and the Clinical Vignettes Assessment for Clinical Accountability were proven to be reliable study measures. Ethical considerations Ethics Committee approval, written informed consent, data privacy and confidentiality, and participants’ right to voluntary participation and withdrawal were maintained. Results Nurses showed good ethical ideology (75 ± 6.2) and are more idealistic while maintaining professional values (108 ± 10.8). Most nurses believed they were accountable for documenting errors, completing incident reports, and calling physicians to discuss or manage the situations. Ethical ideology and the idealism subscale were positively correlated with overall nurses’ professional values (r = 0.321, p < 0.004, r =0.464, p 0.000), respectively. On the other hand, work accountability showed a partial correlation in some areas with ethical ideology and professional values. Discussion Professional values and nurses' accountability appear to be influenced by ethical positions and ideology. Conclusion Healthcare organizations should provide a supportive work environment to help nurses develop self-awareness, and knowledge of their ethical ideologies, which improve professional values and clinical accountability in their practice. Ethical ideology and professional values should be emphasized more in nursing curricula. (shrink)

The Sixth Meditation deals, as its title proclaims, with ‘the existence of material things, and the real distinction between the mind and body of man’. In this paper, I want to start by examining Descartes' argument for the existence of material things—for the existence of an ‘external’, physical world around us. Next, in section two, I shall use this argument concerning the external world to bring out an important general point about the ‘dialectical’ way in which Descartes presents his (...) reasoning in the Meditations. This will lead me on to the third section of the paper, which will analyse the concept of ‘nature’ and the role it plays in Descartes' reasoning, particularly in the Sixth Meditation. And this in turn will bring me to the fourth and final part of the paper, which will focus on what is by general consensus the most fascinating part of the Sixth Meditation—Descartes' account of the relation between mind and body. What I shall try to do in this final section is to highlight a curious tension between Descartes' recognition of the facts of human experience on the one hand, and on the other hand his doctrine that we are essentially incorporeal or non-physical substances. (shrink)

Abe Masao 阿部正雄 is accepted by many as a member of the Kyoto School of philosophy, known primarily for its role in drawing together distinct traditions of Western and Asian thought.1 Abe was a key figure in this respect, dedicating much of his career to dialogue with Western philosophers and theologians.2 Through his many essays, translations, lectures, and conversations, Abe brought Zen Buddhism to audiences in Europe and the United States. In particular, he introduced his own interpretation of the (...) philosophy of Nishida Kitarō 西田幾多郎 and his followers, to Western audiences. Through his work in Japanese, especially his final essays, Abe also developed a more personal perspective and... (shrink)

This article proposes and empirically tests a theoretical framework incorporating Reidenbach and Robin’s (J Bus Ethics 10(4):273–284, 1991 ) conceptual model of corporate moral development. The framework is used to examine the relation between governance and business ethics, as proxied by diversity management (DM), and financial reporting quality, as proxied by the magnitude of earnings management (EM). The level of DM and governance quality are measured in accordance with the ratings of Jantzi Research (JR), a leading provider of social and (...) governance research for institutional investors. This DM score is part of an index developed by JR that investment managers use to integrate DM criteria into their investment decisions. As expected, a negative relation between corporate DM development and financial reporting quality is found while controlling for other factors known in the literatures on governance and accounting choices to affect earnings quality. Despite some caveats presented in conclusion, this study contributes to the ethics, governance, and financial reporting literatures by studying the dynamics between governance and ethics in the prevention of EM. (shrink)

In his book Powers (2003), George Molnar argues against Dispositional Monism by presenting a posteriori reasons to believe in the existence of actual categorical features. In this paper I argue that either Molnar’s project is misdirected, since the properties he concentrates on are most possibly irrelevant for the debate between Dispositional Monism and Property Dualism, or, granted that the properties he chooses are indeed relevant, his arguments cannot prove that they are categorical without begging the question against Dispositional (...) Monism. (shrink)

The study of word meanings promises important insights into the nature of the human mind by revealing what people find to be most cognitively significant in their experience. However, as we learn more about the semantics of various languages, we are faced with an interesting problem. Different languages seem to be telling us different stories about the mind. For example, important distinctions made in one language are not necessarily made in others. What are we to make of these cross-linguistic differences? (...) How do they arise? Are they created by purely linguistic processes operating over the course of language evolution? Or do they reflect fundamental differences in thought? In this sea of differences, are there any semantic universals? Which categories might be given by the genes, which by culture, and which by language? And what might the cross-linguistic similarities and differences contribute to our understanding of conceptual and linguistic development? The kinds of mapping principles, structures, and processes that link language and non-linguistic knowledge must accommodate not just one language but the rich diversity that has been uncovered. The integration of knowledge and methodologies necessary for real progress in answering these questions has happened only recently, as experimental approaches have been applied to the cross-linguistic study of word meaning. In Words and the Mind, Barbara Malt and Phillip Wolff present evidence from the leading researchers who are carrying out this empirical work on topics as diverse as spatial relations, events, emotion terms, motion events, objects, body-part terms, causation, color categories, and relational categories. By bringing them together, Malt and Wolff highlight some of the most exciting cross-linguistic and cross-cultural work on the language-thought interface, from a broad array of fields including linguistics, anthropology, cognitive and developmental psychology, and cognitive neuropsychology. Their results provide some answers to these questions and new perspectives on the issues surrounding them. (shrink)

The contemporary view of the fundamental role of time in physics generally ignores its most obvious characteric, namely its flow. Studies in the foundations of relativistic mechanics during the past decade have shown that the dynamical evolution of a system can be treated in a manifestly covariant way, in terms of the solution of a system of canonical Hamilton type equations, by considering the space-time coordinates and momenta ofevents as its fundamental description. The evolution of the events, as functions of (...) a universal invariant world, or historical, time, traces out the world lines that represent the phenomena (e.g., particles) which are observed in the laboratory. The positions in time of each of the events, i.e., the time of their potential detection, are, in this framework, controlled by this universal parameter τ, the time at which they are generated (and may proceed in the positive or negative sense). We find that the notion of thestate of a system requires generalization; at any given τ, it involves information about the system at timest(τ) ≠ τ. The correlation of what may be measured att(τ) with what is generated at τ is necessarily quite rigid, and is related covariantly to the spacelike correlations found in interference experiments. We find, furthermore, that interaction with Maxwell electromagnetism leads back to a static picture of the world, with no real evolution. As a consequence of this result, and the requirement of gauge invariance for the quantum mechanical evolution equation, we conclude that electromagnetism is described by a pre-Maxwell field, whose τ-integral (or asymptotic behavior as τ → ∞) may be identified with the Maxwell field. We therefore consider the world of events in space time, interacting through τ-dependent pre-Maxwell fields, as far as electrodynamics is concerned, as the objective dynamical reality. Our perception of the world, through laboratory detectors and our eyes, are based onintegration over τ over intervals sufficiently large to obtain an aposteriori description of the phenomena which coincides with the Maxwell theory. Fundamental notions, such as the conservation of charge, rest on this construction. The decomposition of the common notion of time into two essentially different aspects, one associated with an unvarying flow, and the second with direct observation subject to dynamical modification, has profound philosophical consequences, of which we are able to explore here only a few. (shrink)

In this book, I will discuss three main topics: the roots and aims of scientific knowledge, scientific knowledge in society, and science and values I understand scientific knowledge as being a planned and continuous production of the general and common knowledge of scientific communities. I begin my discussion with a brief analysis of the main differences between sciences, on the one hand, and everyday experience, philosophies, religions, and ideologies, on the other. I define the concept of science as a set (...) of family resemblances (in Wittgenstein's sense). The sciences can be distinguished along three lines, in terms of the difference between empirical and non-empirical sciences, differences in degrees of theoretical and methodological structure among individual sciences and scientific disciplines. Scientific knowledge is based upon some grounds, paradigmatic knowledge bases. Scientific knowledge is founded on a unified paradigmatic knowledge base. The latter includes fundamental theories, basic facts, generally accepted empirical regularities (laws), scientific research methods, scientific explanations, and established relations to other sciences. Scientific knowledge in general is defined well in classical terms by the definition that knowledge is a true and rationally-justified belief. In this connection, scientific truth is relative, depending on the given paradigmatic knowledge base and on the precision and accessibility of the measurements and observations involved. In the book's first part, I consider the production and testing of scientific hypotheses, scientific explanations, the structure of scientific theories, and the problem of scientific realism. I consider explanation an integral part of a wider nexus of heuristic and theoretical activities in science like giving reasons, understanding, clarification, and founding. Continuous production of scientific explanations is a necessary condition for the systematic reproduction of scientific knowledge. Accordingly, it does not suffice to describe them in terms of the logical structure of the arguments on which they are based, but rather, scientific explanations ought to be given complete with an epistemic and pragmatic context of the explanation. I consider especially deductive-nomological, inductive-statistical, dispositional, teleological-functional, and genetic explanations. I emphasize the ever-increasing importance of explanations by analogy and by model. Orthogonal to these distinctions lies the distinction between causal and epistemic explanation. Epistemic explanations relate scientific discoveries to epistemic progress, and causal explanations are these epistemic explanations that relate scientific discoveries to reality too. Causal explanations inform us that certain changes occur in the world as agents of other changes, or rather, that certain changes are real consequences of other changes. Thus, by having explanations of causes, we can intervene in the world to induce by design certain changes in some course of phenomena. I consider scientific theories as logically and epistemically ordered wholeness of scientific knowledge in a realm of research that enables us to construct useful models of reality. After the discussion of different 'statement' views on theories and different interpretations of the theory-experience relation, I introduce the 'model' theoretical (non-statement) views on theories, especially the structural theory of science. The model views on theories transcend the realism-antirealism dualism by introducing models between theory and reality. Therefore, the question of scientific realism is not merely whether and, if so, which element(s), of scientific theories represent reality, but rather which conditions suffice to infer from a theory that one of its models truly expresses reality. In other words, under which conditions do models of a theory represent models of reality? Generally, models are just as much images of reality in a theory as they are images of a theory in reality. The actual problem of scientific realism doesn't originate in the observable-unobservable distinction (even if this distinction is otherwise theoretically loaded), but rather in ontological quandaries, of the sort especially encountered in modern physical theories such as quantum mechanics, relativity theory, and cosmological theories, although they are known to arise in other sciences as well. Scientific theories may be real, even if they describe nothing about the world. However, such theories can be given this status only if their formal, mathematical postulates exhibit some formal homology between reality and mathematical forms. The very fact that it is possible to describe reality with the help of mathematics even in cases, where every (representational, conceptual) language and thought fall short, would indicate that even mathematics itself is, in some sense, a part of reality, although 'outside' of the empirical world. It follows we have to distinguish the non-empirical reality and the empirical world. Formal objectivity and non-arbitrariness of theories do not emerge from either our language or thoughts, or from the world of facts, causes, and effects, but rather from non-empirical reality, which frames the world as some kind of objective transcendental condition for the possibility of the existence of the world, thoughts, and language. In the second part of the book, I consider the incorporation of scientific work and scientific knowledge into modern society and its relations to values and ethics. Production of scientific knowledge goes on as a parallel distributed process of a special kind of social (shared) cognition. The central part of this cognition is the presentation of parts of the world by scientific (theoretical) models which are warranted by the shared and public practice of justification, and in reflective acting in the world as it would. I consider various formal concepts of collective propositional knowledge (distributed, mutual, common knowledge). Scientific knowledge is an achievement to be ascribed to a scientific community or, indirectly, to all those who apply or expand it, rather than to individuals per se. It presents the continuous and partially planned production of non-trivial common knowledge of the research communities in modern societies. However, besides common knowledge, shared dispositional knowledge (knowledge how of scientific teams) and shared knowledge by acquiring (knowledge of fundamental similarities and differences in scientific teams) are parts of the real body of scientific knowledge. Scientific common knowledge implies the projection into idealized universal knowledge of all real or potentially rational and well-informed individuals. The respect of scientific knowledge thus presents the norm of rationality. Science as the intensively shared and socially distributed kind of cognition enters into modern society as a special kind of work (general work), as a productive force (social invention drive), and as a form of capital (human, social, cultural, informational, etc.). However any of these categories can adequately represent the socio-economical role of science in modern societies, and we are still waiting for a more adequate general concept that would theoretically cover the 'scientification' of modern societies. My thesis is that the most important general effect of scientification is (and will be) the growth of social processes that structurally resemble parallel distributed shared social cognition of science, and not so much the rise of the use of scientific knowledge and scientifically based information in all kinds of production. Scientification of modern societies inevitably includes a much stronger need for moral and social responsibility of scientists for their work and its effects in their local society and the global world. This need comes in contradiction with the quite large accepted idea (and even the 'norm') on value-free research. I discuss to some degree different arguments for the absence of non-epistemic values and ethical reasoning from science and find them non-convincing. The sound idea of value-free research lies in the need for the absence of categorical value statements from scientific explanations and theoretical deductions. Values and ethical judgment have, and sometimes they even have to play an important role in another part of research and its application in science or outside it. Not the value-loudness of research is a danger for science but its blind, non-reflective use. It leads to the ideologization and politicization of science. A similar danger lies in the purely value-neutrality of research. It leads to the instrumentalization of science to the technical or bureaucratic means for 'any' aims. (shrink)

Foucault’s work is rich enough to sustain multiple readings. I argue in this paper for the continued construction and maintenance of what I have called the ‘American Foucault’, whose principal preoccupation is with the question of how to be free within our contemporary political constraints and possibilities. (Such a Foucault can be found in the works of American writers such as W. E. Connolly, Todd May, and Thomas Dumm.) Appreciation of Foucault’s contribution to an understanding of freedom is too often (...) hampered, however, by the insistence on the part of many of the most influential of Foucault’s critics (and some of his defenders) that his particular mode of thinking is ultimately too irresponsible. It is thought that Foucault’s refusal to account for the grounds of his work vitiates his overall project. I argue that, if we distinguish between the ‘account-ability’ demanded by his critics and the ‘response-ability’ that his work permits, we will be in a better position to appreciate the timeliness of his conception of freedom. (shrink)

Some philosophers have argued recently that introspective evidence provides direct support for an intentionalist theory of visual experience. An intentionalist theory of visual experience treats experience as an intentional state, a state with an intentional content. (I shall use the word ’state’ in a general way, for any kind of mental phenomenon, and here I shall not distinguish states proper from events, though the distinction is important.) Intentionalist theories characteristically say that the phenomenal character of an experience, what it is (...) like to have the experience, is exhausted by its intentional content. Visual experience, and on some views sense-experience generally, does not involve the awareness of ’qualia’, intrinsic, non-intentional features of the experience. According to Gilbert Harman and Michael Tye, support for this view comes from introspecting on experience. Tye describes his ’argument from introspection’ as follows: Standing on the beach in Santa Barbara a couple of summers ago on a bright sunny day, I found myself transfixed by the intense blue of the Pacific Ocean. Was I not here delighting in the phenomenal aspects of my visual experience? And if I was, doesn’t this show that there are visual qualia? I am not convinced. It seems to me that what I found so pleasing in the above instance, what I was focusing on, as it were, were a certain shade and intensity of the colour blue. I experienced blue as a property of the ocean not as a property of my experience. My experience itself certainly wasn’t blue. Rather, it was an experience which represented the ocean as blue. What I was really delighting in, then, were specific aspects of the content of the experience. Tye goes on to suggest that this might have been the sort of thing Moore meant when he said that the sensation of blue is ’diaphanous’, and glosses this as follows: When one tries to focus on it in introspection one cannot help but see right through it so that what one actually ends up attending to is the real colour blue. 1An early version of this paper was presented at the conference, Mental Phenomena III in Dubrovnik, Croatia.. (shrink)

Now that complex Agent-Based Models and computer simulations spread over economics and social sciences - as in most sciences of complex systems -, epistemological puzzles (re)emerge. We introduce new epistemological tools so as to show to what precise extent each author is right when he focuses on some empirical, instrumental or conceptual significance of his model or simulation. By distinguishing between models and simulations, between types of models, between types of computer simulations and between types of empiricity, section 2 gives (...) conceptual tools to explain the rationale of the diverse epistemological positions presented in section 1. Finally, we claim that a careful attention to the real multiplicity of denotational powers of symbols at stake and then to the implicit routes of references operated by models and computer simulations is necessary to determine, in each case, the proper epistemic status and credibility of a given model and/or simulation. (shrink)

Previous analyses of descriptively defined psychotic phenomena have concluded that they can occur in benign spiritual experiences as well as pathological states. Attempts to forge a distinction between psychotic experiences in spiritual and pathological contexts on the basis of the form or content of the experience (broadly described) can be disproved by counterexample; distinguishing on the basis of negative or positive consequences of the phenomena for the individual can be seen to beg the question. In the present paper, (...) it is argued that examining the fundamental conceptual organization of psychotic and mystical mental states not only elucidates the observed similarities between them, but can highlight the differences, and the processes by which negatively evaluated pathological features can be seen to emerge. Oriental philosophical systems such as Tibetan and Zen Buddhism, and Tantric Hinduism, provide conceptualizations of mystical states of mind, from which a model can be drawn, while the epistemologies of these systems provide an illuminating metaphysical perspective on both psychotic and mystical experiences. It is concluded that mystical and psychotic experiences can be distinguished not only by emotional and behavioral consequences, but by real differences in the states themselves; certain features, such as loss of subject/object boundaries and loss of the relative dimensional structure of perception, are common to both processes. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Gethsemani II:Catholic and Buddhist Monastics Focus on SufferingThomas Ryan, CSPApproximately twenty Benedictine, Trappist, and Camaldolese men and women monastics met 13-18 April 2003 with an equal number of Buddhist monastics at the Trappist Gethsemani monastery in Kentucky for five days of dialogue on the causes of suffering. The encounter, Gethsemani II, was a sequel to a similar 1996 meeting at the monastery made famous by the monk Thomas Merton, (...) a noted twentieth-century contemplative and peace activist who died in 1968. Merton's friendship with the Dalai Lama served as seminal inspiration for these two Buddhist-Christian dialogues. In a ritual at the opening of the Gethsemani II meeting, the participants, joined by a few advisors and observers to the dialogue, hung a wreath of flowers around the cross marking Merton's grave.Each day speakers from both sides initiated a conversation on a particular cause of suffering, such as greed and consumerism, personal and structural violence, sickness and aging. "I do not do well at conferences, and I came prepared to be bored," said John Daido Loori, abbot of the Zen Mountain monastery in Mt. Tremper, NY, on day three, "but the level of honesty and depth of sharing in these exchanges has ripped open my heart." It is not possible in this forum to synthesize the penetrating reflections and stories on suffering offered by the participants. What may be even more important is the window offered by this dialogue into the dynamics of interfaith encounter no matter where it takes place.By sharing times of prayer, talk, meals, and rituals appropriate to each tradition, the participants became friends. They came for one thing—to talk about suffering—and in the process found another: an experience of community. They began each conversation with the musical and meditative interlude of a recorder, but the openness and sensitivity of the conversation itself became the real music. They didn't solvea single problem, but they kindled a vital force—friendship—with which to confront problems together in the future. Each brought passion for their own tradition, the gospel on the one hand and the dharma on the other, and each ended by recognizing in the other a powerful resource for healing the world.Evident in this dialogue was the emergence of a Euro-American Buddhist voice, deeply respectful of the Asian tradition inherited, yet willing to think creatively about possible bridge points of understanding, of comparison, of ways of reformulating set [End Page 249] patterns of saying things so as to better get at possible common meanings. One example of this will suffice. Suffering is at the heart of the Buddha's teachings in the Four Noble Truths, the first teachings he gave after his experience of enlightenment. First, all existence is dukkha, unsatisfactory and filled with suffering. Second, dukkha arises from tanha, a craving or clinging, which means a constant effort to find something permanent and stable in a transient world. Third, dukkha can cease totally, and this is nirvana. Fourth, this can be reached by following the Eightfold Path described as "right" or samma: right understanding, right directed thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. In short, the first three wisdom sayings relate to the existence, the cause, and the cessation of suffering. The fourth offers a clearly laid out plan for liberation from suffering.The Christian approach could be typified in Pope John Paul II's 1984 Apostolic Letter "On the Meaning of Christian Suffering," which was distributed to all the participants. In reflecting on Jesus nailed to the cross, the pope observes that "in this weakness there is accomplished his lifting up, confirmed by the power of the resurrection. This means that the weaknesses of all human sufferings are capable of being infused with the same power of God manifested in Christ's cross. In such a concept, to suffer means to become particularly susceptible, particularly open, to the working of the salvific powers of God offered humanity in Christ. In him God has confirmed his desire to act especially through suffering... and wishes to make his power known precisely in this weakness and emptying of self" (p... (shrink)

"Hegel's Philosophy of Nature was for a long time regarded as an outdated historical curiosity. Yet if systematic completeness is given up, the value of Hegelian arguments and of Hegelian logic generally becomes uncertain. In this book, John Burbidge reveals the abiding significance of the Philosophy of Nature as the intermediate movement in Hegel's system." "Burbidge looks at three specific texts in Hegel's work: the two chapters of the Science of Logic that deal with the concept of chemism, and the (...) section on chemical process in the Philosophy of Nature. Through his detailed commentary, he clarifies Hegel's distinction between a strictly theoretical philosophy and one that understands the natural world. He shows that Hegel does not presume to derive natural data a priori, nor is he simply dependent on the explanatory theories arrived at by chemists themselves. Experience provides the data, but thought sets the parameters. Burbidge sets Hegel's thought in context with sketches of what Kant, Fichte, and Schelling had to say about chemistry, and with background outlining the stage chemistry had reached at the time Hegel was writing. He also reveals how Hegel changed his mind as he revised each section for succeeding editions of his work, thus providing a fascinating case study of the development of Hegel's ideas."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved. (shrink)

We propose a lexical account of event nouns, in particular of deverbal nominalisations, whose meaning is related to the event expressed by their base verb. The literature on nominalisations often assumes that the semantics of the base verb completely defines the structure of action nominals. We argue that the information in the base verb is not sufficient to completely determine the semantics of action nominals. We exhibit some data from different languages, especially from Romance language, which show that nominalisations focus (...) on some aspects of the verb semantics. The selected aspects, however, seem to be idiosyncratic and do not automatically result from the internal structure of the verb nor from its interaction with the morphological suffix. We therefore propose a partially lexicalist approach view of deverbal nouns. It is made precise and computable by using the Montagovian generative lexicon, a type theoretical framework introduced by Bassac, Mery and Retoré in this journal in 2010. This extension of Montague semantics with a richer type system easily incorporates lexical phenomena like the semantics of action nominals in particular deverbals, including their polysemy and felicitous copredications. (shrink)

We propose a lexical account of event nouns, in particular of deverbal nominalisations, whose meaning is related to the event expressed by their base verb. The literature on nominalisations often assumes that the semantics of the base verb completely defines the structure of action nominals. We argue that the information in the base verb is not sufficient to completely determine the semantics of action nominals. We exhibit some data from different languages, especially from Romance language, which show that nominalisations focus (...) on some aspects of the verb semantics. The selected aspects, however, seem to be idiosyncratic and do not automatically result from the internal structure of the verb nor from its interaction with the morphological suffix. We therefore propose a partially lexicalist approach view of deverbal nouns. It is made precise and computable by using the Montagovian generative lexicon, a type theoretical framework introduced by Bassac, Mery and Retoré in this journal in 2010. This extension of Montague semantics with a richer type system easily incorporates lexical phenomena like the semantics of action nominals in particular deverbals, including their polysemy and felicitous copredications. (shrink)

Throughout the 20th century, philosophers have criticized the scientific understanding of the human body. Instead of presenting the body as a meaningful unity or Gestalt, it is regarded as a complex mechanism and described in quasi-mechanistic terms. In a phenomenological approach, a more intimate experience of the body is presented. This approach, however, is questioned by Jacques Lacan. According to Lacan, three basic possibilities of experiencing the body are to be distinguished: the symbolical (or scientific) body, the imaginary (or ideal) (...) body and the real body. Whereas the symbolical body is increasingly objectified (and even digitalized) by medical science, the phenomenological perception amounts to an idealization of the body. The real body cannot be perceived immediately. Rather, it emerges in the folds and margins of our efforts to symbolize or idealize the body, which are bound to remain incomplete and fragile. In the first part of the article (1-3), Lacan's conceptual distinction between the symbolical, the imaginary and the real body will be explained. In the second part (4-5), this distinction will be further clarified by relying on crucial chapters in the history of anatomy (notably Mundinus, Vesalius, Da Vinci and Descartes). (shrink)

Color provides an instance of a general puzzle about how to reconcile the picture of the world given to us by our ordinary experience with the picture of the world given to us by our best theoretical accounts. The Red and the Real offers a new approach to such longstanding philosophical puzzles about what colors are and how they fit into nature. It is responsive to a broad range of constraints --- both the ordinary constraints of color experience and (...) the more theoretical constraints of color science, psychology, semantics, and ontology. (shrink)

We shall examine some conceptual tensions in Hick’s ‘pluralism’ in the light of S. Radhakrishnan’s reformulation of classical Advaita. Hick himself often quoted Radhakrishnan’s translations from the Hindu scriptures in support of his own claims about divine ineffability, transformative experience and religious pluralism. However, while Hick developed these themes partly through an adaptation of Kantian epistemology, Radhakrishnan derived them ultimately from Śaṁkara, and these two distinctive points of origin lead to somewhat different types of reconstruction of the diversity of world (...) religions. Our argument will highlight the point that Radhakrishnan is not a ‘pluralist’ in terms of Hick’s understanding of the Real. The Advaitin ultimate, while it too like Hick’s Real cannot be encapsulated by human categories, is, however, not strongly ineffable, because some substantive descriptions, according to the Advaitic tradition, are more accurate than others. Our comparative analysis will reveal that they differ because they are located in two somewhat divergent metaphysical schemes. In turn, we will be able to revisit, through this dialogue between Hick and Radhakrishnan, the intensely vexed question of whether Hick’s version of pluralism is in fact a form of covert exclusivism. (shrink)

s work is rich enough to sustain multiple readings. I argue in this paper for the continued construction and maintenance of what I have called the ‘American Foucault’, whose principal preoccupation is with the question of how to be free within our contemporary political constraints and possibilities. (Such a Foucault can be found in the works of American writers such as W. E. Connolly, Todd May, and Thomas Dumm.) Appreciation of Foucault’s contribution to an understanding of freedom is too often (...) hampered, however, by the insistence on the part of many of the most influential of Foucault’s critics (and some of his defenders) that his particular mode of thinking is ultimately too irresponsible . It is thought that Foucault’s refusal to account for the grounds of his work vitiates his overall project. I argue that, if we distinguish between the ‘account-ability’ demanded by his critics and the ‘response-ability’ that his work permits, we will be in a better position to appreciate the timeliness of his conception of freedom. Key Words: accountability • critique • Foucault • freedom • genealogy • responsibility • theory. (shrink)

This article reviews recent investigations of three familiar naturalistic contexts in which facial expressions are frequently encountered: whole bodies, natural scenes, and emotional voices. It briefly reviews recent evidence that shifts the emphasis from a categorical model of face processing, based on the assumption that faces are processed as a distinct object category with their dedicated perceptual and neurofunctional basis, towards more distributed models where different aspects of faces are processed by different brain areas and different perceptual routines and (...) shows how these models are better suited to represent face perception and face-context effects. This study details one kind of context effect, which is found in investigations of interactions between facial and bodily expressions. It sketches a perspective in which context plays a crucial role, even for highly automated processes like the ones underlying recognition of facial expressions. Some recent evidence of context effects also has implications for current theories of face perception and its deficits. (shrink)

It is argued in this article that Foucault’s most distinctive contribution to philosophical practice is to be found in his distinctive mode of taking up historiography, exploring critically the conditions and limits of knowledge through archival work. The focus on knowledge would seem to place him in the critical lineage of Kant; however, his appeal to history and archival explorations reconfigure the relation between sensibility and the understanding in a way that suggests a different concern with the conditions of “a (...) possible knowledge.” After discussing how Foucault’s archival work engages a distinct sensibility, I suggest that his concern with knowledge can best be understood not within a transcendental project, however historicized, but within the logical space of Hegel’s Doctrine of the Concept, specifically the discussion of the Idea of cognition where it is a question of the twin processes of unifying subjectivity and objectivity as expressive of cognition’s “urge to truth.” Understood within this conceptual context, Foucault’s distinctive archival approach to what he calls “subjectivation” and “objectivation” allows us to appreciate the distinction between knowledge and truth in a way that leaves open the possibility of transformation. (shrink)

It is argued in this article that Foucault’s most distinctive contribution to philosophical practice is to be found in his distinctive mode of taking up historiography, exploring critically the conditions and limits of knowledge through archival work. The focus on knowledge would seem to place him in the critical lineage of Kant; however, his appeal to history and archival explorations reconfigure the relation between sensibility and the understanding in a way that suggests a different concern with the conditions of “a (...) possible knowledge.” After discussing how Foucault’s archival work engages a distinct sensibility, I suggest that his concern with knowledge can best be understood not within a transcendental project, however historicized, but within the logical space of Hegel’s Doctrine of the Concept, specifically the discussion of the Idea of cognition where it is a question of the twin processes of unifying subjectivity and objectivity as expressive of cognition’s “urge to truth.” Understood within this conceptual context, Foucault’s distinctive archival approach to what he calls “subjectivation” and “objectivation” allows us to appreciate the distinction between knowledge and truth in a way that leaves open the possibility of transformation. (shrink)

This collection of essays by one of the preeminent Kant scholars of our time transforms our understanding of both Kant's aesthetics and his ethics. Guyer shows that at the very core of Kant's aesthetic theory, disinterestedness of taste becomes an experience of freedom and thus an essential accompaniment to morality itself. At the same time he reveals how Kant's moral theory includes a distinctive place for the cultivation of both general moral sentiments and particular attachments on the basis of the (...) most rigorous principle of duty. Kant's thought is placed in a rich historical context including such figures as Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume, Burke, Kames, as well as Baumgarten, Mendelssohn, Schiller, and Hegel. Other topics treated are the sublime, natural versus artistic beauty, genius and art history, and duty and inclination. These essays extend and enrich the account of Kant's aesthetics in the author's earlier book, Kant and the Claims of Taste. (shrink)

I argue in this paper that the attempt by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri in Empire and Multitude to “theorize empire” should be read both against the backdrop of speculative philosophy of history and as a development of the conception of a “principle of intelligibility” as this is discussed in Michel Foucault’s recently published courses at the Collège de France. I also argue that Foucault’s work in these courses can be read as implicitly providing what I call “prolegomena to any (...) future speculative philosophy of history.” I define the latter as concerned with the intelligibility of the historical process considered as a whole. I further suggest, through a brief discussion of the classical figures of Kant, Hegel, and Marx, that the basic features of speculative philosophy of history concern the articulation of both the telos and dynamics of history. My claim is that Hardt and Negri provide an account of the telos and dynamics of history that respects the strictures imposed on speculative philosophy of history by Foucault’s work, and thus can be considered as providing a post-Foucauldian speculative philosophy of history. In doing so, they provide a challenge to other “theoretical” attempts to account for our changing world. (shrink)

L'auteur résume dans cet article le contenu du commentaire du Phèdre qui doit paraître en mai 1998. Le Phèdre constitue un véritable « manifeste » qui présente un programme dans lequel Platon, alors âgé de soixante à soixante-cinq ans environ, prend position sur la question de l'écriture, à un moment où celle-ci était en train de se substituer à l'oralité pour constituer un instrument de communication privilégié. Dans le Phèdre, Platon veut montrer que, au moment même où il écrit, il (...) est le plus grand écrivain de la Grèce. Il démontre ce point en deux étapes: il entame tout d'abord une « joute oratoire » avec Lysias, alors considéré comme le meilleur écrivain de son temps, où il fait montre de sa supériorité sur les rhéteurs tant sur la forme que sur le contenu; il propose ensuite une théorie de l'art d'écrire dont le caractère adéquat se fonde sur la méthode dialectique. Il énonce de surcroît les trois critères fondamentaux qui doivent gouverner tous les discours, que ceux-ci soient écrits ou oraux: 1 / il faut connaître l'essence de la chose dont on parle; 2 / il faut connaître la nature des âmes auxquelles on s'adresse; 3 / il faut adapter les contenus des messages que l'on veut communiquer aux capacités de réception des âmes auxquelles on s'adresse. Toutefois, les messages du philosophe ne peuvent être transmis par la seule écriture: les choses les plus précieuses, le philosophe les écrit dans les âmes des hommes, autrement dit, il les communique dans le registre de l' « oralité dialectique ». Les discours écrits n'ont aucune autonomie, puisqu'ils ont, de fait, besoin du « secours » de l'auteur. Pour comprendre les discours écrits, fussent-ils les meilleurs, une connaissance préalable des choses dont ils traitent est nécessaire, connaissance qui ne peut être obtenue que par des voies différentes de celles que fournissent les discours écrits. The author summarizes in this article the content of his Phaedrus' commentary which will appear in May of 1998. The Phaedrus constitutes a true « manifesto ». It presents a programme in which Plato (who was then aged sixty or sixty-five), defends a position on the question of writing at a time when writing was being substituted for orality as the primary instrument of communication. In the Phaedrus, Plato wants to show, while he is writing it, that he is the greatest writer in Greece. He demonstrates this point in two stages: first, he initiates an « oratorical contest » with Lysias who was then considered the best writer of this time, where he shows his superiority over the orators both in form and in content; then, he proposes a theory of the art of writing the appropriate character of which is based on the dialectical method. Moreover, Plato states the three primary criteria which must govern any discourse whether oral or written: 1 / knowledge of the essence of what one speaks; 2 / knowledge of the nature of the souls to be addressed; 3 / knowledge of the content of the messages that one addressed. However, the messages of the philosopher cannot be transmitted only by writing. The most precious things are written by the philosopher in the souls of men, in other words, he communicates them in the register of dialectical orality. Written discourses have no autonomy since they need the « help » of the author. To understand written discourse, including the best, a preliminary knowledge of the things with which they deal is necessary, knowledge which can only be obtained through paths different from those which are provided by written discourse. (shrink)

Este artículo examina el significado del desarrollo humano integral propugnado por Benedicto XVI en Caritas in veritate, destacando su continuidad con Populorum progressio y, en general, con el magisterio social precedente. Tras dar razón del vínculo existente entre la economía, la ética y la antropología, el autor trata de espigar las principales orientaciones ético-económicas que han sido propuestas en esa última encíclica social con vistas a un tal desarrollo, articulándolas a partir de dos concepciones antropológicas de honda raigambre en la (...) doctrina social de la Iglesia, a saber, la dignidad humana y el personalismo comunitario.Comenta, finalmente, la relevancia económica de la antropología cristiana y su potencial crítico frente al homo oeconomicus, así como la capacidad de interlocución con diversas corrientes de pensamiento contemporáneas que dicha antropología proporciona a la doctrina social de la Iglesia.This article examines the meaning of the human, complete development defended by Benedict XVI in Caritas in veritate, emphasizing its continuity with Populorum progessio and with the previous social teaching in general. After stating the existing link between economy, ethics and anthropology, the author tries to select the main ethic-economic orientations proposed in that last social encyclical in relation to a such development, and structures them beginning with two anthropological conceptions deep-rooted in the social doctrine of the church, that is, human dignity and personalism of the community. Finally, the article comments on the economic importance of Christian anthropology and its critical potential against the homo oeconomicus, as well as the capacity of being an interlocutor with several contemporary trends of thought that anthropology provides the social doctrine of the church with. (shrink)

Subjectivity theories of consciousness take self-reference, somehow construed, as essential to having conscious experience. These theories differ with respect to how many levels they posit and to whether self-reference is conscious or not. But all treat self-referencing as a process that transpires at the personal level, rather than at the subpersonal level, the level of mechanism. -/- Working with conceptual resources afforded by pre-existing theories of consciousness that take self-reference to be essential, several attempts have been made to explain seemingly (...) anomalous cases, especially instances of alien experience. These experiences are distinctive precisely because self-referencing is explicitly denied by the only person able to report them: those who experience them deny that certain actions, mental states, or body parts belong to self. The relevant actions, mental states, or body parts are sometimes attributed to someone or something other than self, and sometimes they are just described as not belonging to self. But all are referred away from self. -/- The cases under discussion here include somatoparaphrenia, schizophrenia, depersonalization, anarchic hand syndrome, and utilization behavior; the theories employed, Higher-Order Thought, Wide Intrinsicality, and Self-Representational. Below I argue that each of these attempts at explaining or explaining away the anomalies fails. Along the way, since each of these theories seeks at least compatibility with science, I sketch experimental approaches that could be used to adduce support for my position, or indeed for the positions of theorists with whom I disagree. -/- In a concluding section I first identify two presuppositions shared by all of the theorists considered here, and argue that both are either erroneous or misleading. Second, I call attention to divergent paths adopted when attempting to explain alienation experiences: some theorists choose to add a mental ingredient, while others prefer to subtract one. I argue that alienation from experience, action, or body parts could result from either addition or subtraction, and that the two can be incorporated within a comprehensive explanatory framework. Finally, I suggest that this comprehensive framework would require self-referencing of a sort, but self-referencing that occurs solely on the level of mechanism, or the subpersonal level. In adumbrating some features of this “subpersonal self,” I suggest that there might be one respect in which it is prior to conscious experience. (shrink)

Leibniz explains both activity and sensation in terms of the relative distinctness of perception. This paper argues that the systematic connection between activity and sensation is illuminated by Leibniz’s use of distinctness in analyzing each. Leibnizian sensation involves two levels of activity: on one level, the relative forcefulness of an expression enables certain expressions to stand out against the perceptual field, but in addition to this there is an activity of the mind that enables sensory experience. This connection of mental (...) activity and perceptual distinctness enables us to better appreciate the fundamental role perceptual distinctness plays in Leibniz’s theory of sensation. (shrink)

Cybernetics promoted machine-supported investigations of adaptive sensorimotor behaviours observed in biological systems. This methodological approach receives renewed attention in contemporary robotics, cognitive ethology, and the cognitive neurosciences. Its distinctive features concern machine experiments, and their role in testing behavioural models and explanations flowing from them. Cybernetic explanations of behavioural events, regularities, and capacities rely on multiply realizable mechanism schemata, and strike a sensible balance between causal and unifying constraints. The multiple realizability of cybernetic mechanism schemata paves the way to principled (...) comparisons between biological systems and machines. Various methodological issues involved in the transition from mechanism schemata to their machine instantiations are addressed here, by reference to a simple sensorimotor coordination task. These concern the proper treatment of ceteris paribus clauses in experimental settings, the significance of running experiments with correct but incomplete machine instantiations of mechanism schemata, and the advantage of operating with real machines ??? as opposed to simulated ones ??? immersed in real environments. (shrink)

Can religious experience justify belief in God? We best approach this question by splitting it in two: Do religious experiences give their subjects any justification for believing that there is a God of the kind they experience? And Does testimony about such experiences provides any justification for believing that there is a God for those who are not the subject of the experience? The most popular affirmative answers trace back to the work of Richard Swinburne, who appeals to (...) the Principle of Credulity and the Principle of Testimony. Since then, development of his line of reasoning has gone in a number of distinct directions. Here I propose yet another development. I argue first that the Principle of Credulity is false on the grounds that it has several implausible commitments. I then offer a Phenomenal Conservative perspective on the epistemology of religious experience suggesting a categorically affirmative answer to but a nuanced answer to which allows the possibility of reasonable disagreement about religious experience. (shrink)

J. David Lewis and Richard L. Smith provide a history of pragmatism and Chicago sociology based on the positions of realism and nominalism. This issue is indeed the key to understanding pragmatism’s foundations in Charles Peirce’s original formulation. Lewis and Smith claim that there are two pragmatisms, a realistic one characterized by Peirce and Mead and a nominalistic one (which Lewis and Smith claim has no value) illustrated by James and Dewey. They argue that Chicago sociology, including Herbert Blumer, was (...) under the influence of the nominalistic pragmatism, and that Mead exercised little influence during his lifetime. The argument is based on an ahistorical, a priori "metatheoretical" realism-nominalism distinction that claims to be based on Peirce's discussions of realism and nominalism. Yet the authors support their understanding of realism by appealing to Mead’s discussion of “contact experience,” and claim that Peirce’s realism must be based in non-symbolic “pure resistance.” Ironically, such a view represents the main tenet of nominalism, that only individual particulars are real, and amounts to a denial of Peirce’s category of Thirdness as reducible to the “pure resistance” of Secondness. Lewis and Smith attempt to correct the subjectivist tendencies of symbolic interactionism yet would problematically replace them with an equally subjective view of what constitutes objectivity: individual reaction with an object. American Sociology and Pragmatism tends to present a monistic universe hinging on a nominalistic interpretation of realism, a single-visioned view that places more emphasis on labels than on the substance and pragmatic import of a theorist's thoughts, resulting in serious distortions pro and con. Yet it also has opened up for serious questioning the whole foundations of symbolic interactionism and Mead's place within pragmatism and Chicago sociology. Though the authors claim to be "revisionists," it seems to me that they are also "fundamentalists" in safely preserving Mead at the center of a history they claim he did not significantly influence. In my opinion the ongoing controversy will result in a broader understanding of the antecedents of contemporary symbolic interactionism, one that will call for Mead's now dominating role as the sole representative of pragmatism for many American sociologists to be reevaluated and placed within the context of the quite substantial contributions of Peirce, James, and Dewey. (shrink)