The aim of this paper is to present the French approach to Information and Communication, and to sketch out some arguments pro and con for their amalgamation into a unique scientific body. Since its creation in 1975, the French academic field of Information-Communication has proved several advantages in the development of a new scientific corpus, but also some drawbacks. These are going to be reviewed and the question will be posed on the opportunity to generalize that model or to abandon (...) it. The research concludes that a dichotomy between information and communication is certainly not representative of the French field of information and communication; it would rather be a continuum or a multi-polar space. Furthermore it is suspected that Anglo-Saxon separation of information science from communication science is not clear either. International comparison and research program in information – communication are advocated. (shrink)
This study offers a panoramic view of the creative, expository, interpretive, dialectic, polemical, didactic and devotional phases of Dvaita philosophy, and its ...
Even as media in myriad forms increasingly saturate our lives, we nonetheless tend to describe our relationship to it in terms from the twentieth century: we are consumers of media, choosing to engage with it. In _Feed-Forward_, Mark B. N. Hansen shows just how outmoded that way of thinking is: media is no longer separate from us but has become an inescapable part of our very experience of the world. Engaging deeply with the speculative empiricism of philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, (...) Hansen reveals how new media call into play elements of sensibility that deeply affect human selfhood without in any way _belonging_ to the human. From social media to data-mining to new sensor technologies, media in the twenty-first century work largely outside the realm of perceptual consciousness, yet at the same time inflect our every sensation. Understanding that paradox, Hansen shows, offers us a chance to put forward a radically new vision of human becoming, one that enables us to reground the human in a non-anthropocentric view of the world and our experience in it. (shrink)
In New Philosophy for New Media, Mark Hansen defines the image in digital art in terms that go beyond the merely visual. Arguing that the "digital image" encompasses the entire process by which information is made perceivable, he places the body in a privileged position -- as the agent that filters information in order to create images. By doing so, he counters prevailing notions of technological transcendence and argues for the indispensability of the human in the digital era.Hansen examines new (...) media art and theory in light of Henri Bergson's argument that affection and memory render perception impure -- that we select only those images precisely relevant to our singular form of embodiment. Hansen updates this argument for the digital age, arguing that we filter the information we receive to create images rather than simply receiving images as preexisting technical forms. This framing function yields what Hansen calls the "digital image." He argues that this new "embodied" status of the frame corresponds directly to the digital revolution: a digitized image is not a fixed representation of reality, but is defined by its complete flexibility and accessibility. It is not just that the interactivity of new media turns viewers into users; the image itself has become the body's process of perceiving it.To illustrate his account of how the body filters information in order to create images, Hansen focuses on new media artists who follow a "Bergsonist vocation"; through concrete engagement with the work of artists like Jeffrey Shaw, Douglas Gordon, and Bill Viola, Hansen explores the contemporary aesthetic investment in the affective, bodily basis of vision. The book includes over 70 illustrations from the works of these and many other new media artists. (shrink)
This study offers a panoramic view of the creative, expository, interpretive, dialectic, polemical, didactic and devotional phases of Dvaita philosophy, and its ...
Maurice Merleau-Ponty was described by Paul Ricoeur as 'the greatest of the French phenomenologists'. The essays in this volume examine the full scope of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy, from his central and abiding concern with the nature of perception and the bodily constitution of intentionality to his reflections on science, nature, art, history, and politics. The authors explore the historical origins and context of his thought as well as its continuing relevance to contemporary work in phenomenology, philosophy of mind, cognitive science, biology, (...) art criticism and political and social theory. What emerges is a fresh image of Merleau-Ponty as a deep and original thinker whose philosophical importance has been underestimated, in part owing to the influence of intellectual movements such as existentialism and structuralism, into which his work could not be easily assimilated. New readers will find this the most convenient and accessible guide to Merleau-Ponty currently available. (shrink)
The fate of liberalism in Russia almost automatically brings to mind the image of something tragic, of something that perished in its very prime. The fate of the theoreticians and political leaders of liberalism, from B.N. Chicherin to P.A. Stolypin and P.N. Miliukov, reflects the fate of the movement itself—disgrace, exile, violent death. The Bolshevik October Revolution can be dated as the final ruin of the liberal movement in Russia. The lifespan of Russian liberalism thus dates from the middle of (...) the nineteenth century to 1917. (shrink)
A short account of the genesis and present state of English linguistic philosophy. Warnock looks briefly at the metaphysicians at the turn of the century, and then goes through the work of Moore, Russell, Wittgenstein, and Ryle, to that of Austin and Strawson. The book is mainly expository, and includes chapters on logic and metaphysics as these are related to linguistic philosophy. Sometimes Warnock's style is as mannered as it is lucid, but it is lucid nevertheless; a fine introduction to (...) linguistic philosophy --B. N. F. (shrink)
This book explores the influence of ubuntu on South Africa’s post-apartheid transitional justice mechanism, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and—in contrast to ethnophilosophy—takes differences, historical developments, and social contexts seriously.
This limpidly composed memoir should fascinate anyone interested in Wittgenstein. It consists of personal reminiscences, letters from Wittgenstein, and some straight philosophical material in the form of - notes, taken by Malcolm at the time, on lectures and conversations. A revised version of the already-published biographical sketch of Wittgenstein by von Wright is included.--B. N. F.
These books were dictated by Wittgenstein to pupils between 1933 and 1935, and present an earlier version of the ideas of the Philosophical Investigations. Wittgenstein's main concern is with problems of meaning, but this leads him to consider many connected problems, particularly in the philosophy of mind. Part of the interest of these books is historical, since manuscript copies of them helped to spread Wittgenstein's influence in the '30's and '40's; but they are also important philosophically, for they cast new (...) light on the problems of the Investigations.--B. N. F. (shrink)
In our opinion, the flaws in the teaching of philosophy were to a large degree related to the fact that it was regarded as a science . The resolute rejection of this position and the recognition of philosophy's status as a world view is for us the necessary condition for escaping from the existing situation. To put it more concretely, the view of philosophy that became entrenched among us has produced the following fundamental flaws in the teaching process:—An underestimation of (...) or even a dismissive attitude toward pre- Marxist and in particular non-Marxist theories . Although non-Marxist philosophy was looked at in the course of study, this was done mainly to show its shortcomings—to the greater glory of Marxist philosophy. Idealism was regarded only as a barren flower. Students were instilled with the idea that idealism was on the verge of being overcome and supplanted by materialism, and this created in them a completely untrue picture of the real course of development of philosophical knowledge. (shrink)
The ideas and conceptions of the Frankfurt philosophical-sociological school, above all the "critical theory of society," the principles of "negative dialectics" and the "great refusal," the utopia of "pacified existence," occupy an important place in the contemporary ideological struggle between the world systems of socialism and capitalism, and comprise a significant ideological and theoretical arsenal of bourgeois ideology and revisionism. And this is not accidental. The "critical theory of society" formulated and argued for by T. Adorno, M. Horkheimer, H. Marcuse, (...) J. Habermas, and others, which proclaims a protest against any social status quo, is used for the critique both of capitalism and actually existing socialism. At the same time it is also interpreted as an imaginary alternative to Marxism, and from, moreover, both right and "left" positions. Therefore the social theory of the Frankfurt school impacts upon the most diverse currents—from bourgeois social thought to the right and "left" varieties of revisionism. The complex evolution made by the representatives of this school in the last half-century contributed to this wide dissemination of the ideas of the Frankfurt school. Theoretical arguments are found in it both by those whose ideology, being directed to the progressive forces, is developed in the direction of Marxism, and by those who fled the soil of Marxism and are hostile to it. (shrink)
This article considers recent arguments against the proposition that one and the same object cannot go out of existence and then come into existence again (so that, e.g., teleportation would involve change of identity.). It argues that these arguments can be evaded by adopting a four-dimensional ontology, according to which human beings, trees, etc., have temporal as well as spatial parts.
