Solly Zuckerman’s work has been largely dismissed or marginalized by both historians of primatology and primatologists. This paper, using archival and published materials, re-examines both his life and his research into primate sexuality and sociology in the 1920s, endocrinology in the 1930s, and the effects of bomb blast in the 1940s. Despite the many flaws in his work, which is now largely outdated, his career reveals a great deal about the audiences for primatological knowledge in pre-war and wartime Britain; the (...) interlocking circles of the scientific community that impinged on primatology; and competing ideas of what constituted a scientifically correct methodology for the observation of primate behaviour. Also noted is the gap between Zuckerman’s self-presentation as the scourge of anthropomorphism and the anthropomorphism of his remarks in private notebooks. Although his work well illustrates familiar themes of patriarchy, military and colonialism in the history of primatology, it also suggests another, underexplored dimension of that science: primatology as an example of cross-species social interaction. (shrink)

Hopkins begins his study with Plato's written and unwritten theories of eidê and Aristotle's criticism of both. He then traces Husserl's early investigations into the formation of mathematical and logical concepts, charting the critical necessity that leads from descriptive psychology to transcendentally pure phenomenology. An investigation of the movement of Husserl's phenomenology of transcendental consciousness to that of monadological intersubjectivity follows. Hopkins then presents the final stage of the development of Husserl's thought, which situates monadological intersubjectivity within the context of (...) the historical a priori constitutive of all meaning. An exposition of the unwarranted historical presuppositions that guide Heidegger's fundamental ontological and Derrida's deconstructive criticisms of Husserl's transcendental phenomenology concludes the book. By following Husserl's personal trajectory Hopkins is able to show the unity of Husserl's philosophical enterprise, challenging the prevailing view that Husserl's late turn to history is inconsistent with his earlier attempts to establish phenomenology as a pure science. Contents: Introduction Part I Descriptive Psychology 1. Investigation of the Origin of Number 2. Investigation of the Origin of Logical Signification Part II Cartesian Transcendental Phenomenology 3. Investigation of the Origin of Objective Transcendence 4. Investigation of the Origin of Subjective Transcendence Part III Historical Transcendental Phenomenology 5. The Crisis of Meaning in Contemporary European Science 6. Historical Investigation of the Phenomenological Origin Part IV Husserl and his Critics 7. Fundamental Critiques of Transcendental Phenomenology 8. A Husserlian Response to the Critics. (shrink)

Burt C. Hopkins presents the first in-depth study of the work of Edmund Husserl and Jacob Klein on the philosophical foundations of the logic of modern symbolic mathematics. Accounts of the philosophical origins of formalized concepts—especially mathematical concepts and the process of mathematical abstraction that generates them—have been paramount to the development of phenomenology. Both Husserl and Klein independently concluded that it is impossible to separate the historical origin of the thought that generates the basic concepts of mathematics from their (...) philosophical meanings. Hopkins explores how Husserl and Klein arrived at their conclusion and its philosophical implications for the modern project of formalizing all knowledge. (shrink)

The sociogenomics revolution is upon us, we are told. Whether revolutionary or not, sociogenomics is poised to flourish given the ease of incorporating polygenic scores (or PGSs) as “genetic propensities” for complex traits into social science research. Pointing to evidence of ubiquitous heritability and the accessibility of genetic data, scholars have argued that social scientists not only have an opportunity but a duty to add PGSs to social science research. Social science research that ignores genetics is, some proponents argue, at (...) best partial and likely scientifically flawed, misleading, and wasteful. Here, I challenge arguments about the value of genetics for social science and with it the claimed necessity of incorporating PGSs into social science models as measures of genetic influences. In so doing, I discuss the impracticability of distinguishing genetic influences from environmental influences because of non-causal gene–environment correlations, especially population stratification, familial confounding, and downward causation. I explain how environmental effects masquerade as genetic influences in PGSs, which undermines their raison d’être as measures of genetic propensity, especially for complex socially contingent behaviors that are the subject of sociogenomics. Additionally, I draw attention to the partial, unknown biology, while highlighting the persistence of an implicit, unavoidable reductionist genes versus environments approach. Leaving sociopolitical and ethical concerns aside, I argue that the potential scientific rewards of adding PGSs to social science are few and greatly overstated and the scientific costs, which include obscuring structural disadvantages and cultural influences, outweigh these meager benefits for most social science applications. (shrink)

Two of Husserl’s most important, though fragmentary texts from the final phase of his thought, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology and “The Origin of Geometry as an Intentional-Historical Problem,” focus on the themes of history and the life-world. It is well known that prior to these works Husserl sought to establish transcendental phenomenology as both a factually and an historically pure eidetic science. Thus the interpreter of the whole of Husserl’s thought is faced with the question of (...) whether his later focus on history and the life-world represents a significant departure from his previous thought. In what follows, I shall defend the thesis that it does not. Specifically, I shall argue that the completion of Husserl’s project of realizing the goal of First Philosophy in transcendental phenomenology renders necessary the turn both to history and to the life-world. In connection with this, I shall argue further that the peculiar phenomenological character of this necessity demands that the ‘concepts’ of history and life-world operative in Husserl’s last texts are taken to be inseparably rooted in a more original phenomenon. Husserl conceives this more original phenomenon as the crisis situation of the exemplars of European humanity, the philosophers, who, as the “functionaries of mankind” are faced with the “breakdown” situation of our time, with the “breakdown” of science itself. (shrink)

Uchiyama et al. propose a unified model linking cultural evolutionary theory to behavior genetics (BG) to enhance generalizability, enrich explanation, and predict how social factors shape heritability estimates. A consideration of culture evolution is beneficial but insufficient for purpose. I submit that their proposed model is underdeveloped and their emphasis on heritability estimates misguided. I discuss their ambiguous conception of culture, neglect of social structure, and the lack of a general theory in BG.

Volume XVIII Special Issue: Gian-Carlo Rota and The End of Objectivity, 2019 Aim and Scope: The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy provides an annual international forum for phenomenological research in the spirit of Husserl's groundbreaking work and the extension of this work by such figures as Scheler, Heidegger, Sartre, Levinas, Merleau-Ponty and Gadamer. Contributors: Gabriele Baratelli, Stefania Centrone, Giovanna C. Cifoletti, Jean-Marie Coquard, Steven Crowell, Deborah De Rosa, Daniele De Santis, Nicolas de Warren, Agnese Di Riccio, Aurélien Djian, (...) Yuval Dolev, Mirja Hartimo, Burt C. Hopkins, Talia Leven, Ah Hyun Moon, Luis Niel, Fabrizio Palombi, Mario Ariel González Porta, Gian-Carlo Rota, Michael Roubach, Franco Trabattoni and Michele Vagnetti. Submissions: Manuscripts, prepared for blind review, should be submitted to the Editors electronically via e-mail attachments. (shrink)

The paper argues that the ontology of Self behind Descartes’s paradigmatic modern account of passion is an obstacle to interpreting properly the account Socrates gives in the Symposium of the truth of Eros’s origin, nature, and gift to the philosophical initiate into his truth. The key to interpreting this account is located in the relation between Eros and the arithmos-structure of the community of kinds, which is disclosed in terms of the Symposium’s dramatic mimesis of the two Platonic sources of (...) being, the One Itself and the indeterminate dyad. This interpretation’s focus is the vulgar and philosophical dimensions of the phallic pun at the beginning of the dialogue. Both dimensions of the dialogue’s opening joke manifest the appearance of Eros in the dialogue as a distorted imitation of the koinonia of the greatest kinds: Being, Rest, Motion, the Same, and the Other. (shrink)

The chapter discusses the founding and development up to the present day of the journal “Husserl Studies” and the history and purpose of the journal The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy.

CONTENTS Carlo Ierna: The Beginnings of Husserl's Philosophy. Part 1: From ber den Begriff der Zahl to Philosophie der Arithmetik Robin Rollinger: Scientific Philosophy, Phenomenology, and Logic: The Standpoint of Paul Linke\ Nicholas deWarren:The Significance of Stern's "PrSsenzzeit" for Husserl's Phenomenology of Inner Time-Consciousness Sen Overgaard: Being There: Heidegger's Formally Indicative Concept of "Dasein" Panos Theodorou: Perceptual and Scientific Thing: On Husserl's Analysis of 'Nature-Thing' in Ideas II Nam-In-Lee: Phenomenology of Feeling in Husserl and Levinas Wai-Shun Hung:Perception and Self-Awareness in (...) Merleau-Ponty:The Problem of the Tacit Cogito in the Phenomenology of Perception Ivan Chvatfk: Plato's Phaedo as an Aesopian Fable about the Immortal Soul Joshua Kates: Two Versions of Husserl's Late History: Jacob Klein and Jacques Derrida and the Problem of Modernity L. William Stern: Mental Presence-Time Edmund Husserl: Lecture on the Concept of Number Martina Stieler: Memories of Edmund Husserl Sen Overgaard: Transcendental Phenomenology and the Question of Transcendence: A Discussion of Damian Byers's Intentionality and Transcendence Damian Byers: Method and Discovery in Phenomenology: A Reply to Sen Overgaard Sen Overgaard: Inside Phenomenology: A Reply to Damian Byers. (shrink)

For all its diversity, contemporary discourse about the Other shares the following suppositions: the Other in its radicality eludes the economy of the logic of the Same; it is beyond Being; its alterity is tied to the infinite in a manner that exceeds the ambit of thematization; and the problem it presents to philosophy is novel, in the precise sense that the dominant logic of the Western tradition, the so-called “logic of the Same” , is incapable of recognizing the full (...) depth of the problem of the Other. In what follows I will engage critically each of these suppositions, to the end of answering the question whether contemporary discourse about the Other is determined by a two-fold one-sidedness, characterized by its thoroughly modern presuppositions about the nature of the Self and logic and by its positing of the kath auto status of the Other as something that is either completely unrelated to the Same or, granting the necessity of recognizing some kind of relation to the Same, something that has absolute priority over the Same. My answer to this question will be “yes.” I will endeavor to demonstrate the two-fold one-sidedness belonging to these suppositions by first returning to the original discussion of the Other in the Western tradition, Plato’s account of the dialogue between the philosophical Stranger from Elea and the mathematician Theaetetus in the Sophist. (shrink)

I present the first systematic account in the literature of a Husserlian response to Natorp’s critique of Husserl’s account of the pre-givenness of both the absolute stream of lived-experience and its essencesEssences to reflectionReflections. My response is presented within the broader context of what I argue is Heidegger’s misappropriation of Natorp’s critique of the phenomenological limits of reflectionReflections in Husserl’s transcendental phenomenologyTranscendental phenomenology and the misguided French attempt to address Heidegger’s critique by introducing the dialectical notion of “pre-reflectivePre-reflective” consciousness to (...) phenomenology. My Husserlian response shows that Husserl’s account of reflectionReflections in Ideas I is able to rebut Natorp’s critical claims that transcendental phenomenologyTranscendental phenomenology cannot access the streaming of the stream of lived-experience without “stilling” its flow and that a gap in Husserl’s account of the transformation of the natural phenomenonPhenomenon of reflectionReflections into transcendental reflectionReflections provides justification for Natorp’s criticism of the ambiguity of Husserl’s account in Ideas I of the givennessGivennesses of the essenceEssences of lived-experience investigated by transcendental phenomenologyTranscendental phenomenology. (shrink)

Jacob Klein’s account of the original phenomenon of formalization accomplished by the innovators of modern mathematics, when they transformed the Greek arithmos into the modern concept of number, and his suggestion that the essential structure of this historically located formalization has become paradigmaticfor the concept formation of non-mathematical concepts (and therefore the most salient characteristic of the “modern consciousness”), is situated within the context of Husserl’s and Heidegger’s understanding of formalization. I show that from the perspective of Klein’s account of (...) formalization the questions thatinform Husserl’s and Heidegger’s phenomenological responses to the problem of formalization are derivative, insofar as both phenomenologists presuppose that the essence of formalization is something that is knowable independent of its historicity. I then show that Klein’s philosophical achievement consists in his account of formalization and the formality of the concepts that it generates as being ungraspable so long as thinking approaches them as something is knowable, independent of its historicity. (shrink)

Jacob Klein’s account of the original phenomenon of formalization accomplished by the innovators of modern mathematics, when they transformed the Greek arithmos into the modern concept of number, and his suggestion that the essential structure of this historically located formalization has become paradigmaticfor the concept formation of non-mathematical concepts (and therefore the most salient characteristic of the “modern consciousness”), is situated within the context of Husserl’s and Heidegger’s understanding of formalization. I show that from the perspective of Klein’s account of (...) formalization the questions thatinform Husserl’s and Heidegger’s phenomenological responses to the problem of formalization are derivative, insofar as both phenomenologists presuppose that the essence of formalization is something that is knowable independent of its historicity. I then show that Klein’s philosophical achievement consists in his account of formalization and the formality of the concepts that it generates as being ungraspable so long as thinking approaches them as something is knowable, independent of its historicity. (shrink)

Husserl’s most systematic phenomenological work, Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology (Ideas I) (Husserl, 2014), differentiates pure transcendental phenomenology, as an eidetic science, from the eidetic science of mathematics. In line with the tradition of transcendental philosophy arguably—ante rem—stretching back to Plato, Husserl contrasts transcendental phenomenology with mathematics and argues that its conceptuality cannot be appropriately articulated and conceived in analogy with mathematics. While both mathematics and transcendental phenomenology are eidetic sciences, (...) phenomenology “belongs to a basic class of eidetic sciences … [that is] totally different from that to which the mathematical sciences belong” (Husserl, 2014, 136). The key differential between these two sciences on Husserl’s view concerns the nature of the essences that are the subject matter of each discipline. Mathematics deals with exact essences, which he characterizes as ideas in the Kantian sense. Phenomenology deals with inexact essences, which Husserl characterizes as morphological. (shrink)