Weak links, in the form of inadequacies in both reasoning and supporting evidence, exist at several critical steps in the derivation of an hierarchical concept of evolution from punctuated equilibria. Punctuation itself is predicated on a distorted reading of phyletic change as phyletic gradualism, and of allopatric speciation as the instantaneous formation of unchanging typological taxa. The concept of punctuation is further confounded by the indescriminate employment of the same term to denote both a causal explanation for evolutionary change and (...) an outcome of substantiated evolutionary processes. Even when the intended usage for the term is specified, each denotation of punctuation entails respective drawbacks. As a causal explanation, punctuation clearly belongs to the class of quantum theories with all their attendant impedimenta, including special salsatory non-adaptive mechanisms of evolutionary change. Redefinition of punctuation as a pattern of morphologic change reduces it to one possible outcome of known microevolutioanry processes, thus obviating any need for an hierarchical explanation of macroevolution. While vacillation between usages has preserved the term in the literature, the end result of this obfuscation has been a circle of faulty reasoning in which the pattern of punctuation is invoked as its own proof. Widespread confusion concerning what constitutes an adequate test of punctuation is directly attributable to imprecision in both the original and revised formulations of the concept.The argument for species-level selection is based on the typological and philosphically flawed premise of species as individuals, and further requires the hypothesis of heritable emergent properties, for which empirical evidence is lacking. (shrink)

Autor připomíná 300. výročí narození Davida Huma tím, že české odborné i studentské veřejnosti předkládá text Humova Dopisu lékaři, opatřený poznámkami zpřístupňujícími jeho obsah. Tento dopis představuje významné svědectví o počátcích Humovy filosofie a je místem, kde můžeme identifikovat "bod obratu" na cestu směřující k Traktátu. Zároveň je nepostradatelným dokumentem pro výklad Huma z pozice "kontextualistického přístupu" k ranně-novověké filosofii, jak jej uplatňují zejména Alexander Stewart a John P. Wright.

It has been widely believed that David Hilbert, a precursor of formalism, consid-ered mathematics an ordinary “game of signs”. In this paper, I try to show that Hilbert worked out and applied in his research a cohesive, holistic and organic, as well as universal picture of mathematics (as a supranational discipline) and a vision of its development. This scientific area was supposed to constitute a complex construction, and was perceived by him in an optimistic and humanistic way (it enabled solution (...) to any research problem and fulfilled diverse human needs). External experience (e.g. in the case of geometric pictures) and abstraction of its internal structures (a priori state, mathematical analysis of infinity) are particularly important for this exact science. Mathematics creates a bridge between theory and practice, between thinking and ob-servation. (shrink)

In the article herein I address the issue of the non-reductive functionalist stance devised by David Chalmers and advocated by him in his 1995 paper entitled "Absent Qualia, Fading Qualia, Dancing Qualia". I attend to the argument provided in support of the thesis. The argument takes on the guise of neuron-to-silicon-chip switch thought experiment that involves two alternative-end scenarios of phenomenal consciousness, i.e. qualia, either gradually fading away as silicon chips prevail over neurons in the brain or disappearing abruptly with (...) the removal of a single consecutive neuron and its replacement with a silicon chip. I comply with the main thrust of Charmers' account on the origin of phenomenal consciousness to the effect that it is the functional structure of the material bearer of mental faculties rather than the type of material that warrants the emergence of consciousness. Yet I find fault with certain features of Charmers' reasoning. My main criticism refers to the pivotal notion of functional structure that remains an abstract and requires substantiation. The attempt to trace the fact of having sensations and being aware of them back to an entity that is only hinted at and nowhere to be found within the neurophysiological, cognitive or biological domain falls short of a sound explanation. Thus I develop Charmers' line of argument further to specify an adequate and exhaustive characteristic of the said functional structure. I suggest that, apart from the usual aspects attributive of ordinary functional structure which is considered in terms of input, output and the algorithmic operations in-between, "graininess" should also be discerned. A functional structure eligible for inducing conscious sensations should be sufficiently subtle or, in other words, complex. (shrink)

_ Convention_ was immediately recognized as a major contribution to the subject and its significance has remained undiminished since its first publication in 1969. Lewis analyzes social conventions as regularities in the resolution of recurring coordination problems-situations characterized by interdependent decision processes in which common interests are at stake. Conventions are contrasted with other kinds of regularity, and conventions governing systems of communication are given special attention.

This is the second volume of philosophical essays by one of the most innovative and influential philosophers now writing in English. Containing thirteen papers in all, the book includes both new essays and previously published papers, some of them with extensive new postscripts reflecting Lewis's current thinking. The papers in Volume II focus on causation and several other closely related topics, including counterfactual and indicative conditionals, the direction of time, subjective and objective probability, causation, explanation, perception, free will, and rational (...) decision. Throughout, Lewis analyzes global features of the world in such a way as to show that they might turn out to supervene on the spatiotemporal arrangement of local qualities. (shrink)

The controversy over judicial activism is as old as the question whether law is “made” or “found” by the courts, and is die quintessential living question for legal philosophers. Here the practical meets the abstract, as Supreme Court justices must, explicitly or not, adopt some philosophical viewpoint in deciding how general constitutional propositions do, or do not, decide current concress te controversies.

Contemporary analytical jurisprudence holds that the “doubtful” or “hard” case, not resolved by any clear legal authority, is either legally indeterminate or can be resolved only by judicial recourse to principles. There is an aspect of the “doubtful case” that militates against recourse to principle. When viewed as representative of an early stage of a continuing class of disputes, then (especially in controversial cases of broad import) judicial recourse to principles may lead to an improvident choice of reasons, and violates (...) fundamental democratic values. This argues for early judicial minimalism or particularism, where judges resolve decisions narrowly, for two reasons: 1) principled resolution of all doubtful cases is inconsistent with the exploration and classification phase of judicial inquiry, and 2) public debate among scholars and citizens should be permitted to play a role in the development of practical reasoning and the adjustment of practices surrounding broad controversies. (shrink)

Vision scientists are interested in three diverse entities: physical stimuli, neural states, and consciously perceived colors, and in the mapping rules among the three. In this worldview, the three kinds of entities have coequal status, and views that attribute color exclusively to one or another of them, such as color realism, have no appeal.

Many years ago, C.B. Martin drew our attention to the possibility of ‘finkish’ dispositions: dispositions which, if put to the test would not be manifested, but rather would disappear. Thus if x if finkishly disposed to give response r to stimulus s, it is not so that if x were subjected to stimulus r, x would give response z; so finkish dispositions afford a counter‐example to the simplest conditional analysis of dispositions. Martin went on to suggest that finkish dispositions required (...) a theory of primitive causal powers; there, I think, he was mistaken. All that they require is an improved conditional analysis, and this improved analysis can be built upon whatever treatments of properties and of laws we may favour on other grounds. (shrink)

The first volume of this series presents fifteen selected papers dealing with a variety of topics in ontology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of language.

The first volume of this series presents fifteen selected papers dealing with a variety of topics in ontology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of language.

Judith Butler and Catherine Malabou’s recent exchange, ‘You Be My Body for Me: Body, Shape and Plasticity in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit’, is remarkable because in their rereading of Hegel’s famous lord and bondsman parable, rather than focusing on recognition, work, or even desire, Butler and Malabou each wonder about how Hegel contributes to a new way of thinking about ‘having’ a body and how coming to ‘be’ a body necessarily involves a kind of dispossession. Butler and Malabou’s reading of (...) Hegel is congruent with a current shift on the left away from a liberal politics of recognition to a Marxist analytic of dispossession: a move, in other words, away from liberal ‘solutions’ of redistribution – of either goods or recognition – towards thinking through issues of settler colonialism, forced migration and empire. Butler and Malabou’s piece points towards the insight that Hegel’s parable must be thought in terms of the political history of possessive individualism, and so in terms of the history of juridically defined property relations; the history of regarding both the body and the land as property. The ‘two valences’ of dispossession, in other words, refers in fact to a logic of property relations, one between those who ‘have’ property and those who are juridically defined as propertyless. (shrink)

Tracing the sign -- Signing the trace -- The messianic without messianism -- Mourning terminable and interminable : law and (commmodity) fetishism -- Justice, law, and Antigone's singular act -- Generalizing the economy of fetishism.

In his 1992 text ‘Force of Law’ Jacques Derrida makes the radical claim that the aura of law’s legitimacy is always achieved by virtue of an ideological sleight of hand. I argue that the radicality of this claim does not lie in its abandonment of the rule of law, nor is this claim a call to political quietism. Rather, Derrida charges us with the responsibility of interrogating the moments of law’s force or ideology. Following this suggestion I argue that one (...) important way that the law has maintained its aura of legitimacy is on the basis of an ideological appeal to the presumed natural or transparent nature of sexual complementarity. Through a reading of Hegel’s use of the Greek mythological Antigone, I argue that one important way that the im possibility of the necessary encounter between law and the singular case has been covered over, is by way of an appeal to the presumed naturalness of heterosexuality. The conclusion of my analysis is that the illusion of law’s legitimacy is not necessarily achieved with reference to the feminine, nor by virtue of an appeal to the transparency of heterosexuality, but it is no coincidence that it has been achieved in this way so often in the history of political philosophy either. However, no matter how the illusion of law’s legitimacy is achieved, it will always require a sleight of hand; it will always be ideological and therefore political. This analysis therefore serves as an example of how deconstruction can be mobilized as much more than a philosophical meditation on the impossibility of justice; rather, it offers a mode of analysis of critical importance to social and legal theorists. Key Words: Antigone • Derrida • Hegel • sexual difference. (shrink)

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr, is considered by many to be the most influential American jurist. The voluminous literature devoted to his writings and legal thought, however, is diverse and inconsistent. In this study, Frederic R. Kellogg follows Holmes's intellectual path from his early writings through his judicial career. He offers a fresh perspective that addresses the views of Holmes's leading critics and explains his relevance to the controversy over judicial activism and restraint. Holmes is shown to be an original (...) legal theorist who reconceived common law as a theory of social inquiry and who applied his insights to constitutional law. From his empirical and naturalist perspective on law, with its roots in American pragmatism, emerged Holmes's distinctive judicial and constitutional restraint. Kellogg distinguishes Holmes from analytical legal positivism and contrasts him with a range of thinkers. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Perloff’s Wittgenstein: W(h)ither Poetic Theory?David Kellogg (bio)Though Marjorie Perloff has been one of the most powerful forces in contemporary poetry studies for some time, her work has not received the critical attention it warrants. Her latest book, Wittgenstein’s Ladder: Poetic Language and the Strangeness of the Ordinary, provides an opportunity for reflection on a body of writing remarkable both in its consistency and its constant reinvention. Indeed, reading (...) Perloff through Wittgenstein’s Ladder throws her other work over the last twenty years into a new light, as many concepts crucial to her vocabulary—not only theory but also modernism, artifice, avant-garde—are here turned around and forced into new roles. To ask whether and to what extent Wittgenstein’s Ladder constitutes a break in her career is simultaneously to raise the question of critical and poetic theory.Theory Inside and Out“It is in this sense that grammar may be said to replace theory,” writes Marjorie Perloff in the introduction to Wittgenstein’s Ladder [18]. The sense in question is Ludwig Wittgenstein’s, or rather the sense of the late (post-1929) Wittgenstein inflected through Perloff’s post-poststructuralist sensibility. As the sentence preceding this remarkable claim puts it: “For although the later Wittgenstein was to argue that grammar is precisely the key to understanding a given proposition, that there is no essence above and beyond a specific grammatical structure, one nevertheless must ‘distrust’ grammar in the sense of interrogating it as stringently as possible” [17–18].Of course, formulations of theory as a style of distrust have been a commonplace in theoretical discourse for some time. It would not be difficult to argue that Perloff’s explicit advocacy of grammar through Wittgenstein—whose philosophy, she argues, “is indeed intentionally ‘antiphilosophical,’ its purpose being precisely to determine in what circumstances philosophy should be ‘against’ philosophy and why” [12]—is of a piece with recent attempts to think the limits of theory in theory itself. But such a reduction would seriously misread Perloff’s project. We would do well to question, for example, the obvious similarities between Perloff’s description of a duplicity in the project of grammar/theory and the model it might be taken as at once pointedly evoking and evading, Paul de Man’s now-classic essay “The Resistance to Theory.” Despite their apparent similarities, the startling claims of Wittgenstein’s Ladder have little in common with de Man’s suggestion that “resistance may be a built-in constituent of [theoretical] discourse,” and that “the polemical opposition, the systematic non-understanding and misrepresentation, the unsubstantial but eternally recurrent objections, are the displaced symptoms of a resistance inherent in the theoretical enterprise itself” [12].For one thing, de Man explicitly distances his conception of a theoretical project deeply threatening to the claims of knowledge from one rooted in concepts of grammar: [End Page 67][A]s long as it remains grounded in grammar, any theory of language, includ-ing a literary one, does not threaten what we hold to be the underlying principle of all cognitive and aesthetic linguistic systems. Grammar stands in the service of logic which, in turn, allows for the passage to the knowledge of the world. The study of grammar, the first of the artes liberales, is the necessary pre-condition for scientific and humanistic knowledge. As long as it leaves this principle intact, there is nothing threatening about literary theory. The continuity between theory and phenomenalism is asserted and preserved by the system itself. Difficulties occur only when it is no longer possible to ignore the epistemological thrust of the rhetorical dimension of discourse, that is, when it is no longer possible to keep it in its place as a mere adjunct, a mere ornament within the semantic function.[14; emphasis added]In other words, de Man places grammar opposite the project of criticism, which he identifies with rhetoric and ultimately with reading. What de Man refers to as “the latent tension between rhetoric and grammar” is resolved decidedly in favor of the former: “the grammatical decoding of a text leaves a residue of indetermination that has to be, but cannot be, resolved by grammatical means, however... (shrink)

This article explores Judith Butler’s reinterpretation of Hannah Arendt’s work in terms of the question of dispossession. By paying attention to the changes in voice and tone in Arendt’s work, Butler has brought forward a reading of Arendt that we have not seen before, and one that we have maybe never needed so much.

This article explores Judith Butler’s reinterpretation of Hannah Arendt’s work in terms of the question of dispossession. By paying attention to the changes in voice and tone in Arendt’s work, Butler has brought forward a reading of Arendt that we have not seen before, and one that we have maybe never needed so much.

This book develops John Dewey's broad conception of social conflict as a natural process of discovery and preference adjustment, resolving Kenneth Arrow's famous theorem of the impossibility of ordering diverse preferences through voting. It addresses the nature and resolution of today's urgent problems and political polarization.