Evidence suggests that humans might have neurological specializations for music processing, but a compelling adaptationist account of music and dance is lacking. The sexual selection hypothesis cannot easily account for the widespread performance of music and dance in groups (especially synchronized performances), and the social bonding hypothesis has severe theoretical difficulties. Humans are unique among the primates in their ability to form cooperative alliances between groups in the absence of consanguineal ties. We propose that this unique form of social organization (...) is predicated on music and dance. Music and dance may have evolved as a coalition signaling system that could, among other things, credibly communicate coalition quality, thus permitting meaningful cooperative relationships between groups. This capability may have evolved from coordinated territorial defense signals that are common in many social species, including chimpanzees. We present a study in which manipulation of music synchrony significantly altered subjects’ perceptions of music quality, and in which subjects’ perceptions of music quality were correlated with their perceptions of coalition quality, supporting our hypothesis. Our hypothesis also has implications for the evolution of psychological mechanisms underlying cultural production in other domains such as food preparation, clothing and body decoration, storytelling and ritual, and tools and other artifacts. (shrink)

A provocative critique of Western attitudes about the Orient, this history examines the ways in which the West has discovered, invented, and sought to control the East from the 1700s to the present.

An enormous intellectual adventure. In this groundbreaking new book, the American biologist Edward O. Wilson, considered to be one of the world's greatest living scientists, argues for the fundamental unity of all knowledge and the need to search for consilience --the proof that everything in our world is organized in terms of a small number of fundamental natural laws that comprise the principles underlying every branch of learning. Professor Wilson, the pioneer of sociobiology and biodiversity, now once again breaks (...) out of the conventions of current thinking. He shows how and why our explosive rise in intellectual mastery of the truths of our universe has its roots in the ancient Greek concept of an intrinsic orderliness that governs our cosmos and the human species--a vision that found its apogee in the Age of Enlightenment, then gradually was lost in the increasing fragmentation and specialization of knowledge in the last two centuries. Drawing on the physical sciences and biology, anthropology, psychology, religion, philosophy, and the arts, Professor Wilson shows why the goals of the original Enlightenment are surging back to life, why they are reappearing on the very frontiers of science and humanistic scholarship, and how they are beginning to sketch themselves as the blueprint of our world as it most profoundly, elegantly, and excitingly is. (shrink)

Biophilia is Edward O. Wilson's most personal book, an evocation of his own response to nature and an eloquent statement of the conservation ethic. Wilson argues that our natural affinity for life―biophilia―is the very essence of our humanity and binds us to all other living species.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:70 HUME'S LETTER TO STEWART A Note on a Paper by D. C. Stove In a recent paper, D. C. Stove raises an historical problem. There exists a letter, written in 1754 by Hume to John Stewart, then Professor of Natural Philosophy at Edinburgh, in which the following words occur:. „. J never asserted so absurd a Proposition, as that any thing might arise without a Cause: I only (...) maintained, that our Certainty of the Falsehood of that Proposition proceeded neither from Intuition nor Demonstration; but from another Source. Some commentators, most notably Norman Kemp-Smith, take this as telling strongly in favour of a non-sceptical reading of Hume. Stove undertakes to show beyond reasonable doubt that the claim made in the letter is in blatant contradiction with central theses of Hume's published philosophy, so that it has to be regarded as useless as evidence for the interpretation of the latter. There is a mystery as to how Hume came to say something so clearly false about what he himself had written; Stove offers certain conjectures, none of which he finds wholly satisfactory. As the conclusion of the first, exegetical, part of his article, Stove advances the thesis that Hume held the falsity of the Causal Principle to be possible in at least three senses of "possible". These senses he specifies accurately, but doesn't wish to rest anything on the detail of his specification of the third; it is important only that it be stronger than either of the preceding two. This done, he takes a look at the letter to Stewart, and says, with reference to the first part of the 71 passage quoted above: That something might begin to exist without a cause, is evidently equivalent to the proposition that it is possib Ie for something to begin to exist without a cause. That, in turn, is evidently equivalent to the proposition that the falsity of the Causal Principle is possible. (Stove's o underlining). It follows that what Hume says in the letter is simply false. It could be true only if the "might" referred to some sense of possibility even weaker than the weakest of Stove's three senses. But since that is mere self-consistency, there is no such sense. Now the argument to the contradiction relies on reading "might" as "it is possible", in some sense of those words. Stove says, as we have seen, that they are "evidently equivalent", but the equivalence is certainly not evident, and it may well be asked whether it exists at all. After all, there are English constructions with "might" which don't have modal force: "Do you think something might have happened to them without our knowing about it?" The hearer is not, of course, being asked whether it- is possible that something should have happened without their knowledge; he is being asked for his opinion on whether something actually has so happened. "Most unlikely", would be a perfectly natural and acceptable response. Again : "ïou stay here, to take care of any problem that might arise before we get back". Obviously it is not intended that the hearer should start taking precautions against all possibilities, only that he should cope with whatever actually arises, if anything. 72 This is quite normal modern usage, and I know no reason to think that it wasn't also norT.il usage in the 18th Century. Admittedly, it isn't modern philocophers ' usage - we would be very careful, in writing or; logical matters, not to use the word "might" unless it was definitely the modal proposition that we had in mind, but earlier times haven't always been so professional about their vocabulary. Certainly, if Hume, in the letter to Stewart, was denying that he had ever asserted the possibility of the falsehood of the Causal Principle it would be, as Stove shows, extremely hard to see what he could have been thinking of. But if what he meant could have been as well expressed by "I never asserted... that anything arises without a cause" then most of Stove's problems are over, for there is no 3 conflict with any of the theses (1) - (3) which he... (shrink)

O autor recolhe, no interior da experiência cristã, perspectivas pertinentes e necessárias à concretização histórica do diálogo inter-religioso. Sua tese é a de que elementos básicos para essa práxis libertadora estão presentes na própria experiência religiosa de Jesus de Nazaré. O ponto de partida é o reconhecimento, pressuposto epocal, da legitimidade do pluralismo cultural e religioso. Na primeira parte, explicita a dimensão antropológica e os pressupostos críticos de compreensão de uma tradição religiosa. Na segunda, recolhe contribuições importantes da tradição judaico-cristã (...) para a efetivação do diálogo interreligioso: a estrutura dialógica da revelação divina, a universalidade do amor de Deus, a promoção da vida humana como valor central, a necessária encarnação histórica da experiência de Deus e a dimensão sacramental da religião diante da centralidade teológica do Reino de Deus. Por fim, utiliza a categoria inreligionação, de Torres Queiruga, para mostrar as maravilhas do possível e necessário diálogo inter-religioso. Palavras-chave: Diálogo inter-religioso; Pluralismo; Fundamentalismo; Reino de Deus; Inreligionação. ABSTRACT The author extracts from Christian experience perspectives associated with, and necessary to, the historical concretization of inter-religious dialogue. According to his thesis, basic elements of inter-religious dialogue are present in Jesus’ own religious experience. The starting point is the acknowledgment of the legitimacy of cultural and religious pluralism. In the first part, the article points out the anthropologic dimension and critical premises of the comprehension of a religious tradition. In the second part, important contributions from Jewish-Christian tradition to an effective inter-religious dialogue are presented: the dialogical structure of divine revelation, the universality of God’s love, the promotion of human life as a central value, the necessary historical incarnation of God’s experience and the sacramental dimension of religion in face of the theological centrality of God’s Kingdom. Finally, Torres Queiruga’s category of ‘inreligionation’ is used to show the wonderful results of inter-religious dialogue. Key words: Inter-religious dialogue; Pluralism; Fundamentalism; God’s Kingdom; ‘Inreligionation’. (shrink)

welcomed by a new generation of students and scholars in all branches of learning.

In this imaginative and comprehensive study, Edward Casey, one of the most incisive interpreters of the Continental philosophical tradition, offers a philosophical history of the evolving conceptualizations of place and space in Western thought. Not merely a presentation of the ideas of other philosophers, _The Fate of Place_ is acutely sensitive to silences, absences, and missed opportunities in the complex history of philosophical approaches to space and place. A central theme is the increasing neglect of place in favor of (...) space from the seventh century A.D. onward, amounting to the virtual exclusion of place by the end of the eighteenth century. Casey begins with mythological and religious creation stories and the theories of Plato and Aristotle and then explores the heritage of Neoplatonic, medieval, and Renaissance speculations about space. He presents an impressive history of the birth of modern spatial conceptions in the writings of Newton, Descartes, Leibniz, and Kant and delineates the evolution of twentieth-century phenomenological approaches in the work of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Bachelard, and Heidegger. In the book's final section, Casey explores the postmodern theories of Foucault, Derrida, Tschumi, Deleuze and Guattari, and Irigaray. (shrink)

In this imaginative and comprehensive study, Edward Casey, one of the most incisive interpreters of the Continental philosophical tradition, offers a philosophical history of the evolving conceptualizations of place and space in Western thought. Not merely a presentation of the ideas of other philosophers, _The Fate of Place_ is acutely sensitive to silences, absences, and missed opportunities in the complex history of philosophical approaches to space and place. A central theme is the increasing neglect of place in favor of (...) space from the seventh century A.D. onward, amounting to the virtual exclusion of place by the end of the eighteenth century. Casey begins with mythological and religious creation stories and the theories of Plato and Aristotle and then explores the heritage of Neoplatonic, medieval, and Renaissance speculations about space. He presents an impressive history of the birth of modern spatial conceptions in the writings of Newton, Descartes, Leibniz, and Kant and delineates the evolution of twentieth-century phenomenological approaches in the work of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Bachelard, and Heidegger. In the book's final section, Casey explores the postmodern theories of Foucault, Derrida, Tschumi, Deleuze and Guattari, and Irigaray. (shrink)

After defining a standard modal language and semantics, we offer some clear examples of logical and analytic truths that are not necessary. These examples: (a) are far simpler than the ones cited in the literature, (b) show that a popular conception of logical truth in modal languages is incorrect, and (c) show that there are contingent truths knowable ``a priori'' that do not depend on fixing the reference of a term.

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In the middle decades of the twentieth century phenomenology grew from a local philosophy in a few German towns into a movement that spanned Europe. In Converts to the Real, Edward Baring uncovers an unexpected force behind this prodigious growth: Catholicism. Participating in a tightly-knit transnational community, Catholics helped shuttle ideas between national traditions that were otherwise inward-looking and parochial. In the first half of the twentieth century, they wrote many of the first articles and books introducing phenomenological ideas (...) to new contexts. They even organized the rescue of Edmund Husserl's manuscripts out of Nazi Germany in 1938. But the Catholic fascination with phenomenology was intermixed with a profound anxiety. Catholics worried that phenomenological ideas might prove dangerous to the faith, a possibility exemplified by the intellectual trajectory of Martin Heidegger, whose movement away from the Church was facilitated by his reading of Husserl. Converts to the Real uncovers a surprising genealogy for post-war European thought, with important implications for our understanding of the process of secularization and for the set of schools and ideas we now call "continental philosophy."--. (shrink)

Evolutionary models of human cooperation are increasingly emphasizing the role of reputation and the requisite truthful “gossiping” about reputation-relevant behavior. If resources were allocated among individuals according to their reputations, competition for resources via competition for “good” reputations would have created incentives for exaggerated or deceptive gossip about oneself and one’s competitors in ancestral societies. Correspondingly, humans should have psychological adaptations to assess gossip veracity. Using social psychological methods, we explored cues of gossip veracity in four experiments. We found that (...) simple reiteration increased gossip veracity, but only for those who found the gossip relatively uninteresting. Multiple sources of gossip increased its veracity, as did the independence of those sources. Information that suggested alternative, benign interpretations of gossip decreased its veracity. Competition between a gossiper and her target decreased gossip veracity. These results provide preliminary evidence for psychological adaptations for assessing gossip veracity, mechanisms that might be used to assess veracity in other domains involving social exchange of information. (shrink)

In this highly accessible book, a distinguished philosopher says current focus on the brain conceals the real powers of the mind. Edward Pols revisits one of the basic topics of philosophy: what is the distinction between mind and body and what is the relation between them? He disagrees fundamentally with the many contemporary philosophers who concentrate on the findings of neurophysiology and cognitive science and so look only to the brain for the causes and explanation of mind. Pols concedes (...) the importance of such scientific studies but maintains that they focus on the infrastructure of mind and ignore the momentous difference between the infrastructure and mind itself. Pols calls upon the reader to attend to mind itself as a concrete and experientially available reality. This kind of attention, he argues persuasively, reveals mind to be at once causally dependent on the brain and causally effective on the physical processes of the brain and the world. Pols also examines the hierarchical view of mind and causality first proposed by Plato and Aristotle, the supersession of that view by the received scientific doctrine of causality, and the mistaken denial of the power of the mind to know an independent reality—a denial that resulted from the philosophical doctrines about knowing developed in the era that began with Descartes and ended with Kant. (shrink)

The problem of the one and the many is central to ancient Greek philosophy, but surprisingly little attention has been paid to Aristotle's treatment of it in the Metaphysics. The Central Books of the Metaphysics are widely recognised as the most difficult portion of a most difficult work. This title aims to examine the Central Books.

What happens when we glance around a room? How do we trust what we see in fleeting moments? In The World at a Glance, Edward S. Casey describes how glancing counts for more of human perception than previously imagined. An entire universe is perceived in a glance, but our quick and uncommitted attention prevents examination of these rapid acts and processes. While breaking down this paradox, Casey surveys the glance as an essential way by which we acquaint ourselves with (...) the world. This experiential tour-de-force reveals what happens in a blink of an eye. It will become a landmark study in phenomenology, philosophy, environmental philosophy, and the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

"You are here, a map declares, but of course you are not, any more than you truly occupy the vantage point into which a landscape painting puts you. How maps and paintings figure and reconfigure space--as well as our place in it--is the subject of Edward S. Casey's study, an exploration of how we portray the world and its many places. Casey's discussion ranges widely from Northern Sung landscape painting to nineteenth-century American and British landscape painting and photography, from (...) prehistoric petroglyphs and medieval portolan charts to seventeenth-century Dutch cartography and land survey maps of the American frontier. From these culturally and historically diverse forays a theory of representation emerges. Casey proposes that the representation of place in visual works be judged in terms not of resemblance, but of reconnecting with an earth and world that are not the mere content of mind or language--a reconnection that calls for the embodiment and implacement of the human subject." -- Book jacket. (shrink)

This paper identifies three positions on the relationship between language and experience, the third of which I was not acquainted with before from my reading. It seems absurd.

Mooney (philosophy, Sonoma State U.) explores Kierkegaard's creative invention, the contemporary relevance of his contrasts between resignation and faith, and his conceptual analysis of aesthetic, moral, and religious psychology and life ...

Philosophical discussions of the phenomenon that has come to be known as ‘moral luck’ have either dismissed it as illusory or touted it as the evidence for doubting the probative value of our commitment to certain widely avowed views concerning interpersonal assessments of responsibility. In this discussion, we present a third, distinctive interpretation of the moral luck phenomenon. Drawing upon empirically robust results from psychological studies of judgment bias, we argue that the phenomenon of moral luck is demonstrably not illusory. (...) What we suggest, however, is that the phenomenon ought not to be taken to countenance doubts about the standards generally taken to be regulative of assessments of interpersonal responsibility. Rather, its significance lies in foregrounding certain generally unacknowledged obstacles we face in the process of conclusively applying general valid moral standards in making specific judgments of responsibility and desert.1. (shrink)

As organizational leaders worry about the appalling low percentage of people who feel engaged in their work, academics are trying to understand what causes an increase in engagement. We collected survey data from 231 team members from two organizations. We examined the impact of team members’ emotional intelligence (EI) and their perception of shared personal vision, shared positive mood, and perceived organizational support (POS) on the members’ degree of organizational engagement. We found shared vision, shared mood, and POS have a (...) direct, positive association with engagement. In addition, shared vision and POS interact with EI to positively influence engagement. Besides highlighting the importance of shared personal vision, positive mood, and POS, our study contributes to the emergent understanding of EI by revealing EI’s amplifying effect on shared vision and POS in relation to engagement. We conclude by discussing the research and practical implications of this study. (shrink)

In this paper, the author replies to a question raised about theories of nonexistent objects. The question concerns the way names of fictional characters, when analyzed as names which denote nonexistent objects, acquire their denotations. Since nonexistent objects cannot causally interact with existent objects, it is thought that we cannot appeal to a‘dubbing’or a‘baptism’. The question is, therefore, what is the starting point of the chain? The answer is that storytellings are to be thought of as extended baptisms, and the (...) details of this response receive attention in the paper. Once the storytelling is complete, and the characters have been baptized, a priori metaphysical principles linking the storytelling with the realm of nonexistent objects provide the referential, non‐causal connection between the names used in the storytelling and the objects denoted by such names. (shrink)

"Perhaps more than any other scientist of our century, Edward O. Wilson has scrutinized animals in their natural settings, tweezing out the dynamics of their social organization, their relationship with their environments, and their behavior, not only for what it tells us about the animals themselves, but for what it can tell us about human nature and our own behavior. He has brought the fascinating and sometimes surprising results of these studies to general readers through a remarkable collection of (...) books, including The Diversity of Life, The Ants, On Human Nature, and Sociobiology. The grace and precision with which he writes of seemingly complex topics has earned him two Pulitzer prizes, and the admiration of scientists and general readers around the world.In Search of Nature presents for the first time a collection of the seminal short writings of Edward O. Wilson, addressing in brief and eminently readable form the themes that have actively engaged this remarkable intellect throughout his career.""The central theme of the essays is that wild nature and human nature are closely interwoven. I argue that the only way to make complete sense of either is by examining both closely and together as products of evolution.... Human behavior is seen not just as the product of recorded history, ten thousand years recent, but of deep history, the combined genetic and cultural changes that created humanity over hundreds of thousands of years. We need this longer view, I believe, not only to understand our species, but more firmly to secure its future.The book is composed of three sections. ""Animal Nature, Human Nature"" ranges from serpents to sharks to sociality in ants. It asks how and why the universal aversion to snakes might have evolved in humans and primates, marvels at the diversity of the world's 350 species of shark and how their adaptive success has affected our conception of the world, and admonishes us to ""be careful of little lives""-to see in the construction of insect social systems ""another grand experiment in evolution for our delectation.""The Patterns of Nature"" probes at the foundation of sociobiology, asking what is the underlying genetic basis of social behavior, and what that means for the future of the human species. Beginning with altruism and aggression, the two poles of behavior, these essays describe how science, like art, adds new information to the accumulated wisdom, establishing new patterns of explanation and inquiry. In ""The Bird of Paradise: The Hunter and the Poet,"" the analytic and synthetic impulses-exemplified in the sciences and the humanities-are called upon to give full definition to the human prospect.""Nature's Abundance"" celebrates biodiversity, explaining its fundamental importance to the continued existence of humanity. From ""The Little Things That Run the World""-invertebrate species that make life possible for everyone and everything else-to the emergent belief of many scientists in the human species' possible innate affinity for other living things, known as biophilia, Wilson sets forth clear and compelling reasons why humans should concern themselves with species loss. ""Is Humanity Suicidal?"" compares the environmentalist's view with that of the exemptionalist, who holds that since humankind is transcendent in intelligence and spirit, our species must have been released from the iron laws of ecology that bind all other species. Not without optimism, Wilson concludes that we are smart enough and have time enough to avoid an environmental catastrophe of civilization-threatening dimensions-if we are willing both to redirect our science and technology and to reconsider our self-image as a species.In Search of Nature is a lively and accessible introduction to the writings of one of the most brilliant scientists of the 20th century. Imaginatively illustrated by noted artist Laura Southworth, it is a book all readers will treasure.". (shrink)

Post-foundational politics and democracy -- Agonism and democracy -- A typology of agonistic democracy -- Agonistic democracy and the question of institutions -- Agonistic democracy and the limits of popular participation -- Populism, representation, and the popular will -- Political liberalism, contingency and agonistic pluralism -- Liberalism, agonism, and democracy.

The traditional separation of philosophy, psychiatry, and neuroscience into distinct academic disciplines has led to several discrete approaches to the mind. In an in-depth discussion of major theories from all of these, and related, disciplines, the author progressively reveals fundamental links between these previously unconnected approaches to human thought and experience. The result is a single, unified theory, perhaps the first to integrate all these fields of thought.

This entry explains Frege's Theorem by using the modern notation of the predicate calculus. Frege's Theorem is that the Dedekind-Peano axioms for number theory are derivable from Hume's Principle, given the axioms and rules of second-order logic. Frege's methodology for defining the natural numbers and for the derivation of the Dedekind-Peano axioms are sketched in some detail.

_The Essential Analects_ offers a representative selection from Edward Slingerland's acclaimed translation of the full work, including passages covering all major themes. An appendix of selected traditional commentaries keyed to each passage provides access to the text and to its reception and interpretation. Also included are a glossary of terms and short biographies of the disciples of Confucius and the traditional commentators cited.

Republicanism and imperialism are typically understood to be located at opposite ends of the political spectrum. In Imperial Republics, Edward G. Andrew challenges the supposed incompatibility of these theories with regard to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century revolutions in England, the United States, and France. Many scholars have noted the influence of the Roman state on the ideology of republican revolutionaries, especially in the model it provided for transforming subordinate subjects into autonomous citizens. Andrew finds an equally important parallel between Rome's (...) expansionary dynamic — in contrast to that of Athens, Sparta, or Carthage — and the imperial rivalries that emerged between the United States, France, and England in the age of revolutions. Imperial Republics is a sophisticated, wide-ranging examination of the intellectual origins of republican movements, and explains why revolutionaries felt the need to 'don the toga' in laying the foundation for their own uprisings. (shrink)

The formulation of propositional modal logic is revised by interposing a domain of structured propositions between the modal language and the models. Interpretations of the language (i.e., ways of mapping the language into the domain of propositions) are distinguished from models of the domain of propositions (i.e., ways of assigning truth values to propositions at each world), and this contrasts with the traditional formulation. Truth and logical consequence are defined, in the first instance, as properties of, and relations among, propositions. (...) -/- These definitions have certain interesting consequences. One is that they resolve a question that cannot be answered by the traditional analysis, in which Kripke models directly interpret modal language. The question is, is the reason a modal sentence has a different truth value at other possible worlds due to the fact that the sentence has a different meaning at that world or due to a change in the world? The philosophical conception elaborates the second answer. Another interesting consequence is that modal language, properly speaking, is not intensional, at least according to the classic tests for, and definitions of, intensionality. (shrink)