This chapter contains sections titled: Definitional Structure Probabilistic Structure Theory Structure Concepts Without Structure Rethinking Conceptual structure.

Belief storage is often modeled as having the structure of a single, unified web. This model of belief storage is attractive and widely assumed because it appears to provide an explanation of the flexibility of cognition and the complicated dynamics of belief revision. However, when one scrutinizes human cognition, one finds strong evidence against a unified web of belief and for a fragmented model of belief storage. Using the best available evidence from cognitive science, we develop this fragmented model into (...) a nascent theory of the cognitive architecture of belief storage. (shrink)

This is the first complete, one-volume English translation of the ancient Chinese text Xunzi, one of the most extensive, sophisticated, and elegant works in the tradition of Confucian thought. Through essays, poetry, dialogues, and anecdotes, the Xunzi articulates a Confucian perspective on ethics, politics, warfare, language, psychology, human nature, ritual, and music, among other topics. Aimed at general readers and students of Chinese thought, Eric Hutton's translation makes the full text of this important work more accessible in English than (...) ever before. Named for its purported author, the Xunzi has long been neglected compared to works such as the Analects of Confucius and the Mencius. Yet interest in the Xunzi has grown in recent decades, and the text presents a much more systematic vision of the Confucian ideal than the fragmented sayings of Confucius and Mencius. In one famous, explicit contrast to them, the Xunzi argues that human nature is bad. However, it also allows that people can become good through rituals and institutions established by earlier sages. Indeed, the main purpose of the Xunzi is to urge people to become as good as possible, both for their own sakes and for the sake of peace and order in the world. In this edition, key terms are consistently translated to aid understanding and line numbers are provided for easy reference. Other features include a concise introduction, a timeline of early Chinese history, a list of important names and terms, cross-references, brief explanatory notes, a bibliography, and an index. (shrink)

Conscious states—state that there is something it is like to be in—seem both rich or full of detail and ineffable or hard to fully describe or recall. The problem of ineffability, in particular, is a longstanding issue in philosophy that partly motivates the explanatory gap: the belief that consciousness cannot be reduced to underlying physical processes. Here, we provide an information theoretic dynamical systems perspective on the richness and ineffability of consciousness. In our framework, the richness of conscious experience corresponds (...) to the amount of information in a conscious state and ineffability corresponds to the amount of information lost at different stages of processing. We describe how attractor dynamics in working memory would induce impoverished recollections of our original experiences, how the discrete symbolic nature of language is insufficient for describing the rich and high-dimensional structure of experiences, and how similarity in the cognitive function of two individuals relates to improved communicability of their experiences to each other. While our model may not settle all questions relating to the explanatory gap, it makes progress toward a fully physicalist explanation of the richness and ineffability of conscious experience—two important aspects that seem to be part of what makes qualitative character so puzzling. (shrink)

This book focuses on the unity, diversity, and centrality of the notion of law as it is employed in Kant's theoretical and practical philosophy. Eric Watkins argues that, by thinking through a number of issues in various historical, scientific, and philosophical contexts over several decades, Kant is able to develop a univocal concept of law that can nonetheless be applied to a wide range of particular cases, despite the diverse demands that these contexts give rise to. In addition, Watkins (...) shows how Kant comes to view both the generic conception of law which he develops and its different particular instances as crucial components of his systematic philosophy as a whole. This volume's new and unified account of a major current running through Kant's work will be important for scholars interested in numerous aspects of his philosophy, from the theoretical and abstract to the practical and empirical. (shrink)

Analyticity, or the 'analytic/synthetic' distinction is one of the most important and controversial problems in contemporary philosophy. It is also essential to understanding many developments in logic, philosophy of language, epistemology and metaphysics. In this outstanding introduction to analyticity Cory Juhl and Eric Loomis cover the following key topics: The origins of analyticity in the philosophy of Hume and Kant Carnap's arguments concerning analyticity in the early twentieth century Quine's famous objections to analyticity in his classic 'Two Dogmas of (...) Empiricism' essay The relationship between analyticity and central issues in metaphysics, such as ontology The relationship between analyticity and epistemology Analyticity in the context of the current debates in philosophy, including mathematics and ontology Throughout the book the authors show how many philosophical controversies hinge on the problem of analyticity. Additional features include chapter summaries, annotated further reading and a glossary of technical terms making the book ideal to those coming to the problem for the first time. (shrink)

Background Bioethical debates about privacy, big data, and public health surveillance have not sufficiently engaged the perspectives of those being surveilled. The data justice framework suggests that big data applications have the potential to create disproportionate harm for socially marginalized groups. Using examples from our research on HIV surveillance for individuals incarcerated in jails, we analyze ethical issues in deploying big data in public health surveillance. -/- Methods We conducted qualitative, semi-structured interviews with 24 people living with HIV who had (...) been previously incarcerated in county jails about their perspectives on and experiences with HIV surveillance, as part of a larger study to characterize ethical considerations in leveraging big data techniques to enhance continuity of care for incarcerated people living with HIV. -/- Results Most participants expressed support for the state health department tracking HIV testing results and viral load data. Several viewed HIV surveillance as a violation of privacy, and several had actively avoided contact from state public health outreach workers. Participants were most likely to express reservations about surveillance when they viewed the state’s motives as self-interested. Perspectives highlight the mistrust that structurally vulnerable people may have in the state’s capacity to act as an agent of welfare. Findings suggest that adopting a nuanced, context-sensitive view on surveillance is essential. -/- Conclusions Establishing trustworthiness through interpersonal interactions with public health personnel is important to reversing historical legacies of harm to racial minorities and structurally vulnerable groups. Empowering stakeholders to participate in the design and implementation of data infrastructure and governance is critical for advancing a data justice agenda, and can offset privacy concerns. The next steps in advancing the data justice framework in public health surveillance will be to innovate ways to represent the voices of structurally vulnerable groups in the design and governance of big data initiatives. (shrink)

An enduring question in the philosophy of science is the question of whether a scientific theory deserves more credit for its successful predictions than it does for accommodating data that was already known when the theory was developed. In The Paradox of Predictivism, Eric Barnes argues that the successful prediction of evidence testifies to the general credibility of the predictor in a way that evidence does not when the evidence is used in the process of endorsing the theory. He (...) illustrates his argument with an important episode from nineteenth-century chemistry, Mendeleev's Periodic Law and its successful predictions of the existence of various elements. The consequences of this account of predictivism for the realist/anti-realist debate are considerable, and strengthen the status of the 'no miracle' argument for scientific realism. Barnes's important and original contribution to the debate will interest a wide range of readers in philosophy of science. (shrink)

In Minker and Rajasekar (J Log Program 9(1):45–74, 1990), Minker proposed a semantics for negation-free disjunctive logic programs that offers a natural generalisation of the fixed point semantics for definite logic programs. We show that this semantics can be further generalised for disjunctive logic programs with classical negation, in a constructive modal-theoretic framework where rules are built from _claims_ and _hypotheses_, namely, formulas of the form \(\Box \varphi \) and \(\Diamond \Box \varphi \) where \(\varphi \) is a literal, respectively, (...) yielding a “base semantics” for general disjunctive logic programs. Model-theoretically, this base semantics is expressed in terms of a classical notion of logical consequence. It has a complete proof procedure based on a general form of the cut rule. Usually, alternative semantics of logic programs amount to a particular interpretation of nonclassical negation as “failure to derive.” The counterpart in our framework is to complement the original program with a set of hypotheses required to satisfy specific conditions, and apply the base semantics to the resulting set. We demonstrate the approach for the answer set semantics. The proposed framework is purely classical in mainly three ways. First, it uses classical negation as unique form of negation. Second, it advocates the computation of logical consequences rather than of particular models. Third, it makes no reference to a notion of preferred or minimal interpretation. (shrink)

In What Is Thought? Eric Baum proposes a computational explanation of thought.

In Charles Mills’ essay, “White Ignorance,” and his trail-blazing monograph, The Racial Contract, he developed a view of how Whiteness or anti-Black-Indigenous-and-Latinx racism causes individuals to hold false beliefs or lack beliefs about racial injustice in particular and the world in general. I will defend a novel exegetical claim that Mills’ view is part of a more general view regarding how racial injustice can affect a subject’s epistemic standing such as whether they are justified in a belief and whether their (...) degree of confidence in the belief is rational given their evidence. Then, in light of this novel exegetical claim, I show how this interpretation of Mills’ view that racial injustice causes ignorance relates to how epistemically justified philosophers and social scientists are in the views that dominate their respective scholarly literature. (shrink)

I present a novel position vis-à-vis the views in the Latin American philosophy literature regarding whether subjects more aptly use "Hispanic" or "Latinx" to refer to Hispanic- or-Latinx people. To this end, I will argue (C) the term "Afro-Latinx" is more apt than "Hispanic" or "Latinx" in a significant number of cases. This conclusion is based on three premises. The first premise (P1) is that use of "Afro-Latinx" provides subjects with understanding of how certain events depend on anti-Black racism, US (...) society's racially unjust structure and US colonial policy. The second premise (P2) is that that neither the term "Hispanic" nor the term "Latinx" provide subjects with this understanding of how certain events depend on anti-Black racism, US society's racially unjust structure and US colonial policy. The third premise (P3) is that the term "Afro-Latinx" provides subjects with more understanding of these events than the terms, "Hispanic" and "Latinx.” I present three cases which feature the experiences of Afro-Dominican people. The 1992 murder of Dominican man Kiko García by New York Police officer O’Keefe is first case. The second case is the Washington Heights Uprising that ensued Kiko García’ murder. An instance where a nightclub bouncer in the Dominican Republic denies a Dominican women entry because of her hair texture composes the third case. (shrink)

An enduring question in the philosophy of science is the question of whether a scientific theory deserves more credit for its successful predictions than it does for accommodating data that was already known when the theory was developed. In The Paradox of Predictivism, Eric Barnes argues that the successful prediction of evidence testifies to the general credibility of the predictor in a way that evidence does not when the evidence is used in the process of endorsing the theory. He (...) illustrates his argument with an important episode from nineteenth-century chemistry, Mendeleev's Periodic Law and its successful predictions of the existence of various elements. The consequences of this account of predictivism for the realist/anti-realist debate are considerable, and strengthen the status of the 'no miracle' argument for scientific realism. Barnes's important and original contribution to the debate will interest a wide range of readers in philosophy of science. (shrink)

Since the inception of large‐scale human genome research, there has been much caution about the risks of exacerbating a number of socially dangerous attitudes linked to human genetics. These attitudes are usually labeled with one of a family of genetic or genomic “isms” or “ations” such as “genetic essentialism,” “genetic determinism,” “genetic reductionism,” “geneticization,” “genetic stigmatization,” and “genetic discrimination.” The psychosocial processes these terms refer to are taken to exacerbate several ills that are similarly labeled, from medical racism and psychological (...) fatalism to economic exploitation and social exclusion. But as genomic information becomes more familiar in clinical and research settings as well as other life activities, do we need to continue to worry so much about this family of attitudes and their impact on existing problems?In genomics, the underlying anxiety has been that disclosure of genomic information will trigger a series of (seemingly unavoidable) negative responses that will affect individuals, their families, and their communities at large. The fundamental social challenges that hyperbolic genomic messaging, low genomic literacy, and “folk biology” help sustain remain to be addressed. If we hope to break the cycle of genomic isms and ations, we will have to get better at resisting overinterpretations of the relevance that genomics has for people’s future potentials, ancestral vulnerabilities, community memberships, and ethnic affiliations. (shrink)

A collection of quirky, entertaining, and reader-friendly short pieces on philosophical topics that range from a theory of jerks to the ethics of ethicists. Have you ever wondered about why some people are jerks? Asked whether your driverless car should kill you so that others may live? Found a robot adorable? Considered the ethics of professional ethicists? Reflected on the philosophy of hair? In this engaging, entertaining, and enlightening book, Eric Schwitzgebel turns a philosopher's eye on these and other (...) burning questions. In a series of quirky and accessible short pieces that cover a mind-boggling variety of philosophical topics, Schwitzgebel offers incisive takes on matters both small and large. A common theme might be the ragged edge of the human intellect, where moral or philosophical reflection begins to turn against itself, lost among doubts and improbable conclusions. The history of philosophy is humbling when we see how badly wrong previous thinkers have been, despite their intellectual skills and confidence. Some of the texts resist thematic categorization—thoughts on the philosophical implications of dreidels, the diminishing offensiveness of the most profane profanity, and fatherly optimism—but are no less interesting. Schwitzgebel has selected these pieces from the more than one thousand that have appeared since 2006 in various publications and on his popular blog, The Splintered Mind, revising and updating them for this book. Philosophy has never been this much fun. (shrink)

I argue that Bartolomé de las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda differed in their conclusions regarding the status of Indigenous persons at least partly because las Casas had significant, yet incomplete, understanding of Indigenous persons, culture and societies and Sepúlveda had mere knowledge of them. To this end, I show that the epistemic state of understanding explains why Las Casas properly concluded that Indigenous persons deserve the same moral status afforded to Europeans. And I show how las Casas’ understanding (...) of Indigenous persons, culture and societies related to what he got wrong about Indigenous persons. (shrink)

The need for fair and just AI is often related to the possibility of understanding AI itself, in other words, of turning an opaque box into a glass box, as inspectable as possible. Transparency and explainability, however, pertain to the technical domain and to philosophy of science, thus leaving the ethics and epistemology of AI largely disconnected. To remedy this, we propose an integrated approach premised on the idea that a glass-box epistemology should explicitly consider how to incorporate values and (...) other normative considerations, such as intersectoral vulnerabilities, at critical stages of the whole process from design and implementation to use and assessment. To connect ethics and epistemology of AI, we perform a double shift of focus. First, we move from trusting the output of an AI system to trusting the process that leads to the outcome. Second, we move from expert assessment to more inclusive assessment strategies, aiming to facilitate expert and non-expert assessment. Together, these two moves yield a framework usable for experts and non-experts when they inquire into relevant epistemological and ethical aspects of AI systems. We dub our framework ‘epistemology-cum-ethics’ to signal the equal importance of both aspects. We develop it from the vantage point of the designers: how to create the conditions to internalize values into the whole process of design, implementation, use, and assessment of an AI system, in which values (epistemic and non-epistemic) are explicitly considered at each stage and inspectable by every salient actor involved at any moment. (shrink)

Physicians place significant weight on the distinction between acts and omissions. Most believe that autonomous refusals for procedures, such as blood transfusions and resuscitation, ought to be respected, but they feel no similar obligation to accede to requests for treatment that will, in the physician’s opinion, harm the patient (e.g., assisted death). Thus, there is an asymmetry. In this paper, we challenge the strength of this distinction by arguing that the ordering of values should be the same in both cases. (...) The reason for respecting refusals is that, in such cases, autonomy outweighs well-being. We argue that the same should be true in request cases, which means that requests should not be denied only due to the treatment being too harmful in the physician’s opinion. Our strategy is to consider and reject a number of arguments for the asymmetrical view, including an appeal to the doing–allowing distinction and positive and negative rights. The duty to respect refusals is still greater than the duty to grant requests on our view, but, by arguing that the ordering of values is the same in both cases, we show that there is less of a distinction in healthcare between requests and refusals than many currently believe. (shrink)

Many upper limb amputees experience an incessant, post-amputation “phantom limb pain” and report that their missing limbs feel paralyzed in an uncomfortable posture. One hypothesis is that efferent commands no longer generate expected afferent signals, such as proprioceptive feedback from changes in limb configuration, and that the mismatch of motor commands and visual feedback is interpreted as pain. Non-invasive therapeutic techniques for treating phantom limb pain, such as mirror visual feedback (MVF), rely on visualizations of postural changes. Advances in neural (...) interfaces for artificial sensory feedback now make it possible to combine MVF with a high-tech “rubber hand” illusion, in which subjects develop a sense of embodiment with a fake hand when subjected to congruent visual and somatosensory feedback. We discuss clinical benefits that could arise from the confluence of known concepts such as MVF and the rubber hand illusion, and new technologies such as neural interfaces for sensory feedback and highly sensorized robot hand testbeds, such as the “BairClaw” presented here. Our multi-articulating, anthropomorphic robot testbed can be used to study proprioceptive and tactile sensory stimuli during physical finger-object interactions. Conceived for artificial grasp, manipulation, and haptic exploration, the BairClaw could also be used for future studies on the neurorehabilitation of somatosensory disorders due to upper limb impairment or loss. A remote actuation system enables the modular control of tendon-driven hands. The artificial proprioception system enables direct measurement of joint angles and tendon tensions while temperature, vibration, and skin deformation are provided by a multimodal tactile sensor. The provision of multimodal sensory feedback that is spatiotemporally consistent with commanded actions could lead to benefits such as reduced phantom limb pain, and increased prosthesis use due to improved functionality and reduced cognitive burden. (shrink)

In this clear and comprehensive account of Merleau-Ponty's thought Eric Matthews shows how Merleau-Ponty has contributed to current debates in philosophy, such as the nature of consciousness, the relation between biology and personality, the historical understanding of human thought and society, and many others. Surveying the whole range of Merleau-Ponty's thinking, Matthews examines his views about the nature of phenomenology and the primacy of perception; his account of human embodiment, being-in-the-world, and the understanding of human behaviour; his conception of (...) the self and its relation to other selves; and his views on society, politics, and the arts. A final chapter considers his later thought, published posthumously. The ideas of Merleau-Ponty are of immensely important to the development of modern French philosophy. Matthews evaluates his distinctive contributions and relates his thought to that of his predecessors, contemporaries, and successors, both in France and elsewhere. This unrivalled introduction will be welcomed by analytic philosophers and cognitive scientists as well as all students taking courses in contemporary continental philosophy. (shrink)

Few views are as widely held as the Standard View of Identity. Here I am concerned with minority views that depart from the standard account. First, I attempt to illuminate such views and the debates concerning them by identifying the principles of identity at issue, articulating some of the assumptions underlying the debates, and presenting some of the evidence used against the Standard View of Identity. Second, I enter two of these debates myself. I first defend two Non-Standard Views of (...) Identity from the charge that they violate a principle of identity, namely the Transitivity of Identity. I then present an overlooked consequence of another Non-Standard View of Identity that challenges the view on one of its own methodological principles. Third, I draw on recent work in ontological and parthood pluralism to show how one might be led to think that there is more than one way of being identical. That is, I show how one might be an identity pluralist. (shrink)

_More Precisely_ provides a rigorous and engaging introduction to the mathematics necessary to do philosophy. It is impossible to fully understand much of the most important work in contemporary philosophy without a basic grasp of set theory, functions, probability, modality and infinity. Until now, this knowledge was difficult to acquire. Professors had to provide custom handouts to their classes, while students struggled through math texts searching for insight. _More Precisely_ fills this key gap. Eric Steinhart provides lucid explanations of (...) the basic mathematical concepts and sets out most commonly used notational conventions. Furthermore, he demonstrates how mathematics applies to many fundamental issues in branches of philosophy such as metaphysics, philosophy of language, epistemology, and ethics. (shrink)

Can we build machines with which we can have interesting conversations? Observing the new optimism of AI regarding deep learning and new language models, we set ourselves an ambitious goal: We want to find out how far we can get in creating a digital replica of a philosopher. This project has two aims; one more technical, investigating of how the best model can be built. The other one, more philosophical, explores the limits and risks which are accompanied by the creation (...) of digital replicas. In cooperation with Daniel Dennett, we took his complete works to fine-tune a GPT-3. In this paper, we share our first results with some piloting models and discuss legal and ethical questions about creating and interacting with digital replicas. (shrink)

Vincent Ardourel discusses the eliminability of infinite limits in the explanations of phase transitions—an important point in the debate on the reducibility of thermodynamics to statistical mechanics. To this end, he examines alternative physical theories that deal with phase transitions in finite systems.

The paper discusses the pros and cons of inductive research methods. It is argued that, despite the profusion of good arguments against this scientific strategy, it is frequently employed, for example in psychology. A case probe taken from the realm of cognitive psychology is used as an illustration.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 7.1 (2002) 138-146 [Access article in PDF] Understanding Moral Limits in the Duality of Artifacts and NatureA Reply to Critics Eric Katz Ned Hettinger and Wayne Ouderkirk present some cogent criticisms of my ideas in environmental ethics, especially those ideas closely associated with my attacks on the process of ecological restoration. Both trace the source of my alleged problems to a pernicious dualism of (...) nature and humanity that they perceive in my environmental philosophy. In this reply I accept their basic analysis of my work but deny that my overall position leads to the problems they suggest. I explicitly endorse the dualism of human artifacts and natural entities, and I argue that this dualism exists along a spectrum of "more-or-less" natural or artifactual. I claim that this dualism is not pernicious, but on the contrary, it is the first necessary step to understanding the moral limits of human action in the natural world.I begin with a consideration of the formal structure of these critical papers—there is a remarkable formal similarity between these two essays. Each author begins with a brief review of the positive aspects of my position or "theory" in environmental ethics; then there is an analysis of the problems within the position, and the problematic consequences or implications [End Page 138] of my position for environmental policy and environmentalism generally; then there is an attempt to begin a solution to the problems encountered "on my own terms" so to speak—each author points out that within my position there are ideas that could be used to solve the problems uncovered. Thus I am urged to develop specific strands of my own thought—a recommendation that I (logically) cannot avoid.Now on one level this formal structure is commonplace in polite scholarly discourse. Before offering criticisms of an author—especially when he is in the same room—we cite a few positive things about his work, and we end by noting that the position of the author is not completely hopeless. So perhaps the structural similarity between these two papers is not particularly noteworthy. But in this case I think it is. For the structure of the papers points out a distinguishing feature of my work that I recognize: My work is essentially negative and critical. I believe that I am raising problems and provocative questions. My criticisms apply to both traditional ethics (especially as it relates to environmental issues) and to the standard (policy-driven) versions of environmental ethics (especially the anthropocentric and individualistic variations). My criticisms also create questions for mainstream environmental policies—or I so hope, for this is my chief purpose in doing environmental philosophy. Since it is essentially critical, the most one can derive from my work in a positive vein are suggestions or hints for directions in which solutions may be found. I readily admit that I have not followed these paths to work out solutions—at least not yet. Thus in a formal or structural sense I am in substantial agreement with my critics: my essays raise a lot of problems; I do not offer fully worked out solutions; but the seeds of possible solutions may be present in the body of my work.But I have to make one distinction concerning the nature of "problems." Ouderkirk and Hettinger raise two distinct kinds of problems when they interpret my work. First, there are (possibly) internal contradictions in my ideas that make the theory itself incoherent in some mostly formal way. (For example, my argument for the importance of nonanthropocentric value might hide a latent anthropocentrism—Ouderkirk says at one point that I may be letting anthropocentrism in through the back door.) And second, there are (supposedly) problems in my position because my view has serious negative consequences for standard environmental policies. (For example, both Hettinger and Ouderkirk claim that my view of the distinction between artifacts and natural entities makes impossible all restoration [End Page 139] efforts in the natural world.) Does my position lead to unacceptable consequences for standard environmental... (shrink)

Machine learning operates at the intersection of statistics and computer science. This raises the question as to its underlying methodology. While much emphasis has been put on the close link between the process of learning from data and induction, the falsificationist component of machine learning has received minor attention. In this paper, we argue that the idea of falsification is central to the methodology of machine learning. It is commonly thought that machine learning algorithms infer general prediction rules from past (...) observations. This is akin to a statistical procedure by which estimates are obtained from a sample of data. But machine learning algorithms can also be described as choosing one prediction rule from an entire class of functions. In particular, the algorithm that determines the weights of an artificial neural network operates by empirical risk minimization and rejects prediction rules that lack empirical adequacy. It also exhibits a behavior of implicit regularization that pushes hypothesis choice toward simpler prediction rules. We argue that taking both aspects together gives rise to a falsificationist account of artificial neural networks. (shrink)

Flipping convention on its head, Eric Dietrich argues that science uncovers awe-inspiring, enduring mysteries, while religion, regarded as the source for such mysteries, is a biological phenomenon. Just like spoken language, Dietrich shows that religion is an evolutionary adaptation. Science is the source of perplexing yet beautiful mysteries, however natural the search for answers may be to human existence. _Excellent Beauty_ undoes our misconception of scientific inquiry as an executioner of beauty, making the case that science has won the (...) battle with religion so thoroughly it can now explain why religion persists. The book also draws deep lessons for human flourishing from the very existence of scientific mysteries. It is these latter wonderful, completely _public_ truths that constitute some strangeness in the proportion, revealing a universe worthy of awe and wonder. (shrink)

Since 1969, the international chemistry community has only held conferences on the topic of the Periodic Table three times, and the 2012 conference in Cusco, Peru was the first in almost a decade. The conference was highly interdisciplinary, featuring papers on geology, physics, mathematical and theoretical chemistry, the history and philosophy of chemistry, and chemical education, from the most reputable Periodic Table scholars across the world. Eric Scerri and Guillermo Restrepo have collected fifteen of the strongest papers presented at (...) this conference, from the most notable Periodic Table scholars. The collected volume will contain pieces on chemistry, philosophy of science, applied mathematics, and science education. (shrink)

Does which side of the fence we are on determine our perceptions of justice? Philosopher Eric M. Cave argues that rules of justice would benefit the members of a community little if individuals lacked an effective desire to comply with these rules. However, sometimes a sense of justice appears to do no more than to limit what individuals can do in pursuit of their own ends. Cave presents a provocative vehicle for self-examination.

Tracer des ponts entre la philosophie et la théologie, à travers un discours qui ne sacrifie jamais la raison sur l'autel de la foi, mais qui utilise l'éclairage de la Parole de Dieu pour stimuler la réflexion philosophique, tel est le pari de Charles-Éric de Saint Germain dans ses Écrits philosophico-théologiques sur le christianisme.

Buddhas, gods, prophets and oracles are often depicted as asking questions. But what are we to understand when Jesus asks “Who do you say that I am?”, or Mazu, the Classical Zen master asks, “Why do you seek outside?" Is their questioning a power or weakness? Is it something human beings are only capable of due to our finitude? Is there any kind of question that is a power? -/- Focusing on three case studies of questions in divine discourse on (...) the level of story - the god depicted in the Jewish Bible, the master Mazu in his recorded sayings literature, and Jesus as he is depicted in canonized Christian Gospels - Nathan Eric Dickman meditates on human responses to divine questions. He considers the purpose of interreligious dialogue and the provocative kind of questions that seem to purposefully decenter us, drawing on methods from confessionally-oriented hermeneutics and skills from critical thinking. -/- He allows us to see alternative ways of interpreting religious texts through approaches that look beyond reading a text for the improvement of our own religion or for access to some metaphysically transcendent reality. This is the first step in a phenomenology of religions that is inclusive, diverse, relevant and grounded in the world we live in. (shrink)

Though contemporary European philosophy and critical theory have long had a robust engagement with Christianity, there has been no similar engagement with Buddhism—a surprising lack, given Buddhism’s global reach and obvious affinities with much of Continental philosophy. This volume fills that gap, focusing on “nothing”—essential to Buddhism, of course, but also a key concept in critical theory from Hegel and Marx through deconstruction, queer theory, and contemporary speculative philosophy. Through an elaboration of emptiness in both critical and Buddhist traditions; an (...) examination of the problem of praxis in Buddhism, Marxism, and psychoanalysis; and an explication of a “Buddhaphobia” that is rooted in modern anxieties about nothingness, Nothing opens up new spaces in which the radical cores of Buddhism and critical theory are renewed and revealed. (shrink)

In _Civilization and Its Discontents_, Freud made abundantly clear what he thought about the biblical injunction, first articulated in Leviticus 19:18 and then elaborated in Christian teachings, to love one's neighbor as oneself. “Let us adopt a naive attitude towards it,” he proposed, “as though we were hearing it for the first time; we shall be unable then to suppress a feeling of surprise and bewilderment.” After the horrors of World War II, the Holocaust, and Stalinism, Leviticus 19:18 seems even (...) less conceivable—but all the more urgent now—than Freud imagined. In _The Neighbor_, three of the most significant intellectuals working in psychoanalysis and critical theory collaborate to show how this problem of neighbor-love opens questions that are fundamental to ethical inquiry and that suggest a new theological configuration of political theory. Their three extended essays explore today's central historical problem: the persistence of the theological in the political. In “Toward a Political Theology of the Neighbor,” Kenneth Reinhard supplements Carl Schmitt’s political theology of the enemy and friend with a political theology of the neighbor based in psychoanalysis. In “Miracles Happen,” Eric L. Santner extends the book's exploration of neighbor-love through a bracing reassessment of Benjamin and Rosenzweig. And in an impassioned plea for ethical violence, Slavoj Žižek’s “Neighbors and Other Monsters” reconsiders the idea of excess to rehabilitate a positive sense of the inhuman and challenge the influence of Levinas on contemporary ethical thought. A rich and suggestive account of the interplay between love and hate, self and other, personal and political, _The Neighbor_ has proven to be a touchstone across the humanities and a crucial text for understanding the persistence of political theology in secular modernity. This new edition contains a new preface by the authors. (shrink)

Though Kant is best known for his strictly philosophical works in the 1780s, many of his early publications in particular were devoted to what we would call 'natural science'. Kant's Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens made a significant advance in cosmology, and he was also instrumental in establishing the newly emerging discipline of physical geography, lecturing on it for almost his entire career. In this volume Eric Watkins brings together new English translations of Kant's first publication, (...) Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces, the entirety of Physical Geography, a series of shorter essays, along with many of Kant's most important publications in natural science. The volume is rich in material for the student and the scholar, with extensive linguistic and explanatory notes, editorial introductions and a glossary of key terms. (shrink)

The thirty-fourth volume of The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin consists of Voegelin's Autobiographical Reflections, reprinted from the 1989 edition with additional annotations; a glossary of terms used in Voegelin's writings, illustrated ...

Autobiographical Reflections is a window into the mind of a man whose reassessment of the nature of history and thought has overturned traditional approaches to, and appraisals of, the Western intellectual tradition. Here we encounter the motivations for Voegelin's work, the stages in the development of his unique philosophy of consciousness, his key intellectual breakthroughs, his theory of history, and his diagnosis of the political ills of the modern age. Included in this revised volume is a glossary of terms used (...) in Voegelin's writings. The glossary lists, defines, and illustrates from the author's writings many of the key terms employed, paying particular attention to the Greek terms. Together, the glossary and enlarged index systematically include names, subjects, ideas, writings, and terms, making this volume an indispensable help for any serious study of Eric Voegelin's oeuvre. (shrink)

In _The Already Dead_, Eric Cazdyn examines the ways that contemporary medicine, globalization, politics, and culture intersect to produce a condition and concept that he names "the new chronic." Cazdyn argues that just as contemporary medicine uses targeted drug therapies and biotechnology to manage rather than cure diseases, global capitalism aims not for resolution but rather for a continual state of crisis management that perpetuates the iniquities of the status quo. Engaging critical theory, philosophy, and psychoanalysis, he explores the (...) ways that crisis affects perceptions of time and denies alternative ways of being and thinking. To resist the exploitative crisis state, which Cazdyn terms "the global abyss," he posits the concept of "the already dead," a condition in which the subject has been killed but has yet to die. Embracing this condition, he argues, allows for a revolutionary consciousness open to a utopian future. Woven into Cazdyn's analysis are personal anecdotes about his battle with leukemia and his struggle to obtain Canadian citizenship during his illness. These narratives help to illustrate his systemic critique, one that reconfigures the relationship between politics, capitalism, revolution, and the body. (shrink)

Theorists, historians, and artists address the precarious futurity of the notion of the future. Not long ago, a melancholic left and a manic neoliberalism seemed to arrive at an awkward consensus: the foreclosure of futurity. Whereas the former mourned the failure of its utopian project, the latter celebrated the triumph of a global marketplace. The radical hope of realizing a singularly different, more equitable future displaced by a belief that the future had already come to pass, limiting post-historical society to (...) an uneventful life of endless accumulation. Today, amidst an abundance of neofuturisms, posthumanisms, futurologies, speculative philosophies and accelerationist scenarios, there is as well an expanding awareness of a looming planetary catastrophe driven by the extractionist logic of capitalism. Despite this return to the future, the temporal horizon of our present moment is perhaps more aptly characterized by the “shrinking future” of just-in-time production, risk management, high-frequency trading, and the futures market. In Futurity Report, theorists, historians, and artists address the precarious futurity of the notion of the future itself. Contributors McKenzie Wark, China Miéville, Kerstin Stakemeier, Diedrich Diederichsen, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Marina Vishmidt, Johannes Paul Raether, Felicity D. Scott, Silvia Maglioni, Graeme Thomson, Doreen Mende, Pedro Neves Marques, Achille Mbembe, Kodwo Eshun, Haytham El-Wardany, T. J. Demos, Ana Teixeira Pinto. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Spring Fishing Song, Prehistoric Paros JOHN ERIC HAMEL Come, tuna, iridescent whorl, Spin color through our rain-locked sea. Come, scatter winter’s smoke and spitting hail, The brazier’s headache, days of coiling clay, The endless shuttle. Let the restless needle be. Come, return the sea to life. The days of winter card our limbs to rope. Restore the muscle with your flesh, unfurl The cold’s crushing boredom into the (...) sun. We’ve burnished long enough our winter soul. The heat begins to double back. The stars That mark the Oar re-stroke at last the salt. All turns. By island and straight you loop and belt, In time with star and turning tide. Shake sail, Bring oar and rope. The barley weaves new fleece. Come, bless our boats, wake us from the hours Of dropping lines over bleached gunnel, The nights of damp and cold breathing sea. Raw mackerel for days to eat, until A line is bumped like a lover’s finger touch, And fins cut water fast as breakers flash. The circled sea within our fleet erupts With flailing fins as sharp as swords. We gaff the bleeding gills into our boats. arion 28.3 winter 2021 44 spring fishing song, prehistoric paros Come, strong fish with gemstone scale, Blow on the coals of our blood, renew our strength. The deep obsidian light of winter clouds Begins to pour molten copper thick as oil All down the sea. We’re born for sails and shrouds, We’re born in waters of a mother’s wave, And return our marble souls into the grave. 2017... (shrink)

This book reconsiders the Aristotelian analogy. Focusing primarily on Aristotle’s Physics Alpha, a structure of analogy emerges within Aristotle’s discussion of the principles of “becoming.” Eric Schumacher argues that logos, the first of these principles, is rooted in analogy and entails a type of mobility fit to reflect the be-coming of nature.

In the Peruvian Amazon, tobacco (Nicotiana rustica) is considered a master plant and is the main curing tool of local healers. Among its several medicinal uses, we find drinking tobacco juice with the purpose of purging in order to heal on a physical, mental, and spiritual level. This specific practice is part of the addiction treatment protocol developed at Takiwasi Center. The goal of this investigation was to focus on the effects of the tobacco purge as reported by therapists at (...) Takiwasi and to elaborate its relevance within the context of addiction treatment. In order to obtain information on this topic, we performed research fieldwork based on a participant-observation approach, and retrospective data analysis on information from interviews conducted by psychotherapists with patients. As alleged effects of the tobacco purge, therapists reported that patients experienced feelings of mental clarity with the greatest frequency (n = 80), followed by noteworthy physical effects including discomfort and intoxication (n = 63). An effect on sleep and dreams was also common (n = 36) and many found the experience directly related to addiction treatment and the desire to consume substances (n = 20). (shrink)