There is good news, and there is bad news. The good news is that in my experience, younger physicians generally are much more concerned about the cost of clinical tests and treatments, and about justly distributing finite medical resources, than were those who practiced medicine in the fee-for-service era. The bad news has at least three components. First, with respect to medically nonbeneficial treatment in the ICU, managed care has not yet given evidence of wanting to put the brakes on (...) unrealistic family demands for aggressive medical interventions. Second, managed care is frustrating many healthcare professionals as well as patients. And third, managed care has no apparent interest in addressing, and may even have contributed to, the problem of medical indigence. Let me develop these propositions more fully. (shrink)

STILLWATER, MINNESOTA—Two men sit at a long table, oblivious to the breakfast-time commotion. One moves a coffee cup from one side of a water glass to the other. “If I look here and don’t see the cup,” he says to the other, “then I know it must be there.” It sounds like a “deep” exchange between swotty young philosophy majors. But the fellow moving the cup has gray hair— and a Nobel Prize in physics. Sliding the porcelain, Anthony Leggett (...) of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, explains how scientists might try to see past the strictures of quantum mechanics, the bizarre theory that governs the behavior of tiny objects and clashes with our everyday notions of reality. “None of the existing interpretations of quantum mechanics as a theory of the entire world is satisfactory,” Leggett says to John Preskill, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Leggett, Preskill, and 22 other physicists, philosophers, and historians have gathered here for the Seven Pines Symposium.* Packed into a slightly ramshackle lodge in a wooded state park, the scholars—all of them men—will share their insights, suites of rooms without telephones, and meals of roast quail and pheasant at a long communal table. Perhaps not since the famous Solvay Conferences of the early 20th century, at which Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein debated the meaning of quantum theory in their free time, has physics seemed so genteel. Each year, the symposium tackles another of physics’ enduring puzzles: the nature of the vacuum, the concept of a f ield, the meaning of time. The aim is not to resolve the mysteries but to seed new lines of inquiry, says Roger Stuewer, a historian at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, and chair of the symposium’s advisory board. “When we get the best people together,” he says, “ideas are planted that in some intangible way will influence what they do in the future.” Those germinating ideas are watered with a mellow Zinfandel and nourished with succulent steak. This year, attendees spent 5 days grappling with the implications of quantum mechanics, which have perplexed physi.. (shrink)

This book, the first comprehensive study in English of Heidegger's philosophy of art, starts in the mid-1930s with Heidegger's discussion of the Greek temple and his Hegelian declaration that a great artwork gathers together an entire culture in affirmative celebration of its foundational 'truth', and that, by this criterion, art in modernity is 'dead'. His subsequent work on Hölderlin, whom he later identified as the decisive influence on his mature philosophy, led him into a passionate engagement with the art of (...) Rilke, Ce;zanne, Klee and Zen Buddhism, liberating him not only from the overly restrictive conception of art of the mid-1930s but also from the disastrous politics of the period. Drawing on material hitherto unknown in the anglophone world, Young establishes a new account of Heidegger's philosophy of art and shows that his famous essay 'The Origin of the Work of Art' is its beginning, not its end. (shrink)

1. Sexual Brains and Body Politics 2. Hormones and Hardwiring 3. Making Sense of Brain Organization Studies 4. Thirteen Ways of Looking at Brain Organization 5. Working Backward from “Distinct‘ Groups 6. Masculine and Feminine Sexuality 7. Sexual Orienteering 8. Sex-Typed Interests 9. Taking Context Seriously 10. Trading Essence for Potential.

The spiritual geography of Russian cosmism. General characteristics ; Recent definitions of cosmism -- Forerunners of Russian cosmism. Vasily Nazarovich Karazin (1773-1842) ; Alexander Nikolaevich Radishchev (1749-1802) ; Poets: Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov, (1711-1765) and Gavriila Romanovich Derzhavin (1743-1816) ; Prince Vladimir Fedorovich Odoevsky (1803-1869) ; Aleksander Vasilyevich Sukhovo-Kobylin (1817-1903) -- The Russian philosophical context. Philosophy as a passion ; The destiny of Russia ; Thought as a call for action ; The totalitarian cast of mind -- The religious and spiritual (...) context. The kingdom of god on earth ; Hesychasm: two great Russian saints ; The Third Rome ; Pre-Christian antecedents -- The Russian esoteric context. Early searches for "deep wisdom" ; Popular magic ; Higher magic in the time of Peter the Great ; Esotericism after Peter the Great ; Theosophy and anthroposophy -- Nikolai Fedorovich Fedorov (1829-1903), the philosopher of the common task ; The one idea ; The unacknowledged prince ; The village teacher ; First disciple: Dostoevsky and Tolstoy ; The Moscow librarian ; Last years: Askhabad: the only portrait -- The "common task" ; Esoteric dimensions of the "common task" ; Fedorov's legacy: projectivism, delo, regulation -- The religious cosmists. Vladimir Sergeevich Solovyov (1853-1900) ; Sergei Nikolaevich Bulgakov (1871-1944) ; Pavel Aleksandrovich Florensky (1882-1937) ; Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdyaev (1874-1948) -- The scientific cosmists. Konstantin Edouardovich Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935) ; Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky (1863-1945) ; Alexander Leonidovich Chizhevsky (1897-1964) ; Vasily Feofilovich Kuprevich (1897-1969) -- Promethean theurgy. Life-creation ; Cultural immortalism ; God-building ; Re-aiming the arrows of Eros ; Technological utopianism ; Occultism -- Fedorov's twentieth century followers. Nikolai Pavlovich Peterson (1844-1919) and Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kozhevnikov (1852-1917) ; Svyatogor and the biocosmists ; New wine and the universal task ; Alexander Konstantinovich Gorsky (1886-1943) and Nikolai Alexandrovich Setnitsky (1888-1937) ; Valerian Nikolaevich Muravyov (1885-1932) ; Vasily Nikolaevich Chekrygin (1897-1922) -- Cosmism and its offshoots today. The N.F. Fedorov museum-library ; The Tsiolkovsky museum and Chizhevsky center ; ISRICA - Institute for Scientific Research in Cosmic Anthropoecology ; Lev Nikolaevich Gumilev (1912-1992) and neo-eurasianism ; The hyperboreans ; Scientific immortalism: Igor Vishev, Danila Medvedev ; Conclusions about the Russian cosmists. (shrink)

ArgumentNeuroscience research has created multiple versions of the human brain. The “social brain” is one version and it is the subject of this paper. Most image-based research in the field of social neuroscience is task-driven: the brain is asked to respond to a cognitive (perceptual) stimulus. The tasks are derived from theories, operational models, and back-stories now circulating in social neuroscience. The social brain comes with a distinctive back-story, an evolutionary history organized around three, interconnected themes: mind-reading, empathy, and the (...) emergence of self-consciousness. This paper focuses on how empathy has been incorporated into the social brain and redefined via parallel research streams, employing a shared, imaging technology. The concluding section describes how these developments can be understood as signaling the emergence of a new version of human nature and the unconscious. My argument is not that empathy in the social brain is a myth, but rather that it is served by a myth consonant with the canons of science. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 9.1 (2002) 55-59 [Access article in PDF] One Stage Is Not Enough Andrew W. Young and Karel W. de Pauw Keywords: delusions, Cotard delusion, Capgras delusion, cognitive neuropsychiatry. WE WELCOME THE OPPORTUNITY to offer our reflections on Philip Gerrans' interesting paper. Our opinion is that on fundamental issues we agree quite a bit—but there are clear differences when it comes to details.The most basic (...) issue concerns the nature of the enterprise. Like Gerrans, we think that it is possible to create testable accounts of the formation and maintenance of what would otherwise seem bizarre and inexplicable delusions, and that these accounts should be grounded in theoretical models of factors that underpin our everyday perception and reasoning. This general approach certainly forms part of what has been called cognitive neuropsychiatry. However, we disagree with Gerrans in that we see cognitive neuropsychiatry as an attempt to draw on the underlying logic of cognitive neuropsychology, rather than (as Gerrans implies) its current methods. The underlying logic of cognitive neuropsychological approaches has been to try to understand the effects of brain injury in terms of disruption of different components of theoretical models of normal abilities. In this approach, a model of normal performance is tested by its ability to account for the effects of brain injury. Where the model of normal performance also provides a convincing account of brain injury it is retained, and when it fails to account for effects of brain injury, it is revised or abandoned. In cognitive neuropsychiatry, the key theoretical move has been to argue that an adequate model of normal performance should be able to account for any disordered pattern (Ellis and Young 1990). The same logic of seeking to explain disordered performance by reference to models of normal function is then attempted, but for disorders that would usually fall within the province of psychiatry.In our opinion, however, cognitive neuropsychiatry will not simply involve importing the methods of cognitive neuropsychology into the new domain; they will need to be developed and adapted to fit the new agenda (Young 2000).In cognitive neuropsychology, progress has often come from the careful investigation of people with stable, selective deficits of fundamental cognitive functions involved in sensory analysis, memory, and verbal or motor output. In contrast, delusional beliefs can be relatively unstable; often they are only held for a few weeks or even days. When the delusions change, patients may modify or abandon them as suddenly as they seemed to form them, or they may give them up much more slowly and reluctantly. At the very least, this creates difficulties in the timing of investigations and in interpreting the relation of deficits and symptoms, which may be recorded on separate dates. These methodological problems [End Page 55] are exacerbated by the fact that deficits linked to complex abnormal experiences such as delusions may be multifaceted and diffuse, even when the delusions themselves have a specific content or theme. Such complications do not invalidate cognitive neuropsychiatry, but they do mean it will need to develop its own methods for dealing with them and making appropriate inferences.One of the key complexities that has surfaced already involves the idea that delusional beliefs might reflect the interaction of two or more contributory factors. Gerrans discusses a particular variant of this idea, which had been suggested by Young and Leafhead (1996) as an approach to understanding the Cotard delusion: The Cotard delusion represents a depressed person's attempt to account for abnormal perceptual experiences. It follows that the delusion is based on an unfortunate interaction between different contributory factors. One set of factors creates the abnormal perceptual experiences, which are characterised by lack of emotional responses and feelings of emptiness, depersonalisation and derealisation. The other factors result in a misinterpretation of these perceptual changes, in which the patients' depressed moods lead them correctly to attribute the changes to themselves, but to exaggerate their consequences. (Young and Leafhead, 1996, 166) Gerrans describes this as a two-stage account, but argues that a one-stage account based only on abnormal perceptual... (shrink)

Arthur Schopenhauer was one of the greatest writers and German philosophers of the nineteenth century. His work influenced figures as diverse as Wagner, Freud and Nietzsche. Best known as a pessimist, he was one of the few philosophers read and admired by Wittgenstein. In this comprehensive introduction, Julian Young covers all the main aspects of Schopenhauer's philosophy. Beginning with an overview of Schopenhauer's life and work, he introduces the central aspects of his metaphysics fundamental to understanding his work as (...) a whole: his philosophical idealism and debt to the philosophy of Kant; his attempt to answer the question of what the world is; his account of science; and in particular his idea that 'will' is the essence of all things. Julian Young then introduces and assesses Schopenhauer's aesthetics, which occupy a central place in his philosophy. He carefully examines Schopenhauer's theories of the sublime, artistic genius and music, before assessing his ethics of compassion, his arguments for pessimism and his account of 'salvation'. In the final chapter, he considers Schopenhauer's legacy and his influence on the thought of Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, making this an ideal starting point for those coming to Schopenhauer for the first time. (shrink)

What can we learn about the nature of technology by studying practices of maintenance and repair? This volume addresses this question by bringing together scholarship from philosophers of technology working at the forefront of this emerging and exciting topic. -/- The chapters in this volume explore how attending to maintenance and repair can challenge and complement existing ways of thinking about technology focused on use and design and introduce new philosophical perspectives on the relationship between technology, time and human practice. (...) They examine the significance of maintenance and repair practices at different scales in relation to a diverse range of philosophical traditions and a wide variety of technologies, from urban infrastructure such as bridges and buildings to data technologies such as servers and software systems. Together, the contributions highlight common themes in the philosophical study of maintenance, including the role of skill, the significance of social values and the potential of these practices to transform the technologies to which they are applied. By reflecting on the different ways in which we keep technologies going, from the devices we use in our homes to the large technical systems which surround us, this volume reveals the philosophical significance of practices of maintenance, not only as a source of new insights but also as a resource for enriching our understanding of a variety of existing topics in philosophy. -/- Maintenance and Philosophy of Technology will appeal to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of technology, philosophy of engineering and science & technology studies. (shrink)

When Black Feminist Thought by Patricia Hill Collins was published in 1990, reviewers called it "remarkable", "rich and valuable", and proclaimed, "with the publication of this book, Black feminism has moved to a new level". Now, in Fighting Words, Collins expands and extends the discussion of the "outsider within" presented in her earlier work, investigating how effectively Black feminist thought confronts the injustices African American women currently face. Collins takes on a broad range of issues -- poverty, mothering, white supremacy (...) and Afrocentrism, the resegregation of American society by race and class, the ideas of Sojourner Truth and how they can serve as a springboard for more liberating social theory. Contrasting social theories that support unjust power relations of race, class, gender, and nation with those that challenge inequalities, Collins investigates why some ideas are granted the status of "theory" while others remain "thought". "It is not that elites produce theory while everyone else produces mere thought", she writes. "Rather, elites possess the power to legitimate the knowledge that they define as theory as being universal, normative, and ideal". Collins argues that because African American women and other historically oppressed groups seek economic and social justice, their social theories may emphasize themes and work from assumptions that are different from those of mainstream American society, generating new angles of vision on injustice. Collins also puts such oppositional social theory to the test: while the words of these theories may challenge injustice, do the ideas make a difference in the lives of the people they claim to represent? Throughout,Collins provides an essential understanding of how "outsiders" resist mainstream perspectives, and what the mainstream can learn from such "outsiders". Historically situated yet transcending the specific, Fighting Words provides a new interpretive framework for both thinking through and overcoming social injustice. (shrink)

Previous studies in Western contexts have examined the relationships between various board characteristics and CSR, yet the relationships need to be re-examined in non-Western contexts given differential theoretical premises across contexts. We specifically propose that the effects of board characteristics on CSR in Korea should be patterned distinctively from Western-based existing literature, focusing on three important board characteristics, such as a board’s independence, social ties, and diversity. Using a panel dataset from large Korean firms, we found that various relationships between (...) board characteristics and CSR were non-linear, whereas most of the previous research on Western contexts found that the same relationships were linear. Specifically, curvilinear relationships were found between CSR and board independence, CEO-outside director social ties, and educational diversity. Our findings suggest that there is no universal feature of CSR-supportive board characteristics due to the unique characteristics of various institutional contexts. (shrink)

In Graham Harman’s Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO), an apparent tension arises between his pursuit of a self-proclaimed “new theory of everything,” or general ontology, and his assertion that any ontology must be able to account for distinctions among various regions of being. This paper delves into this tension between universality and specificity, particularly concerning the question of animal ontology, and examines the potential for constructing an object-oriented animal ontology. By juxtaposing Harman’s perspectives with those of Matthew Calarco and other scholars, I (...) aim to demonstrate the feasibility of developing an animal ontology using the framework of OOO. (shrink)

In the fall of 1957 the University of California Press expanded Arnheim’s 1933 book _Film_ by four essays and brought that landmark work back into print as _Film as Art._ Now nearly fifty years after that re-edition, the book continues to occupy an important place in the literature of film. Arnheim’s method, provocative in this age of technological wizardry, was to focus on the way art in film was derived from that medium’s early limitations: no sound, no color, no three-dimensional (...) depth. (shrink)

Joseon neo-Confucianism critically reviewed Chinese Chu Zi Studies and transformed it as Joseon seonglihak through intense debates occurred in the process of trying to settle down the problems raised in the contemporary Joseon society. The representative theories of Joseon seonglihak includes sadanchiljeongron(四端七情論, the theory of the Four Beginnings and the Seven Feelings), inmulseongdongiron (人物性同異論, the theory of whether human nature and animal nature are the same or different), seongbeomsimdongbudongron (聖凡心同不同論, the theory of whether the mind of the nobler man and (...) that of the inferior man arethe same or different), mibalon (未發論, the theory of not-yet-aroused). Among these, this article traces the originality of Joseon seonglihak by means of comparing the sadanchiljeongron of Lee Hwang(Toegye, 1501-1570) with the mibalon of Lee Gan (Oeam, 1677-1727). The clause that 'the nature is li [性卽理]' is the central proposition in Chu Zi Studies, whereas the clause that 'the Four Beginnings are the arousal of li [四端理之發]' is the central proposition in Lee Hwang's theory. The clauses that 'the nature is identified with the mind [心性一致]', that 'the nobler man takes li to be the mind', and that 'the mind is the nature and the nature is the mind' are the main claims made by Lee Gan. Chu Hsi takes the nature (the original nature) to be li, Lee Hwang takes the feeling (the Four Beginnings) to be li, and Lee Gan takes the mind (the original mind) to be li. These claims made by Lee Hwang and Lee Gan are fundamentally different from Chu Hsi's theory of mind and nature. (shrink)

Brechts Sonettsammlung Studien entstand als Reaktion auf die sogenannte Expressionismusdebatte, die in der Exilzeitschrift Das Wort (1937/38) ausgetragen wurde. Es geht darin um die produktive Nutzung des klassischen Erbes der Weltliteratur. Während die theoretischen Schriften Brechts über diese Debatte in der Forschung viel Beachtung fanden, wurden die Studien bisher marginalisiert. Die Autorin legt erstmalig eine Gesamtdarstellung der Studien vor. Im Zentrum stehen die Bezüge zur Expressionismusdebatte, die sich, wie in der Arbeit gezeigt wird, nicht auf eine «Brecht-Lukács-Debatte» reduzieren läßt. Darüber (...) hinaus werden die Studien editionsgeschichtlich, gattungsästhetisch und im Gesamtzusammenhang des Sonett-Werkes Brechts untersucht. (shrink)

Children are surrounded by a lot of problems here and there, and they often show any tendency to answer them promptly. In this paper, I argue that helping children understand their problems properly before answering them is one of the good ways of meta-thinking teaching in philosophy for children, and then I suggest how teachers help them do so.

Given i, j, k ∈ {1,2,3,4}, the notion of -length neutrosophic subalgebras in BCK=BCI-algebras is introduced, and their properties are investigated. Characterizations of length neutrosophic subalgebras are discussed by using level sets of interval neutrosophic sets. Conditions for level sets of interval neutrosophic sets to be subalgebras are provided.

In this classic work of feminist political thought, Iris Marion Young challenges the prevailing reduction of social justice to distributive justice.

The concepts of habitus and capital are crucial in the research tradition of social and cultural reproduction. This article applies both terms to an analysis of aspects of the life histories of low-income African American men. In exploring how their past experiences relate to their present-day statuses as nonmobile individuals, this article also revisits and redefines the utility of habitus and capital as conceptual devices for the study of social inequality. It expands the empirical terrain covered by the concept of (...) capital to include that which allows low-income individuals to manage their existence in socioeconomically disadvantaged communities while also hindering their mobility in the broader social world. One implication of this approach is an improved cultural analysis of low-income individuals. The improvement lies in that their behavior can be better understood as reflections of their readings of social reality, which are based upon the material and ideational resources that they have accumulated throughout their lives, and not simply as manifestations of flawed value-systems or normative orientations. (shrink)

Numerous studies of the beliefs of people with anorexia nervosa (AN) suggest that a subset of such individuals may experience delusions. We first describe what makes a belief delusional and conclude that such characteristics can be appropriately applied to some beliefs of people with AN. Next, we outline how delusional beliefs may relate to the broader psychopathological process in AN, including: (1) they may be epiphenomenal; (2) they may be an initial partial cause of AN; (3) they may be caused (...) by aspects of AN; or (4) they may be sustaining causes, possibly involved in reciprocal causal relations with aspects of AN. We argue that there is good reason to believe that delusional beliefs of people with AN are not merely epiphenomenal, but rather that they’re causally connected to AN. Because of this, empirical studies can be designed to test for the presence of causal relations. We describe how these studies should be designed. The results of such studies have important implications for understanding the experience of individuals with AN and for the treatment of AN. We outline these implications. (shrink)

Ordinary people often make moral judgments that are consistent with philosophical principles and legal distinctions. For example, they judge killing as worse than letting die, and harm caused as a necessary means to a greater good as worse than harm caused as a side-effect (Cushman, Young, & Hauser, 2006). Are these patterns of judgment produced by mechanisms specific to the moral domain, or do they derive from other psychological domains? We show that the action/omission and means/side-effect distinctions affect nonmoral (...) representations and provide evidence that their role in moral judgment is mediated by these nonmoral psychological representations. Specifically, the action/omission distinction affects moral judgment primarily via causal attribution, while the means/side-effect distinction affects moral judgment via intentional attribution. We suggest that many of the specific patterns evident in our moral judgments in fact derive from nonmoral psychological mechanisms, and especially from the processes of causal and intentional attribution. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss the role played by disturbed phenomenology in accounting for the formation and maintenance of the Capgras delusion. Whilst endorsing a two-stage model to explain the condition, I nevertheless argue that traditional accounts prioritise the role played by some form of second-stage cognitive disruption at the expense of the significant contribution made by the patient’s disturbed phenomenology, which is often reduced to such uninformative descriptions as “anomalous” or “strange”. By advocating an interactionist model, I argue that (...) the delusional belief constitutes an attempt on the part of the patient to explain his/her initially odd and somewhat disturbed phenomenal content and, moreover, that the delusion then structures the patient’s experience such that what he/she perceives is an impostor. This fact is used to explain the delusional belief’s maintenance and resistance to revision. Thus, whilst accepting that second-stage cognitive disruption has a part to play in explaining the Capgras delusion, the emphasis here is placed on the role played by the patient’s changing phenomenal content and its congruence with the delusional belief. Unlike traditional two-stage models, which posit a unidirectional progression from experience to belief, the interactionist model advocates a two-way interaction between bottom-up and top-down processes. The application of this model to other delusional beliefs is also considered. (shrink)

Explanations of Capgras delusion and prosopagnosia typically incorporate a dual-route approach to facial recognition in which a deficit in overt or covert processing in one condition is mirror-reversed in the other. Despite this double dissociation, experiences of either patient-group are often reported in the same way – as lacking a sense of familiarity toward familiar faces. In this paper, deficits in the facial processing of these patients are compared to other facial recognition pathologies, and their experiential characteristics mapped onto the (...) dual-route model in order to provide a less ambiguous link between facial processing and experiential content. The paper concludes that the experiential states of Capgras delusion, prosopagnosia, and related facial pathologies are quite distinct, and that this descriptive distinctiveness finds explanatory equivalence at the level of anatomical and functional disruption within the face recognition system. The role of skin conductance response as a measure of ‘familiarity’ is also clarified. (shrink)

Theorizing resistance -- Hellenistic rule in Judea : setting the stage for resistance -- Interaction and identity in Seleucid Judea : 188-173 BCE 78 -- Recreating the empire : the sixth Syrian war, Jason's revolt, and the reconquest of Jerusalem -- Seleucid state terror -- The edict of Antiochus : persecution and the unmaking of the Judean world -- Daniel -- Enochic authority -- The apocalypse of weeks : witness and transformation -- The book of dreams : see and cry (...) out. (shrink)

In Practice in Christianity, Kierkegaard claims that the imaginative planning of projects that require ongoing effort over time always fails to represent them accurately. This paper explores one particular reason Kierkegaard gives for thinking this—that the imagination is incapable of capturing the temporality of such endeavors, and it is this temporality that constitutes their greatest difficulty. This is significant for Kierkegaard because he believes that the tasks of the moral life and the religious life belong to this class of endeavors. (...) But if true, his claim raises questions for all self-determinative projects that use imaginative planning. -/- This paper explores Kierkegaard’s texts on the matter and argues that his claim centers on the fact that in one’s imagination, one cannot face ongoing resistance that is entirely outside one’s control as one does in the actual world. This contributes to a picture of Kierkegaard’s moral psychology that presents having a powerful imagination alone as quite insufficient for practical striving, and that places practice and willful endurance in whatever task one is attempting as central to learning it. One cannot learn how to do such tasks from another or from one’s imagination, according to Kierkegaard—the only teacher is experience, and, crucially, time. (shrink)

These introductory remarks outline the German concept of Kulturtechniken by tracing its various overlapping meanings from the late 19th century to today and linking it to developments in recent German theory. Originally related to the agricultural domain, the notion of cultural techniques was later employed to describe the interactions between humans and media, and, most recently, to account for basic operations and differentiations that give rise to an array of conceptual and ontological entities which are said to constitute culture. In (...) the second part of the essay, cultural techniques are analyzed as a concept that allows theorists to overcome certain biases and impasses characteristic of that domain of German media theory associated with the work of the late Friedrich Kittler. (shrink)