The article begins with an effort to clarify and differentiate a variety of terms used by analysts in dealing with mentions of persons in conversation and other forms of talk-in-interaction — such terms as person-reference, identifying, describing, categorizing, and the like. This effort leads to the observation that `reference to persons' and `membership categorization' are quite distinct sets of practices, with most reference to persons not being done by membership categories, and most uses of membership categorization devices being in (...) the service of actions other than referring. Two interactional sequences whose analysis turns on a connection to talk earlier in the occasion are then examined; first, to establish what is going on interactionally without respect to the mentioning of persons, and then as exercises in examining the various ways person-reference and membership categorization can figure in a stretch of interaction. (shrink)

This reviews, motivates, and extends the event analysis of action sentences and shows how it explains the compositionally of adverbial modification of action verbs and event verbs more generally. It includes a treatment of intensional adverbs like 'intentionally' and how it can be extended to the collective reading of plural action sentences.

The paper inquires the category of _performance_ in Hannah Arendt. Her concept of the political eludes the tradition-inherited approach and subtracts the praxis from instrumental reason. Arendt revisits the political experiences of ancient Greek cities, where tragedy and assembly, theater and agora, provide the propitious space for action. She avoids the instrumental approach of _homo faber_, conceptualizes action as performance and shows its connaturality with the performing arts, to the detriment of the productive ones. In “What is Freedom?” (...) Arendt understands political freedom as a “worldly fact”, and assesses the Machiavellian _virtù_ as public excellence: as _performance on stage_. (shrink)

The categories of acting and undergoing are not really examined in the Aristotelian treatise. This article aims at showing how the anonymous author of the Book of six principles analyses them in trying to fill this void. By doing so, the article underlines how this analysis philosophically relates to some technical problems discussed in the neo-platonician exegetic tradition of Aristotle’s Categories. It makes reference to some thir-teenth- and fourteenth- century commentaries on the Book of six principles both to (...) present how this text was interpretated and to give a glance at how the conceptions of these two categories came to evolve. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: A general interpretation and close textual analysis of Kant’s theory of the categories of freedom (or categories of practical reason) in his Critique of Practical Reason. My main concerns in the paper are the following: (1) I show that Kant’s categories of freedom have primarily three functions: as conditions of the possibility for actions (i) to be free, (ii) to be comprehensible as free and (iii) to be morally evaluated. (2) I show that for Kant actions, (...) although qua theoretical objects they are always already constituted by means of the theoretical categories, qua practical objects (objects of reason in its practical use, i.e. objects qua possibly good or bad) they are constituted by means of the categories of freedom; and that it is only in this way that actions, qua phenomena, can be a consequence of freedom, and can be understood and evaluated as such. (3) Since Kant's presentation of his theory of the Categories of Freedom is extremely brief, Kant's parallel theory of the theoretical categories in his Critique of Pure Reason is used as a guide for the interpretation of the practical categories and their systematic relevance. (Translation by Alex Worsnip, reviewed and approved by the author.). (shrink)

A law is one of the basic concepts of the dialectical materialist conception of determinism as a philosophical theory of the objective interrelationship and mutual conditioning of phenomena in the material and mental world. A law establishes a rigorously determined connection among circumstances, i.e., a totality of derivative components and conditions of their actions and results. By overlooking the existence of two different levels—the concept and the objective reality corresponding to it—some philosophers erroneously interpret Marx's theses concerning the approximateness of (...) the realization of the laws of society. Let us take, for example, Marx's thesis that "In general, in capitalist production general laws are realized in a very confused and approximate way, merely as a prevailing tendency, as a kind of average among constant fluctuations that is never solidly established."1 Some investigators see this as an objectively existing social law in itself, attributing to it an "inexactitude" of operation, variation, and approximation, instead of seeing it as a specific application of a particular law. They thus forget that Marx said, in the Foreword to the very first volume of Capital: "The question does not specifically have to do with a greater or lesser degree of development of the social antagonisms that derive from the natural laws of capitalist production, but rather lies in these laws themselves, these trends, which operate and are realized with iron necessity.". (shrink)

The formal language studied in this paper contains two categories of expressions, terms and formulas. Terms express events, formulas propositions. There are infinitely many atomic terms and complex terms are made up by Boolean operations. Where and are terms the atomic formulas have the form = ( is the same as ), Forb ( is forbidden) and Perm ( is permitted). The formulae are truth functional combinations of these. An algebraic and a model theoretic account of validity are given (...) and an axiomatic system is provided for which they are characteristic.The closure principle, that what is not forbidden is permitted is shown to hold at the level of outcomes but not at the level of events. In the two final sections some other operators are considered and a semantics in terms of action games. (shrink)

NOTE: The English translation is listed separately. ABSTRACT: A general interpretation and close textual analysis of Kant’s theory of the categories of freedom (or categories of practical reason) in his Critique of Practical Reason. My main concerns in the paper are the following: (1) I show that Kant’s categories of freedom have primarily three functions: as conditions of the possibility for actions (i) to be free, (ii) to be comprehensible as free and (iii) to be morally evaluated. (...) (2) I show that for Kant actions, although qua theoretical objects they are always already constituted by means of the theoretical categories, qua practical objects (objects of reason in its practical use, i.e. objects qua possibly good or bad) they are constituted by means of the categories of freedom; and that it is only in this way that actions, qua phenomena, can be a consequence of freedom, and can be understood and evaluated as such. (3) Since Kant's presentation of his theory of the Categories of Freedom is extremely brief, Kant's parallel theory of the theoretical categories in his Critique of Pure Reason is used as a guide for the interpretation of the practical categories and their systematic relevance. (shrink)

: This article presents a new approach to considering the categories and concepts necessary for praxeology based on the theoretical framework proposed by Anna Wierzbicka and Cliff Goddard. Natural semantic metalanguage theory can be a comprehensive method for defining the conceptual foundations of human action and of rational discussion in general. Behind the very premise of ….

The belief-desire model of action explanation is deeply ingrained in multiple disciplines. There is reason to think that it is a cultural artifact. But is there an alternative? In this discussion, I will consider the radical critique of this action explanation model by Rüdiger Bittner, which argues that the model appeals to dubious mental entities, and argues for a model of reasons as responses to states or events. Instead, for Bittner, agents are reason-selectors—selecting the states or events to (...) respond to and selecting the ones the agent is disposed to respond to. By getting rid of the explanatory role of beliefs, this model runs into difficulties over errors usually attributed to false beliefs. These can be resolved by expanding the notion of dispositions to cover the case of false belief. But this suggests that the belief-reason model serves to divide the category of dispositions in an arbitrary or culturally specific way. (shrink)

Modern social theory, by and large, has aimed at reducing the complexity of action situations to a set of manageable abstractions. But these abstractions, whether functionalist or linguistic, fail to grasp the indeterminacy of action situations.Action proceeds by discovery and combination. The logic of action is serendipitous and combinative. From these characteristics, a number of consequences flow: The whole field of our intentions is engaged in each action situation, and cannot really be understood apart from (...) the situation itself. In action situations we remain aware of the problems of categorization, including the dangers of infinite regress and the difficulties of specifying borders and ranges of categories. In action situations, attention is in permanent danger of being overwhelmed. We must deal with many features of action situations outside of attention; in doing so, we must entertain simultaneously numerous possibilities of action. Emotional expression is a way of talking about the kinds of possibilities we entertain. Expression and action have a rebound effect on attention. "Effort" is required to find appropriate expressions and actions, and rebound effects play a role in such effort, making it either easier or more difficult.Recent theoretical trends have failed to capture these irreducible characteristics of action situations, and have slipped into a number of errors. Language is not rich in meanings or multivocal, except as put to use in action situations. The role of "convention" in action situations is problematic, and therefore one ought not to talk of "culture." Contrary to the assertions of certain theorists, actors do not follow strategies, except when they decide to do so. Actors do not "communicate," in the sense of exchanging information, except in specially arranged situations. More frequently, they intervene in the effortful management of attention of their interlocutors. Dialogue, that is, very commonly becomes a form of cooperative emotional effort.From these considerations, it follows that the proper method for gaining social knowledge is to examine the history of action and of emotional effort, and to report findings in the form of narrative. (shrink)

In diesem Artikel versuche ich deutlich zu machen dass, und aus welchem Grund, Kant den Kategorien der Freiheit eine Doppelfunktion zugeschrieben hat. Es wird sich zeigen, dass die Kategorien der Freiheit nicht nur als die ratio cognoscendi von freien Handlungen innerhalb der Sinnenwelt fungieren, sondern auch geeignet sind, die Begriffe von Gut und Böse als echte moralische Relevanzregeln zu begründen; mit anderen Worten, sie eignen sich als Regeln dafür, wie Umstände und Ereignisse mit moralischer Wichtigkeit aufzuspüren und zu bewerten sind. (...) This paper attempts to bring to light and to justify the double task that Kant confers on the categories of freedom. It will be maintained that the categories of freedom do not only function as the ratio cognoscendi of free actions within the sensible world but they are also well appropriated to ground the concepts of the good and the evil as genuine rules of moral salience , that is to say, as rules of how to detect and appraise circumstances and deeds bestowed with moral significance. (shrink)

This paper presents an analysis of conversational actions and category relations exhibited in an episode of argument between a brother and sister during a family meal. The paper is based on two sets of auspices: on a conversation analytic concern with the interconnection between the sequential and categorical ‘layers’ of organization to which parties to talk-in-interaction are demonstrably oriented, and on ‘Sacks’ Conjecture’ regarding children’s culture and adult—child ‘culture contact’. In terms of these auspices, the analysis shows that the children (...) use both sequential and categorical cultural resources to produce their argument. To adapt a concept of Garfinkel’s — the documentary method of interpretation — the category relationship between the children is the underlying matter that the sequential particulars are used to reflexively document and constitute. Specifically, through the sequentially organized particulars of degradation and resistance the children recognizably and reflexively constitute their category relationship. (shrink)

In Experience and Education, John Dewey described how learning should occur in schools, and what the results of that learning should be. Critiquing both the traditional educational practices of his time and the progressive schools that took some of their ideas from his own work, Dewey put forth what he called the "educative" experience (LW 13: 11) as the aim of formal instruction. The educative experience is affectively engaging, intelligently directed, and disciplined by the demands of purposeful and social activity. (...) It leads to growth in possibilities for perception and action. Dewey contrasted the educative experience to those experiences he labeled as "mis-educative" (LW 13: 11), which, lacking some or all of .. (shrink)

Advocates of ordinary aesthetics argue that aesthetic experiences found in everyday life can have an impact on our ethical being. This raises the question of how, specifically, action arises from aesthetic experience. Although this matter affects both Aesthetics and Ethics, the current literature provides few details on potential mechanisms. Using neurophysiological evidence, this article proposes specific action profiles and associated mechanisms for aesthetic experiences. To achieve this, it is argued that aesthetic experience originates within the mind and that (...) ordinary aesthetic experiences are logically permissible. Subsequently, a proposed landscape of aesthetic experience is derived. Mechanisms for pathways from experience to action are provided for each category of aesthetic experience. In sum, this provides a tangible bridge between Aesthetics and Ethics, enabling a better understanding of how one’s ethical being is influenced by certain experiences. (shrink)

The precondition of any feminist politics – a usable category of ‘woman’ – has proved to be difficult to construct, even proposed to be impossible, given the ‘problem of exclusion’. This is the inevitable exclusion of at least some women, as their lives or experiences do not fit into the necessary and sufficient condition(s) that denotes group membership. In this paper, I propose that the problem of exclusion arises not because of inappropriate category membership criteria, but because of the presumption (...) that categories can only be organised by identity relations or shared properties among their members. This criterion of sameness as well as the characterisation of this exclusion as essentialism attests to a metaphysics that is not conducive to resistance and liberatory projects. Following a strain of hybrid thinking in feminist and post-colonial theory, I outline an alternative pluralist logic that confronts oppressive binaries that impede theory work in gender, sexuality, and race theory, and limit political action and resistance. The problem of exclusion is neither irresolvable nor is it essentialism. Instead it is a denial of subjectivity due to pseudodualistic self/Other dichotomies that can be resisted by adopting a new categorial logic. While this paper focuses on the specific problem of formulating a category of ‘woman’, it has implications for other areas of gender, critical race, and postcolonial theory. Rather than working toward an inclusive category founded on sameness, theorists need to develop independent and positive categories grounded in difference. Our current categorial logic does not permit such a project, and therefore a new metaphysics must be adopted. (shrink)

The psychological conceptualization of phenomena involves characteristic explanations of animal movement. Conscientious attention to this fact results in a kind of behaviorism I call 'conceptual epiphenomenalism'. This doctrine at once explains the characteristic 'opacity' of psychological predicables and helps to show the way around difficulties opacity is felt to create, and it also frees our thinking from the tyranny of the distinction between necessity and contingency, too often misapplied to facts rather than to things said or thought. An important challenge (...) to conceptual epiphenomenalism is to account for the facts of introspective certainty and privileged testimony. This challenge can be met by identifying the nature of and displaying the behavioral conditions for the various grades of self-consciousness or reflective knowledge. The methodology of conceptual epiphenomenalism is schematically applied to elucidate first the general conception of animal action and then a variety of phenomena plausibly thought to be exponible by reference to the conception of action, specifically the broader category of animal behavior, intention, and hoping and wishing. (shrink)

Rudolf von Ihering was the leading German philosopher of law of the nineteenth century. He was also a major source of Weber’s more famous sociological definitions of action. Characteristically, Weber transformed material he found: in this case Ihering attempt to reconcile the causaland teleological aspects of action. In Ihering’s hands these become, respectively, the external and internal moments of action, or intentional thought and the factual consequences of action. For Weber they are made into epistemic aspects (...) of action, the causal and the meaningful, each of which is essential to an account of action, but which are logically and epistemically distinct. Ihering thought purposes were the products of underlying interests, but included ‘ideal’ interests in this category. Weber radicalized this by expanding the category and making it historically central. This radicalization bears on rational choice theory: if ideal interests have a large historical role independent of material interests, and are not fully explicable on such grounds as ‘sour grapes’, the methods appropriate to the study of the transformation of ideas, meaning genealogies in the Nietzschean sense, are central to the explanation of action. (shrink)

Volitionalism is a theory of action motivated by certain shortcomings in the standard causal theory of action. However, volitionalism is vulnerable to the objection that it distorts the phenomenology of embodied agency. Arguments for volitionalism typically proceed by attempting to establish three claims: (1) that whenever an agent acts, she tries or wills to act, (2) that it is possible for volitions to occur even in the absence of bodily movement, and (3) that in cases of successful bodily (...) actions the relation between volition and bodily movement is causal. I defend an argument for the second of these claims from an objection by Thor Grünbaum, but I show that several volitionalist arguments for the third are not compelling. I then argue that the dual aspect theory of action provides a better account of the relationship between an agent’s volition and the bodily movements she makes when she acts, insofar as it has the same advantages over the standard story as volitionalism without being open to the phenomenological objection. I also defend the dual aspect theory from an objection by A.D. Smith. Finally, I show why the dual aspect theory of action is a better alternative to volitionalism than the theory of action recently put forward by Adrian Haddock. In order to avoid the phenomenological objection Haddock suggests a disjunctive account of bodily movements. While disjunctivism should be taken seriously in the philosophy of action, on the dual aspect theory it is the category of volition, rather than bodily movement, that should receive a disjunctive analysis. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to improve our understanding of the category of moral “luck”. In current debate most often only specific cases of moral “luck” are taken into account. Such restrictions, however, involving a fragmentary picture of moral "luck", are introduced without any rationale for them. In this paper I look for a formal comprehensiveness of the category of moral “luck”. I consider three factors each of which is developed in two scenarios. These are (i) whether the agent’s (...) action is nasty or nice, (ii) whether the agent’s intention is confirmed or contradicted by her action, and (iii) whether the agent’s action is preceded by her intention or the lack thereof. I explore eight scenarios which are a mark of the intricacy of the category of moral “luck” otherwise ignored in the literature. After an assessment of their structure I arrive at new distinctions. The upshot is a rather complex set of correlations between several cases of moral “luck” with a variety of kinds and shades. (shrink)

When doing mental ontology, we must ask how to individuate distinct categories of mental states, and then, given that individuation, ask how states from distinct categories interact. One promising proposal for how to individuate cognitive from sensorimotor states is in terms of their representational form. On these views, cognitive representations are propositional in structure, while sensorimotor representations have an internal structure that maps to the perceptual and kinematic dimensions involved in an action context. This way of thinking (...) has resulted in worries about the interface between cognition and sensorimotor systems – that is, about how representations of these distinct types might interact in performing actions. I claim that current solutions to the interface problem fail, because they have not sufficiently abandoned intuitions inspired by faculty psychology. In particular, current proposals seek to show how cognitive states can enforce prior decisions on sensorimotor systems. I argue that such “determination” views are the wrong kind of views to adopt, given the form distinction. Instead, I offer a proposal on which propositional representations can at best bias us toward certain kinds of action. This kind of view, I argue, appealingly distributes the explanation of action across distinctive contributions from cognitive and sensorimotor processing. (shrink)

Two experiments show that action alters the shape categories formed by 2-year-olds. Experiment 1 shows that moving an object horizontally (or vertically) defines the horizontal (or vertical) axis as the main axis of elongation and systematically changes the range of shapes seen as similar. Experiment 2 shows that moving an object symmetrically (or asymmetrically) also alters shape categories. Previous work has shown marked developmental changes in object recognition between 1 and 3 years of age. These results suggest (...) a role for action in this developmental process. (shrink)

We are women, we are men. We are refugees, single mothers, people with disabilities, and queers. We belong to social categories and they frame our actions, self-understanding, and opportunities. But what are social categories? How are they created and sustained? How does one come to belong to them? Ásta approaches these questions through analytic feminist metaphysics. Her theory of social categories centers on an answer to the question: what is it for a feature of an individual to (...) be socially meaningful? In a careful, probing investigation, she reveals how social categories are created and sustained and demonstrates their tendency to oppress through examples from current events. To this end, she offers an account of just what social construction is and how it works in a range of examples that problematize the categories of sex, gender, and race in particular. The main idea is that social categories are conferred upon people. Ásta introduces a 'conferralist' framework in order to articulate a theory of social meaning, social construction, and most importantly, of the construction of sex, gender, race, disability, and other social categories. (shrink)

Over the past two decades, the study of moral reasoning has been heavily influenced by Joshua Greene’s dual-process model of moral judgment, according to which deontological judgments are typically supported by intuitive, automatic processes while utilitarian judgments are typically supported by reflective, conscious processes. However, most of the evidence gathered in support of this model comes from the study of people’s judgments about sacrificial dilemmas, such as Trolley Problems. To which extent does this model generalize to other debates in which (...) deontological and utilitarian judgments conflict, such as the existence of harmless moral violations, the difference between actions and omissions, the extent of our duties of assistance, and the appropriate justification for punishment? To find out, we conducted a series of five studies on the role of reflection in these kinds of moral conundrums. In Study 1, participants were asked to answer under cognitive load. In Study 2, participants had to answer under a strict time constraint. In Studies 3 to 5, we sought to promote reflection through exposure to counter-intuitive reasoning problems or direct instruction. Overall, our results offer strong support to the extension of Greene’s dual-process model to moral debates on the existence of harmless violations and partial support to its extension to moral debates on the extent of our duties of assistance. (shrink)

My purpose in this paper is to extend the argument developed in several recent essays that the narrative is a useful—if not indispensable—root metaphor for psychology. Narrative as a root metaphor fits nicely into the world view of contextualism—a world view that is parallel to the mechanistic paradigm. As developed so eloquently by Stephen Pepper, contextualism draws its energy from the root metaphor of the historical act. To me, the historical act and narrativity are near-synonyms, if not identical notions. Both (...) conceptions are dependent upon time as a pivotal category. Narratives are constructed to have beginnings, middles, and endings. Histories are also constructed stories. Historical accounts are endowed with meaning only when they are located within a narrative context. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Two experiments show that action alters the shape categories formed by 2-year-olds. Experiment 1 shows that moving an object horizontally (or vertically) defines the horizontal (or vertical) axis as the main axis of elongation and systematically changes the range of shapes seen as similar. Experiment 2 shows that moving an object symmetrically (or asymmetrically) also alters shape categories. Previous work has shown marked developmental changes in object recognition between 1 and 3 years of age. These results suggest (...) a role for action in this developmental process. (shrink)

It has been argued that 'causes' of action and 'reasons' for acting represent incompatible conceptual categories. This paper examines the alleged incompatibility between these concepts and attempts to show that not only are 'reason' explanations compatible with causal explanations but also that it is plausible to construe the former as a species of the latter. Providing reasons often aids in the search for relevant causal factors, And causal explanations are more systematic than corresponding reason explanations.

The paper discusses Martin Heidegger’s account of the anyone in Being and Time in connection with his reinterpretation of Aristotle’s categories of poiesis and praxis, carried out in his Lecture on Aristotle’s Ethics. The main purpose of the paper is to rethink the relation between production and action developed in Hannah Arendt’s Vita Activa, by understanding them as two different ways of enacting our relation to the world. By showing the inseparability between anyone and self in Heidegger’s account, (...) and therefore by drawing a parallel between these two different ways of existing and Heidegger’s phenomenological interpretation of poiesis and praxis, the paper aims at reformulating Arendt’s distinction between work and action. The purpose is to show – with and against Arendt’s conception – that there is no authentic action without a transformation of the sphere of production. Furthermore, by analyzing the constitutive ambivalence of the activity of building, the paper describes – with and against Heidegger’s perspective – the possibility to transform the self-assurance involved in each making, i.e. in our productive way of being. This transformation points to an ongoing process and lies in facing our self-assurance, thereby acknowledging our constitutive groundlessness and building a public and political place. (shrink)

This paper interprets facts about actions and responsibility in terms of Kant’s category of the ‘intelligible,’ but is also broadly naturalistic in its approach. It analyses intelligible facts in terms of two elements, the institutional and the normative. First, I draw on John Searle’s account of institutional facts. Searle emphasises that neither the meaning of a word nor my possession of something is a matter of empirical facts concerning the entity itself. Instead, to understand the nature of such facts, we (...) must take account of people’s shared beliefs. Kant’s account of property relations can, in part, be understood as an institution in Searle’s sense. Drawing on the work of Tamar Schapiro and Arthur Ripstein, I extend this idea to illuminate our ‘ownership’ of our deeds. Second, and more briefly, I present a normative element. Institutional facts need not, in themselves, be morally compelling. Under conditions of relative freedom and equality, however, I argue that practices of responsibility can be seen as a practical manifestation of critique. This generates a critical self-reflexivity that, I suggest, provides normative warrant to the practices of action and responsibility that we institute among ourselves. (shrink)

This article aims to analyze the manifestation of the universal axiological cultural category of sinfulness in the media space. The study's subject was this category's properties and functions, which are actualized when represented in digital media. In accordance with this goal, we used such methods as continuous sampling and observation of the facts of the representation of cultural categories, which allowed us to determine the linguistic material for analysis and a statistical method for quantitative analysis. The content analysis of (...) the units selected for the study was used to identify the role, properties, and main functions of the universal axiological category of sinfulness. The novelty of the research lies in the fact that, for the first time, the universal nature of the category of sinfulness, its functions and properties, represented in media publications, were considered. Main conclusions: the study of the facts of actualization of the category of sinfulness in the media space allowed us to assert that the phenomenon under study is associated with topics such as politics, crime (in news media), and the assessment of citizens' behavior and morality (in religious media). These facts indicate that the primary function of the category of sinfulness is regulatory, aimed at evaluating and correcting the actions of members of society, as well as creating public opinion. In addition, the article proves that the category of sinfulness has transcultural properties, penetrating and being realized in all cultural layers, from local to global. In these cultural layers, the nature of the category acquires a different shade. In particular, at the global level, the category of sinfulness acquires the meaning of guilt, which is a consequence of the significant influence of Western culture on the global culture. It seems that the revealed properties of the category indicate its high importance for modern Russian society. The established regulatory function will make it possible to apply this category, including within the framework of regulating and managing public opinion and promoting basic values. (shrink)

Language in Action demonstrates the viability of mathematical research into the foundations of categorial grammar, a topic at the border between logic and linguistics. Since its initial publication it has become the classic work in the foundations of categorial grammar. A new introduction to this paperback edition updates the open research problems and records relevant results through pointers to the literature. Van Benthem presents the categorial processing of syntax and semantics as a central component in a more general dynamic (...) logic of information flow, in tune with computational developments in artificial intelligence and cognitive science. Using the paradigm of categorial grammar, he describes the substructural logics driving the dynamics of natural language syntax and semantics. This is a general type-theoretic approach that lends itself easily to proof-theoretic and semantic studies in tandem with standard logic. The emphasis is on a broad landscape of substructural categorial logics and their proof-theoretical and semantic peculiarities. This provides a systematic theory for natural language understanding, admitting of significant mathematical results. Moreover, the theory makes possible dynamic interpretations that view natural languages as programming formalisms for various cognitive activities. (shrink)

This article examines a changing global reality that manifests itself in new forms of social activism. The struggle of the multitude challenges political representation and contemporary art seems to corroborate this observation. Becoming a form of social intervention, it turns into an active force and leaves behind the need to double action with representation, representational practices being the hallmark of classical art. A new theory of the image would have to incorporate this dynamic: it would have to treat and (...) develop the basic categories of action and relation. There are few philosophies of the act, and the existing semiotic models mostly deal with dual structures (signifier/signified; sign/meaning; image/referent, and so on). It is necessary to sketch out a dynamic theory of the image that would: (1) reveal the limitations of the concept of representation; (2) conceive of the image as a set of multiple changing relations. The image would thus be seen as a necessary part of the relations governing the world in its entirety, that is, as part of the movement of matter itself. Which is another way of saying that those relations are actualized, or expressed, in the image. (shrink)

The article deals with the issues of comparing the teachings of Tolstoy and Lao-zi according to the criterion of palingenesis, which is the basis for the construction of the entire ideological corpus of the most important treatise of Taoism “Tao de jing”. Lao-zi formulated the lapidary formula of palingenesis in the fortieth zhang of this treatise, recreating a picture of the harmonization of the Middle Kingdom, arguing that return is the movement of the Tao, and weakening is the action (...) of the Tao. The principle of palingenesis is one of the fundamental principles for which Tolstoy uses Christological vocabulary, and Lao-zi uses embryological vocabulary. The choice of the palingenesis criterion for comparative analysis of the teachings is due to the fact that the latter works as an immutable law when setting the task of recreating harmony in social chaos. Based on the assessments of the content of the zhangs of the “Tao de jing” canon, a representative line of palingenesis elements is built: the category of knowledge/truth; the category of ignorance; the category of simplicity; the category of naturalness; the category of “baby”; the category of non-action; the category of nonviolence. The principles of Taoism are not expressed by Tolstoy with a research sequence in logical definitions, but appear as categories and trends, working in the worldview of the Yasnaya Polyana sage. In the works “What is my faith?”, “Sayings of the Chinese sage Lao-Tse”, “Non-doing”, Tolstoy's teaching is presented in its entirety and is therefore convenient for comparison with the Taoist classics. It is noted that Tolstoy's conceptual idea is based on the desire to convert people to the good - unity with all people. This orientation towards the good is nothing else than the return to man of his original nature, on the way to which the principle of palingenesis associated with the boycott of the civilization of violence is realized. The conducted research has shown that in the teachings of Lao-zi and Tolstoy, which record the experience of theoretical exploration of the world, the categories of palingenesis are common to the Russian and Chinese spirit. (shrink)

The concept of right or fit is an important element entailed, but not fully articulated, in the concept of action or practice in Aristotle's theory of virtue; which, however, turns to be of the utmost importance in later Western ethics. Right is concerned with both feelings and actions, and is not the same for all individuals. It lies in between the two extremes of the spectrum of practical affairs, yet by no means equidistant from them. This account of the (...) concept of fitness or right is derived from the categories of quantity, relationship, and quality rather than from that of substance. Thus, it seems that virtue is relative to vice or error within a continuous existence. If, however, the right of passion and action is environmental and concrete, is it multiple and not singular? To this question, Aristotle gives his reply on two levels: On the level of concrete practitioners, what is right and fit to one man might not be so to another man, and hence the right of practice is not singular but multiple; whereas on the level concerned with the only right choice compared with the two extremes or errors, the right of practice will always be singular. /// "正确"是隐含于亚里士多德的德性学说中的一个重要而未充分展开的，在 后来的西方伦理学中却变成极为重要的关于行为或实践的概念。"正确"与感情和 行为都相关。"正确"并不是对所有人同样的。它是两端间的那个中间，但井不始 终与两端距离相等。对适度或正确的这种说明基本上是从数量、关系与性质范畴引 出，而不是从实体范畴引出的述说。所以，德性似乎始终是在一种有连续性的存在 中相对于恶或错误而言的。感情与行为的正确如果是环境的、具体的，它是否是多 而不是一?亚里士多德在两个层面上回答这个问题。在相对于具体实践者的层面， 对我而言的适度或正确很可能不同于对你而言的，实践的正确不是一而是多:在相 对于两端或错误唯有一个正确的选择而言，实践的正确始终只是一。. (shrink)

The surplus of impulses is a key category in Gehlen’s anthropobiology to understand the process of hominisation and humanisation. From the dedifferentiation of human instincts and the primitivisation of man’s anatomy, to the role of experience, institutions, and speech, the surplus of impulses is a source that flows between the inner and the outer, by feeding the action circle that whether translates in activity or is redirected inwards in order to become a movement of volitional constitution. The ambivalence in (...) which Gehlen deals with this function of freedom gives rise to a pessimistic and sacrificial idea of man. However, he posits certain basic elements of a hedonistic theory of speech from which we can better understand the stabilizing task of language as cornerstone of institutions. (shrink)

Our focus in this article is on some uses of categorial transformations. The discussion is divided into two main parts. In the first part, we begin by outlining our approach, namely membership categorization analysis (MCA), indicating the origins of the term and elaborating the conception of MCA as an ‘occasioned’ members’ apparatus. We then explain what we mean by the concept of categorial transformation, review some of the very few previous studies which have investigated this phenomenon and which are pertinent (...) to its further study, and indicate how categorial transformation serves to embody and illustrate the occasionality of MCA. In the second part of the article, we present an analysis of two extracts from a transcript of the naturally occurring talk-in-interaction which occurred in a particular family meal, involving two children and their parents. A variety of categorial transformation practices in this data are identified and their particular local usages described. In the concluding discussion we consider our argument and our analysis in light of previous discussions of the trajectory of Sacks’ work. (shrink)

This paper investigates how the reader of prose fiction fills in the blanks regarding a fictional character’s membership category, action, and reason for the action. Aligning with an ethnomethodological approach to texts and appropriating membership categorization analysis (MCA), we analyze how the readers of J. D. Salinger, an author whose works are well known for their ambiguity and ambivalence, would grasp the unwritten identities of characters and the meanings of their actions. Our analysis specifies two types of methods (...) deployed for the reader to understand the fictional texts. First, in an at-a-glance way, the reader can supply the missing categories and sequence of actions by turning to the commonsense knowledge and social norms regarding the association between the category and the activity. Second, the reader can construct various interpretations regarding the recognizably ambiguous scenes of the text by turning to the conceptual knowledge of the relevant social phenomena, the maxims specific to the act of storytelling, and the writer’s techniques peculiar to the fictional texts. The findings demonstrate the vast applicability of an MCA approach to the analysis of the work of reading prose fiction and shed light on the detailed operations of the author’s maxims and techniques in the textual configuration of prose fiction, thereby indicating the possibility of ethnomethodological analysis including the interwoven consideration of the reader’s activity and the textual organization. (shrink)

To mark the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Hegel’s death, the Hegel Societies of America and of Great Britain held a joint meeting in September 1981 at Merton College, Oxford. The volume under review contains the papers delivered at that conference. Its theme was well chosen, for “action” is a category central to Hegel’s system, while requiring a certain interpretative ingenuity to tease out exactly how it is so. The result is a book of great interest to Hegel (...) studies. (shrink)