The operation of developing a concept is a common procedure in mathematics and in natural science, but has traditionally seemed much less possible to philosophers and, especially, logicians. Meir Buzaglo's innovative study proposes a way of expanding logic to include the stretching of concepts, while modifying the principles which block this possibility. He offers stimulating discussions of the idea of conceptual expansion as a normative process, and of the relation of conceptual expansion to truth, meaning, reference, ontology (...) and paradox, and analyzes the views of Kant, Wittgenstein, Godel, and others, paying especially close attention to Frege. His book will be of interest to a wide range of readers, from philosophers to logicians, mathematicians, linguists, and cognitive scientists. (shrink)

Historically, mathematics has often dealt with the ‘expansion’ of previously accepted concepts and notions. In recent years, Buzaglo has provided a formalisation of concept expansion based on forcing. In this paper, I briefly review Buzaglo’s logic of concept expansion and I apply it to Cantor’s ‘creation’ of the transfinite. I argue that, while Buzaglo’s epistemological considerations fit well into Cantor’s conceptions, Buzaglo’s logic of concept expansion might be unsuitable to justify the creation of (...) the transfinite in terms of a logically rigorous derivation of concepts. (shrink)

Buzaglo offers a systematic account of nonarbitrary concept expansion in mathematics. Roughly, such expansion involves taking a concept, based upon its rules of application, to apply to objects beyond its intended domain. Buzaglo’s book is directed primarily at philosophers of mathematics, though it should equally interest philosophers of science and philosophers of language and logic. It should also interest logicians and mathematicians. Though Buzaglo does not always fully rebut opposing views, he is clear that his book (...) is meant to lay the groundwork for a continuing research program. Graduate students and professional philosophers would profit from the book. (shrink)

This paper proposes a new Separabilist account of thick concepts, called the Expansion View (or EV). According to EV, thick concepts are expanded contents of thin terms. An expanded content is, roughly, the semantic content of a predicate along with modifiers. Although EV is a form of Separabilism, it is distinct from the only kind of Separabilism discussed in the literature, and it has many features that Inseparabilists want from an account of thick concepts. EV can also give non-cognitivists (...) a novel escape from the Anti-Disentangling Argument. §I explains the approach of all previous Separabilists, and argues that there’s no reason for Separabilists to take this approach. §II explains EV. §III fends off objections. And §IV explains how non-cognitivist proponents of EV can escape the Anti-Disentangling Argument. (shrink)

There are two competing conceptions of the nature and domain of ecological science in the popular and academic literature, an orthodox conception and a more expansive conception. The orthodox conception conceives ecology as a natural biological science distinct from the human social sciences. The more expansive conception views ecology as a science whose domain properly spans both the natural and social sciences. On the more expansive conception, non-traditional ecological disciplines such as ecological psychology , ecological anthropology and ecological economics may (...) legitimately be regarded as sub-disciplines of ecology, and the practitioners of such disciplines as ecologists. The orthodox-expansionist issue is significant both for the practice of ecology and for the self-identity of the philosophy of ecology. I argue in favour of the expansionist conception of ecology on general conceptual grounds, and by developing the case for one particular non-traditional ecological discipline, ecological psychology. (shrink)

Like philosophy itself, Dune explores everything from politics to art to life to reality, but above all, the novels ponder the mysteries of mind. Voyaging through psychic expanses, Frank Herbert hits upon some of the same insights discovered by indigenous people from the Americas. Many of these ideas are repeated in mainstream American and European philosophical traditions like pragmatism and existential phenomenology. These outlooks share a regard for mind as ecological, which is more or less to say that minds extend (...) beyond the brain into the rest of the body and the surrounding environment. -/- The cross-cultural strands in Dune tie closely to Herbert’s life and interests. An outdoorsman born in the Pacific West, he had an abiding bond with a friend from the Quileute tribe, Howie Hansen. Herbert advocated for aboriginal rights and crafted well-intentioned if slightly stereotypical tales about indigenous characters, partly based on his visits with Northwest tribes. Carl Jung (1875-1961), whose idea of collective consciousness echoes aboriginal views, was among Herbert’s European influences. So was existential phenomenology, especially as developed by Martin Heidegger (1889-1976). The names of characters in one of Herbert’s novels—The Santaroga Barrier—in fact coincide with terms that Heidegger used to articulate how emotionally colored coping with our environment defines our existence. Many indigenous philosophers have treated phenomenology and its American cousin pragmatism in approving ways. Indeed, the ideas of North America’s first inhabitants seem to have been absorbed by pragmatists and even earlier by transcendentalists like Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) and Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862). -/- These different philosophies all advance a place-based psychology. Anne Waters, herself of mixed tribal heritage, generalizes the mindset of her people this way: “American Indian consciousness, and hence American Indian identity is … interdependent with our land base.” Lee Hester, a Choctaw thinker, adds that practices—not mere beliefs—are most important for native thought. American transcendentalists and pragmatists, as well as European phenomenologists, similarly see hands-on practices and environmental interactions as the core of experience. Extending this a little, they sometimes suggest experience isn’t individual but instead cultural. “Culture” is here understood as interactions within communities that define our worlds and experiences, as when we talk about the “French experience,” “culture” or “world,” or the “experience of parenthood.” This theme also shows up in indigenous thought. -/- Exploring the Dune universe, we find everything from land-based concepts of personal identity, to the idea of sharpening the mind through hands-on training, to collective notions of experience in cooperative tribes or through the genetic memory of central characters. The stories explore fate versus free will in cosmic contexts, introducing views from indigenous thought and the pragmatic philosophy of William James (1842-1910). Different forms of spiritualism mingle to shape minds and cultural mixtures around the globe, and the same occurs in the Dune series. The customs and personalities of characters fuse elements from Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, Taoism, and especially Islam. The series not only highlights that religion shapes psychology, but also that faith connects to place, especially paralleling Judeo-Christian-Islamic desert faiths. In capturing these points, the Dune novels show that “our values, our lifestyles and even the ways we think and feel have been strongly influenced by our locations in history and geography. The study of the human mind is fundamentally the study of place.”. (shrink)

Feminist scholars have consistently argued for broadened definitions of work that include the invisible family and emotion work done predominantly by women. This article focuses on women's resistances to placing these various activities into the common category of work. Drawing from interviews with teleworkers, it examines how and why women narrowed the meaning of work and explores some of the costs that may accompany a more expansive definition of work.

Epistemology should take seriously the possibility of rationally evaluable changes in conceptual resources. Epistemic decision theory compares belief states in terms of epistemic value. But it's standardly restricted to belief states that don't differ in their conceptual resources. I argue that epistemic decision theory should be generalized to make belief states with differing concepts comparable. I characterize some possible constraints on epistemic utility functions. Traditionally, the epistemic utility of a total belief state has been understood as a function of the (...) epistemic utility of individual (partial) beliefs. The most natural ways of generalizing this account generate a kind of repugnant conclusion. I characterize some possible alternatives, reflecting different epistemic norms. (shrink)

Dune explores everything from politics to art to life to reality, but, the novels ponder the mysteries of mind. Dune explores everything from politics to art to life to reality, but above all, the novels ponder the mysteries of mind. Many of these ideas are repeated in mainstream American and European philosophical traditions like pragmatism and existential phenomenology. Exploring the Dune universe, can find everything from land based concepts of personal identity, to the idea of sharpening the mind through hands (...) on training, to collective notions of experience in cooperative tribes or through the genetic memory of central characters. The sandworms make both the spice and the desert they need to survive. Tribal existence has levels of direct cooperaion that make it hard not to celebrate and occasionally mourn the group aspects of life. (shrink)

Semantic deference is the apparent phenomenon whereby some of -/- our concepts have their content fixed by the minds of others. The -/- phenomenon is puzzling both in terms of how such concepts are -/- supposed to work, but also in terms of why we should have -/- concepts whose content is fixed by others. Here I argue that if we -/- rethink semantic deference in terms of extended mind reasoning -/- we find answers to both of these questions: the (...) minds of others -/- can be understood to play a role in storing the semantic knowledge -/- underpinning our concepts without undermining their -/- functionality, and this ‘outsourcing’ of semantic knowledge greatly -/- expands our overall knowledge-bearing capacity, both at the level -/- of the individual and the community. I conclude that deference in -/- fact affords stronger grounds for a social expansion of knowledge -/- than standard extended mind reasoning permits. (shrink)

Enter The Expanse to explore questions of the meaning of human life, the concept of justice, and the nature of humanity, featuring a foreword from author James S.A. Corey The Expanse and Philosophy investigates the philosophical universe of the critically acclaimed television show and Hugo Award-winning series of novels. Original essays by a diverse international panel of experts illuminate how essential philosophical concepts relate to the meticulously crafted world of The Expanse, engaging with topics such as transhumanism, belief, culture, (...) environmental ethics, identity, colonialism, diaspora, racism, reality, and rhetoric. Conceiving a near-future solar system colonized by humanity, The Expanse provokes a multitude of moral, ethical, and philosophical queries: Are Martians, Outer Planets inhabitants, and Earthers different races? Is Marco Inaros a terrorist? Can people who look and sound different, like Earthers and Belters, ever peacefully co-exist? Should science be subject to moral rules? Who is sovereign in space? What is the relationship between human progress and aggression? The Expanse and Philosophy helps you answer these questions—and many more. Covers the first six novels in The Expanse series and five seasons of the television adaptation Addresses the philosophical issues that emerge from socio-economics and geopolitics of Earth, Mars, and the Outer Planets Alliance Offers fresh perspectives on the themes, characters, and storylines of The Expanse Explores the connections between The Expanse and thinkers such as Aristotle, Kant, Locke, Hannah Arendt, Wittgenstein, Descartes, and Nietzsche Part of the popular Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture series, The Expanse and Philosophy is a must-have companion for avid readers of James S.A. Corey’s novels and devotees of the television series alike. (shrink)

A new picture is emerging from the last hundred years’ study of evolution. Mountains of data to support—or bury—perspective are available, and there have been some substantial, recent summative works. Darlington in particular is recognized not only for comprehensiveness and insight, but for wit and clarity as well. Dobzhansky has done a rather lucid summary in nontechnical language, and Rensch has constructed a monument of documentation and intricate interpretation. Nevertheless, the picture of evolution has changed far more drastically than most (...) professionals can grasp without thoroughly digesting and independently interpreting a host of summative literature. The war-of-all-against-all, which is still evolution for the layman, has long since given away to the ecologist’s community with its various kinds of relationships. Therefore, the concept of “Biological Expansion” is now felt to be a more adequate frame of reference. (shrink)

Leo Strauss’s political philosophy spurs recognition that (i) an adequate political philosophy of technology must be able to integrate domestic and geopolitical ideals that are often expressed separately; (ii) technologies alter the formation of publics around issues, which depend less on the traditional overlap between people and place, so the political concept of sovereignty must be reconsidered; and (iii) both the polis and its technologies lift individuals beyond themselves, so a political philosophy of technology must include an aspirational element: (...) the technologies we make, use, and maintain are expressions of our interests, values, and concerns. (shrink)

A new picture is emerging from the last hundred years’ study of evolution. Mountains of data to support—or bury—perspective are available, and there have been some substantial, recent summative works. Darlington in particular is recognized not only for comprehensiveness and insight, but for wit and clarity as well. Dobzhansky has done a rather lucid summary in nontechnical language, and Rensch has constructed a monument of documentation and intricate interpretation. Nevertheless, the picture of evolution has changed far more drastically than most (...) professionals can grasp without thoroughly digesting and independently interpreting a host of summative literature. The war-of-all-against-all, which is still evolution for the layman, has long since given away to the ecologist’s community with its various kinds of relationships. Therefore, the concept of “Biological Expansion” is now felt to be a more adequate frame of reference. (shrink)

The relationship between “marginal” and “mainstream” science has, in recent decades, become a matter of discussion. Traditional perspectives must be reexamined in the wake of transformations in the international circulation of knowledge and the subsequent diversification of scientific “peripherality”. Argentina represents an interesting case with which to explore the structure of “peripheral centres” and new forms of scientific development. While it has recently experienced an expansion in terms of institutionalization, professionalization, and internationalization, that process has been coupled with entrenchment (...) of existing institutional asymmetries and persistent intra-national inequalities; academic prestige is distributed according to opposite principles of legitimation. Our main task is to explore the current state of research capacities pursuant to that expansion in order to analyze the diverse styles in which knowledge is produced. In our analysis, we make critical use of Bourdieu’s concept of field and the Latin American category of “structural heterogeneity,” while also focusing on the question of circulation. The paper outlines how professionalization has developed locally over time, and the historical tension between the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research and the public universities. It describes the current structure of the scientific field in terms of researchers, institutes, publishing circuits, and institutional evaluative cultures. It focuses on geographical asymmetries in order to assess the distribution of new human and material resources throughout the country. Finally, it addresses the current situation under the new government, and raises concern over recent regressive actions. (shrink)

Dating back to the early modern theories of Burke and Kant, philosophical accounts have made cognitive failure central to the experience of the sublime. This essay argues for a re-conception of the sublime in terms of the notion of epistemic expansion. Doing so not only provides a plausible account of traditional examples of the sublime, but also provides us with language that can capture an important but neglected aesthetic dimension of experimental science: the expansion of human perception. Recognizing (...) this dimension, it is argued, also enriches our understanding of the ways in which experimental science can facilitate broader public engagement with science. (shrink)

From the perspective of world philosophy, one phenomenon of the 20th century is quite intriguing. Certain philosophers in China as well as in the West, finding the traditional conception of epistemology too narrow-minded, argued that its scope should be expanded. The Chinese way of expanding epistemology might be called the metaphysical approach, and the Western way the practical approach. In this article, I will first give an outline of both approaches and then try to demonstrate that a substantial dialogue can (...) be created between them. By focusing on the problem of the articulation of what we know, I will make the metaphysical approach and the practical approach engage each other and thus prove to be mutually complementary. (shrink)

The environment and sociopolitical contexts in which we dwell shape our approach to the world. Islands, following Pádraig Ó Tuama, trigger an openness to other persons and sites. They fuel the comity of their inhabitants, motivate their interconnection with others, and thus sharpen their sense of morality. The Caribbean islands, and the Americas writ large, are also sites of both genocide and of a novel way to embrace the world. The peoples of the Caribbean islands have used the predicaments of (...) isolation, displacement, and genocide to initiate a mode of living that is best articulated, in the contemporary period, through the concept of créolization. The authors considered in this essay have expanded our understanding of the créolization. They have made specific the experiential thread of resilience that undergirds the meaning of créolization. In Condé’s work, the resilience is highlighted through the individual writer’s creativity. Sealy, for her part, expands the meaning of créolization to model a prospective inclusionary polity in the form of a créolizing nation. As we know, nations are not isolated entities; they are part of a conglomeration with other nations. Getachew completes the study to show that the cosmopolitan world that we might aspire to reach can benefit from the post-World War II efforts of Caribbean and African postcolonial nations. In truth, we realize with these authors that a moral and equitable international environment has been the articulated goal of Caribbean peoples since arguably the sixteenth century. It is a goal consonant with all of the perennial humanist ideals of modernity. (shrink)

The Shakespearean image of a tempest and its aftermath forms the beginning as well as a major guiding thread of Logic of Imagination. Moving beyond the horizons of his earlier work, Force of Imagination, John Sallis sets out to unsettle the traditional conception of logic, to mark its limits, and, beyond these limits, to launch another, exorbitant logic—a logic of imagination. Drawing on a vast range of sources, including Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Freud, as well as developments in (...) modern logic and modern mathematics, Sallis shows how a logic of imagination can disclose the most elemental dimensions of nature and of human existence and how, through dialogue with contemporary astrophysics, it can reopen the project of a philosophical cosmology. (shrink)

It is sometimes said that there has been a ‘paradigm shift’ in the field of assessment over the last two or three decades: a new preoccupation with what learners can do, what they know or what they have achieved. It is suggested in this article that this change has precipitated a need to distinguish two conceptually and logically distinct methodological approaches to assessment that have hitherto gone unacknowledged. The upshot, it is argued, is that there appears to be a fundamental (...) confusion at the heart of current policy, a confusion occasioned by the demand to know what learners know and compounded by a failure to recognise what this properly entails for assessment methodology. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 35.2 (2002) 153-174 [Access article in PDF] LSDNA: Rhetoric, Consciousness Expansion, and the Emergence of Biotechnology Richard Doyle I had to struggle to speak intelligibly. —Albert Hofmann on his self-experiment with LSD-25 Finding a place to start is of utmost importance. Natural DNA is a tractless coil, like an unwound and tangled audio tape on the floor of the car in the dark. —Kary Mullis (...) on the invention of Polymerase Chain Reaction 1. Undoing life What happened is this: Once upon a time there was a narrative of vitality. Ok, not a narrative, but an apprehension, a fear, a vision. It didn't have a beginning, middle, or end. It was. Its contours were no more determinable than those of consciousness. Indeed, our consciousness, as humans, was our sole alleged difference from it. From something called "life." We were more than life, but were also, tragically, confined to it. You know the story all too well. Some of its major authors were Cuvier, Lamarck, Darwin, Bichat. Even Shelley.Just because this sudden transformation happened on paper doesn't mean it was easy to endure. Enormous numbers of humans went on tranquilizers just to deal with the effects. Others, elsewhere, knew nothing but rumors. Nonetheless, they became increasingly implicated in its effects, the effects of understanding and experiencing both "life" and "consciousness" as informatic events. Suddenly—and it is sudden, a real surprise—both our vitality and our thought were distributed, scattered across a network and nowhere in particular. Timothy Leary and Francis Crick were speaking the same language, the language of information where the organic and the machinic enfold each other helically and, sometimes, the capacity for replication goes through the ceiling. This new language of information would [End Page 153] introduce a novel response and abyss: the pleasures and hells of eternal replication. The distribution of both life and consciousness enabled a dream of immortality from which we have not yet awakened, as the mere specter of infinite clonal replicants provokes entropies of identity even as it preserves the self from onslaughts of decay. 1In at least one of its characteristics this shift toward an informatic understanding of life is perhaps not really so novel. The seductions of control are hardly, historians of science tell us, foreign to the practices and effects of technoscience. Evelyn Fox Keller makes this point concisely and precisely in her not-quite eponymous essay, "From Secrets of Life to Secrets of Death," itself a self-professed sequel to her 1986 "Making Gender Visible." Here the scientific "impulse" is underwritten by a perennial motif that underlies much of scientific creativity, namely, the urge to fathom the secrets of nature and the collateral hope that, in fathoming the secrets of nature, we will fathom (and hence gain control of) our own mortality (Secrets, 29).Surely Keller is correct that the nascent practices of molecular biology were cryptographic in character, an espionage project unknowingly launched by Erwin Schrodinger during the Second World War. Surely it is crucial to this moment that while Schrodinger's 1943 Dublin lectures were introducing audiences to the concept of the code-script, Alan Turing again brilliantly decrypted a modified U-boat code, giving the Allies code superiority for the remainder of the war. 2 But in this segment on that strange growth called "biotechnology," I want to focus on what Keller has called the "collateral" of hope in this cryptographic impulse, namely the collateral equation between inquiry and control, specifically the control of mortality.For is "fathoming" a secret identical to the exercise of control? The very cadence and rhetorical encryption of Keller's formulation here, a general parenthetical syllogistic conclusion within and alongside a hyphenated invocation of particularity, suggest that concepts and practices of secrecy are more unstable than Keller implies with her invocation of Feynman's "disease" of lock picking: "One of my diseases, one of my things in life, is that anything that is secret, I try to undo" (40).For Keller, Feynman's confession is emblematic of a desire to control life and death... (shrink)

Popular culture could be understood as a political battleground where conflicting meanings are inscribed into the “ordinary objects” that constitute that public sphere. This is also true for science fiction television series. This article critically examines how political matters and ethical agencies are represented within The Expanse, a series that takes place within a speculative twenty-fourth century milky way. Firstly, I will situate The Expanse within its generic “system of reference.” Then, I will illustrate how political matters are represented as (...) conjoined with the ethical. While the ethical refers to actions of persons, politics refers to fictional conceptions of what Tristan Garcia’s terms we-ourselves, understood as conflicting and overlapping conceptions of “we.” The conjunction between the political and the ethical in The Expanse is spatiotemporal: the characters, the events they are entangled in, and the spaces that connect discrete events develop through fictional and literal time. I argue that the science fictional representations of “we-ourselves,” and the specific spatiotemporal representational capacities of the television series format, can be understood through the application of Mikhail Bakhtin’s concepts of the chronotope and the dialogic. That is, The Expanse’s we-representations are chronotopic and the refractive rhetoric of television is dialogic. (shrink)

One of the central pillars of Vygotsky’s contribution to social science is his concept of mediation: the process through which the social and the individual mutually shape each other. His rich, complex and challenging texts focus on a nuanced notion of mediation that was not necessarily visible to those active in the command-and-control climate of the Stalinist era. The article focuses on this notion of the lack of visibility in mediation.

ABSTRACT I offer an approach to the problem of life’s meaning which poses a radical challenge to some of the familiar terms of this debate. First, I defend an expansive form of naturalism which involves a rejection of the common assumption that naturalism and theism are logically incompatible and offers a framework from which to rethink some of the central concepts operative in discussions of life’s meaning. Second, I defend a ‘desire solution’ to the problem of life’s meaning. My initial (...) inspiration is Richard Taylor’s version of such a position as articulated in his book Good and Evil. I argue that this solution is best articulated from within an expansive naturalist framework, raise some doubts about Taylor’s metaphysics, and make a connection with the Nietzschean problem of nihilism. (shrink)

This paper dwells upon formal models of changes of beliefs, or theories, which are expressed in languages containing a binary conditional connective. After defining the basic concept of a (non-trivial) belief revision model. I present a simple proof of Gärdenfors''s (1986) triviality theorem. I claim that on a proper understanding of this theorem we must give up the thesis that consistent revisions (additions) are to be equated with logical expansions. If negated or might conditionals are interpreted on the basis (...) of autoepistemic omniscience, or if autoepistemic modalities (Moore) are admitted, even more severe triviality results ensue. It is argued that additions cannot be philosophically construed as parasitic (Levi) on expansions. In conclusion I outline somed logical consequences of the fact that we must not expect monotonic revisions in languages including conditionals. (shrink)

The article develops the thesis that spiritual objectivity constitutes an independent class of phenomena besides the physical and the mental. The concept of spiritual objectivity presents a solution for the mediation between the bodily and the conscious by further developing the insight of critical monism that individual action can neither be subsumed under the phenomena of the bodily outer world nor under the phenomena of the mental inner world. Referring to Gottlob Frege's thesis that what distinguishes a thought from (...) other phenomena is its capability of being true, the article develops the argument that the thought in its spiritual objectivity should be distinguished from the psychic inner world of ideas as well as from the physical exterior world of material objects. The possibility of rational recognition is dependent upon this genuinely spiritual mediation of inner and outer world, and its objective truth must be distinguished from the constitutive subjectivity of psychic phenomena. This specified concept of the spiritual is not intended to enlarge the substance dualism between the bodily and the mental once again but makes it possible to determine the in itself differentiated unity of the bodily and the mental, namely as spiritual unity of body and mind. (shrink)

The article develops the thesis that spiritual objectivity constitutes an independent class of phenomena besides the physical and the mental. The concept of spiritual objectivity presents a solution for the mediation between the bodily and the conscious by further developing the insight of critical monism that individual action can neither be subsumed under the phenomena of the bodily outer world nor under the phenomena of the mental inner world. Referring to Gottlob Frege's thesis that what distinguishes a thought from (...) other phenomena is its capability of being true, the article develops the argument that the thought in its spiritual objectivity should be distinguished from the psychic inner world of ideas as well as from the physical exterior world of material objects. The possibility of rational recognition is dependent upon this genuinely spiritual mediation of inner and outer world, and its objective truth must be distinguished from the constitutive subjectivity of psychic phenomena. This specified concept of the spiritual is not intended to enlarge the substance dualism between the bodily and the mental once again but makes it possible to determine the in itself differentiated unity of the bodily and the mental, namely as spiritual unity of body and mind. (shrink)

We consider the logics determined by the set of all natural implicative expansions of Kleene’s strong 3-valued matrix and select the class of all logics functionally equivalent to Łukasiewicz’s 3-valued logic Ł3. The concept of a “natural implicative matrix” is based upon the notion of a “natural conditional” defined in Tomova.

This paper deals with some strengthenings of the non-directional product-free Lambek calculus by means of additional structural rules. In fact, the rules contraction and expansion are restricted to basic types. For each of the presented systems the usual proof-theoretic notions are discussed, some new concepts especially designed for these calculi are introduced reflecting their intermediate position between the weaker and the stronger sequent-systems.

I take the phrase ''the theory of nonlinear oscillations'' to identify a historical phenomenon. Under this heading a powerful school in Soviet science, L. I. Mandelstam's school, developed its version of what was later called ''nonlinear dynamics''. The theory of nonlinear oscillations was formed around the concept of self-oscillations, which was elaborated by Mandelstam's graduate student A. A. Andronov. This concept determined the paradigm of the theory of nonlinear oscillations as well as its ideology, that is, a set (...) of characteristic ideas which, together with the corresponding examples and analogues, allowed the expansion of the theory into associated areas where it indicated new interesting phenomena and posed new problems. It was the ideology that made possible the broader application of the theory of nonlinear oscillations, whose domain was originally lumped systems, to continuous media and its subsequent progress toward synergetics. In the course of its ideological application, the concept of self-oscillations was greatly extended, became vague and diffuse, and related concepts such as self-waves and self-structures appeared. (shrink)

Capability approach pioneers Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum both recognize empowerment as an important aspect of human development. They seem to disagree, however, about how empowerment should be represented within the capability approach (CA). This essay is concerned with the analysis of the foundational concepts at work within Sen and Nussbaum’s CAs. Part One concerns the key concepts of empowerment at work in Sen’s CA and has three goals. 1) Clarify Sen’s various empowerment concepts. 2) Argue that Sen’s concept (...) of Realize Agency Success is flawed. 3) Make clear that empowerment in Sen’s approach can be helpfully understood in terms of agency and capability set expansion. Part Two considers Nussbaum’s CA and the debate over whether it can account for empowerment. I conclude that not only can Nussbaum’s CA account for empowerment, but that the role of empowerment in both Sen’s and Nussbaum’s CAs can be understood in terms of agency and capability set expansion. In other words, Sen and Nussbaum actually agree about empowerment at the foundational level. (shrink)

Cognitive processes, cognitive psychology tells us, unfold in our heads. In contrast, several approaches in cognitive engineering argue for a shift of unit of analysis from what is going on in the heads of operators to the workings of whole socio-technical systems. This shift is sometimes presented as part of the development of a new understanding of what cognition is and where the boundaries of cognitive systems are. Cognition, it is claimed, is not just situated or embedded, but extended and (...) distributed in the world. My main question in this article is what the practical significance is of this framing of an expanded unit of analysis in a cognitive vocabulary. I focus on possible consequences for how cognitive engineering practitioners think about function allocation in system design, and on what the relative benefits and costs are of having a common framework and vocabulary for talking about both human and technical system components. I argue for what I call an *expansive but deflated conception of cognition*, primarily on pragmatic grounds. In addition, I claim that the important lesson of the “boundaries of cognition” debate in cognitive science is the negative claim that there is not anything special about the biological boundary of the skin and skull per se, rather than some positive claim about where the boundaries of extended or distributed cognitive systems really are. I also examine the role of the concept of cognition in the theoretical frameworks of distributed cognition, joint cognitive systems (also known as cognitive system engineering), and cognitive work analysis. (shrink)

This exploratory study investigates the manifold conceptions of the internal auditing of risk culture prevalent among four influential actors of the financial sector—regulators, normalizers, consultants, and implementers. By inductive analysis of 20 interviews and 295 documents, we illustrate a two-step interpretive scheme utilized by the four actors in their IA approaches of risk culture: defining broad goals and designing visibility schemes. The visibility schemes were tied to the demarcation, measurement, as well as the IA data collection techniques of risk culture. (...) Our results indicate two dichotomous interpretations among the four actors concerning the IA of risk culture. The first interpretation, prevalent among regulators and implementers, promotes the control of risk culture primarily through verification. The second interpretation, adopted by consultants and normalizers, promotes the control of risk culture by IA along with the empowerment of employees through training programs. Our results not only contribute to understanding IA expansions, specifically to non-tangible domains such as risk culture but also enrich the literature exploring the mechanisms different stakeholders utilize to shape weakly professionalized IA practices. (shrink)

The paper seeks to draw out the connections between social capital, collective intelligence and expansive learning, interrogating the terms for their progressive potential. It sets these concepts within their socio-economic context, one which asserts that the development of social capital will be a vehicle for economic regeneration and competitiveness as well as a mechanism for the generation of social inclusion and cohesion. It concludes by arguing that the debate is set within a context that accepts capitalist relations and that this (...) places a limit on the progressive potential of social capital, collective intelligence and expansive learning. (shrink)

Peter-Paul Verbeek elaborates on the concept of “relational freedom” in Moralizing Technology (2011). In this paper, I propose to extend and reinterpret it as a concept of personal autonomy. Generally, studies of autonomy do not examine the use of technology thoroughly, because these studies mainly focus on an individual’s mental process regarding reasons or motives. Consequently, these studies fail to understand technological aspects that contribute to the agent’s actions and decisions. When we take into consideration that our autonomous (...) behaviors and lives are highly intertwined with technologies, it becomes necessary to clarify the aspect of autonomy that relates to the use of technology. This is where Verbeek’s relational freedom comes into play. This is because it refers to the set of capacities to constitute one’s subjectivity in the process of deliberately using technological means. However, some conceptual analysis and critical discussion are necessary. The former includes whether it is a procedural or substantive notion. The latter consists of the problem concerning the correspondence between human participant(s) and a hybrid agent, and the difference between the hybrid agent and a moral subject. (shrink)

The article uses conceptual metaphor theory to analyse how the concept of “copy” in copyright law is expanding in a digital society to cover more phenomena than originally intended. For this purpose, the legally accepted model for valuing media files in the case against The Pirate Bay (TPB) is used in the analysis. When four men behind TPB were convicted in the District Court of Stockholm, Sweden, on 17 April 2009, to many, it marked a victory over online piracy (...) for the American and Swedish media corporations. The convicted men were jointly liable for the damages of roughly EUR 3.5 million. But how do you calculate damages of file sharing? For example, what is the value of a copy? The article uses a model for valuating files in monetary numbers, suggested by the American plaintiffs and sanctioned by the District Court in the case against the BitTorrent site TPB, in order to calculate the total value of an entire, and in this anonymous other, BitTorrent site. These calculated hypothetical figures are huge—EUR 53 billion—and grow click by click which, on its face, questions some of the key assumptions in the copy-by-copy valuation that are sprung from analogue conceptions of reality, and transferred into a digital context. This signals a (legal) conceptual expansion of the meaning of “copy” in copyright that does not seem to fit with how the phenomenon is conceptualised by the younger generation of media consumers. (shrink)

In this paper we consider the major development of mathematical analysis during the mid-nineteenth century. On the basis of Jahnke’s (Hist Math 20(3):265–284, 1993 ) distinction between considering mathematics as an empirical science based on time and space and considering mathematics as a purely conceptual science we discuss the Swedish nineteenth century mathematician E.G. Björling’s general view of real- and complexvalued functions. We argue that Björling had a tendency to sometimes consider mathematical objects in a naturalistic way. One example is (...) how Björling interprets Cauchy’s definition of the logarithm function with respect to complex variables, which is investigated in the paper. Furthermore, in view of an article written by Björling (Kongl Vetens Akad Förh Stockholm 166–228, 1852 ) we consider Cauchy’s theorem on power series expansions of complex valued functions. We investigate Björling’s, Cauchy’s and the Belgian mathematician Lamarle’s different conditions for expanding a complex function of a complex variable in a power series. We argue that one reason why Cauchy’s theorem was controversial could be the ambiguities of fundamental concepts in analysis that existed during the mid-nineteenth century. This problem is demonstrated with examples from Björling, Cauchy and Lamarle. (shrink)

The concurrence of different languages is one of the tenets of Rosenzweig Sprachdenken and of his translation activity which finds its main theoretical explication in the afterword to his ‘Zweiundneunzig Hymnen und Gedichte des Yehuda Halevi’ (Konstanz, Wöhrle, 1924). In the afterword to the translation of ha-Levi’s lyrical corpus, Rosenzweig outlines a translation model which, trying to convey all the morphological, syntactic and lexical traits of the source language into the target language, gives way to a real linguistic fusion which (...) defies the limits and boundaries of expression and opens onto a redemptive perspective. On the basis of this concluding note and of some passages from ‘The Star of Redemption’, the article tries to analyse Rosenzweig’s idea of language and of its nexus with the idea of redemption with reference to Walter Benjamin’s famous essay ‘The Task of the Translator’ and, as a point of convergence, with Paul Celan’s conception of poetic language. (shrink)

During the last few decades, the concept of primitive accumulation (ursprüngliche Akkumulation) introduced by Karl Marx and expanded by Rosa Luxemburg has been revived and improved. Accordingly, scholars have used this framework not to characterize a past moment in the history of capitalism, but to grasp the continuous process of coupling and uncoupling geographical and social spheres in the capital accumulation in different fields: financialization, the care economy, green grabbing, the sharing economy, real estate bubbles, data mining, etc. Despite (...) the quality and productivity of these debates, they are still focused on authors and phenomena observed in the Global North, ignoring a long tradition of similar discussions developed especially in Latin America. The article seeks to decentre these debates by taking seriously into account approaches which address primitive accumulation from the perspective of (post)colonial and (post)slave societies. It coins the concept entangled accumulation to emphasize the interdependencies between practices of exploitation and expropriation, wage and slave labour, state power and illegal violence, and capitalist and non-capitalist economies, which have shaped capital accumulation throughout history. (shrink)

While there are important tensions between French historical epistemology and classical phenomenology as modes of thought, fixation on these differences has obstructed recognition of their similarities. Using the writings of Jean Cavaillès and Gaston Bachelard as case studies, this chapter shows that historical epistemology may be read as simultaneously critiquing and expanding the phenomenological project originated by Husserl in the early twentieth century. The author rebuffs the widespread conception that historical epistemology is phenomenology’s ‘Other’ and calls for further research on (...) their historical and philosophical relationships. (shrink)

Of the famous passage from Augustine’s Confessions1 that opens Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein writes, These words, it seems to me, give us a particular picture of the essence of human language. It is this: the words in language name objects — sentences are combinations of such names. — In this picture of language we find the roots of the following idea: Every word has a meaning. This meaning is correlated with the word. It is the object for which the word stands. (...) (PI, 2009, §1) -/- This remark has frequently been taken to simply identify as Wittgenstein’s point of departure the ‘naming theory’ of language. But as usual, closer attentiveness to Wittgenstein’s words extracts a good deal more content. Augustine’s words impart a picture not only of human language, but indeed a picture of the essence of language. So to begin, let us look briefly at the concepts of (1) picture and (2) essence as they are used here. (shrink)

Ueda writes in his Reading Nishida Kitarō (Nishida Kitarō o yomu) that to compare Heidegger’s entire thinking up to his last period with Nishida’s thought also up to his last period, including their multiple turns, would be “one of the most valuable paths to investigating the significance, potential, and problematics of Nishidian philosophy.” In this paper I examine the philosophy of Ueda Shizuteru through the juxtaposition of those two thinkers, of West and of East, who prove to be significant for (...) the creative unfolding of his thought: Martin Heidegger who had inspired much of phenomenology and Continental philosophy, and Nishida Kitarō who had inspired the development of Kyoto School philosophy and much of contemporary Japanese philosophy. The Heideggerian and Nishidian streams of thought, in their “placial turns”—Nishida’s “logic of place” and Heidegger’s “topology of beyng”—meet in Ueda as he reads each in light of the other’s terminology and concepts. Through his readings and appropriations that underscore their commonalities and differences, Ueda thus develops a compelling philosophy of place, world, and horizon, a thinking of being-in-the-twofold-world. The chapter thus examines the meeting of Nishida and Heidegger in Ueda. (shrink)

The Bhagavadgītā is often considered the holiest text of Hinduism. It was commented by a legion of commentators, and a number of philologists, starting with Wilhelm von Humboldt, tried to establish the layers of its text, which shows traces of several redactions. Some scholars noticed some seams in the text correctly, and some came close to a general picture of the text history. On the other hand, many scholars were discouraged by the uncertainties in the investigation of the text history (...) and preferred to interpret the Gītā as an indivisible whole. However, between the 1970s and 2009, it was possible to come to very precise results concerning the textual layers of the Bhagavadgītā, which were internationally largely accepted since ca. 2000. These results imply that, over time, views of several philosophical systems were incorporated into the poem, as well as polemics with different doctrines. The teachings and exhortations conveyed by the poem are very synthetic and innovative because they are derived from a very complex set of premises. These results of text analyses have been, on the one hand, accepted by a number of prominent scholars worldwide, but, on the other hand, fiercely contested by some Western post-modernist scholars of religion and by some scholars of Indian origin sensibilised negatively against Western scholarship. What they lack in their reading of the Bhagavadgītā can best be made clear by means of the comparison with a visitor to an artistic monument of a religious character, which underwent centuries of modifications, like the Split cathedral. If such a visitor considered that the sanctity and artistic credibility of a monument depended on its being completely constructed at one stroke by a single architect with a single conception, he would miss the complex, sometimes even polemical, rich and impressive way in which such a monument conveys its messages. This is the fruit of the long and complex history of the Split cathedral, that was first built as the mausoleum of a Roman emperor, and later turned into the church consecrated to his victims, passing thereafter through many subsequent modifications and ‘reinterpretations’. In the history of art, such prejudices are not as common as they are in the study of sacred texts. That is why a suitable example of a monument having religious character, like the Split cathedral of the Assumption of Virgin Mary, also consecrated to Diocletian’s victims Domnius and Anastasius, can best illustrate how we should understand a literary monument of a religious and philosophical character, like the Bhagavadgītā, which underwent a comparably complex history. (shrink)

Due to the historical origin and development of reason, an inventory of its main concepts at a particular moment is less interesting to us than the study of their formation and fixation. This process is studied here in the light of examples from the history of physics. The first one concerns the subsumption of the well-known phenomena of free fall and planetary motion to a new concept of gravity in the 17th century; the remaining examples, drawn from 19th century (...) electrodynamics and 20th century microphysics and cosmology, display the interplay of such concepts with empirical novelties that prompt them in some case and realize them in others. (shrink)

In their article “The Concept of Voluntary Consent,” Robert Nelson and colleagues (2011) argue for two necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for voluntary action: intentionality, and substantial freedom from controlling influences. They propose an instrument to empirically measure voluntariness, the Decision Making Control Instrument. I argue that (1) their conceptual analysis of intentionality and controlling influences needs expansion in light of the growing use of behavioral economics principles to change individual and public health behaviors (growing in part by (...) the designation of “The Science of Behavior Change” as a new National Institutes of Health [NIH] Roadmap Activity); and (2) that their measure of voluntariness that relies on self-perceived intentionality and extent of control is unreliable, given findings from behavioral economics and cognitive science that show that our perceptions about the intentionality and control of our own and others’ decisions and actions are remarkably skewed and un-insightful. (shrink)