This is a commentary on Laurence Maloney’s chapter in Mausfeld R., and Heyer, D. (Eds.): Colour Perception: Mind and the Physical World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. I discuss two related proposals as to the nature of object color formulated by Maloney. On the first proposal colors are photoreceptor excitations; on the second, they are fundamental, universal reflectance characteristics of terrestrial surfaces. I argue that the second proposal is suitable for purposes of color objectivism, whereas the first one is not. (...) However, if we look at Maloney’s – and Brian Wandell’s – models of color vision and color constancy more thoroughly, not even the second version supports absolutist versions of color objectivism, according to which observer-independent reflectance properties determine, or are identical to, the phenomenal character of color experience. (shrink)

Ontic structural realism refers to the novel, exciting, and widely discussed basic idea that the structure of physical reality is genuinely relational. In its radical form, the doctrine claims that there are, in fact, no objects but only structure, i.e., relations. More moderate approaches state that objects have only relational but no intrinsic properties. In its most moderate and most tenable form, ontic structural realism assumes that at the most fundamental level of physical reality there are only relational properties. (...) This means that the most fundamental objects only possess relational but no non-reducible intrinsic properties. The present paper will argue that our currently best physics refutes even this most moderate form of ontic structural realism. More precisely, I will claim that 1) according to quantum field theory, the most fundamental objects of matter are quantum fields and not particles, and show that 2) according to the Standard Model, quantum fields have intrinsic non-relational properties. (shrink)

Despite its uniform appearance, the cerebellar cortex is highly heterogeneous in terms of structure, genetics and physiology. Purkinje cells (PCs), the principal and sole output neurons of the cerebellar cortex, can be categorized into multiple populations that differentially express molecular markers and display distinctive physiological features. Such features include action potential rate, but also their propensity for synaptic and intrinsic plasticity. However, the precise molecular and genetic factors that correlate with the differential physiological properties of PCs remain elusive. In (...) this article, we provide a detailed overview of the cellular mechanisms that regulate PC activity and plasticity. We further perform a pathway analysis to highlight how molecular characteristics of specific PC populations may influence their physiology and plasticity mechanisms. (shrink)

These are exciting times for philosophical theorizing about propositions, with the last 15 years seeing the development of new approaches and the emergence of new theorists. Propositions have been invoked to explain thought and cognition, the nature and attribution of mental states, language and communication, and in philosophical treatments of truth, necessity and possibility. According to Frege and Russell, and their followers, propositions are structured mind- and language-independent abstract objects which have essential and intrinsic truth-conditions. Some recent theorizing doubts (...) whether propositions really exist and, if they do, asks how we can grasp, entertain and know them? But most of the doubt concerns whether the abstract approach to propositions can really explain them. Are propositions really structured, and if so where does their structure come from? How does this structure form a unity, and does it need to? Are the representational and structural properties of propositions really independent of those of thinking and language? What does it mean to say that an object occurs in or is a constituent of a proposition? The volume takes up these and other questions, both as they apply to the abstract object approach and also to the more recently developed approaches. While the volume as a whole does not definitively and unequivocally reject the abstract objection approach, for the most part, the papers explore new critical and constructive directions. This book was originally published as a special issue of the _Canadian Journal of Philosophy. _. (shrink)

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

Biological diversity - or ‘biodiversity’ - is the degree of variation of life within an ecosystem. It is a relatively new topic of study but has grown enormously in recent years. Because of its interdisciplinary nature the very concept of biodiversity is the subject of debate amongst philosophers, biologists, geographers and environmentalists. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Biodiversity is an outstanding reference source to the key topics and debates in this exciting subject. Comprising twenty-three chapters by a team of (...) international contributors the _Handbook_ is divided into six parts: Historical and sociological contexts, focusing on the emergence of the term and early attempts to measure biodiversity _What is biodiversity? _How should biodiversity be defined? How can biodiversity include entities at the edge of its boundaries, including microbial diversity and genetically engineered organisms? _Why protect biodiversity? _What can traditional environmental ethics_ _contribute to biodiversity?_ _Topics covered include anthropocentrism, intrinsic value, and ethical controversies surrounding the economics of biodiversity _Measurement and methodology: _including decision-theory and conservation, the use of indicators for biodiversity, and the changing use of genetics in biodiversity conservation _Social contexts and global justice: _including conservation and community conflicts and biodiversity and cultural values _Biodiversity and other environmental values_: How does biodiversity relate to other values like ecological restoration or ecological sustainability? Essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy, environmental science and environmental studies, and conservation management, it will also be extremely useful to those studying biodiversity in subjects such as biology and geography. (shrink)

'This original discussion breaks new ground by thoroughly analyzing ethical and aesthetic values, centering on the concept of ecological integrity, that apply intrinsically to nature and that govern our rightful use of the environment. Those who have been waiting for an exciting account of the inherent structure and worth of ecological systems in relation to environmental policy will find it in this book.'-Mark Sagoff, Director of the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy, University of Maryland at College Park.

Mindfulness—the awareness of the present moment and experiences in daily life—contributes to genuine intrinsic and social-oriented values and curbs materialistic and hedonistic values. In the context of materialism, money is power. Avaricious individuals take risks and are likely to engage in dishonesty. Very little research has investigated the effects of mindfulness in reducing the avaricious monetary attitudes and enhancing ethical consumer beliefs. In this study, we theorize that mindfulness improves consumer ethics directly and indirectly by lowering avaricious monetary attitudes. (...) To test our theory, we collected data from 523 individuals with the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction training and 307 individuals without MBSR. The results of our whole sample support our theory. Three multiple-group confirmatory factor analyses reveal intriguing discoveries. First, with MBSR training, mindfulness excites consumer ethical beliefs directly and indirectly. Without training, trait mindfulness fails to reduce monetary attitudes—mindfulness training matters. Second, the power of MBSR training holds for participants completing the training within 1 year, but wears off after 1 year—the duration after training matters. Finally, after 1 year, the training retains its strength for those who practice mindfulness, but weakens its power for those who do not—practice matters. We shed light on mindfulness, monetary wisdom, and consumer ethics, in particular, and business ethics, in general. (shrink)

Once upon a time, during a large and international conference of the world's leading philosophers, an angel miraculously appeared and said, "I come to you as a messenger from God. You will be permitted to ask any one question you want - but only one! - and I will answer that question truthfully. What would you like to ask?" The philosophers were understandably excited, and immediately began a discussion of what would be the best question to ask. But it quickly (...) became obvious that they needed more time to discuss the matter, so they asked the angel if he could get back to them. The angel was obliging, and said that he would return at the same time the next day. "But be prepared then," he warned them, "for you will only get this one chance." All of the philosophers gathered at the convention worked at a frenzied pace for the next twenty-four hours, proposing and weighing the merits of various questions. Other philosophers from around the world became involved as well, faxing and emailing their suggestions. Some were in favor of asking the kind of practical question that lots of people might like to know the answer to, such as this one: Q1 Is it better to check your oil when the car is hot or when it is cold? But others said they should not squander this rare opportunity, which gave them a chance to learn something about a truly important and intrinsically interesting topic, and after some discussion it was generally agreed that this was right. (shrink)

According to the BSM- Supergravitation Unified Theory (BSM-SG), the energy is indispensable feature of matter, while the matter possesses hierarchical levels of organization from a simple to complex forms, with appearance of fields at some levels. Therefore, the energy also follows these levels. At the fundamental level, where the primary energy source exists, the matter is in its primordial form, where two super-dense fundamental particles (FP) exist in a classical pure empty space (not a physical vacuum). They are associated with (...) the Planck scale parameters of frequency and distance and interact by Supergravitational forces. These forces are inverse proportional to the cube of distance at pure empty space and they are based on frequency interactions. Since the two FPs have different intrinsic frequencies, the SG forces appear different for interactions between the like and unlike FPs and may change the sign. This primordial form of matter exists in the super-heavy black holes located in the center of each well formed galaxy. The next upper level of matter organization includes the underlying structure of the physical vacuum, called a Cosmic Lattice, and the structure of elementary particles. They have common substructure elements obtained by specific crystallization process preceding the formation of the observable galaxies. The Cosmic Lattice, forming a space known as a physical vacuum, is responsible for the existence and propagation of the physical fields: electrical, magnetic, Newtonian gravity and inertia. The energy of physical vacuum is in two forms: Static (enormous) and Dynamic (weak). The Static energy is directly related to the Newtonian mass by the Einstein equation E = mc^2 and it is a primary source of the nuclear energy. The Dynamic energy is responsible for the existence of the electric and magnetic fields, the constant speed of light and the quantum mechanical properties of the physical vacuum. The next upper energy level is the dynamical energy of excited atoms and molecules. At this level a hidden energy wells exit, such as the internal energy of the electron and the internal energy of atoms with more than one electron. The next upper energy level is at some organic molecules and particularly in the biomolecules that contain ring atomic structures. In such a structure, some quantum states are not emitted immediately, but rotating in the ring. While in organic molecules the energy stored in such a ring is released by a chemical process, in the long chain molecule of proteins in the living organism the stored energy can be released simultaneously by triggering. A huge number of atomic rings are contained in the DNA strands. The release of the energy stored in DNA, for example, is an avalanche process that causes an emission of entangled photons possessing a strong penetrating capability. A sequence of entangled photons emitted by DNA should carry the genetic information encoded by the cordons. This mechanism, predicted in BSM-SG theory, is very important for intercommunication between the cells of the living organism. The next upper level of energy organization may exist in the brain. The brain is an organ of a most abundant number of atomic rings, while its tissue environment might permit complex energy interactions. The human brain contains billions of atomic rings. The next hypothetical upper level of energy organization is an information field, physically existed outside, but connected with the living brain. It corresponds to a specific field known as aura, while the possibility of its existence is still not accepted by the main stream science. The problem is that this field could not be detected by the currently existing technical means used for EM communications. The BSM-SG predicts that this field might differ from the EM field we use for communication, but it is a subject of a further theoretical development that must be supported by experiments using specifically designed technical means. According to the BSM-SG theory, the energy conversion from the primary energy source to the complex levels of matter and field organization is a permanent syntropic process based on complex resonance interactions. (shrink)

Joaquin Segura. Untitled (fig. 40) . 2007 continent. 1.2 (2011): 117-124. The interview that follows is a dialogue between artist and gallerist with the intent of unearthing the artist’s working strategies for a general public. Joaquin Segura is at once an anomaly in Mexico’s contemporary art scene at the same time as he is one of the most emblematic representatives of a larger shift toward a post-national identity among its youngest generation of artists. If Mexico looks increasingly like a foreclosed (...) home burning to the ground, Segura could likely be the one walking away, charred matchstick between thumb and forefinger and shit-eating grin on his face. His corrosive attacks on institutions, ideologies, and power reflect a deep general distrust of authority, increasingly evident within the work of younger Mexican artists. It is perhaps most directly the result of President Calderon’s deeply unpopular war against the cartels but no doubt equally the product of decades upon decades of rampant corruption and errant policy within Mexico. Brett W Schultz (BWS): A recurring—if not dominant—theme within your current work and investigation explores ideological extremism in reaction to some perceived political and economic disenfranchisement, especially that espoused and practiced by right-wing groups in United States. That's exactly why I thought of you when I was approached to contribute a piece to an issue on the subject of the moraine—taken metaphorically here to signify a certain set of beliefs that have resurfaced within mainstream American culture in the wake of a probably over-exaggerated political sea-change, marked by Obama's election. You're a Mexican artist who now lives and works in Guadalajara, far from the border cities where such concerns would seem more likely to be relevant to a contemporary artist; of course, you're even farther from the culture that birthed this nature of extremism. What interests you so intensely about this movement, if we can call it that? Joaquin Segura (JS): I think there are several seminal points that you touch on in this particular question. There's a very specific set of interests that make me address the socio-political issues I've been dissecting through my practice in the last few years. First of all, I don't really consider myself a 'mexican' artist. As I've made clear in the past, I don't really believe in the notion of 'identity' or the idea of 'nation', which I find totally laughable and heartwarmingly passé. I'm convinced that these are totally outdated models of understanding our differences and similarities, expanding our already immense and irreconcilable cultural abysses instead of bringing them together, thus resulting in their total dispersion among the complex and extremely arbitrary weaving of contemporary social nucleii. Pretty much a frankly bad joke, if I may say so. The fact that I live and work in Mexico is a completely random geographical and temporal factor, which of course affects what I think and what I do, but I've chosen not to be limited by this specific circumstance. In the past, while working abroad, I've taken advantage of this preconception of Mexico—to be more exact, pretty much all of Latin America—as one of the last barbaric bastions of western civilization. Totally amusing, if you ask me about it. I consider my practice to be, among other things, a gonzo strategy of deceit: there are quite a few roles you can adopt in this approach that may actually reveal themselves to be a privileged vantage point. In my experience, the gentle savage is one of the most effective ones to establish my standing position. Thus, I'm a mexican artist if I need it to prove my point. If it's not necessary in a specific circumstance, I'm not. Quite simple, I think. Said in other words, it's just an ace I can play to win a particular match. It has worked so far, at least for me. L: Hey, America… , 2009. R: The Inaugural Address , 2009. I am interested in the nature of power and the rise and fall of totalitarian ideological and political apparatuses nowadays. But I guess, going even further, I'm essentially fascinated by the fissures and contradictions that have made these structures spectacularly crumble to the ground. I do believe extreme ideologies have played a crucial role in the globalization of socio-political crisis. In the end, our world is nothing more than a fading monument to all things gone wrong—the inspiring triumph of failure, in every sense. I see this as an exciting parable. And of course, it is an undeniable fact that the US, through their influence in world economy, international policies and general attitude towards the rest of the planet is the largest structure waiting to collapse. I think we are all secretly awaiting that moment of splendor, even americans. It'll be disastrous and as nasty as it can get, but it will also be liberating and incredibly inspirational. Not just because it’s the US but because it'll prove that absolutely everything is susceptible to fall. And not only that, most importantly, it would confirm that radical change may actually be possible and not just one more of the unfulfilled promises modernity has left us to struggle with on our own. BWS: I want to talk first about two of your works in particular: Hey, America... and The Inaugural Address . I feel like your more recent work has a subtle —or even hidden—sinisterness, but these two works are perfect examples of how brutally confrontational your earlier work has been. When we showed Hey, America... at Mexico City's Zona Maco art fair in 2010, there were at least a couple visitors to our stand who were absolutely ready to punch me in my gringo face for having done so. Certainly the shock value of these works is crucial to their central ideas, but can you tell me more about your intentions and how these works relate to your general oeuvre? JS: So funny. Perhaps we do deserve to be punched in the face. I think that's what I'm sometimes looking for, but I hardly ever get it. I do think of such works as some sort of logical trap, a somewhat perverse ambush waiting for someone to walk into head-on. I think what I tried to do with those two specific works, as well as some other past projects, is just emphasize issues or themes that do disturb or make me uneasy and restless. I consider my essential intention a need to make clear that we do not have to look the other way, ignore or forget. We must address, understand and solve these manifestations of senseless violence and absurdity because if we don't confront them this way, they'll end up consuming us. In other words, I do consider these works as a personal need of coming to terms with the nonsense of the world we all are living in. I don't particularly consider myself to be someone with a clear set of beliefs. Perhaps my only certainty would be that everything is there to be denied, demolished and obliterated—even my supposed unquestionability of that particular 'dogma.' My practice is a reflection of that paradox, and I do think that's how these two pieces relate to a wider body of work. Every democratic system and so-called developed contemporary society is deeply flawed on the inside, and that is because each has swept things under the rug. Of course, there's tolerance, good will and eagerness to make a difference but there's also hatred, pain and fear lingering all around. We must learn to relate to both sides of the spectrum. In a way, I approach the themes behind these particular works in what I think to be a non-biased, somewhat 'neutral' way. I do think there's an encryption process going on in the way I work, some sort of formal refinement of this somewhat outrageous content. A digest of infamy, if we can refer to it that way. It is up to the individual experiencing the work to decide which way these pieces lean. They can easily be seen from both positions and I'm ok with that. If you look closely at these works, there's nothing that establishes an unrelenting position—neither support nor rejection. I don't want my personal political views to directly set an agenda for the spectator as that’s essentially propaganda, which is one of the things I absolutely despise. To sum it up, I strive for the spectator to complete the piece in that sense. The work then becomes a reflection of his or her own contradictions, a playground of the mind. I'm interested in achieving a deadpan and deadlock state in the observer. So, in a way, those visitors threatening to beat the shit out of you unconsciously became that particular issue the work is alluding to. Just blind and senseless reaction to god knows what people feel must be defended, the overwhelming virtue of ambiguity. Beautiful. Perhaps you can also think of my practice as a uber-sophisticated and snobbish version of Punk'd. And you wouldn't be far from what I'm trying to convey. Untitled (Disturbance Scenarios #2) . 2010. BWS: To me, an important transitional marker in the overall trajectory of your work is the series, Disturbance Scenarios , which evokes a similar generalized state of panic, paranoia, and impending doom through its incorporation of sensationalist newspaper headlines, yet also suggests this slyly mysterious meta-narrative via the context in which the newspaper itself is placed. How did you arrive at this series and why did you choose photorealistic painting as the medium for it? JS: I consider this series to be a by-product of the process I follow when making work. I spend an important part of my time just doing research, going through documentation and accumulating visual or historical references for the themes or episodes I'm interested in, in that particular moment. These are, of course, valuable assets that connect among themselves in a mysterious and almost undetectable manner, sometimes a few years between one and the other. I've employed similar production strategies in the past, in ongoing series like Random Moments of Urban Decay , in which I document what I consider to be physical traces of ethnic, religious or ideological violence in the form of text graffiti, invisibly scattered in different cities of the world, mostly in the US. Disturbance Scenarios was started in early 2010, following a particularly intense period of traveling here and there that lasted for most of the year. I've always felt compelled by text, as I find quite intriguing the idea of how words can create equally intense evocations of what I call a mental panorama of uneasiness than those produced by aesthetically-charged imagery; of course, if handled right. I have a close relationship to print media—due both to my academic background and to my attraction to its ubiquity and almost unlimited influence, which in the end, is nothing else but power—so I found myself with a growing archive of newspaper headlines snapshots from cities like Melbourne, Auckland, London, and LA. Going through them, I noticed that they had in common a very specific thematic slant: they were all about some sort of conflict: energy crisis, political unrest, local episodes of domestic violence, you name it. So as you very well put it, I felt they all connected through this feeling of anxiety and anguish and I decided to start thinking of them as a body of work. Basically, I felt an interest in creating what I think of as my personal fragmented prefigurements of the end of civilization. There were few elements on the shots that could give away its actual location, geographically speaking, and I liked that. I find this sensation of vagueness and uncertainty quite alluring. The more subtle, the more perverse. The formal resolution of the series—as photo-realistic painting—is linked to my intention of creating distance between me as the artist and the themes I work with. I rarely execute my own work, and that is more a personal choice as I'm more interested in the ideas I mingle with than in the actual outcome of that process, understood as an "art-object" with certain market value. I did some tests with light-jet prints of those snapshots and I found them devoid of that nightmarish, disturbing indistinctness that I felt was so important for them to be able to project the turmoil I experienced upon encountering them and in conceiving of them as a series. So I thought that photorealistic painting would be an interesting resource to play with, as I hardly had worked with that medium before because of my lenient animosity toward painters and their craft. So they were executed like that and I think it turned out to be just right. Homemade (Napalm #2) . 2010. BWS: Though Disturbance Scenarios remains ongoing, it's an interesting contrast to another series of yours, Homemade, which are these beautifully banal photographs of the ingredients used to make improvised explosives. Whereas Disturbance Scenarios still confronts the viewer aggressively with its visual emphasis on loaded texts, in Homemade , you've dropped the surface-level bravado entirely. They're pieces that require explanation to someone not already versed in the fine art of amateur explosive-making. You weren't known for subtlety in your past work; why this change in direction? JS: I'm personally convinced that these are just two angles of the same conceptual preoccupation. I mentioned before my obsession with the idea of encryption. I'm quite enticed by how these processes of translation can politically and semantically alter and deviate purportedly subversive materials such as the ones these works allude to. I do think subversion is futile. I was really troubled by that thought for some time, but I think now I understand that it's not really that important. What is really significant is to elaborate on these alternate views, to envision and refine possible escape routes. It doesn't really matter if they go nowhere, but that is because nothing really matters. A "mute" artwork is a notion that captivates me. When you look at the works you mention, you know there's something off, but it's not fully clear how and why that is. I rely on that insecurity—on that moment of hesitation. And that can also be achieved through an approach like the one I'm now interested in. Let's just call it a smoke screen, a surrogate ruse to get to the same point: to talk about impotence and defeat in contemporary life. The notion that readily accessible information is actually a weapon is a double-edged fallacy: sure, you can make use of whatever resources you can lay your hands on, but that doesn't set you free because freedom is impossible. Still, that doesn't mean you can't blow up stuff during the process, metaphorically or not. I didn't understand the nature of subtlety before. I used to think that you needed to be loud and manifest anger and unconformity in the most aggressive manner possible. Then I finally realized that you can actually permeate and rarify a battleground—because after all, this is low-intensity war—if you actually aim at silently building up the contradictions and making the symbolic value of ideas and acts clash within themselves. Or perhaps it is that I am just getting old. I guess I used to be an angry kid until recently. Now I think of myself as a disenchanted post-teenager, and of course that reflects in my work and my approach to art-making. Kind of a rite of passage and I laugh at it because, overall, it has been overwhelmingly fun. And that doesn't mean that I'm not ready to stick it in someone or something's face again if I feel like it. BWS: You're now taking the subtlety of the Homemade series even further with your newest series, Definitive Reader For a Botched Revolution , in which you photograph a series of politically-charged books side-on, negating their content entirely—essentially reducing them to purely aesthetic objects in which the subject matter is only revealed in the title of the work. Can you talk about the ideas behind this series? Furthermore, is your recent interest in this idea of the "botched revolution" an indication of a general attitudinal or philosophical shift you've since adopted? JS: This new series of works is the logical outcome of a brief period I went through. Probably the last couple years, in which due to a number of circumstances that don't really have to do with my art-making, I was forced to renegotiate my ideas, my beliefs and practically everything that surrounds me. It was quite distressful and turbulent, but in the end, I think it was also almost epiphanic. I came to terms with myself and now I'm calm and serene. That is, of course, my personal take on it but I mention it because I do think it's important to address this shift you mention. The idea of an artwork as a container for latent revelations enthralls me quite a bit. That's how I see these particular works: art as an incendiary agent. It's up to the artist and the spectator to do whatever they please with it. I think the detachment and almost surgical cleanliness from the Definitive Reader series is also my take at poking fun of the way some art is totally innocuous and uncompromising. These images may be pleasing to the eye, but there's something twisted and rotten within them, well hidden beneath. You'll either see it or not, but without a doubt, it will not cancel its presence. This series is intrinsically linked to Homemade . I'm pretty much horsing around with similar ideas and statements here. And well, yes, I do think any revolution is a botched one. There's nothing too heavy about their own downfall. Decay and breakdown are here and will not go away. Perhaps we must learn to embrace them in one way or another, for our own sake. L: Untitled (T.A.Z.). R: Untitled (United States Marine Guidebook of Essential Subjects) . 2011. BWS: Finally, let's discuss the near future. You've got an upcoming solo show at the Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros [SAPS] in Mexico City this summer. What can we expect from that? What else do you have planned? JS: I'll go and get seafood as soon as I'm done with this interview. It's pretty good here in Guadalajara. That's my top priority at this very moment. About my solo project at SAPS, it's due to open in late July. I'm quite looking forward to it. I'm still closely working with the curator on the general feel for the show but I can say that it'll be more of a revision of past works that have not been shown in Mexico City except for a couple pieces. It definitely won't be a showcase for new projects, although we may include one or two previously unseen works. What you can expect is a rereading of what I've been working on during the past few years. In a way, that's exciting to me because for some reason I don't really care about, I'm not that active in Mexico City even though that's where I lived and work for years. I've hardly shown there after my solo project at Yautepec in February of 2010. It'll be nice to see how it all comes together and I'm more thrilled about it because I totally love the space and I think they're doing an excellent job with their programming and its direction. And in a certain way it feels like going back home. About everything else, I need a period to reflect and fully understand what I've been thinking and working on. I've got a few group shows here and there: New York, San Francisco, and Melbourne are the ones happening soon. I will present my censored project Untitled ( Gringo Loco ) as part of the programming of the Museo de Arte de Zapopan in Guadalajara, two years after being escorted at gunpoint from the installation site by police sent by the extreme right-wing mayor of the city, which I found pretty amusing for an otherwise typical Saturday afternoon. I'm also involved in a couple "curatorial" projects. In my case, "curatorial" means that I help put together stuff I like and I'm interested in. One of them will open in late September of 2011 at Arena Mexico Arte Contemporaneo, and I will work with three of whom I consider to be some of the best artists in a lively and active scene such as the one here in Guadalajara. But most importantly, I've been doing heavy research so there are also a number of projects that I've yet to finalize. That'll be my main focus during the rest of the year, even though I really enjoy procrastination. There'll be time for that later. Or maybe not. We'll see. About Joaquin Segura The action, installation, intervention and photographic work of Joaquin Segura (b. Mexico City, 1980) has been shown in solo and group exhibitions in Mexico, the United States, Europe, and Asia. Some spaces that have featured his work include La Panaderia, Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Centro de la Imagen and Ex-Teresa Arte Actual in Mexico City; El Museo del Barrio and apexart, New York, NY; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, Spain; National Center for Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia; and Palace Adria in Prague, Czech Republic. In 2008 and 2009, Segura was an artist-in-residence at the International Studio and Curatorial Program, New York, NY and at the 18th Street Arts Center, Santa Monica, CA. He is represented YAUTEPEC in Mexico City and by Arena Mexico Arte Contemporáneo in Guadalajara. Further Reading Joaquin Segura’s website YAUTEPEC artist page for Joaquin Segura Capps, Kriston. “ID-ENTITY: Washington, DC.” ART PAPERS . 2009. (shrink)

Over the last four decades computers and the internet have become an intrinsic part of all our lives, but this speed of development has left related philosophical enquiry behind. Featuring the work of computer scientists and philosophers, these essays provide an overview of an exciting new area of philosophy that is still taking shape.

Connectionist research first emerged in the 1940s. The first phase of connectionism attracted a certain amount of media attention, but scant philosophical interest. The phase came to an abrupt halt, due to the efforts of Minsky and Papert (1969), when they argued for the intrinsic limitations of the approach. In the mid-1980s connectionism saw a resurgence. This marked the beginning of the second phase of connectionist research. This phase did attract considerable philosophical attention. It was of philosophical interest, as (...) it offered a way of counteracting the conceptual ties to the philosophical traditions of atomism, rationalism, logic, nativism, rule realism and a concern with the role symbols play in human cognitive functioning, which was prevalent as a consequence of artificial intelligence research. The surge in philosophical interest waned, possibly in part due to the efforts of some traditionalists and the so-called black box problem. Most recently, what may be thought of as a third phase of connectionist research, based on so-called deep learning methods, is beginning to show some signs of again exciting philosophical interest. (shrink)

Each of us, right now, is having a unique conscious experience. Nothing is more basic to our lives as thinking beings and nothing, it seems, is better known to us. But the ever-expanding reach of natural science suggests that everything in our world is ultimately physical. The challenge of fitting consciousness into our modern scientific worldview, of taking the subjective “feel” of conscious experience and showing that it is just neural activity in the brain, is among the most intriguing explanatory (...) problems of our times. -/- In this book, Josh Weisberg presents the range of contemporary responses to the philosophical problem of consciousness. The basic philosophical tools of the trade are introduced, including thought experiments featuring Mary the color-deprived super scientist and fearsome philosophical “zombies”. The book then systematically considers the space of philosophical theories of consciousness. Dualist and other “non-reductive” accounts of consciousness hold that we must expand our basic physical ontology to include the intrinsic features of consciousness. Functionalist and identity theories, by contrast, hold that with the right philosophical stage-setting, we can fit consciousness into the standard scientific picture. And “mysterians” hold that any solution to the problem is beyond such small-minded creatures as us. -/- Throughout the book, the complexity of current debates on consciousness is handled in a clear and concise way, providing the reader with a fine introductory guide to the rich philosophical terrain. The work makes an excellent entry point to one of the most exciting areas of study in philosophy and science today. (shrink)

Normal 0 21 false false false PT-BR X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 According to the Hegelian scheme re-proposed by Honneth, the first pattern of intersubjective recognition, still below the juridical mediation, is the sphere of interactions marked by affective bonds, or love. It is considered a first stage mostly because recognition is rooted in the partners' mutual dependency as needy creatures, which demand care and the emotional approval that follows it. In this sense, a constitutional lacking emerges as the fundamental character of (...) the most primitive kinds of interaction embedded in social norms. And that is important inasmuch the other stages of recognitive practices depend on this first one, in which subjects acquire capacities for rational and moral reasoning and action in the public sphere. However, one could question to what extent the same normative structure can be taking as underlying every loving relationship, as oriented by an affirmation of the subject's independence, while presupposing involuntary feelings of liking and attraction. After all, if the aspirations of reciprocal recognition in this realm are intrinsically related to very concrete features, why taking child caring, friendship and sexual encounter as referred to the same set of recognition patterns? If Honneth's recourse to psychoanalytic theory makes it clear why in all these kinds of interaction is to be found erotic contents of libidinal character, on the other hand one gets no clue on why the very different forms of satisfaction of the drives do not come into consideration. At this point it seems important to recall Georges Bataille's account of sexuality to think not only about the limits of recognition, but also its dialectical structure. The central notion of transgression helps understand why the normative grounds of intersubjective acknowledgment regarding at least some love relationships require a sort of suspension which is not the mere suppression of their validity: the violence that resides at the core of such erotic, transgressive experiences points to a disruptive effect over the features of subjective arrangement, intersubjectively formed. That is why excitement and fear, pleasure and anguish intertwine in eroticism, and desire becomes the name of a fascinating and frightening ontological excess. It is this very paradoxical character that is decisive for Bataille, for if norms need their transgression in order to exert a subjective inscription, one should not take the passage from desire to recognition as just a progressive process towards a determined form of sociality. Bataille associates a certain Durkheimian heritage with a philosophy of life to account for a libidinal economy of recognition in which desire lies at its very core. This paper proposes a reflection on what is at stake in this conceptual operation, and on the significance of the peculiar enjoyment of norms to a rethinking of the particular aspirations of recognition in love relationships. (shrink)

P. Kyle Stanford - The Manifest Connection: Causation, Meaning, and David Hume - Journal of the History of Philosophy 40:3 Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.3 339-360 The Manifest Connection: Causation, Meaning, and David Hume P. Kyle Stanford 1. Introduction exciting recent hume scholarship has challenged the traditional view that Hume's theory of meaning leads him to deny the very intelligibility or coherence of supposing that there are objective causal powers or intrinsic necessary connections between causally related entities. (...) Influential recent interpretations have variously held that Hume himself accepted the existence of such powers and connections, that he was genuinely agnostic about them, or that he denied their existence while nonetheless holding it to be a perfectly coherent possibility, indeed one that we routinely think actual. In this paper I will argue against all three of these lines of interpretation and in favor of what I consider a neglected alternative: that Hume rejects the existence of objective necessary connections or causal powers as literally incoherent or meaningless, but on subtle and sophisticated semantic grounds, rather than simplistic ones. I find support for this semantic reading and against the alternatives not only in passages whose significance to the debate is widely appreciated, but also in Hume's discussions "Of Liberty and Necessity" and "Of the Immateriality of the Soul." The.. (shrink)

(1) The is not the only interpretation of cerebellar histology worth considering. Therefore, it is not imperative to strive for a theory of cerebellar function which gives it a prominent rôle. (2) The experiments with cannot support the tidal wave theory. (3) The notion that only can excite the cerebellar cortex is burdened with many intrinsic difficulties. (4) The common theoretical claim that the accuracy of skilled movements is due to exact pattern-matching processes in the cerebellum may be most (...) misleading. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.3 (2003) 426-427 [Access article in PDF] Timothy Smiley, editor. Mathematics and Necessity: Essays in the History of Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp. ix + 166. Cloth, $35.00.Mathematics and Necessity contains essays by M. F. Burnyeat, Ian Hacking, and Jonathan Bennett based on lectures given to the British Academy in 1998. All concern the history of the philosophical treatment of (...) mathematics, necessity, or both, although there is no single thread running through all three essays.Burnyeat focuses on Plato's understanding of mathematics in the Republic, making use of the Timeaus in particular to defend his interpretation. Plato claimed that in the ideal society mathematics should be studied for a full ten years, which many have thought excessive. To explain it, Burnyeat argues that the role of mathematics is pervasive: ethics and politics are mathematical, because in Plato's view mathematics is a constitutive part of ethical understanding. On Burnyeat's interpretation, goodness is part of the objective world, and mathematics is a science of values. The link between mathematics and goodness in the objective world is forged by the concord, harmony, and unity of proportions, which express the goodness of the Divine Craftsman's beneficent design. Proportions are both intrinsically good and the proper study of mathematics.Burnyeat explains why Plato thinks abstract kinematics (the pure non-sensible counterpart to astronomy) and abstract harmonics lead to knowledge of the good. Abstract kinematics concerns the "harmony of the spheres" described in the Republic. Drawing heavily on the Timeaus, Burnyeat argues that the circular motions of the spheres are motions in the intelligence of the world soul and that there are similar motions in human souls. The world soul and human souls are spatial and have circular motions (invisibility and intangibility make them incorporeal). Souls are the most important subject matter of abstract harmonics—the study of good proportions. A soul that understands the various mathematical disciplines and their relations takes on the harmony and hence goodness of the world soul. Such a soul serves as a model for organizing the social world, a model which properly trained rulers can use to shape a community. Burnyeat's well-argued essay is compelling and exciting. [End Page 427]Ian Hacking's views provide a great contrast to Burnyeat's Plato. Hacking conducts a phenomenological inquiry into why some philosophers have become obsessed by mathematics as a source of philosophical inspiration. He holds that mathematics concerns a relatively minor part of human culture and that the influence of mathematics on philosophy is pernicious; he even describes it as an infection.Hacking examines the views of six philosophers: Plato, Leibniz, Mill, Descartes, Lakatos, and Wittgenstein. Hacking's assessment of the six philosophers is at times disputable, but it is also interesting and stimulating, and serves his phenomenological inquiry.Hacking traces philosophy's infection by mathematics to two factors. A mathematical proof can be perspicuous; that is, a proof can be "grasped," which requires seeing directly why something must be true and being able to recapitulate it. A mathematical proof can also anticipate facts about the world. He thinks that these two factors affect us in two ways: they give us the idea of a priori knowledge, and they dazzle us into unreasoned conviction in proofs. One might respond that, setting aside the feeling proofs give us, we are still justified in being impressed by them. Hacking argues that much of what impresses is based on a misunderstanding of their nature, which he attempts to correct.According to Hacking, a mathematical demonstration involves shifts of meaning that analytically bind the proof and the theorem it establishes. They thereby mutually support each other and provide what he calls self-authentication. The correctness of the proof is supported by the "analytified" truth of the theorem and the theorem is considered true because proven.This bootstrapping feature of mathematical proofs supports Hacking's deflationary account of necessity. Hacking suggests that the "must" of logical necessity rests upon our unwillingness to accept empirical counter-examples to the... (shrink)

Our understanding of language, its origins and subsequent evolution, is shaped not only by data and theories from the language sciences, but also fundamentally by the biological sciences. Recent developments in genetics and evolutionary theory offer both very strong constraints on what scenarios of language evolution are possible and probable, but also offer exciting opportunities for understanding otherwise puzzling phenomena. Due to the intrinsic breathtaking rate of advancement in these fields, and the complexity, subtlety, and sometimes apparent non-intuitiveness of (...) the phenomena discovered, some of these recent developments have either being completely missed by language scientists or misperceived and misrepresented. In this short paper, we offer an update on some of these findings and theoretical developments through a selection of illustrative examples and discussions that cast new light on current debates in the language sciences. The main message of our paper is that life is much more complex and nuanced than anybody could have predicted even a few decades ago, and that we need to be flexible in our theorizing instead of embracing a priori dogmas and trying to patch paradigms that are no longer satisfactory. (shrink)

Based on the hypothesis that the (non-reversible) arrow of time is intrinsic in any system, no matter how small, the consequences are discussed. Within the framework of local quantum physics it is shown how such a semi-group action of time can consistently be extended to that of the group of spacetime translations in Minkowski space. In presence of massless excitations, however, there arise ambiguities in the theoretical extensions of the time translations to the past. The corresponding loss of quantum (...) information on states upon time is determined. Finally, it is explained how the description of operations in classical terms combined with constraints imposed by the arrow of time leads to a quantum theoretical framework. These results suggest that the arrow of time is fundamental in nature and not merely a consequence of statistical effects on which the Second Law is based. (shrink)

According to Whitehead, nature is disclosed to mind by an ensemble of events characterized by unobservable hidden intrinsic factors (e.g., mass, gravitation) and observable extrinsic factors (e.g., motion, density). Mass is not the substratum of dynamics. It implies spatial extension and temporal duration, which are both necessary conditions of observable natural phenomena. Therefore, an instant, deprived of duration, is immeasurable. Whitehead’s claims on mass, space, and time corroborate Verlinde’s alternative conception of quantum gravitation. Within the de Sitter space-time, this (...) conception starts from the competition of the short distance degrees of freedom of the Ryn-Takanayagi tensor with long-distance thermalized excitations. This enables the creation of a baryonic mass and a decrease in de Sitter entropy. The memory effect of the original baryon creation leads to gravitation and the production of extensive thermodynamic entropy. However, the baryon production shrinks, and the dissipating space-time transforms into a space-timeless cold sink with an accompanying strong contracting memory effect. This is equivalent to the alternate motion of a giant Carnot engine, where the heat source and sink energy exchange produce the eternal periodic dynamics of the Universe. This suggests that the Universe did not start from Big Bang but oscillated eternally as a Big Bounce Universe. (shrink)

It has become almost _de rigueur_ in contemporary psychoanalysis to cite Freud's positivism-especially his commitment to an objective reality that can be accessed through memory and interpretation-as a continuing source of weakness in bringing the field into the postmodern era. But is it so simple to move beyond Freud and objectivism in general? Or is it the case that even the most astute recent theorizing aimed at this move-and guided by therapeutic sensitivity and a concern with epistemic rigor-still betrays a (...) lingering commitment to objective reality? This is the intellectually exciting and exacting question that Richard Moore poses to his reader-and to the texts of four of the most influential psychoanalytic theorists on the scene today: Donald Spence, Roy Schafer, Robert Stolorow, and Irwin Z. Hoffman. Written with concentration and grace, _The Creation of Reality in Psychoanalysis_ begins with the ambiguities in Freud's founding commitment to a recoverable, objectively verifiable reality before examining the ghost of objectivism that confounds, in surprising and unexpected ways, Spence's, Schafer's, Stolorow's, and Hoffman's recent attempts to move toward narrativist and constructivist views of the analytic encounter. Following his penetrating survey of the contributions of these four major architects of contemporary psychoanalysis, Moore provides a glimpse of what an internally consistent postmodern metapsychology would actually look like. He approaches this task by exploring how our understanding of basic analytic concepts may ultimately be reconciled with the view that the creation of reality is an intrinsic aspect of any therapeutic encounter. Elegantly conceived and beautifully argued, this book guides the reader through the labyrinth of contemporary theory while holding fast to a critical stance toward its overarching goal: the elaboration of a truly thoroughgoing constructivism that is both therapeutically consequential and intellectually defensible. (shrink)

Medium- and high-spin states of Pr-134 were populated using the Cd-116(Na-23, 5n) reaction and studied with the GAMMASPHERE spectrometer. Several new bands have been found in this nucleus, one of them being linked to the previously observed chiral-candidate twin-band structure. The ground state of Pr-134 could be determined through establishing a level structure that connects the two previously known long-lived isomeric states. Unambiguous spin-parity assignments for the excited states could be performed based on the known 2(-) spin-parity of the ground (...) state combined with the present experimental data. Intrinsic single-particle configurations have been assigned to the newly observed bands on the basis of the measured B(M1)/B(E2) ratios, alignments, band-crossing frequencies, bandhead spins, the observed single-particle configurations in the neighboring nuclei, and taking into account the predictions of total Routhian surface and tilted-axis cranking calculations. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 26.2 (2002) 312-333 [Access article in PDF] Consilient Literary Interpretation Marcus Nordlund I THIS IS AN EXCITING TIME in the history of human self-knowledge. Like the two souls in Plato's Symposium, the life sciences and the human sciences are slowly coming to terms with their painful divorce and are increasingly on speaking terms. Thanks to important developments across a broad range of academic disciplines from biology (...) and neuroscience to anthropology and psychology, we are starting to glean the possibility of a new conceptual integration that may have important consequences for our understanding of human nature. After hundreds of years of virtuoso variations on the theme of philosophical and scientific dualism, we have come some way towards bridging the gap between mind and matter, biology and culture, science and the arts.From the perspective of literary studies, two recent developments have been especially valuable. The previous decade saw a growing recognition among social scientists of the explanatory force of evolutionary theory, and of the ultimate bankruptcy of the nature-nurture opposition that forces biology and culture into different compartments. Since the social sciences have always supplied literary studies with food for thought, it would be strange if such developments did not reflect on literature, too. Equally important has been the increasing impatience among scholars in the humanities with the radical skepticism, antiscientism, and dogmatic agnosticism that turns both science and literature into mere self-validating narratives and sees no significant difference between descriptive and normative statements. Together, these theoretical shifts have slowly begun to pave the way for a new dialogue between those who study biology, psychology, and cultural artifacts like literature. Since the mid-1990s, a number of literary [End Page 312] scholars have taken the first steps towards merging evolutionary and cultural explanation in the study of literature. 1One striking defense of such a conceptual integration between science and literature was delivered a few years ago in Edward O. Wilson's Consilience. 2 According to Wilson, there is "only one way to unite the great branches of learning and end the culture wars. It is to view the boundary between the scientific and literary cultures not as a territorial line but as a broad and mostly unexplored terrain awaiting cooperative entry from both sides" (p. 138). While he concedes that the two cultures can and should be characterized by "radically different goals and methods," he also stresses that interpretation provides a "logical channel of consilient explanation between science and the arts" (p. 234).While we have good reason to be optimistic about the potential of this joint endeavor, it is nevertheless fraught with massive problems. The current track record in interdisciplinary literary studies is uneven, to say the least. Strange confusions about the nature and status of theory abound, and these often take the shape of spontaneous raids into foreign conceptual frameworks that are bound to baffle the practitioners of the host discipline. As Richard Levin importantly points out, 3 there are numerous reasons why current interdisciplinary literary theories tend to become self-validating. There are no negative tests; critics tend to choose theories on the basis of ideological preferences rather than the criterion of truth; and there is a widespread assumption that theories can simply be transformed willfully whenever they do not meet the requirements of the interpreter.Many of the problems Levin points to can, I think, be remedied by something as trivial as a change in attitude within the discipline of literature itself. For example, something has obviously gone seriously wrong when the automatic spouting of political ad hominem arguments and genetic fallacies has become second nature to so many critics. But there are other and more fundamental problems that seem intrinsic to the whole question of interdisciplinarity. One of these, according to Wilson, is that as we move forward in the hierarchy of sciences, from physics to biology to literature, we encounter a rapidly accelerating complexity: "It is far easier to go backward through the branching corridors than to go forward.... Biology is almost unimaginably more complex than physics, and the arts equivalently more complex than... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Betrayal of Substance: Death, Literature, and Sexual Difference in Hegel’s “Phenomenology of Spirit” by Mary C. RawlinsonShannon Hoff (bio)Mary C. Rawlinson, The Betrayal of Substance: Death, Literature, and Sexual Difference in Hegel’s “Phenomenology of Spirit” New York: University Press, 2021, 215 pp. ISBN 978-0-231-19905-6Mary rawlinson shows that to be genuinely receptive to a philosophical text one must be creative, and she brings the Phenomenology of Spirit to (...) life with her reading. It speaks of and to experience, and she makes it resound as such, matching its aptitude with her own rich descriptions of the character of experience. The reader is bound to learn a lot from her careful and vivid analyses of consciousness, self-consciousness, reason, and spirit, where she displays her power to digest a text that is almost impossibly unwieldy. Both students and scholars of Hegel’s philosophy will find satisfaction here: her book will spark understanding and excitement in inexperienced readers and hone approaches to complex issues of interpretation in experienced ones.Rawlinson opens The Betrayal of Substance with the provocative thesis that Hegel “writes with both hands” (xv). On the one hand, he affirms the abundance of difference in life by insisting on the material realization of the abstract concept, on the life of the singleton (her translation of das Einzelne) as the site of this realization, and on the difference intrinsic to identities (xiii). On the other hand, she says, he aims at a science of logic beyond phenomenology, where singularity has been erased and difference comprehended, such that “nothing is other to it”; this is “an unrelenting insistence on an absolute [End Page 225] detachment from life” (53). Rawlinson tracks this severance of concept and life throughout the Phenomenology: in the abandonment of sensuousness in sense-certainty; in the thing’s dissolution in perception; in “the ‘loss of reality’ of the play of forces”; in the struggle to the death, where self-consciousness “risks life absolutely” (66); in stoicism and skepticism, which “install an absolute difference between life and thought” (47). The life of the singleton is severed from the concept by the production (on the part of the unhappy consciousness) of “ethics, culture, morality, and religion as institutional infrastructures sustaining the self-transcendence of the singleton in the ‘we’ of a community” (66); by reason’s erasure of singularity in its accomplishment of a universal consciousness (68); by perpetual reference to the Bacchanalian revel, that “frenzy of the group that survives [the singleton’s] collapse” (xxx). (Indeed, one of the book’s contributions is its illumination of the prevalence of the image of the revel in Hegel’s text.)In response, Rawlinson asserts the need for a double reading of this double writing: (1) to affirm the capacious narrative that dislodges “ready-made abstractions” and engages the “thick richness of life,” because that is where the truth lies (xxix–xxx); and (2) to oppose Hegel’s “completion” of the phenomenological project and the departure from it to logic, and with it the erasure of the singleton. The book reflects the style of this double reading at each turn, in turns rebellious and appreciative, at ease with its own ambiguity toward Hegel. Rawlinson produces three central pieces of evidence for her critique, three “dangling threads [that] refuse to be woven into the completed fabric of absolute knowing[:] sexual difference, the mortality of the singleton,... and the differences of style in art and literature” (xv). Her critique of Hegel’s abandonment of life sets in relief the critical centrality of Hegel’s identification of maternal love as “the most dangerous force with which the state must contend” (68): this love is a clear instance of affirmation of the singleton over the “we” in which it is submerged. Finally, Rawlinson opposes the idea that truth is “the fully realized series of shapes of knowing and figures of truth” in which “science will have been the truth of phenomenology” with the hypothesis instead that “phenomenology will prove to have been the truth of science” (xliv).Itself beginning several times, The Betrayal of Substance thematizes Hegel’s multiple beginnings and the insight ref lected thereby... (shrink)

continent. 2.1 (2012): 40–43. Lance Olsen is a professor of Writing and Literature at the University of Utah, Chair of the FC2 Board of directors, and, most importantly, author or editor of over twenty books of and about innovative literature. He is one of the true champions of prose as a viable contemporary art form. He has just published Architectures of Possibility (written with Trevor Dodge), a book that—as Olsen's works often do—exceeds the usual boundaries of its genre as it (...) explores his interests in narrative theory and pedagogy. The book is a kind of “anti-textbook;” a performative polemic against the stale, conservative and monolithic conception of the literary that so often dominates institutional discourse around creative writing. The following interview takes the occasion of AoP's publication as a chance to speak with Olsen about the book itself as well as to engage with larger, unanswerable, questions about the futures and intersections of literature and education. —Ben Segal INTERVIEW: 1) First, I want to start before the beginning, with the title. I’m really fascinated by the concept it conjures. Can you say something about innovative/experimental/(choose your adjective) literature in relation to both ideas around architecture and possibility? Innovative or experimental are tremendously fraught adjectives, needless to say. But for the purposes of my book, they modify a fiction concerned with the questions: What is fiction? What can it do, and how, and why? Now, of course, what looks “innovative” or “experimental” to one at 17 may not be what looks “innovative” or “experimental” to one at 27 or 57, and what looks “innovative” or “experimental” in 1812 may not be what looks “innovative” or “experimental” in 2012. A certain existential and historical perspectivism is always at work. But I think it’s fair to say that innovative and experimental usually refer to a narrativity that includes a self-reflective awareness of and engagement with theoretical inquiry, concerns, and obsessions, as well as a sense of being in conversation with fiction across space and time. One can't create challenging writing in a vacuum; it has to challenge in relation to something. So contemporary writers interested in the subject are not only in pursuit of the innovative, but are also always-already writing subsequent to it—writing, that is, in its long wake. Architectures of Possibility conceives of creativity as a possibility space, a locale just outside our comfort zones where we can and should take multiple chances in order to imagine in new ways, explore fresh strategies for finding and cultivating ideas, re-view what it is we’re doing and why, better understand what Samuel Beckett meant when he wrote: “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” It reminds us that there are other ways of narrating our worlds and ourselves than those we have inherited from the entertainment industry, the government, academia, previous writing, and so on. 2) AoP seems to be directed at several audiences (and purposes) simultaneously. What I mean is that it seems at times a polemic in favor of innovative literature, at other times a creative writing textbook, and still other times a guide to the network of publishers, journals, and programs that make up the current world of non-mainstream literary art in the U.S. In my mind, Architectures is a theorized anti-textbook about writing. Most textbooks on the subject (think of Janet Burroway’s Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft , taught in most creative-writing classroom across the country) orchestrate how to construct conventional stories. They instruct from a place of power how to generate familiar stories that are repeated so often that many of us begin to take them as the primary model for narrativity, if not unconsciously as a kind of truth. The result, as Brian Kiteley points out in 3 A.M. Epiphany (one of the only other alternative textbooks about innovative writing around, by the way, and a tremendous repository of exercises), is merely competent texts. Architectures problematizes that gesture by outlining what conventional narrativity looks like, urging writers to think about its ideology of form as well as content, and invites them to imagine writing, not as a set of relatively stable conventions, but, rather, as a possibility space where everything can and should be thought, tried, challenged. It thereby rhymes with Roland Barthes’s definition of literature: the question minus the answer—which is to say Architectures poses complications to the act of writing rather than solutions. 3) One of the most notable things about the book is the use of interviews. This is also one of the reasons that I think the book works so well for a variety of audiences—that anyone with even a passing interest in the state and future of literature will have an interest in your conversation with people like Ben Marcus, Samuel Delany, and Lydia Davis. I was hoping you could just talk a little about how you chose these subjects to interview, how you edited the interview material, and which answers you received struck you the most. Experimentalism , like realism , wants to appear in the plural. The idea of gathering more than forty interviews (with the help of my awesome collaborator, Trevor Dodge, himself a fine innovative author) represents an attempt to suggest that: the wide, rich, exciting opportunities inherent in the term. There are interviews with younger writers, elder statesmen in the field, publishers, editors, hypermedia artists, comic book makers, and so on: Joe Wenderoth, Carole Maso, Scott McCloud, Nick Montfort, Kathy Acker, et al. Trevor and I decided to do flash interviews: short, concentrated Q&As, each focusing on a particular troubling of writing. We only lightly edited the results to match the manuscript’s overall style, and every interview arrived as a surprise housing several unexpected insights. Three brief examples: Michael Mejia, when asked about what he dreads when setting about writing: “Dread is an interesting word here. I associate it less with loathing or aversion, I suppose, than with a kind of productive fear. Do I dread a project’s failure? Sure, who doesn’t? Who wants to waste time on something that comes to nothing, or is unreadable? But then, what do these terms mean, and who or what defines a work as a ‘failure,’ as ‘waste,’ as ‘unreadable’? Should a work actually try to interrogate and exceed these conceptual limitations? My tendency is to write into dread in order to reveal to myself, as much as to any reader that may come after, the varied complacencies that make other, mostly more conventional writings, readable. It’s at the frontier between readability (security) and unreadability (terror) that I want to live creatively.” Carole Maso, when asked what she’d like a sentence to accomplish: “I think a sentence can if allowed carry emotional and intellectual states as they flee, as they come and go, an escaping essence difficult to hold in other ways. In this way I think the sentence can work as a phrase of music does, sounding something large and elusive in us. Alternatively it can provide sometimes a stability, an essence, a moment of being. Unlike music the sentence also of course carries language with all its potential for meaning making and memory traces and association with it as well. I probably love the accretion of sentences most—those patterns, that shimmer, that resonance.” Shelley Jackson, when asked what is innovative about the innovative: “The purpose of the innovative is, I think, to wake us up. We are not quite alive, most of the time; we occupy a sort of cartoon version of our lives, its lines made smooth by repetition. Writing can open the seams in that world, reintroduce us to the real lives that we have forgotten. Maybe all good writing is innovative in some sense, in that it shows or tells or makes you feel something you never felt before—something for which you have no cartoon ready.” 4) You talk a little about N. Katherine Hayles’s concept of Media Specific Analysis and propose the supplemental notion of Medium Specific Generation—basically taking Hayles and applying her thought from the perspective of the writer. I’ve been trying to develop somewhat related theoretical frameworks, so I was really excited to come upon this section of the book. I’m wondering if you can talk a little more about this idea and, in general, about the potentials that you see as being opened up by writers engaging with and exploiting different media as literary platforms? “Lulled into somnolence by five hundred years of print,” Hayles urges in her (at least for me) transformative 2004 essay, “Print is Flat, Code is Deep,” “literary analysis should awaken to the importance of media-specific analysis, a mode of critical attention which recognizes that all texts are instantiated and that the nature of the medium in which they are instantiated matters.” She goes on to argue critics should learn to become more attuned to the materiality of the medium under investigation—which is to say a story isn’t a story isn’t a story. Rather, the “same” story remediated through film is intrinsically different from that story remediated through conventionally printed books is intrinsically different from that story remediated through hypermedia. “Materiality,” Hayles goes on, “is reconceptualized as the interplay between a text’s physical characteristics and its signifying strategies, a move that entwines instantiation and signification at the outset.” My point in Architectures is simply to emphasize Media Specific Generation: the idea that when writing you should be cognizant, not only of the thematics of the text you are working on, and, as it were, the internal components of its narrativity (character, language, plot, etc.), but also of the material embodiment those components take, and, perhaps more important, the material embodiment those components can take. The idea that the way texts matter matters isn’t something usually addressed in any significant way in creative-writing classrooms and textbooks. It may almost go without saying such experimentation with typography, layout, and white space has a long tradition—certainly one that tracks back at least as far as Guillaume Apollinaire’s early twentieth-century Calligrammes , Laurence Sterne’s textually ribald eighteenth-century Tristram Shandy , although one could arguably plot a hypothetical trajectory that reaches to ancient Greek romances like Achilles Tatius’ second-century Leucippe and Clitophon . Experiments into atomic materiality and digital immateriality bracket the definition of “book” at the same time they highlight Michael Martone’s prediction of its present future as increasingly viral, collaborative, and ephemeral. Or, as Matthew Battles points out: the future of the “book” has already arrived, and it is “ethereal and networked” rather than “an immutable brick.”While conventional writing and reading practices are conceptualized as private, individual, relatively fixed experiences, many of the new forms indicate that writing and reading—from production through dissemination—are rapidly becoming public, collective, incrementally unfixed experiences. That strikes me as an astonishing set of opportunities for a writer to investigate. 5) Another concept you elaborate in AoP is that of limit texts, basically texts that, once you read them, change what you imagine as the shape/horizon/potential of literature. You provide a fantastic reading list of limit texts at the end of AoP. I was hoping you could talk about a few of them in terms of how they specifically operate as limit texts for you—how they expand your understanding of what literature could be or do. Karl Jaspers coined the word Grenzsituationen (border/limit situations) to describe existential moments accompanied by anxiety in which the human mind is forced to confront the restrictions of its existing forms—moments that make us abandon, fleetingly, the securities of our limitedness and enter new realms of self-consciousness. Death, for example. Limit texts are a variety of disturbance that carries various elements of narrativity to their brink so the reader can never quite imagine them in the same terms again. Once you’ve taken one down from the shelf, you’ll never be able to put it back up again. They won’t leave you alone. They will continue to work on your imagination long after you’ve read them. Simply by being in the world, they ask us to embrace difficulty, freedom, radical skepticism. One of the most important for me is Samuel Beckett’s The Unnamable . Instead of establishing conventional setting and building traditional character, from its first words it unsettles both: “Where now? Who now? When now?” That first trio of question marks broadcasts the thematics of the writing (“novel” may be too strong a word) that will follow: it is all about a voice (or, perhaps, voices, about the grammatical mistake of the first-person pronoun), a consciousness (maybe, again, too strong a word), often genderless, removed from place and chronology and socioeconomic reality, hovering in a state of perpetual aporia. All it knows is what it doesn’t know, and its not-knowing is blackly, sardonically comic. The Unnamable is the embodiment of an unreliable narrator—a subject position that can’t trust itself, let alone be trusted by a reader. It contradicts, takes back, digresses, undoes what it just did, forgets, lies, hallucinates gloriously. The language is abstract, disembodied, devoid of sensory data, grayish rather than painterly in texture. Without knowing this passage is from a novel, a reader might well conclude s/he were reading a patch of (anti-)Cartesian philosophy. It might be helpful to conceive of what Beckett is doing as post-genre writing, then, or perhaps what Raymond Federman referred to as critifiction—a mode that blurs conventional distinctions between theory and narrative. In completely different register, and much more recently, Anne Carson’s Nox blew me away. It takes the form of an elegy for her older brother, whom she didn’t know well and who died unexpectedly while on the run from the law in Europe. The thing itself arrives in a box that simulates a thick book, as well as the brother’s textual coffin. Open it, and inside you discover, not a codex, but an accordioned series of “pages” that folds out into an arrangement that suggests an ancient scroll (Carson is, perhaps illuminatingly, a professor of classics) made up of shards of her brother’s letters, old photographs, tickets, Carson’s observations, Catullus’ poem 101 (the one addressed to the Roman poet’s dead brother, a doubling of Carson’s situation), and extensive dictionary entries on all the words that compose that poem. The aggregate produces a collage about the impossibilities of aggregates, the impossibilities of understanding fully, of capturing absences in language. At times Nox feels less an example of what most readers consider a book than something closer to a three-dimensional work of assemblage art. It’s a beautiful mechanism for contemplating Media Specific Analysis, for urging us all to be more extreme. 6) Finally, I want to talk a little about pedagogy and institutions. I’m less interested in questions like “Are MFA programs good for writers?” than in questions about how your role as teacher informs your understanding of literature and your writing practice. I’m also very curious about your take on how commercially marginal literary art is largely patronized by large state institutions and at the same time often imagines itself as a critical and even possibly revolutionary practice. How have your own positions within universities and university-affiliated organizations shaped your thinking about them and about innovative literature? I can imagine in many ways it might make you even more critical. And (I know, another ‘and’...) how does AoP (especially given its relation to Rebel Yell , your previous text on creative writing) reflect your personal history and experience as a teacher and member of communities that are largely defined by institutions? In the classroom, I try to generate the pedagogical field I would have liked to have inhabited as a student, but didn’t. Roland Barthes has a lovely line about this: “We need to substitute for the magisterial [classroom] space of the past (the word delivered by the master from the pulpit above with the audience below, the flock, the sheep, the herd)—a less upright, less Euclidean space where no one, neither teacher nor students, would ever be in his final place.” Easier said than done, of course, but an important life project for all who think of themselves as educators. My own classroom, my own writing, and Architectures of Possibility itself attempt to create the sort of possibility space where, as I mentioned at the outset of our interview, everything should be thought, tried, challenged; where everything rhymes with Roland Barthes’s definition of literature: the question minus the answer. I’m not sure I could write what I’m writing now without the conversations I have almost daily with my students, the conversations they have with each other, the conversations we all have with the texts we study. Especially in light of the paradigm shift over the last, say, quarter century from academia as intellectual exploration to academia as McDonaldized trade school, the irony isn’t lost on me concerning the discrepancy between the safe harbor innovative authors find there and the cultural critiques those authors launch through their writing and pedagogical work. In 2001, I quit my full professorship at one institution precisely because of my disappointment over what had happened to the learning environment there. I had no intentions of reentering the field. In 2007, however, the University of Utah approached me, and I found myself in an environment much more hospitable to the sort of work I want to do—teaching experimental narrative theory and practice. It isn’t by any means a simple irony. One could easily argue innovative writing and pedagogy represents the trace of the paradigm Barthes suggests, and that trace is tremendously productive in all kinds of ways. Innovative writing has never and will never change the world in any large, macrocosmic way. But we’ve all had our lives changed, one by one, by an encounter with a difficult, rich, resonant piece of prose, poetry, music, art, you name it. We’ve all had our lives changed at the ahistorical, microcosmic moment by a class we’ve taken, a teacher we’ve studied with, to such an extent that we became, quite literally, different people. I just came across a stunning set of sentences from Derrida on the topic: “What is education? The death of the parents.” That’s what we’re all up to in the innovative, be it in written texts or the texts we call our classrooms or the texts we call our politics: trying to disrupt what both can and can’t be disrupted, trying to undo what both can and can’t be undone, continuously. (shrink)

Instead of postulated fixed structures and abstract principles of usual positivistic science, the unreduced diversity of living world reality is consistently derived as dynamically emerging results of unreduced interaction process development, starting from its simplest configuration of two coupled homogeneous protofields. The dynamically multivalued, or complex and intrinsically chaotic, nature of these real interaction results extends dramatically the artificially reduced, dynamically single-valued projection of standard theory and solves its stagnating old and accumulating new problems, “mysteries” and “paradoxes” within the unified (...) and causally complete picture of intrinsically evolving, dynamically complex reality. The permanently unfolding complexity progress thus revealed is fundamentally unlimited and does not need to stop at the directly observed diversity of usual matter complexity. The exciting, but rigorously substantiated and objectively inevitable prospects of further civilisation complexity development towards its superior levels of genuine sustainability and global Noosphere are outlined, with practically important conclusions for today’s critical problem solution. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Klossowski, Deleuze, and OrthodoxyEleanor Kaufman (bio)Among the many strange and wonderful things to be found there, Pierre Klossowski's oeuvre is a preeminent illustration of what divides univocity and equivocity and therefore serves as one of the twentieth century's most instructive models for thinking the complexity of the dialectic. Univocity and equivocity are significant both in their roots in Scholastic philosophy, as the idea that Being is expressed in either (...) one or several senses, and as belonging to a longstanding framework that helps demarcate the differences, nuanced yet significant, among members of the extraordinary generation of French intellectuals of which Klossowski was a part. Thus, these terms, apart from their theological and philosophical import, will serve as a heuristic for renarrating points of filiation and divergence among a series of prominent French thinkers, primarily Bataille, Klossowski, and Deleuze, but also extending backward to Sartre and forward to Badiou to frame the series. I will approach this in segmented fashion, first opposing Bataille's dialectic of transgression to Klossowski's more univocal method of disjunctive synthesis. When juxtaposed with Deleuze's Spinozist affirmation of univocity, however, Klossowski would seem to be more on the side of the equivocal. Whereas Deleuze criticizes the realm between the univocal and the equivocal as the lukewarm space of the analogical, my contention is that this middle realm allows for a space of movement and reversal that escapes the pitfalls Deleuze locates in the dialectic, and does so without a strict adherence to Spinozist univocity. Whereas Bataille and Deleuze remain closer to Klossowski in the tenor of their thought, I will nonetheless suggest in conclusion that Sartre and Badiou are actually closer to Klossowski on a formal level, in that each poses a similarly analogical challenge to the thought of the dialectic.For many reasons Bataille and Klossowski can be paired together. They were contemporaries, both born around the turn of the century, both writing in a variety of literary and philosophical genres, including pornographic or semi-pornographic fiction, and working outside the academy. Both wrote studies of Nietzsche, of Sade, and radical economic treatises. They were friends and fellow members in the late 1930s of the College of Sociology, which was modeled after a secret society, the members taking great interest in such topics as sacrifice and headlessness. Bataille and Klossowski wrote about each other. Both were at different points obsessed with Roman Catholicism, both at different points prepared to enter monastic orders, both in different fashions fell away. As might easily be imagined, their fiction is an outrageous mixture of the sacred and the profane, including sexual encounters and other desecrations staged at church alters and the like. Both work in that realm where pornography and theology come together. Yet while the more familiar Bataille uses pornography toward transgressive aims, the lesser-known Klossowski uses a more nuanced and interesting mechanism of boredom to elaborate an intrinsically disjunctive structure.Even boredom, for Bataille, partakes of the transgressive. In his novella The Story of the Eye, the narrator describes offhandedly how he and his companion Simone have just found their friend Marcelle's body. She has hung herself. The narrator and Simone [End Page 47] take the body down and have sex for the first time next to it. Then the narrator describes the boredom that ensues even in the face of death: "We were perfectly calm, all three of us, and that was the most hopeless part of it. Any boredom in the world is linked, for me, to that moment and, above all, to an obstacle as ridiculous as death. But that won't prevent me from thinking back to that time with no revulsion and even with a sense of complicity. Basically, the lack of excitement made everything far more absurd, and thus Marcelle was closer to me dead than in her lifetime, inasmuch as absurd existence, so I imagine, has all the prerogatives" [59–60]. This is actually an unusually meditative moment in Bataille's story of murder, priests, bullfights, and constant sex.1 Here his narrator links boredom to death, and to a reflection on the absurd boundary between life and death. But by commenting on boredom... (shrink)

Proponents of an intentionalist theory of perceptual experience have taken for granted that perceptual experience is an informing form of intentionality. Hence they often speak of the way an experience represents the environment to be, or what there is. In this respect perceptual experience is thus assumed to resemble a speech act like assertion or a mental state like belief. There is another important form of intentionality though that concerns not what there is, but what to do. I call this (...) a guiding form of intentionality. In speech, there are – for example – imperatives and among intentional mental states there are desires and intentions. In this paper I argue that perceptual experience is at least sometimes characterized by such a guiding form of intentionality. Perception does not just inform, it is sometimes intrinsically action‐guiding. I call this the perceptual guidance claim. I distinguish the perceptual guidance claim from related, but importantly distinct claims (such as claims concerning the perception of affordances or concerning whether perception is normative), and argue that perceptual action guidance occurs not just in an unconscious vision‐for‐action system, but also within conscious perceptual experience.1I have benefitted a lot from many discussions of the materials of this paper. Precursors, variants and extensions of this paper have been presented at the Harvard Philosophical Psychology lab, the CSMN colloquium in Oslo, a workshop on Imperatival Aspects of Perceptual Experience at the University of Oslo (organized by Susanna Siegel and the author), and a workshop on Attention and Perceptual Activity at Warwick University (organized by Thomas Crowther). I especially would like to thank: Tim Bayne, Rosa Cao, Thomas Crowther, Anya Farennikova, Dagfinn Føllesdal, Olav Gjelsvik, Sean Kelly, Farid Masrour, James Stazicker. Most of all I would like to thank Susanna Siegel for many illuminating and exciting discussions of every aspect of the contents of this paper. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:PHILOSOPHY AND STYLE: WITTGENSTEIN AND RUSSELL by John Hughes Was there ever a great philosopher who was not also a distinctive stylist, whose modes of elucidation or comprehension were not inseparable from wholly individual ways of writing? If it is true that this is a fact often noted by commentators or philosophers, it is also true that its implications are somewhat neglected. A study of a philosopher 's characteristic (...) uses of language can suggest a great deal about the relationships between thought and personality—between what is said or written, and how or why. The aim of what follows is briefly to compare Wittgenstein and Russell in these terms, to suggest something of how a study of this kind can deepen our understanding of the personal sources and contexts of philosophy. Russell's daughter Katherine once wrote of her father that although he was "a passionate believer in liberty and equality" he was, in practice, incapable of "fraternity," an aristocrat "who had been taught to think himselfsuperior."1 Such paradoxes and blind spots are, ofcourse, often noted in men of vision and principle, and it would be invidious to lay too uncharitable an emphasis on these words. However, the comment does indicate a track of vision fundamentally characteristic of Russell. In intellectual terms he was capable of imposing upon phenomena of the most diverse kinds a synoptic perspective of supreme sweep and rigor which, nevertheless, coexists with all sorts of necessary simplifi332 John Hughes333 cation, even evasiveness. As an aspect ofthis his prose can come to seem both satisfied in its own superior lucidity, and tendentious. An obvious, if perhaps slighdy unfair, example of the personal aspect of this is a passage from the beginning of the Autobiography: "Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither... over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair...."2 The self-esteem which sustains and is sustained by this prose lacks relation to words, reader, and world. The vocabulary, sentiments, and syntax of this sentence assume an impossible grandeur which merely encloses Russell within his own expansive sense of his destiny. The comparisons here are worth pursuing. Russell depends on a congenial sense of an historic philosophical mission, and is adept at conveying his sense of this to the reader. However, he remains unreflective about the implications or nature of the process, and this may excite orirritate us depending on how we react to thewriter's assumption of our acquiescence in his own estimation of himself. The later Wittgenstein, in contrast, is far more suspicious of the way philosophy can be compromised by self-satisfaction: "A beautiful garment that is transformed (coagulates, as it were) into worms and serpents if its wearer looks smugly at himself in the mirror...."3 As has been implied, for Wittgenstein philosophy, in one aspect, was an attempt to authenticate self-presentation, as it was also an attempt to evade "the edifice of... pride."4 The unremitting grappling with words reveals the man to the reader, while the exacting inner focus and process ofthe philosophy exclude any composed consciousness of self. What of Russell's writing on other topics? Here is an example picked more or less at random from On Education: But that is not the real issue; the real issue is: should we, in education, aim at filling the mind with knowledge which has direct practical utility, or should we try to give our pupils mental possessions which are good on their own account? It is useful to know that there are twelve inches in a foot, and three feet in a yard, but this knowledge has no intrinsic value; to those who live where the metric system is in use it is utterly worthless. To appreciate Hamlet, on the other hand, will not be much use in practical life, except in those rare cases where a man is called upon to kill his uncle; but it gives a man a mental possession which he would be soriy to be without, and makes... (shrink)

Critics often take conservationists to task for delivering a constant barrage of bad news without offering a compelling vision of the future. Could recent advances in synthetic biology—an optimistic, forward‐looking field with a can‐do attitude—let conservationists develop a new vision and generate some better news? Synthetic biology and related gene‐editing applications could be used to address threats to species. Genetic interventions might also be used in plants to better protect biodiversity in U.S. rangelands and forests. One possibility has stood out (...) in its ability to capture media attention and the public imagination—recreating extinct species. And perhaps a de‐extinction story could counter the seemingly relentless negativity in biodiversity talk. De‐extinction proponent Stewart Brand writes that resurrecting species could shift the “conservation story … from negative to positive, from constant whining and guilt‐tripping to high fives and new excitement.” So, why do many people in conservation oppose the de‐extinction narrative? This essay is an inquiry into whether there are intrinsic social reactions to these types of conservation solutions that might offset their potential benefits. If genetic tools are to be applied to address conservation issues in a realistic and responsible way, their broader social‐cultural implications deserve far more attention than they have so far received. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Commentary on “Towards a Design-Based Analysis of Emotional Episodes”Margaret A. Boden (bio)The theoretical work of Wright, Sloman, and Beaudoin is a significant contribution to our understanding of the nature and function of emotions, and potentially also to therapeutic method. Their message that emotions, as controlling and scheduling mechanisms, are essential to any complex intelligent system (that is: one with multiple and potentially conflicting motives, and situated in a changing (...) and unfriendly world) is important. It encourages cognitive psychologists to regard emotions as a central aspect of intelligence, not to sideline (or even to forget) them, as is too often done. In addition, it shows—at least in general outline—how emotions might be understood in computational terms.Critics of computational psychology too often assume that emotions and motivation must lie outside its scope. This is not so, although it is true that relatively little computational work has been done in this area. Interestingly, the very early days of AI saw a comparatively high proportion of models of multiple goal-seeking, affective processes, and even personality (see, for example, the papers in Tomkins and Messick 1963). But, inevitably, these were so crude as to be almost useless in illuminating the nature of emotion and motivation. As AI-workers and their psychologist colleagues found to their cost, it is difficult enough to model the pursuit of one goal, never mind the pursuit of several mutually conflicting goals. Accordingly, personality and emotion soon faded from the scene as preferred topics of computational research—but not before I too had argued that they could, in principle, be so addressed (Boden 1965; 1972).I suggested—in the sketchiest terms—that the concepts of William McDougall’s personality theory could be interpreted in a computational fashion (Boden 1965; 1972). His concept of sentiment, for example, marks what Wright et al. call “goal-sets,” and his master sentiment of self-regard relates to the descriptive and normative aspects of the self-image to which they draw our attention. He even described emotions as (conscious) control mechanisms, enabling the subject to monitor the incipient excitement of distinct types of motivation, and (sometimes) to adjust behavior so as to facilitate or inhibit the otherwise-inevitable response. What the target-authors have done is to put subtle and sophisticated computational flesh onto these minimalist theoretical bones.McDougall himself, of course, will be turning in his grave. He saw affect as partly conscious (as well as dispositional), and argued that consciousness—and purposive behavior too—cannot possibly [End Page 135] be given a mechanistic, or physicalist, explanation. Despite Wright et al.’s persuasive anti-reductionist remarks about the necessity for highly abstract (psychological) levels of explanation, he would not have accepted that such explanations could be computationally grounded. He even insisted that the neurophysiological ground of goal-seeking behavior involved a special sort of energy, or horme, intrinsically directed to specific ends. Presumably, no professional reader today would agree with McDougall on that point. But many may agree with him about consciousness. And many more will insist that consciousness is a crucial aspect—perhaps the crucial aspect—of emotion. Such critics will doubtless point out that our three authors explicitly “factor out,” or refuse to discuss, consciousness as such.Wright et al.’s rhetorical reserve on this point is defensible on two counts. First, even though emotions do involve conscious sensations, the dispositional and control aspects of affect are at least as important. Indeed, it is evident from the quotations from individuals reacting to bereavement that people often describe the phenomenology of grief in terms of these sorts of factors, rather than in a “purely qualitative” fashion (whatever that might be). Even so, these dispositional aspects of emotion are often overlooked, or regarded as less significant than the conscious phenomenology. And second, theoretical psychologists in general sideline consciousness: either they ignore it entirely, or they take it for granted philosophically and ask about the conditions under which it appears or disappears. They are well advised to do so, since we do not yet understand this concept (more accurately: this mixed bag of related concepts) at the philosophical level. Even a journal whose title has “Philosophy” as its leading... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:524 BOOK REVIEWS Word is to interpret us" (189). That two-way response to the Word of God neatly summarizes William Hill's witness to us as theologian as well: to he the mediator between classical and contemporary idiomata in such a way as to enrich the deliverances of both, reminiscent of Matthew's commendation of the " disciple in the kingdom of Heaven [being] like a householder who brings out from (...) his storeroom new things as well as old" (13 :52). The excitement of this project will not he lost on students of theology confronted with novel theories periodically renewed. What makes William Hill a theologians' theologian is not only his conceptual clarity, hut his capacity to move among us as a fellow inquirer. Bereft of any need to kill off contenders to make room for his innovations, we rather find him recalling on every page how much he has learned from others and wishes to pass on to us. University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, Indiana DAVID B. BURRELL, c.s.c. The Diversity of Religions: A Christian Perspective. By J. A. D1NoIA, O.P. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1992. $29.95 (cloth), $17.95 (paper). For some time now the debate in the Christian theology of religions has centered around the question of ·the possibility of salvation for nonChristians. The answers to this question have often been placed in a threefold typology: exclusivism, inclusivism or pluralism. Exclusivists generally maintain that salvation is conditional on an explicit confession of faith in Jesus Christ, hence non-Christians are lost. Pluralists, on the other hand, maintain that salvation can he found in different religions in various ways, and that Christianity is one among many paths to the divine reality. Inclusivists agree that non-Christians may he saved, and if they are it may he through rather than despite their religion. Inclusivists differ from pluralists in believing that Christ is the constitutive cause of all salvation, even therefore the salvation of a non-Christian. DiNoia's hook claims to do two very significant things. First, to go beyond the three approaches and suggest a fresh way of dealing with the question. Second, in doing so, to create a new agenda for the Christian theology of religions. My verdict: he partly fails and partly succeeds, and both his failings and success are deeply instructive and profoundly illuminating. DiNoia's argument is advanced carefully and lucidly and is acces- BOOK REVIEWS 525 sihle to non-specialists. The bibliographic essay/notes related to each chapter indicate thorough research (with one exception) and are a pleasure to read. DiNoia (a Thomist with Barthian leanings) closely follows George Lindbeck's cultural-linguistic model of religion, arguing that the specific way of life, determined by the actual doctrines held, uniquely shapes and moulds the religious practitioner. The goal and means of the religious way are intrinsically related and cannot he separated. He then persuasively argues that the difficulty with pluralists and inclusivists is that they impose a soteriocentricism upon other religions where there may he none! In contrast, DiNoia maintains one cannot say anything about the meaning of another religion apart from specific and proper attention to the ways in which its doctrines regulate its practice and stipulate the goal to he achieved by that way of life. In Christianity, eternal fellowship with the blessed Trinity can be said to he the goal (salvation) which is carefully orchestrated in minute detail through the liturgical life of the community. To claim that other religions attain the same salvific goal is therefore problematic. DiNoia's argument creates a space for other religions to really disclose what they are about in their doctrines and practice, without a priori categorization, and this is to he welcomed. Hence, the necessity of dialogue as the proper location for disclosure of the "other". Dialogue thereby becomes central to a theology of religions. Only in this process can we ask the question as to whether and how these ways of life relate to Christianity. DiNoia allows for the possibility that doctrinal truth and good actions can he found in other religions, without compromising the cen· trality of the incarnation as constitutive... (shrink)

ABSTRACT The two-hundredth anniversary of the publication of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right allows us to provide an array of exciting interpretations of his work. In one interpretation, exemplified by the reactions of Johann Friedrich Herbart (discussed here by Frederick Beiser) and of Karl Marx (discussed here by Jacob Roundtree), Hegel’s holism is a product of a romantic or mystical metaphysics that prioritizes the invisible reality of the Idea over visible realities. In another interpretation (advanced here by Roundtree himself and by (...) Darren Nah, Alan Patten, and Paul Rosenberg), Hegel’s holism is instrumental to preserving individual freedoms or interests by embedding them in a larger cultural or institutional context. A third interpretation, not necessarily incompatible with the second (and exemplified here by contributions from Frederick Neuhouser, Angelica Nuzzo, and Terry Pinkard), treats the Hegelian whole as rational intrinsically, not merely because it is instrumental to other ends. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 25.1 (2001) 169-171 [Access article in PDF] Book Review The Passion for Happiness: Samuel Johnson and David Hume The Passion for Happiness: Samuel Johnson and David Hume, by Adam Potkay; 241 pp. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000, $42.50. This book is a sustained attack on the widespread impression that Samuel Johnson and David Hume were antithetical characters, a notion largely nourished by that memorable moment when (...) Boswell brings up Hume "and other skeptical innovators" and Johnson replies, as we all remember, "Truth will not afford sufficient food to their vanity; so they have betaken themselves to error. Truth, sir, is a cow which will yield such people no more milk, and so they have gone to milk the bull." Professor Potkay feels that this image has radically distorted our perception of the truth.A large part of the problem, as Potkay sees it, is that the Johnson of the biography is not the same as the Johnson seen in his writings. Boswell, he claims, "superbly fashioned a Johnson after his own heart" (p. 29). Biography is beset with the misapprehensions we all have of another individual, but personal writing is equally subject to rhetorical posturing, selective memory, and other histrionics of the ego.Potkay makes a strong and interesting case for the proposition that Johnson and Hume were in accord as to their ideas of happiness. "Johnson and Hume set forth largely compatible visions of human happiness that, while rooted in Cicero, draw as well on modern authors..." (p. 5). In this view, happiness is intrinsically social, the inverse of Sartre's L'enfer, c'est les autres. We are estimable in our own eyes only if we are so in the eyes of others. The astronomer in Rasselas finally surmounts his delusion that he controls the weather only by leaving his solitude for the society of others. Hume declared that perfect solitude is the greatest punishment that we can suffer (p. 60). Hume and Johnson both agree that cities afford the greatest happiness through a multiplicity of agreeable consciousness--London for Johnson and Paris for Hume.Potkay argues that the chief ethic in the writings of both Hume and Johnson [End Page 169] "is the eclectic, Ciceronian brand of Stoicism Hume delineates in 'the Stoic', a sociable Stoicism whose end is 'the moderating of our passions, the enlightening of our reason'" (p. 77). The path to happiness lies in cultivating reason and moderating passion. However, unlike ethicists that downgrade the passions, Hume and Johnson see the passions as necessary and good. As against the whole duty of man, they think that pride is good, unless it causes pain to others. This is fresh news for those of us who have squirmed in Sunday school classes when pride was severely denounced and humility recommended--squirmed in spite of our reverence for Milton. Johnson and Hume viewed pride and the pleasure derived from praise as inspiring progress in trades, professions, arts, and science. It excites ingenuity. This is what we didn't dare say in Sunday school.Potkay searches indefatigably for parallels between the two men. We are told that they both rejected the hard determinism that some thinkers derived from Newtonian physics. In the midst of all this we have another discussion of tragedy, pity and fear, etc., the sort of thing that requires the reckless exuberance of youth in order to relish. Are we expected to feel astonished that here too we find them in accord? The parallels between the two men are pushed to the point that a reader might begin to suspect that there is a hidden half of the text that is being withheld, perhaps countervailing evidence. We begin to feel that lurking suspicion evoked by someone too zealously dedicated to a thesis.By the middle of the book, a reader is likely to be convinced that far from going forth to milk the bull, Hume was almost an intellectual twin of Johnson. At the same time, though, sepia thoughts begin to seep into the mind. We notice that these parallel thoughts... (shrink)

The Golden rule expression for x-ray absorption spectra (XAS) is typically calculated within a one-particle (quasiparticle) approximation and generally leads to good agreement between theory and experiment. The fact that a quasiparticle approximation works fairly well is surprising, since it neglects satellite excitations and intrinsic losses due to a suddenly created core-hole. The resolution of this paradox requires physics beyond the independent particle approximation. This is discussed here using an effective Green's function formulation based on a quasi-boson model that (...) takes interference between inelastic losses into account. This approach shows that inelastic excitations such as multi-electron excitations tend to be suppressed, and that the XAS is given by a broadened quasiparticle particle approximation, together with weak satellite structure and edge singularity effects. (shrink)

The radical evolutionary step that divides human decision-making from that of nonhumans is the ability to excite the reward process for its own sake, in imagination. Combined with hyperbolic over-valuation of the present, this ability is a potential threat to both the individual's long term survival and the natural selection of high intelligence. Human belief is intrinsically or under-founded, which may or may not be adaptive.

Kierkegaard’s attitude toward the family of issues usually associated with the rubric ‘nature and grace’ has long been disputed by his interpreters. Some of have seen him as a proponent of the ‘grace perfects nature’ position while others have viewed him as a radical bifurcator of nature and grace. Actually, Kierkegaard’s treatment of these issues is more nuanced. He does propose that human nature intrinsically possesses a yearning that can only be satisfied by God’s grace (and therefore nature is oriented (...) toward grace), but he suggests that the grace that God offers is utterly unanticipated, counter-intuitive, and potentially offensive (and therefore grace disrupts nature). The prospect of God’s self-emptying love is something that nature did not know would fulfill its deepest longings, and which excites both attraction and repulsion. (shrink)

An intrinsic property is roughly a property things have in virtue of how they are, as opposed to how they are related to things outside of them. This paper argues that it is not possible to give a definition of 'intrinsic' that involves only logical, modal and mereological notions, and does not depend on any special assumptions about either properties or possible worlds.