This paper presents a simple model to estimate the number of languages that existed throughout history, and considers philosophical and linguistic implications of the findings. The estimated number is 150,000 plus or minus 50,000. Because only few of those remain, and there is no reason to believe that that remainder is a statistically representative sample, we should be very cautious about universalistic claims based on existing linguistic variation.

One of Jacques Derrida’s richest and most provocative works, Life Death challenges and deconstructs one of the most deeply rooted dichotomies of Western thought: life and death. Here Derrida rethinks the traditional philosophical understanding of the relationship between life and death, undertaking multidisciplinary analyses of a range of topics, including philosophy, linguistics, and the life sciences. In seeking to understand the relationship between life and death, he engages in close readings of Freudian psychoanalysis, the philosophy of (...) Nietzsche and Heidegger, French geneticist François Jacob, and epistemologist Georges Canguilhem. Derrida gave his “Life Death” seminar over fourteen sessions between 1975 and 1976 at the École normale supérieure in Paris as part of the preparation for students studying for the agrégation, a notoriously competitive qualifying exam. The theme for the exam that year was “Life and Death,” but Derrida made a critical modification to the title by dropping the coordinating conjunction. The resulting title of Life Death poses a philosophical question about the close relationship between life and death. Derrida argues that death must be considered neither as the opposite of life nor as the truth or fulfillment of it, but rather as that which both limits life and makes it possible. Through these captivating sessions, Derrida thus not only questions traditional understandings of the relationship between life and death, but also ultimately develops a new way of thinking about what he calls “life death.”. (shrink)

Although declarations of the death of God seem to be provocations announcing the end of the era of theology, this announcement is actually central to the Christian revelation in its most classic forms, as well as to its reworkings in contemporary religious thought. Indeed provocative new possibilities for thinking theologically open up precisely in the wake of the death of God. Already Hegel envisaged a revolutionary new realization of divinity emerging in and with the secular world through its (...) establishment of a total order of immanence. However, in postmodern times this comprehensive order aspired to by modern secularism implodes or cracks open towards the wholly Other. A hitherto repressed demand for the absolute difference of the religious, or for “transcendence”, returns with a vengeance. This difference is what could not be stated in terms of the Hegelian System, for reasons that poststructuralist writers particularly have insisted on: all representations of God are indeed dead. Yet this does not mean that they cannot still be powerful, but only that they cannot assign God any stable identity. Nietzsche’s sense of foreboding concerning the death of God is coupled with his intimations of the demise of representation and “grammar” as epistemologically bankrupt, but also with his vision of a positive potential for creating value in the wake of this collapse of all linguistically articulated culture. He points the way towards the emergence of a post-secular religious thinking of what exceeds thought and representation. (shrink)

My hypothesis is that the cognitive challenge posed by death might have had a co-evolutionary role in the development of linguistic faculties. First, I claim that mirror neurons, which enable us to understand others’ actions and emotions, not only activate when we directly observe someone, but can also be triggered by language: words make us feel bodily sensations. Second, I argue that the death of another individual cannot be understood by virtue of the mirror neuron mechanism, since (...) the dead provide no neural pattern for mirroring: this cognitive task requires symbolic thought, which in turn involves emotions. Third, I describe the symbolic leap of the human species as a cognitive detachment from the here and now, allowing displaced reference: through symbols the human mind can refer to what is absent, possible, or even impossible (like the presence of a dead person). Such a detachment has had a huge adaptive impact: adopting a coevolutionary standpoint can help explain why language is as effective as environmental inputs in order to stimulate our bodily experience. In the end I suggest a further coevolutionary reversal : if language is necessary to understand the death of the other, it might also be true that the peculiar cognitive problem posed by the death of the other (the corpse is present, but the other is absent) has contributed to the crucial transition from an indexical sign system to the symbolic level, i.e., the cognitive detachment . Death and language, as Heidegger claimed, have an essential relation for humans, both from an evolutionary and a phenomenological perspective: they have shaped the symbolic consciousness that make us conceive of them. (shrink)

Linguistic Modelling of Scenarios proposes a paradigm change from the 'systemic VIEW' to 'systems SCIENCE', so as to extend the methodology of conventional science of physics into the domains hitherto beyond the reach of this kind of treatment. The book: I. Identifies the problematic issues in current approaches to the 'systemic or structural view' of parts of the world as opposed to the 'quantitative/qualitative views' of conventional science of physics and the arts whereby introducing the 'third culture'. II. Locates (...) the position of the structural view in the context of 'human intellectual endeavour'. III. Discusses the fundamental questions raised by modelling aspects of human behaviour. IV. Introduces the basic ideas and the symbolism of linguistic modelling which are then applied to turning descriptions of scenarios as a story or narrative into reasoning schemes. V. Describes a methodology of 'problem solving' of which design thinking and the operation of purposive systems are seen as essential ingredients. Problem solving is a universal activity of living in particular human beings through innovation, invention and creativity. Lack of this activity leads to death! Problem solving is regarded as pivotal point which may propel the spread of the modified structural view into social, technical, cultural and educational awareness. VI. Shows the location of aspects of conventional science within the scheme of systems science whereby achieving a 'continuity of the scientific endeavour'. VII. Outlines a teaching scheme for 'linguistic modelling'. Janos Korn explains how a view can be converted into a science which can lead to a possibility of 'organised speculation' or simulation of behaviour, exploring the effects of variation of parameters on performance, and the occurrence of outcomes of operations, beneficial or not, of dynamic structures. Static and dynamic structures are expressed in more rigorous and computable terms so that the results of analysis and design of human activity scenarios could be exposed to at least thought experiments. Linguistic Modelling of Scenarios is an informative read for any professionals, teachers and students of engineering, social science, management, business and production. (shrink)

‘Language death’ is an undeniable phenomenon of our modern times as languages have started to disappear at an alarming rate. This has led linguists, anthropologists, philosophers and educationists to engage with this issue at various levels in an attempt to try to understand the decline in this rich area of human communication and culture. In this article I refer to some interesting and innovative educational projects in the Amazon region of Brazil, which are revitalizing local languages, cultures and communities. (...) I analyse these projects in the light of some of Paulo Freire’s ideas, particularly his views on conscientization, praxis and contextualization, and will argue that these educational ventures might be viewed as useful templates for other countries and peoples seeking to reverse or avoid ‘language-culture’ death. (shrink)

We propose to analyze well-known cases of "imaginative resistance" from the philosophical literature (Gendler, Walton, Weatherson) as involving the inference that particular content should be attributed to either: (i) a character rather than the narrator or, (ii) an unreliable, irrational, opinionated, and/or morally deviant "first person" narrator who was originally perceived to be a typical impersonal, omniscient, "effaced" narrator. We model the latter type of attribution in terms of two independently motivated linguistic mechanisms: accommodation of a discourse referent (Lewis, (...) Stalnaker, Kamp) and 'cautious' updating as a model of non-cooperative information exchange (Eckardt). (shrink)

An exposition of Spinoza's views of the cause and cure of death. He holds death to be disruption of mind/body which need not involve becoming a corpse; amnesia counts. It follows that his criterion of personal identity includes memory, so Spinozistic immortality is impersonal. The cause of death is always something external, for nothing can destroy itself. (This principle, however, is not universally true; Spinoza was led to it by mistaken physics.) Suicide is irrational. Fear of (...) class='Hi'>death is to be overcome by realization that since adequate ideas are eternal, to the extent that they consitute our minds we are eternal also. (But if so, isn't suicide rational after all? And since language depends on memory, the eternal understanding of adequate ideas is non-linguistic and non-symbolic; what then can it be?). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:From Death to Life: Key Themes in Plato’s Phaedo by Franco TRABATTONIAthanasia A. GiasoumiTRABATTONI, Franco. From Death to Life: Key Themes in Plato’s Phaedo. Boston: Brill, 2023. 190 pp. Cloth, $143.00In his comprehensive study of the Phaedo, Franco Trabattoni challenges the conventional interpretation of Plato’s thought by denying that Plato was ever a dogmatist or a skeptic. The opening chapter proposes that Plato employs a “third (...) way” standing on the Parmenidean distinction between dôxa (belief) and epistēme (knowledge). According to Trabattoni, the Phaedo (together with all other dialogues dealing with the distinction between sensible and intelligible reality) implies that knowledge of the forms can be obtained only after the separation of body and soul and only without the assistance of intermediaries. He contends that humans have no better instrument than lôgos to discover the intelligible realities (forms) that philosophy seeks. However, because lôgos serves as an intermediary, he believes that the mediation of lôgos introduces an unavoidable fault into the cognitive process, which is directly linked to the concept of dôxa. He maintains that this hypothesis is essential for the arguments presented in the Phaedo’s first part to make sense.Trabattoni delves into the Phaedo not just philosophically but also linguistically, particularly in passage 60c, where Cebes brings up the question of suicide. Notably, in chapter 2, Trabattoni provides a new translation of this passage that contrasts with the readings supplied by Dorter, Gallop, and Boter. Trabattoni claims that Plato responds to the problem of suicide by adhering to the eudaemonistic stance that no obligation that goes against the happiness of the individual subject to it is of any value.Chapter 3 features a counterargument to the predominant viewpoint positing an inconsistency between the Phaedo and the Republic. Trabattoni asserts that these dialogues agree in maintaining that true virtue can be ascribed only to those who believe in metaphysical realities and possess an exclusive desire to acquire knowledge of them. He posits that the disparities between the two dialogues can be attributed primarily to differing perspectives rather than a significant theoretical divide.In my opinion, chapter 4 is the book’s most interesting and original portion. Here, Trabattoni argues that Plato’s contrast in the Phaedo between genuine and false philosophers is directed at Antisthenes, specifically, that Plato opposes his Socratism to Antisthenes’ by depicting the Platonic Socrates as a genuine philosopher (philōsophos) in contrast to Antisthenes’ Socrates, who is portrayed as a false one (philōdoxos). According to Trabattoni, Plato endeavors to provide what Antisthenes’ portrayal of Socrates does not, namely, a metaphysical perspective that differentiates between opinion and truth. Though novel and charming, Trabattoni’s interpretation is not supported by the text since the Phaedo makes no direct allusion to Antisthenes’ Socrates, mentioning Antisthenes only at the beginning (58b) as someone present at Socrates’ last moments. Thus, the book’s strongest section could also be considered its weakest.Chapter 5 argues that the recollection theory is not intended to establish the possibility of a complete retrieval of the knowledge of the forms. [End Page 163] Trabattoni disagrees with Scott’s and others’ assertion that recollection is a method of inquiry on the grounds that Socrates never explains how the alleged “method” of recollection should be applied. Rather, Trabattoni contends, the function of recollection is to explain why human intellective knowledge cannot exceed the boundary of dôxa. Trabattoni argues further that the recollection theory indicates that only when the soul is separated from the body, that is, when a person dies, is it possible to gain knowledge of the forms.Chapters 6 and 7 examine in depth the philosophical, methodological, and linguistic aspects of the objections raised by Cebes and Simmias as well as Socrates’ ensuing arguments regarding the immortality of the soul. Additionally, Trabattoni explores the historical background of Plato’s Phaedo and the impact on it of Pythagoreanism, Orphism, and Eleatic philosophy.Chapter 8 is another particularly captivating section. It offers a fresh perspective on the concept of the “second voyage” (deũteros ploũs), challenging the prevailing interpretation, on which the second voyage signifies the triumph of the... (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought considerable death and economic hardship to populations around the world. Yet, its legacy may be in the form of Long COVID, a condition in which individuals who have had COVID infection continue to experience symptoms often for many months after their acute illness. One group of symptoms is described by sufferers as “brain fog”. This expression captures a constellation of complaints that are cognitive-linguistic in nature, with affected individuals reporting a significant impact of (...) these problems on their occupational functioning and daily lives. This chapter reports the findings of case studies of two adults with Long COVID. Both adults enjoyed good health prior to their COVID infection. Neither was judged to be unwell enough to require hospitalization during the acute phase of their illness. Yet, they each reported an incomplete recovery and the persistence of debilitating symptoms over many months. The case studies provide a detailed account of their pre-morbid functioning and lifestyle, the onset and progression of their COVID illness, and a comprehensive analysis of their language skills. Both adults had intact structural language skills in the presence of high-level discourse difficulties. Specifically, they struggled to harness their strong skills in structural language to produce informative discourse, the transmission of which is an important pragmatic function of communication. The language profile associated with these cases of Long COVID is discussed in relation to other conditions that are assessed and treated by speech-language pathologists. (shrink)

This article applies some conceptual tools from semiotics to better understand the disastrous impacts of the world economy on global ecology. It traces the accelerating production of material disorder and waste to the logic of the money sign, as economic production processes simultaneously increase exchange-values and entropy. The exchange of indexical and iconic signs is essential to the dynamics of ecological systems and the proliferation of biological diversity. The human species has added a third kind of sign, the symbol, and (...) more recently a fourth: all-purpose money. Money does not refer to any referent either through contiguity, similarity, or convention. It is an empty sign, capable of assuming any significance that its owner attributes to it. The article argues that the concept of symbolic reference should be restricted to cultural and linguistic phenomena. Money qualifies as a new species of sign based on its exceedingly open mode of reference. It does not refer to any object by social convention but owes its specific properties precisely to the absence of such conventions. The logic of money pivots on decontextualisation: it presupposes and encourages the detachment of exchange values, people, and concepts from the particular and the local. Selective advantage is no longer primarily about calibration within local contexts, but increasingly a matter of transcending or emancipating oneself from the specific. This drift toward decontextualisation reverses the evolution of complexity and diversity throughout the planetary biosphere. (shrink)

: American society traditionally has assumed a univocal notion of "death," largely because we have only one word for it and, until recently, have not needed a more nuanced notion. The reality of death-processes does not preclude the reality of death events. Linguistically, "death" can be understood only as an event; there are other words for the process. Our death vocabulary should expand to reflect multiple events along the process from sickness to decomposition. Depending on (...) context, some death-related events may constitute a more obvious discontinuity than others and more justifiably may be considered "death" within that context. There is no reason to assume a priori that there must be an overarching, unitary concept of death from which all diagnostic criteria must derive. Regarding organ transplantation, the relevant question is not "Is the patient dead?" but rather "Can organs X, Y, Z . . . be removed without causing or hastening death or harming the patient?". (shrink)

An analysis of Derrida’s early work engaging Plato, Hegel, and the life sciences. Germs of Death explores the idea of genesis, or dissemination, in the early work of Jacques Derrida. Looking at Derrida’s published and unpublished work from “Force and Signification” in 1963 to Glas in 1974, Mauro Senatore traces the development of Derrida’s understanding of genesis both linguistically and biologically, and argues that this topic is an overlooked thread that draws together Derrida’s readings of Plato and Hegel. Demonstrating (...) how Derrida’s analysis liberates the understanding of genesis from Platonic and Hegelian presupposition, Senatore also highlights Derrida’s engagement with the biological thought of his day. Senatore also shows that the implications of Derrida’s insights extend into contemporary ethical and political questions relating to postgenomic conceptions of life. “Senatore here demonstrates with stunning insight, clarity, and economy that Derrida’s work of the 1960s and ’70s needs to be understood as a radical critique or deconstruction of both the philosophical concept of life (from Plato to Hegel) and the prevailing biological model of heredity as a ‘genetic program.’ It will be impossible henceforth to read Derrida on questions of the trace, dissemination, life, and so on, without coming to terms with ‘the germs of death.’” — Michael Naas, author of The End of the World and Other Teachable Moments: Jacques Derrida’s Final Seminar “The book represents a major contribution to the field of Derrida studies and phenomenology, particularly its attention to the concept of genesis that formed the basis of Derrida’s earliest study of Husserl and the origin of his concept of writing. The unique contribution is the inclusion of the works from the periods of the mid-1970s, which have been neglected in the mainstream scholarship on Derrida.” — Gregg Lambert, author of Philosophy after Friendship: Deleuze’s Conceptual Personae. (shrink)

Whereas traditional abolitionist arguments call for putting an end to capital punishment, French-Algerian philosopher Jacques Derrida emphasizes its survival, writing that “even when it will have been abolished, the death penalty will survive.” My dissertation interprets this perplexing claim by attending to the specificity of Derrida’s discourse on survival or survivance, contending that the death penalty serves an irreducible role in the constitution of the (individual or collective) subject, such that, even in the event of its abolition, some (...) form of the death penalty must continue. Through close readings of Heidegger, Kant, Nietzsche, Freud, Michel de Montagne, and Victor Hugo, as well as Shakespeare, linguist Émile Benveniste, Hungarian psychoanalysts Abraham and Torok, and the nineteenth-century political theorist Juan Donoso Cortés, the dissertation provides an account of the function of the death penalty as a specific institution within the modern penal system of a collective political body and as the legacy of ancient political economies based on sacrificial rites. This analysis interprets the death penalty both structurally and specifically, accounting for the indissociable relationship between the institution and its conceptual structure more broadly. Survivance, I argue, only ever occurs through an other, leaving open the question of the survival of the death penalty to the dissemination of indefinite and unpredictable forms that could consist in its abolition. (shrink)

Modem theories of metaphor seem to be pretty unanimous in taking the "death" of a metaphor literally. By doing so they too easily wipe out sedimented, past meanings and so ignore semantic memory. A further consequence of this stand is that meanings are reduced to a one-dimensional (either metaphoric or literal), static structure. This article, in a procedure that resembles a sort of "archeology of meaning," is critical of such an attitude, for which conventionalization of metaphors means their burial (...) in the graveyard of language. It attempts to provide a ground for the assumption that labeling of metaphors as "dead" is not lethal, for their meanings can be revitalized and recreated, according to our linguistic competence, diachronic perspective, interests, and needs. It contains implicit support for the thesis that semantic mechanisms are flexible, dynamic, and subject to evolutionary growth. Not even the death of a metaphor can be exempt from this overall scheme. (shrink)

The territorial contraction and speaker-reduction undergone by the Welsh language during the past few centuries has resulted in its categorization by many linguists as an obsolescent language. This study illustrates that, although it is undeniably showing some signs of decline, Welsh stands in marked contrast to many previously documented cases of language death. Against this backdrop of contraction a steady revitalization is taking place. Based upon extensive fieldwork in two sociolinguistically contrasting communities, this book is the first to examine (...) the position and nature of contemporary Welsh with reference to both obsolescence-related developments and changes under way in the dialects. Jones focuses on immersion education, long heralded as the saviour of the language and, by examining the variety of Welsh being produced by immersion pupils, seeks to determine whether this claim is justified, or whether such pupils are in fact 'speaking immersion'. As well as discussing the recent linguistic change shown by contemporary Welsh within the language death framework, the author examines the ways in which the language has been standardized and their repercussions for language maintenance. By way of comparison these tensions and implications are also explored with reference to the other varieties of P-Celtic, namely Breton and Cornish. Series Information: Oxford Studies in Language Contact Series Editor: Professor Suzanne Romaine, Merton College, Oxford Series ISBN: 0-19-961466-0 Series Description: Most of the world's speech communities are multilingual, and contact between languages is thus an important force in the everyday lives of most people. Studies of language contact should therefore form an integral part of work in theoretical, social, and historical linguistics. This series makes available a collection of research monographs which present case studies of language contact around the world. As well as providing an indispensable source of data for the serious researcher, it contributes significantly to theoretical developments in the field. (shrink)

The topic of this paper is the general thesis that the death of the human organism is what constitutes the death of a person. All admit that when the death of a human organism occurs, in some form or another, this normally does result in the death of a person. But, some maintain, organismic death is not the same thing as personal death. Why? Because, they maintain, despite the fact that persons are associated with (...) a human organism (‘their organism’), they are not identical with their organism, and so they can, at least in principle and perhaps in actuality, die before or after their organism dies. The thesis described above I shall call ‘the two-deaths thesis’ in virtue of the fact that its proponents believe that there are two kinds of death, viz. organismic death and personal death. The opposing thesis, according to which the death of a human organism does constitute the death of a person, I call the ‘one death thesis’. After giving some background remarks in section 2 of this paper, in section 3 I argue that, if we take linguistic usage seriously, neither the two-deaths thesis nor the one-death thesis is true. I argue, rather, that so far as linguistic usage goes it is indeterminate which of them is true. In section 4 I go further and argue that if one accepts a widely held metaphysical view, viz. that the world itself partially determines reference and the extensions of our concepts, then it is plausible that the one-death thesis is true despite the facts about linguistic usage. (shrink)

In reply to my criticism of his argument for the fine-grained theory of action individuation, Hendrickson proposes a new argument. He notes that there is a kind of indeterminacy with respect to Caesar’s death in the case of Brutus’s stabbing of Caesar that is missing in the case of Brutus’s killing of Caesar. He argues that the best explanation for the indeterminacy is given by the fine-grained view. I show that the argument fails for similar reasons. Minimalists have good (...) reasons not to accept a crucial premise, viz., that the indeterminacy is metaphysical rather than merely linguistic. (shrink)

Well over five thousand languages are known to exist or to have existed in the world, but hundreds of these are no longer living languages used by speakers and speech communities in their day-to-day activities and lives. Some of them lead a pseudolife as revered monuments of the past which still have some restricted and specialised roles to play today, such as Latin, Ancient Greek, Church Slavonic and others, but most of them are of interest and concern only to a (...) small group of linguists, historians and some other experts who look at the past. Many languages have disappeared without being known to us in any great detail, with only some fragmentary materials in them - written or noted down by speakers or observers of them hundreds or even thousands of years ago - at our disposal to give us some idea as to what those languages were like. Others have disappeared without even that scanty information about their nature being available to us; only their names are known from historical records, or perhaps some remarks were written down by someone many years ago and were preserved over the ages to tell us something about some special features of such a language or such languages and who and what kind of people their speakers were. Many other languages, certainly a much larger number than the dead languages about which we know something, have disappeared without our knowing anything of or about them. (shrink)

Africa, along with Asia, is the continent with the highest number of ‘living’ indigenous languages. European languages, mainly English, French and Portuguese, have spread throughout all African nations during the last 200 years; however, until today, the use of these ‘foreign’ languages has been mostly restricted to certain domains, such as higher education, politics and business, and also to a relatively small number of people. According to Scotton (1982: 68) only 10 per cent or less of the rural African population (...) have a considerable competence in the imported languages, even though these are in many instances the official languages of their home countries. African vernaculars are generally not in danger of being replaced by European languages. However, we observe a diminishing use of African vernaculars, not only in an increasing number of domains, but also with regard to the absolute number of indigenous languages; that means, in short, that linguistic vitality and variety on the African continent is decreasing. (shrink)

Over the centuries, the idea of the self has both fascinated and confounded philosophers. From the ancient Greeks, who problematized issues of identity and self-awareness, to Locke and Hume, who popularized minimalist views of the self, to the efforts of postmodernists in our time to decenter the human subject altogether, the idea that there is something called a self has always been in steady decline. But for Richard Sorabji, one of our most celebrated living intellectuals, this negation of the self (...) is dispiriting. In Self , he sets out to recover the rich variety of positive accounts of the self from Antiquity right up to the present, while offering his own inspiring view of what precisely the self might be. Drawing on Eastern religion, classical antiquity, and Western philosophy, Sorabji proceeds to tackle a number of thematic debates that have preoccupied philosophers over the ages, including the concept of the self, its sameness and mutability, the idea of the resurrection of the body and spirit, and the fear of death. According to Sorabji, the self is not an undetectable soul or ego, but an embodied individual whose existence is plain to see. It is also neither a linguistic creation nor a psychological fiction, but something that owns both a consciousness and a body. Ultimately, Sorabji argues, the demise of a positive idea of the self stems from much older and more pervasive problems of identity than we realize. Through an astute reading of this tradition, he helps us come to terms with our uneasiness about the subject in an account that will be at the forefront of philosophical debates for years to come. (shrink)

Drugie wydanie książki prof. dr Rosenberga zawiera, jak autor sam zaznacza, tylko niewielkie stylistyczne poprawki w stosunku do wydania pierwszego, które ukazało się w roku 1983. Na uwagę zasługuje to, że omawiane wydanie ukazało się w renomowanym wydawnictwie Hacketta. Wydanie pierwsze zainteresowało raczej akademickie kręgi filozofów i psychologów. Rosenberg jest profesorem filozofii analitycznej w Uniwersytecie North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Z jego bibliografii obejmującej kilkadziesiąt pozycji na szczególną uwagę zasługują książki: Linguistic Representation, One World and our Knowledge of It, (...) The Thinking Self, Beyond Formalism: Naming and Necessity for Human Beings. (shrink)

Homer'sIliadis an epic poem full of war and battles, but scholars have noted that ‘[t]he Homeric poems are interested in death far more than they are in fighting’. Even though long passages of the poem, particularly the so-called ‘battle books’ (Il.Books 5–8, 11–17, 20–2), consist of little other than fighting, individual battles are often very short with hardly ever a longer exchange of blows. Usually, one strike is all it takes for the superior warrior to dispatch his opponent, and (...) death occurs swiftly. The prominence of death in Homeric battle scenes raises the question of how and in which terms dying in battle is being depicted in theIliad: for while fighting can be described in a straightforward fashion, death is an abstract concept and therefore difficult to grasp. Recent developments in cognitive linguistics have ascertained that, when coping with difficult and abstract concepts, such as emotions, the human mind is likely to resort to figurative language and particularly to metaphors. (shrink)

We pragmatists have within our tradition significant methodological resources for contributing to the understanding of the meaning of beliefs about the nature of death—a topic that has still not received enough attention. 1 I want here to articulate what crucial features of pragmatism I believe to be especially helpful for such a contribution, and to explain something about why they are helpful in this regard. As my title indicates, I am not drawing upon the neo-pragmatism of those such as (...) Richard Rorty, but instead upon some of pragmatism’s rich classical American manifestations, according to which theory must be connected to practice and experience (as opposed to neopragmatism’s linguistic preoccupation).2 In.. (shrink)

This paper samples the large body of neuroscientific evidence suggesting that each mental function takes place within specific neural structures. For instance, vision appears to occur in the visual cortex, motor control in the motor cortex, spatial memory in the hippocampus, and cognitive control in the prefrontal cortex. Evidence comes from neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, neurochemistry, brain stimulation, neuroimaging, lesion studies, and behavioral genetics. If mental functions take place within neural structures, mental functions cannot survive brain death. Therefore, there is no (...) mental life after brain death. -/- 1. The Neural Localization of Mental Functions - 1.1 Perception and Motor Control - 1.2 Memory - 1.3 Emotion - 1.4 Language - 1.5 Thinking - 1.6 Attention and Consciousness - 1.7 Spirituality -- 2. Objections - 2.1 Linguistic Dualism - 2.2 Mere Correlation - 2.3 Neural Plasticity - 2.4 Intentionality - 2.5 Phenomenal Consciousness - 2.6 Subjectivity - 2.7 Self-Knowledge - 2.8 Free Will - 2.9 Are We Just Indulging in Physicalistic Wishful Thinking? -- 3. Conclusion -- Appendix: Physicalism and the Afterlife. (shrink)

Referring to certain lexical units of Roget’s Thesaurus, the authors consider in the article philosophical interpretation of verbal means for creation and further transformation of culturally significant senses and meanings that are aligned with death and dying. Thus, the given study involves one of the most famous and historically significant treasuries of language into plentiful and practically oriented philosophical examination. The authors propose a heuristic scheme to classify lexical units according to their structure and meaning with taking general and (...) peripheral meanings into account. The article hermeneutically reveals linguistic and cultural sources of common images and concepts of death and dying. The authors make up a conclusion about sense-generative, gnoseological, world-view, cultural and communicative functions of the above-mentioned units that point to death and dying. Thus, Roget’s Thesaurus can be considered a helpful guide to philosophical examination of culturally prescribed or determined concepts of death and dying, of verbally expressed attitudes to death issues. (shrink)

In this essay, I examine the ‘Postulates of Linguistics’ chapter of A Thousand Plateaus. In regard to this chapter, I aim to demonstrate something that has remained unrecognised about minor language in Deleuze and Guattari. I aim to show not only the characteristics of Deleuzian speaking in tongues that overlap with Foucaultian speaking-freely and with Derridean speaking-distantly, but also and more importantly, I hope to show how it is possible for us to make a language speak in tongues. Derrida's way (...) of speaking is made only by forming an enunciation that states a self-contradiction, which thereby makes the enunciation imply more than it says. Foucault's way of speaking is made only by forming an enunciation that states the truth directly and loudly, which thereby makes the enunciation do more than it says. And finally, Deleuze way of speaking is made only by forming an enunciation that states a command abstracted from its context, which thereby makes the enunciation proliferate. All three ways of speaking are made not for the benefit of the speaker, but ‘in favour of’ others. And perhaps this speaking ‘in favour of’ others will allow us to come to understand the true meaning of the phrase ‘capitalism and schizophrenia’. (shrink)

The work of Jacques Derrida has received relatively little attention within nursing philosophy. Perhaps this is because Derrida is known best for deconstructing philosophy itself, a task he performed by making language unintelligible to make a point. This in itself makes his work daunting for nurses who do applied philosophy. Despite these difficulties, Derrida's focus on holding open a space for ideas, particularly those ideas that are invisible or unpopular, holds potential for enhancing the diversity of ideas within nursing. His (...) work, liberally scattered with religious references, and focused on deconstructing language that served the profits of a few, earned him the characterization of a prophet without religion. This idea was further supported in the way his deconstruction attempted to keep spaces open for the un‐representable and its generativity in opening new possibilities in life. A deconstruction for generative purposes is particularly helpful within palliative care where language quickly takes on dogma in the face of mystery and where new possibilities support life amidst the irrevocable nature of death. In this article, I discuss Derrida's deconstructive approach of differance and then apply that approach to language common in palliative care. (shrink)

Drugie wydanie książki prof. dr Rosenberga zawiera, jak autor sam zaznacza, tylko niewielkie stylistyczne poprawki w stosunku do wydania pierwszego, które ukazało się w roku 1983. Na uwagę zasługuje to, że omawiane wydanie ukazało się w renomowanym wydawnictwie Hacketta. Wydanie pierwsze zainteresowało raczej akademickie kręgi filozofów i psychologów. Rosenberg jest profesorem filozofii analitycznej w Uniwersytecie North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Z jego bibliografii obejmującej kilkadziesiąt pozycji na szczególną uwagę zasługują książki: Linguistic Representation, One World and our Knowledge of It, (...) The Thinking Self, Beyond Formalism: Naming and Necessity for Human Beings. (shrink)

According to a prominent view of organism persistence, organisms cease to exist at death. According to a rival view, organisms can continue to exist as dead organisms. Most of the arguments in favor of the latter view rely on linguistic and common sense intuitions. I propose a new argument for somaticism by appealing to two other sources that have thus far not figured in the debate: the concept of naturalness, and biological descriptions of organisms, in particular in ethology (...) and ecology. I show that if we hone in on the relevant notion of naturalness, we can show that organisms can continue to instantiate the natural property being an organism after death. (shrink)

While linguistic and analytical interpretations of the Euthyphro are usually circumscribed to two passages of the dialogue, there is a general tendency to disregard the distinc­tion between the ὅσιον and the θεοφιλές. Consequently, one makes hardly any attempt to understand Plato’s criticism of religion. The concepts of θεραπεὶα τοῦ θεοῦ and ἀπεργασία provide us with the possibility of positively characterizing piety and distinguishing it from pure love affection. Contrary to the views of Schleiermacher and Gigon, but following Willamowitz, the (...) present paper shows that the idea of service to the god consists in the doric harmony of Λόγος and Ἔργον, combined with various duties and services to the state. While this is precisely what justice is, the criticism of religion is not solely negative. Through justice, the ὅσιον becomes elevated to εὖ ζῆν and the highest ἀγαθόν in private as well as in public dimension. Without justice, one is left with the neccessity to flee to the other world and embrace the ὁμοούσια with the god, as shown in the Theaetus. If that is the meaning of Socrates’ death, then the idea resembles Kant’s postulate of the immortality of the soul, for in both cases one is faced with the neverending task of realizing the highest good. The question is whether it is possible to realize the δικαιοσύνη in a political life. Plato considers the issue in his the Republic, Sophist, Statesman and Laws. In the Statesman, justice is the primary goal of any political life that can only be attained through cultivting the divine relationship of harmoni­ous elements in the ὅσιον. It is here that Plato’s doctrine of the ὅσιον becomes completed. (shrink)

As a model for processing information about people's perceptions to understand the complex world and society in which they live, the cultural schema serves as a key concept in Cultural Linguistics when directing to the perception and processing of information about people, and social groups, and events. Cultural schema theory is valuable in deciphering culturally structured concepts, covering the entire range of human experience expressed in many fields such as education, belief, religion, etc. Through the practice of sacred rituals, each (...) religious believer can form his system of ideas about entities in his or her belief world. Those experiences and experiences are conceptualized through the language picture. In the process of cultural development and integration, the cultural awareness of the Catholic community also reflects certain changes in Catholicism in the West in harmony with the customs and beliefs of Eastern countries. like Vietnam, expressed through the practice of funeral rites and traditional marriage of the Vietnamese. In this article, by using quantitative and qualitative methods, we have conducted a character analysis of the above cultural schemas based on the corpus of 120 discourses drawn during the implementation perform funeral and marriage rites for Vietnamese Catholics. Research results show that cultural schemas (event diagrams, role schemas, image schemas, propositional schemas, and emotional schemas) reflect the cultural knowledge (beliefs, standards, principles, and expectations) of each Vietnamese Catholic about DEATH and MARRIAGE as a journey or a new transformation in one's life... That is the basis for them to transmit achieve and explain the basic values of these two concepts, helping us to understand more deeply the mind of the Vietnamese Catholic community in Vietnam when performing two important rituals in human life in reality. (shrink)

From the barbed, childish taunt on the school playground, to the eloquent sophistry of a lawyer prising open a legal loophole in a court of law, meaning arises each time we use language to communicate with one another. How we use language - to convey ideas, make requests, ask a favour, and express anger, love or dismay - is of the utmost importance; indeed, linguistic meaning can be a matter of life and death. In The Crucible of Language, (...) Vyvyan Evans explains what we know, and what we do, when we communicate using language; he shows how linguistic meaning arises, where it comes from, and the way language enables us to convey the meanings that can move us to tears, bore us to death, or make us dizzy with delight. Meaning is, he argues, one of the final frontiers in the mapping of the human mind. (shrink)

In this essay, I follow the lead of recent scholarship in Saussure linguistics and critically examine the Saussurean doctrine associated with the Course in General Linguistics, which later became a hallmark of structuralism. Specifically, I reconstruct the history of the concluding sentence in the Course which establishes the priority of la langue over everything deemed external to it. This line assumed the status of an oft-cited ‘famous formula’ and became a structuralist motto. The ‘famous formula’ was, however, freely inserted by (...) the editors of the Course who effectively ghostwrote the book after Saussure’s death, and authored a series of early book-reviews of the same text in dedicated scholarly venues. I argue that the editorial success turning their vision of Saussure’s teaching into official doctrine was enabled in part by the dominant social structures regulating twentieth-century European academia. (shrink)

The article examines individual German translations of works by Lesia Ukrainka in various genres, which activate the concept of “struggle.” To establish the linguistic and stylistic analogues, coincidences, and diff erences of the translated works, their typological comparison with the original Ukrainian sources was carried out. It was found that key motifs in the works of Lesia Ukrainka, such as aff ection, resilience, courage, confrontation, and great strength of will and spirit are factors that form the concept of “struggle.” (...) The conceptual meanings and axiological values of the concept of “struggle” created by the poetess are: internal strength and independence; free choice, freedom, and liberty; the desire to have freedom and longing for it as the beginning or continuation of the struggle, a sign of insubordination, the spirit of disobedience; the word as a future weapon for the native language and Ukraine; the desire to prevail; the antithesis of death, sad thoughts, obedience, and others. The analysis revealed that there are some linguistic and stylistic diff erences in the analyzed German translations that are related to the peculiarities of German grammar and word formation. The selection of German equivalents sometimes further reinforces the emphasis of the original text. The concept of “struggle” in Lesia Ukrainka’s works in the analyzed translations into German by well-known translators fully reveals the conceptual picture of the author’s works and expands the possibilities of the reception of Ukrainian linguistic culture for German-speaking readers. (shrink)

At his death in 1992, the eminent philosopher, critic, and theorist Louis Marin left, in addition to a dozen influential books, a corpus of some three hundred articles and essays published in journals and anthologies. A collection of twenty-two essays that appeared between 1971 and 1992, this book interrogates the theory and practice of representation as it is carried out by both linguistic and graphic signs, and thus the complex relation between language and image, between perception and conception. (...) The essays are grouped in four parts that reflect the continuity and coherence of Marin's interests in semiology, narrative, visuality, and painting. The interdisciplinary horizon of the book draws on multiple scholarly resources—the cultural history of the seventeenth century, the philosophy of language, the tools of discourse analysis, the history of art and aesthetics, the analysis of reception—to address a stunning diversity of subjects ranging from historical painting through cartography to the processes of deciphering texts, interpreting stories, and _reading_ images. Throughout the essays, Marin's reflection on representation is supported and deepened by his brilliant exegesis of graphic art. His analysis of works by Caravaggio, Philippe de Champaigne, Le Brun, and Poussin, among others, provides the armature that allows him to describe both the structural logic of representation and the intricate processes of production and reception that make it dynamic and unstable. Marin demonstrates with consummate rigor why the pursuit of a general theory of representation is experienced by artists and critics alike as an inevitable, yet unattainable objective. (shrink)

In _Animacies_, Mel Y. Chen draws on recent debates about sexuality, race, and affect to examine how matter that is considered insensate, immobile, or deathly animates cultural lives. Toward that end, Chen investigates the blurry division between the living and the dead, or that which is beyond the human or animal. Within the field of linguistics, animacy has been described variously as a quality of agency, awareness, mobility, sentience, or liveness. Chen turns to cognitive linguistics to stress how language habitually (...) differentiates the animate and the inanimate. Expanding this construct, Chen argues that animacy undergirds much that is pressing and indeed volatile in contemporary culture, from animal rights debates to biosecurity concerns. Chen's book is the first to bring the concept of animacy together with queer of color scholarship, critical animal studies, and disability theory. Through analyses of dehumanizing insults, the meanings of queerness, animal protagonists in recent Asian/American art and film, the lead in toys panic in 2007, and the social lives of environmental illness, _Animacies_ illuminates a hierarchical politics infused by race, sexuality, and ability. In this groundbreaking book, Chen rethinks the criteria governing agency and receptivity, health and toxicity, productivity and stillness—and demonstrates how attention to the affective charge of matter challenges commonsense orderings of the world. (shrink)

This volume collects for the first time in a single volume all of Kant's writings on religion and rational theology. These works were written during a period of conflict between Kant and the Prussian authorities over his religious teachings. His final statement of religion was made after the death of King Frederick William II in 1797. The historical context and progression of this conflict are charted in the general introduction to the volume and in the translators' introductions to particular (...) texts. All the translations are new with the exception of The Conflict of the Faculties, where the translation has been revised and re-edited to conform to the guidelines of the Cambridge Edition. As is standard with all the volumes in this edition, there are copious linguistic and explanatory notes, and a glossary of key terms. (shrink)

Seeking a Mnemonic Turn: Interior Reflections in Gadamer's Post-Platonic Thought This paper reflects on trajectories and pathways for philosophical hermeneutics, now, after the death of its founder, Hans-Georg Gadamer in 2002. More specifically, it challenges the notion that Gadamer's thought is simply tied to the linguistic turn of the 20th century. Instead, it considers the possibility that Gadamer's thinking makes for an implicit declaration of its own kind, calling for a mnemonic turn in modern philosophy and present day (...) hermeneutics. Some reference will be made to both rationalist and empiricist models of inquiry insofar as Gadamer attempts to take philosophy beyond, for example, the Ur-grammar of Chomsky's linguistic theories, and into a world of post-Platonic memory. (shrink)

The recent death of Peter McHugh becomes an occasion for the remembrance and recollection of the distinctive form of reflexive or analytic social inquiry, which framed his work and that of his longtime friend and collaborator, Alan Blum. Following dual appointments at York University, Toronto, Canada in 1972, Blum and McHugh’s partnership formed the basis for a community of scholars and students throughout the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. A brief review of McHugh and Blum’s works shows theoretical roots in (...) social constructivism and a deep appreciation of the linguistic turn, which in turn lead to the development of a form of social analysis that meets the stringent requirements of a reflexive sociology by repudiating any claim to a privileged exemption of theoretical speech (practice) from the hermeneutical circle of speech and language. Blum and McHugh are shown to embrace and not to evade the hermeneutical circle by a form of social inquiry that subverts the inherent possibilities available within speech and social convention to make available an encounter with the (moral) authority or form of life for that self-same speech. With each example of everyday life or conventional usage, McHugh (and Blum) move from theorizing which formulates the complexity of a particular instance of social interaction through its rules, to the question of the form of life that make that particular instance of the rules possible. It is the pursuit of transparency between speech and its roots in language that informed and continues to inform the distinctive style of social theory fostered at York-Toronto under the orchestration of McHugh and Blum. (shrink)

Compiled by disciples of Confucius in the centuries following his death in 479 B.C.E., _The Analects of Confucius_ is a collection of aphorisms and historical anecdotes embodying the basic values of the Confucian tradition: learning, morality, ritual decorum, and filial piety. Reflecting the model eras of Chinese antiquity, the Analects offers valuable insights into successful governance and the ideal organization of society. Filled with humor and sarcasm, it reads like a casual conversation between teacher and student, emphasizing the role (...) of the individual in the attainment of knowledge and the value of using historical events and people to illuminate moral and political concepts. Confucius's teachings focus on cultural and peaceful pursuits and the characteristics of benevolent and culturally distinguished government. He also discusses ancestor worship and other rites performed for the spirits of the dead. The single most influential philosophical work in all of Chinese history, _The Analects of Confucius_ has shaped the thought and customs of China and neighboring countries for centuries. Burton Watson's concise translation uses the pinyin romanization system and keeps explanatory notes to a minimum, yet his intimate knowledge of the Confucian tradition and precise attention to linguistic detail capture the original text's elegance, cogency, and wit. (shrink)

Mindfulness based interventions (MBIs) are rapidly emerging in health care settings for their role in reducing stress and improving physical and mental health. In such settings, the religious roots and affiliations of MBIs are downplayed, and the possibilities for developing spiritual, even mystical, states of consciousness are minimized. This article helps rebalance this trend by using the tools of medical humanities and narrative medicine to explore MBI as a bridge between medical and spiritual approaches to health related suffering. My narrative (...) medicine method draws insights from the arts and humanities that are rarely used in standard clinical research but are increasingly common among medical humanities and narrative medicine scholars. The specific path I take will be to work through historical, linguistic, and philosophic dimensions of mindfulness and mysticism as relevant to illness, suffering, death, and dying. I close with two case examples in which mindfulness is used as an intentionally spiritual practice for health concerns. (shrink)

Iris Murdoch was a notable philosopher before she was a notable novelist and her work was brave, brilliant, and independent. She made her name first for her challenges to Gilbert Ryle and behaviourism, and later for her book on Sartre, but she had the greatest impact with her work in moral philosophy—and especially her book The Sovereignty of Good. She turned expectantly from British linguistic philosophy to continental existentialism, but was dissatisfied there too; she devised a philosophy and a (...) style of philosophy that were distinctively her own. Murdoch aimed to draw out the implications, for metaphysics and the conception of the world, of rejecting the standard dichotomy of language into the 'descriptive' and the 'emotive'. She aimed, in Wittgensteinian spirit, to describe the phenomena of moral thinking more accurately than the 'linguistic behaviourists' like R. M. Hare. This 'empiricist' task could be acheived, Murdoch thought, only with help from the idealist tradition of Kant, Hegel, and Bradley. And she combined with this a moral psychology, or theory of motivation, that went back to Plato, but was influenced by Freud and Simone Weil. Murdoch's impact can be seen in the moral philosophy of John McDowell and, in different ways, in Richard Rorty and Charles Taylor, as well as in the recent movements under the headings of moral realism, particularism, moral perception, and virtue theory. This volume brings together essays by critics and admirers of Murdoch's work, and includes a longer Introduction on Murdoch's career, reception, and achievement. It also contains a previously unpublished chapter from the book on Heidegger that Murdoch had been working on shortly before her death, and a Memoir by her husband John Bayley. It gives not only an introduction to Murdoch's important philosophical life and work, but also a picture of British philosophy in one of its heydays and at an important moment of transition.Readership: Students and scholars of philosophy and literature. (shrink)

This is a new edition, revised and expanded, of a seminal work in the logic and philosophy of time, originally published in 1968. Arthur N. Prior was the founding father of temporal logic. His work has attracted increased attention in the decades since his death: its influence stretches beyond philosophy and logic to computer science and formal linguistics. Prior's fundamental ideas about the logic of time are presented here along with his investigations into the formal properties of time and (...) tense. Already in 1969 Prior had been planning a new edition of Papers on Time and Tense, to incorporate his more recent work. Because of his untimely death this plan was never followed through--till now. Seven important papers have been added to the original selection, as well as a comprehensive bibliography of his work and an illuminating interview with his widow, Mary Prior, about his life and work. In addition, the Polish logic which made the original book difficult for many readers has been replaced by standard logical notation. This new edition will secure the classic status of the book. (shrink)

Compiled by disciples of Confucius in the centuries following his death in 479 B.C.E., _The Analects of Confucius_ is a collection of aphorisms and historical anecdotes embodying the basic values of the Confucian tradition: learning, morality, ritual decorum, and filial piety. Reflecting the model eras of Chinese antiquity, the Analects offers valuable insights into successful governance and the ideal organization of society. Filled with humor and sarcasm, it reads like a casual conversation between teacher and student, emphasizing the role (...) of the individual in the attainment of knowledge and the value of using historical events and people to illuminate moral and political concepts. Confucius's teachings focus on cultural and peaceful pursuits and the characteristics of benevolent and culturally distinguished government. He also discusses ancestor worship and other rites performed for the spirits of the dead. The single most influential philosophical work in all of Chinese history, _The Analects of Confucius_ has shaped the thought and customs of China and neighboring countries for centuries. Burton Watson's concise translation uses the pinyin romanization system and keeps explanatory notes to a minimum, yet his intimate knowledge of the Confucian tradition and precise attention to linguistic detail capture the original text's elegance, cogency, and wit. (shrink)

The relationship of the author’s intention to the meaning of a literary work has been a persistently controversial topic in aesthetics. Anti-intentionalists Wimsatt and Beardsley, in the 1946 paper that launched the debate, accused critics who fueled their interpretative activity by poring over the author’s private diaries and life story of committing the ‘fallacy’ of equating the work’s meaning, properly determined by context and linguistic convention, with the meaning intended by the author. Hirsch responded that context and convention are (...) not sufficient to determine a unique meaning for a text; to avoid radical ambiguity we must appeal to the author’s intention, which actualizes one of the candidate meanings. Subsequent writers have defended refined versions of these views, and a variety of positions on the spectrum between them, in a debate that remains central to philosophical aesthetics. This Teaching and Learning Guide lists key readings and suggests how they might be incorporated within a syllabus. It also offers focus questions related to the readings. See also the companion article, Sherri Irvin, “Authors, Intentions and Literary Meaning.” Philosophy Compass 1 (2006), 114-128. (shrink)

This volume collects for the first time in a single volume all of Kant's writings on religion and rational theology. These works were written during a period of conflict between Kant and the Prussian authorities over his religious teachings. His final statement of religion was made after the death of King Frederick William II in 1797. The historical context and progression of this conflict are charted in the general introduction to the volume and in the translators' introductions to particular (...) texts. All the translations are new with the exception of The Conflict of the Faculties, where the translation has been revised and re-edited to conform to the guidelines of the Cambridge Edition. As is standard with all the volumes in this edition, there are copious linguistic and explanatory notes, and a glossary of key terms. (shrink)