In a recent article Sachs suggests that the concept of somatic intentionality is the key to understanding how the conceptual order is externally constrained by something outside itself which is nonetheless fully intentional in nature. Sachs claims that his proposal fares better than Sellars’ view on the issue of how our experience can so much as be about objective reality. In this paper, I shall argue that this is not the case because Sellars’ view is in crucial respects misdescribed. Sachs (...) suggests that Sellars’ view is problematic because 1) conceptual intentionality cannot objectively constrain the conceptual order due to its essential discursive form, and 2) a non-intentional consciousness cannot provide an objective worldly constraint on conceptual intentionality because it is not world-directed. However neither of these points succeeds in capturing Sellars’ actual position. Further I will suggest the deepest problem which phenomenological views of a Merleau-Pontyan stripe face in the.. (shrink)

Over the course of a lifetime, the risk of professional disruption is considerable. The most frequent causes of disruption are linked to illness or accidents, which leads many employees or self-employed people to change their professional status by obtaining recognition as disabled workers from Maisons Departmentale des Personnes Handicapées (MDPHs) (Departmental Centres for Disabled People). This situation concerns a significant proportion of the population. This research study, which was carried out using a qualitative methodology based on ten interviews and eighty (...) questionnaires, sheds new light on the support provided during skills assessments. It re-examines the support provided to jobseekers who have been recognized as disabled workers by examining the in-between positions of employment support professionals, the in-between nature of the challenges they face, and the in-between nature of the timeframes required to get people forced to change career path back into the workplace. (shrink)

Touching on Nancy and Derrida offers a glimpse not only into the thesis both of Jean-Luc Nancy's critique of touch and of Derrida's Le Toucher, but also into the threshold of a technology of (the) sense to come. This glimpse is an interrogation, and one that is both historic and historical, in the sense that Derrida, in addressing Jean-Luc Nancy's work, has presented us with an encyclopedic history of touch in the philosophic tradition from Aristotle to Nancy, one in which (...) what Derrida calls “transcendental archifacticity” is accorded its proper value, and within which any seeming anthropological privilege, as an inherent aspect of the Phenomenological Reduction is, as Derrida says, ‘overshadowed.’ Such an overshadowing is both strategic, in terms of a historical phenomenological project, and tactical, in Derrida's investigative sense: tactical in terms of implementation, manifestation, manipulation (i.e. through the application of the hand, manus) and in terms of tact, tactility; to which must be tacked on, à la Nancy, con-tact, ‘with touch,’ a ‘with-touch’ in which a béance, a gash or dash, opens out in-between, ‘at the very point’ to use Derrida's repeated specification, of bifurcation and of con-tact, at the junction point of the ‘spacing out’ of a laminated différance con-noting more than it has or had ever done in Derrida's work itself. *. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show that expressivism about attitudes is not a tenable position. Although this claim has been often made in the literature, traditional arguments against attitudinal expressivism assumed a dated form of expressivism. In order to show that ascriptions of attitudes cannot be seen as expressive in either of them, the paper discusses two more recent versions of expressivism: quasi-realism and inferentialist expressivism. Quasi-realism escapes traditional arguments against attitudinal expressivism because it allows expressive statements to (...) be true in a deflationary sense. Nonetheless, it is implausible to adopt quasi-realist expressivism with regard to attitudes because this position cannot avoid substantial psychological commitments, despite Toppinen's recent arguments to the contrary. This conclusion also pertains to quasi-realist hybrid expressivist conceptions. The recently developed conception of inferentialist expressivism arguably creates the most accommodating theory for attitudinal expressivism as it does not make any substantial psychological commitments. Still, the criteria of bifurcation assumed in this framework does not support the claim that attitudes play an expressive role. (shrink)

The Westermarck Effect posits that intimate association during childhood promotes human incest avoidance. In previous work, I articulated and defended a version of the Westermarck Effect by developing a phylogenetic argument that has purchase within primatology but that has had more limited appeal for cultural anthropologists due to their commitment to conventionalist or culture-first accounts of incest avoidance. Here I look to advance the discussion of incest and incest avoidance beyond culture-first accounts in two ways. First, I shall dig deeper (...) into the disciplinary grooves within cultural anthropology that make attractive the view that incest has a naturalness to it that is countered only or primarily by explicit social rules, such as taboos. Second, I further explore the emerging, post-conventionalist view of incest avoidance in a more positive vein by elaborating on the nature of the Westermarckian mechanism and how it relates to such explicit social rules and our innate biological endowments. One general aim here is to overcome the bifurcation between perspectives that are seen as biological and those seen as cultural, preempting or countering the claim that rejecting culture-first accounts entails a form of biological reductionism, a general aim I have pursued in related publications on bioessentialism about kinship. (shrink)

Přednáška poukazuje na roli O. Marquarda v úvahách o poválečném němectví. Jeho studie Obtíže s filosofií dějin je představena jako cenné vodítko, které napomáhá lépe charakterizovat hlavní rysy reflexe němectví a současně nastiňuje východisko ze slepých uliček, do nichž se toto téma dostává v literárních i neliterárních textech. Marquardem nastíněný střet mezi filosofií dějin a antropologií, který u něho vyústil do skeptického postoje, je v této studii analogicky přenášen mimo filosofii. Vypovídá o opakujících se rozporech mezi německými historiky a rovněž (...) umožňuje výstižně popsat proměny úvah o němectví v díle německých literátů – Marquardových vrstevníků -, jako jsou Martin Walser, Günter Grass nebo H. M. Enzensberger. (shrink)

The lecture focuses on the role of O. Marquard in the discussions on post-war Germany. His study The Difficulties with Philosophy of History is introduced as a valuable guide to the characterization of the main features of the reflection of German identity and it outlines the ways to the resolution of a stalemate that this theme has reached in both literary and non-literary texts. In this study, the clash between philosophy of history and anthropology, which Marquard outlined and which resulted (...) in his sceptical stance, is applied outside philosophy. It describes repeated conflicts between German historians and enables an apt characterization of the changes in the discussions on German identity in the works of German authors – Marquard’s contemporaries – such as Martin Walser, Günter Grass or H. M. Enzensberger. (shrink)

The position that science is a technique establishing the means to achieve any stipulated end has now fanned out and been defended by social scientists as well as by natural scientists. It is the thesis of this paper that the bifurcation of science and morality derives from the social status of both science and scientists today, and involves, wittingly or unwittingly, an uncritical acceptance of dominant social values. Science is thus not non-moral, as is claimed, but rather appropriates conventional (...) morality. Certain conditions have brought about this role for science and scientists. (shrink)

Avançant par bifurcations et ruptures, la pensée de Foucault renouvelle sans arrêt ses méthodes et ses concepts. Sous cette ligne brisée se laisse lire l'unité, non d'un système, mais d'un souci : articuler l'analyse positive des normes historiques au repérage de leurs crises ; se défaire de toute référence au sujet constituant mais rouvrir l'interstice d'un soi, où penser autrement deviendrait possible. Ce livre propose l'étude de deux moments précis de l'oeuvre : la description, dans l'Histoire de la folie, (...) de la naissance de l'asile; l'examen de la subjectivation grecque, dans L'Usage des plaisirs. S'y laisse voir l'invention d'une nouvelle figure de la critique : critique sans surplomb qui, au lieu d'en appeler à la raison et aux principes, s'autorise des failles singulières ouvertes dans le jeu du savoir et du pouvoir. De cette position exposée et précaire, chaque livre tire sa puissance d'intervention : morale de l'inconfort, la pensée de Foucault est aussi une politique de l'incertitude. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Necropolitical arrangements of bifurcations delineate those ontological antagonisms that code Blackness as ontological lack (as non-position). In this article, I attempt to think about this evacuation of being in terms of the necropolitical’s fleshy excess, as what Alexander Weheliye’s work names “habeus viscus.” In so doing, I explore the implications, for our understanding of the “repressed proximities” of which the necropolitical consists, of arrangements that always-already include entanglements with their fleshy excess. In other words, if the nonposition of the (...) excluded is always positioned within, then living in/against the death-logics of necropolitics is always happening from that “nonposition within.” Hence, a reading of Achille Mbembe’s account of necropolitics must reckon with what Katherine McKittrick names “the creative consequences of the plot and the plantation,” with the implications of the inextricable proximal entanglements between the killing of life and the living that persists, despite. This article focuses on this “living despite.” Through a constellation of thinkers like Katherine McKittrick, Alexander Weheliye, and Zakiyyah Iman Jackson (to name a few), it aims to show that there are, perhaps, other futures that are already “now,” shattering what Édouard Glissant refers to as the “stone of time,” shattering (necropolitical) history as destiny. (shrink)

Philosophers have always taken an interest not only in what is actually the case, but in what is necessarily the case and what could possibly be the case. These are questions of modality. Epistemologists of modality enquire into how we can know what is necessary and what is possible. This dissertation concerns the meta-epistemology of modality. It engages with the rules that govern construction and evaluation of theories in the epistemology of modality, by using modal empiricism – a form of (...) modal epistemology – as a running example. In particular, I investigate the assumption that it is important to be able to meet the integration challenge. Meeting the integration challenge is a source of serious difficulty for many approaches, but modal empiricism is supposed to do well in this respect. But I argue that once we have a better grasp of what the integration challenge is, it is not obvious that it presents no problem for modal empiricism. Moreover, even if modal empiricism could be said to be in a relatively good position with respect to integration, it comes at the cost of a forced choice between far-reaching partial modal scepticism and non-uniformism about the epistemology of modality. Non-uniformism is the view that more than one modal epistemology will be correct. While non-uniformism might not in itself be unpalatable, it must be defined and defended in a way which squares with the modal empiricist’s other commitment. I explore two ways of doing so, both involving a revised idea of the integration challenge and its role for the epistemology of modality. One involves a bifurcation of the integration challenge, and the other a restriction of the integration challenge’s relevance. Both ways are interesting, but neither is, as it turns out, a walk in the park. (shrink)

Schopenhauer’s bifurcation between optimistic and pessimistic religions is made, so I argue here, by means of five criteria: to perceive of existence as punishment, to believe that salvation is not attained through ‘works’, to preach compassion so as to lead towards ascetics, to manifest an aura of mystery around religious doctrines and to, at some deep level, admit to the allegorical nature of religious creeds. By clearly showing what makes up the ‘pessimism’ of a ‘pessimistic religion’, Schopenhauer’s own philosophical (...) pessimism can be clarified since he posits a strict correlation between the truth of philosophy and religion. Accordingly, Schopenhauer’s pessimism is by means of this process clarified as non-radical and providing a genuine ‘highest good’ that is more than absolute denial. (shrink)

The boundaries of the field of communications have been unclear from the beginnings. Somewhere between the liberal arts/humanities and the social sciences, communications exists in a contested space where advocates of different methods and positions have attempted to define the field and police intruders and trespassers. Despite several decades of attempts to define and institutionalize the field of communications, there seems to be no general agreement concerning its subject-matter, method, or institutional home. In different universities, communications is sometimes placed in (...) humanities departments, sometimes in the social sciences, and generally in schools of communications. But the boundaries of the various departments within schools of communications are drawn differently, with the study of mass-mediated communications and culture{0} sometimes housed in Departments of Communication, Radio/Television/Film, Speech Communication, Theater Arts, or Journalism departments. Many of these departments combine study of mass-mediated communication and culture with courses in production, thus further bifurcating the field between academic study and professional training, between theory and practice. (shrink)

Throughout much of his writing, Whitehead outlines a critique of what he termed the `bifurcation of nature'. This position divides the world into objective causal nature, on the one hand, with the perceptions of subjects on the other. On such a view, truth lies in a reality external to such subjects and it is the task of science to deliver clear and immediate access to this realm. Further, judgments about this external reality are the province of human subjects and (...) it is the task of philosophy to ascertain the validity or otherwise of these. This article outlines Whitehead's attempts to develop a conception of nature which avoids this premise; it also explains how he offers a way for contemporary theories to construct or engineer abstractions which go beyond notions of social construction or deconstruction. This article argues that not only does Whitehead offer a coherent alternative to such approaches but that the manner in which his major text is written reflects his commitment to the inherently constructed and constructing character of all existence. (shrink)

Background Best interests is a ubiquitous principle in medical policy and practice, informing the treatment of both children and adults. Yet theory underlying the concept of best interests is unclear and rarely articulated. This paper examines bioethical literature for theoretical accounts of best interests to gain a better sense of the meanings and underlying philosophy that structure understandings. Methods A scoping review of was undertaken. Following a literature search, 57 sources were selected and analysed using the thematic method. Results Three (...) themes emerged. The first placed best interests within the structure of wider theory, noting relationships with consequentialism, deontology, prudential value theory, rights and political philosophy. The second mapped a typology of processes of decision-making, among which best interests was ambiguously positioned. It further indicated factors that informed best interests decision-making, primarily preferences, dignity and quality of life. The final theme considered best interests from a relational perspective. Conclusions Characterisation of best interests as strictly paternalist and consequentialist is questionable: while accounts often suggested a consequentialist basis for best interests, arguments appeared philosophically weak. Deontological accounts, found in law and Kantianism, and theories of political liberalism influenced accounts of best interests, with accounts often associating best interests with negative patient preferences (i.e. individual refusals). There was much more emphasis on negative interests than positive interests. Besides preference, factors like dignity and quality of life were held to inform best interests decisions, but generally were weakly defined. To the extent that preferences were unable to inform decision making, decisions were either made by proxy authority or by an intersubjective process of diffuse authority. Differing approaches reflect bifurcations in liberal philosophy between new liberalism and neo-liberalism. Although neither account of authority appears dominant, bias to negative interests suggests that bioethical debate tends to reflect the widespread ascendancy of neo-liberalism. This attitude was underscored by the way relational accounts converged on private familial authority. The visible connections to theory suggest that best interests is underpinned by socio-political trends that may set up frictions with practice. How practice negotiates these frictions remains a key question. (shrink)

Against Nature – Chapter Abstracts Chapter 1. A Transdisciplinary Approach. In this short book you will find philosophy – metaphysical and political - economics, critical theory, complexity theory, ecology, sociology, journalism, and much else besides, along with the signposts and reference texts of the Information Systems field. Such transdisciplinarity is a challenge for both author and reader. Such books are often problematic: sections that are just old hat to one audience are by contrast completely new and difficult to another. My (...) hope is that in the interconnections, arguments and thrust of this polemic, readers will discover both interest and insight, alongside a range of new avenues to explore. This introductory chapter sets the scene – today’s digital world of Tech Giants and Fake News, its roots in the philosophical arguments of the 1920s, and the book’s key claims: (i) that the early 20th century philosophical grounding of today’s digital revolution is culpable in digital’s (growing) contribution to the ecological catastrophe unfolding in the 21st century; (ii) that process philosophy offers a new way to rethink that philosophical grounding, and reshape the digital revolution to support strategies to counter that catastrophe. Chapter 2. The Problem with Digital. This chapter begins with a brief overview of the research approaches in information systems as an academic field, before turning to the deeper roots of its malaise, in individualism, and its looming consequences. The three branches of Information Systems research, in academia, prove to be a useful lens through which to understand the field: Positivism, Interpretivism, and the Critical stance taken by this book. The ‘scientism’ at the root of positivism is examined, and the positivism in Information Systems critiqued as a historically contingent response to the ascendancy of a new brand of economics in Business Schools after the Second World War. But the computational market-fundamentalist form of economics sponsored in the 1950s (and applied by governments since the 1970s) centred around notions of the individual rational actor as an information processor. The philosophical underpinning of methodological and possessive individualism in this approach is exposed, and its influence upon the development – long before computing – of the science of ecology, and our notion of ecosystems, introduced. Chapter 3. The Future Does Not Exist. The philosophical core of the book, this chapter introduces process philosophy. Through an examination of the irreversible reality of subjectivity, Bergson’s famous notion of the durée reélle, and Whitehead’s critique of the bifurcation of subject and object, are introduced. The causally closed ‘time’ of positive science determines existence from the beginning to the end of the universe, be it three seconds or three trillion years. But the reality, of course, is that the future does not exist: our choices are real, and only one of myriad potential futures comes into being at each moment. As Bergson insists, durational succession exists, I am conscious of it; it is a fact. Bergson’s star – once the brightest of any living philosopher in the world – faded almost as quickly as it rose, under the onslaught from the logical positivists whose verificationism insisted that any proposition has no factual meaning if no evidence of observation can count for or against it: all ethics, aesthetics, romance, and metaphysics – and the very subjectivity with which duration is experienced - were thus closed down and dismissed. In this chapter it is reintroduced, to a new audience. Chapter 4. The World in a New Light. Many fundamental problems in the world can be seen as resulting from the false philosophy of bifurcation, fixity, and the reification of abstractions critiqued by process philosophy. Being – with all the isolation and focus upon the individual that it entails – must, if we are to address these problems, be seen as secondary to Becoming, with all the connection, interrelatedness, and complex collectivity that it implies. Choices become clearer, between positivism and interpretivism, between accents upon individualism or collectivism, between reductionist and complex adaptive systems approaches. The systemic individualism in Anglo-American societies can be regarded as actually harmful: the Tech Giants severing ties and bonds rather than connecting us; algebraic ecological models actually breaking the co-dependencies and co-requisites upon which real – complex - ecological health depends. Positivism, built as it is upon methodological individualism, seen in the light of process philosophy, becomes a danger to personal psychological balance – cutting us off from one another; a danger to the social fabric – undermining and impoverishing our civic life; and a danger to the ecological health of the planet – ignoring the immense (eco)systemic impact of our activities over the last centuries upon everything around us in the natural world. Chapter 5. A Theoretical Manifesto for Green IT. We are not islands, and in a process-relational social organisation much must be held in common. We are individuals, but we cannot survive alone. Four different perspectives on individualism show it to be little more than greed. An ecological economics reintegrating the household, the social, the supportive State, and – crucially – the life-giving earth into our polities is introduced and promoted. I introduce the concept of ‘Infomateriality’ – a non-bifurcated digital world where the physical bodies of people - fingers touching keyboards and eyes scanning screens - are as much ‘hardware’ as cabling, circuitboards and haptic interfaces, and the social practices, power relations, and embedded politics within IT artefacts define all such techné as fundamentally social. Abstract divisions are false, and whole, socially embedded systems should be the focus of IS, and from a philosophically and sociologically much deeper perspective. ‘Tech for Good’ is held up as movement in the right direction. My hope is that this book will help promote action, in the field of information systems, toward a better world, where Green Tech for Good is deployed for Nature, rather than against it. (shrink)

Two principal questions lie at the heart of the philosophy of colour perception. First: how do colour experiences represent the world? Second: do colour representations veridically represent the world? This collection of papers closely examines the various ways in which colour experience may represent the world, and the possibilities regarding the veridicality of these representations. As it turns out, close attention to the above two questions illuminates novel ways of approaching the metaphysics of colour and colour experience. Paper one distinguishes (...) different ways in which colour experience can be veridical or erroneous, and uses these distinctions to motivate realist error theories: a new class of theory regarding the perception of colour. Realist error theories say that colour experience is erroneous regarding the location and/or metaphysics of colour, but is generally veridical regarding the instantiation of colour. I argue that realist error theories provide a new approach to certain tensions between our motivated metaphysics for colour and how experience represents the colours. Paper two falls into two parts. In the first part, I argue that extant subject-dependent theories of colour fail to delineate veridical colour experiences from erroneous colour experiences. In part two, I develop novel subject-dependent theories which successfully delineate veridical colour experiences from erroneous colour experiences. I advocate for mono-minimalism: a view which says that colours are subject-dependent properties which range over at least one standard perceiver in at least one standard condition. Paper three focuses on the distinction between steady and unsteady colours. Extant proposals involve positing that steady colours are subject-independent and unsteady colours are subject-dependent. I argue that the subject-dependent theorist can explain the metaphysical difference between steady and unsteady colours in wholly subject-dependent terms. We can say that steady and unsteady colours are both subject-dependent properties, but steady colours range over a broader range of perceptual conditions compared to unsteady colours. I argue that this bifurcation in the scope of the colours is consistent with the mono-minimalist theory of colour proposed in paper two. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Spinoza and the Theory of Organism HANS JONAS I CARTESIANDUALISMlanded speculation on the nature of life in an impasse: intelligible as, on principles of mechanics, the correlation of structure and function became within the res extensa, that of structure-plus-function with feeling or experience (modes of the res cogitans) was lost in the bifurcation, and thereby the fact of life itself became unintelligible at the same time that the (...) explanation of its bodily performance seemed to be assured. The impasse became manifest in Occasionalism : its tour de force of an extraneous, divine "synchronization" of the outer and the inner world (the latter denied to animals) not only suffered from its extreme artificiality, the common failing of such ad hoc constructions, but even at so high a cost failed to accomplish its theoretical purpose by its own terms. For the animal machine, like any machine, raises beyond the question of the "how" that of the "what for" of its functioning---of the purpose for which it had thus been constructed by its maker.1 Its performance, however devoid of immanent teleology, must serve an end, and that end must be someone's end. This end may (directly) be itself, as indeed Descartes had implied when declaring self-preservation to be the effect of the functioning of the organic automaton. In that case the existence as such of the machine would be its end--either terminally, or in turn to benefit something else. In the former case, the machine would have to be more than a machine, for a mere machine cannot enioy its existence. But since, by the rigorous conception of the res extensa, it cannot be more than a machine, its function and/or existence must serve something other than itself. Automata in Descartes ' time were mainly for entertainment (rather than work). But the raison d'etre of the living kingdom could not well be seen in God's indulging his mechanical abilities or in the amusement of celestial spectators--especially since mere complexity of arrangement does not create new quality and thus add something to the unrelieved sameness of the simple substratum that might enrich the spectrum of being. For quality, beyond the primitive determinations of the extended per se, is the subjective creature of sensation, the confused representation of quantity in a mind; and thus organisms cannot harbor it because as mere machines they lack mentality, and pure spirits cannot because they lack sensuality, or the privilege of confusion and thereby of illusion with its possible enjoyment. And as to their intellectual enjoyment, even that, deprived of the thrill of discovery by the same token, would pale in the contemplation of what to sufficiently large The concept of "machine," adopted for its strict confinementto efficientcause, is still a finalisticconcept,even thoughthe final cause is no longer internal to the entity, as a mode of its own operation,but external to it as antecedent design. [43] 44 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY intellects is nothing but the ever-repeated exemplification of the same few, elementary (and ultimately trivial) truths. There remained, then, the time-honored--Stoic as well as Christian--idea that plants and animals are for the benefit of Man. Indeed, since the existence of a living world is the necessary condition for the existence of any of its members, the self-justifying nature of at least one such member (= species) would justify the existence of the whole. In Stoicism, Man provided this end by his possession of reason, which makes him the culmination of a terrestrial scale of being that is also self-justifying throughout all its grades (the end as the best of many that are good in degrees) ; in Christianity, by his possession of an immortal soul, which makes him the sole imago Dei in creation (the end as the sole issue at stake) ; and Cartesian dualism radicalized this latter position by making man even the sole possessor of inwardness or "soul" of any kind, thus the only one of whom "end" can meaningfully be predicated as he alone can entertain ends. All other life then, the product of physical necessity, can be considered his means. However, this traditional idea, in its anthropocentric vanity never a... (shrink)

Written for non-experts, this volume introduces the mechanisms that underlie reticulate evolution. Chapters are either accompanied with glossaries that explain new terminology or timelines that position pioneering scholars and their major discoveries in their historical contexts. The contributing authors outline the history and original context of discovery of symbiosis, symbiogenesis, lateral gene transfer, hybridization or divergence with gene flow, and infectious heredity. By applying key insights from the areas of molecular (phylo)genetics, microbiology, virology, ecology, systematics, immunology, epidemiology and computational science, (...) they demonstrate how reticulate evolution impacts successful survival, fitness and speciation. Reticulate evolution brings forth a challenge to the standard Neo-Darwinian framework, which defines life as the outcome of bifurcation and ramification patterns brought forth by the vertical mechanism of natural selection. Reticulate evolution puts forward a pattern in the tree of life that is characterized by horizontal mergings and lineage crossings induced by symbiosis, symbiogenesis, lateral gene transfer, hybridization or divergence with gene flow, and infective heredity, making the “tree of life” look more like a “web of life.” On an epistemological level, the various means by which hereditary material can be transferred horizontally challenges our classic notions of units and levels of evolution, fitness, modes of transmission, linearity, communities, and biological individuality. The case studies presented examine topics including the origin of the eukaryotic cell and its organelles through symbiogenesis; the origin of algae through primary and secondary symbiosis and dinoflagellates through tertiary symbiosis; the superorganism and holobiont as units of evolution; how endosymbiosis induces speciation in multicellular life forms; transferrable and non-transferrable plasmids and how they symbiotically interact with their host; the means by which pro- and eukaryotic organisms transfer genes laterally (bacterial transformation, transduction and conjugation as well as transposons and other mobile genetic elements); hybridization and divergence with gene flow in sexually-reproducing individuals; current (human) microbiome and viriome studies that impact our knowledge concerning the evolution of organismal health and acquired immunity; and how symbiosis and symbiogenesis can be modelled in computational evolution. (shrink)

Spinoza’s philosophy is bold and rich in challenges to our “common-sense intuitions”, and insofar as it provides powerful arguments to motivate these challenges, I believe that we cannot ask for more. Bold and well-argued philosophy has the indispensable virtue of being able to unsettle and try us, to move us to reconsider what seems natural and obvious, and possibly even to change our most basic beliefs. Indeed, for those who seek to test – rather than confirm - their old and (...) well-fortified intuitions, Spinoza is nothing short of a living spring. My deep support for rigorous, counter-intuitive philosophy notwithstanding, a considerable part of the current paper will be dedicated to an examination and critique of one of the boldest and most fascinating readings of Spinoza of the past few years. In his recent piece, “Rationalism Run Amok: Representation and the Reality of Emotions in Spinoza,” and in his outstanding new book, Michael Della Rocca suggests a strict identification of the relations of inherence, causation, and conception in Spinoza (Della Rocca develops this view partly in response to a position recently articulated by Don Garret). In order to see the striking implications of this claim, one need only realize that, according to Della Rocca, Spinoza holds that insofar as the sun is the (partial) cause of some states of the sunflower, the sunflower (partly) inheres in the sun. Furthermore, insofar as my great-great-grandparents caused me, I inhere in them (though we never co-existed at the same time). The mere oddity of Della Rocca’s claim will play only a limited role, if any, in my discussion below. Della Rocca provides important and interesting arguments to the effect that if we are to accept Spinoza’s radical version of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (henceforth, PSR), we should bite the bullet and accept the odd implications of Spinoza’s alleged view. While I have nothing but admiration for this willingness to read Spinoza in an allegedly consistent and uncompromising manner, I do think that Della Rocca’s argument that a strict endorsement of the PSR leads necessarily to the identification of the relations of inherence, causation and conception is wrong. I will argue that (1) Spinoza never endorsed this identity, and (2) that Della Rocca’s suggestion could not be considered as a legitimate reconstruction or friendly amendment to Spinoza’s system because it creates several severe and irresolvable problems in the system, and for that reason (and not because the threefold identity contravenes common sense) it should be rejected. In the rest of the paper I rely on my analysis of the relations of inherence, causation, and conception, and suggest a new interpretation of core issues in Spinoza’s metaphysics, and particularly of the conceived through and in another relations and the nature of the substance/modes opposition. Against Della Rocca’s claim that the bifurcation of efficient causation (into causation which is, and is not, accompanied by inherence) constitutes an illegitimate brute fact, I will argue that the bifurcation of causation in Spinoza is paralleled by a bifurcation of conception and that the two relations are grounded in the foundational bifurcation of existence into substance and modes. If we are to recognize the reality of modes in Spinoza, we must also acknowledge the bifurcations that result from the bifurcation of existence into substance and modes. (shrink)

There is a traditional view concerning the relation between mind and matter, knower and known. It posits a bifurcation between the two, maintaining, as Ryle puts it, that mind and matter are two distinct orders of existence. This traditional view comes, in large part, from Descartes. James rejects the traditional view, arguing instead for a close relationship between thought and object. His argument contains two components. The first stresses the close functional relationship between thought and object in our everyday (...) experience. James argues here that true thoughts do or can lead us to their objects, culminating in prosperous interaction with them. The second part of James's argument holds that in pure experience--the original flow of data within which all distinctions are to be made--there is no distinction yet made between mind and matter, knower and known. These distinctions arise only later as conceptual tools for bringing organization to the original presentations. Any given element of pure experience is categorized twice, once as an element of the physical world, and a second time as an element of the perceiver's own mental history. The conclusion, then, is that James: shows that thought and object work together in a close functional relationship in ordinary experience; and argues that they arise from one homogeneous pure experience. ;A number of criticisms were directed against James's view, including: Lovejoy's, arguing that the incompatibilities of thought and object preclude the possibility of their arising from one homogeneous source; Russell's and Perry's, arguing that James's theory is unable to extricate itself from idealism; Miller's and Bode's, arguing that James's view contradicts one of his own important tenets in The Principles of Psychology; and an argument that James is unable to account for the agency by means of which pure experience gets organized. ;James can reply plausibly to all of these criticisms including the difficult issue of the self. On this question a consistent understanding of James's basic assumptions is required. ;Finally, James's viewpoint offers an interesting critical perspective on certain contemporary theories of mind-brain identity. (shrink)

Notre these porte sur le probleme des etats mentaux intentionnels, te'l qu'il se pose dans le cadre de la philosophie de l'esprit contemporaine, plus prteisement dans la tradition analytique. Nous nous interessons particulierement a la notion de contenu etroit qui a recemment ete suggeree pour faire face a des difficultes importantes que rencontre la notion d'etat mental intentionnel, telle que concue dans le cadre general du fonctionnalisme. La problematique generale de cette these emerge d'une tension entre deux aspects importants des (...) etats mentaux intentionnels, soit leur intentionalite - c'est-a-dire le fait qu'ils visent le monde--et leur utilite pour expliquer les comportements humains, en raison de laquelle une psychologie scientifique aurait interet, semble-t-il, a caracteriser de facon adequate de tels etats mentaux. ;Notre propos s'organise autour d'un probleme pose par des intuitions emergeant d'experiences de pensee qui ont fait l'objet de nombreuses discussions en theorie de l'esprit . Un des objectifs importants de notre these est de clarifier les principales positions qui ont ete adoptees relativement a ces intuitions problematiques, de les evaluer en discutant les principaux arguments qui ont ete suggeres pour les defendre, et d'endosser une position qui nous parai t coherente, dans ce debat concernant l'individuation des etats mentaux intentionnels. De facon generale, cette discussion s'appuie sur l'hypothese selon laquelle les etats mentaux doivent etre individues en respectant des contraintes de pertinence explicative. Or, nous sommes amene a rejeter les principales positions qui ont ete defendues dans ce debat, a savoir les theses individualiste et anti-individualiste, puisqu'elles s'appuient sur des arguments auxquels nous nous objectons. Ainsi, relativemient au probleme de l'individuation, nous arrivons a endosser une position pluraliste, voulant que certains etats mentanux soient individues de facon compatible avec la these lndividualaliste, tandis que d'autres etats mentaux devraient l'etre en accord avec I'anti-individualisme. ;Dans la mesure ou nous acceptons le principe d'une individuation etroiet de certains etats mentaux, l'autre objectif majeur de notre these est de clarifier les principales suggestions qui ont ete faites, dans le but de caracteriser l'individuation d'etats mentaux etroits, et d'en faire une evaluation critique. Nous rejetons la suggestion d'une individuation purement syntaxique, telle que proposee par S. Stich, ainsi que l'individuation par le contenu etroit, tel que concu selon l'approche de J. Fodor. Nous endossons, finalement, une individuation qui s'appuie sur la notion de role conceptuel, telle que caracterisee dans le cadre d'une these de la bifurcation. De plus, nous soulignons que le cadre general de la these de la bifurcation a l'avantage d'etre compatible avec notre position pluraliste relativement au probleme de l'individuation. Notre principale conclusion est que la notion de contenu mental est une notion ambigue que permet de clarifier la these de la bifurcation. Cette discussion et les positions que nous sommes amene a adopter semblent avoir des implications importantes, notamment en relation aux problemes que pose la notion d'explication psychologique, mais egalement pour la problematique de l'anallyse des enonces d'attitudes propositionnelles. (shrink)

What is the constituent nature of God? Most scholars project the idea that God is an absolute, pure spirit devoid of matter. In this paper, I engage this position from the African philosophical place. First, I contend that the postulation that God is pure spirit stems from an ontological system known as dualism. This system bifurcates reality into spirit and matter and sees spirit as good, and matter as evil. Therefore, scholars who subscribe to this theory of dualism, posit that (...) God, the Supreme Being is the ultimate good that is, and is pure spirit. Secondly, I disagree with this position. Using the African theory of duality, I argue that everything that is has both spirit and matter, and that spirit and matter are good. Thus, God as an existent reality consists of spirit and matter. I will support my argument using Asouzu’s Ibuanyidanda ontology and Ijiomah’s Harmonious Monism, two African culture-inspired philosophical systems. In this paper, I employ conversationalism as my philosophical method. (shrink)

This dissertation examines the source and structure of twentieth-century existential despair and the implications for the existence of God that come with its resolution. ;I argue that a despairing consciousness is defined by giving epistemological primacy to thought over being. Although this dialectic defines despair generally, it is peculiar to the contemporary Western consciousness given that the latter has been defined by modern philosophy whose essential characteristic is the epistemological primacy of thought. ;Modern philosophy has taken offense in the face (...) of the "intentional paradox" as found in St. Thomas, that the object is imminent to consciousness while simultaneously ontologically transcending it. We can see this in the First Meditation of Descartes in which he overrides his immediate experience of the world in search for Absolute Certainty. ;It is our claim that a despairing consciousness is a closed Cartesian consciousness. In modern thought, it is Kierkegaard who has existentially appropriated it. An examination of Kierkegaard's epistemology verifies that he has indeed inherited the bifurcation of thought and reality. Moreover, he tells us what it is like inside a closed consciousness all the way through Religiousness A where it is realized that the only natural way to alleviate despair is to fulfill the Ideal of Absolute Certainty and in effect become the Eternal Deity. Kierkegaard recognizes that this Ideal cannot be met by a finite entity, but he does not see that the Ideal itself is the culprit; he thus offers Religiousness B as an "experimental" solution. ;An alternative phenomenology of despair is presented which closely resembles Religlousness A in that the individual attempts to become the Eternal Deity thereby also finding Religiousness B attractive. But the individual realizes that the problem is not a religious one by just skirting self-destruction and abolishing despair by accepting the intentional paradox. ;After a brief Interlude in which the alternative liberation is related to satori, we turn to a natural theology. The premise from which St. Thomas argues for the existence of God has been experienced by the individual in despair, namely, that essence does not equal existence in finite entities. It is thus argued that God exists. So if thought and being are properly related, the God of St. Thomas must be posited, and if not, the individual must become the God of St. Thomas in order to escape the resulting despair. (shrink)

For millennia self has been conjectured to be necessary for consciousness. But scant empirical evidence has been adduced to support this hypothesis. Inconsistent explications of “self” and failure to design apt experiments have impeded progress. Advocates of phenomenological psychiatry, however, have helped explicate “self,” and employed it to explain some psychopathological symptoms. In those studies, “self” is understood in a minimalist sense, sheer “for-me-ness.” Unfortunately, explication of the “minimal self” (MS) has relied on conceptual analysis, and applications to psychopathology have (...) been hermeneutic, allowing for many degrees of interpretive latitude. The result is that MS’s current scientific status is analogous to that of the “atom,” at the time when “atom” was just beginning to undergo transformation from a philosophical to a scientific concept. Fortunately, there is now an opportunity to promote a similar transformation for “MS.” Discovery of the brain’s Default Mode Network (DMN) opened the door to neuroimaging investigations of self. Taking the DMN and other forms of intrinsic activity as a starting point, an empirical foothold can be established, one that spurs experimental research and that enables extension of research into multiple phenomena. New experimental protocols that posit “MS” can help explain phenomena hitherto not thought to be related to self, thereby hastening development of a mature science of self. In particular, targeting phenomena wherein consciousness is lost and recovered, as in some cases of Unresponsive Wakefulness Syndrome (UWS), allow for design of neuroimaging probes that enable detection of MS during non-conscious states. These probes, as well as other experimental protocols applied to NREM Sleep, General Anesthesia (GA), and the waking state, provide some evidence to suggest that not only can self and consciousness dissociate, MS might be a necessary precondition for conscious experience. Finally, these findings have implications for the science of consciousness: it has been suggested that “levels of consciousness” (LoC) is not a legitimate concept for the science of consciousness. But because we have the conceptual and methodological tools with which to refine investigations of MS, we have the means to identify a possible foundation—a bifurcation point—for consciousness, as well as the means by which to measure degrees of distance from that foundation. These neuroimaging investigations of MS position us to better assess whether LoC has a role to play in a mature science of consciousness. (shrink)

Spinoza's response to a certain radical form of scepticism has deep and surprising roots in his rationalist metaphysics. I argue that Spinoza's commitment to the Principle of Sufficient Reason leads to his naturalistic rejection of certain sharp, inexplicable bifurcations in reality such as the bifurcations that a Cartesian system posits between mind and body and between will and intellect. I show how Spinoza identies and rejects a similar bifurcation between the representational character of ideas or mental states and the (...) epistemic status of these ideas, a bifurcation to which Spinoza sees the radical sceptic committed. Spinoza's rejection of this bifurcation helps to explain some of his most cryptic statements concerning scepticism and also reveals a promising and highly metaphysical strategy for understanding and responding to scepticism. (shrink)

Adolescence methamphetamine use is an issue of considerable concern due to its correlation with later delinquency, divorce, unemployment and health problems. Understanding how adolescents initiate methamphetamine abuse is important in developing effective prevention programs. We formulate a mathematical model for the spread of methamphetamine abuse using nonlinear ordinary differential equations. It is assumed that susceptibles are recruited into methamphetamine use through imitation. An epidemic threshold value, Ra\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\mathcal {R}}_a$$\end{document}, termed the abuse reproduction (...) number, is proposed and defined herein in the drug-using context. The model is shown to exhibit the phenomenon of backward bifurcation. This means that methamphetamine problems may persist in the population even if Ra\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\mathcal {R}}_a$$\end{document} is less than one. Sensitivity analysis of Ra\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\mathcal {R}}_a$$\end{document} was performed to determine the relative importance of different parameters in methamphetamine abuse initiation. The model is then fitted to data on methamphetamine users less than 20 years old reporting methamphetamine as their primary substance of abuse in the treatment centres of Cape Town and parameter values that give the best fit are chosen. Results show that the proportion of methamphetamine users less than 20 years old reporting methamphetamine as their primary substance of abuse will continue to decrease in Cape Town of South Africa. The results suggest that intervention programs targeted at reducing adolescence methamphetamine abuse, are positively impacting methamphetamine abuse. (shrink)

What is the constituent nature of God? Most scholars project the idea that God is an absolute, pure spirit devoid of matter. In this paper, I engage this position from the African philosophical place. First, I contend that the postulation that God is pure spirit stems from an ontological system known as dualism. This system bifurcates reality into spirit and matter and sees spirit as good, and matter as evil. Therefore, scholars who subscribe to this theory of dualism, posit that (...) God, the Supreme Being is the ultimate good that is, and is pure spirit. Secondly, I disagree with this position. Using the African theory of duality, I argue that everything that is has both spirit and matter, and that spirit and matter are good. Thus, God as an existent reality consists of spirit and matter. I will support my argument using Asouzu’s Ibuanyidanda ontology and Ijiomah’s Harmonious Monism, two African culture-inspired philosophical systems. In this paper, I employ conversationalism as my philosophical method. (shrink)

In this essay I attempt to show the limitations of analytic thinking and the kinds of dead ends into which such analyses may lead us in the philosophy of sport. As an alternative, I argue for a philosophy of complementation and compatibility in the face of what appear to be exclusive alternatives. This is a position that is sceptical of bifurcations and other simplified portrayals of reality but does not dismiss them entirely. A philosophy of complementation traffics in the realm (...) of ambiguities, paradoxes, differences by degree, tendencies, mixtures, polarities, tensions, complexes, transitions and all other forms of messiness. I note that this position has been generated, in part, by work conducted in the empirical sciences and that complementation provides a paradigm that is useful across the academic disciplines. To show the ways in which analytic thinking leads to dead ends, I analyse the epistemological debate over ?broad internalism? engaged in by Russell (1999, 2004), Dixon (2003), Simon (2000, 2004) and Morgan (2004). Evidence for the claim that they reached a mostly unhelpful stalemate is based on the fact that they did not provide any third option and moreover that the analytic tools and ground rules they employ prevent its discovery. I suggest that all four authors are comfortable with the analytic tendency to bifurcate reality and require choices among exclusionary alternatives. I also claim that they treat reason as if it were generated by a ?mind from nowhere?. Philosophical anthropology, I suggest, provides much-needed somatic grounding that would reign in excessively optimistic views of reason (Dixon, Simon and Russell) or excessively plastic interpretations of mind (Morgan). It can also provide evidence that could help us understand why hominids (even modern ones) are so attracted to dichotomies and why we have so much trouble in reconciling apparent incompatibilities. (shrink)

The increasing prevalence of ecologically sustainable products in consumer markets, such as organic produce, are generally assumed to curtail anthropogenic impacts on the environment. Here I intend to present an alternative perspective on sustainable production by interpreting the relationship between recent rises in organic agriculture and greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural production. I construct two time series fixed-effects panel regressions to estimate how increases in organic farmland impact greenhouse gas emissions derived from agricultural production. My analysis finds that the rise (...) of certified organic production in the United States is not correlated with declines in greenhouse gas emissions derived specifically from agricultural production, and on the contrary is associated positively overall agricultural greenhouse gas emissions. To make sense of this finding, I embed my research within the conventionalization thesis. As a result I argue that the recent USDA certification of organic farming has generated a bifurcated organic market, where one form of organic farming works as a sustainable counterforce to conventional agriculture and the other works to increase the economic accessibility of organic farming through weakening practice standards most conducive to reducing agricultural greenhouse gas output. Additionally, I construct my own theoretical framework known as the displacement paradox to further interpret my findings. (shrink)

Spinoza's response to a certain radical form of scepticism has deep and surprising roots in his rationalist metaphysics. I argue that Spinoza's commitment to the Principle of Sufficient Reason leads to his naturalistic rejection of certain sharp, inexplicable bifurcations in reality such as the bifurcations that a Cartesian system posits between mind and body and between will and intellect. I show how Spinoza identies and rejects a similar bifurcation between the representational character of ideas or mental states and the (...) epistemic status of these ideas, a bifurcation to which Spinoza sees the radical sceptic committed. Spinoza's rejection of this bifurcation helps to explain some of his most cryptic statements concerning scepticism and also reveals a promising and highly metaphysical strategy for understanding and responding to scepticism. (shrink)

This thesis offers a fresh interpretation and defense of epistemological disjunctivism about perceptual knowledge. I adopt a multilevel approach according to which perceptual knowledge on one level can enjoy factive rational support provided by perceptual knowledge of the same proposition on a different level. Here I invoke a distinction Ernest Sosa draws between ‘judgmental’ and ‘merely functional’ belief to articulate what I call the bifurcated conception of perceptual knowledge. The view that results is a form of epistemological disjunctivism about perceptual (...) knowledge specifically at the higher judgmental level, layered over a straightforward externalism about perceptual knowledge at the lower merely functional level. The first chapter orients the reader to epistemological disjunctivism— with particular emphasis on the ‘reflective epistemological disjunctivism’ defended by Duncan Pritchard with inspiration from John McDowell. Here I review the arguments for thinking such a proposal true, as well as highlight some problems and three emerging challenges for the view: what I call the internalist challenge, the new access challenge, and the ‘new evil genius’ challenge. These challenges largely inspire the chapters to follow. In the second chapter I present the positive proposal: a fresh interpretation of epistemological disjunctivism in terms of perceptual knowledge at the specifically judgmental level. I argue that this is a modification that epistemological disjunctivists should adopt since it inoculates their view against the internalist challenge: the challenge of explaining why perception should provide one with knowledge by providing one with motivating reasons for belief. In the third chapter I motivate the view further in connection with the more familiar ‘basis problem’ for epistemological disjunctivism. I argue that this approach supports a unique strategy for solving that problem: one that is consistent both with what is known as ‘the entailment’ thesis and the thought that we can reduce perceptual knowledge to a kind of rationally supported belief. In the fourth chapter I move to playing defense. I defend the proposal against the so-called ‘new evil genius’ challenge. This is the challenge to explain why subjects in pairs of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ cases can seem equally justified for sustaining their perceptual beliefs. I argue that what we are being sensitive to here, rather, is the fact that both subjects can be equally epistemically responsible and/or reasonable for believing what they do. Before concluding this chapter I also offer an error theory. In the fifth chapter I defend the proposal against the new access challenges raised in chapter one. These alleged challenges for epistemological disjunctivism arise specifically for versions of reflective epistemological disjunctivism that hold that one’s rational support for perceptual beliefs is not only factive but reflectively accessible as well. Rather than address the challenges head on, I try to dislodge the thought they depend upon—viz., that one’s factive rational support for perceptual beliefs is reflectively accessible to the subject. Here I argue that the reflective accessibility of one’s factive rational support is actually a wheel turning idly in the debate with the underdetermination-based radical sceptic—so that we can simply drop it without consequence. The result is an epistemological disjunctivism that is immune to access problems. I then offer a final summary and conclude. At the end of this thesis I have attached an appendix, which is an excursion into religious epistemology and an exploration of a form of religious epistemological disjunctivism. Here I apply the epistemological disjunctivist insight to the case of religious perception in order to defend the idea that one can offer independent rational support for theistic belief by appealing to religious beliefs that are justified on the basis of religious experiences. This appendix chapter is in keeping with the general spirit of the thesis insofar as it seeks to developed epistemological disjunctivism in new and fruitful directions. (shrink)

Feminist-Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition, which draws upon the insights of both feminist and pragmatist theory and practice. It is fundamentally concerned with enlarging philosophical thought through activism and lived experience, and assumes feminist and pragmatist ideas to be mutually beneficial for liberatory causes. Feminist-pragmatism emphasises the need to redress false distinctions, or dualisms, as these usually result in a denigration of one oppositional by another. Thus, feminist-pragmatists critique such bifurcations as thought/action, mind/body, universal/particular, and they show how the skewed (...) favouring of one over the other results in philosophical theories which are incapable of explaining our gendered existences, positions in society, understandings of knowledge, or learning experiences. Feminist-pragmatists contribute to current debates in epistemology, social and political philosophy, philosophy of education, ethics, and metaphysics. Their work reflects the theoretical advances made by feminist theorists especially over the course of the latter part of the twentieth century, while being rooted in the principles and criticisms of the classical pragmatists. (shrink)

The article delves into the conceptual frameworks surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) by juxtaposing it with natural intelligence and delineating the correlated notions. It enumerates the issues propelling the discourse on the explored topics. The author proposes a bifurcation between two polar concepts of artificial intelligence. The first is dubbed “imitative,” where AI is perceived in relation to natural intelligence as its technical recreation, capable of not only emulating but significantly outstripping its natural counterpart. A prerequisite for embodying this concept (...) is understanding natural intelligence; three approaches are examined: (a) acknowledging the lack of a precise understanding of natural intelligence, (b) exploring it from a biological perspective, and (c) analyzing it from a psychological perspective. The author articulates their own interpretation of natural intelligence, portraying it as a multifaceted amalgam of cultural, historical, social, and anthropological elements. From this vantage point, natural intelligence emerges not merely as a natural formation (thereby, discussions about the laws governing its function and evolution are warranted), but also as an “extra-natural” formation, its existence dictated by randomness and uniqueness, meaning natural intelligence evolves in a “singular” manner. In the context of comparing natural and artificial intelligence, the discussion encompasses several issues: the feasibility of the control of natural intelligence processes, the structure of neural networks, the superiority of computer programs in chess, the use of neural networks to write academic papers, and so forth. The conclusion posits that given artificial intelligence, despite its complexity, remains a technical invention orchestrated and brought to fruition by humans as a tool; society, if inclined to bestow AI with autonomy for tackling specific tasks, ought to do so prudently to prevent self-detriment and retain the ability to curtail or utterly revoke such autonomy. (shrink)

The divest movement has focused attention on strategic and ethical differences in the practice of socially responsible investing and highlighted an unnecessary bifurcation of best-of-class engagement and divestment. Although best-of-class engagement is favored as a contemporary and pragmatic approach, this paper calls for a more pronounced recognition of absolute dealbreakers and divestment as an underpinning for best-of-class engagement. After linking divestment and best-of-class engagement to their foundations of absolutism and relativism, respectively, I critique best-of-class engagement and argue that without (...) a distinct and explicit role for divestment, best-of-class strategies are ethically and strategically fraught. Following a discussion of which types of issues suggest divestment or best-of-class engagement, I identify the Norway Government Pension Fund as a noteworthy example, and posit that divestment and engagement are best presented and employed in tandem, particularly for issues that have yet to be addressed by law and convention. (shrink)

This article addresses the ideological context of twentieth-century history of science as it emerged and was discussed at the threshold of the Cold War. It is claimed that the bifurcation of the discipline into a socio-economic strand and a technical-intellectual one should be traced back to the 1930s. In fact, the proposal of a Marxist-oriented historiography by the Soviet delegates at the International Congress of History of Science and Technology led by Nikolai Bukharin, set off the ideological and methodological (...) opposition that characterised the later years. Bukharin’s views on science are closely considered, as well as those of his Marxist critics, György Lukács and Antonio Gramsci. It is argued that, despite the fluidity of the positions of the 1920s and 1930s, these theories soon crystallized as demonstrated by the leftist reception of Bukharin’s and his associates’ perspective in the history of science, especially in Great Britain, as well as by the anti-communist reactions. Intellectualist approaches renouncing socio-economic factors, typically those by Alexandre Koyré and Thomas Kuhn, are reconsidered in the light of the ideological confrontation of the Cold War era. Reflection on the political-cultural embedding of the history of science has often been overshadowed by claims about the objectivity and neutrality of science and its historiography. Thus, the seminal discussion of the 1930s remains one of the most lucid moments of reflection about the role of science and history of science as cultural phenomena shaped by political struggles. (shrink)

In this work, our aim is to investigate the impact of a non-Kolmogorov predator-prey-subsidy model incorporating nonlinear prey refuge and the effect of fear with Holling type II functional response. The model arises from the study of a biological system involving arctic foxes, lemmings, and seal carcasses. The positivity and asymptotically uniform boundedness of the solutions of the system have been derived. Analytically, we have studied the criteria for the feasibility and stability of different equilibrium points. In addition, we have (...) derived sufficient conditions for the existence of local bifurcations of codimension 1. It is also observed that there is some time lag between the time of perceiving predator signals through vocal cues and the reduction of prey’s birth rate. So, we have analyzed the dynamical behaviour of the delayed predator-prey-subsidy model. Numerical computations have been performed using MATLAB to validate all the analytical findings. Numerically, it has been observed that the predator, prey, and subsidy can always exist at a nonzero subsidy input rate. But, at a high subsidy input rate, the prey population cannot persist and the predator population has a huge growth due to the availability of food sources. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:RELIGION AND SYMBOLIC VIOLENCE Paul Ricoeur Université de Nanterre Paris X These are issues that I take very much to heart, so I will risk my own thoughts on the relation between religion and violence, not excluding the violence in and ofreligion. This is to say that I am not evading the objection made by Jean-Pierre Changeux in a recent discussion, namely, that religion as such produces violence. I (...) do not wish to evade the objection nor to hide behind the collateral explanation that it is when religion is detoured by politics that it produces violence. It is the presupposition that religion produces violence that brings me into discussion with René Girard. I encountered his work several decades ago and I have met him intermittently, with moments of distancing and rediscovery. This is the case for me again today regarding one of his later books, The Scapegoat. I cannot forget the dazzling excitement of 1972 when Violence and the Sacred first appeared. And then for me came a moment of hesitation, of doubt: isn't this explanation too psychologizing? Aren't the Gospels too easily exonerated ofthe accusation ofviolence? But I thereafter experienced disappointment with alternative accounts, principally sociological ones, and in particular with the one given by Maurice Bloch in La Violence du religieux. I am going to take the risk of a personal interpretation ofthe intimate relation between religion and violence. My own conviction, at bottom, is that I have been able, by broadening and deepening the issue, to discern the point where this very movement of going deeper bifurcates and branches out toward external violence. I have clarified my position in La Critique et la conviction and in my more recent debate with J.R Changeux, Ce quifait que nouspensons on this complicity between religion and violence. And it was in pursuing the direction opened up in La Critique et la conviction that I rediscovered an 2 Paul Ricoeur interest in The Scapegoat. I found his interpretation not only to be complementary to my own, but its necessary complement. I will now proceed to show how René Girard's thesis is necessary to my own thinking. So now I will go directly to my interpretive proposal, then I will turn to the position of Bloch in La Violence du religieux, a sociological interpretation, in order to come back in the end to Girard. It is by way of reflection on tolerance considered as a progressive initiation that I arrived at the interpretation I am going to present. At its minimal state, we find only the tolerance ofthe intolerant person, who states, "I don't agree with what you believe, I disapprove of it, but I cannot prevent it. I tolerate it in the sense of not being able to prevent it; I would like to prevent it, but I do not have the power to do so." At a second level, tolerance is more positive, saying, "I maintain the conviction that I am the one who has the truth, but I recognize, by way of being accommodating, that you have the right to profess what I hold as false, and I do this in the name ofjustice. That is to say, you certainly have the right, and it is one equal to mine, to profess what you believe, although I take it as false." I would say that the force of the principle ofjustice as thus expressed is this: any other life is worth as much as mine. Let us say that what I recognize here is the right to error. But at this stage I am torn within by the truth that I believe to be unilaterally mine and the justice that entails recognition ofthe other, which I place on another level from that oftruth. I make a further step in pursuing the issue, at a level farther advanced, when I say, "My adversary has perhaps a part ofthe truth but I don't know what it is." I would say that this is the perspectival version oftolerance: the other person sees a side of things, which I cannot see. But our positions cannot be substituted for each other. At this stage there is a... (shrink)

Over the last thirty years, once staunchly film history scholars such as Thomas Elsaesser, Jane Gaines, Siegfried Zielinski, André Gaudreault and Benoît Turquety (to name just a few) have abandoned history for historiography and film studies for media archaeology. Considering the heightened attention given to kulturtechnik (Siegert), the database as a dominant symbolic metaphor,1 and the decentered networked tenants of the postmodern global present, cinema is taking on the characteristics of new media, existing in increasingly intertextual space. Thus, the term (...) “post-cinema” has been co-opted as a viable intermediary that accounts for new media conditions, as cinema is no longer emblematic of our cultural climate. It was once presaged in 1992 that “[t]he end of the cinema truly sounds the death knell of the ultimate metaphysical adventure of Dasein. In the twilight of post-cinema, of which we are seeing the beginning, human quasi-existence, now stripped of any metaphysical hypostasis and deprived of any theological model, will have to seek its proper generic consistency elsewhere.” Accordingly, we are no longer “moviegoing animals” who seek images of ourselves among a collective in the dark but, rather, users interfacing within a network of moving images. By locating post-cinema within the semblance of social media, we are allocated a newfound series of theoretical interventions, the most marked of which is that of media archeology vis-à-vis dialectical materialism. This is a lens through which Brian Winston has recently deftly decried Virtual Reality’s “empathy machine” utopic illusionism, bolstered by Chris Milk and a slew of neurohumanities researchers, steadily maintaining that the fundamental myth of “technologies of seeing” is in disguising “their artifice, their cultural formation and their ideological import.” However, this approach, which illuminates the bifurcation between Max Horkheimer/Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin, neglects what Benjamin identified as occurring to the work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility—a shift from a technology’s “cult value,” associated with the unique work, to its “exhibition value,” associated with the social act of viewing as part of a mass. Speaking to this divarication, Benjamin Barber, in Strong Democracy, foresaw new media’s two-fold potential—as they are organized and networked, new media and communications technologies possess the possibility to both energize citizen information and political participation but, simultaneously, to supplement the deterioration of public debate. As evinced by Mark Adrejevic’s concept of Infoglut, this two-pronged possibility has only been exacerbated by the interlocking relationship between the advent of a “glut” of information, post-truth politics, the demise of symbolic efficiency, and a renewed focus on the role of affect and emotion as “alternative modalities for thinking about the role of communication in a post-referential era.” Manuel Castells qualifies Barber’s pessimism, noting that the Internet can “be an appropriate platform for informed, interactive politics, stimulating political participation.. […] beyond the closed doors of political institutions,” but that the Internet, like any technology, “is shaped by its uses and users.” Thus, if there exists a positive correlation between exposure to post-cinema media artifacts and political participation, then I seek to explore the revelatory political possibilities of “exhibition value” by way of a particular “post-cinema” case study: the Marxist-Leninist Turkish hacktivist group Redhack’s YouTube-circulated documentary RED! (2013), a project that demanded—by way of the moving-image—to galvanize cyberprotest and democratize a “hacktivist commons. (shrink)

A striking aspect of the so-called "Goldhagen debate" has been the bifurcated reception Hitler's Willing Executioners has received: the enthusiastic welcome of journalists and the public was as warm as the impatient dismissal of most historians was cool. This article seeks to transcend the current impasse by analyzing the underlying issues of Holocaust research at stake here. It argues that a "deep structure" necessarily characterizes the historiography of the Holocaust, comprising a tension between its positioning in "universalism" and "particularism" narratives. (...) While the former conceptualizes the Holocaust as an abstract human tragedy and explains its occurrence in terms of processes common to modern societies, the latter casts its analysis in ethnic and national categories: the Holocaust as an exclusively German and Jewish affair. These narratives possess important implications for the balance of structure and human agency in the explanation of the Holocaust: where the universalism narrative emphasizes the role of impersonal structures in mediating human action, the particularism narrative highlights the agency of human actors. Although historical accounts usually combine these narratives, recent research on the Holocaust tends in the universalist direction, and this bears on the sensitive issue of responsibility for the Holocaust by problematizing the common-sense notion of the perpetrators' intention and responsibility. Goldhagen is responding to this trend, but by retreating to the particularism narrative and employing an inadequate definition of intention, he fails to move the debate forward. It is time to rethink the concept of intention in relation to events like the Holocaust. (shrink)

This paper in an elementary level expresses the inevitable relation between the word and meaning from the prominent Indian philosophical trends by giving stress on Vyakti-śakti-vāda and Jāti-śakti-vāda, the two contender doctrines. The first one puts emphasis on the semantic value of a predicate whereas the latter draws attention to the generic uses of nouns. The second part of the writing underpins Navya Nyāya and Kumārila’s positions on the word-meaning reliance and the debate initiate when we look back to the (...) question whether the word-meaning relation sounds conventional or eternal. I propose a position (śabda-vivarta-vāda) on these issues derived from the works of Patan᷈jali and Bhartṛharị, two grammarians of classical Indian tradition. They defend eternal verbum as the material cause of the word and objects. This doctrine advocates uniforism by giving up bifurcation between the word and the world. (shrink)

The American Society for Philosophy, Counseling, and Psychotherapy (ASPCP) was founded on the premise that philosophical and psychological practices are interdependent and mutually supportive. While psychological practice can benefit from becoming more philosophical, the converse is also true. In contrast, the American Philosophical Practitioner’s Association, under the direction of Louis Marinoff, has driven a wedge between these two practices. In this paper, I show how philosophical therapies such as my own Log­ic-Based modality, and psychological therapies, especially Rational-Emotional Behavior Therapy (REBT) (...) work together synergistically. I hold that the APPA bifurcation of psycho­logical from philosophical practice is artificial, impractical, and self-defeating. Further, I maintain that Marinoff’s position that there is a distinct class of “sane” clients appropriate for the latter form of therapy serves to propagate a dangerous popular stereotype, that clients who “need” conventional psychological therapy must therefore be “insane.”. (shrink)

This article serves as the introduction to the Annual Review special section entitled ‘Bernard Stiegler and the Internation Project: Computational Practices and Circumscribed Futures’. As such, it introduces the collective undertaking of the Internation Project in relation to Stiegler’s long career as a thinker, educator and community organizer. The introduction pursues a number of themes addressed in the section’s contributions, including pharmacological logic, transindividuation, computational practices, bifurcation and negentropy (means of slowing entropic processes at individual and collective levels). All (...) of these themes pertain to the climate crises the world collectively faces and posit means by which futures can be conceived in less detrimental and destructive economic, social, technological and intellectual ways. The Internation Collective as represented and furthered in this special section responds to the demands of climate crises through a macroeconomic model designed to combat entropy at various scales, from the bio-chemical to the biosphere. (shrink)

The academic community in the West tends to be suspicious of Russian philosophy, often relegating it to another category, such as “ideology” or “social thought.” But what is philosophy? There is no simple universal definition, and many thinkers consider it impossible to formulate one. The most credible attempt is nominalistic: philosophy is the practice in which Plato and Aristotle were involved. As Alfred North Whitehead wrote, “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a (...) series of footnotes to Plato.”If so, then Russian thought needs to be understood as an important part of the Western philosophical heritage, given that it offers perhaps the most elaborate set of footnotes to Plato's most mature and comprehensive dialogues: the Republic and the Laws. The status of ideas in Russian philosophy mirrors Plato's vision of them as ontological and political entities, “laws,” or ideal principles—as distinct from mere epistemic units or tools of cognition. The Platonic tendency to integrate and implement religious, philosophical, and political teachings culminated in twentieth-century Russia. In the Soviet state, perhaps more than anywhere else in history, philosophy became a supreme legal and political institution, acquiring the power of a suprapersonal, universal reason. Hence thought itself, in the moment of its triumph, became a prisoner in the social structures that Soviet ideocracy erected on a philosophical foundation. In discussing Russian philosophy, we inevitably consider the practical application of Platonic conceptions by the Soviet ideocracy to a state in which philosophy was called upon to rule.According to Sergei Averintsev, the emphasis on Platonism in the Russian intellectual tradition is nothing to be proud of; it should rather be lamented and repented. Despite the obvious Platonic preferences of Russian thinkers (from Ivan Kireyevsky to Aleksei Losev), Averintsev asks whether even now we might be able to reorient the tradition toward Aristotle instead—toward a more secular, tolerant, and analytic philosophy of human nature. “If Plato is the first utopian,” Averintsev writes, “Aristotle is the first thinker to look the spirit of utopia right in the eye and overcome it.... Aristotle's technique of thought is more neutral toward religion than is Plato's ecstasy.” Characteristically, the name index to the Palgrave Handbook of Russian Thought contains almost twice as many mentions of Plato as of Aristotle.Each national tradition has its own “strange attractor,” as they say now in complexity theory. English empiricism, French rationalism, German Idealism, American pragmatism... However stereotypical these generalizations are, they help to clarify the nations’ distinctive contributions to philosophy. Where does Russia stand in this row? I think that Caryl Emerson is correct to pinpoint, among the most distinctive features of the Russian intellectual tradition, the striving for “wholeness” (tselostnost’). Many Russian thinkers seem to evade definitive and particular “isms,” preferring to find ways of complementing (and thus diluting) those that are on offer. Faced with the claims for rationalism, for example, the Russian response tends to be that true rationality is or should be coupled with fullness of feeling. The characteristic Russian “ism” is at best “holism,” at worst “totalitarianism,” and is usually directed against Western thought. Kireyevsky declares: There [in the West] is a bifurcation [razdvoenie] of the spirit, a bifurcation of thoughts, a bifurcation of the sciences, a bifurcation of the state, a bifurcation of estates, a bifurcation of society, a bifurcation of family rights and duties, a bifurcation of morality and the heart.... In Russia, on the contrary, there is a predominant tendency toward the wholeness of the inner and the outer, of public and moral being.Vladimir Solovyov held that the goal of all knowledge was to comprehend “total unity” and to overcome all kinds of unilateralism, which he referred to as “abstract elements” (otvlechennye nachala). These one-sided elements included Realism, rationalism, empiricism, and positivism, all of which had been advanced by Western philosophical movements.Reading the Handbook, I was struck by how steadily, from one thinker to another, the concept of “unity” is reiterated in various synonyms and contexts: “all-unity,” “wholeness,” “totality,” “integrity,” “edinstvo,” “tsel'nost,’” “tselostnost,” “sobornost,” and so forth. Russian thinkers endeavor not to create something original and special but to unify everything that has already been done and known. Consider opponents, like the Slavophiles and Westernizers; take Petr Chaadaev and Vissarion Belinsky, Kireyevsky and Alexander Herzen, Dostoevsky and Solovyov—all are united by this “super-idea,” proclaiming its embodiment to be the all-embracing vocation of the Russian people. At the same time, they sharply reject all “private principles” and “trashy certainty” (Belinsky's driannaia opredelennost’)—anything that restricts and divides individuals or nations. All these forms of privacy and particularity must be overcome on the way to a universal whole that is even greater in scale than Western Catholicism. According to this logic of totality, we would be better off left with nothing than to be content with the particular and the limited. The first original Russian thinker, Chaadaev (1794–1856), makes the salto mortale of declaring Russia a country that has given nothing to the world, then proclaiming that Russia's destiny is to rise above the rest of the world and resolve all its contradictions. From nothing to everything: such are the philosophical foundations for the totalitarian aspiration of Russian thought, which eventually expressed itself in the revolutionary movements and communist experiments of the twentieth century.As is well known, Russian literature is considered in the West a far more powerful and original expression of philosophical ideas than Russian philosophy as such. Characteristically, then, almost half of the Handbook, its entire second part, is devoted to the dialogue of Russian philosophy with literature and art. As M. N. Forster remarks in the Handbook's concluding essay: “It is natural to wonder why this striking asymmetry between relatively modest achievements in pure philosophy and spectacularly high achievements in literature came about.” To the literary focus of Russian philosophy, we can add a political focus. At least a third of part one of the Handbook is devoted to Russian political and revolutionary philosophy, to Lenin and other Marxists, to Ivan Ilyin, and so on. In this context, both literature and politics assumed philosophical dimensions, often overshadowing philosophy itself.Bertrand Russell lamented that the system of philosophical categories in the West featured mostly nouns (being, consciousness, idea, matter, substance, and so forth), omitting adjectives, verbs, prefixes, and other parts of speech. This criticism should be applied to the category philosophy itself. Why the noun philosophy rather than the adjective philosophical, which can be applied to many areas of activity and creativity, including literature and politics?In Russian intellectual history, the philosophical, rather than philosophy, is the predominant category. The state, ideology, economics, politics and geopolitics, literature, art, warfare, space exploration—all these spheres in Russia and the USSR have been and remain abundantly philosophical, subordinated to certain philosophical tasks, though philosophy as such has never been as developed and sophisticated as in the West. As a discipline, Western philosophy “outsourced” itself to Russian disciples, leaving it to Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, Lenin and Trotsky, to test in literary and political practices a host of Western philosophical ideas, from those of Plato, Rousseau, and Hegel to those of Feuerbach, Marx, and Nietzsche.Likewise, the verb to philosophize is used in ways unusual and awkward in the West. “It is characteristic of the Russian people to philosophize [filosofstvovat'],” as Nikolai Berdyaev observed: “An illiterate Russian peasant likes to pose questions of a philosophical nature—about the meaning of life, about God, about eternal life, about evil and untruth, about how to realize the Kingdom of God.” The philosophical and philosophizing, as attributes and actions of the state and society, overpowered philosophy as a noun—as an academic discipline, if you will. Russian philosophy has had a very modest impact on the West, but the impact of the philosophical has been immense. Nineteenth-century Russian literature influenced Western culture with its philosophical interrogations and existential dilemmas, just as, in the twentieth century, the USSR influenced the West with the philosophical ideas (Marxism, materialism, dialectics, collectivism, socialism, communism) that determined Soviet ideology, politics, and economics.In the USSR of the 1920 and 1930s, for instance, philosophy as an independent academic subject was in a subdued position, as a servant of party ideology. But, meanwhile, the sphere of the philosophical spread to such distant domains as theater (Stanislavsky), physiology (Pavlov), and agriculture (Michurin), with all such activities glorified and sponsored by the state as “philosophically correct”—as faithful to “materialism” and “Realism.” Paradoxically, in the quintessentially philosophical state that was the USSR, the state of philosophy, with the repression of all independent thought and thinkers, was miserable. The fateful and often disastrous originality of Russian philosophy consisted precisely in its dissemination to other areas, in an act of kenosis or self-transcendence that can be viewed both as an aggressive philosophical appropriation of politics, economics, ideology, and literature—and as philosophy's sacrificial devotion to the world beyond its professional boundaries.So there are three features that make Russian thought relevant and dangerous: its Platonic utopian aspiration; its spirit of totality; and its tendency to transcend the boundaries of academic philosophy and to philosophize society, politics, and life in general. Russian philosophy has not been as good at explaining the world as at changing it, sometimes ethically and poetically, sometimes violently and aggressively. Teachers and students of Russian culture should be deeply motivated to draw more attention to the philosophical in Russia and to raise its status in the Western academy. In my view, we would do better service to Russian philosophy if we are frank enough to qualify it as dangerous, sometimes very toxic and addictive, fraught with totalistic tendencies. This philosophy is the voice of the “underground,” both in the Dostoevskian and Leninist senses.At the same time, however, the antidotes concocted in the Russian metaphysical laboratory are of enormous value: the Russian versions of personalism, existentialism, secular and religious liberalism, neorationalism, culturology, conceptualism, and postmodernism. These movements, which counteract totalization, need to be studied precisely because they were cooked up and tested under the same extreme conditions in which the most dangerous intellectual poisons have been produced. (shrink)

In God, Value, and Nature, Fiona Ellis dissects philosophical and theological positions on the metaphysics of our universe. Drawing on the works of John McDowell and Peter Railton, Ellis examines the dominant dichotomy between naturalism and supernaturalism among the perspectives of scientists, philosophers, and theologians. She challenges this metaphysical bifurcation, reframing the question of naturalism. Rather than asking what fits into the category of natural and what fits into the category of supernatural, the question should be, how should we (...) understand this category of natural that we are talking about in the first place? Ellis then seeks to expand the scope of what... (shrink)

Carl Cohen’s and James Sterba’s debate is an impressive discussion of the legality and morality of various types of affirmative action and a must read for researchers in this field. These two issues bifurcate. The legality of preferential treatment consists of two different issues: Is preferential treatment Constitutional? Does preferential treatment violate laws other than the Constitution? The morality of preferential treatment also consists of two issues: Is preferential treatment right? Is it good? The discussion in this book is wide-ranging (...) and the authors provide a fascinating set of legal and empirical arguments that are a nice complement to the moral arguments that underlie their positions on affirmative action. The only problem with the book is that the moral arguments are somewhat abbreviated. In summary, the debate between Cohen and Sterba is insightful, well researched, and worth reading. Their legal arguments are particularly interesting. In the end, however, neither Cohen nor Sterba provide a plausible argument with regard to whether preferential treatment has effects that make it worth pursuing. Nor does either provide a strong moral case for or against preferential treatment as compensation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:360 HUME'S NATURALI Z EP PHILOSOPHY In "Epistemology Naturalized," Quine claimed that the failure of reductive-foundationalist attempts in epistemology, after the model of Carnap' s Aufbau, must lead to a redefinition of epistemology's task. Instead of setting out to reconstruct the whole fabric of our knowledge from absolute data through deductive operations, we should investigate how human subjects derive their knowledge of nature from sensory inputs. Thus epistemology is (...) to be conceived as a branch of natural science, cognate with psychology, not as the study of the foundations of science any more. In the present paper, I will first outline Quine's position and his related interpretation of Hume's philosophical enterprise. Then, I will try to assess the relevance and fairness of Quine's account and consider in what measure it allows us to understand the novelty of Hume's conception of philosophy, since Hume also advocated a nonfoundationalist conception of philosophy which bears some striking analogy to naturalized epistemology. Finally, I will suggest which consequences are to be drawn from this unusual view of Hume, especially as regards the self-reference of philosophy. Quine's position in the matter of epistemology is well known. For him, under its traditional form and program, epistemology used to deal with the foundations of science, be it mathematics or the science of nature. This foundationalist approach had two connected aspects, one which Quine calls conceptual; the other he calls doctrinal. As Quine 361 puts it "the conceptual studies are concerned with clarifying concepts by defining them, some in terms of others" (Quine, p. 69). In the same manner, the doctrinal studies attempt to establish laws "by proving them, some on the basis of others" (Quine, p. 69). Derivative concepts will be defined in terms of the clearer ones and complex laws will be proved from primitive and obvious ones. Thus the traditional or classical conception of epistemology involves simultaneously a theory of concepts or meanings and a theory of truth. These two branches (Quine speaks of a duality of structure or bifurcation) converge so as to provide an analysis of the way our knowledge of nature -- and our knowledge in general — stems from and is built upon our sensory experience which validates it. In so characterizing epistemology, Quine simply restates in his own terms the f oundationalist and reductivist program of positivist epistemology, which itself tied in with the logicist program in mathematics. Then Quine suggests that Hume dealt with both sides of this program, the conceptual and the doctrinal. To begin with, Hume developed what might be called a theory of concepts or meanings in terms of our sensory data. Such is the point of his theory of ideas which consists in tracing them back to the original impressions they are derived from. In spite of its limitations, which hinge on the lack of an approach in terms of statements, Hume's phenomenalism does the job of a theory of meaning and concepts. Hume also attempted to give an answer to the question of the truth of our knowledge. In this case again, his phenomenalist stand allows him to account for the truth of our singular statements concerning our perceptions, even though this result is achieved at the cost of identifying objects and sensory data. 362 However, when Hume comes to general statements and singular statements concerning future events, his attempt fails. This is not surprising. According to Quine, if it were possible to improve on Hume's theory of meaning and concepts, especially through the use of contextual definition techniques, by contrast, all the attempts to logically derive the truth of our knowledge from true premises have failed. In matter of induction, we are not one step further than Hume was. "The most modest of generalizations about observable traits will cover more cases than its utterer can have had occasions actually to observe. The hopelessness of grounding natural science upon immediate experience in a firmly logical way was acknowledged" (Quine, p. 74). Or "the Humean predicament is the human predicament." For Quine, foundationalist attempts of the sort Hume engaged in involve two cardinal principles of empiricism which remain unchallenged. One of these principles is to the effect... (shrink)

This paper explores the role that willing plays in Fichte’s transcendental idealism, as set out in the nova methodo lectures on the Wissenschaftslehre and elsewhere. I first consider the link between the idea of the self-positing I and freedom, as well as the bifurcation of the I into cognition and volition. I then pinpoint the significance of intellectual intuition as part of Fichte’s strategy of substantiating the actuality of freedom via practical reason, especially in relation to the way in (...) which our capacity for self-determination conditions our knowledge-claims about nature. Finally I indicate that the will is essential for intuitional experience, which entails the ability to distinguish pure willing from empirical willing. In this context, I argue that, for Fichte, willing is constitutive of the possibility of consciousnessin general, and the possibility of determinate knowledge in particular. (shrink)

Taking its lead from analyses of gift exchange by Marcel Mauss and Marshall Sahlins as well as of contact by Charles Long and Jonathan Z Smith, this article elaborates a theory of the exchange, among dominant social subjects, of representations of their subjected proximate others in order to rectify the crisis precipitated by contact with otherness that threatens their claims to autonomy, authority, homogeneity, and universality. Specifically it situates the polemical exchange of representations of women among Friedrich Schlegel, G W (...) F Hegel, and Karl Gutzkow as exemplary German male bourgeois efforts to rectify the crises to subject formation generated, in part, by the emergence of gender-coded bifurcated bourgeois society and signaled by the Kantian and French Revolutions. The public dissemination of apotropaic representations screened the dependence upon proximate others by, and determined the positions among, exchange participants as well as maintained structures of domination. (shrink)

Conventional wisdom has it that there is — or at least there ought to be — a correspondence between theoretical and political positions. But the very labelling of it as conventional wisdom already betrays its falsity. Sure enough, any careful examination of the record readily reveals that this correspondence hardly ever obtains. No such parallel can be drawn for the Hegelians who split into Right and Left wings with qualitatively different positions, e.g., the German Young Hegelians and the British neo-Hegelians (...) at the end of the last century. Nor is that true for Marxists who bifurcated into Social Democrats and Bolsheviks, or for the existentialists who produced Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, as well as Kierkegaard and Marcel. (shrink)