Can politics be thought?, asks Alain Badiou in the title of a recent book. The question itself reveals an experienced lack: that of politics. A lack which the so-called “return of the subject,” far from resolving, would stigmatize. The “return of the subject,” as he asserts, is merely the counterface of the break of politics, its reduction to an “ethics of tolerance” from which all its properly political traces have previously been erased. If politics cannot be associated with the “return (...) of the subject,” this is because politics does not relate to any subject but rather to the very impossibility of conceiving of it. Thus, the attempt to reactivate politics becomes inextricably linked to the endeavor of rethinking, or better said, unthinking the subject. As this article shows, this project articulates a specially dynamic current of thought in the last years, which we may call, generically, “poststructuralist Marxist.” That project not only gave a new impulse to Marxist thinking, articulating a space of reflection which delimitates this current from that one with which it borders—deconstructionism—and from which it can interpellate the entire philosophical tradition. Ultimately, it comes to condense an issue whose relevance far exceeds the ambit of Marxist thinking: how politics is possible in a post-metaphysical and post-subjective context. Being and Event, by Alain Badiou, is, no doubt, the most systematical attempt to answer that question. It allows us to observe the main contributions of these current to contemporary philosophical thinkings, revealing, at the same time, the kind of aporias that that issue poses to it. (shrink)

The eureka moment is a myth. It is an altogether naïve and fanciful account of human progress. Innovations emerge from a much less mysterious combination of historical, circumstantial, and accidental influences. This book explores the origin and evolution of several important behavioral innovations including the high five, the Heimlich maneuver, the butterfly stroke, the moonwalk, and the Iowa caucus. Such creations' striking suitability to the situation and the moment appear ingeniously designed with foresight. However, more often than not, they actually (...) arise 'as if by design.' Based on investigations into the histories of a wide range of innovations, Edward A. Wasserman reveals the nature of behavioral creativity. What surfaces is a fascinating web of causation involving three main factors: context, consequence, and coincidence. Focusing on the process rather than the product of innovation elevates behavior to the very center of the creative human endeavor. (shrink)

Idealization is a fundamental feature of human thought. We build simplified models in our scientific research and utopias in our political imaginations. Concepts like belief, desire, reason, and justice are bound up with idealizations and ideals. Life is a constant adjustment between the models we make and the realities we encounter. In idealizing, we proceed “as if” our representations were true, while knowing they are not. This is not a dangerous or distracting occupation, Kwame Anthony Appiah shows. Our best chance (...) of understanding nature, society, and ourselves is to open our minds to a plurality of imperfect depictions that together allow us to manage and interpret our world. -/- The philosopher Hans Vaihinger first delineated the “as if” impulse at the turn of the twentieth century, drawing on Kant, who argued that rational agency required us to act as if we were free. Appiah extends this strategy to examples across philosophy and the human and natural sciences. In a broad range of activities, we have some notion of the truth yet continue with theories that we recognize are, strictly speaking, false. From this vantage point, Appiah demonstrates that a picture one knows to be unreal can be a vehicle for accessing reality. -/- As If explores how strategic untruth plays a critical role in far-flung areas of inquiry: decision theory, psychology, natural science, and political philosophy. A polymath who writes with mainstream clarity, Appiah defends the centrality of the imagination not just in the arts but in science, morality, and everyday life. (shrink)

When he formulated the program of neurophenomenology, Francisco Varela suggested a balanced methodological dissolution of the hard problem of consciousness. I show that his dissolution is a paradigm which imposes itself onto seemingly opposite views, including materialist approaches. I also point out that Varela's revolutionary epistemological ideas are gaining wider acceptance as a side effect of a recent controversy between hermeneutists and eliminativists. Finally, I emphasize a structural parallel between the science of consciousness and the distinctive features of quantum mechanics. (...) This parallel, together with the former convergences, point towards the common origin of the main puzzles of both quantum mechanics and the philosophy of mind: neglect of the constitutive blindspot of objective knowledge. (shrink)

The primary focus here is romantic love, but it may be applied to other cases of love such as those within a family. The first issue is whether love is a non-rational occurrence leading to a state of affairs to which the normative constrains of reason do not apply. If one assumes that reasons are relevant to determining love, then the second issue is the manner in which love is and should be reasonable and governed by the indications of reason. (...) It is contended that our conception of love is inherently contradictory. Depending on circumstances, we want love to be both a non-rational occurrence beyond reason and something normative such that the indications of reasons are relevant to determining and assessing it. We alternate between the two treatments of love and in so doing love can function in our lives. The incoherence is accommodated by each treatment or view of love being one of as if. This allows us to live with love in a manner whereby we do not have to definitively commit to either alternative, so we have a dipolar as if concept of love. Sometimes we view love as if reasons were beside the point and at others we view love as if it were rightly subject to the indications of reason. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Sacrificial "As-If" and Avuncular HilarityLiving by MéconnaissanceWiel Eggen (bio)INTRODUCTION: THE CURIOUS QUESTIONAt my departure for anthropological fieldwork in the Central African Republic (RCA), just after Girard's seminal work La Violence et le sacré had come to upset my structuralist tutors in Paris, I was given a list of penetrating questions to probe in the field, since my research was to be conducted in an area known for its a-cephalous (...) traditions with little or no political or religious centralization.1 The prime critique concerned Girard's apparent return to a bluntly utilitarian vision of myth and religion as the mental framework of society's ritual foundations, in line with Durkheim's functionalist analysis of archaic religion, which was finely reworded in Lord Raglan's recent preface to a cluster of Hocart's articles titled The Life-Giving Myth.2 The approach had come to dominate, as a way of unraveling outdated transcendentalist claims, and also underpinned Freudian and Marxist attacks on religion. After Kant's Critique of Pure Reason had given the lie to any claims of access to transcendent realms, the deontological view of religion as society's functionalist toolbox for orderly [End Page 69] conduct became dominant. But, inspired also by such "masters of suspicion" in human sciences, structuralism had set out even beyond that utilitarian perspective. In a decisive bolt of relativism, it took myths to be a mere mental ordering of daily observations into a logical frame, independent of any ritual or social utility. So, how could Girard once again declare social control via rituals to be religion's true aim, allot a prime role to sacrificial rites, and, most alarmingly, thereby raise the suspicion of aiming to rehabilitate Christian dogmas?I was urged to go and check this theory on sacrifices, scapegoating, social rivalry, and on the shaping of archaic society, its forms of authority, and even sacred kingship. Reflecting on the questions, though, I noted that they overlooked a critical point in Girard's hypothesis, which I read as reverse functionalism. In fact, Girard viewed religion's social function and the issuing cultural regulations as rooted in a radical "lie," or in what he labels méconnaissance. Worded in evolutionary terms, he hypothesized not so much a kind of Darwinian utilitarian adaptation, but rather the alternative of "exaptation," or what has been called an oblique functionalism.After I had learned enough of the Banda language to start my research, though, my schedules were thrown in disarray on my first evening in the village that was to be my starting point. It presented me with a curious quandary. The village of Wademi, some 25 km north of Ippy, in the sparsely populated wooded savannah, was home to two exogamous patrilineal clans that straddle a little river and sit on a dirt road constructed by the colonial power for the collection of cotton. To oversee this two-clan unit a chief had been appointed with the title of makonji, a loanword from the national Sango language. This gentle, friendly man had offered to host me in his own cemented house and organized a welcome for me in the customary way of staging a pleasant storytelling session, punctuated with joyous songs and dances, lasting well into the night. Most of the stories and songs figured Tere, the famous trickster figure, who resembles Ture in neighboring Azande-land, well documented by E. Evans-Pritchard.3 The enjoyable, moonlit session was shot through with outbursts of laughter. It brought the two clans together, including the women and children. Before turning in, the makonji's junior son, who had been assigned my assistant and interpreter, came to convey his father's sincere but puzzling query, whether Tere actually was the same as Jesus Christ. Actually, his French name in Banda phonetics implied so: Christ Jésu = Tre se te jesu; and "Jesu Christ = Jesu Tre."4 Taken by surprise and much in need of some rest after a rather demanding day, I politely asked to let the issue rest till the morning.This question was all the more disturbing, as Christians were wont to call Jesus the Lord, and relate this to chieftaincy... (shrink)

As If: Idealization and Ideals, by AppiahKwame Anthony. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017. Pp. xvi + 218.

This article studies the response of the US disability community to the prevalent assumption that disabled people do not have a future, in the form of the disability rights movement. It provides an exploratory discussion of the key role played by utopianism in the response. In doing so, the article adds to critical theorizing on the importance of utopia to the oppression of non-dominant groups and to transcending that oppression. I use utopian studies scholarship to interpret the activities leading up (...) to the passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990 as a minor utopia, characterized by an ambiguous, grounded, and provisional effort to imagine alternative ways of being. I articulate the central role played by a positive vision of disability and disabled people for this inversion of the historically negative relationship between utopia and disability. The article turns to disability activists to show that the movement countered exclusionary utopian approaches by acting as if it had a right to envision and enact a different, better future for all from the perspective of disability and disabled people. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 45, Issue 3, pp 386 - 411 “As If, As Such” reads Derrida’s understanding of the institution of literature as both the most interesting thing in the world and “perhaps” more interesting than the world in relation to his remark that the noema remains one of the most difficult and problematic concepts in Husserl’s phenomenological toolbox. By focusing on the noema as the objective side of consciousness and thus as what does not properly belong to consciousness, hence (...) as the site of the tension between form and matter, the following essay also explains why Derrida claimed that the “as” was always the target of deconstruction. Ultimately, “As If, As Such” seeks to elaborate what Derrida called the “power of literature” as that which is at work in the possibility of life. (shrink)

The argument of this paper hinges on Derrida's relation to Judaism as a religious heritage and/or as an essential experience. If he can be said to ‘appropriate his Jewish roots’ at all, as Colby Dickinson (2011) has recently proposed, this is not because Derrida concurs that all belief in an ultimate reality (‘as such’) must now be understood in merely conditional terms (‘as if’). Rather, it is because Derrida deconstructs the difference between the Jew and the non-Jew, along with the (...) differences between the ‘as if’ and the ‘as such’ and the performative and the constative, in his very demonstration of the impossibility of ‘being-jewish’. Dickinson thus misunderstands the way in which Derrida appropriates Kant's regulative ‘as if’, and thus misrepresents what is at stake in Derrida's ‘faith’ in ‘Jewishness’. What is at stake is what Derrida calls deconstructive responsibility, and it takes the form of a radical fidelity to the principle of reason (to an ‘unconditional theoreticism’). This responsibility, paradoxically, demands and impels the interrogation of critical thinking itself, with its principles, its essences and its identities. Accordingly, Derrida interrupts both the ‘as such’ and the ‘as if’ with the ‘if’ of a dangerous ‘perhaps’. (shrink)

Much current educational research shows the influence of two powerful but potentially pernicious lines of thought. The first, which can be traced at least as far back as Francis Bacon, is the ambition to formulate precise techniques of research, or ‘research methods’, which can be applied reliably irrespective of the talent of the researcher. The second is the recognition that in the social sciences we—humankind—are ourselves the objects of our study. The first line of thought threatens to cut educational research (...) free of the wider range of ideas and theories that should govern or at least inform it. The second tends to turn it into an absorption with self, particularly when allied to what its practitioners like to think of as the postmodern turn. (shrink)

This paper is divided into two main sections. In the first, I attempt to show that the characterization of Frege as a redundancy theorist is not accurate. Using one of Wolfgang Carl's recent works as a foil, I argue that Frege countenances a realm of abstract objects including truth, and that Frege's Platonist commitments inform his epistemology and embolden his antipsychologistic project. In the second section, contrasting Frege's Platonism with pragmatism, I show that even though Frege's metaphysical position concerning truth (...) has been criticized as reproachable, I argue that it may be useful for people to think like Platonists while conducting their scientific and philosophical inquiries. (shrink)

Much current educational research shows the influence of two powerful but potentially pernicious lines of thought. The first, which can be traced at least as far back as Francis Bacon, is the ambition to formulate precise techniques of research, or ‘research methods’, which can be applied reliably irrespective of the talent of the researcher. The second is the recognition that in the social sciences we—humankind—are ourselves the objects of our study. The first line of thought threatens to cut educational research (...) free of the wider range of ideas and theories that should govern or at least inform it. The second tends to turn it into an absorption with self, particularly when allied to what its practitioners like to think of as the postmodern turn. (shrink)

This article examines several aspects of the appreciation of Chinese calligraphy, seeking to address two questions. First, what are the aesthetic objects in its appreciation? And second, how can we characterize the process of coming to understand calligraphic works? The answers, I contend, can be found in classical texts on this art. I hold that the aesthetic objects in the experience of a calligraphic work are twofold: the outer form and the inner qualities. This is analogous to what Noël Carroll (...) understood as the object of aesthetic experience, that is, the formal and/or expressive properties.1 I propose that calligraphy appreciation can be understood as a process of retrieval, a term I take from Richard... (shrink)

This is the first part of a larger project that aims to develop a cross-categorical semantic account of a broad range of _as if_ constructions in English. In this paper, we focus on descriptive uses of _as if_ with regular truth-conditional content. The core proposal is that _as if_-phrases contribute hypothetical (_if_-like) and comparative (_as_-like) properties of situations, which are instantiated by an event, state, or larger situation when it resembles in some relevant respect its counterparts in selected stereotypical worlds (...) described by the clause embedded under _as if_. We motivate and develop this situation-semantic analysis in detail for examples like _Pedro danced as if he was possessed by demons_ where the modifying _as if_-adjunct is used to inferentially convey the manner of a reported activity. We extend this analysis to _as if_-complements of perception verbs in reports like _The soup tastes as if it contains fish sauce_, offering an alternative to conceptually problematic approaches that assimilate such perceptual resemblance reports to propositional attitude ascriptions. We also examine the predicative function of _as if_ in examples like _The state of the house is as if a tornado passed through it_ where the _as if_-phrase denotes a hypothetical comparative property of the nominal subject. (shrink)

I learned very early, perhaps even before 1933 and certainly after Hitler’s huge success at the time of his election to the Reichstag, of Heidegger’s sympathy toward National Socialism. It was the late Alexandre Koyré who mentioned it to me for the first time on his return from a trip to Germany. I could not doubt the news, but took it with stupor and disappointment, and also with the faint hope that it expressed only the temporary lapse of a great (...) speculative mind into practical banality. It cast a shadow over my firm confidence that an unbridgeable distance forever separated the delirious and criminal hatred voiced by Evil on the pages of Mein Kampf from the intellectual vigor and extreme analytical virtuosity displayed in Sein und Zeit, which had opened the field to a new type of philosophical inquiry.Could one question the incomparable impression produced by this book, in which it immediately became apparent that Heidegger was the interlocutor and equal of the greatest—those very few—founders of European philosophy? that here was someone, this seemed obvious, all modern thought would soon have to answer? Emmanuel Levinas has been professor of philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure Israélite de Paris and at the University of Paris I . Among his books that have been translated into English are Totality and Infinity, Ethics and Infinity, and Otherwise Than Being or Beyond Essence. Paula Wissing, a free-lance translator and editor, has recently translated Paul Veyne’s Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths? (shrink)

In this essay I wish to consider the implications for theory and practice of the following two propositions, either or both of which may be controversial, but which will here be assumed for the sake of argument: Libertarianism is the correct framework for political morality. The vast majority of our fellow citizens disbelieve. 1.

At the close of this psychotherapeutic century, an alternative to psychotherapy has begun to emerge: the use of philosophy as guidance in order to ameliorate everyday life situations. This new approach to so?called psychological problems, consisting of various forms of open?ended dialogue and reflection on life, may prevent or resolve many of the ?illnesses? for which people seek psychiatric or psychological treatment. If successful, philosophical counseling would mark not only a radical shift in the direction of psychological care, but a (...) radical return to the original, practical purposes of philosophy. (shrink)

Vaihinger... shows that thought is primarily a biological function turned into a conscious art. It is an art of adjustment, whose chief instrument is the construction of fictions by which men may manage to live. Thought is to be tested not by correspondence to an objective reality (that fiction is neatly disposed of) nor by its mirroring in consciousness an objective external world. Thought is to be tested by its fruits. The constructions of thought are not copies of or transcripts (...) of reality; they are programs, guess-work plans; possible programs for operation. Their validity is to be measured not by verisimilitude but by value. The fruits of thought are not "true," but especially where they are false, it may be important to act as if they were true... Vaihinger's chief originality consists in his defining of fictions and his distinction of fictions from hypotheses on the one hand, and from dogmatisms on the other. An hypothesis is a tentative discovery about the universe; a fiction is a deliberate, often clearly false and internally contradictory invention of thought... Evolution is the hypothesis that man is descended from the lower animals. We assume that we can indirectly turn to the remote facts which would justify that hypothesis. But the concept of infinity in the calculus, the atom and the ether in physics, the economic man in Adam Smith, are deliberate self-contradictory fictions, and fictions at variance with all experience. But though they are not only imaginary, false to the reality they allegedly represent and logically incoherent, they nevertheless facilitate thought and proper action. They are vital lies, human conveniences. They are the faiths, the palpably false faiths, the clearly useful falsities by which we live... The discovery that fictions were fictions has led, in the past, says Vaihinger, to an abandonment of them, and a turning to other fictions believed to be truer. Pathetic and foolish adventure! What the race needs is more faith in its own effective imaginations. The myths that it has told itself, the world pictures that it has made, are not to be dismissed because they are found to be creations of the imagination. They tally with no world and they carry the canker of logical inconsistency within them. The important thing is their utility; their human scope and mortal relevance. If we ceased making fictions, we should cease altogether to be. Let us beware to plunge from fruitful fictions to less fruitful ones that masquerade as truths and are really dogmatisms. (Review of As If by Irwin Edman, Saturday Review of Literature, 10 January, 1925) This is a well-formatted version of C.K. Ogden's translation of Philosophie des Als Ob, originally published in 1925 by Kegan Paul. (shrink)

The discovery of mirror neurons in both primates and humans has led to an enormous amount of research and speculation as to how conscious beings are able to interact so effortlessly among one another. Mirror neurons might provide an embodied basis for passive synthesis and the eventual process of further communalization through empathy, as envisioned by Edmund Husserl. I consider the possibility of a phenomenological and scientific investigation of laughter as a point of connection that might in the future bridge (...) the gap Husserl feared had grown too expansive between the worlds of science and philosophy. Part I will describe some implications of the discovery of mirror neurons. Part II will address Husserl’s concept of embodiment as it relates to neuroscience and empathy. Part III will be a primer to investigating laughter phenomenologically. Part IV will be a continuation of the study of laughter and empathy as possible elements helpful in broadening the scope of what Husserl calls the Life-World. (shrink)

Law students are usually told that the purpose of damages is to make it as if a wrong had never happened.3 Although torts professors are good at explaining this idea to their students, it is the source of much academic perplexity. Money cannot really make serious losses go away, and it seems a cruel joke to say that money can make an injured person “whole.” Worse still, if money could make an injured person whole, injuring someone and then paying them (...) seems just as good as not injuring them at all. (shrink)

Abstract“Reading as if for Death” asks how people live in the face of imminent death by analyzing Nevil Shute’s 1957 novel On the Beach. The few critics who have commented on this novel have focused on its message about the dangers of nuclear weapons. This article argues that this middlebrow Australian bestseller, which has never gone out of print, is also an important contribution to the literature of death and dying. In its focus on characters who may well be dead (...) within a year but continue to plant gardens and learn shorthand, the novel departs from common views of everyday life as passive, static, and immanent, instead portraying it as centered around acts of repair and future-oriented planning. In contrast to representations of mortality that emphasize transcendence and enlightenment, On the Beach sympathetically conveys the combination of certainty and uncertainty that most of its characters endure in living their final days and depicts characters for whom denial, refusing to see what is, and delusion, believing in what is not, become forms of palliative care. (shrink)

Hans Vaihinger tried to explain how mathematical theories can be useful without being true or even coherent, arguing that mathematicians employ a special kind of fictional or "as if" reasoning that reliably extracts truths from absurdities. Moritz Pasch insisted that Vaihinger was wrong about the incoherence of core mathematical theories, but right about the utility of fictional discourse in mathematics. This essay explores this area of agreement between Pasch and Vaihinger. Pasch's position raises questions about structuralist interpretations of mathematics.

Hans Vaihinger tried to explain how mathematical theories can be useful without being true or even coherent, arguing that mathematicians employ a special kind of fictional or “as if” reasoning that reliably extracts truths from absurdities. Moritz Pasch insisted that Vaihinger was wrong about the incoherence of core mathematical theories, but right about the utility of fictional discourse in mathematics. This essay explores this area of agreement between Pasch and Vaihinger. Pasch’s position raises questions about structuralist interpretations of mathematics.

Veterinarians are increasingly confronted with new technologies, such as Precision Livestock Farming (PLF), which allows for automated animal monitoring on commercial farms. At the same time, we lack information on how veterinarians, as stakeholders who may play a mediating role in the public debate on livestock farming, perceive the use and the impact of such technologies. This study explores the meaning veterinarians attribute to the application of PLF in the context of public concerns related to pig production. Semi-structured interviews were (...) carried out with pig veterinarians located in the Netherlands and Germany. By using an inductive and semantic approach to reflexive thematic analysis, we developed four main themes from the interview data: (1) the advisory role of the veterinarian, which is characterized by a diverse scope, including advice on PLF, generally positive evaluations and financial dependencies; (2) the delineation of PLF technologies as supporting tools, which are seen as an addition to human animal care; (3) the relationship between veterinarian and farmer, which is context-related, ranging from taking sides with to distancing oneself from farmers; and (4) the distance between agriculture and society, in the context of which PLF has both a mitigating and reinforcing potential. The present findings indicate that veterinarians play an active role in the emerging field of PLF in livestock farming. They are aware of and reflect on competing interests of different groups in society and share positions with different stakeholders. However, the extent to which they are able to mediate between stakeholder groups in practice seems to be constrained by external factors, such as financial dependencies. (shrink)

The injunction to “analyze the way you randomize” is well known to statisticians since Fisher advocated for randomization as the basis of inference. Yet even those convinced by the merits of randomization-based inference seldom follow this injunction to the letter. Bernoulli randomized experiments are often analyzed as completely randomized experiments, and completely randomized experiments are analyzed as if they had been stratified; more generally, it is not uncommon to analyze an experiment as if it had been randomized differently. This article (...) examines the theoretical foundation behind this practice within a randomization-based framework. Specifically, we ask when is it legitimate to analyze an experiment randomized according to one design as if it had been randomized according to some other design. We show that a sufficient condition for this type of analysis to be valid is that the design used for analysis should be derived from the original design by an appropriate form of conditioning. We use our theory to justify certain existing methods, question others, and finally suggest new methodological insights such as conditioning on approximate covariate balance. (shrink)

In this paper, I assess Peter Dabrock's “Drawing distinctions responsibly and concretely: A European Protestant perspective on foundational theological bioethics.” I explore the ways in which Dabrock announces nontraditional Christian assumptions to guide Christian bioethics, engages the secular bioethical agenda on the very terms set by and congenial to the field of secular bioethics, and searches for insights from philosophy and science through which to recast Christian moral judgments. For example, he cites approvingly, as if they were expressive of Christian (...) moral concerns: human rights, democracy, and state-based social redistribution of resources to satisfy welfare entitlements. In this short essay, I argue that Dabrock has unduly limited the role of Traditional Christian theology to guide bioethics and, consequently, has also wrongly characterized the Christian moral life and Christian social/political obligations. (shrink)

Based on the double character of “as if,” it is argued in this paper that “the surplus of meaning” turns out to be “the surplus of being,” which reveals a human being who interprets his or her own being and also acknowledges this being as be-ing at the same time. In this article, 1) the notion of “as if” is retrieved from Ricoeur’s early work in relation to the “poetics of being” aspired to by him. This leads us to 2) (...) examine the relation between the “semantic surplus” and the “becoming of being.” 3) Addressing the problem of metaphorical reference, the key philosophical problem of poetics, is, therefore, inevitable. Only after this analysis will we 4) be able to consider whether there is a kind of “poetics of being” in the work of Paul Ricoeur. (shrink)

Glen Stassen has approached his life and work "as if Jesus mattered," and this new collection of essays in his honor demonstrates that the contributors share that commitment, each in her or his own way. Ethics as if Jesus Mattered will introduce Stassen's work to a new generation, advance dialogue and debate in Christian ethics, and inspire more faithful discipleship just as it honors one whom the contributors consider a mentor.

The discovery of mirror neurons in both primates and humans has led to an enormous amount of research and speculation as to how conscious beings are able to interact so effortlessly among one another. Mirror neurons might provide an embodied basis for passive synthesis and the eventual process of further communalization through empathy, as envisioned by Edmund Husserl. I consider the possibility of a phenomenological and scientific investigation of laughter as a point of connection that might in the future bridge (...) the gap Husserl feared had grown too expansive between the worlds of science and philosophy. Part I will describe some implications of the discovery of mirror neurons. Part II will address Husserl’s concept of embodiment as it relates to neuroscience and empathy. Part III will be a primer to investigating laughter phenomenologically. Part IV will be a continuation of the study of laughter and empathy as possible elements helpful in broadening the scope of what Husserl calls the Life-World. (shrink)

The usual way of discussing normativity and naturalism is by running through a standard range of issues: the relations of fact and value, objectivity, reason and emotion, is and ought, and the so-called ‘naturalistic fallacy’. This is a naturalism that is virtually silent on nature. I outline an alternative approach that relates normativity to our nature as living beings, for whom specific things are good or bad for us. Our nature as evaluative beings is shown to be rooted in and (...) emergent from this biological normativity. There is also significant downward causation, such that our brain-bodies are continually modified by our experience and thoughts. Cultures, as emergent from the affordances of our brain-bodies, create further extensive, irreducible sources of normativity, albeit ones which do not wholly escape biological normativity and can impact back on it. (shrink)

The island of Palawan stretches northward from Borneo like a bridge to Luzon in the South China Sea. This tropical forest environment, rich in thousands of species of plants and animals, is home to about 50,000 people, known as the Palawan. Besides hunting with blowpipes, traps, spears, and dogs, these people also practice shifting cultivation. Hunting and gathering activities as well as work in the fields follow the alternation of two seasons, the “monsoon” and the “heat,” barat and bulag. As (...) an integral ecosystem, swidden places a high value on mobility rather than on land property. Land tenure, and recourse to physical violence of all kinds are considered unethical behavior. Social life among the Palawan is governed by a bilateral or undifferentiated kinship system, a complex customary law based on rules and values dictated by “the tradition of the Ancestors,” Adat ät Kägunggurangan. (shrink)

The interest of this essay is meta-philosophical: I seek to reconstruct neglected concepts of thought available to us given the diverse use South Asian Buddhist philosophers have made of the term-of-art vikalpa. In contemporary Anglophone engagements with Buddhist philosophy, it has come to mean either the categorization and reidentification of particulars in terms of the construction of equivalence classes and/or the representation of extra-mental causes of content. While this does track much that is important in the history of Buddhist philosophy, (...) it is overly restrictive. Based on three examples, this essay reconstructs other concepts of vikalpa available before, during, and after Digṅāga’s epochal reformulation of Buddhist epistemology. The first example takes us away from the familiar context of content introduction in perceptual experience to consider Ratnakīrti’s way of treating cases where one exits from concept-involving modes of engaging content. The second takes up with Vasubandhu and Sthiramati the case of the contents of background awareness. The third and final case builds on the last concern, taking up a discussion of possible worlds in the Laṅkāvatārasūtra. This last was intended to address the relationship of thought to language. Moving beyond narrowly epistemological concerns allows a more expansive sense of vikalpa to come into view. Doing so, in turn, allows one to see that vikalpa need not indicate only occurrent representations, but also the structured systems of possible discriminations which some Buddhists took to serve as the background for all possible perception, thought, and action. The existence of such a background changes the salience and the value of distinctions drawn between conceptual and non-conceptual contents and experiences. (shrink)

In Knights, Aristophanes represents the dangers of parrhēsia run amuck with the near-destruction of an elderly man’s Athenian household by Paphlagon. In this setting, Paphlagon’s invocations of his own parrhēsia and goodwill become a destructive form of flattery, causing chaos in the household and threatening its viability. This article begins with a discussion of the problem of parrhēsia in democratic Athens and the ways in which Cleon exemplified those problems. Moving to an examination of Aristophanes’ Knights, the author tracks the (...) playwright’s exploration and response. Aristophanes uses the figure of the elderly Demos as a metaphor for the decline of the city, allowing him to both critique the demos and to align himself with it. Moreover, even as he must win the audience over in order to achieve the theatrical success he craves, Aristophanes removes himself from the perverse logic of dēmophilia-turned-pandering by claiming to be motivated not by goodwill for the audience, but by his hatred of Cleon, an enemy shared by both the playwright and the city. (shrink)

In Knights, Aristophanes represents the dangers of parrhēsia run amuck with the near-destruction of an elderly man’s Athenian household by Paphlagon. In this setting, Paphlagon’s invocations of his own parrhēsia and goodwill become a destructive form of flattery, causing chaos in the household and threatening its viability. This article begins with a discussion of the problem of parrhēsia in democratic Athens and the ways in which Cleon exemplified those problems. Moving to an examination of Aristophanes’ Knights, the author tracks the (...) playwright’s exploration and response. Aristophanes uses the figure of the elderly Demos as a metaphor for the decline of the city, allowing him to both critique the demos and to align himself with it. Moreover, even as he must win the audience over in order to achieve the theatrical success he craves, Aristophanes removes himself from the perverse logic of dēmophilia-turned-pandering by claiming to be motivated not by goodwill for the audience, but by his hatred of Cleon, an enemy shared by both the playwright and the city. (shrink)