Peter Warnek: Descent of socrates: Self-knowledge & cryptic nature in the platonic dialogues Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-5 DOI 10.1007/s11007-012-9214-0 Authors Christopher P. Long, The Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA, USA Journal Continental Philosophy Review Online ISSN 1573-1103 Print ISSN 1387-2842.

Drawing on recent work on the nature of the numbering system of the _Tractatus_ and Wittgenstein’s use of that system in his composition of the _Prototractatus_, the paper sets out the rationale for the online tool called__ __ The University of Iowa Tractatus Map. The map consists of a website with a front page that links to two separate subway-style maps of the hypertextual numbering system Wittgenstein used in his _Tractatus_. One map displays the structure of the published _Tractatus_; the (...) other lays out the structure of the _Prototractatus_. The site makes available the full text of the German and the two canonical English translations.__ __While we envisage the map as a tool that we would like a wide variety of readers to find helpful, we argue that our website amounts to a radically new edition of Wittgenstein’s early masterpiece, with far-reaching implications for the interpretation of that text. In particular, we claim that our visually compelling presentation of the book’s overall structure delivers on Wittgenstein’s cryptic claim in a letter to his publisher that it is the numbers that “make the book surveyable and clear”. (shrink)

In this paper I aim to critically analyse the underlying moral justification of the rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth. The aim of the critique is to highlight some of the problematic areas that underpin the Declaration’s rights and in doing so to point to ways that one can begin to rectify the problems with them and the Universal Declaration itself. The paper aims to critically examine the moral justification for the Universal Declaration’s rights, (...) which is found in the works of Thomas Berry and his commentators who use the notion of ‘subjectivity’ to justify the existence of such rights. The paper critically examines such a notion and argues that it is not strong enough to do the work required of it, and that it is too problematic to serve as a justification for the Universal Declaration’s rights, as the ethical framework it provides is too cryptic and indeterminate, and does not provide us with an adequate action- and law-guiding framework upon which to establish the Universal Declaration and its rights. (shrink)

Author of the acclaimed Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet, Lyndal Roper has here produced a somewhat cryptic sequel: a series of related essays, explaining why Luther was such a dominant, controv...

This paper gives two complete and elementary proofs that if the speed of light over closed paths has a universal value c, then it is possible to synchronize clocks in such a way that the one-way speed of light is c. The first proof is an elementary version of a recent proof. The second provides high precision experimental evidence that it is possible to synchronize clocks in such a way that the one-way speed of light has a universal value. We (...) also discuss an old incomplete proof by Weyl which is important from an historical perspective. (shrink)

Filosofia e Educação como “Modo de vida”: o cuidado de si, do outro e o agradecimento a Asclépio Resumo: Este artigo é parte dos resultados de pesquisas empreendidas no Grupo de Pesquisa GPEFE - Grupo de Pesquisa Estudos Foucaultianos e Educação da Universidade São Francisco. As análises partem de referenciais teóricos filosóficos da Antiguidade grega, em especial Platão e avança por entre os contemporâneos como Nietzsche, Foucault, dentre outros, com intuito de perscrutar o enigmático pedido de Sócrates a Críton, quando (...) Sócrates pediu que sacrificasse um galo a Asclépio. O que Sócrates queria dizer com este “enigma”? “– Devemos um galo a Asclépio”. Então perguntamos: Sócrates foi curado? Curado de que doença? Doenças? Qual ou quais livros de Platão poderiam esclarecer o enigma? Quem era o deus Asclépio? Em que momento Asclépio se tornou importante para os helenos? Qual a simbólica do galo para os atenienses? Existe algum legado através desse enigma que possa nos ajudar de alguma forma a nos educar e educarmos? Tais leituras podem ser importantes para a esfera da Educação? Palavras-chave: Filosofia e Educação, Parrhesía, Epimeléia heautou. Philosophy and Education as “Way of life”: care for the self, care for the others and gratitude to Asclepius: This article is part of the results of a research undertaken in the Research Group GPEFE - Grupo de Pesquisa Estudos Foucaultianos e Educação at the University São Francisco. The analyzes depart from philosophical theoretical references from the Greek Antiquity, especially Plato, and advance with contemporary authors such as Nietzsche, Foucault, among others, in order to examine Socrates' cryptic request to Crito, when Socrates asked that he sacrificed a cock to Asclepius. What did Socrates mean by this “enigma”? “-We owe a cock to Asclepius”. So we ask: was Socrates healed? Healed of what disease? Diseases? Which book or books of Plato could enlighten the riddle? Who was the god Asclepius? When did Asclepius become important to the Hellenes? What is the symbol of the cock for the Athenians? Is there a legacy through this puzzle that can somehow help us to educate and educate ourselves? Can such readings be important to the sphere of Education? Keywords: Philosophy and education, Parrhesía, Epimeléia heautou. Filosofía y Educación como “Modo de vida”: cuidarse a sí mismo, al otro y agradecer a Asclepio Resumen: Este artículo es parte de los resultados de investigaciones realizadas en el Grupo de Investigación GPEFE - Grupo de Pesquisa Estudos Foucaultianos e Educação de la Universidad São Francisco. Los análisis parten de referenciales teóricos filosóficos de la Antigüedad Griega, en particular Platón, y avanzan entre los contemporáneos como Nietzsche, Foucault, entre otros, con el fin de escrutar el enigmático pedido de Sócrates a Críton, cuando Sócrates le rogó que sacrificara un gallo a Asclepio. ¿Qué Sócrates quería decir con este “enigma”? “-Debemos un gallo a Asclepio”. Entonces nos preguntamos: ¿Sócrates fue sanado? ¿Curado de qué enfermedad? ¿Enfermedades? ¿Cuál o cuáles libros de Platón podría aclarar el enigma? ¿Quién era el dios Asclepio? ¿En qué momento Asclepio se hizo importante para los helenos? ¿Cuál es la simbología del gallo para los atenienses? ¿Hay algún legado a través de ese enigma que pueda ayudarnos de algún modo a educarnos y a educar? ¿Tales lecturas pueden ser importantes para la esfera de la Educación? Palabras clave: Filosofía y educación, Parrhesía, Epimeléia heautou. Data de registro: 25/10/2019 Data de aceite: 27/05/2020. (shrink)

The paper explores the meaning of the phenomenological concept of sedimentation in the framework of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology. The analysis I offer suggests that Merleau-Ponty initiates a transition from the constitutional problematic of sedimentations that we come across in Husserl’s phenomenology to the analysis of existential sedimentations. Merleau-Ponty accomplishes this transformation by binding the Husserlian conception of sedimentations with the Heideggerian conception of facticity. The distinction Merleau-Ponty draws between originary sedimentations and secondary sedimentations is especially important, for it allows one to (...) claim that Merleau-Ponty recognizes all experiences as sedimented. Against the background of this realization, I offer a reevaluation of Merleau-Ponty’s cryptic remarks in the Phenomenology of Perception regarding the “original past,” also described as “a past that has never been a present.” I argue that these are metaphors for originary sedimentations. In place of a conclusion, I suggest that especially when the concept of sedimentation is universalized, we come to recognize its inherently paradoxical nature. In the final analysis, besides being a genetic concept, sedimentation is also a limit problem and a limit phenomenon. (shrink)

Robert C. Neville, Dean of Theology and Professor of Philosophy, Boston University, in his comments on Chuang-Tzu for Spiritual Transformation for the State University of New York press: ‘The present outstanding volume by Robert Allinson ... initiates a new direction ... His new direction for understanding Chuang-Tzu is his comprehensive and detailed argument that Chuang Tzu was advocating an ideal of sageliness. Whereas many interpreters have claimed that Chuang Tzu used his metaphorical language to defend a relativism, Allinson shows with (...) convincing mastery that Chuang Tzu had a position, namely, the importance of achieving the ideal of sageliness ... he brings the discussion of Chuang Tzu into the heart of contemporary Western philosophy. Professor Allinson’s book, like his many articles, contributes to the growing body of literature that is creating an effective dialogue between Chinese and Western philosophy. The sophistication of this book demonstrates that the dialogue has worked and that we are in a new era of substantive comparative philosophy ... he also makes a substantial contribution to the philosophy of religion. Currently in its 8th impression, "Chuang-Tzu for Spiritual Transformation: An Analysis of the Inner Chapters" has been translated into Chinese and Korean. This book offers a fundamentally new interpretation of the philosophy of the Chuang-Tzu. It is the first full-length work of its kind which argues that a deep level cognitive structure exists beneath an otherwise random collection of literary anecdotes, cryptic sayings, and dark allusions. The author carefully analyzes myths, legends, monstrous characters, paradoxes, parables and linguistic puzzles as strategically placed techniques for systematically tapping and channeling the spiritual dimensions of the mind. Allinson takes issue with commentators who have treated the Chuang-Tzu as a minor foray into relativism. Chapter titles are re-translated, textual fragments are relocated, and inauthentic, outer miscellaneous chapters are carefully separated from the transformatory message of the authentic, inner chapters. Each of the inner chapters is shown to be a building block to the next so that they can only be understood as forming a developmental sequence. In the end, the reader is presented with a clear, consistent and coherent view of the Chuang-Tzu that is more in accord with its stature as a major philosophical work. (shrink)

Prolegomena §38 is intended to elucidate the claim that the understanding legislates a priori laws to nature. Kant cites various laws of geometry as examples and discusses a derivation of the inverse-square law from such laws. I address 4 key interpretive questions about this cryptic text that have not yet received satisfying answers: How exactly are Kant's examples of laws supposed to elucidate the Legislation Thesis? What is Kant's view of the epistemic status of the inverse-square law and, relatedly, (...) of the legitimacy of the geometric derivation of that law? Whose account of laws, the understanding, and space is Kant critiquing in the passage? What positive account of the relationship between laws, the understanding, and space is Kant offering in the passage? My answer to depends crucially on my answers to –. As I interpret Kant, he holds that a wide range of a priori laws—including geometric laws, the inverse-square law, and the universal laws discussed in the Analytic of Principles—are ‘grounded’ in categorial syntheses rather than the intrinsic nature of the space given to us in pure intuition. (shrink)

This book offers readers a uniquely detailed engagement with the ideas of legendary French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. The Freudian Thing is one of Lacan's most important texts, wherein he explains the significance and stakes of his "return to Freud" as a passionate defence of Freud's disturbing, epoch-making discovery of the unconscious, against misrepresentations and criticisms of it. However, Lacan is characteristically cryptic in The Freudian Thing. The combination of his writing style and vast range of references renders much of (...) his thinking inaccessible to all but a narrow circle of scholarly specialists. Johnston's Irrepressible Truth opens up the universe of Lacanian psychoanalysis to much wider audiences by furnishing a sentence-by-sentence interpretive unpacking of this pivotal 1955 essay. In so doing, Johnston reveals the precision, rigor, and soundness of Lacan's teachings. (shrink)

According to St. Thomas, the natures of material things are the proper objects of human understanding.Thomas claims only that the natures of things are the proper objects of the intellect, not that they are its only objects: he does not deny that we have intellective cognition also of the contingent states and situations of particular material things. And he holds that, at least in this life, humans cognize these natures, not through innate species or by perceiving the divine exemplars, but (...) only by abstraction from phantasms (ST Ia, 84.7, 85.1).This claim applies to the exercising of concepts already acquired, as well as their initial acquisition (ST Ia 84.7). Here and throughout, I use “cognition” to translate “cognitio.” As Scott MacDonald (“Theory of Knowledge” in Cambridge Companion to Aquinas, ed., N. Kretzmann and E. Stump [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993], p. 162) points out, translating “cognitio” with “knowledge” is misleading, given that cognitiones can, on Thomas’s account, be false (see, for example, ST Ia 17.3). I discuss Aquinas’s conception of cognition in section I.1. More precisely, the human intellect’s active component, the agent intellect, produces cognition of the natures of material things by abstracting intelligible forms from phantasms and informing them on its passive component, the possible intellect, to actualize the latter’s potency to understand.This division of the intellect into an active and a passive component originates in Aristotle’s cryptic remark that in the soul “there is a mind for becoming all things” and “a mind for producing all things” (DA III 5, 430a10). This passage has been subject to myriad interpretations. Aristotle’s Arabic commentators read him as saying that (one or both) of these intellects are single and separate from individual human souls. In opposition to these interpretations, Aquinas holds that the agent and possible intellects are both immanent powers of each individual soul. Since these interpretations enjoyed considerable popularity in Aquinas’s day, we often find him developing his account of the human intellect in explicit opposition to them (cf. OUIAA). The aim of the present piece is to clarify Thomas’s account of this intellective abstraction, and thereby the precise force of the conceptual empiricism it asserts.Important recent work by several scholars has advanced our understanding of many central aspects of Aquinas’s philosophy of mind and epistemology, including his account of intellective abstraction. See Eleonore Stump, “Aquinas on the Foundations of Knowledge,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy (Supplementary Volume) 17 (1992); “Aquinas’s Account of the Mechanisms of Intellective Cognition,” Revenue Internationale de Philosophie 52 (1998): 287–307; “Aquinas on Sensory Cognition,” in Medieval Analyses in Language and Cognition, eds. Sten Ebbesen and Russell L. Friedman, volume 77 in the series Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, Historisk-Filosofiske Meddelelser (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1999), pp. 377–395. Norman Kretzmann, “Infallibility, Error, and Ignorance,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 17 (1992); Kretzmann, “Philosophy of Mind,” in Cambridge Companion to Aquinas; Robert Pasnau, Theories of Cognition in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); and Scott MacDonald (“Theory of Knowledge,” in Cambridge Companion to Aquinas).Many of these discussions share a salutary focus on Aquinas’s claims regarding the reliability of our faculties, so that their treatments of intellective abstraction tend to center on his prima faciae wildly implausible claim to its infallibility: “The proper object of intellect is the quiddity of a thing, and this is why intellect is not fallible regarding the quiddity of a thing, speaking of it just as such” (ST Ia 85.6). Kretzmann provides an interesting and detailed treatment of this claim. Drawing on a range of texts, he argues that the intellect’s apprehension of the quiddity of a thing is such that one acquires an initial, crude concept of that thing, and that this apprehension must be distinguished from the intellect’s act of compounding, in judgments, the aspects of things so apprehended: it is only through a fallible, and extended process of making such judgments that we arrive at more adequate concepts of things (see the final section of “Infallibility, Error, and Ignorance”). MacDonald also makes insightful, and complementary, observations along similar lines (pp. 183–84). However, though helpful, these points do not suffice to explain, let alone render defensible, Thomas’s claim of infallibility: why can’t some of our acts of intellective abstraction yield false cognitions (however rudimentary), in the sense Thomas specifies?; in other words; why can’t the agent intellect sometimes produce in the possible intellect forms which do not correspond to the forms that actually inhere, or even could inhere, in material things? I think that Stump is right to take this optimism to be one striking instance of Thomas’s general epistemic optimism rooted in his conviction that God designed our cognitive faculties (Stump, “Foundations of Knowledge,” pp. 145–48).The interpretation of his intellective abstraction provided here complements Stump’s insight. For it, in effect, elaborates how Aquinas’s theistic metaphysics grounds his epistemic optimism about the first operation of our intellect. In particular, it explains how the agent intellect, as the human participating likeness in the divine light of understanding, has the active potency to order phantasms in such a way that it can produce in the possible intellect intelligible species which are determinate likenesses of the particular material things of which we have experience (cf. Section III iv, below). Examining his distinction between sensible and intellectual cognition, and his account of the way the former, in phantasms, supplies the data for intellective abstraction, will lead us to reassess the nature of Thomas’s antinativism—arguably the most important historical and philosophical legacy of his cognitive psychology. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 43.4 (2005) 490-491 [Access article in PDF] Husain Sarkar. Descartes' Cogito: Saved from the Great Shipwreck. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. xviii + 305. Cloth, $65.00. Descartes's first critics attacked his cogito, ergo sum as deficient; his present critics attack it as excessive. Either way, it is an Archimedean point in Descartes's world and merits a book-length study. In this book, (...) Husain Sarkar makes a powerful case that the cogito is not an argument, but rather an "experiment," generating an intuition enabling Descartes to retrieve a timber from what Bourdin called the "great shipwreck" of the hyperbolic doubt.Sarkar places the experiment within his own fresh readings of Descartes's philosophy. They will be illuminating to new Descartes scholars. Some readings will seem perverse or cryptic. Constructive passages illuminate more, polemic passages less, as when Sarkar finds seven flaws in Hintikka's cogito interpretation. Despite the polemic excesses, Sarkar writes with modesty, epitomized by his slogan, "Reason with them in the most courteous manner."With verve and imagination Sarkar presents the cogito as an experiment which can be carried out in any world at all and yields an intuition that qualifies as a Cartesian first principle. He suggests various implications of his interpretation—for example, for the epistemic role of will: "The will initially learns the limits that it must recognize only at the foot of the cogito... It is in the state of the cogito that the will learns what it means to be ineluctably inclined toward affirming a proposition, and what it is to be free" (256).What is the content of the intuited 'I exist'? Sarkar calls upon Robert Adams's notion of a "primitive thisness," entirely distinct from a substance's properties or "suchnesses," and upon David Lewis's thesis that besides knowing propositions a person can know a self-ascription of a property. Still, he makes no headway at all. True, the question is extraordinarily [End Page 490] difficult. It has not yielded appreciably to brilliant phenomenologists or brilliant students of direct reference and indexicality or, for that matter, me. The content of 'I' statements is a topic for another book, and no one I know of is writing it.In the book's centerpiece, Sarkar marshals a series of attacks on the cogito as argument. Sometimes they miss—more polemic overkill. Usually they hit home. Their cumulative effect is persuasive.Descartes says that "I think, therefore I exist" is the first principle of his philosophy (VI, 32; VIIIA, 7; V, 147: references are to the Adam and Tannery edition). But if the cogito were an argument, one of its premises would become his first principle.An argument requires movement of thought and that requires reliance on memory (X, 370 and 408), and in the cogito Descartes strips memory of its credentials (VII, 24, superseding the assurances of X, 368).An argument relies on logical principles, but Descartes suspects these and reasoning generally. In the First Meditation he calls into doubt the simplest mathematics; elsewhere he generalizes from mathematics to "self-evident principles" and to "all the arguments I had previously taken as demonstrative proofs" (VI, 32; IXB, 6; similar aspersions are cast in V, 137 and 139). (But see also Mark Olson, "Descartes' First Meditation: Mathematics and the Laws of Logic" JHP 26 [1988]: 407–438.)I'll add a wrinkle. Descartes's mouthpiece Eudoxus says you can use your own doubt to deduce facts that are even more certain than those commonly built upon the great principle that it is impossible that a thing should both exist and at the same time not exist (X, 522). The conclusion of any argument rests on such logical principles. If the cogito were an argument, its certainty could not exceed theirs. Descartes suggests here that it does.Sarkar also cites Descartes's denigrations of "logic," but these often pertain not to reasoning generally but to syllogistic logic. Thus Margaret Wilson took the cogito to be a nonsyllogistic argument. Still, Sarkar effectively deploys... (shrink)

Among the central meanings in Büchner's Woyzeck, there is one that comes clear only when we read the play in the context of the history of ideas—specifically in the light of certain currents of thought about human history and eschatology. Aspects of the play's expression are thereby elucidated, that are forcefully brought forward through the organization and compositional procedures of Berg's Wozzeck. Near the end of the long third scene of the opera, Wozzeck appears suddenly at Marie's window and alludes (...) cryptically to the mysterious signs that had come to him in the field the scene before, confiding to her that he is "on the track of something big." As those signs had first been presented through Wozzeck's eyes, they seemed like the imaginings and fears of a simple man about Freemasons and who knows what other objects of superstition, But now in the third scene he gives them a scriptural context, as though through a sudden insight: "Isn't it written, 'And behold, the smoke went up from the land, as the smoke from a furnace'?" What Wozzeck has recalled here is a passage in the Book of Genesis, chapter 19: "Then the Lord rained upon Sodom brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven. . . . and, behold, the smoke went up from the Land as the smoke from a furnace." The image is repeated in the New Testament Book of Revelation , chapter 9: "And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth; and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit as the smoke of the great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit." Both passages are about a holocaust visited by a wrathful God upon a corrupt and debauched people, and that is the idea that begins to form in Wozzeck's mind as he stands for the first time on the stage before his mistress. And he asks, "What will it all come to?" The answer to this thematic question lies in the strange unfolding of the drama, pressed forward by forces that lie, as Büchner had once put it, "Outside of ourselves"1 and by Wozzeck, who guarantees the outcome as he imagines himself becoming aware of what it must be. · 1. Letter to his family, February 1834: "I scorn no one, least of all because of his understanding or his education, for it lies in no one's power not to become a dumbbell or a criminal—because we have all become alike through like circumstances, and because the circumstances lie outside of ourselves . . ." Werner Lehmann, George Büchner: Sämtliche Werke und Briefe , 2:422. Leo Treitler, professor and chairman of the department of music at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is the author of, among other works, "Dufay the Progressive" and "Homer and Gregory: The Transmission of Epic Poetry and Plainchant.". (shrink)

In the Aristotelian corpus of writings as it has come down to us, there are four works specifically on ethics: the Nicomachean ethics, the Eudemian ethics, the Magna moralia ( or Great ethics) and the short On virtues and vices. Scholars are now agreed that the first two are genuinely by Aristotle and most also believe that the Nicomachean is the later and better of the two. About the Magna moralia, there is still a division of opinion, though probably most (...) scholars hold that it is not genuine, Those who hold it is genuine suppose it to be an early work or a redaction of an early work made by a later Peripatetic. As for On virtues and vices almost everyone holds it to be a spurious work written some two centuries after Aristotle's death. However the arguments scholars give for these opinions are entirely unconvincing. In fact, they beg the question by assuming the conclusion in order to prove the conclusion. My own contention is that all the hard evidence we have compels us to conclude that all of these works are definitely by Aristotle but that they dffer not by time of writing, as scholars universally suppose, but by audience and purpose. In brief, the Nicormachean and Eudemian ethics are writings internal to Aristotle's School with the Nicomachen being directed to legislators and the Eudemian to philosophers. The Magna moralia ls an exoteric work meant for those outside the school. On virtues and vices is a collection of endoxa, or common and received opinions about virtues, perhaps meant as a handbook for young students but also for use in philosophical analysis. It is almost certainly referred to as such by a cryptic remark in the Eudemian ethics. (shrink)

Tripura Upanishad is a minor Shakta or Tantra Upanishad explaining the structure of and meditation on Sri Chakra or Sri Yantra—a diagrammatic representation of the universe through nine interlocking triangles coming out of a central point. To date, there are two English translations of this Upanishad. The first and the earliest, by A G Krishna Warrier done in 1967, is a verse translation and because of the obvious constraints of such translation, fails to explain the intricacies and implied meanings (...) of this cryptic Upanishad. The second translation done many years later, is by Douglas Renfrew Brooks, who has also beautifully translated the commentary on this Upanishad by Bhaskararaya in the book 'The Secret of the Three Cities' published by the University of Chicago Press in 1990. While maintaining a high level of accuracy and bringing out the intricate nuances of this Upanishad, the emphasis of Brooks' translation seems to be more on the geometrical aspects of the Sri Chakra. The present translation emphasises the practice aspect of this Upanishad as derived from Bhaskararaya's commentary. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.3 (2001) 454-456 [Access article in PDF] Michael Potter. Reason's Nearest Kin: Philosophies of Arithmetic from Kant to Carnap.New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp. x + 305. Cloth, $45.00. This book tells the story of a remarkable series of answers to two related questions:(1) How can arithmetic be necessary and knowable a priori? [End Page 454](2) What accounts for the applicability of (...) arithmetic to matters of empirical fact?These are philosophical questions, part of a "wider puzzle of explaining the link between experience, language, thought, and the world" (18). But answers to them are heavily constrained by technical results in logic and mathematics, and most of Potter's protagonists are either mathematicians (Frege, Dedekind, Ramsey, Hilbert, Gödel) or mathematically trained philosophers (Kant, Russell, Carnap). (Only Wittgenstein fits neither category.) Potter, whose doctorate was in pure mathematics, is an able guide.It is not hard to think of answers to these questions taken singly; what is hard is answering both at the same time. Formalists can easily explain why arithmetic does not depend for its justification on empirical fact—it is just a game with symbols, not responsible to anything beyond its own rules—but they then have trouble explaining why the world of empirical fact is constrained by this game. Empiricists can explain the applicability of arithmetic in just the same way they explain the applicability of physics, but they then must then explain away the apparent a prioricity and necessity of arithmetic. Kant was the first to propose a plausible answer to both questions: arithmetic is both necessary and empirically applicable because it is grounded in the spatio-temporal form of any possible experience.What unites Frege, Dedekind, Russell, Ramsey, Hilbert, and Carnap is that they reject Kant's answer while continuing to seek an answer to his question: how can arithmetic's necessity be reconciled with its applicability? Potter helpfully classifies their projects by the surrogates they substitute for Kant's appeal to the form of spatio-temporal intuition: Frege and Dedekind appeal to thought, Russell to necessary features of the world, Wittgenstein, Ramsey, and Carnap to language, and Hilbert to the necessary structure of our experience of finitary combinations of objects. (Revealingly, the logicists are not grouped together in Potter's taxonomy.) A chapter (or two) is devoted to each of these thinkers, plus Kant and Gödel.This breadth of coverage does not come at the price of superficiality: Potter's chapters are (by and large) accurate, penetrating, and full of interesting insights. I cannot think of another book that offers such clear explanations of the many mathematical concepts and distinctions one must grasp in order to follow debates in the philosophy of arithmetic. The Russell chapters are enhanced by numerous quotations from archival material. The exposition of Hilbert's programme and the implications for it of Gödel's theorems is the best I have seen. The discussions of Wittgenstein's views on arithmetic and of Carnap's syntactical approach also shine. The chapters on Kant and Frege are somewhat weaker; the discussion of Kant, in particular, would have benefited from some engagement with Michael Friedman's views.But the real contribution of Potter's book is its integration of these nine thinkers into a single coherent story. No one will be surprised that Russell's motivations can only be understood in light of Frege's failures, or that many features of Wittgenstein's cryptic work become clearer when seen in light of the specific problems with Russell's system. But there are also some less obvious payoffs: for example, Hilbert's programme is usefully compared with Russell's regressive method (227-8), and Carnap and Russell are shown to face a common dilemma (269, 286).If there is a central theme to Potter's story, it is "how often we have had to reject an [End Page 455] account not for philosophical reasons but for technical ones" (278). Frege's program founders on Russell's paradox, Russell's... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.3 (2001) 454-456 [Access article in PDF] Michael Potter. Reason's Nearest Kin: Philosophies of Arithmetic from Kant to Carnap.New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp. x + 305. Cloth, $45.00. This book tells the story of a remarkable series of answers to two related questions:(1) How can arithmetic be necessary and knowable a priori? [End Page 454](2) What accounts for the applicability of (...) arithmetic to matters of empirical fact?These are philosophical questions, part of a "wider puzzle of explaining the link between experience, language, thought, and the world" (18). But answers to them are heavily constrained by technical results in logic and mathematics, and most of Potter's protagonists are either mathematicians (Frege, Dedekind, Ramsey, Hilbert, Gödel) or mathematically trained philosophers (Kant, Russell, Carnap). (Only Wittgenstein fits neither category.) Potter, whose doctorate was in pure mathematics, is an able guide.It is not hard to think of answers to these questions taken singly; what is hard is answering both at the same time. Formalists can easily explain why arithmetic does not depend for its justification on empirical fact—it is just a game with symbols, not responsible to anything beyond its own rules—but they then have trouble explaining why the world of empirical fact is constrained by this game. Empiricists can explain the applicability of arithmetic in just the same way they explain the applicability of physics, but they then must then explain away the apparent a prioricity and necessity of arithmetic. Kant was the first to propose a plausible answer to both questions: arithmetic is both necessary and empirically applicable because it is grounded in the spatio-temporal form of any possible experience.What unites Frege, Dedekind, Russell, Ramsey, Hilbert, and Carnap is that they reject Kant's answer while continuing to seek an answer to his question: how can arithmetic's necessity be reconciled with its applicability? Potter helpfully classifies their projects by the surrogates they substitute for Kant's appeal to the form of spatio-temporal intuition: Frege and Dedekind appeal to thought, Russell to necessary features of the world, Wittgenstein, Ramsey, and Carnap to language, and Hilbert to the necessary structure of our experience of finitary combinations of objects. (Revealingly, the logicists are not grouped together in Potter's taxonomy.) A chapter (or two) is devoted to each of these thinkers, plus Kant and Gödel.This breadth of coverage does not come at the price of superficiality: Potter's chapters are (by and large) accurate, penetrating, and full of interesting insights. I cannot think of another book that offers such clear explanations of the many mathematical concepts and distinctions one must grasp in order to follow debates in the philosophy of arithmetic. The Russell chapters are enhanced by numerous quotations from archival material. The exposition of Hilbert's programme and the implications for it of Gödel's theorems is the best I have seen. The discussions of Wittgenstein's views on arithmetic and of Carnap's syntactical approach also shine. The chapters on Kant and Frege are somewhat weaker; the discussion of Kant, in particular, would have benefited from some engagement with Michael Friedman's views.But the real contribution of Potter's book is its integration of these nine thinkers into a single coherent story. No one will be surprised that Russell's motivations can only be understood in light of Frege's failures, or that many features of Wittgenstein's cryptic work become clearer when seen in light of the specific problems with Russell's system. But there are also some less obvious payoffs: for example, Hilbert's programme is usefully compared with Russell's regressive method (227-8), and Carnap and Russell are shown to face a common dilemma (269, 286).If there is a central theme to Potter's story, it is "how often we have had to reject an [End Page 455] account not for philosophical reasons but for technical ones" (278). Frege's program founders on Russell's paradox, Russell's... (shrink)

continent. 1.2 (2011): 141-144. This January, while preparing a new course, Robert Seydel was struck and killed by an unexpected heart attack. He was a critically under-appreciated artist and one of the most beloved and admired professors at Hampshire College. At the time of his passing, Seydel was on the brink of a major artistic and career milestone. His Book of Ruth was being prepared for publication by Siglio Press. His publisher describes the book as: “an alchemical assemblage that composes (...) the life of his alter ego, Ruth Greisman— spinster, Sunday painter, and friend to Joseph Cornell and Marcel Duchamp. Through collages, drawings, and journal entries from Ruth’s imagined life, Seydel invokes her interior world in novelistic rhythms.” This convergence of his professional triumph with the tragedy of his death makes now a particularly appropriate time to think about Robert Seydel and his work. This feature contains a selection of excerpts from Book of Ruth (courtesy of Siglio Press) alongside a pair of texts remembering him and giving critical and biographical insights into his art and his person. These texts, from a former student and a colleague respectively, were originally prepared for Seydel's memorial at Hampshire College and have since been revised for publication in continent. For more information on Book of Ruth, please visit the book's page at the Siglio Press website. —Ben Segal draughty R. * Lauren van Haaften-Schick 2011 “The most apt way to order Smithson's library is with the conjunction 'and'; science and religion; modernism and mass culture; what is present and what is missing.” —Alexander Alberro, 248 Robert Seydel's classes on collage and collecting immersed his students in a curious world of cabinets, oddities, exhaustive archives and obscure histories, explored always with critical rigor and a sincere eye for wonder. His office was a compendium of the ancient, mythic, potential and unworldy, where seemingly unrelated references were endlessly pulled, piled and fused in an ecstatic dance of hyper-annotation. The small room and all its contents overflowed with notes tucked in every margin and corner. Books coated the walls like a switchboard, anxious and humming, waiting for infinite links to be activated. William Blake's books of Job and Urizen summoned Greek mythology and the animal as metaphor, leading to 19th century cryptozoology and the cave paintings at Lascaux, Gaston Bachelard's description of the bird in his garden and Robert Rauschenberg's Canyon . Tracking archetypes and following tangential threads, new revelations and ancient narratives were compiled and ordered to form a new text, a bibliography as assemblage, portrait and poem. Robert's library—one of his many collections—is a portrait, an “artifact, collage of time, a token and remnant” (Seydel, 2007) He is humming with it still. The imagination of this room—of Robert—breathes through the pages of Book of Ruth, as every decision and detail unfolds to a cosmos. Allegory, invention, personal and art histories are entangled and leveled, rendering lived, perceived and absorbed experiences indistinguishable. Anonymous scraps discovered on the street or studio floor, careful clippings and drawn figures are chosen and animated through serendipitous destruction and whimsical, delicate positioning. A precise vocabulary of characters and terms erupts and collapses as personas and passers-by wave and whisper, “Every figure reveals aspects of the total form, which is open and green” (Seydel, 2007). The initials R.S. repeat, a nod to Robert's true family tree and further complicating identification. Robt, Robert's sometimes alter-ego, appears in myriad forms as a trickster “half-wit,” mercurial and skittish, or soft and worn thin. Saul is a solemn tinkerer, parsing the world and sometimes blind. Ruth, the speaker of the book, records and translates all, her voice wavering between poetic verse and a cryptic half-speech as complex as it is sparse. The rhythm of frayed edges sets time - the weight of the world and the lightness of paper. Robert wrote of his process, “Material is essential; scuffings carry history, which wanders throughout” (Seydel, 2007). Collectors, assemblers, sway between careful movements of selection and placement as they pull from the found world, mediating calculated and unconscious association to form a lexicon of gestures, symbols and allusion, the “artifacts of a life... the refuse and rejecta of days” (Seydel, 2007). These assembled fragments shift and chatter, at home in their homelessness, actors performing in their own lives, populating an invented world of similar orphans. Such accumulated, severed parts carry the injury of their cutting and retain the evidence of their source, binding loss to creation in a symbiosis of trauma and repair. Mourning and remembrance are deeply embedded in the histories and acts of such practices. Grievance, acceptance, and the fragility of life are conveyed in the 18th century allegorical arrangements of fetal specimens by Frederik Ruysch. A certain melancholy reverence colors Joseph Cornell's intimately tactile assemblages rendering the universe tangible in miniature, or made in devotion to unrequited loves. Preserved in stasis, these ghosts and idols are kept in a purgatory where fact and fiction, past and present are irrelevant distinctions. Catalogued and contained, the subject of loss is transferred to an artifact. Every thread, scrap and letter may be glued, gathered and placed in a museum, a tomb, a box, a page, ripe and open for possession. Holding on to grief and reveling in disrepair, we opt to be haunted. Forever unbalanced and in flux, the sublime of collage is its resolve to irresolution. For Robert, “Art, as creation and as sign of primary Imagination, is not objects but a state, a kind of fluid” (Seydel, 2007) Reflecting on his work, life, and death, I am drawn to my library and the myriad titles acquired through his inspiration. There is Daniel Spoerri's An Anecdoted Topography of Chance , Susan Stewart's On Longing , various Borges, Barthes, Perec, and especially Life: A User's Manual , which concludes that the perfect puzzle will have no solution. I think of the drawers of miscellaneous swallowed objects at the Mutter Museum, Ray Johnson coding the every day in riddles, Wallace Berman twisting tongues, and Susan Hiller laying every detail to bear. Collectors and makers working in endless cycles of observation, ingestion and display. Every gesture informs and is defined by others, every space is shaped by that which surrounds and fills it, the knot has an inner logic, the gigantic is not so different from the miniature, there is a world in every detail, and “All art is collage” (Seydel, 2011) These thoughts have molded my life, my art, and all the minutia that keep the two so profoundly intertwined; There is no difference between life and what we do with our time. “I write my life. I make me up.” What a gift to share this secret way of knowing the world, and to leave this knowledge for us to do with what we please. “Art begins in admiration” (Seydel, 2011) Lauren van Haaften-Schick is a curator, writer and artist based in New York. Upcoming curatorial projects include "Cancelled" at the Center for Book Arts, and "The Spirit of the Signal" at Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery, New York. Recent activities include the workshops "Market, Alternative" and "Alternative Art Economies" at Trade School and Momenta Art, and the e-flux Time/Store, New York. She is the founding director of two arts spaces in Northampton, MA and Philadelphia, PA. She received a BA in Art History and Studio Art from Hampshire college in 2006. Sura Levine on Robert Seydel If early on in his time at Hampshire College I was officially his “mentor,” Robert Seydel quickly became one of my great teachers. Over the years we talked about everything, from art, music, collage, and poetry, to campus politics, this latter far too often. It was always a sublime pleasure, if all too rarely done, to enter his apartment to look at his work in progress, to peruse his bookshelves where, inevitably, there were always new treats to examine. And, while he was working on his Book of Ruth , I was given the opportunity over the course of many meals at the Korean and other restaurants, to talk with him about image and poem ordering. To see how he thought through each comma, each juxtaposition across the gutters of the Book, was to watch a brilliant curator at work. Each day, I walk past his wonderful collaged portrait of Ruth, purchased, after much haggling, as a birthday present, a couple of years ago. And each day, I think how lucky I am to have known Robert as he produced this magnum opus. One of my greatest pleasures in 24 years at the College was to teach “The Collector” with Robert. One of my greatest regrets is that the magic we created together in the classroom will not, and cannot, be duplicated. Its various incarnations, its utter intelligence and magic, were all so deeply Robert’s. His was a mind that put poetry, philosophy, history of science, and history together with art, and art together with music. His intellect and eye were unparalleled. He introduced us to so many artists. He shared his fascination with the cabinets of curiosity of Aldrovandi, of Seba, and Peter the Great’s collection of fetal anomalies, as well as the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles. Robert knew them all and so many more. He was a walking encyclopedia, his home a great archive. Arcane knowledge, perhaps, but oh so important for another of Robert’s heroes, the mid-20th century Belgian artist Marcel Broodthaers, whose name he invariably mispronounced as “Broadthayers.” In speaking his name, Robert would always look in my direction in a panic, and then he go on and maul it. I absolutely loved his various mispronunciations of French names and terms! “The Collector” was always filled with talented young artists, art historians, philosophers and writers who all came to understand the wondrous obsessions of the figure of the collector. Students in this course created dazzling projects each term. He always moved while looking and speaking. He read deeply, and commented on everyone’s work with wonderful generosity. Robert always found something to praise even in the least developed of projects. Robert inspired and mentored all of his students into making work that far exceeded their expectations—and ours. For those of you who were lucky enough to have been touched by or to have had an evaluation written by Robert, savor it, keep it, reread it, and share it. He loved working with you all; it is somehow fitting that he died while prepping yet another new course. Robert, it’s almost impossible to speak of you in the past tense, even though you left us a month ago. No doubt, if you knew about our gatherings and celebrations of you, you would be embarrassed that we are making a fuss over you; you always placed the focus on others rather than on yourself. This trait is exactly why so many people miss you now. We’re here to love you publicly as we all did privately for the eleven years you were among us. Robert, my very dear friend, you were an extraordinary artist—you were my brother of choice. My heart broke when yours did. I miss you profoundly. —Sura Levine, February 26, 2011 Sura Levine is a professor of art history at Hampshire College. Her field of specialty is 19th century Belgian and French art, particularly realism and impressionism. Having worked in museums for a number of years both prior to coming to the College, and, as guest curator and co-author of exhibition catalogues, she became particularly interested in the history of museum and trends in collecting. It was because of their shared interests that she and Robert Seydel developed their course, The Collector, which they co-taught for many years. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:John Dewey & Moral ImaginationWilliam T. MyersJohn Dewey & Moral Imagination, by Steven Fesmire. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2003, 167 pp., $19.95 paper.The resurgence of interest in pragmatism, especially in regard to the work of John Dewey, has been ongoing for several decades now. In addition to the development of neo-pragmatism with its appreciation of the deconstructive side of Dewey, there have also been numerous books (...) written on the constructive side of pragmatism, including pragmatist aesthetics, metaphysics, politics, and education. An interest in pragmatist ethics, though later coming, seems to be picking up some steam at last, and Steven Fesmire's book, John Dewey & Moral Imagination, is an important contribution to that burgeoning area of inquiry.While Fesmire's book is not a full-blown account of a Deweyan moral theory, a fact he makes clear from the [End Page 107] outset, it is an insightful and important development of the role of aesthetics, inquiry, and imagination within a Deweyan framework. Fesmire is not interested in simply explicating Dewey's view of imagination, but in further developing Dewey's sometimes cryptic comments on the subject. But even more than that, Fesmire explicitly notes that he is going beyond Dewey, though Dewey is his starting point (p. 4). And in this enterprise, the book is successful, as Fesmire's development is very much in the spirit of Dewey's empiricism. That having been said, however, there are some elements of Dewey's ethics that I believe are important to Fesmire's interpretation, but do not receive enough attention in his book. In addition, the centrality of imagination seems somewhat overstated, sometimes to the detriment of other central notions. I will address these concerns later.In the Introduction, Fesmire states three interrelated theses that he builds a case for: "(1) Moral character, belief, and reasoning are inherently social, embodied, and historically situated; (2) Moral deliberation is fundamentally imaginative and historically situated; (3) Moral conduct is helpfully conceived on the model of aesthetic perception and artistic creation" (p. 4). He goes on to note that the first two are clearly and articulately defended by Dewey, and the third is "inspired" by him, but, clearly, this latter one he sees as a further development of Dewey's ethics.In order to build his case, Fesmire spends Part I of the book elaborating the "pragmatic turn" and its conception of "character, belief, inquiry, and intelligence" (p. 4). This first part is necessary in order to keep the second, more developmental part from seeming a piecemeal dialogue with traditional ethical theories. In other words, Part I contextualizes Part II.In the opening chapter, "Habit and Character," Fesmire contrasts the Deweyan notion of character with the traditional atomistic conception of the individual. As Dewey points out, it isn't that moral conduct ought to be social; rather it is social by its very nature (p. 13). Indeed, character and habits are socially derived from our cultural context. Moral inquiry is, then, social at its very base. Using the example of Studs Lonigan, Fesmire continues to develop these notions through a fascinating discussion of the James T. Farrell character. The application of the Deweyan notion of character and habit is a natural fit here, given that Farrell wrote his trilogy as an explicit exploration of Dewey's notion of habit. Through this discussion, we see the ongoing struggle of the individual and the environment, with the ultimate lesson learned being that one cannot be separated from the other, though either can be destructive of the other. Fesmire then applies this same essential idea to nature and culture. As Fesmire notes, "Dewey's goal was to break down the barriers that separate nature from culture, to show that biological drives are transmuted by social life, that neither impulse nor culture simply trumps the other, and that culture lends itself as much to intelligent conservation and critical redirection as to transmission" (p. 23). The lesson to learn from all of this is that the individual is not, as much traditional moral theory has supposed, a detached decision maker who can, by a simple act of will, follow some categorical imperative. Indeed, "[i]ndividuals... (shrink)

It is generally acknowledged that Kant's political philosophy stands on a par with the great works of the Western liberal tradition. It is also a matter of agreement that the rational principles on which it rests represent an adequate philosophical expression of the progressive agenda that was inaugurated by the Enlightenment and fulfilled, with varying degrees of success, by the French Revolution. Yet Kant's philosophical position is ambiguous when it comes to evaluating that momentous event in modern history. We know, (...) from anecdotal evidence, some surviving letters, several cryptic references in his published works, as well as a number of posthumously published reflections, that Kant was enthusiastic about and strongly approved of the changes that were taking place in France at the time. He certainly condemned, in strong and unequivocal terms, the execution of Louis XVI. But this did not translate into a repudiation of his support for the revolution. And he seems to have found even in this case mitigating circumstances that explained the revolutionaries' decision to execute the monarch, thus in fact excusing their action. Moreover, he argued that all post-revolutionary governments ought to command the same kind of loyalty from their subjects as the ones they replaced, which appears to justify Kant's contention in the Idea for a Universal History that political violence can be a vehicle of progress. Furthermore, in the Contest of Faculties Kant went so far as to identify in the enthusiastic response of the ‘spectators’ to the French Revolution a clear sign of the moral disposition of humankind. (shrink)

… [T]he scandals surrounding the work of these men are as nothing compared to the scandal of Ezra Pound’s Cantos. We are amused to think that anyone ever felt Byron might have been mad, bad, and dangerous to know. We are not amused by the Cantos. Like Pound’s letters and so much of his prose, the Cantos is difficult to like or enjoy. It is a paradigm of poetic obscurity because its often cryptic style is married to materials which (...) are abstruse, learned, even pedantic. The poem also makes a mockery of poetic form; and then there are those vulgar and bathetic sinking which it repeatedly indulges through its macaronic turns of voice.All that is scandalous, but the worst has not been said. For the Cantos is a fascist epic in a precise historical sense.1 Its racism and anti-Semitism are conceived and pursued in social and political terms at a particular point in time and with reference to certain state policies. Those policies led to a holocaust for which the murder of six million Jews would be the ultimate exponent. That is truly scandalousFor anyone convinced that works of imagination are important to human life, however, the scandal takes a last, cruel twist. Pound’s magnum opus is one of the greatest achievements of modern poetry in any language. That is more a shocking than a controversial idea. It shocks because it is outrageous to think so; but it is in fact a commonplace judgment passed on the poem by nearly every major writer and poet of this century. The greatness of the Cantos was an apparent to Pound’s contemporaries as it has been to his inheritors, to his enemies as to his friends, to those who have sympathized with Pound’s ideas and to those who have fought against them. 1. See John Lauber, “Pound’s Cantos: A Fascist Epic,” Journal of American Studies 12 : 3-21; Victor C. Ferkiss, “Ezra Pound and American Fascism,” Journal of Politics 17 : 173-97. Jerome J. McGann is Commonwealth Professor of English, University of Virginia. This essay was originally one of the Clark Lectures delivered at Trinity College, Cambridge, and subsequently one of the Carpenter Lectures at the University of Chicago. (shrink)

Heidegger’s paper ‘Art and Space’ (1969, Man and world 6. Bloomington: Indiana university Press) is the place where he gives his fullest discussion of a major art medium which is somewhat neglected in aesthetics, namely sculpture. The structure of argument in ‘Art and Space’ is cryptic even by Heidegger’s standards. The small amount of literature tends to focus on the paper’s role within Heidegger’s own oeuvre as an expression of changes in his understanding of space. This is ironic; for (...) Heidegger’s main thematic in the essay is the way in which space is overcome in the creation of sculpture. Of course, by virtue of its three-dimensional character, sculpture seems to be a spatial medium, par excellence. The counter-intuitive character of Heidegger’s position requires, accordingly, that his argumentative strategy be scrutinized very closely. In this paper, therefore, I will examine closely the structure of Heidegger’s argument, with the aim of understanding, rectifying, and then developing his most important insights. My ultimate aim is to show the subtle, but radical points which are at issue in Heidegger’s arguments, and to develop them much further in the clarification of sculpture’s key philosophical significance. (shrink)

This is a very welcome addition to the invaluable Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy. Originally published in France as La Notion d’ a priori in 1959, this book is chronologically as well as logically central to Dufrenne’s thinking as it has been expressed from the time of Karl Jaspers et la philosophie de l’existence, written with Paul Ricoeur in 1947, through Phénoménologie de l’expérience esthétique in 1953, to Le Poétique and Jalons in 1963 and 1966. Perhaps it (...) cannot be fully understood without reference to these other books, which it must be hoped will be translated into English. Dufrenne has written several articles in English, as well as the Mahlon Powell Lectures for 1959, published as Language and Philosophy all of which are listed in a Dufrenne bibliography which the translator has appended to the present book. He has translated as preface Paul Ricoeur’s near-definitive review of the book in Esprit, March 1961. Apart from his own very helpful introduction and index the translator has done intensive research in tracking down sources which throw light on the often cryptic allusions sewn into the text in Dufrenne’s highly-condensed style, which in spite of his eulogy to the poetic offers no concessions to readability, and few to the imagination. (shrink)

Much insect sounding is beyond the limits of typical human hearing ability. This sonic separation is exacerbated by a socialized narrative of fear and avoidance of insects in many western societies. With the use of audio technologies to expand our senses, we can embrace opportunities to get to know sensory and communicative insect sound-worlds beyond our own. Ecological sound art – sound art that has an environmentalist intent – is a tangible and accessible means of listening to these sounds. In (...) the series Built Hidden Soundscapes, the primary author (Schonberg) composes imagined soundscapes existing solely of sounds that are beyond the limits of typical human hearing ability. In this article we introduce two compositions in this series, Reserva Florestal Adolpho Ducke and Pipeline Road. These compositions offer a temporary expansion of our aural senses that can increase listeners’ awareness of cryptic insect existences/ecologies. We suggest that this listening practice might prompt future auralization (sounding or hearing in the mind) of insect sound for the listener. (shrink)

This thesis defends the diagnostic accuracy and political usefulness of the claim that women are complicit in their sexual objectification. Feminists have long struggled to demarcate the appropriate limits of feminist critiques of sexual objectification, particularly when it comes to objectifying practices which women both consent to and experience as empowering. These struggles, I argue, are the result of a fundamental misdiagnosis of what happens when women are sexually objectified, whereby the abstract notion of 'treating as an object' is called (...) upon to explicate the kind of phenomena which can only be properly understood in light of a more general set of social norms of masculinity and femininity. A more accurate diagnosis of sexual objectification, I argue, is provided by Catharine MacKinnon's radical feminist theory, according to which sexually objectifying acts are manifestations of the social process through which women are made into objects of male sexual gratification. One important implication of this account is that women themselves play a role in perpetuating the norms through which sexually objectifying treatment of women is enabled: insofar as they participate in the re-constitution of the social context which facilitates their sexual objectification, they are complicit in it. Although this idea lacks intuitive appeal from a feminist perspective, I argue that understanding the nature of the contribution women make to perpetuating their objectification enables a better understanding of what practices of resistance are necessary for effectively combatting the sexual objectification of women. I defend the explanatory power of the complicity account of objectification in light of two pressing debates in contemporary feminist philosophy: the question of how women can disidentify from femininity given the strong attachments they develop to it, and the question of how feminism can continue to appeal to the motif of solidarity considering the anti-essentialist commitments of recent feminist theory. (shrink)

Hollywood movies can be deeply engaging and easy to understand. To succeed in this manner, feature-length movies employ many editing techniques with strong psychological underpinnings. We explore the origins and development of one of these, the reaction shot. This shot typically shows a single, unspeaking character with modest facial expression in response to an event or to the behavior or speech of another character. In a sample of movies from 1940 to 2010, we show that the prevalence of one type (...) of these shots—which we call the cryptic reaction shot—has grown dramatically. These shots are designed to enhance viewers’ emotional involvement with characters. They depict a facial gesture that reflects a slightly negative and slightly aroused emotional state. Their use at the end of conversations, and typically at the end of scenes, helps to leave viewers in a state of speculation about what the character is thinking and what her thoughts may mean for the ongoing narrative. (shrink)

How math helps us solve the universe's deepest mysteries You must be able to test any physical theory in the real world. To most physicists, this is obvious. But since the 1980s, experimental physics has yielded vanishingly little insight into the fundamental physics of the universe. Meanwhile, some physicists have begun to probe the universe not with proton beams, but with pure math. They're less concerned with testable theories than with the drive to explain nature with mathematical (...) beauty. This approach is often pilloried by traditional scientists, who point out that such approaches have yet to make a correct prediction about the real world. But in The Universe Speaks in Numbers, Graham Farmelo offers a gripping tour of the history of math-based physics and explores why it may be the key to the next big breakthrough in our understanding of the nature of reality. (shrink)

One of the first books to address what has come to be known as the philosophy of cosmology, Universes asks, "Why does the universe exist?", arguing that the universe is "fine tuned for producing life." For example, if the universe's early expansion speed had been smaller by one part in a million, then it would have recollapsed rapidly; with an equivalently tiny speed increase, no galaxies would have formed. Either way, this universe would have been lifeless.

Although 80–90% of adults are seropositive for antibodies against the human parvovirus adeno‐associated virus (AAV), infection has not been associated with either symptoms or disease. In cell culture, AAV infection is not productive unless there is a coinfection with a helper virus, either adenovirus or any type of herpes virus; in the absence of a helper virus coinfection the viral genome is integrated into the genome, usually at a specific site on chromosome 19q13.3‐qter. The integrated genome can be activated and (...) rescued by subsequent super infection by a helper virus. The high frequency of site‐specific integration by AAV and the lack of associated disease have encouraged the use of AAV as a vector for gene therapy. This review will focus on the molecular mechanisms involved in the establishment of, and rescue from, the latent state and their relevance to use of AAV as a vector. (shrink)

A growing awareness of a subsurface fossil record of mostly hyphal fungi organisms stretching back through the Phanerozoic to ≈400 megaannum (Ma) and possibly earlier, provides an alternative view on hyphal development. Parallel with the emergence of hyphal fungi during Ordovician–Devonian times when plants colonized the land, which is the traditional notion of hyphal evolution, hyphae‐based fungi existed in the deep biosphere. New insights suggest that the fundamental functions of hyphae may have evolved in response to an ancient subsurface endolithic (...) life style and might have been in place before the colonization of land. To address the gaps in the current understanding of hyphal evolution a strategy based on research prospects involving investigations of uncharted geological material, new diagnostics, and comparisons to live species is proposed. (shrink)

Pain is a global problem whose social, economic, and psychological costs are immeasurable. It is now seen as the most common reason why people seek medical (including psychiatric) care. But what is pain? This article shows that the discourse of pain tends to suffer from the same problems of ethnocentrism and obscurity as the discourse of emotions in general. Noting that in the case of pain, the costs of miscommunication are particularly high, this article offers a new paradigm for communicating (...) about pain. It shows how the use of natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) techniques developed in linguistic semantics can help in this area, as in other areas concerned with human subjectivity, and can lead to a greater understanding between psychologists, psychiatrists, medical practitioners, social workers, and ordinary suffering mortals. (shrink)

_The Universal_ proposes a radically new philosophical system that moves from ontology to ethics. Drawing on the work of De Beauvoir, Sartre, and Le Doeuff, among others, and addressing a range of topics from the Asian sex trade to late capitalism, quantum gravity, and Merleau-Ponty's views on cinema, Dorothea Olkowski stretches the mathematical, political, epistemological, and aesthetic limits of continental philosophy and introduces a new perspective on political structures. Straddling a course between formalism and conventionalism, Olkowski develops the concept of (...) an ontological unconscious that arises from our "sensible" relation to the world-the information we absorb and emit that affects our encounters with the environment and others. In this "realm of the senses," or the field of vulnerability defined by our experience with pleasure and pain, Olkowski is able to rethink the space-time relations put forth by Irigaray's notion of the "interval," Bergson's "recollection," Merleau-Ponty's idea of the "flesh," and Deleuze's "plane of immanence." This aesthetic sense is shared by all humankind and nonhuman entities in the organic and inorganic world. The sensible universal can be applied to categories of pure and practical reason; experiential binaries of male-female and subject-object; and issues of autonomy, moral laws, and the regulation of perception. (shrink)

For most of human history children have been a byproduct of sex rather than a conscious choice by parents to create people with traits that they care about. As our understanding of genetics advances along with our ability to control reproduction and manipulate genes, prospective parents have stronger moral reasons to consider how their choices are likely to affect their children, and how their children are likely to affect other people. With the advent of cheap and effective contraception, and the (...) emergence of new technologies for in vitro fertilization, embryo selection, and genetic engineering, it is becoming increasingly difficult to justify rolling the genetic dice by having children without thinking about the traits they will have. It is time to face up to the awesome responsibilities that accompany our reproductive choices. (shrink)

The challenges public comprehensive universities face today are expanding—they have been challenged to enroll and graduate more students, adopt new technologies that lower cost without sacrificing quality, and align program and curricular offerings with the skills that employers require. While these universities have a long history of adapting to change, today’s environment will likely test the capabilities of even the most adaptive institutions. This volume assembles a team of experts from a variety of disciplines to examine both the history of (...) the comprehensive university and what lies ahead. Overall, the book grapples with such questions as: How do these institutions adapt to serve the growing population of non-traditional students? How well do they prepare graduates for the labor market? Can partnerships between community colleges and comprehensive universities bolster student success? The University Next Door draws much-needed attention to a set of institutions that has historically received little notice, yet play an important role in meeting our new attainment goals and helping the American economy grow. Book Features: Examines the role of comprehensive universities from start to finish—their history and future. Uses empirical analysis to explore complex questions about which students choose these universities and why. Explores how these institutions might struggle under a federal ratings system such as the one proposed by President Obama. Discusses how these institutions can better monitor the needs of the economy and better educate students to fill those needs. Provides recommendations to inform future decisions about higher education policy. (shrink)

Kant's formulae ought to effectively produce the same result when applied to the moral validity of any particular maxim; further, no valid maxim produces contradictory results when applied against Kant's Universal Law and Humanity formulae. Where one uses all formulae in the assessment of a maxim, one gains a more complete understanding of the moral law, thereby bridging principles of reason with intuition within the agent who has undertaken to evaluate the morality of a particular action. These formulae command without (...) regard to any particular interests, but are instead unconditional; further, these formulae effectively limit choice of action and therefore give rise to duty. Kant implies that the structure of all maxims requires different formulae of the same moral law, i.e., all maxims have a ‘form’ and a ‘matter’, which prompt reconfiguring of the categorical imperative into different formulae in order to test the morality of a maxim. (shrink)

Preface to the fifth edition -- A world of difference -- A universe charged with the grandeur of God : Christian theism -- The clockwork universe : deism -- The silence of finite space : naturalism -- Zero point : nihilism -- Beyond nihilism : existentialism -- Journey to the east : eastern pantheistic monism -- A separate universe : the New Age spirituality without religion -- The vanished horizon : postmodernism -- A view from the Middle (...) East : Islamic theism -- The examined life. (shrink)