An engaging argument about what experimental music can tell us about being human. -/- In Experimenting the Human, G Douglas Barrett argues that experimental music speaks to the contemporary posthuman, a condition in which science and technology decenter human agency amid the uneven temporality of postwar global capitalism. Time moves forward for some during this period, while it seems to stand still or even move backward for others. Some say we’re already posthuman, while others endure the extended consequences (...) of never having been considered fully human in the first place. Experimental music reflects on this state, Barrett contends, through its interdisciplinary involvements in postwar science, technology, and art movements. -/- Rather than pursuing the human’s beyond, experimental music addresses the social and technological conditions that support such a pursuit. Barrett locates this tendency of experimentalism throughout its historical entanglements with cybernetics, and in his intimate analysis of Alvin Lucier’s neurofeedback music, Pamela Z’s BodySynth performances, Nam June Paik’s musical robotics, Pauline Oliveros’s experiments with radio astronomy, and work by Laetitia Sonami, Yasunao Tone, and Jerry Hunt. Through a unique meeting of music studies, media theory, and art history, Experimenting the Human provides fresh insights into what it means to be human. (shrink)

`The critic explicitly acknowledges his dependence on prior words that make his word a kind of answer. He calls to other texts "that they might answer him."' Geoffrey Hartman is the first book devoted to an exploration of the `intellectual poetry' of the critic who, whether or not he `represents the future of the profession', is a unique and major voice in twentieth-century criticism. Professor Atkins explains clearly Hartman's key ideas and places his work in the contexts of Romanticism and (...) Judaism on which he has written extensively. In Geoffrey Hartman he provides a valuable introduction to a major critical voice who has called into question our assumptions about the distinction between commentary and imaginative literature. (shrink)

`The critic explicitly acknowledges his dependence on prior words that make his word a kind of answer. He calls to other texts "that they might answer him."' _Geoffrey Hartman_ is the first book devoted to an exploration of the `intellectual poetry' of the critic who, whether or not he `represents the future of the profession', is a unique and major voice in twentieth-century criticism. Professor Atkins explains clearly Hartman's key ideas and places his work in the contexts of Romanticism and (...) Judaism on which he has written extensively. In _Geoffrey Hartman_ he provides a valuable introduction to a major critical voice who has called into question our assumptions about the distinction between commentary and imaginative literature. (shrink)

An obituary notice outlining the main aspects of Charles Hartshorne's life, career, and thought.

Although stockholders may benefit from information regarding the frequently substantial charitable and political contributions of the corporations they own, US corporations are typically not required to disclose any information about such payments in annual financial statements or information submitted periodically to regulatory agencies. This lack of transparency is confounded by disclosure requirements of private foundations, which a corporation may choose to establish for the purposes of administering charitable giving for the corporation. The resulting disclosure fog engendered by extant regulations may (...) be confusing to those corporation owners who would like to know what corporation contributions are being made to charities and politicians. This article enumerates the magnitude of the charitable and political gifts of 40 of the most generous public corporations in the USA, the current disclosure requirements for public companies, the role of foundations, rationales for withholding relevant information from owners, and ethically questionable strategies that corporations may use to manage those disclosures for their benefit. (shrink)

There is growing interest in the use of neurointerventions to reduce the risk that criminal offenders will reoffend. Commentators have raised several ethical concerns regarding this practice. One prominent concern is that, when imposed without the offender’s valid consent, neurointerventions might infringe offenders’ right to bodily integrity. While it is commonly held that we possess a moral right to bodily integrity, the extent to which this right would protect against such neurointerventions is as-yet unclear. In this paper, we will assess (...) whether, why, and how severely three forms of neurointervention might infringe the right to bodily integrity. We show that the severity of the infringement of the right to bodily integrity differs across different forms of neurointervention. Moreover, we argue that mental and behavioral effects of neurointerventions could in some cases be relevant to determining the severity of infringements of the right to bodily integrity. (shrink)

The partial ordering of Medvedev reducibility restricted to the family of Π0 1 classes is shown to be dense. For two disjoint computably enumerable sets, the class of separating sets is an important example of a Π0 1 class, which we call a ``c.e. separating class''. We show that there are no non-trivial meets for c.e. separating classes, but that the density theorem holds in the sublattice generated by the c.e. separating classes.

Abstract.The partial ordering of Medvedev reducibility restricted to the family of Π01 classes is shown to be dense. For two disjoint computably enumerable sets, the class of separating sets is an important example of a Π01 class, which we call a ``c.e. separating class''. We show that there are no non-trivial meets for c.e. separating classes, but that the density theorem holds in the sublattice generated by the c.e. separating classes.

Through his views on perspectivism and the will to power, Nietzsche indirectly influences many current discourses on identity. This article places these themes in the broader context of Nietzsche’s thought. Firstly, it is indicated how difficult it is to speak of someone’s identity by showing how many ‘Nietzsches’ appear in his writings, notebooks and letters and the accounts of his contemporaries. Such comparative readings, although they may cast new light on Nietzsche’s philosophy, are rare in Nietzsche scholarship. Next, his views (...) on identity are briefly explored, paying attention to his rejection of the centred subject, equality and morality and his view on hierarchy, creativity and power struggles. Finally, it is argued that Nietzsche confronts our discourses on identity with challenges regarding the ubiquity of power struggles, the role of ressentiment, the possibility of communication across boundaries, the importance of the individual and the problem of affirmation. Contribution: Discourses on identity, although fashionable, are often confusing. Instead of offering solutions, this article uses Nietzsche’s life and philosophy to identify some causes of confusion and indicates where crucial decisions regarding our presuppositions have to be taken. Its aim was not to produce knowledge but, in line with Nietzsche’s practice, to ‘produce ignorance’, to question the terms we use confidently, without fully considering their meaning or implications. (shrink)

It is considered in some quarters that hypothesis‐driven methods are the only valuable, reliable or significant means of scientific advance. Data‐driven or ‘inductive’ advances in scientific knowledge are then seen as marginal, irrelevant, insecure or wrong‐headed, while the development of technology—which is not of itself ‘hypothesis‐led’ (beyond the recognition that such tools might be of value)—must be seen as equally irrelevant to the hypothetico‐deductive scientific agenda. We argue here that data‐ and technology‐driven programmes are not alternatives to hypothesis‐led studies in (...) scientific knowledge discovery but are complementary and iterative partners with them. Many fields are data‐rich but hypothesis‐poor. Here, computational methods of data analysis, which may be automated, provide the means of generating novel hypotheses, especially in the post‐genomic era. BioEssays 26:99–105, 2004. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

The Jewish leftist lawyer Ernst Fraenkel was one of twentieth-century Germany's great intellectuals. During the Weimar Republic he was a shrewd constitutional theorist for the Social Democrats and in post-World War II Germany a respected political scientist who worked to secure West Germany's new democracy. This book homes in on the most dramatic years of Fraenkel's life, when he worked within Nazi Germany actively resisting the regime, both publicly and secretly. As a lawyer, he represented political defendants in court. As (...) a dissident, he worked in the underground. As an intellectual, he wrote his most famous work, The Dual State – a classic account of Nazi law and politics. This first detailed account of Fraenkel's career in Nazi Germany opens up a new view on anti-Nazi resistance – its nature, possibilities, and limits. With grit, daring and imagination, Fraenkel fought for freedom against an increasingly repressive regime. (shrink)

This study examined the influence of corporate giving programs on the link between certain categories of corporate crime and corporate reputation. Specifically, firms that violate EPA and OSHA regulations should, to some extent, experience a decline in their reputations, while firms that contribute to charitable causes should see their reputations enhanced. The results of this study support both of these contentions. Further, the results suggest that corporate giving significantly moderates the link between the number of EPA and OSHA violations committed (...) by a firm and its reputation. Thus, while a firm's reputation can be diminished through its violation of various government regulations, the extent of the decline in reputation may be significantly reduced through charitable giving. (shrink)

Jeremy Bentham was a British philosopher, jurist, and social reformer. He is regarded as the founder of modern utilitarianism.

David Hume, Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill are often viewed as contributors to or participants in a common tradition of thought roughly characterized as ‘the liberal tradition’ or the tradition of ‘bourgeois ideology’. This view, however useful it may be for polemical or proselytizing purposes, is in some important respects historiographically unsound. This is not to deny the importance of asking what twentieth-century liberals or conservatives might find in the works of, say, David Hume to support their (...) respective ideological persuasions. It is only to insist that attempts to use selected arguments, or parts of arguments, from great eighteenth-century thinkers to shore up twentieth-century programmatic political positions must be categorically distinguished from attempts to understand what Hume, Smith, Bentham or Mill actually meant, or could imaginably have meant, to say. (shrink)

Working within weak subsystems of second-order arithmetic Z2 we consider two versions of the Baire Category theorem which are not equivalent over the base system RCA0. We show that one version (B.C.T.I) is provable in RCA0 while the second version (B.C.T.II) requires a stronger system. We introduce two new subsystems of Z2, which we call RCA+ 0 and WKL+ 0, and show that RCA+ 0 suffices to prove B.C.T.II. Some model theory of WKL+ 0 and its importance in view of (...) Hilbert's program is discussed, as well as applications of our results to functional analysis. (shrink)

We develop a theory of LOGSPACE structures and apply it to construct a number of examples of Abelian Groups which have LOGSPACE presentations. We show that all computable torsion Abelian groups have LOGSPACE presentations and we show that the groups ${\mathbb {Z}, Z(p^{\infty})}$ , and the additive group of the rationals have LOGSPACE presentations over a standard universe such as the tally representation and the binary representation of the natural numbers. We also study the effective categoricity of such groups. For (...) example, we give conditions are given under which two isomorphic LOGSPACE structures will have a linear space isomorphism. (shrink)

Important examples of $\Pi^0_1$ classes of functions $f \in {}^\omega\omega$ are the classes of sets (elements of ω 2) which separate a given pair of disjoint r.e. sets: ${\mathsf S}_2(A_0, A_1) := \{f \in{}^\omega2 : (\forall i < 2)(\forall x \in A_i)f(x) \neq i\}$ . A wider class consists of the classes of functions f ∈ ω k which in a generalized sense separate a k-tuple of r.e. sets (not necessarily pairwise disjoint) for each k ∈ ω: ${\mathsf S}_k(A_0,\ldots,A_k-1) := (...) \{f \in {}^\omega k : (\forall i < k) (\forall x \in A_i) f(x) \neq i\}$ . We study the structure of the Medvedev degrees of such classes and show that the set of degrees realized depends strongly on both k and the extent to which the r.e. sets intersect. Let ${\mathcal S}^m_k$ denote the Medvedev degrees of those ${\mathsf S}_k(A_0,\ldots,A_{k-1})$ such that no m + 1 sets among A 0,...,A k-1 have a nonempty intersection. It is shown that each ${\mathcal S}^m_k$ is an upper semi-lattice but not a lattice. The degree of the set of k-ary diagonally nonrecursive functions $\mathsf{DNR}_k$ is the greatest element of ${\mathcal S}^1_k$ . If 2 ≤ l < k, then 0 M is the only degree in ${\mathcal S}^1_l$ which is below a member of ${\mathcal S}^1_k$ . Each ${\mathcal S}^m_k$ is densely ordered and has the splitting property and the same holds for the lattice ${\mathcal L}^m_k$ it generates. The elements of ${\mathcal S}^m_k$ are exactly the joins of elements of ${\mathcal S}^1_i$ for $\lceil{k \over m}\rceil \leq i \leq k$. (shrink)

This paper examines naturalized epistemology's prospects for dealing with Cartesian skepticism and the traditional problem of induction. It is argued that Quine's approach fails to satisfy the skeptic who does not already embrace some version of scientific method. In addition, it is argued that Goldman's reliabilism enables one to address these issues empirically only if one rejects the view that if we are capable of confirming an empirical hypothesis, we are also capable of disconfirming it. The article ends with a (...) negative appraisal of the role relevant alternatives play in Goldman's account, particularly with regard to second order knowledge. (shrink)

Modules in ethics have become astonishingly popular at the University of the Western Cape. This could reflect students’ concern about morality, but the saying by Lafargue in Tao te ching in the title suggests that moral discourse flourishes when moral behaviour is languishing. This article reflects on some 15 years of teaching ethical theory to third-year students. Three trends are identified: Students’ responses to the theories are unpredictable and surprising. Nietzsche and Kant are very popular, although some modern ‘contextual’ theories (...) draw less support. Students who can be extremely moralistic in class are sometimes amoral in their practices and offhand pronouncements. Students are hampered by their poor conceptual skills and rely excessively on memorising. The last two trends raise questions about our teaching of ethics and the ethics of our teaching. Although many students embrace character-based theories, to some ‘a good character’ apparently means ‘what makes me feel good about myself’ and to others ‘what makes me look good to my group’. Thus, they effectively embrace either individual relativism or group relativism, which is understandable when theories are presented without the backing of at least a rudimentary philosophical anthropology. Questions of indoctrination become acute in the teaching of ethics. Are we, in the name of moral formation, teaching students to parrot current dogmas presented without arguments? If so, our practice may be both morally dubious and counterproductive. The best students rebel against such manipulation. The article calls for more reflection on how and to what ends we teach ethics. (shrink)

Continuing the investigations of X. Yu and others, we study the role of set existence axioms in classical Lebesgue measure theory. We show that pairwise disjoint countable additivity for open sets of reals is provable in RCA0. We show that several well-known measure-theoretic propositions including the Vitali Covering Theorem are equivalent to WWKL over RCA0.

It is widely held that intuitive dualism—an implicit default mode of thought that takes minds to be separable from bodies and capable of independent existence—is a human universal. Among the findings taken to support universal intuitive dualism is a pattern of evidence in which “psychological” traits (knowledge, desires) are judged more likely to continue after death than bodily or “biological” traits (perceptual, physiological, and bodily states). Here, we present cross-cultural evidence from six study populations, including non-Western societies with diverse belief (...) systems, that shows that while this pattern exists, the overall pattern of responses nonetheless does not support intuitive dualism in afterlife beliefs. Most responses of most participants across all cultures tested were not dualist. While our sample is in no way intended to capture the full range of human societies and afterlife beliefs, it captures a far broader range of cultures than in any prior study, and thus puts the case for afterlife beliefs as evidence for universal intuitive dualism to a strong test. Based on these findings, we suggest that while dualist thinking is a possible mode of thought enabled by evolved human psychology, such thinking does not constitute a default mode of thought. Rather, our data support what we will call intuitive materialism—the view that the underlying intuitive systems for reasoning about minds and death produce as a default judgment that mental states cease to exist with bodily death. (shrink)

For Wittgenstein, as Cora Diamond interprets him in the essays collected in her recent The Realistic Spirit , there are no logical truths, and a host of other linguistic constructions, such as ‘A is an object’ are, contrary to appearances, nonsensical. In what follows, after outlining Diamond's account I argue that the position she ascribes to Wittgenstein is incoherent. I also reject some possible responses to this charge, among them an appeal to the distinction between what can be said and (...) what can only be shown. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein ed. by Hans Sluga, David G. SternDouglas G. WinbladHans Sluga and David G. Stern, editors. The Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pp. ix + 509. Cloth, $59.95. Paper, $18.95.There is a disconcerting lack of agreement about how to interpret Wittgenstein’s texts. The introduction and fourteen essays in this book are cases in point. Stern claims that the phenomenon is (...) due largely to the fact that Wittgenstein’s writings call for a radical change in philosophical sensibility, a change to which there continues to be considerable resistance. He also notes that most of Wittgenstein’s posthumous publications are the result of massive editorial interventions, and that much of his work remains unpublished. The electronic edition of the entire Nachlass, Stern argues, will reveal that Wittgenstein’s writings as a whole constitute a highly interconnected network of remarks—a hypertext. In a similar vein, Sluga suggests that Wittgenstein’s philosophical trajectory reflects the larger cultural shift in this century from modernism to postmodernism. The postmodern, hypertextual aspect of Wittgenstein’s thinking is nowhere better embodied here than in Cavell’s reflections on the importance of context in deciding whether some behavior counts as language use. Cavell’s remarks reproduce and comment on his own lectures on the opening sections of Philosophical Investigations, sections he reads as a commentary on a passage in Augustine.A closely related theme in the essays concerns the status of Wittgenstein’s attempt to avoid replacing older philosophical theories with new ones. Garver maintains that Wittgenstein’s notion of grammar provides a powerful rebuke to speculative or scientific metaphysics, but not to descriptive metaphysics. Glock argues in turn that Wittgenstein’s distinction between grammatical and empirical propositions does not fall prey to Quine’s attack on analyticity. One wonders whether this distinction is purely descriptive. And even if one grants Glock’s claim that grammatical rules are unfalsifiable, how does one decide whether a particular remark about these rules is mistaken? We cannot pass judgment on what for Garver is Wittgenstein’s genuinely critical enterprise without addressing these issues.Doing so also requires us to assess Wittgenstein’s closely related treatment of rule following. Stroud rejects Kripke’s account of this material, claiming that what the relevant passages actually show is that that no explanation of how language in general—and meaning and normativity in particular—is possible. Stroud holds that this conclusion can be felt as dissatisfying. But is it a theoretical conclusion? And why not find it liberating, as Wittgenstein apparently did?Fogelin also emphasizes Wittgenstein’s antitheoretical animus, taking issue with Dummett’s view that Wittgenstein is advancing a use theory of meaning and an antirealist philosophy of mathematics. Like Fogelin, Gerrard challenges Dummett’s view of Wittgenstein’s treatment of mathematics, insisting that for Wittgenstein, truth is not a matter of human agreement. But Gerrard does not tell us what Wittgenstein believes truth is. The question whether there is anything he thinks it is deserves further attention.Some contributors impute to the later Wittgenstein what are clearly theoretical [End Page 643] stances. Bloor argues that what he takes to be Wittgenstein’s linguistic idealism arises from certain sociological assumptions. And Kober attributes a “collective-linguistic idealism” to Wittgenstein on the grounds that the latter thinks that the truth conditions of a sentence depend on, or are part of, its utterance conditions. But, as several of the other essays make clear, it is debatable whether Wittgenstein would agree.A few authors discuss in detail the nature of philosophical theorizing in the early Wittgenstein. Summerfield offers an interpretation of what she takes to be the theory of representation in the Tractatus. She allows, however, that Wittgenstein tells us that one cannot represent the connection between a name and its referent. Ricketts, on the other hand, stresses that the so-called picture theory appears to imply that there can be no such theory. Yet his reading does not abandon the conception of truth as agreement with reality. It is unclear to me that this conception survives the implosion of the text as a whole. Why not kick the entire ladder away... (shrink)

Johnstone, H. W., Jr. Rhetoric and communication in philosophy.--Smith, C. R. and Douglas, D. G. Philosophical principles in the traditional and emerging views of rhetoric.--Wallace, K. R. Bacon's conception of rhetoric.--Thonssen, L. W. Thomas Hobbes's philosophy of speech.--Walter, O. M., Jr. Descartes on reasoning.--Douglas, D. G. Spinoza and the methodology of reflective knowledge in persuasion.--Howell, W. S. John Locke and the new rhetoric.--Doering, J. F. David Hume on oratory.--Douglas, D. G. A neo-Kantian approach to the epistomology of (...) judgment in criticism.--Bevilacqua, V. M. Lord Kames's theory of rhetoric.--Brockriede, W. E. Bentham's philosophy of rhetoric.--Anderson, R. E. Kierkegaard's theory of communication.--Macksoud, S. J. Ludwig Wittgenstein, radical operationism and rhetorical stance.--Stewart, J. J. L. Austin's speech act analysis.--Torrence, D. L. A philosophy of rhetoric from Bertrand Russell.--Clark, A. Martin Buber, dialogue, and the philosophy of rhetoric.--Bennett, W. Kenneth Burke--a philosophy in defense of un-reason.--Dearin, R. D. The philosophical basis of Chaim Perelman's theory of rhetoric. (shrink)

Is reasoning about religious ritual tethered to ordinary, nonreligious human reasoning about actions? E. Thomas Lawson and Robert N. McCauley’s ritual form hypothesis constitutes a cognitive approach to religious ritual – an explanatory theory that suggests people use ordinary human cognition to make specific predictions about ritual properties, relatively independent of cultural or religious particulars. Few studies assess the credibility ofrfhand further evidence is needed to generalize its predictions across cultures. Towards this end, we assessed culturally Chinese “special patient” rituals (...) in Singapore. Our findings strongly supportrfhpredictions for special patient ritual repeatability, reversibility, sensory pageantry and emotionality. (shrink)

Preparatory Principles is not a linear text in the conventional sense, but consists of a series of short passages on a variety of topics, whose themes are summarised in marginal headings. The material constitutes a philosophical commonplace book, compiled by Bentham in the mid-1770s, in which he worked out the foundational ideas for his new science of legislation. He then drew on this material when composing such works as A Fragment on Government and An Introduction to the Principles of Morals (...) and Legislation. Inspired by such figures as John Locke and Claude Adrien Helvetius, Bentham developed an original ontological and epistemological basis for legal terminology, with the aim of replacing the traditional terminology of English law with that of universal jurisprudence. The work that dominates the text, in that Bentham returns to it time and time again in order to offer criticism of it, is William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England. While unorganized and fragmentary, the material in Preparatory Principles constitutes a remarkable record of the evolving ideas of a major legal philosopher at a formative stage of his career. (shrink)