We review some of the main implications of the free-energy principle (FEP) for the study of the self-organization of living systems – and how the FEP can help us to understand (and model) biotic self-organization across the many temporal and spatial scales over which life exists. In order to maintain its integrity as a bounded system, any biological system - from single cells to complex organisms and societies - has to limit the disorder or dispersion (i.e., the long-run entropy) of (...) its constituent states. We review how this can be achieved by living systems that minimize their variational free energy. Variational free energy is an information theoretic construct, originally introduced into theoretical neuroscience and biology to explain perception, action, and learning. It has since been extended to explain the evolution, development, form, and function of entire organisms, providing a principled model of biotic self-organization and autopoiesis. It has provided insights into biological systems across spatiotemporal scales, ranging from microscales (e.g., sub- and multicellular dynamics), to intermediate scales (e.g., groups of interacting animals and culture), through to macroscale phenomena (the evolution of entire species). A crucial corollary of the FEP is that an organism just is (i.e., embodies or entails) an implicit model of its environment. As such, organisms come to embody causal relationships of their ecological niche, which, in turn, is influenced by their resulting behaviors. Crucially, free-energy minimization can be shown to be equivalent to the maximization of Bayesian model evidence. This allows us to cast natural selection in terms of Bayesian model selection, providing a robust theoretical account of how organisms come to match or accommodate the spatiotemporal complexity of their surrounding niche. In line with the theme of this volume; namely, biological complexity and self-organization, this chapter will examine a variational approach to self-organization across multiple dynamical scales. (shrink)

Critical Rationalism has become an influential philosophy in many areas including a great number of scientific disciplines. Yet only few studies have been devoted to the role of the philosophy of Sir Karl Popper in the vast field of education. This volume undertakes to fill this gap. Leading scholars in the educational science and in the philosophy of education have critically written for this volume in an attempt to elaborate Popper's methodological and socio-political views and confront them with a globally (...) relevant spectrum of scientific objectives and cultural values. Among the topics discussed are moral values, education for freedom and its consequences for the student, and the critical attitude in political education. Attention is also paid to the historiography of this significant philosophical movement. Regarding pedagogical research, the empirical paradigm, the falsificatory approach to educational research, the complex relationship between educational theory and practice as well as the problem of value-neutrality in educational science are objects of critical analysis. (shrink)

English summary: This volume contains controversial views and discussions on the purpose, function, analysis and justification of value judgments and norms in the social sciences and humanities.

Based upon a brief outline of existential-phenomenological ontology we present a theoretical and practical understanding of humanbeing, which is suited for a methodologically reflected approach to qualitative research. We present the phenomenological distinction between threedimensions of corporeal intentionality(structural, generative and dialectic intentionality) that form elementary events and structures of meaning. Various aspects of human being are better scrutinized with these concepts of intentionality, such as the association of individual being or collective being (e.g. groups) with the less differentiated anonymity of (...) human being. The aim of our framework is to support the qualitative researcher in grasping the experience of the human life in closer accord with how this being actually unfolds and is lived. Application of the presented framework is illuminated with empirical examples from educational, health and psychological contexts. Finally, we discuss the methodological implications that our approach has for qualitative investigations of human being. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt’s concept of the mob has long been neglected. This paper aims to shine new light on the concept. It focusses on the mob’s role in Origins of Totalitarianism, as one of the key components in the rise of totalitarianism. First, this paper analyses Arendt’s definition of the mob. Next, it traces the mob’s origins, its growing influence, and two major ideological predispositions: tribal nationalism and rebellious nihilism. After further differentiation from Arendt’s concept of the masses, using the concept (...) of the mob, the paper counters Robert Paxton’s objection to theories of atomized societies leading to fascism. (shrink)

In a wide range of contemporary debates on Japanese cultures of technological practice, brief reference is often made to distinct Shinto legacies, as forming an animist substratum of indigenous spiritual beliefs and cosmological imaginations. Japan has been described as a land of Shinto-infused ‘techno-animism’: exhibiting a ‘polymorphous perversity’ that resolutely ignores boundaries between human, animal, spiritual and mechanical beings. In this article, we deploy instances of Japanese techno-animism as sites of theoretical experimentation on what Bruno Latour calls a symmetrical anthropology (...) of nature-cultures. In staging a dialogue between actor-network theory and Japanese techno-animism, we show how Shinto cosmograms provide an enlivening and alternative diffraction device on several of the ontological motifs manifested in Latour’s work. In particular, by mobilizing the territory of a ‘new’ animism debate in anthropology – manifested in the work of Philippe Descola and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro – we attempt to infuse Latourian ‘multinaturalism’ with new, other-than-western analytical energy. Extending actor-network theory, we argue, Shinto cosmograms offer an interesting vantage point for interpreting the immanent, affective, enchanting and enabling powers of non-humans in contributing to collective life. By thus broadening the ‘cosmopolitical’ imagination beyond Latour’s own European-Catholic frame of reference, Shinto techno-animism offers up a wider reflection on contemporary entanglements of science, politics, ecology and cosmos. This reflection, we conclude, opens up a new intellectual territory, allowing us to trace techno-animist streams of thinking both ‘East’ and ‘West’, beyond the confines of the scientific naturalism indigenous to European thinking. (shrink)

ABSTRACT If phenomenology is a research methodology uniquely positioned to enable us to learn from others, I aim to demonstrate the idea that cinema is a privileged site from which to investigate the notion of virtuality (sight and reality), even in an age where vision’s predominance is waning. In order to do so, I consider the painfully disruptive mother-daughter relationship found cross-culturally and discourse-analytically in contemporary patriarchal societies. This bond is arguably of central concern to feminists (and women in general) (...) since previous research has found that the fractious nature of this dynamic points to a very specific psychological deformation of the female psyche under conditions of sexist oppression. The views of French psychoanalyst and philosopher Julia Kristeva and other feminist contributors to the debate on this psychological construct are considered. The possibility of a cultural remedy inspired by a secularised trend of Chinese Buddhism in post-Maoist China, a society very different from that of the West, is investigated. This will involve the analysis of the film Curse of the Golden Flower (Chinese Mandarin soundtrack and English subtitles). I subsequently explore whether or not a valuable model for the compromised mother/daughter relationship is available within the context of the notion of a “slave economy” in the comparatively healthier mother/son relationship of (contemporary) Han Chinese culture. By means of cross-cultural analysis as research tool, this article finds confirmation for the proposition of a positive mother/daughter dynamic in the French novelist Colette’s relationship with her mother, Sido. In conclusion, I find that cinema (as an art form serving the eye, i.e. virtuality) is particularly well suited as a site to investigate psychological phenomena by way of interpretative phenomenology as a research methodology, even as vision – as the human sense of choice – has begun to wane amid a global crisis in masculinity. (shrink)

After explaining the well-known two-envelope paradox by indicating the fallacy involved, we consider the two-envelope problem of evaluating the factual information provided to us in the form of the value contained by the envelope chosen first. We try to provide a synthesis of contributions from economy, psychology, logic, probability theory (in the form of Bayesian statistics), mathematical statistics (in the form of a decision-theoretic approach) and game theory. We conclude that the two-envelope problem does not allow a satisfactory solution. An (...) interpretation is made for statistical science at large. (shrink)

Over the last decade, the Anthropocene has overrun the discourses of the humanities and social sciences. Remarkably, two of the most astute commentators, the cross-disciplinary theorist Barbara Herrnstein Smith and the unorthodox philosopher Isabelle Stengers, find inspiration for grappling with these issues in the same apparently odd place: the work of the Polish microbiologist and comparative epistemologist Ludwik Fleck. The first part of this essay explores the role of Fleck's radical constructivism in Smith's analyses of perplexing Anthropocene realities and Stengers's (...) arguments for slowing down science and learning to “compose with Gaia.” In conjunction, they generate a pattern of speculative, conceptual, practical, and political motifs for dealing with changing climates. The second half of the essay uses those insights to test a divergent series of proposals for how to conceive science, politics, theory, and environmental relations in the Anthropocene. (shrink)

The dichotomy between the conceptual and the empirical is part of common sense, yet its organizing force also extends to intellectual life more generally, including the disciplinary life of science and technology studies. This article problematizes this dichotomy as it operates in contemporary STS discussions, arguing instead that the conceptual and the empirical form unstable hybrids. Beginning with a discussion of the “discontents” with which the dominant theory methods packages in STS are viewed, it is suggested that STS has entered (...) a phase resembling Kuhnian normal science. Based on a discussion of the making of cognitive dissonance theory, it is then argued conceptual–empirical mixtures are unavoidable in actual research practice. This situation can be taken as an encouragement for more sustained exploration of conceptual–empirical relations and their inventive potentials. Invoking Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of “continuous variation,” the article concludes that STS as a discipline is well served by promoting an ethos of empirical and conceptual experimentation. (shrink)

This paper supplements an earlier one (Wassermann 1978b). Its views aim to reinforce those of Lewontin and other prominent evolutionists, but differ significantly from the opinions of some philosophers of science, notably Popper (1957) and Olding (1978). A basic distinction is made between 'laws' and 'theories of mechanisms'. The 'Theory of Evolution' is not characterized by laws, but is viewed here as a hypertheory which explains classifiable evolutionary phenomena in terms of subordinate classifiable theories of 'evolution-specific mechanisms' (ESMs), each of (...) which could apply to a host of species. Adaptations could result from ESMs that are rooted in molecular complementarities. The status of optimization theories that aim to predict best adapted states of organisms or populations is also discussed. (shrink)

The Ministry of Illusion: Nazi Cinema and Its Afterlife. By Eric Rentschler (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996) xviii + 456 pp. $60.00 cloth, $25.00 paper.

In The Law of Blood, French historian Johann Chapoutot synthesizes an enormous number of writings from the Third Reich to give a rendering of the Nazi Weltanschauung—world-view—as both consistent a...

This volume outlines a Deleuzian approach to analyzing science, culture and politics.

Williams Syndrome is a developmental disorder that is characterized by cardiovascular problems, particular facial features and several typical behavioral and neurological abnormalities. In Williams Syndrome patients, a heterozygous deletion is present of a region on chromosome 7q11.23 (the Williams Syndrome critical region), which spans approximately 20 genes. Two of these genes encode proteins that regulate dynamic aspects of the cytoskeleton of the cell, either via the actin filament system (LIM kinase 1, or LIMK1), or through the microtubule network (cytoplasmic linker (...) protein of 115 kDa, or CLIP‐115). The recent findings that knockout mice lacking LIMK1 or CLIP‐115 have distinct neurological and behavioural phenotypes, indicates that cytoskeletal defects might play a role in the development of neurological symptoms in Williams Syndrome patients. In this review, we discuss the properties of LIMK and CLIP family proteins, their function in the regulation of the actin and microtubule cytoskeletal systems, respectively, and the relationship with neurodevelopmental aspects of Williams Syndrome. BioEssays 26:141–150, 2004. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

In this paper it is argued that the understanding of Brouwer as replacing truth conditions with assertability or proof conditions, in particular as codified in the so-called Brouwer-Heyting-Kolmogorov Interpretation, is misleading and conflates a weak and a strong notion of truth that have to be kept apart to understand Brouwer properly: truth-as-anticipation and truth- in-content. These notions are explained, exegetical documentation provided, and semi-formal recursive definitions are given.

Early in his career, Bruno Latour’s limited readership consisted mainly of the research community in science and technology studies that he helped to inaugurate. Today the situation could hardly be more different. Latour is now subject to the “translations”—the processes by which ideas travel—that he has provided such powerful tools for analyzing. He has become a “mutable mobile”—eminently transportable but always changing as he goes—that in different contexts exists as a variety of conceptual characters or figurations. As the Latour network (...) continues to see significant extensions and transformations, it offers an instructive case for understanding the potentials and dynamics of traveling texts and ideas—and of their relation to existing disciplinary formations—as ecologies of knowledge change. This article examines the reception and adaptation of Latour’s ideas in two quite different intellectual contexts: anthropology and literary studies. The proliferation of Latour figurations is shown to be a consequence of interactions between, on the one hand, existing disciplinary constellations of ideas, concerns, and practices, and, on the other hand, his own often ambiguous arguments on topics including theory and method, nonhuman agency and politics, and technical mediation. (shrink)

This book presents a new nominalistic philosophy of mathematics: semantic conventionalism. Its central thesis is that mathematics should be founded on the human ability to create language – and specifically, the ability to institute conventions for the truth conditions of sentences. This philosophical stance leads to an alternative way of practicing mathematics: instead of “building” objects out of sets, a mathematician should introduce new syntactical sentence types, together with their truth conditions, as he or she develops a theory. Semantic conventionalism (...) is justified first through criticism of Cantorian set theory, intuitionism, logicism, and predicativism; then on its own terms; and finally, exemplified by a detailed reconstruction of arithmetic and real analysis. Also included is a simple solution to the liar paradox and the other paradoxes that have traditionally been recognized as semantic. And since it is argued that mathematics is semantics, this solution also applies to Russell’s paradox and the other mathematical paradoxes of self-reference. In addition to philosophers who care about the metaphysics and epistemology of mathematics or the paradoxes of self-reference, this book should appeal to mathematicians interested in alternative approaches. (shrink)

The proliferation, globalization, and fragmentation of law in world politics have fostered an attempt to re-integrate International Law and International Relations scholarship, but so far the contribution of realist theory to this interdisciplinary perspective has been meagre. Combining intellectual history, the jurisprudence of IL and IR theory, this article provides an analysis of John H. Herz’s classical realism and its perspective on international law. In retrieving this vision, the article emphasizes the political and intellectual context from which Herz’s realism developed: (...) the study of public law in Germany during the interwar period and in particular the contribution of Hans Kelsen and the pure theory of law to the study of international law. Herz was deeply inspired by Kelsen but he criticized the pure theory for ignoring the sociological foundations of law. Following his emigration to the United States, Herz embraced realism but without disregarding international law. Indeed, his mature, globally oriented realism offers a balanced, fruitful perspective for thinking about the relationship between politics and law that is deeply relevant for contemporary theory: it challenges modern, law-blind variants of realism and holds considerable potential for contributing to the approaches that have most successfully studied the law–politics nexus. (shrink)

This introduction to the Common Knowledge symposium titled “Comparative Relativism” outlines a variety of intellectual contexts where placing the unlikely companion terms comparison and relativism in conjunction offers analytical purchase. If comparison, in the most general sense, involves the investigation of discrete contexts in order to elucidate their similarities and differences, then relativism, as a tendency, stance, or working method, usually involves the assumption that contexts exhibit, or may exhibit, radically different, incomparable, or incommensurable traits. Comparative studies are required to (...) treat their objects as alike, at least in some crucial respects; relativism indicates the limits of this practice. Jensen argues that this seeming paradox is productive, as he moves across contexts, from Lévi-Strauss's analysis of comparison as an anthropological method to Peter Galison's history of physics, and on to the anthropological, philosophical, and historical examples offered in symposium contributions by Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Marilyn Strathern, and Isabelle Stengers. Comparative relativism is understood by some to imply that relativism comes in various kinds and that these have multiple uses, functions, and effects, varying widely in different personal, historical, and institutional contexts that can be compared and contrasted. Comparative relativism is taken by others to encourage a “comparison of comparisons,” in order to relativize what different peoples—say, Western academics and Amerindian shamans—compare things “for.” Jensen concludes that what is compared and relativized in this symposium are the methods of comparison and relativization themselves. He ventures that the contributors all hope that treating these terms in juxtaposition may allow for new configurations of inquiry. (shrink)

According to L.E.J. Brouwer, there is room for non-definable real numbers within the intuitionistic ontology of mental constructions. That room is allegedly provided by freely proceeding choice sequences, i.e., sequences created by repeated free choices of elements by a creating subject in a potentially infinite process. Through an analysis of the constitution of choice sequences, this paper argues against Brouwer’s claim.

According to L.E.J. Brouwer, there is room for non-definable real numbers within the intuitionistic ontology of mental constructions. That room is allegedly provided by freely proceeding choice sequences, i.e., sequences created by repeated free choices of elements by a creating subject in a potentially infinite process. Through an analysis of the constitution of choice sequences, this paper argues against Brouwer’s claim.

A method of supervaluation for Kripke’s theory of truth is presented. It differs from Kripke’s own method in that it employs trees; results in a compositional semantics; assigns the intuitively correct truth values to the sentences of a particularly tricky example of Gupta’s; and – it is argued – is acceptable as an explication of the correspondence theory of truth.

A modification of Kripke’s theory of truth is proposed and it is shown how this modification solves some of the problems of expressive weakness in Kripke’s theory. This is accomplished by letting truth values be grounded in facts about other sentences’ ungroundedness.

Two reverse supertasks—one new and one invented by Pérez Laraudogoitia —are discussed. Contra Kerkvliet and Pérez Laraudogoitia, it is argued that these supertasks cannot be used to conduct fair infinite lotteries, i.e., lotteries on the set of natural numbers with a uniform probability distribution. The new supertask involves an infinity of gods who collectively select a natural number by each removing one ball from a collection of initially infinitely many balls in a reverse omega-sequence of actions.

Radical glut and gap theorists deny—in opposite ways—that the liar sentence has exactly one of the two values true and not true. I describe a scenario where a signalman finds himself in a situation analogous to the liar paradox: if he lights a fire at a certain time, that is analogous to the liar being true, and if he does not, that is analogous to the liar not being true. It is obvious that he must make exactly one of those (...) states of affairs come about. It is argued that there are no relevant differences between the liar and the signalman’s dilemma, implying that the glut and gap theorists are wrong about the former. A further point is that whether or not the liar is true/the signalman lights the fire, language/the signalman is misleading relative to the conditions under which the liar/the fire “ought” to be true/lit. (shrink)

This paper points out the need for an analytical and ontological reorientation of the field of computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW). It is argued that even though this field is heterogeneous it is marred by general problems of conceptualising the co-constitutive relations between humans and technologies. This is demonstrated through readings of several recent CSCW analyses. It is then suggested that a conceptual improvement can be facilitated by paying attention to newer scientific studies, here exemplified by Pickering, Haraway and Latour.