. This is one of the better books on Indian religion" ÑChoice In this book, Farella combines the classic studies of Gladys Reichard and Berard Haile with recent interviews with tribal elders, in order to develop an understanding of the ...

This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.

The aim of this paper is to show how a sensory approach to visual arts can be relevant for philosophy and how this prism, once brought to philosophy, can give insights on art in return. I will try to demonstrate that the difference between modernity’s two main schools of thought (namely, materialism and idealism) can be understood – thanks to the model of painting as an allegory of the world – as an exclusive preference for one sense: touch (...) for materialism and sight for idealism. Much as the two schools differ, both consider the painting (or the world) a finite picture, whose elements can be juxtaposed in a single homogeneous plane of knowledge devoid of any opacity. This leads to separate both vision and the mind from the body and from the world. As a result, sight and touch end up dissociated. That is why, to challenge this modern paradigm and renew with a holistic relationship to the world and to ourselves, philosophers and artists propose a shift towards a synaesthetic approach to painting. Such an approach will uncover a modality of being where the body, the subject, and the world, as well as sight and touch, can be reunited. Thus, I will show that Merleau-Ponty’s ontology of the flesh – that echoes through the paintings of artists who attempt to break free from the frame and engage the observer with all his senses and being, such as Racławice Panorama, Malevich, El Lissitzky, Cézanne or the Navajos’ sand paintings – can offer, thanks to a synaesthetic approach, both a new framework for philosophy and a new understanding of visual arts. (shrink)

Bourdieu’s thought is disturbing. Provocative. Scandalous even, at least for those who do not easily tolerate the unmitigated truth about the social. Nonetheless his ideas, among the most important and innovative of our time, are here to stay. This thought has taken form in the course of a career and through works on diverse subjects that have constructed a far-reaching analytical model of social life, which the author calls more readily an anthropology rather than a sociology. In their totality, they (...) constitute today an original and powerful proposal to explain human practices. In the face of criticisms commonly leveled at Bourdieu’s thought (notably the charge that it reduces everything to a single schematic model), it is important to identify the spirit of his enterprise. Early on, it is true, his thought drew on a few fundamental concepts—the trilogy habitus, field (champ), practice (pratique)—to which it constantly returned, and followed a clearly defined trajectory. At the same time, however, he continually reformulated, adapted, and refined his analytical model, depending on the operations to which he subjected new objects of inquiry. The regenerative and transformative force of his thought was supported by two convictions. First, that there being nothing more vain than theory for theory’s sake, it is preferable that theoretical production originate in the study of concrete and occasionally very specific cases. Second, that in order to escape stereotypical classifications, boundaries separating disciplines are best transgressed, thereby favoring new constructions of the object of inquiry. (shrink)

Explores some steps toward non-assimilative encounters in the "global village.".

Comparative political theory is at best an embryonic and marginalized endeavor. As practiced in most Western universities, the study of political theory generally involves a rehearsal of the canon of Western political thought from Plato to Marx. Only rarely are practitioners of political thought willing (and professionally encouraged) to transgress the canon and thereby the cultural boundaries of North America and Europe in the direction of genuine comparative investigation. Border Crossings presents an effort to remedy this situation, fully launching a (...) new era in political theory. Thirteen scholars from around the world examine the various political traditions of West, South, and East Asia and engage in a reflective cross-cultural discussion that belies the assumptions of an Asian "essence" and of an unbridgeable gulf between West and non-West. The denial of essential differences does not, however, amount to an endorsement of essential sameness. As viewed and as practiced by contributors to this ground-breaking volume, comparative political theorizing must steer a course between uniformity and radical separation--this is the path of "border crossings.". (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: 1 Introduction 1 -- 2 Central themes and critical issues 10 -- Introduction 10 -- Core themes 11 -- Differences which have surfaced in the move from -- margins to mainstream 15 -- The claims of restorative justice: a brief examination 21 -- Some limitations of restorative justice 25 -- Some dangers of restorative justice 29 -- Debunking restorative justice 32 -- 3 Reviving restorative justice traditions 36 -- The rebirth of an ancient practice 36 -- (...) Pre-modem criminal justice 37 -- The renaissance of native justice traditions 43 -- Navajo peacemaking 44 -- Can one characterise ancient and indigenous -- justice as restorative? 47 -- Can one revive restorative justice traditions? 49 -- Conclusion: did restorative justice ever die? 59 -- 4 Healing the victim 62 -- Introduction 62 -- The experiences and needs of victims 64 -- The inadequacy of punitive justice for the victim 67 -- Victim reforms 70 -- Restitution from the offender 74 -- Beyond restitution: restoring victims 76 -- Restorative justice or 'clubbing together'? 78 -- Using victims to rehabilitate offenders 81 -- Paternalism towards victims 83 -- Balancing the needs of the victim with those of society 84 -- 5 A restorative approach to offenders 87 -- Introduction 87 -- Restorative justice as an alternative to retributive justice 88 -- Restorative justice as an alternative to treatment 94 -- The goals and methods of restorative justice in relation -- to offenders 95 -- An alternative to punishment or an alternative form of -- punishment? 106 -- An alternative to treatment? 111 -- 6 Shame, apology and forgiveness 114 -- Introduction 114 -- Restorative cautioning 115 -- The psychological routes of restorative conferencing 116 -- The idea of reintegrative shaming 118 -- Some questions about shaming 123 -- Apology and forgiveness 132 -- 7 Mediation, participation and the role of community 136 -- Introduction: handling criminal conflicts 136 -- The rationale for the restorative justice process 140 -- Achieving restorative goals 141 -- Moral development and the strengthening of community 144 -- The role of community 151 -- 8 The future of restorative justice 161 -- Introduction 161 -- Implementing restorative justice: the paths less likely 163 -- The implementation of restorative techniques 166 -- Restorative justice and the pattern of penal control 169 -- The future of restorative justice research 170 -- Appendix to chapter 3: the theological roots of judicial -- punishment 172. (shrink)

This article about restorative justice practices of Native American Restorative Justice of the southwestern United States is not intended to be all-inclusive, but rather a broad thematic overview. It includes interviews with three justice practitioners of the southwestern United States: The Honorable Robert Yazzie, chief justice emeritus of the Navajo Nation Supreme Court and director of the Dine’é Policy Institute of the Dine’é College at Tsaile, Arizona, a college chartered by the Navajo Nation; Judge Joseph Flies-Away of the (...) Hualapai Nation; and James Zion, formerly solicitor to the Navajo Nation Courts, currently domestic abuse commissioner at Crownpoint, New Mexico, Family Court. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Thinking Musically, and: Teaching Music GloballyJames AckmanBonnie C. Wade, Thinking Musically ( Oxford University Press: New York, 2004)and Patricia Shehan Campbell, Teaching Music Globally ( Oxford University Press: New York, 2004).Thinking Musically and Teaching Music Globally, the first two volumes in The Global Music Series, for which Wade and Shehan are general editors, offer concisely stated themes that permeate their texts and the authors' extensive use of cross-referencing (...) provides music educators at all levels the resources to achieve their educational and musical goals.Thinking Musically begins with Bonnie Wade's statement of the purposes of the book, which are to offer "a basis for the contrast and comparison of diverse 'musics,'" "provide a set of unifying topics that recur in multiple case studies," and "frame and complement a series of cases studies in The Global Music Series."1 Wade states unequivocally that Thinking Musically is ultimately a study of musical practices and ideas from around the world and that at its core, Thinking Musically "is a teaching book."2 A unifying theme throughout the volume is the view of how people constantly make music meaningful in their lives, including how music functions within a social group or particular society.3Thinking Musically includes a fifty-nine track CD containing musical examples that are designed for inclusion in the lessons and projects outlined in the [End Page 81] series. These provide aural illustrations of the topics discussed in each chapter. Activities include musical examples chosen by students which relate to the topic. The first chapter, "Thinking About Music," is based upon the concept of furthering students' awareness of musics beyond their everyday comfort level. Wade states that music is a process and not simply a method of organized sounds or compositions,4 and discusses music in terms of sound, values, and aesthetics.A striking aspect of this chapter is Wade's in-depth discussion of the contextual meaning of music within various cultures. Using such exotic examples as Central Javanese gamelan and a Navajo work song,5 she explores the rich variety of aural experiences available to students. The suggested activities exhibit Wade's understanding of educational philosophy and her awareness of what educators require in structuring appropriate musical experiences for their students.In Chapter 2, "Thinking About Instruments," Wade examines the roles of musical within a particular society and the topic of cultural diffusion.6 A succession of examples of instruments and musicians emphasizes her point that music has historically been interwoven with culture and society. Suggested activities include identifying extra musical links with instruments7 as a method of increasing students' awareness of music in daily life events, "the nature of the musical roles (of) musicians," and the meaning of musical terms (for example, soloist, accompanist) within the context of culture. Examples are drawn from the familiar, such as "New Orleans front-line," and the exotic, a North Indian singer.8Chapters 3–5 ("Thinking About Time," "Thinking About Pitch," and "Thinking About Structure") are devoted to the basic elements of music. Musical time is explored through its origins and function within specific cultures. Again, Wade uses an assortment of musical examples drawn from throughout the world in order to emphasize her points.Both the strongest and weakest aspects of the author's presentation style are on display in these three chapters. Wade has included an abundance of detailed suggested activities pertaining to various rhythmic concepts, such as Southeast Asian colotomic structure and Korean changdan, replete with detailed charts for presenting the material. Yet the amount of detail included borders on minutiae and the resulting format risks information overload for both teacher and student. A separate activities booklet might help reduce some of the clutter and also allow teachers to select more easily the concepts and activities they would like to use for a particular class session or unit.In chapter 6, "Thinking about Issues," Wade examines some arguably contentious topics that impact contemporary music education, including acculturation, gender, and "global versus local,"9 where her pithy assertions are eloquently presented. Student activities are designed to demonstrate the interconnectedness of musics among nations and communities as well as authenticity in their own cultures.10... (shrink)

Jamake Highwater is a master storyteller and one of our most visionary writers, hailed as "an eloquent bard, whose words are fire and glory" (Studs Terkel) and "a writer of exceptional vision and power" (Ana"is Nin). Author of more than thirty volumes of nonfiction, fiction, and poetry, Highwater--considered by many to be the intellectual heir of Joseph Campbell--has long been intrigued by how our mythological legacies have served as a foundation of modern civilization. Now, in The Mythology of Transgression, he (...) uses his remarkable narrative powers to offer a personal and extraordinarily far-ranging examination of how people who stand outside of society--by dint of their sexual orientation, physical appearance, ideas, artistic inclinations, or ethnic heritage--often achieve lasting, even profound influence upon the culture at large. Drawing from a stunningly rich variety of sources ranging from the arts and literature to biology, physics, psychology, and anthropology, Highwater looks at his own outsider status--as a gay man, an artist, and an orphaned Native American--in an attempt to explore how mythologies from ancient times to the present have shaped the ways we think about social "abnormality" and alienation. Throughout, he points to a paradox at the center of Western values--the competing notions that the outsider is at once sinful and wise, that in everyday life the transgressor is ostracized, while in our most durable folklore and religious legends, heroes must break the rules to achieve greatness. Focusing in particular on homosexuality as a modern metaphor of transgression, Highwater brilliantly mixes personal anecdotes with wide ranging research, leading us on a tour through the history of social conformity and rejection, citing examples that span from Judeo-Christian-Islamic doctrines of good and evil, to the Navajo Nation's ambivalence toward the nature of sexuality, to Carson McCullers's treatment of physical deformity in the novella Member of the Wedding, to Descartes's theories of dualism. He also pays special attention to the debates currently raging in science regarding the biology of homosexuality and provides an engaging discussion of why we are motivated to seek a genetic basis of sexual orientation in the first place. Jamake Highwater has long been celebrated as a writer uniquely suited to give voice to the social outsider. Often provocative, always fascinating, The Mythology of Transgression is a tour de force of eloquent scholarship, a book that will prompt discussion and debate on the subject for years to come. (shrink)

Visions and derisions of utopia -- Ernst Bloch and utopian critical theory -- Homo aestheticus -- Case study: Navajo design, culture and theology -- Archetypes, the unconscious and psychoanalysis -- Roger Fry and the language of form -- From Genesis to Job -- Homo absconditus.

The philosopher, poet and painter Viola Cordova was the first Native American woman to earn a Ph.D. in philosophy. Like all scholars, she rose on the shoulders of those who came before. Crediting the influence of both Western and Native American philosophical works, Cordova’s aim was to make clear the nature and benefit of Native American philosophy. To achieve this she explained Apache philosophy as well as that of the closely-related Navajo, distinguished the Native American worldview (...) from that of Western philosophy, and demonstrated the beneficial consequences it offers. This introduction to Cordova reveals how significant her Native American philosophy with its dissimilar ontology would be to the philosophical canon, and how if admitted to it, the canon would be truer and more comprehensive. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Religion and Public Policy: Human Rights, Conflict, and Ethics ed. by Sumner B. Twiss, Marian Simion, and Rodney L. PetersenJoshua T. MauldinReligion and Public Policy: Human Rights, Conflict, and Ethics Edited by Sumner B. Twiss, Marian Simion, and Rodney L. Petersen NEW YORK: CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2015. 372 PP. $99.00This festschrift in honor of David Little canvasses the range of topics Little explored during a distinguished career. The (...) breadth of Little's research interests is reflected in the diversity of essays represented in the volume. Some of the seventeen chapters reflect directly on issues within Little's corpus while others discuss the influence Little had on various fields of inquiry or draw on his ideas for new areas of research.John Witte and Gene Outka provide essays of the first sort: Witte examines Little's work on the religious origins of human rights, while Outka raises questions about how Little's historical work on Reformed Protestantism relates to his work in human rights. Outka raises broader questions about methodology in religious ethics, questions also explored in a chapter by John Kelsay. These include foundationalism, the role of normativity in the study of religion, and the role of expressly theological concepts in religious ethics. The questions are intertwined but played out in different ways in Little's scholarly career; the first [End Page 224] two issues arose in response to the 1978 volume, Comparative Religious Ethics: A New Method, which was foundationalist in orientation. It sought to find the "basic" norm that was the ground of all other moral ideas in a religious system, whether Christianity, Buddhism, or the religion of the Navajo. Jeffrey Stout's critique of the book's foundationalist assumptions struck a serious blow to the project; in response, Little conceded so many of Stout's points that Stout questioned whether the methodology of the volume was meant to be taken seriously. As Kelsey notes in his chapter, some wondered whether the rigid methodology of Comparative Religious Ethics was created primarily to give religious ethicists a respectable job to do in an academic environment in which the study of religion was otherwise suspect. It sought to create a neo-Weberian study of religious ethical systems in which the scholar bracketed out her own ethical assumptions. Through this "value-free" descriptive science, the comparative ethicist hoped to gain admission to the secular academy. Foundationalism was meant to provide the kind of objectivity that gave the religious ethicist something objective to study. Giving up foundationalism would mean giving up the hope of comparative religious ethics as a science.This brings us to the role of distinctly theological claims in Little's work. When putting on the normative hat of the ethicist, Little preferred to bracket out theological assumptions, precisely in order to maintain conversation with his nonreligious interlocutors. The benefits of such a method are evident in this volume. Little managed to engage in moral and political conversation with scholars across a variety of religious, political, and national locations. As is clear in Little's afterword to this volume, he believes that bracketing out his first-order theological assumptions made this dialogue possible. But how can we be sure that this is the case? Perhaps other intellectual and moral virtues allowed this dialogue to flourish, and perhaps Little's virtues would have made such a dialogue possible, even had he been more open about his theological assumptions all along the way. It's hard to know for sure. But in light of the difficulties involved in bracketing out first-order theological assumptions, perhaps the better option is to make one's assumptions explicit while remaining willing to change one's mind when given compelling reasons to do so. That, it seems to me, is what it means to be reasonable—and this is compatible with holding theological beliefs. [End Page 225]Joshua T. MauldinCenter of Theological InquiryCopyright © 2017 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

Over a century ago a Western observer recognized an effective morality among Navajo Indians in the American Southwest, yet could not locate its expression, except in mythology recounting contradictory behaviors. Through the 1900s scholars delineated contours of Navajo moral values, myths, and taxonomies upon which moral traditions were based, and situations in which Navajos have engaged in ethical decision-making. Recently individual Navajos have manifested their role as ethical agents, not merely as recipients of moral lore. A contemporary (...) class='Hi'>Navajo storyteller, Sunny Dooley, enunciates narrative ethical judgments, grounded in traditional Navajo mythology and its religious milieu, as she addresses the present conditions of her people. Thus she probes the contradictions that are inherent to life. Her stories testify to the insoluble conflicts within the human condition, ultimate and immediate conundrums that must be faced, even though they surely will not be resolved. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Thinking Musically, and: Teaching Music GloballyJames AckmanBonnie C. Wade, Thinking Musically ( Oxford University Press: New York, 2004)and Patricia Shehan Campbell, Teaching Music Globally ( Oxford University Press: New York, 2004).Thinking Musically and Teaching Music Globally, the first two volumes in The Global Music Series, for which Wade and Shehan are general editors, offer concisely stated themes that permeate their texts and the authors' extensive use of cross-referencing (...) provides music educators at all levels the resources to achieve their educational and musical goals.Thinking Musically begins with Bonnie Wade's statement of the purposes of the book, which are to offer "a basis for the contrast and comparison of diverse 'musics,'" "provide a set of unifying topics that recur in multiple case studies," and "frame and complement a series of cases studies in The Global Music Series."1 Wade states unequivocally that Thinking Musically is ultimately a study of musical practices and ideas from around the world and that at its core, Thinking Musically "is a teaching book."2 A unifying theme throughout the volume is the view of how people constantly make music meaningful in their lives, including how music functions within a social group or particular society.3Thinking Musically includes a fifty-nine track CD containing musical examples that are designed for inclusion in the lessons and projects outlined in the [End Page 81] series. These provide aural illustrations of the topics discussed in each chapter. Activities include musical examples chosen by students which relate to the topic. The first chapter, "Thinking About Music," is based upon the concept of furthering students' awareness of musics beyond their everyday comfort level. Wade states that music is a process and not simply a method of organized sounds or compositions,4 and discusses music in terms of sound, values, and aesthetics.A striking aspect of this chapter is Wade's in-depth discussion of the contextual meaning of music within various cultures. Using such exotic examples as Central Javanese gamelan and a Navajo work song,5 she explores the rich variety of aural experiences available to students. The suggested activities exhibit Wade's understanding of educational philosophy and her awareness of what educators require in structuring appropriate musical experiences for their students.In Chapter 2, "Thinking About Instruments," Wade examines the roles of musical within a particular society and the topic of cultural diffusion.6 A succession of examples of instruments and musicians emphasizes her point that music has historically been interwoven with culture and society. Suggested activities include identifying extra musical links with instruments7 as a method of increasing students' awareness of music in daily life events, "the nature of the musical roles (of) musicians," and the meaning of musical terms (for example, soloist, accompanist) within the context of culture. Examples are drawn from the familiar, such as "New Orleans front-line," and the exotic, a North Indian singer.8Chapters 3–5 ("Thinking About Time," "Thinking About Pitch," and "Thinking About Structure") are devoted to the basic elements of music. Musical time is explored through its origins and function within specific cultures. Again, Wade uses an assortment of musical examples drawn from throughout the world in order to emphasize her points.Both the strongest and weakest aspects of the author's presentation style are on display in these three chapters. Wade has included an abundance of detailed suggested activities pertaining to various rhythmic concepts, such as Southeast Asian colotomic structure and Korean changdan, replete with detailed charts for presenting the material. Yet the amount of detail included borders on minutiae and the resulting format risks information overload for both teacher and student. A separate activities booklet might help reduce some of the clutter and also allow teachers to select more easily the concepts and activities they would like to use for a particular class session or unit.In chapter 6, "Thinking about Issues," Wade examines some arguably contentious topics that impact contemporary music education, including acculturation, gender, and "global versus local,"9 where her pithy assertions are eloquently presented. Student activities are designed to demonstrate the interconnectedness of musics among nations and communities as well as authenticity in their own cultures.10... (shrink)

This essay explores the process and issues related to community collaborative research that involves Native Americans generally, and specifically examines the Navajo Nation’s efforts to regulate research within its jurisdiction. Researchers need to account for both the experience of Native Americans and their own preconceptions about Native Americans when conducting research about Native Americans. The Navajo Nation institutionalized an approach to protecting members of the nation when it took over Institutional Review Board (IRB) responsibilities from the US Indian (...) Health Service (IHS) in 1996. While written regulations for the Navajo Nation IRB are not dissimilar, and in some ways are less detailed than those of the IHS IRB, in practice the Navajo Nation allows less flexibility. Primary examples of this include not allowing expedited review and requiring prepublication review of all manuscripts. Because of its broad mandate, the Navajo Nation IRB may also require review of some projects that would not normally be subject to IRB approval, including investigative journalism and secondary research about Navajo People that does not involve direct data collection from human subjects. (shrink)

The second volume in the _Blackwell Brown Lectures in Philosophy_, this volume offers an original and provocative take on the nature and methodology of philosophy. Based on public lectures at Brown University, given by the pre-eminent philosopher, Timothy Williamson Rejects the ideology of the 'linguistic turn', the most distinctive trend of 20th century philosophy Explains the method of philosophy as a development from non-philosophical ways of thinking Suggests new ways of understanding what contemporary and past philosophers are (...) doing. (shrink)

Looking at verb structure across a spectrum of languages, one wonders anew how languages can be so different and yet so much the same. Ken Hale's work suggests some answers to this classic question in linguistics; the discussion that follows is intended as a contribution in the same direction.

HISTORICALLY, PHOTOGRAPHS have said less about the Navajo than about the photographers of Navajos. In Navajo and Photography James Faris calls attention to the inability of these photographs to communicate either the lived experiences of native people or their history. Beginning with the earliest photographs of Navajos in captivity at Bosque Redondo and including recent glossy picture books and calendars, Faris's survey points up assumptions that have always governed photographic representation of the Navajo people. Full of the (...) work of photographers such as Edward S. Curtis and Laura Gilpin, as well as photographs by many less-well-known figures, readers will find Navajo and Photography an enlightening juxtaposition of cultures. (shrink)

This article proposes an explanation of the way information about time is conveyed in Navajo.1 We assume that all sentences have a temporal interpretation, direct or indirect. We have two main purposes in this article. The first is to discuss temporal interpretation in this Athabaskan language. The Navajo temporal system, which is varied, has not yet been described in detail. Further, the language allows sentences without explicit temporal information. In such sentences temporal interpretation is indirect - arrived at (...) by inference. We outline the principles underlying the default inferences. Our second purpose is to show that a few general principles of temporal interpretation, which hold for some other languages, apply very nicely to Navajo. The principles include semantic rules for 1 interpreting explicit expressions about time, and pragmatic principles for inferring temporal location indirectly. The applicability of these principles to Navajo is a satisfying though unsurprising result; but it is worth working out explicitly. The temporal system of Navajo offers a future verb inflection, temporal particles, and temporal adverbs. Although a well-formed sentence need not have any of these forms, speakers consistently agree on temporal interpretation. To account for these facts, we must consider sentences with and without direct temporal information. In this article we propose semantic and pragmatic principles that account for both types of cases. The temporal interpretation of all sentences is deictically based. For sentences without direct temporal forms, aspectual information allows the inference of temporal location. We propose three general pragmatic principles to account for this, which we call temporal interpretation: the Deictic Principle, the Bounded Event Constraint, and a Simplicity Principle. The key factor in temporal inference is boundedness, direct or inferred. To arrive at the inference of boundedness we use the Temporal Schema Principle, a special case of the simplicity principle.. (shrink)

Jonathan Y. Tsou examines and defends positions on central issues in philosophy of psychiatry. The positions defended assume a naturalistic and realist perspective and are framed against skeptical perspectives on biological psychiatry. Issues addressed include the reality of mental disorders; mechanistic and disease explanations of abnormal behavior; definitions of mental disorder; natural and artificial kinds in psychiatry; biological essentialism and the projectability of psychiatric categories; looping effects and the stability of mental disorders; psychiatric classification; and the validity of the (...) DSM's diagnostic categories. The main argument defended by Tsou is that genuine mental disorders are biological kinds with harmful effects. This argument opposes the dogma that mental disorders are necessarily diseases that result from biological dysfunction. Tsou contends that the broader ideal of biological kinds offers a more promising and empirically ascertainable naturalistic standard for assessing the reality of mental disorders and the validity of psychiatric categories. (shrink)

First published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Much discussion about experimental philosophy and philosophical methodology has been framed in terms of the reliability of intuitions, and even when it has not been about reliability per se, it has been focused on whether intuitions meet whatever conditions they need to meet to be trustworthy as evidence. But really that question cannot be answered independently from the questions, evidence for what theories arrived at by what sorts of inferences? I will contend here that not just philosophy's sources (...) of evidence, but also its inferential resources, are in great need of closer examination. (shrink)

Points of variation manifested by adjectives crosslinguistically have received much recent attention in the literature. This paper argues that one way in which adjectives may differ is in their projection of a degree argument position in the syntax. Under standard analyses of adjectival meaning, semantic transitivity implies syntactic transitivity. However, the Navajo data presented in this paper suggests that while all Navajo adjectives have a degree argument in their semantics, syntactic projection of the degree argument is only licensed (...) by special morphology on the adjective. (shrink)

Most traditional art forms around the planet are an expression of the spiritual dimension of a culture’s cosmology and the spiritual experiences of individuals. Religious art and iconography often reveal the hidden aspects of spirit as glimpsed through the filter of cultural significance. Moreover, traditional art, although often highly abstract, may actually describe sensory experiences derived in alternative states of consciousness . This article analyzes the often fuzzy concepts of “art” and “spirit” and then operationalizes them in a way that (...) makes them useful for cross-cultural transpersonal research. The fact of the universally abstract nature of traditional art is analyzed and used as a clue to the function of art in expressing and penetrating to the spiritual domain. A “continuum of representational-associational abstraction” model is introduced and described. These concepts are then applied to the author’s experiences with Navajo art and the relation between art and the important Navajo philosophical concept of hozho . A perspective on art and spirit is developed that essentially supports Wassily Kandinsky’s contention that abstract art is the expression of an “inner necessity” of spirit. The article argues for a greater sensitivity among researchers and theorists for the sublime nature of spiritual art.be induced by very different means, including contemplative practices and chemical substances, and yet have different after-effects. Taken together, these ideas lead to the cautious conclusion that some psychedelics can induce genuine mystical experiences sometimes in some people, and that the current tendency to label these chemicals as entheogens may be appropriate. (shrink)

Wittgenstein finished part 1 of the Philosophical Investigations in the spring of 1945. From 1946 to 1949 he worked on the philosophy of psychology almost without interruption. The present two-volume work comprises many of his writings over this period. Some of the remarks contained here were culled for part 2 of the Investigations ; others were set aside and appear in the collection known as Zettel . The great majority, however, although of excellent quality, have hitherto remained unpublished. This (...) bilingual edition of the Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology presents the first English translation of an essential body of Wittegenstein's work. It elaborates Wittgenstein's views on psychological concepts such as expectation, sensation, knowing how to follow a rule, and knowledge of the sensations of other persons. It also shows strong emphasis on the "anthropological" aspect of Wittgenstein's thought. Philosophers, as well as anthropologists, psychologists, and sociologists will welcome this important publication. (shrink)

Wolfson's systematic presentation of the philosophy of Spinoza has long been a classic. It is with pride that we make it available again in a one-volume edition.

The present investigation brings into view the philosophy of nature of German Idealism, a philosophical movement which emerged around the beginning of the nineteenth century. German Idealism appro- priated certain motivations of the Kantian philosophy and developed them further in a "speculative" manner (Engelhardt 1972, 1976, 2002). This powerful philosophical movement, associated above all with the names of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel - and moreover having nothing whatsoever to do with the "subjective idealism" of George Berkeley - was (...) replaced by philosophical positions designated roughly as metaphysics of the will, Marxism, life-philosophy, phenomenology and existentialism, as well as positivism, empiricism, philosophy of science, the linguistic turn, and analytic philosophy. These philosophical positions more or less still shape us today. German Idealism amounts to a virtual intellectual-historical antithesis to these movements and thus presents itself in retrospect as a striking alternative. The basis of Idealism - in its various respective forms - is the ideal <Ideelle>, and thus the opposite of that which is real. It continually takes as its task explaining the real in terms of the ideal, and this is especially true of the Idealists' philosophy of nature.' Is this a hopeless undertaking? Does Idealism not lack an empirical basis? Can one secure any solid ground whatsoever in the ether of the ideal? In what follows, I explain how, more than anyone else, Schelling and Hegel sought to handle this problem and to cope with it. By way of anticipation, a clear preference for the Hegelian philosophy of nature will emerge in what follows, a preference which may come as some surprise considering how much controversy has surrounded the significance of that view. The project of renewing a thoroughgoing philosophy of nature can meaningfully begin here. (shrink)