I examine the question why in Proclus' view genetic processes provide demonstrative explanations, in light of the interpretation of Aristotle's theory of demonstration in late antiquity. I show that in this interpretation mathematics is not an explanatory science in the strict sense because its objects, being immaterial, do not admit causal explanation. Placing Proclus' account of demonstrative explanation in this context, I argue that this account is aimed at answering the question whether mathematical proofs provide causal explanation as opposed to (...) grounds. I show further that Proclus can answer this question in the affirmative due to his realist view of mathematical objects and the priority he ascribes to causal relations over logical relations. (shrink)

Selected papers, presented at the conference titled "Birds as Ornithologists: Scholarship Between Faith and Reason", held at Theg-mchog rnam-grol bshad-sgrub dar-rgyas-gling, Monastery, Bylakuppe, India, July 23-25, 2017.

Background Much like academic-industry partnerships, industry financial support of patient advocacy organizations has become very common in recent years. While financial conflicts of interest between PAOs and industry have received more attention in recent years, robust efforts to mitigate these conflicts are still limited. Main body The authors outline the possible benefits and ethical concerns that can result from financial interactions between biomedical companies and PAOs. They argue that the use of novel strategies, such as the creation of a standing (...) ethics committee, could be helpful in managing FCOIs and ensuring the warranted trust of PAO’s constituents. Although ethics committees to address FCOIs are common in the academic context, its use by PAOs is still limited. The authors conclude by describing the process of development and implementation of such an ethics committee at the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation. Conclusions While collaborations with industry can result in conflicts of interest, PAOs can develop strategies to address those conflicts. One such strategy is the creation of a standing independent ethics committee to guide PAOs on new and/or existing programs and protocols as they pertain to their industry relationships. (shrink)

This study focuses on women who define themselves as being undecided about becoming mothers. It addresses the question of how these women navigate their lives between two main conflicting cultural directives and perceptions: pronatalism and familism entwined in perception of linear time on one hand; and individualism and its counterpart, the notion of flexible liquid society, on the other. The research is based on group meetings designated for these women, which were facilitated by the first author. Ten women participated in (...) the study—of whom, most were heterosexual, half were single, and half were partnered. Data were collected using questionnaires completed during individual interviews that preceded the group encounter; transcripts of the discussions held during the ten group sessions; and questions regarding the status of the women’s doubts about motherhood asked 4 years after participating in the group. Our findings expand the existing typology of women’s reproductive decision-making, and demonstrate how categories that are commonly perceived as binary intersect when one challenges the rigid classifications of “active decisions” and “passive decisions”; “motherhood” and “non-motherhood,” and “want to be a mother” and “do not want to be a mother.” The findings also suggest that after becoming mothers, women can change their maternal status from “non-mother” to “mother,” yet still continue to view themselves as indecisive regarding motherhood. Based on our findings, we will argue that while indecisiveness about motherhood derives from individualized neoliberal rhetoric, it simultaneously undermines that same rhetoric and contradicts the injunction to “know, to decide, to strive.” It opposes the expectation in post-feminist discourse, that women will make choices about their bodies and exert them, while also opposing the pronatalist rhetoric, and the temporal linear discourse positing that women should “move forward” toward motherhood along with the ticking of the “biological clock.” Whereas some women sought to resolve their indecisiveness, other women found that the indecisiveness leaves all options open in a manner that expands their boundaries of autonomy in a society that seeks to limit it. (shrink)

A generation ago scientific ideas floated free in the air, as historians gazed up at them in wonder and admiration. From time to time, historians agreed, the ideas that made up the body of scientific truth became incarnate: they were embedded into the fleshly forms of human culture and attached to particular times and places. How this incarnation occurred was a great mystery. How could spirit be made flesh? How did the transcendent and the timeless enter the forms of the (...) mundane and the contingent? Platonist and providentialist perspectives offered ways of speaking about the mystery, but, in general, it remained unresolved at the core of orthodox idealist historiography.1. (shrink)

In program synthesis, we transform a specification into a system that is guaranteed to satisfy the specification. When the system is open, then at each moment it reads input signals and writes output signals, which depend on the input signals and the history of the computation so far. The specification considers all possible input sequences. Thus, if the specification is linear, it should hold in every computation generated by the interaction, and if the specification is branching, it should hold in (...) the tree that embodies all possible input sequences. Often, the system cannot read all the input signals generated by its environment. For example, in a distributed setting, it might be that each process can read input signals of only part of the underlying processes. Then, we should transform a specification into a system whose output depends only on the readable parts of the input signals and the history of the computation. This is called synthesis with incomplete information. In this work we solve the problem of synthesis with incomplete information in its full generality. We consider linear and branching settings with complete and incomplete information. We claim that alternation is a suitable and helpful mechanism for coping with incomplete information. Using alternating tree automata, we show that incomplete information does not make the synthesis problem more complex, in both the linear and the branching paradigm. In particular, we prove that independently of the presence of incomplete information, the synthesis problems for CTL and CTL * are complete for EXPTIME and 2EXPTIME, respectively. (shrink)

In the automata-theoretic approach to verification, we translate specifications to automata. Complexity considerations motivate the distinction between different types of automata. Already in the 60s, it was known that deterministic Büchi word automata are less expressive than nondeterministic Büchi word automata. The proof is easy and can be stated in a few lines. In the late 60s, Rabin proved that Büchi tree automata are less expressive than Rabin tree automata. This proof is much harder. In this work we relate the (...) expressiveness gap between deterministic and nondeterministic Büchi word automata and the expressiveness gap between Büchi and Rabin tree automata. We consider tree automata that recognize derived languages. For a word language L, the derived language of L, denoted L, is the set of all trees all of whose paths are in L. Since often we want to specify that all the computations of the program satisfy some property, the interest in derived languages is clear. Our main result shows that L is recognizable by a nondeterministic Büchi word automaton but not by a deterministic Büchi word automaton iff L is recognizable by a Rabin tree automaton and not by a Büchi tree automaton. Our result provides a simple explanation for the expressiveness gap between Büchi and Rabin tree automata. Since the gap between deterministic and nondeterministic Büchi word automata is well understood, our result also provides a characterization of derived languages that can be recognized by Büchi tree automata. Finally, it also provides an exponential determinization of Büchi tree automata that recognize derived languages. (shrink)

The ArgumentMontaigne'sEssayswere an exercise in self-knowledge carried out for more than twenty years in Montaigne's private library located in his mansion near Bordeaux. The library was a place of solitude as well as a place of knowledge, a kind ofheterotopiain which two sets of spatial relations coexisted and interacted: the social and the epistemic. The spatial demarcation and arrangement of the site – in both the physical and the symbolic sense – were necessary elements of the constitution of Montaigne's self (...) as an object of knowledge and as a subject of discourse. The spatial setting of the library made possible and constrained certain discursive patterns through which words were systematically linked to things, authority was correlated with access and visibility, and the epistemological was coordinated with the social. In this sense, Montaigne's library resembled other places of empirical knowledge of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in which subjects of knowledge were constituted, objects were posited in their proper phenomenal fields and the entire structure of intellectual activity was reproduced through various cultural mechanisms. But the initial similarity is only apparent. The private library never became a culturally recognized place for knowledge of the self; its heterotopic structure could not have been reproduced without the concrete presence of an author and of a self, while Montaigne's skepticism systematically undermined the possibility of the author's position and of the identity of the self. (shrink)

This paper offers a way to think philosophically about Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests and in particular their ethical implications. I focus on how the faces of the Screen Tests’ participants appear on the screen, making a link to the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. For Levinas, the human face signifies the possibility of transcending day-to-day structures of perception based on understanding, knowledge and visual representation, and can therefore invite an encounter with radical alterity. I make a connection between Levinas’s reading of (...) the face and the observations of a number of film theorists who see the cinematic close-up as a unique image, transcending the status of an ordinary perceptual phenomenon. I examine two Screen Tests, those of Bob Dylan and Ann Buchanan, using them as concrete examples of how film close-ups can open viewers to the face, in a Levinasian sense: the epiphany of radical alterity. This allows me to claim that despite Levinas’s declared hostility towards the visual, his philosophical articulation of the notion of the face helps to show the ethical implications of the appearance of the human face in cinema in general, and in Warhol’s Screen Tests in particular. (shrink)

Volume 25, Issue 5, October 2020, Page 171-174.

Previously unpublished fragments of Merleau-Ponty’s insights about cinema have added an important layer to our understanding of the medium. In this paper I examine these fragments along with some of Merleau-Ponty’s other observations about cinema, in the context of his work on perception and temporality. My aim is to show how his thought is relevant for understanding an important topic in film theory: cinematic point of view. With Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological articulation of what it is to see, the possibility opens up (...) of conceptualizing the structure of cinematic point of view as a “whole” that is concomitantly dynamic and always plural. (shrink)

This article examines the implications of mandatory conscription for women by studying the experience of women soldiers who serve as secretaries in the Israeli military. The author argues that the military service of the secretaries is shaped by three organizing principles: an employment principle of cheap labor, a matrimonial principle of the office wife, and a hierarchy principle that shapes the secretaries as status symbols. Employing the theory of gendered organizations, the author maintains that each one of these organizing principles (...) operates as a gendering and a power mechanism. The convergence of these three gender/power principles results in overgendering of these women and their military experience. This overgendering reflects gender discrimination and creates feelings of alienation and frustration. For them, military service is not an experience that articulates their citizenship or enhances feelings of national belonging but rather stands in opposition to the values and goals of the mandatory people's army by estranging them from the state and its major institution. (shrink)

A new moral theory from an Israeli philosopher and activist emphasizing theexistential and political nature of evil.

In this article I explain three puzzling features of Simplicius’ use of syllogistic reconstructions in his commentary on Aristotle’s Physics: (1) Why does he reconstruct Aristotle’s non-argumentative remarks? (2) Why does he identify the syllogistic figure of an argument but does not explicitly present its reconstruction? (3) Why in certain lemmata does he present several reconstructions of the same argument? Addressing these questions, I argue that these puzzling features are an expression of Simplicius’ assumption that formal reasoning underlies Aristotle’s prose, (...) hence they reflect his attempt to capture as faithfully as possible Aristotle’s actual mode of reasoning. I show further that, as a consequence of this seemingly descriptive use of syllogistic reconstructions, logic serves Simplicius not only as an expository and clarificatory tool of certain interpretations or philosophical views, but also motivates and shapes his exegetical stances and approach. (shrink)

This book offers an original and detailed reading of Plato's _Republic_, one of the most influential philosophical works in the emergence of Western philosophy. The author discusses the _Republic_ in terms of discursive events and political acts. Plato's act is placed in the context of a politico-discursive crisis in Athens at the end of the fifth and the beginning of the fourth century B.C that gave rise to the dialogue's primary question, that of justice. The originality of Dr. Ophir (...) lies in the way he reconstructs the _Republic's_ different spatial settings - utopian, mythical, dramatic and discursive - using them as the main thread of his interpretation. Against the background of Plato's critique of the organisation of civic-space in the Greek _polis_, the author relates the spatial settings in the Plato text to each other. This provides a basis for a re-examination of the relationship between philosophy and politics, which Plato's work advocates, and which it actually enacted. (shrink)

This paper examines the widely accepted contention that geometrical constructions serve in Greek mathematics as proofs of the existence of the constructed figures. In particular, I consider the following two questions: first, whether the evidence taken from Aristotle's philosophy does support the modern existential interpretation of geometrical constructions; and second, whether Euclid's Elements presupposes Aristotle's concept of being. With regard to the first question, I argue that Aristotle's ontology cannot serve as evidence to support the existential interpretation, since Aristotle's ontological (...) discussions address the question of the relation between the whole and its parts, while the modern discussions of mathematical existence consider the question of the validity of a concept. In considering the second question, I analyze two syllogistic reformulations of Euclidean proofs. This analysis leads to two conclusions: first, it discloses the discrepancy between Aristotle's view of mathematical objects and Euclid's practice, whereby it will cast doubt on the historical and theoretical adequacy of the existential interpretation. Second, it sets the conceptual background for an alternative interpretation of geometrical constructions. I argue, on the basis of this analysis that geometrical constructions do not serve in the Elements as a means of ascertaining the existence of geometrical objects, but rather as a means of exhibiting spatial relations between geometrical figures. (shrink)

I examine Alexander of Aphrodisias’ theory of action, addressing the question how his view that human actions are determined by reason accounts for the capacity of doing otherwise. Calling into question the standard view that Alexander frees agents from internal determination, I argue that (1) the capacity of doing otherwise is a consequence of determination by reason, since it enables agents to do something different from what they would have done had they followed external circumstances; and (2) this capacity is (...) compatible with causal determination by reason because as a case of potentiality for opposites, it grants agents the qualified possibility of doing otherwise insofar as their nature as human beings is concerned – a possibility which remains also when their actions are causally determined by reason and by their internal disposition. I show further that these elements of Alexander’s theory of action are ultimately based on his conception of the soul, specifically on his commitment to Aristotle’s view that the human soul is not purely rational, as the Stoics hold, but has nonrational and rational parts. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to explore the coping resources of hope and sense of coherence, which are rooted in positive-psychology theory, as potential resilience factors that might reduce the emotional distress experienced by adults from three cultural groups in Israel during the chronic-stress situation of a pandemic. The three cultural groups examined were secular Jews, Ultra-Orthodox Jews, and Arabs. We compared these cultural groups during the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, just before the Jewish New Year (mid-September (...) 2020) as a second lockdown was announced. Data were gathered from 248 secular Jews, 243 Ultra-Orthodox Jews, and 203 Arabs, who were 18–70 years old (M= 37.14,SD= 12.62). The participants filled out self-reported questionnaires including the Brief Symptom Inventory as a measure of emotional/psychological distress (i.e., somatization, depression, and anxiety) and questionnaires about sense of coherence and different types of hope (i.e., intrapersonal, interpersonal, and transpersonal) as measures of coping resources and resiliency. Differences were found between the three groups in terms of several variables. The Arab participants reported the highest levels of emotional distress and the lowest levels of interpersonal and transpersonal hope; whereas the Ultra-Orthodox participants revealed the highest levels of sense of coherence and other resilience factors. A structural equation model revealed that, in addition to the sociodemographic factors, only sense of coherence and intrapersonal hope played significant roles in explaining emotional distress, explaining 60% of the reported distress among secular Jews, 41% among Ultra-Orthodox Jews, and 48% among Arabs. We discuss our findings in light of the salutogenic and hope theories. We will also discuss their relevancy to meaning-seeking and self-transcendence theory in the three cultural groups. (shrink)

Critique involves reflection, specifically self-reflection, and as such it is inherently linked with philosophy. Critique calls for change, awareness, liberation from false conceptions, and reshaping of spheres of action and belief. Consequently it is closely linked with the moral and the political. Critique aspires to enhance truth, beauty, and justice and is thus an integral part of science, art, and social action. The present volume tackles issues of critique through a selection of papers originally presented at the workshop on “Models (...) of Critique in the Sciences, Society, and the Arts,” held in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv during May 1996. As the full program indicates, this selection provides only a partial picture of the topics discussed at the workshop. A major consideration has been the publication policy of Science in Context, with its emphasis on science, which is reflected here. We wish to express our gratitude to all the participants for their presentations and contributions to a stimulating exchange of ideas. (shrink)

The authors suggest that social movements research should recognize more the potential of the protesting body as an agent of social and political change. This contention is based on studying the relations among the body, gender, and knowledge in social protest by comparing two Israeli-Jewish leftist protest movements, a woman-only movement and a mixed-gender one, which protested against the Israeli Occupation in the early 1990s. The comparison reveals reversed patterns of body/knowledge relations, each connoting a different meaning and outcome of (...) the social protest. In the mixed movement, the body served as an instrument in carrying out the political knowledge and thus was left unmarked. In Women in Black, on the other hand, the body was the message, as it produced and articulated political ideology, simultaneously challenging the national security legacy and the gender order in Israel. (shrink)

Based on our prior work (Neuman and Nave, in press [a]) we proceed from the notion that the mind has the capacity to generate and use concepts through themediation of signs. This mediation constrains the vast potential for confusion, given the incalculable number of similarities between objects in the world and therefore has important adaptive value. Despite the ubiquity of sign-mediated concept formation (SMCF), a rigorous formalization of this phenomenon is rare. Following the work of Neuman and Nave (in press (...) [a]), here we present a formal description of sign-mediated concept formation and discuss the relevance of this theory to certain outstanding issues in biology, psychology and Artificial Intelligence (AI). (shrink)

The essay proposes an unexpected alliance between two of the figures assembled in the impressive intellectual constellation Benhabib presents in her new book: Albert O. Hirschman and Judith Butler. Hirschman’s model of ‘exit, voice, loyalty’ is used to interpret and justify the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel.

In his famous lecture on Kant's essay 'An Answer to the Question What is Enlightenment' Foucault distinguished between two traditions in modern philosophy coming out of Kant's work: 'an analytic of truth' and 'an ontology of present reality [ actualité ]' or 'a genealogy of ourselves'. The paper presents this distinction as a fruitful displacement of the distinction between 'analytic' and 'continental' philosophy,which gives the latter precise cultural and philosophical meaning. The paper clarifies the distinction and argues that almost without (...) exception, analytic philosophers are not interested -in their capacity as philosophers - in interpreting and understanding their historical present. Some possible reasons and some possible consequences of this lack of interest are examined briefly. Within the continental tradition itself, two major contemporary forms of 'an ontology of present reality' are distinguished, one exemplified by Habermas and the other by Foucault. The difference between these two forms of 'taking aim at the heart of the present' (to use Habermas' phrase) is explicated as a difference between distinct genres of critical discourse, or forms of critique. The difference is presented in respect to two major aspects: historical time and historicity, and critique's mode of engagement with 'an analytic of truth'. The last point, namely the presence of a crucial analytic moment in the philosophical interpretation of present reality, suggests a possible modification of the initial distinction between the two philosophical traditions. (shrink)

In every search for knowledge one presupposes that there is more to the phenomenal field one studies than what meets the eye. A play between those phenomena thatpresentthemselves to an observer andabsententities or phenomena, and the orders, structures or laws that govern these, lies at the heart of anysearchfor empirical knowledge. On the basis of this play of presence and absence read by a particular discourse into a more or less defined phenomenal field, phenomena are constitutedquasigns for that discourse's participants.

Among those who know Yehuda's work, the term “two-tier thinking” is usually associated with a problematic relativist position. But “two-tier thinking” is not a name for a philosophical argument; it is best understood, I think, as a term designating certain conditions of knowledge: universal, or modern, or perhaps only postmodern conditions, but in any case, they are generalizations derived from anthropological and psychological observations on matters of facts. This is how things actually work in the sphere of knowledge: Western intellectuals (...) and scientists tend to acknowledge that their truth claims and certainly their normative claims are incompatible with other claims that stem from other belief systems, frameworks of thought or genres of discourses, and there is no final, impartial instance of judgment to adjudicate between the incompatible claims and the conflicting systems. Lack of “final,” impartial judgment does not hinder people from taking their truth claims seriously and acting as realists within the world constituted by their particular belief systems — tier 1. But when they come to reflect upon it, as some of them do, sometimes, they acknowledge the context-dependence of this realism and the fact that there is no way to make good on its claim to universality; theirs, they know, is but one particular “belief system,” or “genre of discourse,” among many. (shrink)

One of the most significant, incontestable, and relatively ignored aspects of modernity is the new role states play as generators and facilitators of disasters, on the one hand, and as authors — or at least facilitators, sponsors, and coordinators — of survival and relief operations, on the other hand. The relation of the modern state to disaster has played an important role in the emergence of the state as a "totalizing totality" and in the constitution of its image as a (...) historical subject. This Article argues that state’s relation to disaster and its unfolding consequences has developed in two opposite directions that should be distinguished carefully. In line with these two opposite relations to disaster, I suggest a theoretical distinction between two state formations: a providential state and a catastrophic state. This distinction is based on Agamben’s concept of "bare life," which a sovereign may forsake by declaring an exception but which it may also save by taking extraordinary measures of protection or relief. The Article examines two aspects of the difference between the two state formations. From a formal point of view, it distinguishes and discusses two different notions of sovereignty, its authority, foundation, and legitimacy, along with two different understandings of the subjectivity of the state. These two conceptions involve and are intimately related to two distinct sets of theological presuppositions and two different conceptions of the political. From a chronological point of view, the Article sketches two diverging genealogies that go back to distinct, even if related, moments in the history of the modern West. Recognizing the fact that in certain historical moments these two genealogies were intertwined and that in our time this intertwinement has yielded a rapid process of hybridization, the Article claims that this process is not dialectical, and that the difference between the two genealogies should be maintained for theoretical and political reasons alike. (shrink)

I argue that Aristotle’s late-antique commentators read into his theory of demonstration the notion of tekmeriodic proofs in attempt to integrate into the theory of demonstration the assumption that the principles of demonstration should be evident. In so doing, I trace the late antique commentators’ view to Alexander of Aphrodisias’ discussion of the principles of demonstration, showing how his assumption that the principles of demonstration should be evident underlies their notions of tekmeriodic proofs.