Maintaining two full-time careers has required sacrifice, of course. On a recent Saturday Night Live, as an obvious plug, one of the actors carried a copy of The Chomsky Reader throughout a skit. Albert telephoned Chomsky to say, "Hey, you're on television!" and found himself having to explain what Saturday Night Live is. So Chomsky doesn't know anything about popular culture. He doesn't watch TV. He doesn't listen to rock & roll. He goes to maybe one movie a year. He (...) has little time for a private life. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Figuring Myself Out:Certainty, Injury, and the Poststructuralist Repositioning of Bodies of IdentityJames Haywood Rolling Jr. (bio)CertaintyI have been attempting to figure myself out. Out of chaos and incompletion, toward increased certainty. I have been at this task of construction for quite some time now. I have just proposed my dissertation and my intentions are once again uncertain. My dissertation is to be a self-study. It is also a (...) story about uncertainty and my attempts to redeem a clear definition, to be named a peer and a colleague among artists, writers, and teachers. I have been uncertain as a little boy; uncertain as a son; uncertain as a student of architecture; uncertain as an artist and writer; uncertain as a teacher; uncertain as a black man. To compensate, I have sought the conferral of certainty, a name among leaders in many fields of inquiry. Still, it is not easy to forget that certainty has also been the cause of great injury to my body, to my mind.On sunny afternoons after school all the kids came outside to play. The air would fill with echoes going back and forth between the red brick and stone buildings on both sides of our narrow street. Pounding rubber balls, the taps and scratches of shoe heels, and the slapping of sneakers on the cement and asphalt.Sometimes white chalk would appear and hopscotch boxes were quickly drawn on the neat squares of cement pavement in front of my Grandma's house. Grandma lived next door to us. Houses on our block were side by side, sharing each other's walls.On a particular day, similar to other days, I watched as a small flat stone was tossed to bounce across the cement into a numbered box. I watched the one foot, two feet, one foot hops from box to box to stop and balance on one small hopping foot, steadying itself, to drop a hand to pick up the stone. Some little girl came to sit beside me and asked me to look at her. We were sitting on one of Grandma's two wooden benches, just inside the front gate. [End Page 46] Two steps down was the sidewalk and other kids. I ignored the girl. I made sure my body had no contact with hers on the bench. Why was she talking to me anyway? Didn't she see I didn't have anything I wanted to say?"Look at me!" she said, tugging at my arm."Will you stop it!" I snapped back, jerking my arm away. Being touched was not natural to me. My family didn't touch. I tightened the skin of my eyebrows and the bridge of my nose into a frown."Smile!" the little girl said slyly, trying to tickle me."Leave me alone!" I yelled. I tried to move away from the touching.I must have grinned. Grinning relaxes the frowns on faces. The girl clapped a hand over her mouth, all giggles. I asked what she was laughing so loud for. The kids out in front of us now had our attention. I felt like I was now being watched. I can't remember the faces, just the noise and voices that seemed to stop. The little girl stood up, pointed at my face and declared, finger in my face, pointing, speaking out loud, "Look! He only has one dimple! See?! Look at his face!""No I don't," I said, dropping my face, my eyes, my voice. My head was down and I didn't want to see if anyone was looking. The attention made my face warm and I needed to move away fast. "No I don't," I repeated, stiffly. My whole head seemed to glow brightly, very hot, drawing lots of attention. I was beneath windows, very near, on both sides of the street, always with onlookers. I rushed through the painted iron gate, going quickly next door, upstairs to "our house," to the second floor apartment we lived in, down the hallway so dark after the bright outside, around a curve and a corner, into the bathroom, closing the door behind me. Locking the door... (shrink)

This study is called the "greatest juristic volume of the twentieth century." No ordinary text book. At least ten volumes rolled into one. Above all, a lawyer's book, also an economist's book, a philosopher's book, a social scientist's book, a historian's book & a librarian's book.

From their commanding role in the so-called British Invasion of the early 1960s to their status as the elder statesmen of rock and roll, the Stones have become more than an evanescent phenomenon in pop culture. They have become a touchstone not only for the history of our times?their performance at the Altamont Raceway marked the "end of the sixties," while their 1990 concert in Prague helped Czechoslovakia and other eastern bloc nations celebrate their newfound freedom out from under Moscow's (...) thumb. Because of their longevity, the music and career of the Stones?much more than The Beatles?stand as touchstones in the personal lives of even casual Stones fans. Everyone of a certain age remembers the Stones on Ed Sullivan, the death of founder Brian Jones, their favorite songs, concerts, or videos, and their stance in the classic?Beatles versus Stones” debates. In the wake of Keith Richards's bestselling autobiography, Life, many are now reliving these events and decades from the viewpoint of the band's endearing and seemingly death-defying guitarist. The chapters in The Rolling Stones and Philosophy celebrate the Stones' place in our lives by digging into the controversies, the symbols, and meanings the band and its songs have for so many. What might you mean by?sympathy for the Devil”? Did the Stones share any of the blame for the deaths at Altamont, as critic Lester Bangs charged they did in Rolling Stone magazine? What theories of ethics and personality lay behind the good-boy image of the Beatles and the bad-boy reputation the Stones acquired? If Keith Richards really had his blood replaced four separate times, does that make him a zombie? How do the Glimmer Twins help us refine our understanding of friendship? Written by a dozen philosophers and scholars who adore the Rolling Stones not only for their music, this book will become required reading for anyone seeking maximum satisfaction from "the world's greatest rock and roll band.". (shrink)

_Published in its entirety for the first time, a candid conversation with Susan Sontag at the height of her brilliant career_ “One of my oldest crusades is against the distinction between thought and feeling, which is really the basis of all anti-intellectual views: the heart and the head, thinking and feeling, fantasy and judgment... and I don’t believe it’s true.... I have the impression that thinking is a form of feeling and that feeling is a form of thinking.” Susan Sontag, (...) one of the most internationally renowned and controversial intellectuals of the latter half of the twentieth century, still provokes. In 1978 Jonathan Cott, a founding contributing editor of _Rolling Stone_ magazine, interviewed Sontag first in Paris and later in New York. Only a third of their twelve hours of discussion ever made it to print. Now, more than three decades later, Yale University Press is proud to publish the entire transcript of Sontag’s remarkable conversation, accompanied by Cott’s preface and recollections. Sontag’s musings and observations reveal the passionate engagement and breadth of her critical intelligence and curiosities at a moment when she was at the peak of her powers. Nearly a decade after her death, these hours of conversation offer a revelatory and indispensable look at the self-described "besotted aesthete" and "obsessed moralist." “I really believe in history, and that’s something people don’t believe in anymore. I know that what we do and think is a historical creation....We were given a vocabulary that came into existence at a particular moment. So when I go to a Patti Smith concert, I enjoy, participate, appreciate, and am tuned in better because I’ve read Nietzsche.” “There’s no incompatibility between observing the world and being tuned into this electronic, multimedia, multi-tracked, McLuhanite world and enjoying what can be enjoyed. I love rock and roll. Rock and roll changed my life....You know, to tell you the truth, I think rock and roll is the reason I got divorced. I think it was Bill Haley and the Comets and Chuck Berry that made me decide that I had to get a divorce and leave the academic world and start a new life.”. (shrink)

Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards has argued that rock and roll happens from the neck down. In this contribution to The Rolling Stones and Philosophy, edited by Luke Dick and George Reisch, I draw on neuroscience to argue that, in the parlance of John Stuart Mill, rock and roll is both a higher and a lower pleasure.

Chulan Tomb 2 in present-day Suxian, Anhui province, offers the rare opportunity to study the hitherto unknown relationship between multiple depictions of chariot processions—one of the most popular pictorial motifs in Eastern Han funerary art—at different locations in a single cemetery. Comparing this tomb’s two chariot processions in stylistic, iconographic, and positional terms, this paper draws attention to a special dragon motif that ornaments a few special chariots and argues that these “dragon chariots,” unique among stone carvings of the (...) Eastern Han, were meant to carry the deceased couple, who were buried separately but received joint sacrifices in their shared shrine. Unlike previous studies, which focus on either the shrine or the burial as self-contained units, this paper approaches the entire cemetery as an organic architectural and pictorial nexus without breaking the narrative link between its units. This case study of depictions of chariot processions presents a dynamic view of the afterlife during the Eastern Han dynasty: the burial and the shrine formed two temporary stops rather than permanent homes for the deceased souls, which were ceaselessly traveling on the posthumous road. (shrink)

The precipitous cliffs, rolling headlands, and rocky inlets of the Big Sur coast of California prompted Robinson Jeffers to extol their wild beauty throughout his long career as a poet. This extraordinary volume brings together Jeffers’s haunting poetry with magnificent photographs of Big Sur by his friend and neighbor, famed photographer Morley Baer.

In unraveling the long-hidden issues of the most famous free speech case of all time, noted author I.F. Stone ranges far and wide over Roman as well as Greek history to present an engaging and rewarding introduction to classical antiquity and its relevance to society today. The New York Times called this national best-seller an "intellectual thriller.".

An approach to emotion is described in which emotions are defined as states elicited by instrumental reinforcers, that is, by stimuli that are the goals for action. This leads to a theory of the evolutionary adaptive value of emotions, which is that different genes specify different goals in their own self-interest, and any actions can then be learned and performed by instrumental learning to obtain the goals. The brain mechanisms for emotion in brain regions such as the orbitofrontal and anterior (...) cingulate cortex provide a foundation for understanding the neural basis of emotion. Classically conditioned effects may modulate the actions initiated by this system. In addition to this instrumental learning system, some stimuli may elicit responses, for example approach, withdrawal, or fixed action patterns, but intervening states are not required for this type of adaptive response. In addition, a rational thought system involved in multistep planning can allow gene-specified goals to be deferred or avoided in order to achieve longer-term types of goals that may be more advantageous to the individual than to the genes. (shrink)

Explains how yoga practitioners can deepen and enrich their relationships with family and friends, as well as become more engaged with their communities.

This book aims to show the many resources at our disposal for grappling with the Holocaust as the darkest occurrence of the twentieth century. These wide-ranging studies on philosophy, history, and literature address the way the Holocaust had led to the reconceptualization of the humanities. The scholarly approaches of Pierre Klossowski, Georges Bataille, and Maurice Blanchot are examined critically, and the volume explores such poignant topics as violence, evil, and monuments.

This Element introduces the philosophy of Frances Power Cobbe (1822-1904), a very well-known moral theorist, advocate of animal welfare and women's rights, and critic of Darwinism and atheism in the Victorian era. After locating Cobbe's achievements within nineteenth-century British culture, this Element examines her duty-based moral theory of the 1850s and then her 1860s accounts of duties to animals, women's rights, and the mind and unconscious thought. From the 1870s, in critical response to Darwin's evolutionary ethics, Cobbe put greater moral (...) weight on the emotions, especially sympathy. She now criticised atheism for undermining morality, emphasised women's duties to develop virtues of character, and recommended treating animals with sympathy and compassion. The Element links Cobbe's philosophical arguments to her campaigns for women's rights and against vivisection, brings in critical responses from her contemporaries, explains how she became omitted from the history of philosophy, and shows the lasting importance of her work. (shrink)

'Middle' Platonism has some claim to be the single most influential philosophical movement of the last two thousand years, as the common background to 'Neoplatonism' and the early development of Christian theology. This book breaks with the tradition of considering it primarily in terms of its sources, instead putting its contemporary philosophical engagements front and centre to reconstruct its philosophical motivations and activity across the full range of its interests. The volume explores the ideas at the heart of Platonist philosophy (...) in this period and includes a comprehensive selection of primary sources, a significant number of which appear in English translation for the first time, along with dedicated guides to the questions that have been, and might be, asked about the movement. The result is a tool intended to help bring the study of Middle Platonism into mainstream discussions of ancient philosophy. (shrink)

Many philosophers and psychologists argue that out everyday ability to predict and explain the actions and mental states of others is grounded in out possession of a primitive 'folk' psychological theory. Recently however, this theory has come under challenge from the simulation alternative. This alternative view says that human beings are able to predict and explain each other's actions by using the resources of their own minds to simulate the psychological aetiology of the actions of the others. This book and (...) the companion volume Folk Psychology: The Theory of Mind Debate together offer a richly woven fabric of philosophical and psychological theory, which promises to yield real insights into the nature of our mental lives. (shrink)

The relation between mental states and brain states is important in computational neuroscience, and in psychiatry in which interventions with medication are made on brain states to alter mental states. The relation between the brain and the mind has puzzled philosophers for centuries. Here a neuroscience approach is proposed in which events at the sub-neuronal, neuronal, and neuronal network levels take place simultaneously to perform a computation that can be described at a high level as a mental state, with content (...) about the world. It is argued that as the processes at the different levels of explanation take place at the same time, they are linked by a non-causal supervenient relationship: causality can best be described in brains as operating within but not between levels. This allows the supervenient properties to be emergent, though once understood at the mechanistic levels they may seem less emergent, and expected. This mind-brain theory allows mental events to be different in kind from the mechanistic events that underlie them; but does not lead one to argue that mental events cause brain events, or vice versa: they are different levels of explanation of the operation of the computational system. This approach may provide a way of thinking about brains and minds that is different from dualism and from reductive physicalism, and which is rooted in the computational processes that are fundamental to understanding brain and mental events, and that mean that the mental and mechanistic levels are linked by the computational process being performed. Explanations at the different levels of operation may be useful in different ways. For example, if we wish to understand how arithmetic is performed in the brain, description at the mental level of the algorithm being computed will be useful. But if the brain operates to result in mental disorders, then understanding the mechanism at the neural processing level may be more useful, in for example, the treatment of psychiatric disorders. (shrink)

The relation between mental states and brain states is important in computational neuroscience, and in psychiatry in which interventions with medication are made on brain states to alter mental states. The relation between the brain and the mind has puzzled philosophers for centuries. Here a neuroscience approach is proposed in which events at the sub-neuronal, neuronal, and neuronal network levels take place simultaneously to perform a computation that can be described at a high level as a mental state, with content (...) about the world. It is argued that as the processes at the different levels of explanation take place at the same time, they are linked by a non-causal supervenient relationship: causality can best be described in brains as operating within but not between levels. This allows the supervenient (e.g., mental) properties to be emergent, though once understood at the mechanistic levels they may seem less emergent, and expected. This mind-brain theory allows mental events to be different in kind from the mechanistic events that underlie them; but does not lead one to argue that mental events cause brain events, or vice versa: they are different levels of explanation of the operation of the computational system. This approach may provide a way of thinking about brains and minds that is different from dualism and from reductive physicalism, and which is rooted in the computational processes that are fundamental to understanding brain and mental events, and that mean that the mental and mechanistic levels are linked by the computational process being performed. Explanations at the different levels of operation may be useful in different ways. For example, if we wish to understand how arithmetic is performed in the brain, description at the mental level of the algorithm being computed will be useful. But if the brain operates to result in mental disorders, then understanding the mechanism at the neural processing level may be more useful, in for example, the treatment of psychiatric disorders. (shrink)

Interdisciplinary investigations marry the methods and concerns of different fields. Computer science is the study of precise descriptions of finite processes; semantics is the study of meaning in language. Thus, computational semantics embraces any project that approaches the phenomenon of meaning by way of tasks that can be performed by following definite sets of mechanical instructions. So understood, computational semantics revels in applying semantics, by creating intelligent devices whose broader behavior fits the meanings of utterances, and not just their form. (...) IBM’s Watson (Ferrucci, Brown, Chu-Carroll, Fan, Gondek, Kalyanpur, Lally, Murdock, Nyberg, Prager, Schlaefer & Welty 2010) is a harbinger of the excitement and potential of this technology. (shrink)

This book traces, for the first time, a revolution in philosophy which took place during the early centuries of our era. It reconstructs the philosophical basis of the Stoics' theory that fragments of an ancient and divine wisdom could be reconstructed from mythological traditions, and shows that Platonism was founded on an argument that Plato had himself achieved a full reconstruction of this wisdom, and that subsequent philosophies had only regressed once again in their attempts to "improve" on his achievement.

This volume brings together essential writings by the unjustly neglected nineteenth-century philosopher Frances Power Cobbe (1822-1904). A prominent ethicist, feminist, champion of animal welfare, and critic of Darwinism and atheism, Cobbe was well known and highly regarded in the Victorian era. This collection of her work introduces contemporary readers to Cobbe and shows how her thought developed over time, beginning in 1855 with her Essay on Intuitive Morals, in which she set out her duty-based moral theory, arguing that morality and (...) religion are indissolubly connected. This work provided the framework within which she addressed many theoretical and practical issues in her prolific publishing career. In the 1860s and early 1870s, she gave an account of human duties to animals; articulated a duty-based form of feminism; defended a unique type of dualism in the philosophy of mind; and argued against evolutionary ethics. Cobbe put her philosophical views into practice, campaigning for women's rights and for first the regulation and later the abolition of vivisection. In turn her political experiences led her to revise her ethical theory. From the 1870s onwards she increasingly emphasized the moral role of the emotions, especially sympathy, and she theorized a gradual historical progression in sympathy. Moving into the 1880s, Cobbe combatted secularism, agnosticism, and atheism, arguing that religion is necessary not only for morality but also for meaningful life and culture. -/- Shedding light on Cobbe's philosophical perspective and its applications, this volume demonstrates the range, systematicity and philosophical character of her work and makes her core ethical theory and its central applications and developments available for teaching and scholarship. (shrink)

Many women wrote philosophy in nineteenth-century Britain, and they wrote across the full range of philosophical topics. Yet these important women thinkers have been left out of the philosophical canon and many of them are barely known today. The aim of this book is to put them back on the map. It introduces twelve women philosophers - Mary Shepherd, Harriet Martineau, Ada Lovelace, George Eliot, Frances Power Cobbe, Helena Blavatsky, Julia Wedgwood, Victoria Welby, Arabella Buckley, Annie Besant, Vernon Lee, and (...) Constance Naden. Alison Stone looks at their views on naturalism, philosophy of mind, evolution, morality and religion, and progress in history. She shows how these women interacted and developed their philosophical views in conversation with one another, not only with their male contemporaries. The rich print and periodical culture of the period enabled these women to publish philosophy in forms accessible to a general readership, despite the restrictions women faced, such as having limited or no access to university education. Stone explains how these women became excluded from the history of philosophy because there was a cultural shift at the end of the nineteenth century towards specialised forms of philosophical writing, which depended on academic credentials that were still largely unavailable to women. (shrink)

Twenty-five years after his death, critics and academics, film-makers and journalists continue to argue over Sartre's legacy. But certain interpretations have congealed around his iconic text _Nausea_, tending to confine it within the framework provided by the later philosophical work, _Being and Nothingness_. This volume opens up the text to a range of new approaches within the fields of English and Comparative Literature, as well as Philosophy and French Studies, under the headings: ‘Text’, ‘Context’, and ‘Intertext’: the textual strategies at (...) work within the novel; the literary, cultural and philosophical context of its production; and the intertextual web within which it is situated. This volume will interest a wide public of teachers, students and all those who want to reconsider Sartre’s legacy in the twenty–first century. (shrink)

Many philosophers and psychologists argue that normal adult human beings possess a primitive or 'folk' psychological theory. Recently, however, this theory has come under challenge from the simulation alternative. This alternative view says that human bings are able to predict and explain each others' actions by using the resources of their own minds to simuate the psychological etiology of the actions of others. The thirteen essays in this volume present the foundations of theory of mind debate, and are accompanied by (...) an extensive introduction. (shrink)

How closely do the theoretical notions of 'metaphor' and 'allegory' developed by ancient rhetoricians reflect the practice of classical writers? This question is tackled through eleven new essays by a team of distinguished academics. Ancient theories of metaphor are compared with twentieth century alternatives; theory is tested against practice; and allegory - a distinctive though neglected feature of ancient literature and philosophy - is explored against the background of the rhetoricians' claim that it is one form of metaphor.

In response to this need, this book shows how the yoga tradition offers a greater path to being a responsible member of the global community.

Progress in machine learning and artificial intelligence has spurred the widespread adoption of automated decision systems (ADS). An extensive literature explores what conditions must be met for these systems' decisions to be fair. However, questions of legitimacy -- why those in control of ADS are entitled to make such decisions -- have received comparatively little attention. This paper shows that when such questions are raised theorists often incorrectly conflate legitimacy with either public acceptance or other substantive values such as fairness, (...) accuracy, expertise or efficiency. In search of better theories, we conduct a critical analysis of the philosophical literature on the legitimacy of the state, focusing on consent, public reason, and democratic authorisation. This analysis reveals that the prevailing understanding of legitimacy in analytical political philosophy is also ill-suited to the task of establishing whether and when ADS are legitimate. The paper thus clarifies expectations for theories of ADS legitimacy and charts a path for a future research programme on the topic. (shrink)

Joan Scott's poststructuralist critique of experience demonstrates the dangers of empiricist narratives of experience but leaves feminists without a meaningful way to engage nonempiricist, experience-oriented texts, texts that constitute many women's primary means of taking control over their own representation. Using Chandra Mohanty's analysis of the role of writing in Third World feminisms, I articulate a concept of experience that incorporates poststructuralist insights while enabling a more responsible reading of Third World women's narratives.

A collection of essays exploring the relationship between Plato and the poet Hesiod. The volume covers a wide variety of thematic angles, brings new and sometimes surprising light to a large range of Platonic dialogues, and represents a major contribution to the study of the reception of archaic poetry in Athens.

What produces emotions? Why do we have emotions? How do we have emotions? Why do emotional states feel like something? This book considers these questions, going beyond examining brain mechanisms of emotion, by proposing a theory of what emotions are, and an evolutionary, Darwinian, theory of the adaptive value of emotion.

In recent years, poetry and videogames have begun talking to one another in earnest. Poets have found inspiration in digital-interactive landscapes, while game developers now look to poetry as a source of textual enrichment. This book examines the p.