First published in France in 1936 as a journal article, The Transcendence of the Egowas one of Jean-Paul Sartre's earliest philosophical publications. When it appeared, Sartre was still largely unknown, working as a school teacher in provincial France and struggling to find a publisher for his most famous fictional work, Nausea. The Transcendence of the Egois the outcome of Sartre's intense engagement with the philosophy of Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology. Here, as in many subsequent writings, Sartre embraces Husserl's (...) vision of phenomenology as the proper method for philosophy. But he argues that Husserl's conception of the self as an inner entity, 'behind' conscious experience is mistaken and phenomenologically unfounded. The Transcendence of the Egooffers a brilliant diagnosis of where Husserl went wrong, and a radical alternative account of the self as a product of consciousness, situated in the world. This essay introduces many of the themes central to Sartre's major work, Being and Nothingness: the nature of consciousness, the problem of self-knowledge, other minds, anguish. It demonstrates their presence and importance in Sartre's thinking from the very outset of his career. This fresh translation makes this classic work available again to students of Sartre, phenomenology, existentialism, and twentieth century philosophy. It includes a thorough and illuminating introduction by Sarah Richmond, placing Sartre's essay in its philosophical and historical context.t of consciousness, situated in the world. This essay introduces many of the themes central to Sartre's major work, Being and Nothingness: the nature of consciousness, the problem of self-knowledge, other minds, anguish. It demonstrates their presence and importance in Sartre's thinking from the very outset of his career. This fresh translation makes this classic work available again to students of Sartre, phenomenology, existentialism, and twentieth century philosophy. It includes a thorough and illuminating introduction by Sarah Richmond, placing Sartre's essay in its philosophical and historical context. (shrink)

Health‐related Quality of Life measures have recently been attacked from two directions, both of which criticize the preference‐based method of evaluating health states they typically incorporate. One attack, based on work by Daniel Kahneman and others, argues that ‘experience’ is a better basis for evaluation. The other, inspired by Amartya Sen, argues that ‘capability’ should be the guiding concept. In addition, opinion differs as to whether health evaluation measures are best derived from consultations with the general public, with patients, or (...) with health professionals. And there is disagreement about whether these opinions should be solicited individually and aggregated, or derived instead from a process of collective deliberation. These distinctions yield a wide variety of possible approaches, with potentially differing policy implications. We consider some areas of disagreement between some of these approaches. We show that many of the perspectives seem to capture something important, such that it may be a mistake to reject any of them. Instead we suggest that some of the existing ‘instruments’ designed to measure HR QoLs may in fact successfully already combine these attributes, and with further refinement such instruments may be able to provide a reasonable reconciliation between the perspectives. (shrink)

Health-related Quality of Life measures have recently been attacked from two directions, both of which criticize the preference-based method of evaluating health states they typically incorporate. One attack, based on work by Daniel Kahneman and others, argues that ‘experience’ is a better basis for evaluation. The other, inspired by Amartya Sen, argues that ‘capability’ should be the guiding concept. In addition, opinion differs as to whether health evaluation measures are best derived from consultations with the general public, with patients, or (...) with health professionals. And there is disagreement about whether these opinions should be solicited individually and aggregated, or derived instead from a process of collective deliberation. These distinctions yield a wide variety of possible approaches, with potentially differing policy implications. We consider some areas of disagreement between some of these approaches. We show that many of the perspectives seem to capture something important, such that it may be a mistake to reject any of them. Instead we suggest that some of the existing ‘instruments’ designed to measure HR QoLs may in fact successfully already combine these attributes, and with further refinement such instruments may be able to provide a reasonable reconciliation between the perspectives. (shrink)

Henri Bergson's philosophy, which Sartre studied as a student, had a profound but largely neglected influence on his thinking. In this paper I focus on the new light that recognition of this influence throws on Sartre's central argument about the relationship between negation and nothingness in his Being and Nothingness. Sartre's argument is in part a response to Bergson's dismissive, eliminativist account of nothingness in Creative Evolution (1907): the objections to the concept of nothingness with which Sartre engages are precisely (...) those raised by Bergson. Even if Sartre's account of nothingness in its entirety is found to be flawed, I argue that the points he makes specifically against Bergson are powerful. My discussion concludes with a brief examination of the wider philosophical background to Sartre's and Bergson's discussion of nothingness: here I point to some important aspects of Sartre's early philosophy, including some features of his conception of nothingness, that may testify to Bergson's positive influence on his thought. (shrink)

'I know what you're thinking' is a fascinating exploration into the neuroscientific evidence on 'mind reading'.

Nelson Goodman has constructed two theories of simplicity: one of predicates; one of hypotheses. I offer a simpler theory by generalization and abstraction from his. Generalization comes by dropping special conditions Goodman imposes on which unexcluded extensions count as complicating and which excluded extensions count as simplifying. Abstraction is achieved by counting only nonisomorphic models and subinterpretations. The new theory takes into account all the hypotheses of a theory in assessing its complexity, whether they were projected prior to, or result (...) from, projection of a given hypothesis. It assigns simplicity post-projection priority over simplicity pre-projection. It better orders compound conditionals than does the theory of simplicity of hypotheses, and it does not inherit an anomaly of the theory of simplicity of predicates — its failure to order the ordering relations. Drop Goodman's special conditions, and the problems fall away with them. (shrink)

Joseph Agassi is known primarily among fellow academics as an exemplary historian and philosopher of science; an ardent critic and disciple of Karl Popper; a critical admirer of the work of Michael Polanyi; and a Socratic fly with the “sting of a bee” for all those who wear the intellectual fashions of the day. To most of Agassi’s students he is known primarily as an exemplary model of the Socratic teacher. The question of most urgency for educators today who care (...) about the intellectual development of students is: How do we make ready our educational institutions for more Socratic teachers? The philosophical or theoretical question is: Why do we want Socratic teachers? In outline, of the many of Agassi’s educational essays selected for this book, Agassi answers those questions: authoritarianism (or anti-democracy) blocks the democratic reform of educational institutions where Socratic teachers and students could find a safe haven; and, Socratic teaching is the main anti-dote to authoritarianism. The removal of authoritarianism from education also removes the hazard that education has become to students; to their happiness, creativity, and dignity as autonomous individuals. See Less Copyright Year: 2014 E-Book (PDF) Availability: Published ISBN: 978-94-6209-626-4 Publication date: 01 Jan 2014 Hardback Availability: Published ISBN: 978-94-6209-624-0 Publication date: 01 Jan 2014 Paperback Availability: Published ISBN: 978-94-6209-623-3 Publication date: 01 Jan 2014 Login via Institution Prices from (excl. shipping): -/- $56.00 -/- ​ Available formats Add to Cart View PDF Flyer Get Permissions. (shrink)

Der Kunsthistoriker Ernst Hans Josef Gombrich hat einen „wissenschaftlichen“ oder kognitiven Ansatz zur Erforschung der Geschichte und Psychologie der Künste entwickelt, der sehr maßgeblich von der Wissenschaftstheorie seines engen Freundes Karl Popper beeinflusst worden ist. Die geistige Nähe zwischen beiden wird in Gombrichs zentraler Arbeit zur Wiederentdeckung der Repräsentation in der Renaissance und zur Historiografie der Kunst deutlich. Ihre Differenzen verdienen allerdings ebenfalls Beachtung. Gombrichs Ansicht zufolge verändern sich Geschmack und Stil entsprechend der von ihm so genannten „Logik der Mode“. (...) Gombrich hat dargelegt, auf welch vielfältige Weise Veränderungen in der Kunst sich vollziehen. Während sich die Moden in der Kunst auf unvorhersehbare, launenhafte Weise wandeln, tauchen technische Veränderungen als Lösungen für technische Probleme auf und werden im Modus von Versuch und Irrtum ermittelt. Auf diese Weise stieß Gombrich auf eine Antinomie in der Kunsttheorie: Handwerkliche Fähigkeiten und Können wandeln sich durch rationalen Fortschritt, während sich Stile durch den irrationalen Mitläufereffekt verändern. In der Kunst ist der relativistische Pluralismus zur Mode geworden, und diese Mode hat seine Antinomie ignoriert – und zwar, sofern er richtig liegt, recht willkürlich. (shrink)

Utilitarians take an uncritical attitude toward the sort of individual claims they seek to aggregate. In this way they cannot account for an individual's valid claim against a policy which actually maximizes aggregate satisfaction. We thus claim that utilitarianism properly functions only after conflicting claims have been adjudicated; consequently, Utilitarianism properly maximizes the satisfaction of claims judged to be valid. In such a program, Utilitarianism ceases to be considered a part of ethics, But is seen as maintaining a principle of (...) feasibility and efficiency. Finally, We briefly suggest the methods we believe to be most effective in the resolution of ethical conflict. (shrink)

SummaryThe main question of this paper is — how do representational pictures convey information? I argue: 1) This question is approached from three opposing metaphysical frameworks. a) Monism answers this question by treating representational pictures as a species of cognitive symbolism. b) Polarism answers this question by sharply distinguishing between natural symbolism and languages; and, between symbolism and reality — representational pictures are natural symbols, mimics of reality. c) Pluralism treats pictures as occupying a mid‐point between the scales of reality (...) /illusion, knowledge/deception — representational pictures are quasi‐symbolic simulations. 2) The occurrence of institutionalized deception , the game of creating/having false visual hypotheses without the making of false intellectual hypotheses — undermines monism and polarism. Consequently, 3) the pluralist approach — we gain information on the intellectual plane by the use of perceptual deception — is the most promising for explaining how representational pictures convey information.RésuméLa question principale dont s'occupe cet article est »Comment les images représentatives transmettent de l'information?« Mon argumentation: 1) Cette question est abordée dans trois cadres métaphysiques opposés: a) le monisme répond à cette question en la traitant comme une variété de symbolisme cognitif; b) le polarisme y répond en distinguant strictement entre le symbolisme naturel et les langages et entre le symbolisme et la réalité— les images représentatives sont des symboles naturels, des imitations de la réalité; c) le pluralisme traite les images comme occupant un point médian entre les échelles »realité/illusion«, »connaissance/erreur«. Les images représentatives sont des simulations quasi‐symboliques. 2) L'existence de »tromperies institutionalisées« , le jeu consistant á créer/avoir des hypothèses visuelles fausses sans faire des hypothèses intellectuelles fausses, condamnent le monisme et le polarisme. Par conséquent 3) l'approche pluraliste constitue la voie la plus prometteuse pour expliquer comment les images représentatives apportent de I'information.ZusammenfassungDie Hauptfrage, die in dem vorliegenden Aufsatz behandelt wird, ist die, wie repräsentationale Bilder Information vermitteln. Meine Argumentation lautet: 1.) Die Frage wird von drei entgegengesetzten metaphysischen Standpunkten her angegangen. a) Der Monismus beantwortet die Frage, indem er repräsentationale Bilder als eine Art von kognitiven Symbolen behandelt. b) Der Polarismus beantwortet die Frage, indem er scharf zwischen natürlichen Symbolen und Sprachen einerseits und zwischen Symbolismus und Wirklichkeit anderseits unterscheidet . c) Der Pluralismus behandelt Bilder als ein Zwischending, das in der Mitte von Wirklichkeit Illusion der Wissen/Täuschung lokalisiert wird . 2) Das Vorkommen von institutionalisierter Täuschung , das Spiel, das darin besteht, falsche visuelle Hypothesen zu schaffedhaben ohne falsche intellektuelle Hypothesen zu machen untergraben die Position des Monismus und des Polarismus. Folglich ist 3.) der pluralistische Standpunkt wonach wir auf intellektueller Ebene durch den Gebrauch von Wahrnehmungstäuschung Information gewinnen, der vielversprechenste für die Erklärung, wie repräsentationale Bilder Information vermitteln. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 8.1 (2001) 41-44 [Access article in PDF] A Response to Mitchell, Hinshelwood, and Adshead Sarah Richmond Iam grateful to Juliet Mitchell for contributing, in her response to my paper, some interesting further ideas about anorexia. Before commenting on these, I would like to reply to her suggestion that a distinction between symptom and phantasy will provide a necessary corrective to my approach. I think that, (...) in relation to my usage of terms, this suggestion is mistaken.If I have understood her correctly, Mitchell maintains that we need to focus on symptoms rather than on phantasy because the former always indicate the influence of something truly unconscious, a meaning that the subject cannot recognize. On the other hand, phantasy, Mitchell says, involves a "slippage between unconscious and preconscious," between the notions of a meaning that remains disguised and inaccessible to consciousness and one that may be recognized by the subject.I meant, in my paper, to use the term phantasy in the Kleinian sense, that is, to denote mental content that is unconscious. On the Kleinian view, symptoms whose cause is psychological are expressions of (and clues to) an unconscious phantasy that underlies them: To understand symptomatic behavior, the analyst needs to understand its basis in unconscious object-relational phantasy. (Many such cases can be found in Klein's writings. In her seminal paper of 1935, for example, she cites a patient suffering from "hypochondriacal complaints" and carefully "nursing these parts of his body"; in her view, "the different organs he was trying to cure were identified with his internalized brothers and sisters, about whom he felt guilty and whom he had to be perpetually keeping alive" (Klein 275). There is not, therefore, any important distinction, as far as the line of thought pursued in my paper goes, between phantasy and symptom.In introducing the distinction, Mitchell seems to want to emphasize the distinctive, conflict-indicating nature of unconscious material and its heterogeneity with respect to conscious thought. On this, I am in agreement; indeed, my complaint against feminist "literalist" accounts of anorexia is precisely that they overlook the opacity of the unconscious, attributing such "reasonable" and straightforward conflicts to women as to render most of the explanatory resources of psychoanalytical theory redundant.In connection with this issue, it is helpful to be reminded by Mitchell of the "delusion" that often accompanies anorexia, that is, the manifestly false belief, on the sufferer's part, that she is fat. This feature of the subject's outlook must be one of the reasons that anorexia is popularly thought of as [End Page 41] a "slimmer's disease"; equally, it may have helped to encourage the view that anorexia is a response to constructions of female beauty in the media.The "delusional" aspect of the belief, however, discredits this view: Anorexic women do not stop "dieting" when they approximate to a conventional ideal of female slimness. (What about the recent use of anorexically thin fashion models? I don't think this provides a real objection to my claim; so far at least, this practice is quite rare, and I think intended more to shock than to provide an aesthetic ideal.)Anorexic women's continued abstinence from food leads them to acquire an appearance that most people find unattractively thin. Often, they become sufficiently malnourished to endanger their health and sometimes to result in their death. This behavior, surely, cannot be attributed to a desire to conform to fashion, even if that is what the woman says she is trying to do. I agree with Mitchell that the anomaly manifested in some anorexic behavior, the mismatch between what is said and done, suggests the need for explanation in terms of unconscious conflict.Nonetheless, it is plausible that the "media message" and the slimming industry play some role. As I suggested in my article, we might see this role as provocative; the message sounds a note that resonates with or encourages an adolescent's distaste for her body. Further, it may also provide her with a convenient rationalization of her behavior: "I need to diet; I look... (shrink)

Computers are supposed to be smart, yet they frustrate both ordinary users and computer technologists. Why are people frustrated by smart machines? Computers don’t fit people. People think in terms of comparisons, stories, and analogies, and seek feedback, whereas computers are based on a fundamental design that does not fit with analogical and feedback thinking. They impose a binary, an all-or-nothing, approach to everything. Moreover, the social world and institutions that have developed around computer technology hide and reinforce the lack (...) of alignment between computers and people. This book suggests a solution: we do not have to accept the way things are now and work around the bad social and technical design of computers. Rather, it proposes a diverse, distributed, critical discussion of how to design and build both computer technology and its social institutions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Bill Brandt: A LifeStuart Richmond, Professor of Arts EducationBill Brandt: A Life, by Paul Delany. Stanford California: Stanford University Press, 2004, 335 pp., $47.50 hardcover.From June to September 2003, Britain's famous art gallery, the Tate Modern, housed dramatically in a gigantic, renovated power station on the south bank of the Thames, held its first major photography exhibition, entitled Cruel and Tender after comments made by a critic to (...) describe the work of Walker Evans. The twenty-three artists in the show, including August Sander, Diane Arbus, Rineke Dijkkstra, William Eggleston, Walker Evans, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, and Thomas Ruff, were mainly Americans and Germans. Bill Brandt, who had a reputation as a documentary photographer, was not included. Writing in the catalogue, Tate director Nicholas Serota notes, "Cruel and Tender examines a form of documentary photography that keeps within the limits of the medium, stressing pure description.... Surrealist and Conceptual photography would fit more naturally into the programs and displays at the Tate, but the elusive and documentary qualities in straight photography challenge the traditions of the institution, by concentrating on a form of photography which explores the intrinsic aspects of the medium." In other words, "straight photography" serves as a kind of unemotional, uncreative narrative of ordinary life, avoiding drama, romanticism, sentimentality, deep coding, and, as far as possible, the expressive contributions of the artist. The relationship of photograph to reality, though problematic, is still interesting, according to the catalogue notes, and this contemporary work aims to inform us, literally, of the true essence, banal or otherwise, of our world. This approach acts implicitly to undermine the fake optimism of consumer capitalism.It will be useful to keep in mind this exhibition in considering the work of Brandt, for in the early 1980s Brandt was being lauded as Britain's greatest photographer, and he was nothing if not expressive. It was his métier to find the unusual in the everyday and to create meaning through careful staging and composition, drawing very much on his own personal outlook, aesthetic philosophy, and psychology. He believed all was permitted in photography, whether in the novel choice of lens, use of friends as models, or darkroom processing to achieve his vision. Rather than being a documentary photographer, at least in the purist sense of the Tate collection, he was more the poet ethnographer with a strong sense of the surreal. His was a vision that would be imposed on the world. After reading Paul Delany's excellent biography, it becomes clear why Brandt, all too soon, had become unfashionable in the eyes of the Tate organizers and contemporary photography at large. He is, nevertheless, an artist who can help us question the nature of reality while producing work that is often very complex and beautiful, and someone whose methods and ideas can serve as [End Page 118] a model of individual creative practice. The global interest in photography, the many significant exhibitions and books produced in the past decade, and the prices paid for photographs have by now lain to rest the old debate about whether photography is a genuine art form. As any serious photographer can attest, producing a photograph that has form, presence, and originality is dauntingly difficult, even though photography seems so easy. Everyone, today, has a camera. Yet, constantly fed with glitzy images from commerce and entertainment that direct our minds along certain well-worn grooves—a challenge for aesthetic education—budding artists require a certain strength of character and imagination to resist the literal and obvious and move toward a more authentic way of seeing. Delany's book shows how someone can defy fashion, as Brandt did for half a century, producing "pictorial" images layered with meaning and mystery. As an aside, despite the intent to show images that simply describe the world, some of the Tate pictures still manage, to my eye at least, to have their own ephemeral expressiveness, and at times great beauty, which raises the question, At what point does a document become a work of art? The Tate approach, with its strict theories, seems to be more interested in legislating than in exploring photographic practice.Biographies can... (shrink)

Do contemporary big-budget blockbuster films like Gravity move something in us that is fundamentally the same as what avant-garde and experimental films have done for more than a century? In a powerful challenge to mainstream film theory, Cinema's Bodily Illusions demonstrates that this is the case. Scott C. Richmond bridges genres and periods by focusing, most palpably, on cinema's power to evoke illusions: feeling like you're flying through space, experiencing 3D without glasses, or even hallucinating. He argues that cinema is, (...) first and foremost, a technology to modulate perception. He presents a theory of cinema as a proprioceptive technology: cinema becomes art by modulating viewers' embodied sense of space. It works primarily not at the level of the intellect but at the level of the body. Richmond develops his theory through examples of direct perceptual illusion in cinema: hallucinatory flicker phenomena in Tony Conrad's The Flicker, eerie depth effects in Marcel Duchamp's Anémic Cinéma, the illusion of bodily movement through onscreen space in Stanley Kubrick's 2001, Godfrey Reggio's Koyaanisqatsi, and Alfonso Cuarón's Gravity. In doing so he combines insights from Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of perception and James J. Gibson's ecological approach to perception. The result is his distinctive ecological phenomenology, which allows us to refocus on the cinema's perceptual, rather than representational, power. Arguing against modernist habits of mind in film theory and aesthetics, and the attendant proclamations of cinema's death or irrelevance, Richmond demonstrates that cinema's proprioceptive aesthetics make it an urgent site of contemporary inquiry. (shrink)

Joseph Agassi develops a humanist world view in his last single-authored book through confronting the challenges facing the humanist world view. The three challenges that Agassi confronts are: 1. how do we rationally choose ways of life, including the life of rationality? 2. is humanity worthwhile? 3. how can we improve liberal democracy in our fractured societies where extremists seek to gain control?

This article analyses Mary Kelly’s Love Songs, 2005—07, which was exhibited in 2007 at Documenta 12. The series of artworks addresses the political and ideological legacies of early Anglo-US feminism through the perspectives of two generations of women. Drawing on oral and photographic archives, as well as historical re-enactments, Kelly indicates how her work does not simply record a feminist legacy but, rather, keenly intervenes in the process. I propose that this intervention is an ethical one. Drawing on Luce Irigaray’s (...) writings on the maternal gift, I demonstrate how Kelly’s project may be understood to enact an ethical relationality that I find is fundamental for thinking about the vexing issue of feminist intergenerationality. I conclude that while Love Songs maps no specific course of action, nor indicates exactly why or how a current generation of feminists should proceed, it nonetheless generates a space in which to imagine the radical futurity of the maternal gift. (shrink)

How do we alleviate the cultural obstacles to dialogue? The answer, we argue, is by using Socratic dialogue as the architecture for the design of social systems, societies can overcome the cultural obstacles to inter-cultural dialogue of imposed insider-outsider social divisions, of imposed social hierarchies, and of imposed social walls around cultures. We elaborate on how Socratic Dialogue removes those cultural obstacles to intercultural dialogue when used as social architecture or as a blueprint for institutions that open the social gates (...) to all “outsiders” through the social levelling of hierarchies, and through the creation of social bridges among all “parallel” cultures. (shrink)

In this article, I reply to the charge, made in Analysis by Anthony Hatzimoysis, that my criticism of Sartre's Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions is unwarranted. I argued that Sartre offers two lines of reasoning about emotional experience that are in clear conflict with each other. Hatzimoysis counters that we can and should read Sartre's text in a way that avoids attributing inconsistency to Sartre. In response, I argue that Hatzimoysis' suggestion about how one might read the text (...) does not in fact remove the central inconsistency. Pace Hatzimoysis, the inconsistency that I identified remains. (shrink)