Many books explain what is known about the universe. This book investigates what cannot be known. Rather than exploring the amazing facts that science, mathematics, and reason have revealed to us, this work studies what science, mathematics, and reason tell us cannot be revealed. In The Outer Limits of Reason, Noson Yanofsky considers what cannot be predicted, described, or known, and what will never be understood. He discusses the limitations of computers, physics, logic, and our own thought processes. Yanofsky (...) describes simple tasks that would take computers trillions of centuries to complete and other problems that computers can never solve; perfectly formed English sentences that make no sense; different levels of infinity; the bizarre world of the quantum; the relevance of relativity theory; the causes of chaos theory; math problems that cannot be solved by normal means; and statements that are true but cannot be proven. He explains the limitations of our intuitions about the world -- our ideas about space, time, and motion, and the complex relationship between the knower and the known. Moving from the concrete to the abstract, from problems of everyday language to straightforward philosophical questions to the formalities of physics and mathematics, Yanofsky demonstrates a myriad of unsolvable problems and paradoxes. Exploring the various limitations of our knowledge, he shows that many of these limitations have a similar pattern and that by investigating these patterns, we can better understand the structure and limitations of reason itself. Yanofsky even attempts to look beyond the borders of reason to see what, if anything, is out there. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Social, the Outer and the ReflexiveSome More Dimensions of Subjectivity, Schizophrenia, and Its RecoveryThe author reports no conflicts of interest.First of all, I want to express my gratitude to the Association for the Advancement of Philosophy and Psychiatry, Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology, and the Karl Jaspers Award Committee for their recognition of my paper "Institution or individuality? Some reflections on the lessons to be learned from personal (...) accounts of recovery from schizophrenia" (Wannberg, 2024). I am also very thankful for Dr. Paul B. Lieberman's (2024) and Pr. Elizabeth Pienkos' (2024) stimulating comments on the paper.In the original paper, I used the case of the first person accounts of recovery from schizophrenia as a paradigm to elucidate the components of subjectivity more generally, as well as their logical relations. My main point was that considering the "recovery claim" as potentially endowed with a meaning sufficiently close to the official definition of the "personal" sense of recovery at stake—that is, in brief, having "become oneself" despite recurring or residual symptoms—invites us to question current phenomenological, narrative and constructionist approaches of the self in psychopathology. By contrast to these, I stressed the need of a conception of the self more sensible to its social and interpersonal dimensions, which I attempted to sketch out notably by resorting to Wittgenstein's (1953/1997) idea of "grammar." I am very happy that both Lieberman and Pienkos see the appeal to the social as a welcome move with regard to prevailing approaches to schizophrenia and its recovery. But what does it really mean for the subjective or the individual to be socially and interpersonally constituted, and how are we to account for that? [End Page 75]At a first glance, appealing to the social seems to be in line with current trends in psychopathology, including, as Pienkos points out, in the phenomenological tradition. She elsewhere announces a "shift in emphasis" currently taking place within phenomenological psychopathology, characterized by an increasing interest in the situated and dated aspects of subjectivity (Pienkos et al., 2023). This is a valuable turn. However, I am quite dubious that the well-known distinction between an "experiential" and a "narrative" self to which Pienkos appeals is apt to do all the conceptual work required to attain a satisfactory conception of the self and its social dimensions. In my original paper, I took the "recovery account" to challenge both these notions. As concerns the experiential dimension, I held that this type of account questions the phenomenologist's assumption that subjectivity is ultimately grounded in lived (self-)experience. Provided that typical symptoms of schizophrenia (e.g., thought insertion) are expressions of a disorder situated at this most "fundamental" level of the self and provided that they are stemming, at least according to one of the most widespread phenomenological models, from a trait-like disposition present before the onset of psychosis (e.g., Henriksen et al., 2019), it is quite natural to think that these symptoms persist in some form in the context of recovery (e.g., as intrusive thoughts or as "thoughts spoken out loud"). This is indeed the case for several of the authors "in recovery" in the Schizophrenia Bulletin's archives (e.g., Greenblat, 2000), which provided the main source of my analysis. But if this is so, we cannot see their recovery claim as an expression of a "whole" self, so to speak. So we must either say that "personal" recovery from schizophrenia is an illusion or a contradiction, or else we must revise the foundational status of the experiential dimension (other possible options are left aside for the purposes of this brief comment). I argue for the revisionist option. For the equation between the subjective and the experiential does not only lead to an unwelcomed skepticism about the recovery account. There are also more straightforward philosophical reasons for refusing it. Wittgenstein (1980) made a first important step by inviting us to better take into account the variability of the psychological concepts. He notably made a crucial categorical distinction between "lived experiences" (like sensations and mental images) and "attitudes" (like beliefs and intentions) such that all concepts which, when used in the first person... (shrink)

Both Bakhtin and Vygotsky, as we have seen, responded directly or indirectly to the challenge of Freud. Both attempted to account for their data without resorting to postulating an unconscious in the Freudian sense. By way of contrast, it is instructive here to recall Jacques Lacan—who, among others, has been a beneficiary of Bakhtin’s “semiotic reinterpretation” of Freud.17 Lacan’s case is intriguing, for he retains the unconscious while at the same time submitting Freudian psychoanalysis to rigorous criticism along the lines (...) of Bakhtin. By focusing attention on the dialogic word, he encourages a rereading of Freud in which the social element is crucial. As Lacan opens his essay “The Empty Word and the Full Word”:Whether it sees itself as an instrument of healing, of formation, or of exploration in depth, psychoanalysis has only a single intermediary: the patient’s Word….And every word calls for a reply.I shall show that there is no word without a reply, even if it meets no more than silence, provided that it has an auditor: this is the heart of its function in psychoanalysis.18The word is conceived as a tool not only in the external world but also of an autonomous internal world as well. And what emerges, it would seem, is a reinterpretation of the role of dialogue in the painful maturational process of the child. For Vygotsky, the child’s realization of his separateness from society is not a crisis; after all, his environment provides both the form and the content of his personality. From the start, dialogue reinforces the child’s grasp on reality, as evidenced by the predominantly social and extraverted nature of his earliest egocentric speech. For Lacan, on the contrary, dialogue seems to function as the alienating experience, the stade du miroir phase of a child’s development. The unconscious becomes the seat of all those problems that Bakhtin had externalized: the origin of personality, the possibilities of self-expression. The je-moi opposition in the mirror gives rise to that permanent for “a locus where there is constituted the je which speaks as well as he who has it speak.”19 And consequently, the Word takes on an entirely different coloration: it is no longer merely an ideological sign but a potent tool for repressing knowledge of that gap, the face in the mirror, the Other. Lacan’s celebrated inversion of Saussure’s algorithm, with the line between signifier and signified representing repression, created a powerful but ominous new role for language. The child is released from his alienating image only through discovering himself as Subject, which occurs with language; but this language will inevitably come to him from the Other. Thus speech is based on the idea of lack, and dialogue, on the idea of difference. 17. See Ivanov, “The Significance of M. M. Bakhtin’s Ideas,” p. 314.18. Jacques Lacan, “The Empty Word and the Full Word,” in Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis, ed. and trans. Anthony Wilden , p. 9.19. Lacan, from “La Chose freudienne” , quoted in Wilden, “Lacan and the Discourse of the Other,” in Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis, p. 266. Caryl Emerson, assistant professor of Russian literature at Cornell University, has translated The Dialogic Imagination, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics . She is currently at work, on a study of Boris Godunov in Russian cultural history. (shrink)

Mitochondrial function and biogenesis depend on the transport of a large variety of proteins, ions, and metabolites across the two surrounding membranes. While several specific transporters are present in the inner membrane, transport processes across the outer membrane are less understood. Recent studies reveal that the number of outer membrane channels and their transport mechanisms are more diverse than originally thought. Four protein‐conducting channels promote transport of distinct sets of precursor proteins across and into the outer membrane. (...) The voltage‐dependent anion channel (VDAC) forms the major channel for small hydrophilic molecules. In addition, three channels with yet unknown substrate specificity exist in the outer membrane. In this review, we outline the emerging functional diversity, selectivity, and regulation of mitochondrial outer membrane channels. The presence of several channel‐forming proteins challenges the traditional view that the outer membrane forms an unspecific size‐exclusion filter for the flux of small hydrophilic molecules. (shrink)

We prove that, in the framework of ordered geometry, the inner form of the Pasch axiom does not imply its outer form . We also show that OP can be properly split into IP and the weak Pasch axiom.

This article’s guiding thesis is that the theory of radical democratic citizenship is built on a tension between a radical, conflictual element and a democratic element. As radical democrats, these philosophers point to the intimate relation between conflict and both emancipation and democracy. But as radical democrats, they also propose different methods that prevent conflict from breaking up the polis—the common ground that makes democratic conflict possible. I look at two radical democrats’ way of dealing with this tension: Chantal Mouffe (...) and Étienne Balibar. My claim is that the former ends up overemphasising the danger of division in her later democratic works and is therefore unable to account for more intense forms of democratic resistance (such as riots). In the work of Balibar, however, we find a way of dealing with this tension. (shrink)

Ion channels mediate ion flux across biological membranes and regulate important organellar and cellular tasks. A recent study revealed the presence of four new proteins, the MIM complex (composed by Mim1 and Mim2), Ayr1, OMC7, and OMC8, that are able to form ion‐conducting channels in the outer mitochondria membrane (OMM). These findings strongly indicate that the OMM is endowed with many solute‐specific channels, in addition to porins and known channels mediating protein import into mitochondria. These solute‐specific channels provide (...) essential pathways for the controlled transport of ions and metabolites and may thus add a further layer of specificity to the regulation of mitochondrial function at the organelle‐cytosol and/or inter‐organellar interface. Future studies will be required to fully understand the way(s) of regulation of these new channels and to integrate them into signaling pathways within the cells. (shrink)

Mammalian outer hair cells generate mechanical forces at acoustic frequencies and can thus amplify the sound stimulus within the inner ear. The mechanism of force generation depends upon the plasma membrane potential but not upon either calcium or ATP. Forces are generated in the lateral cortex along the full length of the cell. The cortex includes a two‐dimensional cytoskeletal lattice composed of circumferential filaments 6–7 nm thick that are cross‐linked by filaments 3–4 nm thick and 40–60 nm long. The (...) two filament types may, respectively, be actin and some form of spectrin. The lattice reinforces the cylindrical shape of the cell and permits limited changes in length. Beneath it lie the lateral cisternae, a regular system of multi‐layered membranes. Force–generation may depend upon voltage‐dependent shape changes in proteins that lie either in the plasma membrane or in the cytoskeletal lattice. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:“Bodyheartminding” (xin 心): Reconceiving the Inner Self and the Outer World in the Language of Holographic Focus and FieldRoger T. Amesin body consciousness: a philosophy of mindfulness and somaesthetics, Richard Shusterman expands upon a professional oeuvre in which his exploration of the phenomenon of “body consciousness” has effected nothing less than a somatic turn in the contemporary Western philosophical narrative.1 But his contribution does not end there. Over (...) the past two decades, the reach and influence of his “somaesthetics” has been extended to the gates of China. Indeed, it has become a theme engaged by scholars of China’s indigenous philosophical traditions, thus providing an opportunity for a further edifying conversation between the Chinese and Western philosophical traditions.2 And it is this conversation, as it has been inspired by Shusterman’s work, that I propose to join in this short essay.In Body Consciousness, Shusterman tells the story of how John Dewey advances the pragmatic project of not only understanding the body better, but indeed of applying the Alexander Technique as his way of using his own body properly.3 Just as Dewey has been a prominent resource for Shusterman in his development of somaesthetics, for Dewey in turn, it was William James’s Principles of Psychology that was a self-confessed inspiration for the development of his own evolving interpretation of pragmatism.4 Indeed, one way of reading Dewey’s philosophical career and his thirty-seven-volume opus is that it is a sustained effort to take the radical “stream-of-consciousness” insights developed in James’s Principles to their logical, systematic conclusion. In pursuing this project, while appreciative, Dewey is at times impatient with James’s dualistic lapses in which he continues to separate individuals from community, mind from body, emotions from intellect, agents from actions, and theory from practice. Dewey takes these unfortunate reversions to old ways of thinking as serving only to confound James’s holistic doctrines of pure experience and radical empiricism. Given Dewey’s own postulate of [End Page 100] immediate and continuous empiricism, one way of tracking his journey from having been inspired by James’s biological naturalism to achieving his own philosophical coherence is to register his unrelenting aversion to dualism in any form.But Dewey himself was not always consistent in this respect. Shusterman gives an account of the early neo-Hegelian Dewey who, affirming the familiar transcendent conception of soul we associate with idealism, unsurprisingly embraces a clear soul and body dualism. And in spite of the philosophically mature Dewey’s best efforts to think “process,” he has no choice but to use both a language and a grammar freighted with substance ontology that resists his more holistic insights. On occasion, even while trying to remain consistent in his thinking, Dewey seems to fall victim to terminology that if not dualistic is at best ambiguous. Dewey’s struggle against this problem of equivocation is particularly apparent in some of the language he appeals to in attempting to put the Humpty Dumpty of mind and body together again. In his effort to register the irreducible continuity and inseparability of the nonanalytic abstractions we differentiate as body and mind—the ontological givenness or “hadness” of “bodyminding”—Dewey still at times invokes terms such as “combination,” “integration,” “unity,” and so on, that take as their suppressed premise “two things becoming one.” By way of contrast, in the correlative vocabulary of Chinese process cosmology, expressions such as yinyang 陰陽, the natural/cultural and the human (tianren 天人), and knowing and doing (zhixing 知行), primacy is given to vital relationality and the continuity it entails. It is not putting two things together that is referenced with these binomials, but the deepening of the horizon of constitutive, internal relationships that transforms the two aspects of the same phenomenon qualitatively into harmonics (he 和) for yinyang, sagacity (sheng 聖) for tianren, and acting wisely (zhi 智) for zhixing. In each instance, the two aspects themselves are simply conceptual abstractions from a complex relational process. The proper and effective measure (du 度) sought in this Confucian cosmology is not quantitatively more or less of two distinct things—taking mind and body as our example—but rather a qualitative and transformative change that... (shrink)

My aim in this article is twofold. First, I will illuminate the triangular conceptual connections between responsibility, authority, and power as they are exposed in the organizational realm; second, I will show how the three concepts are distinct. Relying on the work of Peter Strawson and his followers on responsibility for my point of departure, I will show that the connection between the inner corporational authority and its inner matching responsibility is different from the connection between the outer corporational (...) forces and influences and the CSR that they develop in reaction to these. This will expose another important distinction between two kinds of responsibility: the organizational kind, as instantiated in organizations, and the social kind, which constitutes the outer aspect of the CSR. Though many thinkers address different kinds of responsibility, a comparative perspective of these different concepts is missing. I attempt to bring three of these separate discourses together to examine them alongside one another, evaluating them in the light of their differences and similarities. This will expose a new typology of ‘responsibility’ that penetrates and illuminates the relations between corporations and society and as such enhance our understanding of organizational responsibility. (shrink)

As a result of the increasing economical exploitation of outer space, humanity faces a new challenge that, as well as having economic advantages, also entails a great many ecological hazards. At present, the human race is encroaching on outer space, particularly in the form of almost 5000 active satellites and the corresponding space debris they produce. For the large part, this debris burns up on entering the Earth’s atmosphere, yet time and again it still does cause damage. (...) However, this could change dramatically if, as is now foreseeable, further uses of outer space, such as tourism, so-called satellite mega-constellations, regular transport flights to the moon or even Mars and the extraction of water and valuable rocks from celestial bodies, are expanded. There is a danger that ecological damage like that of the earlier phases of economic development will become externalised and ultimately pose a threat to the whole of humanity. Sautter’s ‘global “sustainability trilemma”’ remains unresolved. This trilemma consists in the fact that, in political resolutions, ‘the growth of resource-intensive prosperity is weighted far more highly than the conservation of functioning ecosystems and the implementation of inter- and intragenerational “justice”’ and that there are ‘up until now no efficient and ethically acceptable solutions’ for this problem. In this situation, it is therefore more important that rules for the sustainable use of outer space be established and enshrined as legally binding so that it becomes possible to minimise or even to preclude negative ecological consequences.Contribution: Although the commercial use of outer space does not seem to be a crucial point, it marks a new step of the dynamics of modern economics that has to be identified as an important ethical challenge. The article discusses aspects of ethics, law, religion and economy in a multidisciplinary way. (shrink)

Building on the philosophies of the social sciences and of religion, this book is concerned with the interplay between the inner powers of individuals and the structures of their societies and with how these inner powers affect how they see outer realities. Dorothy Emmet looks at persons in a world of impersonal processes. She is critical of the notion of a personal God, but sees the emergence of personal activities as constrained but also sustained through "an enabling universe.".

… power is never uni dimensional; it is exercised not only as a mode of domination, but also as an act of resistance or even as an expression of a creative mode of cultural and social production outside the immediate force of domination.The point is important in that the behavior expressed by subordinate groups cannot be reduced to a study of domination or resistance.Clearly, in the behavior of subordinate groups there are moments of cultural and creative expression that are informed (...) by a different logic, whether it be existential, religious, or otherwise.Our faith is ultimately in individuals and their potentialities.In saying this, I do not mean what is sometimes called individualism as opposed to association.I mean rather an individuality that operates in and through voluntary associations.If our outward scene is one of externally imposed organization, behind and beneath there is working the force of liberated individualities, experimenting in their own ways to find and realize their own ends.The testimony of history is that in the end such a force, however scattered and inchoate, ultimately prevails over all set institutionalized forms, however firmly established the latter may be. (shrink)

The following is a chapter of a book and I should say something at the outset about the content of the book. The topic is Hegel’s “social theory of agency,” and that topic, given how the problem of agency is usually understood, raises the immediate question of why anyone would think that “sociality” would have anything at all to do with the “problem of agency.” That problem is understood in a number of ways; most generally – what distinguishes naturally occurring (...) events from actions (if anything)? (Sometimes the question is: what, if anything, distinguishes responsible human doings from what animals do?) The most prominent approach has it that actions are things done intentionally by individuals, purposely, for a purpose. This is sometimes said to mean: acting from or on or because of an intention, although as we shall see this nominalization can be quite misleading. Or, of the many possible descriptions of some occurrence, it is an action is there is a true description which is intentional. This is often taken to mean simply that if you ask a person why he is doing something he can express this intention to explain himself, most often in the form of a reason. He does not (except in extraordinary circumstances) describe why he is acting in the way he might describe what caused his.. (shrink)

Right now my conscious experience is directed at part of the world. It takes in some aspects of things around me and not others. Some bits of the world occupy my attention, other worldly goings on condition or colour the character of my current perceptual experience. I experience buildings in view through the window, the clothes in the corner of the room, the colour of the walls, the plate with breads, the coffee mugs, the smell of fresh laundry, the muffled (...) sounds of someone in the kitchen, the sounds from the street: a sequence of things that in turn capture my attention moment to moment. And all the while thoughts occur to me, modulating my conscious awareness. I have no doubt that the world and my place in it, together with my recent past history, explains the particular form my consciousness takes right now. But what shape does that explanation take? Things out there beyond the boundaries of my skin enter into the conscious events I undergo. The inner is in this way shaped and determined by those outer things that impress themselves on the mind. What is it, though, for consciousness of this kind to go on at all? (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 22 (2002) 31-46 [Access article in PDF] Remedying Globalization and Consumerism: Joining the Inner and Outer Journeys in "Perfect Balance" Judith Simmer-Brown Naropa University One hundred forty years ago, Abraham Lincoln wrote in a prophetic voice: I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country.... Corporations have been enthroned and an era (...) of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. 1As the global economy has grown and the economic gap between the poor nations and the rich nations has become enormous, we are realizing Lincoln's nightmare.Globalization has effects more devastating than Lincoln could have imagined. What do we mean by globalization? The president of Nabisco once defined it as "a world of homogeneous consumption." 2 It is a world in which everyone, no matter what latitude or longitude, eats the same food, wears the same clothing, and derives pleasure from the same entertainment. It is the world of McDonald's, Holiday Inn, James Bond movies, Nike shoes, and Coca-Cola. Noam Chomsky, in a lecture at Boston College, described globalization as the "new face of capitalism." 3 It is a network of power centered in corporate interests and financial institutions that controls the flow of capital in order to promote the financial interests of those in power to the detriment of all others. The strategies of globalization have to do with centralizing all power in financial interest, reducing all value to money, and subsuming governments to the interests of the corporations. According to Chomsky, the strategies employed by the transnational network are designed to consolidate this control:Buy the executive branch of the states involved;Own the legislative branch through lobbyists, campaign contributions, and term extensions, or whatever else may work; [End Page 31]Set the conditions in which policy is determined, asserting the power of global capital;Control the doctrine and information systems, especially to invent new needs in order to bolster a culture of fashionable consumption. 4The players in this transnational network reside in the wealthy countries of the world, especially the governments of the G8, and most especially the United States. The global dominance of the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization is funded by U.S. dollars funneled to them by the network. Yet this capital is not really exchange of cash; instead, it is speculation. Chomsky commented: In the last twenty-five years, there has been a huge explosion of financial institutions and financial capital, most of it speculative, with little actual capital in the economy. The flow of capital is $1.5 trillion per day, very little of it productive. Ninety-five percent of it is destructive and speculative. The return time on investments is very rapid; eighty percent has a return time of a week, and often it is less than a day. This daily flow of capital in international markets is twice the total foreign exchange of all states together. This concentrated power is interlinked, determining states' decisions. 5States are no longer autonomous agents; transnational economic interests have taken precedence over national sovereignty, regional power, and military concerns.The impact on developing countries and rural economies is devastating. The global monoculture is eradicating cultural diversity, replacing locally adapted forms of production with industrial systems divorced from natural cycles. Agriculture has become centrally managed and chemically dependent, delivering a narrower range of transportable foods to the international market. This, of course, robs the vitality of local communities and moves a greater proportion of villagers into urban life, creating megalopolises. Because everyone becomes dependent upon the same resources, "globalization creates efficiency for corporations, but it also creates artificial scarcity for consumers, thus heightening competitive pressures.... Globalization means the undermining of the livelihoods and cultural identities of the majority of the world's peoples." 6... (shrink)

This article is centred on the idea that from the analysis and interpretation of data from the crowd noise (at historical and engaging events) it is possible to define the manifestation of extroversion of people’s perceptions and emotions. What I seek to reveal in my artistic research is not the conjugation of perceptions and emotions for individual participants but rather the collective feeling, the energy that connects and refines the involvement of individuals and creates from it a new and indivisible (...) whole: a collective perception and sentiment that in the multilayering of noise finds its full manifestation. Crowd noise, therefore, represents the synthesis of this unique collective emotion, a psychological and physical synergic experience channelling its force, energy and form into a distinctive event that is noise itself. What I am investigating is the sum, neutralization, enrichment and suppression of the constitutive elements of the emotion experienced by participants in an event, and noise ‘as a register of the intensity of relationships’ between them. Showing and describing an event, its sensations and atmosphere, or the perceptions and emotions of a moment, is impossible. The questions, how emotions emerge, how mental and physical perceptions are stimulated by our senses or how consciousness develops, are unanswerable; what is possible to show as an artist is what happens in the middle, what lies between the lines, within the fabric of events, and what one grasps and realizes from the exploration of what is in the involuntary traces the experience itself leaves behind. (shrink)

Clinical photography in the late 19th century aimed at unveiling the hidden processes invisible to the clinical eye. Changes in the outer form hinted at deeper lying causes, and decoding these forms was supposed to extend the range of the clinical eye into the realm of invisibility. Two suppositions supported this hope: the belief that each disease as an ontological entity showed typical exterior signs which allowed a diagnosis at sight, and the technological trust in photography as a (...) precise and objective means of representation superior to the human eye. For a short time, clinical photography seemed to be the “via regia” of diagnosis. Heinrich Curschmann's Klinische Abbildungen and Ludwig Jankau's periodical Internationale medizinisch-photographische Monatsschrift marked the climax of this development in Germany. Röntgen's discovery and its immediate application in clinical medicine put an end to the optimistic expectations: clinical photography was from now on only one among many different means of documenting clinical signs and findings. (shrink)

The paper analyzes some of the problems involved in defining speech, with the aim of showing the epistemic choices involved in its implementation as a methodology or analysis technique. The difficulty of the concept of discourse is its bordering nature of language structures and contextual domains that shape utterances, which has led to different approaches: the contextualized utterances, institutions governing language formation of statements or sociohistorical systems that explain its regularity. Such uncertainty increases when registering the models on the set (...) of concomitant concepts, from which derive various extensions of the discursive, basically the discourse as inner domain of ideology, and in which connection the subject form, or as a representation of social concepts in serving an ideological domain and a cognitive domain of prediscursive character. El trabajo analiza algunos de los problemas implicados en la definición de discurso, con el objetivo de mostrar las opciones epistémicas implicadas en su aplicación como metodología o técnica de análisis. La dificultad del concepto de discurso radica en su carácter de frontera entre las estructuras de lenguaje y los dominios contextuales que dan forma a los enunciados, lo que ha derivado en enfoques cuyo objeto es distinto: los enunciados contextualizados, las instituciones de lenguaje que regulan la formación de los enunciados o los sistemas sociohistóricos que explican su regularidad. Tal indeterminación aumenta al inscribir los modelos en el conjunto de conceptos concomitantes al discurso, de donde derivan distintas extensiones de lo discursivo, básicamente, el discurso como dominio interior a la ideología, y en cuya conexión se forma el sujeto, o en cuanto representación de lo social en que actúa un dominio ideológico y un dominio cognitivo, de carácter prediscursivo. (shrink)

My aim in this article is twofold. First, I will illuminate the triangular conceptual connections between responsibility, authority, and power as they are exposed in the organizational realm; second, I will show how the three concepts are distinct. Relying on the work of Peter Strawson and his followers on responsibility for my point of departure, I will show that the connection between the inner corporational authority and its inner matching responsibility is different from the connection between the outer corporational (...) forces and influences and the CSR that they develop in reaction to these. This will expose another important distinction between two kinds of responsibility: the organizational kind, as instantiated in organizations, and the social kind, which constitutes the outer aspect of the CSR. Though many thinkers address different kinds of responsibility, a comparative perspective of these different concepts is missing. I attempt to bring three of these separate discourses together to examine them alongside one another, evaluating them in the light of their differences and similarities. This will expose a new typology of ‘responsibility’ that penetrates and illuminates the relations between corporations and society and as such enhance our understanding of organizational responsibility. (shrink)

The article is dedicated to ways in which authors of the socialist realism novel used the poetics of the non-fiction literature (mainly reportage). Perceiving a work of art as a cultural fact of political character had serious consequences. The literary creation was to be replaced by a reportage storyline. The outer reality was depicted in accordance with top-down guidelines of propaganda. Two strategies were used: linking poetics of documentary with belles lettres and incorporating elements typical of non-fiction literature to (...) fiction. At the same time genological “light-heartedness” of authors of socialist realism makes it now difficult to decide about typological affiliation of those works. (shrink)

We reexamine Plato’s use of visual metaphors by considering his own treatment of light and sight, which differed from the later view that the eye is purely passive. Instead, he considered the eye to be active, sending out beams that contact the “outer fire” and then return to the seer. This essential activity of the act of seeing changes the way we should read many passages in Plato based on metaphors of vision, in order to bring forward the fundamental (...) activity of the soul in knowing. Understood in this way, Plato’s words eidos and idea may refer not only to self-subsistent, transcendent “forms” but also to the active process of “seeing” that connects us with them. (shrink)

This paper develops the ideas of the Swiss zoologist Adolf Portmann or, more precisely, his concept of organic self-representation, wherein Portmann considered the outer surface of living organisms as a specific organ that serves in a self-representational role. This idea is taken as a starting point from which to elaborate Portman’s ideas, so as to make them compatible with the theoretical framework of biosemiotics. Today, despite the many theories that help us understand aposematism, camouflage, deception and other phenomena related (...) to the category of mimicry, there still is a need for a general theory of self-representation that would re-synthesize evolutionary, morphogenetic and semiotic aspects of the surface of organisms. Here, Adolf Portmann’s concept of self-representation is considered as an important step towards the biosemiotics of animal form. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy of Music Education Review 12.1 (2004) 67-70 [Access article in PDF] Response to Mary J. Reichling, "Intersections: Form, Feeling, and Isomorphism" David Stevenson Vassalboro, Maine Mary J. Reichling's essay regarding the three concepts, form, feeling, and isomorphism, is lucid, well structured, and aptly supported by research of other music education philosophers. She states her purpose in the opening paragraph: "to examine and to elucidate various aspects (...) of these three concepts in her [Susanne Langer's] writing, as they are fundamental to an understanding of her aesthetic theory and to the construction of a philosophy of music and music education."A philosophy of music education must be the focus in all ensuing debate, and must remain of paramount importance. Arguments, especially dialectic arguments, are not won or lost; they merely strip away the outer garments until more and more of the truth is exposed. My thoughts regarding Reichling's essay are offered in this vein.Reichling amply makes the point that music is a dynamic moving form. She asserts that "Langer argues that form is not separable from content," clarifying further by saying that "By content Langer is designating the form's import or meaning." And she offers other examples of dynamic, moving forms, among them, "forms created by movements of clouds or fog through the mist and early light." [End Page 67]At this point, perhaps interjecting the notion of perception is in order. I would suggest that the cloud formations offer no content or meaning outside of the viewer's perceptions or imagination. Music (art), being the nebulous subject that it is, ensconced in subjectivity and steeped in perception, both interpersonal and intrapersonal at the same time, exists to be taken by individuals, each at his or her own level of accomplishment, understanding, and interest. Therefore, does the meaning inhere in the form, as Langer and Reichling assert, or is it assigned by the listener (in the case of music) or by the viewer (in the case of the cloud formation)? "If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is: infinite."1 William Blake's observation notwithstanding, the truth is that perception is the only thing that we have with which to view our existence. I believe that there is such a thing as absolute truth, and that reality does exist. However, we mere mortals lack the ability to view the world through anything other than our own perceptions. The knowledge or meaning gained through contemplation of the form is, in all likelihood, quite different for each observer.Likewise, imagination and conceptual ability play a role in interpreting what the senses have perceived. Langer, and by quotation, Reichling, offers the notion of a red dot placed on the rim of a spinning wheel that appears to the viewer as a red circle. "When the spinning stops, the form, the red circle, evaporates. Did it really exist? Does it have ontological status? Is it merely an illusion?" I asked my students to close their eyes and imagine a spinning wheel with a red dot placed on the rim. I asked them, "As the wheel spins, do you see the dot?" The answer was that they saw a red circle. Did they really see a red circle, or even a spinning wheel? Of course not, we were in a music classroom. Yet they were able to conceptualize or imagine the image, and I would suggest that that carries more weight in the realm of art than does actual ontological status.The problem with the experiment of the preceding paragraph is that "Langer argues that form is not separable from content, writing that it is not possible 'to divorce the logical form from its one embodiment or expression.'" In the subsequent paragraph Reichling states, When the music stops, when the ballet is concluded, when the play ends, when the wheel stops spinning, memory may remain but the content (content as meaning-my parenthetical interjection), the feeling, the red circle, the image the dancer created is gone. Is this illogical or has knowledge... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy of Music Education Review 12.1 (2004) 67-70 [Access article in PDF] Response to Mary J. Reichling, "Intersections: Form, Feeling, and Isomorphism" David Stevenson Vassalboro, Maine Mary J. Reichling's essay regarding the three concepts, form, feeling, and isomorphism, is lucid, well structured, and aptly supported by research of other music education philosophers. She states her purpose in the opening paragraph: "to examine and to elucidate various aspects (...) of these three concepts in her [Susanne Langer's] writing, as they are fundamental to an understanding of her aesthetic theory and to the construction of a philosophy of music and music education."A philosophy of music education must be the focus in all ensuing debate, and must remain of paramount importance. Arguments, especially dialectic arguments, are not won or lost; they merely strip away the outer garments until more and more of the truth is exposed. My thoughts regarding Reichling's essay are offered in this vein.Reichling amply makes the point that music is a dynamic moving form. She asserts that "Langer argues that form is not separable from content," clarifying further by saying that "By content Langer is designating the form's import or meaning." And she offers other examples of dynamic, moving forms, among them, "forms created by movements of clouds or fog through the mist and early light." [End Page 67]At this point, perhaps interjecting the notion of perception is in order. I would suggest that the cloud formations offer no content or meaning outside of the viewer's perceptions or imagination. Music (art), being the nebulous subject that it is, ensconced in subjectivity and steeped in perception, both interpersonal and intrapersonal at the same time, exists to be taken by individuals, each at his or her own level of accomplishment, understanding, and interest. Therefore, does the meaning inhere in the form, as Langer and Reichling assert, or is it assigned by the listener (in the case of music) or by the viewer (in the case of the cloud formation)? "If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is: infinite."1 William Blake's observation notwithstanding, the truth is that perception is the only thing that we have with which to view our existence. I believe that there is such a thing as absolute truth, and that reality does exist. However, we mere mortals lack the ability to view the world through anything other than our own perceptions. The knowledge or meaning gained through contemplation of the form is, in all likelihood, quite different for each observer.Likewise, imagination and conceptual ability play a role in interpreting what the senses have perceived. Langer, and by quotation, Reichling, offers the notion of a red dot placed on the rim of a spinning wheel that appears to the viewer as a red circle. "When the spinning stops, the form, the red circle, evaporates. Did it really exist? Does it have ontological status? Is it merely an illusion?" I asked my students to close their eyes and imagine a spinning wheel with a red dot placed on the rim. I asked them, "As the wheel spins, do you see the dot?" The answer was that they saw a red circle. Did they really see a red circle, or even a spinning wheel? Of course not, we were in a music classroom. Yet they were able to conceptualize or imagine the image, and I would suggest that that carries more weight in the realm of art than does actual ontological status.The problem with the experiment of the preceding paragraph is that "Langer argues that form is not separable from content, writing that it is not possible 'to divorce the logical form from its one embodiment or expression.'" In the subsequent paragraph Reichling states, When the music stops, when the ballet is concluded, when the play ends, when the wheel stops spinning, memory may remain but the content (content as meaning-my parenthetical interjection), the feeling, the red circle, the image the dancer created is gone. Is this illogical or has knowledge... (shrink)

Epistemic warrant for Husserl is closely tied to his phenomenological method and his main philosophical theme: intentionality. By investigating the lived experience of intentional givenness he elaborates what being a justificatory reason amounts to and thereby develops his specific conception of epistemic justification: intuitive fulfillment of a signitive intention which achieves evidence as the experienced, subjectively accessible presence of the “thing itself.” Terminologically, Husserl calls this Ausweisung. The intuitively fulfilled givenness of the intended, its self-givenness, is the ultimate reason for (...) its epistemic justification. For Husserl a “space of reasons” is thus is tied to and made possible only by means of the fundamental accomplishment of intentionality: the conscious presence of the world itself which surpasses the classical epistemological division between inner and outer realm, mind and world. By following Husserl’s development from the Logical Investigations up to his phenomenological version of transcendental idealism, the role of epistemic justification qua demonstration of intuitive fulfillment will be spelled out according to the theses above. In the last part of the paper I will examine Husserl’s position with respect to discussions on justification in the Philosophy of Mind and analytic epistemology. (shrink)

The subject of normalization and its relationship to sex/gender is a major one in feminist theory; Heyes' book is unique in her masterful use of Foucault; its clarity, and its sophisticated mix of the theoretical and the anecdotal. It will appeal to feminist philosophers and theorists.

The aim of this paper is to show that an aesthetics of exemplarity could be a useful component of projects of moral self-cultivation. Using some in Linda Zagzebski's exemplarism, I describe a distinctive, aesthetically-inflected mode of admiration called moral attraction whose object is the inner beauty of a persn - the expression of the 'inner' virtues or excellences of character of a person in 'outer' forms of bodily comportment that are experienced, by others, as beautiful. I then argue that (...) certain moral traditions deploy inner beauty within their practices of moral self-cultivation - a good example being Confucianism. Advocates of exemplarist moral education should therefore take seriously the ways that an aesthetics of exemplarity can play roles within projects of moral self-cultivation. (shrink)

This article examines several aspects of the appreciation of Chinese calligraphy, seeking to address two questions. First, what are the aesthetic objects in its appreciation? And second, how can we characterize the process of coming to understand calligraphic works? The answers, I contend, can be found in classical texts on this art. I hold that the aesthetic objects in the experience of a calligraphic work are twofold: the outer form and the inner qualities. This is analogous to what (...) Noël Carroll understood as the object of aesthetic experience, that is, the formal and/or expressive properties.1 I propose that calligraphy appreciation can be understood as a process of retrieval, a term I take from Richard... (shrink)

In this paper I investigate affinities between Nietzsche’s early philosophy and some aspects of Kant’s moral theory. In so doing, I develop further my reading of Nietzschean wholeness as an ideal that consists in the achievement of cultural—not psychic—integration by pursuing the ennoblement of humanity in oneself and in all. This cultural achievement is equivalent to the procreation of the genius or the perfection of nature. For Nietzsche, the process by means of which we come to realize the genius in (...) ourselves is one in which our true content comes to necessarily govern or guide the shaping of our outer form (or our outward activities). Since this true content turns out to be our autonomy or free agency, I argue that this Nietzschean idea of necessitation parallels in important ways Kant’s notion of normative necessity. In particular, I claim that for Nietzsche the agent’s form becomes necessitated by his content as a result of the agent’s recognition of the duties that befall those who aspire to belong to a genuine culture and his resolve to guide his actions in accordance to them. These duties spring from the idea of humanity, from the image we have of ourselves as endowed with the capacity to be the helmsmen of our lives or to be more than mere animals or automata. The person who takes up this ideal of humanity turns his life into a living unity of content and form by organizing it around an aspect of his being that belongs necessarily, hence more truthfully, to him. He also participates in a collective project (that of the ennoblement of the human being) that can lend a certain coherence and imperishability to his individual life and through which he becomes necessarily connected to everyone else for all eternity. (shrink)

JEAN-PAUL SARTRE and Maurice Merleau-Ponty share the composite position of acknowledging the influence of Husserl on their work and of claiming to fulfill Husserl’s intentions, yet of criticizing Husserl for having failed to live up to his own intentions. This is the outer form of their explicit criticism of Husserl. Their work itself constitutes an implicit criticism of Husserl, while it gives us some indication of the direction that Husserl’s continued researches might have taken.

This paper explores iconicity in the metrical structure and the cultural value of Artistic Chinese calligraphy along the lines of Carles S.Peirce’s theory. It drawsattention to the fact that there is a simple categorical correspondence between the outer forms of Artistic Chinese Calligraphy and their subject-matter, presenting it a mixed form of representation, based on resemblances but also creating its own metaphysical meanings simultaneously.

This paper explores iconicity in the metrical structure and the cultural value of Artistic Chinese calligraphy along the lines of Carles S.Peirce’s theory. It drawsattention to the fact that there is a simple categorical correspondence between the outer forms of Artistic Chinese Calligraphy and their subject-matter, presenting it a mixed form of representation, based on resemblances but also creating its own metaphysical meanings simultaneously.

In this study, I discuss the devotional lives of Finns who have joined the Orthodox Church of Finland as adults. The analysis is based on interviews conducted with 29 converts to Orthodoxy. My specific focus is the interplay of interiority and exteriority in my interlocutors’ religious practice. To conceptualise this dynamic, I turn to Adam Seligman’s theorisation of ritual and sincerity as two modes of organising social action. For Seligman, ritual action relies on the outer form, whereas sincere (...) action prioritises the inner form – intention and mindset – instead. My interlocutors’ religious trajectories challenge the standard conceptualisation of the modern subject as someone who is primarily concerned for the truthful expression of their internal states and therefore rejects any external restrictions placed on their actions. After all, they had voluntarily transferred to a religious group that emphasises compliance with an outer form. My analysis demonstrates that while the interviewees understood sincerity as the driving force of religious practice, they valued Orthodox ritual as a resource. Moreover, their engagement in ritual action helped them come to terms with the ambiguities of their daily lives, including their conflicting obligations and wavering commitment, and to experience their lives as imbued with religion nonetheless. (shrink)