Today’s film scholars draw from a dizzying range of theoretical perspectives—they’re just as likely to cite philosopher Gilles Deleuze as they are to quote classic film theorist André Bazin. To students first encountering them, these theoretical lenses for viewing film can seem exhilarating, but also overwhelming. _Thinking in the Dark _introduces readers to twenty-one key theorists whose work has made a great impact on film scholarship today, including Rudolf Arnheim, Sergei Eisenstein, Michel Foucault, Siegfried Kracauer, and Judith Butler. Rather (...) than just discussing each theorist’s ideas in the abstract, the book shows how those concepts might be applied when interpreting specific films by including an analysis of both a classic film and a contemporary one. It thus demonstrates how theory can help us better appreciate films from all eras and genres: from _Hugo _to_ Vertigo_, from _City Lights _to _Sunset Blvd._, and from _Young Mr. Lincoln_ to _A.I. _and _Wall-E_. The volume’s contributors are all experts on their chosen theorist’s work and, furthermore, are skilled at explaining that thinker’s key ideas and terms to readers who are not yet familiar with them. _Thinking in the Dark _is not only a valuable resource for teachers and students of film, it’s also a fun read, one that teaches us all how to view familiar films through new eyes. Theorists examined in this volume are: Rudolf Arnheim, Béla Balázs, Roland Barthes, André Bazin, Walter Benjamin, Judith Butler, Stanley Cavell, Michel Chion, Gilles Deleuze, Jean Douchet, Sergei Eisenstein, Jean Epstein, Michel Foucault, Siegfried Kracauer, Jacques Lacan, Vachel Lindsay, Christian Metz, Hugo Münsterberg, V. F. Perkins, Jacques Rancière, and Jean Rouch. (shrink)

Summary Landscape planning lacked an evidence-based method for the reflection of planning models on the imaginary level in order to present the image content and the relationships in the image as the basis for interpretation in a verifiable manner. The contribution is based on the thesis that the perceptual analysis according to Rudolf Arnheim can be translated into landscape planning. The case study, here an illustration with two plan sketches for urban and landscape development, is described and interpreted with (...) the Gestalt theoretical perceptual analysis according to the criteria theme, theses, principle sketches and composition lines, interpretation, conclusion and Gestalt theoretical results. The analysed planning sketches have a low “reality level” and are part of the imaginary level. The theory of science contained therein can be understood by Gestalt theory as elementary theory of design. In the sketches, the living spaces and economic areas of the city are divided into the elements ‘settlement’ and ‘landscape’ and thereby undergo a revaluation of their significance. The replacement of figure (city) and ground (landscape) can be interpreted in terms of gestalt theory as a change of theme in the sketches as the greatest possible structural exchange. The results of the analysis are processed as research theses in the contextualisation of landscape planning and thus examined scientifically on the basis of circumstantial evidence against the reality of the living environments of the urban dwellers. The contribution proves that the perceptual analysis according to R. Arnheim is a suitable method in landscape planning for describing and interpreting graphic representations of planning models. Interdisciplinary cooperation is a contribution to the holistic treatment of a topic, because structuralist landscape planning has structural similarities with Gestalt theory and is committed to the dialogical principle. As a theory of organisation (development), Gestalt theory derives principles, structures, their relationships and qualities and is therefore suitable as a meta-theory of landscape planning to characterise the values and ethical bases in planning. This applies to all areas of the field of consciousness in landscape planning. (shrink)

Art as communication, by L. Tolstoi.--Art, intuition, and expression, by B. Groce.--Art as expression, by R. G. Collingwood.--The Groce-Collingwood theory of art, by J. Hospers.--The act of expression, by J. Dewey.--Art and the language of the emotions, by C. J. Ducasse.--Music as impressive and music as expressive, by E. Gurney.--Expression, by G. Santayana.--The expressiveness of colors, by W. Kadinsky.--Expression and association, by C. Hartshorne.--Expressiveness, by R. Arnheim.--The expression theory of art, by O, K. Bouwsma.--The concept of expression in art, (...) by V. Tomas, D. Morgan and M. Beardsley.--Musical expression, by M. Beardsley.--Expressive predicates of art, by G. Sircello. (shrink)

The format of this book is unusual, especially for a book about linguistics. The book is meant primarily as a research monograph aimed at linguists who have some background in formal semantics, e. g. Montague Grammar. However, I have two other audiences in mind. Linguists who have little or no experience of formal semantics, but who have worked through a basic mathematics for linguists course (e. g. using Wall, 1972, or Partee, 1978), should, perhaps with the help of a sympathetic (...) Montague gramma rian, be able to discover enough of how I have adapted some of the basic ideas in formal semantics to make the developments that I undertake in the rest of the book accessible. Logicians and computer scientists who know about model theoretic semantics and formal systems should be able to glean enough from Chapters I and II about linguistic concerns and techniques to be able to read the remainder of the book, again possibly with the help of a sympathetic Montague grammarian. However, readers should beware. Chapter II is not meant as a general introduction either to formal semantics or to linguistics and while much of the presentation there is going over ground that is already well covered in the literature, the particular formulation and the emphases are very much oriented to the developments to be undertaken later in the book. (shrink)

The End of the Timeless God considers two approaches to the philosophy of time, presentism and eternalism. It is often held that God cannot be timeless if presentism is true, but can be if eternalism is true. R. T. Mullins draws on recent work in the philosophy of time as well as the work of classical Christian thinkers such as Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas to contend that the Christian God cannot be timeless in either case.

Psychopaths continue to be demonised by the media and estimates suggest that a disturbing percentage of the population has psychopathic tendencies. This timely and controversial new book summarises what we already know about psychopathy and antisocial behavior and puts forward a new case for its cause - with far-reaching implications. Presents the scientific facts of psychopathy and antisocial behavior. Addresses key questions, such as: What is psychopathy? Are there psychopaths amongst us? What is wrong with psychopaths? Is psychopathy due to (...) nature or nurture? And can we treat psychopaths? Reveals the authors' ground-breaking research into whether an underlying abnormality in brain development leaves psychopaths with an inability to feel emotion or fear. The resulting theory could lead to early diagnosis and revolutionize the way society, the media and the state both views and contends with the psychopaths in our midst. (shrink)

Assuming S5, the main controversial premise in modal ontological arguments is the possibility premise, such as that possibly a maximally great being exists. I shall offer a new way of arguing that the possibility premise is probably true.

In the last ten years or so there has been some lively discussion of the questions of immortality and resurrection. Within the Christian tradition there has been debate at theological and exegetical level over the relative merits of belief in the immortality of the soul, and belief in the resurrection of the dead as an account of life after death. Further to this, however, there has been the suggestion that there may be good philosophical reasons for preferring the latter to (...) the former. It is just this contention which I propose to discuss. (shrink)

I am interested in extending modal calculi by adding propositional quantifiers, given by the rules for quantifier introduction: provided that p does not occur free in A.

this article is based on a paper that I presented during the annual meeting of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, as a keynote speaker in the Coss Dialogue sessions. I was pleasantly surprised to hear that most participants of SAAP use the term "American" in its continental, rather than in the US-centric sense. I am glad that many of the philosophers of this community of knowledge have opened their dialogues to the voices and experiences south of the (...) Río Bravo. We are living during very difficult times in which cultures and practices of violence, as well as aggressive exclusion and intolerance, are affecting our communities on both sides of the border. In this context of multiple... (shrink)

It is a common complaint against moral philosophers that their abstract theorising bears little relation to the practical problems of everyday life. Professor Braithwaite believes that this criticism need not be inevitable. With the help of the Theory of Games he shows how arbitration is possible between two neighbours, a jazz trumpeter and a classical pianist, whose performances are a source of mutual discord. The solution of the problem in the lecture is geometrical, and is based on the formal analogy (...) between the logic of the situation and the geometry of a parabola. But an appendix provides the alternative algebraic treatment of a general two-person collaboration situation. (shrink)

This is a review of those aspects of the theory of varieties of Boolean algebras with operators that emphasise connections with modal logic and structural properties that are related to natural properties of logical systems.It begins with a survey of the duality that exists between BAO's and relational structures, focusing on the notions of bounded morphisms, inner substructures, disjoint and bounded unions, and canonical extensions of structures that originate in the study of validity-preserving operations on Kripke frames. This duality is (...) then applied to polymodal propositional logics having finitary intensional connectives that generalise the Box and Diamond connectives of unary modal logic. Issues discussed include validity in canonical structures, completeness under the relational semantics, and characterisations of logics by elementary classes of structures and by finite structures.It turns out that a logic is strongly complete for the relational semantics if the variety of algebras it defines is complex, which means that every algebra in the variety is embeddable into a full powerset algebras that is also in the variety. A hitherto unpublished formulation and proof of this is given that applies to quasi-varieties. This is followed by an algebraic demonstration that the temporal logic of Dedekind complete linear orderings defines a complex variety, adapting Gabbay's model-theoretic proof that this logic is strongly complete. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 4, May 2020, Page 71-73.

This unique textbook--the first to offer balanced, comprehensive coverage of all major perspectives on the rational justification of religious belief--includes twenty-four key papers by some of the world's leading philosophers of religion. Arranged in six sections, each representing a major approach to religious epistemology, the book begins with papers by noted atheists, setting the stage for the main theistic responses--Wittgensteinian Fideism, Reformed epistemology, natural theology, prudential accounts of religious beliefs, and rational belief based in religious experience--in each case offering a (...) representative sample of papers by leading exponents, a critical paper, and a substantial bibliography. A comprehensive introductory essay and ample cross-references help students to contrast and evaluate the different approaches, while the overall arrangement encourages them to assess the full range of philosophical positions on the issue. Carefully selected to provide both a comprehensive overview of current work and a series of modern perspectives on many classic sources--Swinburne's detailed discussion of Hume's critique of the design argument, for example, as well as an entire section evaluating and extending Pascal's famous Wager--the essays also provide a uniquely readable survey that will be useful in a wide range of undergraduate and graduate courses in philosophy of religion and epistemology. (shrink)

Implicit processes almost certainly preceded explicit processes in our evolutionary history, so they are likely to be more resistant to disruption according to the principles of evolutionary biology [Reber, A. S. . The cognitive unconscious: An evolutionary perspective. Consciousness and Cognition, 1, 93–133.]. Previous work . Knowledge, nerves and know-how: The role of explicit versus implicit knowledge in the breakdown of a complex motor skill under pressure. British Journal of Psychology, 83, 343–358.]) has shown that implicitly learned motor skills remain (...) stable under psychological pressure and concurrent cognitive demands, and recently [Poolton, J. M., Masters, R. S. W., & Maxwell, J. P. . Passing thoughts on the evolutionary stability of implicit motor behaviour: Performance retention under physiological fatigue. Consciousness and Cognition, 16, 456–468.] showed that they also remain stable under conditions of anaerobic fatigue that would have significantly challenged the survival skills of our ancestors. Here we examine the stability of an implicitly learned motor skill under fatigue conditions that primarily tax a different physiological system , but which have equally strong evolutionary connotations. Participants acquired a throwing task by means of an errorless learning method or an errorful method. Motor performance in the errorless condition, but not the errorful condition, remained stable following an exhaustive VO2 max. running test. Our findings replicate and extend the work of Poolton et al., providing further support for Reber’s evolutionary distinction between implicit and explicit processes. (shrink)

The famous 1893 Chicago World’s Fair celebrated the dawn of corporate capitalism and a new Machine Age with an exhibit of the world’s largest engine. Yet the noise was so great, visitors ran out of the Machinery Hall to retreat to the peace and quiet of the Japanese pavilion’s Buddhist temples and lotus ponds. Thus began over a century of the West’s turn toward an Asian aesthetic as an antidote to modern technology. From the turn-of-the-century Columbian Exhibition to the latest (...) Zen-inspired designs of Apple, Inc., R. John Williams charts the history of our embrace of Eastern ideals of beauty to counter our fear of the rise of modern technological systems. In a dazzling work of synthesis, Williams examines Asian influences on book design and department store marketing, the commercial fiction of Jack London, the poetic technique of Ezra Pound, the popularity of Charlie Chan movies, the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, and the design of the latest high-tech gadgets. Williams demonstrates how, rather than retreating from modernity, writers, artists, and inventors turned to traditional Eastern technê as a therapeutic means of living with—but never abandoning—Western technology. (shrink)

The most glamorous and even glorious moments in a legal system come when a high court recognizes an abstract principle involving, for example, human liberty or equality. Indeed, Americans, and not a few non-Americans, have been greatly stirred--and divided--by the opinions of the Supreme Court, especially in the area of race relations, where the Court has tried to revolutionize American society. But these stirring decisions are aberrations, says Cass R. Sunstein, and perhaps thankfully so. In Legal Reasoning and Political Conflict, (...) Sunstein, one of America's best known commentators on our legal system, offers a bold, new thesis about how the law should work in America, arguing that the courts best enable people to live together, despite their diversity, by resolving particular cases without taking sides in broader, more abstract conflicts. Sunstein offers a close analysis of the way the law can mediate disputes in a diverse society, examining how the law works in practical terms, and showing that, to arrive at workable, practical solutions, judges must avoid broad, abstract reasoning. Why? For one thing, critics and adversaries who would never agree on fundamental ideals are often willing to accept the concrete details of a particular decision. Likewise, a plea bargain for someone caught exceeding the speed limit need not--indeed, must not--delve into sweeping issues of government regulation and personal liberty. Thus judges purposely limit the scope of their decisions to avoid reopening large-scale controversies. Sunstein calls such actions incompletely theorized agreements. In identifying them as the core feature of legal reasoning--and as a central part of constitutional thinking in America, South Africa, and Eastern Europe-- he takes issue with advocates of comprehensive theories and systemization, from Robert Bork to Jeremy Bentham, the father of utilitarianism, and Ronald Dworkin, who defends an ambitious role for courts in the elaboration of rights. Equally important, Sunstein goes on to argue that it is the living practice of the nation's citizens that truly makes law. For example, he cites Griswold v. Connecticut, a groundbreaking case in which the Supreme Court struck down Connecticut's restrictions on the use of contraceptives by married couples--a law that was no longer enforced by prosecutors. In overturning the legislation, the Court invoked the abstract right of privacy; the author asserts that the justices should have appealed to the narrower principle that citizens need not comply with laws that lack real enforcement. By avoiding large-scale issues and values, such a decision could have led to a different outcome in Bowers v. Hardwick, the decision that upheld Georgia's rarely prosecuted ban on sodomy. And by pointing to the need for flexibility over time and circumstances, Sunstein offers a novel understanding of the old ideal of the rule of law. Legal reasoning can seem impenetrable, mysterious, baroque. This book helps dissolve the mystery. Whether discussing the interpretation of the Constitution or the spell cast by the revolutionary Warren Court, Cass Sunstein writes with grace and power, offering a striking and original vision of the role of the law in a diverse society. In his flexible, practical approach to legal reasoning, he moves the debate over fundamental values and principles out of the courts and back to its rightful place in a democratic state: the legislatures elected by the people. (shrink)

Dil, düşüncelerin ifade edilmesini, bilgi aktarımını ve sosyal etkileşimi sağlayan temel bir olgudur. Dil eğitimi ise kültürler arası iletişimi kolaylaştıran ve dünya genelinde etkili iletişim kurma becerisi kazandıran bir faaliyettir. Birden fazla dil bilmek, farklı kültürlere ve bakış açılarına açık olmayı sağlar. Yaşadığı dünya düzeni içerisinde çağın gerisinde kalmak istemeyen, uygar ve etkileşimli bir toplum olma niyetini taşıyan Fransa hükümet yetkilileri dil eğitimi konusunda ciddi adımlar atmıştır. 1795 yılında Doğu dilleri üzerine uzmanlaş Inalco’yu kurarak başta Osmanlı olmak üzere İslâm dünyasının (...) konuştuğu dili öğrenen uzmanlar yetiştirmeye başlamıştır. Kuruluşundan itibaren sistemli bir şekilde dil yelpazesini genişleten Inalco, Türkçe, Arapça, Çince, Farsça, Hintçe, Japonca, Korece, Rusça, İbranice ve daha birçok Doğu dilini bünyesine katmıştır. Bu dilleri öğrenen ve konuşan kişiler sayesinde Fransa, Doğuyla olan münasebetini güçlü tutmakta ve burada bulunan devletlerle uzaktan yahut yakından temas içerisinde kalmayı sürdürmektedir. Yaklaşık dört asırlık geçmişiyle Inalco, bir dil eğitimi merkezi olmanın yanında şarkiyat kurumları içerisinde önde gelen, sayısız oryantalist yetiştirip çeşitli sahalarda eserlerin yazılmasına imkân tanıyan bir kurumdur. Kuruluş, misyonuna uygun olarak uzun süre Doğu dilleri ve medeniyetleri üzerine uzmanlaşmış öncü isimleri yetiştirip çalışmalarıyla kültürel etkileşimi teşvik etmiş ve kültürler arası anlayışı geliştirmeye yardımcı olmuştur. Kurumsal tecrübesiyle ilgi alanını hep genişleten Inalco günümüzde neredeyse tüm dünya dilleri ve medeniyetleri üzerine çalışmalarını devam ettirmektedir. Artık dil ve kültür alanındaki uzmanlığı ve köklü geçmişiyle dünya genelinde saygın bir kurum olarak kabul edilmektedir. Inalco’da yetişen dil uzmanları Fransız hükümetinin diplomatik ve ticari ilişkilerinde aktif rol alarak bu konularda yetkililere tercümanlık hizmeti sunmuşlardır. Aynı zamanda uzman oldukları dillerin yeni nesillere öğretilmesinde öğretici pozisyonlarını korumuşlar ve ilişkide oldukları kültürlerin tanınmasında da önemli roller üstlenmişlerdir. Her ne kadar yaptıkları iş şarkiyat hizmeti olsa da Doğu kültürüne ait mirasın gün yüzüne çıkartılmasında, değerlendirilmesinde ve tasnifinde yer alarak bu kültürlere ait ögelerin korunmasında yardımcı unsur olmuşlardır. Silvestre de Sacy, Louis Bazin, Régis Blachère, Louis Massignon vb. birçok Doğu bilimci burada yetişerek hem kendi ülkelerine hem de Doğu kültürüne hizmet etmişlerdir. Ancak akademik ortamda Inalco ve benzeri kurumlar üzerine yeteri kadar çalışmanın olmadığı da bir gerçektir. Dolayısıyla bu çalışmada, Inalco’nun kuruluşu, işleyiş şekli ve faaliyet alanları tanıtıldıktan sonra bir şarkiyat kurumu olarak misyonu üzerinde durulacaktır. Saha araştırması, gözlem, yetkili mercilerden alınan bilgi ve belgelerle oluşturulan çalışmanın alandaki boşluğu dolduracağı düşünülmektedir. Yaklaşık dört asırlık geçmişiyle Inalco, bir dil eğitimi merkezi olmanın yanında şarkiyat kurumları içerisinde önde gelen, sayısız oryantalist yetiştirip çeşitli sahalarda eserlerin yazılmasına imkân tanıyan bir kurumdur. Fiilen 1795 yılında Fransa’da kurulan Inalco kuruluş misyonuna uygun olarak uzun süre Doğu dilleri ve medeniyetleri üzerine uzmanlaşmış öncü isimleri yetiştirmiştir. Uzun süre şarkiyat alanına odaklanan Inalco, Doğu dilleri ve medeniyetleri üzerindeki çalışmalarıyla kültürel etkileşimi teşvik etmiş ve kültürler arası anlayışı geliştirmeye yardımcı olmuştur. Kurumsal tecrübesiyle ilgi alanını hep genişleten Inalco günümüzde neredeyse tüm dünya dilleri ve medeniyetleri üzerine çalışmalarını devam ettirmektedir. Artık dil ve kültür alanındaki uzmanlığı ve köklü geçmişiyle dünya genelinde saygın bir kurum olarak kabul edilmektedir. Ancak akademik ortamda Inalco ve benzeri kurumlar üzerine yeteri kadar çalışmanın olmadığı da bir gerçektir. Dolayısıyla bu çalışmada, Inalco’nun kuruluşu, işleyiş şekli ve faaliyet alanları tanıtıldıktan sonra bir şarkiyat kurumu olarak misyonu üzerinde durulacaktır. Saha araştırması, gözlem, yetkili mercilerden alınan bilgi ve belgelerle oluşturulan çalışmanın alandaki boşluğu dolduracağı düşünülmektedir. (shrink)

R S Peters; A Reply to John Kleinig, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 7, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 167–176, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.1973.

The philosophy of science of Patrick Suppes is centered on two important notions that are part of the title of his recent book (Suppes 2002): Representation and Invariance. Representation is important because when we embrace a theory we implicitly choose a way to represent the phenomenon we are studying. Invariance is important because, since invariants are the only things that are constant in a theory, in a way they give the “objective” meaning of that theory. Every scientific theory gives a (...) representation of a class of structures and studies the invariant properties holding in that class of structures. In Suppes’ view, the best way to define this class of structures is via axiomatization. This is because a class of structures is given by a definition, and this same definition establishes which are the properties that a single structure must possess in order to belong to the class. These properties correspond to the axioms of a logical theory. In Suppes’ view, the best way to characterize a scientific structure is by giving a representation theorem for its models and singling out the invariants in the structure. Thus, we can say that the philosophy of science of Patrick Suppes consists in the application of the axiomatic method to scientific disciplines. What I want to argue in this paper is that this application of the axiomatic method is also at the basis of a new approach that is being increasingly applied to the study of computer science and information systems, namely the approach of formal ontologies. The main task of an ontology is that of making explicit the conceptual structure underlying a certain domain. By “making explicit the conceptual structure” we mean singling out the most basic entities populating the domain and writing axioms expressing the main properties of these primitives and the relations holding among them. So, in both cases, the axiomatization is the main tool used to characterize the object of inquiry, being this object scientific theories (in Suppes’ approach), or information systems (for formal ontologies). In the following section I will present the view of Patrick Suppes on the philosophy of science and the axiomatic method, in section 3 I will survey the theoretical issues underlying the work that is being done in formal ontologies and in section 4 I will draw a comparison of these two approaches and explore similarities and differences between them. (shrink)

The Practice of Value is an exploration of a pervasive but puzzling aspect of our world: value. The starting-point is the Berkeley Tanner Lectures delivered in 2001 by the leading moral theorist Joseph Raz. His aim is to make sense of the dependence of value on social practice, without falling back on cultural relativism. The lectures are followed by discussions from three eminent philosophers, Christine Korsgaard, Robert Pippin, and Bernard Williams, and a response from Raz. The result is a fascinating (...) debate, accessible to readers throughout and beyond philosophy, about the relations between human values and human life. (shrink)

For most of the church's history, people have seen Christian ethics as normative and universally applicable. Recently, however, this view has been lost, thanks to naturalism and relativism. R. Scott Smith argues that Christians need to overcome Kant's fact-value dichotomy and recover the possibility of genuine moral and theological knowledge.