The paper in this volume challenge the concept of form and aim to set out, explore and develop different theories and examples of 'the formless'.

Written by leading scholars in the field, this collection analyses the notion of travel writing as a genre, while tracing significant examples of Mediterranean travel writing that return us to Ancient Greece, to Medieval pilgrimages, to Venetians diplomatic missions, to an Egyptian's account of Paris in the nineteenth century, to French artistic journeys in North Africa and to contemporary narratives of privileged resettlement, death and dislocation.

This work provides the means for re-establishing the unity of science by interpreting the whole of modern experimental science from the perspective of analogous transfer of the metaphysical principle of unity rather than in terms of efficient causality.

Tens of thousands of students have learned to be more discerning at constructing and evaluating arguments with the help of Patrick J. Hurley. Hurley’s lucid, friendly, yet thorough presentation has made A CONCISE INTRODUCTION TO LOGIC the most widely used logic text in North America. In addition, the book’s accompanying technological resources, such as CengageNOW and Learning Logic, include interactive exercises as well as video and audio clips to reinforce what you read in the book and hear in class. (...) In short, you’ll have all the assistance you need to become a more logical thinker and communicator. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version. (shrink)

Few areas of scientific investigation have spawned more alternative approaches than animal behavior: comparative psychology, ethology, behavioral ecology, sociobiology, behavioral endocrinology, behavioral neuroscience, neuroethology, behavioral genetics, cognitive ethology, developmental psychobiology---the list goes on. Add in the behavioral sciences focused on the human animal, and you can continue the list with ethnography, biological anthropology, political science, sociology, psychology (cognitive, social, developmental, evolutionary, etc.), and even that dismal science, economics. Clearly, no reasonable-length chapter can do justice to such a varied collection. We (...) have opted therefore to focus on three of these subdisciplines and to provide a somewhat historical tour of them, mentioning along the way the philosophical points that are of particular interest to us, but allowing the development of these points to be limited only by the imaginations of our readers. For readers seeking a more-traditional historical survey, see Dewsbury (1984a, b) and Burghardt (1985a). Our chosen brief is to write about comparative psychology, ethology, and cognitive ethology, although other approaches, especially neuroscience, will be mentioned where appropriate. These sciences are philosophically significant because they are enmeshed in ancient philosophical questions about the nature of mind and purposeful action and about the differences between humans and other animals. These sciences are also clustered because of their attention to mechanistic explanations of individual animal behavior as opposed to attempting to capture regularities at a population level, such as the game-theoretic strategic models popular among behavioral ecologists. (shrink)

Your soul is your connection to the richness and power of Universal Source. When body and soul are misaligned you can't be the divine human you are meant to be.

In a case study of the growth of cognitive science, we analyzed the activities of the Cognitive Science Society with a particular emphasis on the multidisciplinary nature of the field. Analyses of departmental affiliations, training back‐grounds, research methodology, and paper citations suggest that the journal Cognitive Science and the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society are dominated by cognitive psychology and computer science, rather than being an equal division among the constituent disciplines of cognitive science. However, at many levels, (...) a growing percentage of work was found to involve a conjunction of multiple disciplines, such that approximately 30–50% of recent work in the Cognitive Science Society is multidisciplinary. In a questionnaire study of cognitive scientists involved in collaborative research, multidisciplinarity was found to shape the research process and affect the factors associated with successful research. (shrink)

The Polymath Project is an online collaborative enterprise that was initiated in 2009, when Timothy Gowers asked whether and how groups could work together to solve mathematical problems that “do not naturally split up into a vast number of subtasks.” Gowers proposed to answer this question himself by actually trying to set up such a collaboration, based on interactions taking place in the comment-threads of a series of posts on a WordPress blog. Hence, the first project officially started in early (...) 2009, to be proclaimed successful only 6 weeks later (Gowers and Nielsen 2009). From its inception until April 2018, 15 more Polymath problems (and a handful of smaller or related ones) have been launched. These projects have attracted attention from different scholarly communities, including the philosophy of mathematical practices, from the perspective of which the Polymath Project can be seen as a vast repository of mathematics in action. This chapter continues previous work by its authors on the topic in question and topics related. More specifically, for the purposes of this volume, it is our aim to both summarize and expand upon these earlier contributions. The starting point is the above observation that in the past decade, the issue of “massively collaborative mathematics” (to be qualified below) has drawn quite some attention. However, does it also warrant intensive philosophical attention in particular? For, as exciting as these developments might be from mathematical and other points of view, the enhanced possibilities that have come with it do not per se give rise to any philosophical import. In Van Bendegem (2011), one of us has indeed tentatively argued for the philosophical relevance of these new dynamics of proof construction flowing from the wide availability and efficiency of Internet technology. We shall below briefly rehearse and update the argument given there. (shrink)

This modern, advanced textbook reviews modal logic, a field which caught the attention of computer scientists in the late 1970's.

The present study sought to clarify the impact of executive and social functioning on challenging behavior and the downstream influence of challenging behavior on quality of life and functioning in a large transdiagnostic sample. Understanding these relationships is crucial for developing and designing tailored intervention strategies. In a cross-sectional study, parent informants of 2,004 children completed measures of executive and social functioning, challenging behavior, child and family quality of life, and reported on functional impacts of challenging behavior. Using structural (path) (...) modeling, analyses evaluated the associations between executive and social functioning, including emotion regulation and risk avoidance, with overall and specific types of challenging behavior. Structural models also examined the influence of challenging behavior on child and family quality of life, including measures of the immediate and extended environment, and functional impacts on the parent/child as well as interactions with the medical/legal systems. Finally, mediational models explored the direct and indirect effects of executive and social functioning on quality of life and impact measures via challenging behavior. Results indicated that executive functioning accounts for substantial variance (R2 = 0.47) in challenging behavior. In turn, challenging behavior accounts for substantial variance in child and family quality of life (R2 = 0.36) and parent/child impacts (R2 = 0.31). Exploratory mediational models identified direct effects from executive and social functioning measures on quality of life and functional impacts and indirect effects for executive functioning via challenging behavior. These findings support the development of new intervention strategies and suggest the need to measure executive functioning when assessing and tailoring the treatment of challenging behavior in clinical practice. (shrink)

Hogan argues that the basis of interpretive method is ordinary inferential reasoning - that there is no general methodological difference between interpretation in the humanities and theory construction in the physical sciences. Further, the nature of interpretation does not entail cultural, historical, or other forms of relativism, as is commonly thought. However, this does not imply that there is only one way of approaching interpretation or that there is one true meaning of any particular work. Rather, there are many kinds (...) of interpretation and many kinds of meaning and the interpreter is free to stipulate one of these in the context of a particular enquiry. More exactly, discussing the constraints upon stipulation, Hogan says that, although there are a large number and variety of intents (those of authors and readers, conscious and unconscious), there are no nonintentional meanings - Platonic, social, essential, or otherwise. (shrink)

In this article we argue that philosophy can facilitate improvement in cross-disciplinary science. In particular, we discuss in detail the Toolbox Project, an effort in applied epistemology that deploys philosophical analysis for the purpose of enhancing collaborative, cross-disciplinary scientific research through improvements in cross-disciplinary communication. We begin by sketching the scientific context within which the Toolbox Project operates, a context that features a growing interest in and commitment to cross-disciplinary research (CDR). We then develop an argument for the leading idea (...) behind this effort, namely, that philosophical dialogue can improve cross-disciplinary science by effecting epistemic changes that lead to better group communication. On the heels of this argument, we describe our approach and its output; in particular, we emphasize the Toolbox instrument that generates philosophical dialogue and the Toolbox workshop in which that dialogue takes place. Together, these constitute a philosophical intervention into the life of CDR teams. We conclude by considering the philosophical implications of this intervention. (shrink)

This paper is about the phenomenon known as Neg-Raising. All previous analyses of Neg-Raising fall into one of two categories: syntactic and semantic/pragmatic. The syntactic approach derives the unexpected interpretation of Neg-Raising expressions from a Neg movement operation in the syntax while the semantic/pragmatic approach derives it as an inference attributed to an excluded middle associated with Neg-Raising predicates. In this squib, I discuss a collection of novel and known data, which I argue indicate that both a Neg movement operation (...) as well as an excluded middle are necessary to account for the full range of data. I propose that Neg-Raising is an intrinsically semantic/pragmatic phenomenon and that the Neg movement operation is conditioned by the presence of an excluded middle. I offer a generalization that takes a step towards understanding this mysterious dependency. (shrink)

Meeting grand challenges requires responses that constructively combine multiple forms of expertise, both academic and non-academic; that is, it requires cross-disciplinary integration. But just what is cross-disciplinary integration? In this paper, we supply a preliminary answer by reviewing prominent accounts of cross-disciplinary integration from two literatures that are rarely brought together: cross-disciplinarity and philosophy of biology. Reflecting on similarities and differences in these accounts, we develop a framework that integrates their insights—integration as a generic combination process the details of which (...) are determined by the specific contexts in which particular integrations occur. One such context is cross-disciplinary research, which yields cross-disciplinary integration. We close by reflecting on the potential applicability of this framework to research efforts aimed at meeting grand challenges. (shrink)

In this ground-breaking new text, Patrick Baert analyses the central perspectives in the philosophy of social science, critically investigating the work of Durkheim, Weber, Popper, critical realism, critical theory, and Rorty's neo pragmatism. Places key writers in their social and political contexts, helping to make their ideas meaningful to students. Shows how these authors’ views have practical uses in empirical research. Lively approach that makes complex ideas understandable to upper-level students, as well as having scholarly appeal.

It is argued that core areas of philosophy can benefit from reflection on cross-disciplinary research (CDR). We start by giving a brief account of CDR, describing its variability and some of the ways in which philosophers can interact with it. We then provide an argument in principle for the conclusion that CDR is philosophically fecund, arguing that since CDR highlights fundamental differences among disciplinary research worldviews, it can be used to motivate new philosophical problems and supply new insights into old (...) problems. We close by providing an argument by example that uses the epistemology of peer disagreement to establish the potential of CDR for core philosophical areas. With this argument, we aim to demonstrate how the complex research contexts that CDR affords can point the way toward important avenues of epistemological research by highlighting potential limitations of key epistemological components, such as peerage and uniqueness. (shrink)

Carruthers argues that an integrated faculty of metarepresentation evolved for mindreading and was later exapted for metacognition. A more consistent application of his approach would regard metarepresentation in mindreading with the same skeptical rigor, concluding that the “faculty” may have been entirely exapted. Given this result, the usefulness of Carruthers’ line-drawing exercise is called into question.

This conceptual paper explores the relationship between an organization’s exclusive talent management practices, employees’ perceptions of the fairness of exclusive TM practices, and the corresponding impact on employee engagement. We propose that in organizations pursuing exclusive TM programs, employee perceptions of organizational justice of the exclusive TM practices may affect their employee engagement, which may influence both organizational and employee outcomes. Building on extant research, we present a conceptual framework depicting the relationship between exclusive TM practices, organizational justice and employee (...) engagement, with social exchange theory and equity theory as the framework’s foundation. The propositions in the framework are each supported by the respective literature. The perceived organizational justice and potential ramifications of exclusive TM practices for employees who are not included in corporate talent pools is an under-researched topic. The paper considers the perspectives of employees not included in corporate talent pools and explores how exclusive TM practices, as inputs, could lead to negative employee engagement outputs. In unpacking how exclusive TM practices could impact on employee engagement, the implications for organizations are underlined. The ethics and perceived fairness of exclusive TM practices, which have the potential to marginalize employees and lead to their disengagement, are considered. (shrink)

Les auteurs, à partir de rencontres entre historiens et spécialistes de littérature ou de cinéma, se penchent sur la récurrence du thème de la défaite. Vercingétorix, Jeanne d'Arc, Waterloo, Sedan, juin 1940 : la France exalte volontiers vaincus et pertes. La défaite permet de refonder une nation, un peuple, une communauté, elle est l'occasion d'un sursaut.

`This book grew out of the conviction, not in itself strange or startling, that the ordinary person can and should think straight rather than crooked.' Patrick Shaw has written a commonsense introduction to the use of logic in everyday thought and argument. It explains some of the rules of good argument and some of the ways in which arguments can fail, drawing illustrations from a variety of contemporary and international sources, such as the press, radio, and television. Symbols and (...) technicalities are kept to a minimum in this thorough and provocative investigation of the rational approach to thought - and its limitations. Logic and Its Limits emphasizes the use of logic in helping to settle and clarify disputes. It will help the reader to avoid bad arguments, to detect them in others, and so to think and argue more effectively. A wide range of thought-provoking examples and exercises concerned with contemporary social and political issues make this a readable and stimulating guide for the student and general reader alike. (shrink)

The Handbook of Modal Logic contains 20 articles, which collectively introduce contemporary modal logic, survey current research, and indicate the way in which the field is developing. The articles survey the field from a wide variety of perspectives: the underling theory is explored in depth, modern computational approaches are treated, and six major applications areas of modal logic (in Mathematics, Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Linguistics, Game Theory, and Philosophy) are surveyed. The book contains both well-written expository articles, suitable for beginners (...) approaching the subject for the first time, and advanced articles, which will help those already familiar with the field to deepen their expertise. Please visit: http://people.uleth.ca/~woods/RedSeriesPromo_WP/PubSLPR.html - Compact modal logic reference - Computational approaches fully discussed - Contemporary applications of modal logic covered in depth. (shrink)

Soren Kierkegaard, one of the most original thinkers of the nineteenth century, wrote widely on religious, psychological, and literary themes. This book shows how Kierkegaard developed his views in emphatic opposition to prevailing opinions. His arresting but paradoxical conception of religious belief is critically discussed, and Patrick Gardiner concludes this lucid introduction by showing how Kiekegaard has influenced contemporary thought.

Descartes with his sharp separation of the mental and the physical set the stage for the philosophy of mind for the next 350 years. Philosopher Patrick T. Mackenzie finds in the later writings of Wittgenstein the suggestion that Descartes got off on the wrong foot. Following Wittgenstein's lead, Mackenzie argues that instead of analyzing our human nature as a composite of mind and body, we should view ourselves as whole persons. One of the dividends of this approach to the (...) mind-body problem is that it provides us with a resolution to the problem of human freedom—i.e., how can a human being be free if his or her body (including the brain) belongs to a deterministic world? Mackenzie here argues that the person is largely free even though the movements of the body are determined by neurophysiological events. He takes the same approach to the philosophy of mind as that taken by M.R.Bennett and P.M.S.Hacker in their recent and controversial book, The Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience. Mackenzie's approach is, however, much more accessible. Students of philosophy and philosophers interested in the problem of human freedom will welcome Mackenzie's fresh approach, especially those disenchanted by the present list of mind-body "isms.". (shrink)

Why do humans make music? Theories of the evolution of musicality have focused mainly on the value of music for specific adaptive contexts such as mate selection, parental care, coalition signaling, and group cohesion. Synthesizing and extending previous proposals, we argue that social bonding is an overarching function that unifies all of these theories, and that musicality enabled social bonding at larger scales than grooming and other bonding mechanisms available in ancestral primate societies. We combine cross-disciplinary evidence from archeology, anthropology, (...) biology, musicology, psychology, and neuroscience into a unified framework that accounts for the biological and cultural evolution of music. We argue that the evolution of musicality involves gene–culture coevolution, through which proto-musical behaviors that initially arose and spread as cultural inventions had feedback effects on biological evolution because of their impact on social bonding. We emphasize the deep links between production, perception, prediction, and social reward arising from repetition, synchronization, and harmonization of rhythms and pitches, and summarize empirical evidence for these links at the levels of brain networks, physiological mechanisms, and behaviors across cultures and across species. Finally, we address potential criticisms and make testable predictions for future research, including neurobiological bases of musicality and relationships between human music, language, animal song, and other domains. The music and social bonding hypothesis provides the most comprehensive theory to date of the biological and cultural evolution of music. (shrink)

This paper develops and refines the suggestion that logical systems are conceptual artefacts that are the outcome of a design-process by exploring how a constructionist epistemology and meta-philosophy can be integrated within the philosophy of logic.

The practice of appealing to esoteric intuitions, long standard in analytic philosophy, has recently fallen on hard times. Various recent empirical results have suggested that philosophers are not currently able to distinguish good intuitions from bad. This paper evaluates one possible type of approach to this problematic methodological situation: calibration. Both critiquing and building on an argument from Robert Cummins, the paper explores what possible avenues may exist for the calibration of philosophical intuitions. It is argued that no good options (...) are currently available, but leaves open the real possibility of such a calibration in the future. (shrink)

By way of essays and a selection of primary sources in parallel text, Biography, Historiography, and Modes of Philosophizing provides an introduction to a vast, significant, but neglected corpus of early modern literature: collective biography. It focuses especially on the various related strands of political, philosophical, and intellectual and cultural biography as well as on the intersection between biography, historiography, and philosophy. Individual texts from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century are presented as examples of how the ancient collective biographical (...) tradition--as represented above all by Plutarch, Suetonius, Diogenes Laertius, and Jerome--was received and transformed in the Renaissance and beyond in accordance with the needs of humanism, religious controversy, politics, and the development of modern philosophy and science"--Provided by publisehr. (shrink)

Partant du débat qui oppose les orientations sémiologique et esthétique, l'auteur propose une troisième voie qui, comme les deux autres, vise à rendre compte de la perception esthétique du film, mais, au lieu de s'enfermer dans l'antinomie discours-figure, ou représentation-visibilité, problématise le fait de " l'impossible à représenter " dans sa confrontation avec le langage et le visible. Ce projet peut être considéré, selon l'auteur, comme une poétique, en un sens plus radical que la notion traditionnelle ou son prolongement chez (...) les formalistes russes, étant donné le thème de " l'articulation des signifiants à l'impossible " - une poétique qui procède de la crise de la représentation dans certains films (Duras) et trouve ses principaux instruments dans la psychanalyse. La première partie du livre explore deux propositions majeures de poétique, comme étude du discours et comme approche du sensible, puis les met à l'épreuve du cinéma de Duras, avant d'utiliser les conclusions de cette partie pour instaurer un débat épistémologique autour de la théorie psychanalytique du sujet divisé, laquelle permet d'accéder à la problématique centrale du livre : la rencontre avec le réel comme impossible. Cette perspective renvoie aux travaux de Jacques Lacan sur lesquels l'auteur se fonde pour introduire sa contribution la plus personnelle : le projet d'une nouvelle poétique du cinéma. (shrink)

In diesem Beitrag wollen wir zeigen, wieso die Fachdidaktik Philosophie und Ethik (neue) Ansätze entwickeln muss, um dem Anspruch auf (philosophische) Bildung von Menschen mit sonderpädagogischem Förderbedarf gerecht zu werden. Dafür zeigen wir anhand von Schüler_innen mit eingeschränkten Kommunikationsmöglichkeiten auf, wie Philosophieren mit ihnen dennoch möglich ist. Gleichzeitig wenden wir uns im Beitrag dem Haupteinwand zu, der darin besteht, dass Philosophieren mit dieser Schüler_innengruppe nicht möglich sei. Wir erklären unter welchen Umständen dieser Einwand nicht aufrecht erhalten werden sollte, sondern vielmehr (...) eine moralische Pflicht besteht, Menschen mit Behinderung philosophische Bildungsprozesse zu ermöglichen. (shrink)

" Je parle. Mes mots sont des pensées qui représentent. Dans leur essence même, ces pensées sont des énoncés vrais. Il est impossible en effet que ces mots qui s'imposent au nom de ma pensée puissent, dans leur évocation même, témoigner du faux. Comment l'acte de penser, dans ce qui l'institue comme énoncé encore une fois, pourrait-il m'abuser à travers ce qui constitue son acte même d'énonciation? " Que l'on ait pu parler de " mort de la métaphysique " est (...) absolument invraisemblable ; la métaphysique, en effet, n'a jamais été aussi " vivante " qu'aujourd'hui. Que l'on puisse, tout pareillement, imaginer que l'action aujourd'hui nécessaire à effectuer dans tous les domaines du savoir soit celle d'une " déconstruction " est tout aussi déconcertant ; il s'agit bien plutôt de tout l'inverse : de reconstruire. Non pas tellement de reconstruire des modes de savoir " nouveaux " mais, plus exactement, de reconstruire les questions de méthode par lesquelles nous pensons savoir. (shrink)

The author explores how Catholic social teaching and the principle of the common good can be successfully deployed in the public sphere, be it in relation to education, economics, democracy or civil rights.

In the Anthropocene, the fact that human activity is enmeshed with the existence and actions of every kind of other being is inescapable. As a result, the planetary ecological crisis has brought forth an urgent need to rethink understandings of human action. One response holds that the transformations necessary to tackle today’s crises will emerge from the distinctive capacity of human beings to transcend their environment. Another school of thought calls for seeing action as composite, produced by distributed networks of (...) human and nonhuman agents. Yet the first of these is open to charges of human exceptionalism, while the second, according to its critics, lacks effective political traction. Martin Crowley argues that a new conception of political agency is necessary to break this impasse. Engaging with thinkers such as Bruno Latour, Bernard Stiegler, and Catherine Malabou, Crowley proposes an original account of agency as both distributed and decisive. Challenging the prevailing view of agency as exclusively human, he explores how a politics that incorporates nonhuman agency can intervene in the real world, examining timely issues such as climate-related migration and digital-algorithmic politics. A major intervention into ongoing debates in posthumanism, political ecology, and political theory, Accidental Agents reshapes our understanding of political agency in and for a more-than-human world. (shrink)

Enhancing Communication & Collaboration in Interdisciplinary Research, edited by Michael O'Rourke, Stephen Crowley, Sanford D. Eigenbrode, and J. D. Wulfhorst, is a volume of previously unpublished, state-of-the-art chapters on interdisciplinary communication and collaboration written by leading figures and promising junior scholars in the world of interdisciplinary research, education, and administration. Designed to inform both teaching and research, this innovative book covers the spectrum of interdisciplinary activity, offering a timely emphasis on collaborative interdisciplinary work. The book’s four main parts focus (...) on theoretical perspectives, case studies, communication tools, and institutional perspectives, while a final chapter ties together the various strands that emerge in the book and defines trend-lines and future research questions for those conducting work on interdisciplinary communication. (shrink)

Up to now theories of semantic information have implicitly relied on logical monism, or the view that there is one true logic. The latter position has been explicitly challenged by logical pluralists. Adopting an unbiased attitude in the philosophy of information, we take a suggestion from Beall and Restall at heart and exploit logical pluralism to recognise another kind of pluralism. The latter is called informational pluralism, a thesis whose implications for a theory of semantic information we explore.