Beyond belief change and meme adoption, both genetics and infection have been spoken of in terms of information transfer. What we examine here, concentrating on the specific case of transfer between sub-networks, are the differences in network dynamics in these cases: the different network dynamics of germs, genes, and memes. Germs and memes, it turns out, exhibit a very different dynamics across networks. For infection, measured in terms of time to total infection, it is network type rather than degree of (...) linkage between sub-networks that is of primary importance. For belief transfer, measured in terms of time to consensus, it is degree of linkage rather than network type that is crucial. Genes model each of these other dynamics in part, but match neither in full. For genetics, like belief transfer and unlike infection, network type makes little difference. Like infection and unlike belief, on the other hand, the dynamics of genetic information transfer within single and between linked networks are much the same. In ways both surprising and intriguing, transfer of genetic information seems to be robust across network differences crucial for the other two. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that the way information transfers across networks depends importantly on the structure of the network. Here, we show that the mechanism of information transfer is crucial: in many respects the effect of the specific transfer mechanism swamps network effects. Results are demonstrated in terms of three different types of transfer mechanism: germs, genes, and memes. With an emphasis on the specific case of transfer between sub-networks, we explore both the dynamics of each of these across networks (...) and a measure of their comparative fitness. Germ and meme transfer exhibit very different dynamics across linked networks. For germs, measured in terms of time to total infection, network type rather than degree of linkage between sub-networks is the primary factor. For memes or belief transfer, measured in terms of time to consensus, it is the opposite: degree of linkage trumps network type in importance. The dynamics of genetic information transfer is unlike either germs or memes. Transfer of genetic information is robust across network differences to which both germs and memes prove sensitive. We also consider function: how well germ, gene, and meme transfer mechanisms can meet their respective objectives of infecting the population, mixing and transferring genetic information, and spreading a message. A shared formal measure of fitness is introduced for purposes of comparison, again with an emphasis on linked sub-networks. Meme transfer proves superior to transfer by genetic reproduction on that measure, with both memes and genes superior to infection dynamics across all networks types. What kinds of network structure optimize fitness also differ among the three. Both germs and genes show fairly stable fitness with added links between sub-networks, but genes show greater sensitivity to the structure of sub-networks at issue. Belief transfer, in contrast to the other two, shows a clear decline in fitness with increasingly connected networks. When it comes to understanding how information moves on networks, our results indicate that questions of information dynamics on networks cannot be answered in terms of networks alone. A primary role is played by the specific mechanism of information transfer at issue. We must first ask about how a particular type of information moves. (shrink)

The publication of Michel Foucault’s lectures at the Collège de France in the late 1970s has provided new insight into crucial developments in his late work, including the return to an analysis of the state and the introduction of biopolitics as a central theme. According to one dominant interpretation, these shifts did not entail a fundamental methodological break; the approach Foucault developed in his work on knowledge/power was simply applied to new objects. The present article argues that this reading — (...) which is colored by the overwhelming privilege afforded to Discipline and Punish in secondary literature — obscures an important modification in Foucault’s method and diagnostic style that occurred between the introduction of biopolitics in 1976 (in Society Must Be Defended) and the lectures of 1978 ( Security, Territory, Population) and 1979 ( Birth of Biopolitics). Foucault’s initial analysis of biopolitics was couched in surprisingly epochal and totalizing claims about the characteristic forms of power in modernity. The later lectures, by contrast, suggest what I propose to call a ‘topological’ analysis that examines the ‘patterns of correlation’ in which heterogeneous elements — techniques, material forms, institutional structures and technologies of power — are configured, as well as the redeployments through which these patterns are transformed. I also indicate how attention to the topological dimension of Foucault’s analysis might change our understanding of key themes in his late work: biopolitics, the analysis of thinking, and the concept of governmentality. (shrink)

A growing interest in and concern about the adequacy and fairness of modern peer-review practices in publication and funding are apparent across a wide range of scientific disciplines. Although questions about reliability, accountability, reviewer bias, and competence have been raised, there has been very little direct research on these variables.The present investigation was an attempt to study the peer-review process directly, in the natural setting of actual journal referee evaluations of submitted manuscripts. As test materials we selected 12 already published (...) research articles by investigators from prestigious and highly productive American psychology departments, one article from each of 12 highly regarded and widely read American psychology journals with high rejection rates (80%) and nonblind refereeing practices.With fictitious names and institutions substituted for the original ones (e.g., Tri-Valley Center for Human Potential), the altered manuscripts were formally resubmitted to the journals that had originally refereed and published them 18 to 32 months earlier. Of the sample of 38 editors and reviewers, only three (8%) detected the resubmissions. This result allowed nine of the 12 articles to continue through the review process to receive an actual evaluation: eight of the nine were rejected. Sixteen of the 18 referees (89%) recommended against publication and the editors concurred. The grounds for rejection were in many cases described as “serious methodological flaws.” A number of possible interpretations of these data are reviewed and evaluated. (shrink)

Language is coordination. Pursuing this, the present Special Issue of Pragmatics & Cognition challenges two widely held positions. First, the papers reject the claim that language is essentially ‘symbolic’. Second, they deny that minds represent verbal patterns. Rather, language is social, individual, and contributes the feeling of thinking. Simply, it is distributed. Elucidating this claim, the opening papers report empirically-based work on the anticipatory dynamics of reading, their cognitive consequences, Shakespearean theatre, what images evoke, and insight problem-solving. Having given reasons (...) for rejecting linguistic autonomy, the papers turn to theory building. Initially, attention is given to a possible origin for semiotic cognition. Then, it is claimed that language functions by realizing values. Next, it is argued that human dynamics are co-regulated by cultural and biological symbols. Finally, in a review article, the distributed view of language is used to contrast Clark’s organism-centered cognition with what is here called ecologically extended cognition. (shrink)

Behavioral and physiological synchronization have important implications for work teams with regard to workload management, coordinated behavior and overall functioning. This study extended previous work on the nonlinear statistical structure of GSR series in dyads to larger teams and included subjective ratings of workload and contributions to problem solving. Eleven teams of 3 or 4 people played a series of six emergency response (ER) games against a single opponent. Seven of the groups worked under a time pressure instruction at the (...) beginning of the first game. The other four groups were not given that instruction until the beginning of the fourth game. The optimal lag length for the teams, which appeared to be phase-locked, was substantially shorter than that obtained previously for loosely-coupled dyads. There was a complex nonlinear effect from the time pressure manipulation on the autocorrelation over time that reflected workload and fatigue dynamics that were operating. The R2 values for linear and nonlinear statistical models differed by less than.01. The average amount of influence from one ER team member to another was 4.5-4.7% of the variance in GSR readings. ER team members were classified as drivers and empaths, based on the autocorrelations and transfer influences to and from other players in the GSR time series. Empaths were rated by their peers as making more types of positive contributions to the problem solving discussions than others, and drivers received the lowest ratings. Larger Lyapunov exponents that were calculated from the GSR time series were positively correlated with individuals’ ratings of subjective workload and were negatively correlated with leadership indicators. Several directions for further research are outlined. (shrink)

Nevertheless, Marx's essay ["On the Jewish Question"] has a profound bearing upon The Jew of Malta; their conjunction enriches our understanding of the authors; relation to ideology and, more generally, raises fruitful questions about a Marxist reading of literature. The fact that both works use the figure of the perfidious Jew provides a powerful link between Renaissance and modern thought, for despite the great differences to which I have just pointed, this shared reference is not an accident or a mirage. (...) "On the Jewish Question" represents the nineteenth-century development of a late sixteenth-century idea or, more accurately, a late sixteenth-century trope. Marlowe and Marx seize upon the Jew as a kind of powerful rhetorical device, a way of marshalling deep popular hatred and clarifying its object. The Jew is charged not with racial deviance or religious impiety but with economic and social crime, crime that is committed not only against the dominant Christian society but, in less "pure" form, by that society. Both writers hope to focus attention upon activity that is seen as at once alien and yet central to the life of the community and to direct against that activity the anti-Semitic feeling of the audience. The Jews themselves in their real historical situation are finally incidental in these works, Marx's as well as Marlowe's, except insofar as they excite the fear and loathing of the great mass of Christians. It is this privileged access to mass psychology by means of a semimythical figure linked in the popular imagination with usury, sharp dealing, and ruthless cunning that attracts both the sixteenth-century playwright and the nineteenth-century polemicist.1 · 1. Anti-Semitism, it should be emphasized, is never merely a trope to be adopted or discarded by an author as he might choose to employ zeugma or eschew personification. It is charged from the start with irrationality and bad faith and only partly rationalized as a rhetorical strategy. Marlowe depicts his Jew with the compulsive cruelty that characterizes virtually all his work, while Marx's essay obviously has elements of a sharp, even hysterical, denial of his religious background. It is particularly tempting to reduce the latter work to a dark chapter in its author's personal history. The links I am attempting to establish with Marlowe or the more direct link with Feuerbach, however, locate the essay in a far wider context. Still, the extreme violence of the latter half of Marx's work and his utter separation of himself from the people he excoriates undoubtedly owe much to his personal situation. It is interesting that the tone of the attack on the Jews rises to an almost ecstatic disgust at the moment when Marx seems to be locating the Jews most clearly as a product of bourgeois culture; it is as if Marx were eager to prove that he is in no way excusing or forgiving the Jews. Stephen J. Greenblatt is the Class of 1932 Professor of English Literature at the University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of Sir Walter Raleigh: The Renaissance Man and His Roles, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare, Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World, and the editor of a collection of essays, New World Encounters. (shrink)

By considering a variety of readings of Renaissance Florence from Burckhardt to the present, this article discusses the nature of the interrelation between the archive and the historian, with a view to illustrating the partiality of both. The records contained within the archives are by nature fragmentary; vestiges of the past, they are also partial in the sense of being subjective, testimonies to past relationships either between individuals or between individuals and institutions - social or political. Likewise, the readings of (...) historians are partial both in the sense that the historian’s research is focused upon particular parts of the archive and in his or her subjectivity as an historian. Interestingly, in this context post-Burckhardtian Florentine historiography shares common ground, however unwittingly, with certain aspects of post-modern writing in decentring the subject, for observations concerning the partial subjectivity of Burckhardt’s Renaissance individual apply equally to observations concerning the partial subjectivity of historians as writers. The fiction of an objective historical method producing hard history becomes apparent once the static relation of historian as subject researching the archive as object is reconfigured as a dynamic and dialectical process. Through the acknowledging of the contingency of such archival readings it becomes apparent that the archive itself is a symbolic construct constituted through the process of writing. (shrink)

Recent studies have provided evidence of associations between neurochemistry and reading (dis)ability (Pugh et al., 2014). Based on a long history of studies indicating that fluent reading entails the automatic convergence of the written and spoken forms of language and our recently proposed Neural Noise Hypothesis (Hancock et al., 2017), we hypothesized that individual differences in cross-modal integration would mediate, at least partially, the relationship between neurochemical concentrations and reading. Cross-modal integration was measured in 231 children using a two-alternative forced (...) choice cross-modal matching task with three language conditions (letters, words, and pseudowords) and two levels of difficulty within each language condition. Neurometabolite concentrations of Choline (Cho), Glutamate (Glu), gamma-Aminobutyric (GABA), and N- acetyl-aspartate (NAA) were then measured in a subset of this sample (n = 70) with Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (MRS). A structural equation mediation model revealed that the effect of cross-modal word matching mediated the relationship between increased Glu (which has been proposed to be an index of neural noise) and poorer reading ability. In addition, the effect of cross-modal word matching fully mediated a relationship between increased Cho and poorer reading ability. Multilevel mixed effects models confirmed that lower Cho predicted faster cross-modal matching reaction time, specifically in the hard word condition. These Cho... (shrink)

In this paper we make a simple theoretical point using a practical issue as an example. The simple theoretical point is that robustness is not 'all or nothing': in asking whether a system is robust one has to ask 'robust with respect to what property?' and 'robust over what set of changes in the system?' The practical issue used to illustrate the point is an examination of degrees of linkage between sub-networks and a pointed contrast in robustness and fragility between (...) the dynamics of (1) contact infection and (2) information transfer or belief change. Time to infection across linked sub-networks, it turns out, is fairly robust with regard to the degree of linkage between them. Time to infection is fragile and sensitive, however, with regard to the type of sub-network involved: total, ring, small world, random, or scale-free. Aspects of robustness and fragility are reversed where it is belief updating with reinforcement rather than infection that is at issue. In information dynamics, the pattern of time to consensus is robust across changes in network type but remarkably fragile with respect to degree of linkage between sub-networks. These results have important implications for public health interventions in realistic social networks, particularly with an eye to ethnic and socio-economic sub-communities, and in social networks with sub-communities changing in structure or linkage. (shrink)

In order to understand the transmission of a disease across a population we will have to understand not only the dynamics of contact infection but the transfer of health-care beliefs and resulting health-care behaviors across that population. This paper is a first step in that direction, focusing on the contrasting role of linkage or isolation between sub-networks in (a) contact infection and (b) belief transfer. Using both analytical tools and agent-based simulations we show that it is the structure of a (...) network that is primary for predicting contact infection—whether the networks or sub-networks at issue are distributed ring networks or total networks (hubs, wheels, small world, random, or scale-free for example). Measured in terms of time to total infection, degree of linkage between sub-networks plays a minor role. The case of belief is importantly different. Using a simplified model of belief reinforcement, and measuring belief transfer in terms of time to community consensus, we show that degree of linkage between sub-networks plays a major role in social communication of beliefs. Here, in contrast to the case of contract infection, network type turns out to be of relatively minor importance. What you believe travels differently. In a final section we show that the pattern of belief transfer exhibits a classic power law regardless of the type of network involved. (shrink)

Public health care interventions—regarding vaccination, obesity, and HIV, for example—standardly take the form of information dissemination across a community. But information networks can vary importantly between different ethnic communities, as can levels of trust in information from different sources. We use data from the Greater Pittsburgh Random Household Health Survey to construct models of information networks for White and Black communities--models which reflect the degree of information contact between individuals, with degrees of trust in information from various sources correlated with (...) positions in that social network. With simple assumptions regarding belief change and social reinforcement, we use those modeled networks to build dynamic agent-based models of how information can be expected to flow and how beliefs can be expected to change across each community. With contrasting information from governmental and religious sources, the results show importantly different dynamic patterns of belief polarization within the two communities. (shrink)

In his list of essential reading, Richard Baxter includes a section on “affectionate practical English writers.” Among others, he mentions George Swinnock. While essentially forgotten today, Swinnock's contemporaries held him in high esteem as a skilful physician of the soul. The focus of this article is Swinnock's view of Scripture meditation as necessary for bridging the gap between head and heart in Christian experience. He encourages his readers to “retire out of the world's company, to converse with the word of (...) God.” He believes this “conversing” warms the heart, causing it to “boil with love” for God. With that basic premise in view, this article is organized around three main sections. The first establishes Swinnock's place in the Puritan meditative tradition, stretching back to Joseph Hall. The second analyzes Swinnock's faculty-focused approach to meditation, whereby it begins in the understanding, extends to the affections, and ends in the will, resulting in practical knowledge. The third section considers Swinnock's teaching on the role of the Holy Spirit in Scripture meditation. As with the other means of grace, meditation is ultimately dependent upon the Holy Spirit to work through it and along with it directly upon the faculties of the soul. The article concludes with Swinnock's threefold approach to transformative Scripture meditation. (shrink)

Gabriel Nuchelmans, Dilemmatic arguments. Towards a history of their logic and rhetoric. Amsterdam, New York, Oxford, Tokyo:North-Holland, 1991. 152pp. No price stated Francis P. Dinneen, Peter of Spain:language in dispute. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1990. xxxix + 271 pp. Hfl. 110/$58.00 Charles H. Manekin, The logic of Gersonides. A translation of Sefer ha-heqqesh ha-yashar of Rabbi Levi ben Gershom with introduction, commentary and analytical glossary. Dordrecht, Boston and London:Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1992. xii + 341 pp. £61.00 F. (...) P. Ramsey, Notes on philosophy, probability and mathematics. Edited by Maria Carla Galavotti. Naples:Bibliopolis, 1991 [published 1992]. 349 pp. No price stated Thomas Drucker, Perspectives on the History of Mathematical Logic. Boston, Basel, Berlin; Birkhäuser, 1991. xxiii 4- 195 pp. 108 SFr./128 DM J.P. Cleave, A study of logics. Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1991. xiii + 417 pp. £65.00 Hartry Field, Realism, mathematics and modality. Oxford and Cambridge :Blackwell, 1989. viii + 290 pp. £14.95 T.E. Forster, Set theory with a universal set, exploring an untyped universe. Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1992. viii + 152 pp., £25.00 Mark Sainsbury, Logical forms:an introduction to philosophical logic. Cambridge, Mass, and Oxford: Basil Blackwell Publishers, 1991. viii + 398 pp. £40.00, £11.95 L.C. Burns, Vagueness. An investigation into natural languages and the sorites paradox. Dordrecht, Boston and London:Kluwer, 1991. xii + 202 pp. dollar;130.00/£74.00/Dfl 130 Douglas Walton, Slippery slope arguments. Oxford:The Clarendon Press, 1992. xi + 296 pp. £35.00 Bas Van Fraassen, Quantum mechanics. An empiricist view. Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1991. xvi + 541 pp. £50.00 /£17.50 R. Giuntini, Quantum logic and hidden variables. Mannheim, Vienna and Zürich:BI-Wissenschaf ts-verlag, 1991. x + 184 pp. No price stated W. Spohn, B.C. Van Fraassn And B. Skyrms, Existence and explanation:essays presented in honor of Karel Lambert. Dordrect, Boston and London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991. xii 4- 243 pp. £56.00 Michele Di Francesco, Il realismo analitico. Logica, ontologia e significato nel primo Russell Milan:Guerini, 1991. 269 pp. 30,000 Lire Kenneth Blackwell and Carl Spadont, A detailed catalogue of the second archives of Bertrand Russell. Bristol:Thoemmes Press, 1992. xxvi + 433 pp. £60.00. (shrink)

fusion theory challenges efforts to see theory as inhibiting by presenting an approach that is innovative, eclectic, and subtle in order to draw out competing and constellating ideas and opinions. This collected volume of essays examines fusion theory and demonstrates how the theory can be applied to the reading of various works of Indian English novelists.

This is a supplemental text for all philosophy courses that facilitates, invigorates, and enhances student learning by teaching students to read and write effectively.

In the last decade, reading research has seen a paradigmatic shift. A new wave of computational models of orthographic processing that offer various forms of noisy position or context-sensitive coding have revolutionized the field of visual word recognition. The influx of such models stems mainly from consistent findings, coming mostly from European languages, regarding an apparent insensitivity of skilled readers to letter order. Underlying the current revolution is the theoretical assumption that the insensitivity of readers to letter order reflects the (...) special way in which the human brain encodes the position of letters in printed words. The present article discusses the theoretical shortcomings and misconceptions of this approach to visual word recognition. A systematic review of data obtained from a variety of languages demonstrates that letter-order insensitivity is neither a general property of the cognitive system nor a property of the brain in encoding letters. Rather, it is a variant and idiosyncratic characteristic of some languages, mostly European, reflecting a strategy of optimizing encoding resources, given the specific structure of words. Since the main goal of reading research is to develop theories that describe the fundamental and invariant phenomena of reading across orthographies, an alternative approach to model visual word recognition is offered. The dimensions of a possible universal model of reading, which outlines the common cognitive operations involved in orthographic processing in all writing systems, are discussed. (shrink)

Medical school curricula, although traditionally and historically dominated by science, have generally accepted, appreciated, and welcomed the inclusion of literature over the past several decades. Recent concerns about medical professional formation have led to discussions about the specific role and contribution of literature and stories. In this article, we demonstrate how professionalism and the study of literature can be brought into relationship through critical and interrogative interactions based in the literary skill of close reading. Literature in medicine can question the (...) meaning of “professionalism” itself, thereby resisting standardization in favor of diversity method and of outcome. Literature can also actively engage learners with questions about the human condition, providing a larger context within which to consider professional identity formation. Our fundamental contention is that, within a medical education framework, literature is highly suited to assist learners in questioning conventional thinking and assumptions about various dimensions of professionalism. (shrink)

The concept of representation has become almost inextricably bound to the concept of symbol systems. the concepts is nowhere more prevalent than in descriptions of "internal representations." These representations are thought to occur in an internal symbol system that allows the brain to store and use information. In this paper we explore a different approach to understanding psychological processes, one that retains a commitment to representations and computations but that is not based on the idea that information must be stored (...) and manipulated in symbol systems. In particular, we suggest that the notion of a symbol system as currently understood construes psychological processes in terms of a specific type of computational system, in which a control function "reads," "interprets," and manipulates discrete entities called "symbols." We argue that other types of computational systems may provide a more appropriate characterization of psychological processes. One implication of our argument is the need to consider the constraints placed on computational theories in psychology by the nature of the computing device itself, the human brain. Perhaps surprisingly, this implication leads us to the conclusion that a "functionalist" conception of psychological processes (discussed below) does not entail that physiology is irrelevant to psychology, as has been maintained by prominent adherents of the symbol-systems approach. (shrink)

In 1997, the Nobel Prize-winning novelist J. M. Coetzee, invited to Princeton University to lecture on the moral status of animals, read a work of fiction about an eminent novelist, Elizabeth Costello, invited to lecture on the moral status of animals at an American college. Coetzee's lectures were published in 1999 as The Lives of Animals, and reappeared in 2003 as part of his novel Elizabeth Costello; and both lectures and novel have attracted the critical attention of a number (...) of influential philosophers--including Peter Singer, Cora Diamond, Stanley Cavell, and John McDowell. In The Wounded Animal, Stephen Mulhall closely examines Coetzee's writings about Costello, and the ways in which philosophers have responded to them, focusing in particular on their powerful presentation of both literature and philosophy as seeking, and failing, to represent reality--in part because of reality's resistance to such projects of understanding, but also because of philosophy's unwillingness to learn from literature how best to acknowledge that resistance. In so doing, Mulhall is led to consider the relations among reason, language, and the imagination, as well as more specific ethical issues concerning the moral status of animals, the meaning of mortality, the nature of evil, and the demands of religion. The ancient quarrel between philosophy and literature here displays undiminished vigor and renewed significance. (shrink)

In 1997, the Nobel Prize-winning novelist J. M. Coetzee, invited to Princeton University to lecture on the moral status of animals, read a work of fiction about an eminent novelist, Elizabeth Costello, invited to lecture on the moral status of animals at an American college. Coetzee's lectures were published in 1999 as The Lives of Animals, and reappeared in 2003 as part of his novel Elizabeth Costello; and both lectures and novel have attracted the critical attention of a number (...) of influential philosophers--including Peter Singer, Cora Diamond, Stanley Cavell, and John McDowell. In The Wounded Animal, Stephen Mulhall closely examines Coetzee's writings about Costello, and the ways in which philosophers have responded to them, focusing in particular on their powerful presentation of both literature and philosophy as seeking, and failing, to represent reality--in part because of reality's resistance to such projects of understanding, but also because of philosophy's unwillingness to learn from literature how best to acknowledge that resistance. In so doing, Mulhall is led to consider the relations among reason, language, and the imagination, as well as more specific ethical issues concerning the moral status of animals, the meaning of mortality, the nature of evil, and the demands of religion. The ancient quarrel between philosophy and literature here displays undiminished vigor and renewed significance. (shrink)

Transnational corporations have become actors with significant political power and authority which should entail responsibility and liability, specifically direct liability for complicity in human rights violations. Holding TNCs liable for human rights violations is complicated by the discontinuity between the fragmented legal/political structure of the TNC and its integrated strategic reality and the international state system which privileges sovereignty and non-intervention over the protection of individual rights. However, the post-Westphalian transition—the emergence of multiple authorities, increasing ambiguity of borders and jurisdiction (...) and blurring of the line between the public and private spheres—should facilitate imposing direct responsibility on transnational firms. Mechanisms for imposing direct responsibility on TNCs are considered including voluntary agreements and international law. However, I conclude that a hybrid public-private regime which relies on non-hierarchical compliance mechanisms is likely to be both more effective and consistent with the structure of the emerging transnational order. (shrink)

What is the importance of deconstruction, and the writing of Jacques Derrida in particular, for literary criticism today? Derek Attridge argues that the challenge of Derrida's work for our understanding of literature and its value has still not been fully met, and in this book, which traces a close engagement with Derrida's writing over two decades and reflects an interest in that work going back a further two decades, shows how that work can illuminate a variety of topics. Chapters include (...) an overview of deconstruction as a critical practice today, discussions of the secret, postcolonialism, ethics, literary criticism, jargon, fiction, and photography, and responses to the theoretical writing of Emmanuel Levinas, Roland Barthes, and J. Hillis Miller. Also included is a discussion of the recent reading of Derrida's philosophy as 'radical atheism', and the book ends with a conversation on deconstruction and place with the theorist and critic Jean-Michel Rabate. Running throughout is a concern with the question of responsibility, as exemplified in Derrida's own readings of literary and philosophical texts: responsibility to the work being read, responsibility to the protocols of rational argument, and responsibility to the reader. (shrink)

_ Consequentialism_ collects, for the first time, both the main classical sources and the central contemporary expressions of this important position. Edited and introduced by Stephen Darwall, these readings are essential for anyone interested in normative ethics. Edited and introduced by Stephen Darwall, examines key topics in the consequentialist branch of moral theory. Includes seven essays which respond to the classic sources. Includes an insightful discussion of central topics in consequentialism by John Rawls and Amartya Sen. Includes classic (...) articles by key figures such Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Henry Sidgwick and G. E. Moore; and recent reactions to this work by philosophers including Philip Pettit, Derek Parfit, Samuel Scheffler, Peter Railton, R. B. Brandt, J. C. Harsanyi, and Robert Adams. (shrink)

_ _ _Consequentialism_ collects, for the first time, both the main classical sources and the central contemporary expressions of this important position. Edited and introduced by Stephen Darwall, these readings are essential for anyone interested in normative ethics. Edited and introduced by Stephen Darwall, examines key topics in the consequentialist branch of moral theory. Includes seven essays which respond to the classic sources. Includes an insightful discussion of central topics in consequentialism by John Rawls and Amartya Sen. Includes (...) classic articles by key figures such Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Henry Sidgwick and G. E. Moore; and recent reactions to this work by philosophers including Philip Pettit, Derek Parfit, Samuel Scheffler, Peter Railton, R. B. Brandt, J. C. Harsanyi, and Robert Adams. (shrink)

J. M. Coetzee’s ‘Jesus’ trilogy extends and intensifies his long-term interest in engaging with a wide range of texts, themes, and assumptions that help constitute the history of Western European philosophy. In this commentary, Stephen Mulhall extends his own earlier work on Coetzee’s previous stagings of the ancient quarrel between philosophy and literature by identifying and following out various ways in which the ‘Jesus’ trilogy activates and interrogates themes drawn from Wittgenstein’s later philosophy. These themes include rival conceptions of (...) counting and reading, the relation between concepts and wider forms of life, and the intertwined fate of philosophy, literature, and religion in a resolutely secular world. In these ways, Wittgenstein’s and so Coetzee’s visions of the world disclose their uncanny intimacy with issues and values central to the critique of modernity elaborated in the work of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre. (shrink)

Foucault, Power, and Education invites internationally renowned scholar Stephen J. Ball to reflect on the importance and influence of Foucault on his work in educational policy.

1 Introducing Monsieur Foucault Stephen J. Ball Michel Foucault is an enigma, a massively influential intellectual who steadfastly refused to align himself ...

This book develops an alternative approach to sentence- and word-meaning, which I dub the speech-act theoretic approach, or STA. Instead of employing the syntactic and semantic forms of modern logic–principally, quantification theory–to construct semantic theories, STA employs speech-act structures. The structures it employs are those postulated by a novel theory of speech-acts. STA develops a compositional semantics in which surface grammar is integrated with semantic interpretation in a way not allowed by standard quantification-based theories. It provides a pragmatic theory of (...) truth, a treatment of logically complex discourse as expressive cognitive states, and a background metaphysics in which the world is a totality of logically simple states of affairs. The book also puts forward an account of how intentional states provide the simple, representational foundation for a superstructure of speech-act structures–a system of thoughts–that far outruns the expressive power of the intentional foundation. In short, it provides an account of cognitive foundations of a language and a naturalistic reduction of semantics through an expressive theory of semantic norms. (shrink)

Frege’s distinction between force and sense is a central pillar of modern thinking about meaning. This is the idea that a self-standing utterance of a sentence S can be divided into two components. One is the proposition P that S’s linguistic meaning and context associates with it. The other is S’s illocutionary force. The force/sense distinction is associated with another thesis, the embedding principle, that implies that the only content that embeds in compound sentences is propositional content. We argue that (...) both the Force/Sense distinction and the principle of embedding are seriously challenged by figurative language, and irony in particular. We conclude that theorists need to go back to the drawing board about the nature of illocutionary acts. (shrink)