Overt racism and discrimination have been on the decline in the United States for at least two generations. Yet many American institutions continue to produce racial disparities. Sociologists and social critics have predominantly explained continuing disparities as results of continuing racism and discrimination, albeit in increasingly covert, anonymous forms; these critics suggest racism and discrimination have to be understood as historical, systemic problems operating at the level of institutions, culture, and society, even if overt forms are now rare. With increasing (...) reliance upon a proliferation of notions including “institutional racism,” “institutionalized discrimination,” and “glass ceilings,” however, scholars and critics alike have grown increasingly dependent upon statistical data on inequalities and institutional outcomes as grounds for theoretical and political inferences concerning collective motives or prejudices. In this crucial respect, insights from beyond studies of race and inequality, drawing especially on Wittgensteinian and Schutzian contributions to social thought, stand to illuminate the pragmatic, moral reasoning at work in the institutional racism argument and similar approaches. Such reflexive attention to a central conceptual resource of contemporary social criticism stands to bring attention back to the basic empirical and critical questions of how to study and engage with continuing inequalities in the post-civil rights era. These questions can certainly be addressed through theoretical stipulation and political claims-making, but a more viable conceptual and empiricalfoundation for both theory and criticism can be gained by attending more respectfully to foundational issues of meaning and interpretation in the human sciences and human relations. (shrink)

Overt racism and discrimination have been on the decline in the United States for at least two generations. Yet many American institutions continue to produce racial disparities. Sociologists and social critics have predominantly explained continuing disparities as results of continuing racism and discrimination, albeit in increasingly covert, anonymous forms; these critics suggest racism and discrimination have to be understood as historical, systemic problems operating at the level of institutions, culture, and society, even if overt forms are now rare. With increasing (...) reliance upon a proliferation of notions including “institutional racism,” “institutionalized discrimination,” and “glass ceilings,” however, scholars and critics alike have grown increasingly dependent upon statistical data on inequalities and institutional outcomes as grounds for theoretical and political inferences concerning collective motives or prejudices. In this crucial respect, insights from beyond studies of race and inequality, drawing especially on Wittgensteinian and Schutzian contributions to social thought, stand to illuminate the pragmatic, moral reasoning at work in the institutional racism argument and similar approaches. Such reflexive attention to a central conceptual resource of contemporary social criticism stands to bring attention back to the basic empirical and critical questions of how to study and engage with continuing inequalities in the post-civil rights era. These questions can certainly be addressed through theoretical stipulation and political claims-making, but a more viable conceptual and empiricalfoundation for both theory and criticism can be gained by attending more respectfully to foundational issues of meaning and interpretation in the human sciences and human relations. (shrink)

Overt racism and discrimination have been on the decline in the United States for at least two generations. Yet many American institutions continue to produce racial disparities. Sociologists and social critics have predominantly explained continuing disparities as results of continuing racism and discrimination, albeit in increasingly covert, anonymous forms; these critics suggest racism and discrimination have to be understood as historical, systemic problems operating at the level of institutions, culture, and society, even if overt forms are now rare. With increasing (...) reliance upon a proliferation of notions including “institutional racism,” “institutionalized discrimination,” and “glass ceilings,” however, scholars and critics alike have grown increasingly dependent upon statistical data on inequalities and institutional outcomes as grounds for theoretical and political inferences concerning collective motives or prejudices. In this crucial respect, insights from beyond studies of race and inequality, drawing especially on Wittgensteinian and Schutzian contributions to social thought, stand to illuminate the pragmatic, moral reasoning at work in the institutional racism argument and similar approaches. Such reflexive attention to a central conceptual resource of contemporary social criticism stands to bring attention back to the basic empirical and critical questions of how to study and engage with continuing inequalities in the post-civil rights era. These questions can certainly be addressed through theoretical stipulation and political claims-making, but a more viable conceptual and empiricalfoundation for both theory and criticism can be gained by attending more respectfully to foundational issues of meaning and interpretation in the human sciences and human relations. (shrink)

It is well known that MTL satisfies the finite embeddability property. Thus MTL is complete w. r. t. the class of all finite MTL-chains. In order to reach a deeper understanding of the structure of this class, we consider the extensions of MTL by adding the generalized contraction since each finite MTL-chain satisfies a form of this generalized contraction. Simultaneously, we also consider extensions of MTL by the generalized excluded middle laws introduced in [9] and the axiom of weak cancellation (...) defined in [31]. The algebraic counterpart of these logics is studied characterizing the subdirectly irreducible, the semisimple, and the simple algebras. Finally, some important algebraic and logical properties of the considered logics are discussed: local finiteness, finite embeddability property, finite model property, decidability, and standard completeness. (shrink)

Der Begriff «Harmonie» wird unter musikalischen, philosophischen, psychologischen und neurologischen Gesichtspunkten behandelt. Sein Bezug zur Verschmelzungslehre von Carl Stumpf wird erörtert. Die Beiträge des Bandes reichen von der antiken Musiktheorie über die Phänomenologie bis zu neuen neuroakustichen Modellen.

Recent studies indicate that mammalian chromosomes contain discretecis‐acting loci that control replication timing, mitotic condensation, and stability of entire chromosomes. Disruption of the large non‐coding RNA gene ASAR6 results in late replication, an under‐condensed appearance during mitosis, and structural instability of human chromosome 6. Similarly, disruption of the mouse Xist gene in adult somatic cells results in a late replication and instability phenotype on the X chromosome. ASAR6 shares many characteristics with Xist, including random mono‐allelic expression and asynchronous replication timing. (...) Additional “chromosome engineering” studies indicate that certain chromosome rearrangements affecting many different chromosomes display this abnormal replication and instability phenotype. These observations suggest that all mammalian chromosomes contain “inactivation/stability centers” that control proper replication, condensation, and stability of individual chromosomes. Therefore, mammalian chromosomes contain four types ofcis‐acting elements, origins, telomeres, centromeres, and “inactivation/stability centers”, all functioning to ensure proper replication, condensation, segregation, and stability of individual chromosomes. (shrink)

A historical investigation of the exclusion of Africa and Asia from modern histories of philosophy.

This paper defends the possibility that meaningful learning can be supported by the Internet. Responding to Hubert Dreyfus’s neo-Kierkegaardian contention that the Internet inhibits and does not support meaningful learning, we argue that it is a valuable tool for learning that can promote the development of intellectual expertise without the accompanying atrophy of personhood that Dreyfus believes is a prominent effect of extensive engagement with the Internet. Additionally, we argue that a conflation of practically ultimate commitments and epistemically ultimate commitments (...) underlies Dreyfus’s conception of unconditional commitments that constitutes the core of his critique of the possibility of meaningful learning on the Web. (shrink)

This essays provides a critical overview of the the significance of sexual activity and the important role consent as a necessary condition for its permissibility.

Evil Beyond Belief provides an overview of the problem of evil and argues that the evil in the universe does not make it irrational to believe in an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent creator.

This dissertation is an attempt to construct a coherent account of Rene Descartes' theory of the will from the remarks on the will scattered throughout his works. Although his treatment of the topic is fragmentary , and cursory , Descartes' assorted comments on the will can be reconstructed into an account that is both consistent and penetrating. ;The most distinctive features of the reconstructed theory are: the will is not a distinct faculty, but merely the extension of the class of (...) volitions, the will is necessitated by the contents of consciousness and judgment and is an act of the will. With regard to the first point, it is argued that a good deal of the criticism that Descartes' theory has received stems from inaccurately attributing a faculty model of the soul to him. In addition, an attempt is made to reconcile the non-faculty model of the soul with the account of error found in the Fourth Meditation. In explaining the second aforementioned feature of Descartes' theory, it is argued--against commentators such as Anthony Kenny, Margaret Wilson and Peter Schouls--that he held that all free action is necessitated by some set of psychological states. Finally, regarding the third distinctive feature of Descartes' theory, the claim that judgment is an act of the will is defended on the basis of the fact that one's judgments can have an impact upon one's behavior and web of beliefs. (shrink)

A critical overview of topics in the philosophy of sex and love, this article pays special attention to the connection between reason and love.

The Macmillan Interdisciplinary Handbooks: Philosophy series serves undergraduate college students who have had little or no exposure to philosophy, as well as the curious lay reader. Following this first primer volume, which introduces both the discipline and the topics of the remaining nine volumes, each handbook will usher the reader into a subfield of philosophy, and explore fifteen to thirty topics in that subfield. Every chapter in each volume will use vehicles such as film to facilitate understanding of philosophical issues; (...) for example, the film Dead Man Walking may be used as an introduction to issues related to the death penalty. (shrink)

The article is a reflection about the controversies on social media. It analyzes a week of Folha de São Paulo’s posts, the largest Brazilian newspaper, on its Facebook page. The methodological basis adopted is the Grounded Theory. From the results, in a week of data collection, it seeks to theorize over coercive factors for the emergence of discursive struggles, with the aim of outlining a phenomenology of commentaries, based on Alfred Schutz, Thomas Luckmann and Peter Berger. Finally, it contrasts this (...) situation of online conflicts with the Brazilian identity and the historical moment of the country. (shrink)

This essay is a detailed, critical overview of the evidence and arguments for and against belief in reincarnation.

Wittgenstein's distinction between the subjective and objective uses of the first-person and his claim that " I " plays a referential role in its objective use are explicated and defended in terms of the conceptual connection between the language-games of falsifiability and referring. In addition, Norman Malcolm's criticism of the objective/referring use of "I" is seen to fail because he does not attend to the role that the contextuality of meaning plays in Wittgenstein's account of the different uses of "I".

Wittgenstein's distinction between the subjective and objective uses of the first-person and his claim that " I " plays a referential role in its objective use are explicated and defended in terms of the conceptual connection between the language-games of falsifiability and referring. In addition, Norman Malcolm's criticism of the objective/referring use of "I" is seen to fail because he does not attend to the role that the contextuality of meaning plays in Wittgenstein's account of the different uses of "I".

Wittgenstein's distinction between the subjective and objective uses of the first-person and his claim that " I " plays a referential role in its objective use are explicated and defended in terms of the conceptual connection between the language-games of falsifiability and referring. In addition, Norman Malcolm's criticism of the objective/referring use of "I" is seen to fail because he does not attend to the role that the contextuality of meaning plays in Wittgenstein's account of the different uses of "I".

Vaesen infers unique properties of mind from the appearance of specific cultural innovation – a correlation without causal direction. Shifts in habitat, population density, and group dynamics are the only independently verifiable incentives for changes in cultural practices. The transition from Acheulean to Late Stone Age technologies requires that we consider how population and social dynamics affect cultural innovation and mental function.

The first English translation of Fichte’s second set of 1804 lectures on the Wissenschaftslehre.

Orthologic is defined by weakening the axioms and rules of inference of the classical propositional calculus. The resulting Lindenbaum-Tarski quotient algebra is an orthoimplication algebra which generalizes the author's implication algebra. The associated order structure is a semi-orthomodular lattice. The theory of orthomodular lattices is obtained by adjoining a falsity symbol to the underlying orthologic or a least element to the orthoimplication algebra.

Providing an original and systematic treatment of foundational issues in philosophy of religion, J. L. Schellenberg's new book addresses the structure of..

According to realist structuralism, mathematical objects are places in abstract structures. We argue that in spite of its many attractions, realist structuralism must be rejected. For, first, mathematical structures typically contain intra-structurally indiscernible places. Second, any account of place-identity available to the realist structuralist entails that intra-structurally indiscernible places are identical. Since for her mathematical singular terms denote places in structures, she would have to say, for example, that 1 = − 1 in the group (Z, +). We call this (...) the identity problem and conclude that nominalism is presently the safest route for the structuralist. (shrink)

v. 1. Nicomachean ethics. Politics. The Athenian Constitution. Rhetoric. On Poetics.--v. 2. Logic.--v. 3. Physics. Metaphysics. On the soul. Short physical treaties.--v. 4. On the heavens. On generation and corruption. Meteorology. Biological treatises.

The posterior parietal cortex (PPC) is the most likely site where egocentric spatial relationships are represented in the brain. PPC cells receive visual, auditory, somaesthetic, and vestibular sensory inputs; oculomotor, head, limb, and body motor signals; and strong motivational projections from the limbic system. Their discharge increases not only when an animal moves towards a sensory target, but also when it directs its attention to it. PPC lesions have the opposite effect: sensory inattention and neglect. The PPC does not seem (...) to contain a “map” of the location of objects in space but a distributed neural network for transforming one set of sensory vectors into other sensory reference frames or into various motor coordinate systems. Which set of transformation rules is used probably depends on attention, which selectively enhances the synapses needed for making a particular sensory comparison or aiming a particular movement. (shrink)

Ned Block argues that the higher-order (HO) approach to explaining consciousness is ‘defunct’ because a prominent objection (the ‘misrepresentation objection’) exposes the view as ‘incoherent’. What’s more, a response to this objection that I’ve offered elsewhere (Weisberg 2010) fails because it ‘amounts to abusing the notion of what-it’s-like-ness’ (xxx).1 In this response, I wish to plead guilty as charged. Indeed, I will continue herein to abuse Block’s notion of what-it’s-like-ness. After doing so, I will argue that the HO approach accounts (...) for the sense of what-it’s-like-ness that matters in a theory of consciousness. I will also argue that the only incoherence present in the HO theory is that generated by embracing Block’s controversial notion of what-it’s-like-ness, something no theorist of any stripe ought to do. Block is famous for (among other things) having introduced the notion of ‘phenomenal consciousness’ into contemporary philosophy of mind (Block 1995). This term is widely employed in the philosophical literature and it even appears in the empirical literature. But wide-speared usage has brought about divergent interpretations of the term. We can distinguish a ‘moderate’ and a ‘zealous’ reading of ‘phenomenal consciousness’. On the moderate reading, ‘phenomenal consciousness’ just means ‘experience’. Many people have embraced this sense of the term and use it to roughly pick out conscious experience involving sensory quality (states like conscious visual experiences or conscious pains, for example).2 On the zealous reading, however, phenomenal consciousness is held to be ‘distinct from any cognitive, intentional, or functional property’ (Block 1995: 234). That is, any explanation of phenomenal consciousness in exclusively cognitive, intentional, or functional terms will fail to capture, without remainder, what is really distinctive about phenomenal consciousness. Block, of course, is fully clear about embracing the zealous reading; indeed, his initial introduction of the notion is in those terms. The same ambiguity occurs with the much-used (and abused) idea of ‘what-it’s-like-ness’.. (shrink)

Scientists and laypeople alike use the sense of understanding that an explanation conveys as a cue to good or correct explanation. Although the occurrence of this sense or feeling of understanding is neither necessary nor sufficient for good explanation, it does drive judgments of the plausibility and, ultimately, the acceptability, of an explanation. This paper presents evidence that the sense of understanding is in part the routine consequence of two well-documented biases in cognitive psychology: overconfidence and hindsight. In light of (...) the prevalence of counterfeit understanding in the history of science, I argue that many forms of cognitive achievement do not involve a sense of understanding, and that only the truth or accuracy of an explanation make the sense of understanding a valid cue to genuine understanding. (shrink)