A very material question has been started concerning abstract or general ideas, whether they be general or particular in the mind's conception of them. A great philosopher [Dr. Berkeley] has disputed the receiv'd opinion in this particular, and has asserted, that all general ideas are nothing but particular ones, annexed to a certain term, which gives them a more extensive signification, and makes them recall upon occasion other individuals, which are similar to them. As I look upon this to (...) be one of the greatest and most valuable discoveries that has been made of late years in the republic of letters, I shall here endeavour to confirm it by some arguments, which I hope will put it beyond all doubt and controversy. (shrink)

Standard physicalism is repudiated by Susan Schneider on the grounds that the science of physics at physicalism's foundation is individuated by mathematics, revealing that science is abstract rather than concrete. She seeks to remedy the situation for physics, though not for physicalism, with a panprotopsychist variant of panpyschism. Her approach is clever and well-developed, but I believe it suffers from at least two flaws. First, with few exceptions individuation is the wrong tool for the discovery of a thing's nature; (...) second, panpsychism and its proto variant have problems no less worrisome than those attributed to standard physicalism. Moreover, once developed it is questionable whether a surviving panpsychism is distinct from a less troubled emergentism. (shrink)

This article argues against the non-cognitivist theory of vision that has been formulated in the work of Nico Orlandi. It shows that, if we understand ‘representation’ in the way Orlandi recommends, then the visual system’s response to abstract regularities must involve the formation of representations. Recent experiments show that those representations must be used by the visual system in the production of visual experiences. Their effects cannot be explained by taking them to be non-visual effects involving attention or (...) memory. This contradicts Orlandi’s version of the non-cognitivist hypothesis, but does so while vindicating her methodological position. (shrink)

In the _New Theory of Vision, Berkeley defends the heterogeneity thesis, i.e., the view that the ideas of sight and touch are numerically and specifically distinct. In sections 121-122 of that work, he suggests that the thesis of abstract ideas is somehow closely connected to the heterogeneity thesis, though he does not there fully explain just what the connection is supposed to be. In this paper an interpretation of this connection is proposed and defended. Berkeley needs to reject (...) abstract ideas because, if there were such ideas then the heterogeneity thesis would be false and, in turn, this would lead directly to the falsity of Berkeley's theory of vision. (shrink)

Abstract. A rhesus monkey, Helen, from whom the striate cortex was almost totally removed, was studied intensively over a period of 8 years. During this time she regained an effective, though limited, degree of visually guided behaviour. The evidence suggests that while Helen suffered a permanent loss of `focal vision she retained (initially unexpressed) the capacity for `ambient vision.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.4 (2003) 555-557 [Access article in PDF] Quentin Skinner. Visions of Politics. Vol. I, Regarding Method. Pp. xvi + 209. Vol. II, Renaissance Virtues. Pp. xix + 461. Vol. III, Hobbes and Civil Science. Pp. xvii + 386. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Cloth, $180.00. Paper, $65.00. Quentin Skinner's Visions of Politics consists of three volumes of his essays, most of (...) which have been previously published. Volume I concerns the nature of historical interpretation. It contains the classic, "Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas"; much of his "Reply to My Critics," from Meaning and Context (James Tully, editor [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988]);"Interpretation and the Understanding of Speech Acts"; and other notable essays. Volume II focuses on aspects of the Renaissance, especially discussions of the concept of liberty and various theories of civic republicanism. Volume III focuses on the life and thought of Thomas Hobbes, although its chapters also contain an enormous amount of information about ancient rhetoric, Renaissance humanism, and other things. As my brief description of the contents of these volumes indicates, Skinner's knowledge is [End Page 555] not just encyclopedic; it is Britannic. The range and depth of his scholarship, evident in each article written over several decades, is all the more impressive when they are gathered together. Unfortunately, he has stopped short of reprinting all of his articles in their entirety; for example, only part of "Hobbes on Sovereignty" (1965), is included.Although the Journal of the History of Philosophy does not normally review works of previously published essays, an exception is being made in this case because of the importance of Skinner's thought and because these volumes contain significant new material. Although most of the chapters are reprinted largely as they originally appeared, some chapters were extensively rewritten. Many readers will wish that he had changed less and provided more commentary on the views of his younger self.Given the number and originality of Skinner theses, every reader will disagree with some of them. In the rest of this review, I will discuss a few of these. Skinner makes the provocative claim that "our goals as historians should [not] be to recount [facts]... as objectively as possible" (I:1). This looks relativistic but he says that he is not a relativist. Shortly later, he makes the disturbing, but not unfamiliar, claim that "the concept of truth is irrelevant to the enterprise of explaining beliefs" (I:2). A major problem for this view is that anyone who makes a statement is, or purports to be, aiming at the truth. The fact that a speaker might not use the word 'true' or 'truth' does not show that the concept is not operating. Moreover, to be rational is to pursue the truth.Skinner is particularly interested in political rhetoric, and the rhetorical feature he studies most closely is paradiastole. Simplifying it, let's say that paradiastole is the technique of rejecting one description-cum-evaluation, say, "The prince is stubborn," for another, say, "The prince is resolute." Since redescriptions of things can go in either direction, many philosophers thought that the possibility of paradiastole undermined the objectivity of ethics. Rhetoricians fostered this belief by teaching students to argue for either side of an argument.Skinner thinks Hobbes "undoubtedly" provided a solution to the problem of paradiastole and that the solution "has the great merit of confronting the problem in a uniquely uncompromising way" (III:141). The solution depends on recognizing that the goodness of virtues "resides in the fact that they form 'the meanes of peaceable, sociable and comfortable living'" (III:137). So, when a dispute about morality arises, one simply asks "whether the effect of the action will or will not be conducive to the preservation of peace" (III:137). I do not see that this solves the problem. In early 2003, one side called the American invasion of Iraq a means to peace by defeating terrorism, the other side a provocation of war against Muslim nations; either side can be argued. Tending toward peace cannot be part... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Visions of Damietta:St. Francis, Robert Grosseteste, and the Crusades, 1219–1253Rosamund M. Gammie (bio)A peculiar and under-explored event in Robert Grosseteste's (d. 1253) life is that of his supposed dream-vision in 1249, reported posthumously and in only one source, the Lanercost chronicle.1 The vision foreshadows the loss of Damietta in Egypt the following year, during the Seventh Crusade (1249–54) under the leadership of Louis IX. The parallels (...) to St. Francis's vision at Damietta in 1219 during the Fifth Crusade (1215–21) are immediately noticeable yet the vision has remained largely dismissed as an afterthought in the scholarship of Grosseteste. Considering that Grosseteste wrote, in 1236, what has been described by Michael Lower as "surely the best defence of the cross petition a crusader ever had," in addition to his association with the Franciscans and his relationship with Richard, earl of Cornwall, brother of Henry III and nephew of celebrated crusader Richard I and a (if not the) principal leader of the Baron's Crusade, it is surprising that there is no fuller account of his support for the movement; rather there are piecemeal references to certain acts of interference such as that noted by Lower.2 This paper seeks to establish Grosseteste's position on the crusades, in light of a thoroughly Franciscan influence, beginning with Damietta. [End Page 141]Robert Grosseteste and the FranciscansMuch has been written about the relationship between Robert Grosseteste and the early Franciscan movement in England.3 As Giles Gasper writes in a recent study of Grosseteste and the Franciscan school at Oxford, "Robert Grosseteste is well-known for his support for the Franciscan order, and his warm relations with many brothers of the English province."4 James McEvoy concludes in his examination of Grosseteste's affinity with the nascent movement that "there can be no doubt that Grosseteste was well acquainted with the personality and ideals of St. Francis, the circumstance of the Franciscans' foundation, and the nature of their vocation."5 Grosseteste's Letters are full of admiration for the Franciscans and involvement in their affairs, so much so that a clear and uncompromisingly affectionate relationship can be traced during the bishop's lifetime. Indeed, Grosseteste, in Letter 41, ca. 13 March, 1236, declares to Elias of Cortona, third minister of the Franciscan Order, that "there are no assistants I know of … so effective as your friars."6 The Friars themselves reciprocated their love for Grosseteste; the same letter states, "your sons, the Friars Minor in England, out of kindness in a special way embrace me tightly with arms of love." A letter from 1238 (Letter 58) to Pope Gregory IX asks for help in preserving the reputation of the Brothers, who "illuminate our whole land with the brilliant light of their preaching and teaching" with the warning that "the glory of such an important religious order will vanish and the masses will be scandalized in them."7 [End Page 142]The Dominican Brother Hubert perhaps best expresses the affection between the religious orders and Grosseteste, writing the celebratory Life of Grosseteste shortly after the bishop's death in 1253.8 According to Brother Hubert, Grosseteste was the "father and guardian" of both orders, whose presence "pleased him, as did their / Arrival, their multitude, and frequent conversation," and that just "as a mother to her new-born, he fostered, loved / Protected, fed, and valued them."9 Gasper continues, "English Franciscan historiography leaves no doubt as to the high esteem in which the order held Grosseteste from the mid-13th century onwards, honored in particular for his teaching and learning."10 Chosen personally by Agnellus of Pisa to teach the first Franciscans at Oxford, his influence cannot be underestimated. Indeed, there were Franciscan (and Dominican) contributions to the ultimately unsuccessful attempt to canonize the bishop; a ten-lined letter from Nicholas, guardian of the Greyfriars at Lincoln, penned on 26 June, 1289, extolls the exemplary actions of the bishop.11The relationship between Grosseteste and this first generation of Franciscans was one of mutual respect and love. What is harder to trace is Grosseteste's appreciation of St. Francis himself. When Servus Gieben asks... (shrink)

Much of The Reason’s Proper Study is devoted to defending the claim that simply by stipulating an abstraction principle for the “number-of” functor, we can simultaneously fix a meaning for this functor and acquire epistemic entitlement to the stipulated principle. In this paper, I argue that the semantic and epistemological principles Hale and Wright offer in defense of this claim may be too strong for their purposes. For if these principles are correct, it is hard to see why they do (...) not justify platonist strategies that are not in any way “neo-Fregean,” e.g. strategies that treat “the number of Fs” as a Russellian definite description rather than a singular term, or employ axioms that do not have the form of abstraction principles. (shrink)

Dans sa thèse complémentaire intitulée « Essai sur l’unité des sciences mathématiques dans leur développement actuel » Albert Lautman analysa la question de l’unité des mathématiques en considérant différentes paires antithétiques de concepts mathématiques, notamment le continu et le discret. Dans le cadre de sa refonte de la géométrie algébrique abstraite, le mathématicien français Alexandre Grothendieck considéra également l’opposition traditionnelle du continu et du discret selon un cadre conceptuel fort similaire à celui de Lautman. En comparaison, l’introduction du concept de (...) topos lui permit de donner une réponse strictement mathématique et parfaitement claire à cette question.Albert Lautman’s complementary thesis, entitled “Essai sur l’unité des sciences mathématiques dans leur développement actuel”, analysed the unity of mathematics through various antithetical pairs of mathematical concepts such as the continuous and the discrete. As part of his renewal of abstract algebraic geometry, French mathematician Alexandre Grothendieck also considered the traditional opposition between the continuous and the discrete and adopted a conceptual framework very similar to that of Lautman. However, the topos concept allowed Grothendieck to come up with a purely mathematical and, in comparison, much clearer solution. (shrink)

Wilber's most timely, accessible, and practical work to date. Here is a concise, comprehensive overview of Wilber's revolutionary thought and its application in today's world. Wilber has long been hailed as one of the most important thinkers of our time, but--until now--his work has seemed inaccessible to the general reader who lacks a background in consciousness studies or evolutionary theory. Integral Vision will allow a general audience to fully understand what all the excitement has been about. In clear, non-technical (...) language, Wilber presents complex, cutting-edge theories and models that integrate the realms of body, mind, soul, and spirit. He then demonstrates how these theories and models can be applied to real world problems. Finally, Wilber discusses daily practices that readers take up in order to apply this integrative vision to their own, everyday lives. Wilber begins by presenting a leading model of human evolution, a model called "spiral dynamics." He then goes on to summarize his ground-breaking "all-level, all-quadrant" model for integrating the seemingly contradictory realms of science and religion--the "all-level, all-quadrant" model has already been adopted by leading thinkers in a variety of fields. In a chapter entitle "The Real World," Wilber shows how these rather abstract theories and models are being applied to real-world issues such as politics, medicine, business, education, and the environment. Wilber goes on to present a collection of maps of the Kosmos. These are broader models that can integrate the various worldviews that have been developed around the world throughout the ages. The final chapter of the book, "One Taste," proposes that readers take up an "integral transformative practice" such as meditation to help them to apply and develop this integral vision in their personal, everyday lives. (shrink)

This article describes an implemented architecture for intermediate vision. By integrating a variety of Intermediate visual mechanisms and putting them to use in support of concrete activity, the implementation demonstrates their utility. The sytem, SIVS, models psychophysical discoveries about visual attention and search. It is designed to be efficiently implementable in slow, massively parallel, locally connected hardware, such as that of the brain.SIVS addresses five fundamental problems. Visual attention is required to restrict processing to task-relevant locations in the image. (...) Visual search finds such locations. Visual routines are a means for nonuniform processing based on task demands. Intermediate objects keep track of intermediate results of this processing. Visual operators are a set of relatively abstract, general-purpose primitives for spatial analysis, out of which visual routines are assembled. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.4 (2003) 555-557 [Access article in PDF] Quentin Skinner. Visions of Politics. Vol. I, Regarding Method. Pp. xvi + 209. Vol. II, Renaissance Virtues. Pp. xix + 461. Vol. III, Hobbes and Civil Science. Pp. xvii + 386. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Cloth, $180.00. Paper, $65.00. Quentin Skinner's Visions of Politics consists of three volumes of his essays, most of (...) which have been previously published. Volume I concerns the nature of historical interpretation. It contains the classic, "Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas"; much of his "Reply to My Critics," from Meaning and Context (James Tully, editor [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988]);"Interpretation and the Understanding of Speech Acts"; and other notable essays. Volume II focuses on aspects of the Renaissance, especially discussions of the concept of liberty and various theories of civic republicanism. Volume III focuses on the life and thought of Thomas Hobbes, although its chapters also contain an enormous amount of information about ancient rhetoric, Renaissance humanism, and other things. As my brief description of the contents of these volumes indicates, Skinner's knowledge is [End Page 555] not just encyclopedic; it is Britannic. The range and depth of his scholarship, evident in each article written over several decades, is all the more impressive when they are gathered together. Unfortunately, he has stopped short of reprinting all of his articles in their entirety; for example, only part of "Hobbes on Sovereignty" (1965), is included.Although the Journal of the History of Philosophy does not normally review works of previously published essays, an exception is being made in this case because of the importance of Skinner's thought and because these volumes contain significant new material. Although most of the chapters are reprinted largely as they originally appeared, some chapters were extensively rewritten. Many readers will wish that he had changed less and provided more commentary on the views of his younger self.Given the number and originality of Skinner theses, every reader will disagree with some of them. In the rest of this review, I will discuss a few of these. Skinner makes the provocative claim that "our goals as historians should [not] be to recount [facts]... as objectively as possible" (I:1). This looks relativistic but he says that he is not a relativist. Shortly later, he makes the disturbing, but not unfamiliar, claim that "the concept of truth is irrelevant to the enterprise of explaining beliefs" (I:2). A major problem for this view is that anyone who makes a statement is, or purports to be, aiming at the truth. The fact that a speaker might not use the word 'true' or 'truth' does not show that the concept is not operating. Moreover, to be rational is to pursue the truth.Skinner is particularly interested in political rhetoric, and the rhetorical feature he studies most closely is paradiastole. Simplifying it, let's say that paradiastole is the technique of rejecting one description-cum-evaluation, say, "The prince is stubborn," for another, say, "The prince is resolute." Since redescriptions of things can go in either direction, many philosophers thought that the possibility of paradiastole undermined the objectivity of ethics. Rhetoricians fostered this belief by teaching students to argue for either side of an argument.Skinner thinks Hobbes "undoubtedly" provided a solution to the problem of paradiastole and that the solution "has the great merit of confronting the problem in a uniquely uncompromising way" (III:141). The solution depends on recognizing that the goodness of virtues "resides in the fact that they form 'the meanes of peaceable, sociable and comfortable living'" (III:137). So, when a dispute about morality arises, one simply asks "whether the effect of the action will or will not be conducive to the preservation of peace" (III:137). I do not see that this solves the problem. In early 2003, one side called the American invasion of Iraq a means to peace by defeating terrorism, the other side a provocation of war against Muslim nations; either side can be argued. Tending toward peace cannot be part... (shrink)

Comment se caractérise la peinture abstraite contemporaine? Quelles relations entretient-elle avec celle des maîtres du début du XXe siècle? Pour l'auteur, des oeuvres comme celles de Shirley Jaffe, Jonathan Lasker, Philippe Richard et Diana Cooper se caractérisent par un refus de l'unité, de l'harmonie et de la pureté, c'est-à-dire d'une recherche de la perfection. L'hétérogénéité, constitutive de leurs oeuvres, est fondée sur la reprise d'images réelles et l'ouverture des oeuvres à l'espace qui les environne. Elle participe d'une position politique et (...) d'une vision désenchantée du monde contemporain. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Vanities of the Eye: Vision in Early Modern European CultureDallas G. Denery IIStuart Clark. Vanities of the Eye: Vision in Early Modern European Culture. Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. Pp. xi + 415. Cloth, $75.00.A popular and pervasive historical narrative links the Renaissance development of linear perspective with Europe’s transition from a pre-modern to an early modern society. Erwin Panofsky gave this narrative its (...) definitive form early in the twentieth century and William Ivins boiled it down to a simple idea that served as the title of his most famous book. According to Ivins, single-point perspective, the artistic technique championed by Alberti and perfected in the paintings of Masaccio and Piero della Francesca, allowed for “the rationalization of sight.” In other words, it provided a mathematically and geometrically grounded method for accurately representing the external world. It is a powerful and seductive claim, one that has shaped generations of scholarly work. It is also, Stuart Clark contends in this important new book, patently wrong. Far from exhibiting a renewed or reinvigorated confidence in the accuracy and reliability of vision, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century philosophers, artists, theologians, and doctors worried that sight was susceptible, perhaps permanently so, to all sorts of debilitating derangements, displacements, and delusions.Rather than relate a history of progress, Clark offers a history of exhaustion, failure, and, ultimately, of rejection. Early modern intellectuals inherited a comprehensive theory of vision and cognition from their medieval predecessors known as perspectivist optics. This theory sought to secure the accuracy of human sense perception through regularized causal processes that linked things in the world with our various cognitive faculties. While some fourteenth-century intellectuals, most notably Nicolas of Autrecourt and Nicole Oresme, recognized structural deficiencies in this theory, their critiques were mostly ignored or treated as anomalies. Over the course of the next two and a half centuries, Clark argues, the challenges to this theory multiplied until it collapsed under their weight (20).Clark’s argument is straightforward and, as his evidence mounts, thoroughly convincing. Throughout each of the eight engrossing chapters that form the core of the book, Clark outlines a different threat, a different set of challenges that pointed out problems with the assumption that vision is trustworthy. The range and depth of those challenges are truly amazing. Doctors worried that imbalances in our humoral system, and especially in the black bile that causes melancholy, could render our visual perceptions dubious at best (ch. 2). Theologians, wary of the dangers of witchcraft and eager to prosecute its practitioners, obsessed over the cognitive threats that devils and demons posed to good Christians (ch. 4), while Protestant reformers relegated the entire tradition of Catholic miracles to the counterfeit illusions of the antichrist (ch. 5). For their part, artists believed that perspective undermined vision, depending as it does on the assumption that what we see is always relative, dependent upon our point of view (ch. 3).Clark structures much of his argument around George Hakewill’s 1608 book, The vanitie of the eye, an exposition on the natural, artificial, and demonic sources that forever render visual knowledge suspect. He could just as well have organized it around the opening pages of Descartes’s Meditations, and in many ways Clark’s book serves as a superb rumination on the sources of Descartes’s skeptical arguments. Unlike Etienne Gilson and, more recently, Richard Popkin, both of whom have done so much to open up the scholastic and early modern sources of Descartes’s skeptical thought experiments, Clark does not limit himself to philosophical lineages. Rather, he considers sources of visual skepticism that developed across an entire culture—in natural philosophy, medicine, art, religion, and literature (especially in Shakespeare’s Macbeth). Not only does the sheer volume and variety of such [End Page 103] sources help to explain Descartes’s urgent desire to overturn everything he had learned and begin again from the foundations, but it also contextualizes the specific arguments he employs. None of Descartes’s skeptical arguments were new and most were well known in the Middle Ages. What had changed over the intervening centuries, Clark contends, was how these arguments drew from... (shrink)

Abstract‘Synod’ and ‘synodality’ have become synonymous with Pope Francis. Since Pope Paul VI instituted the Synod of Bishops as a permanent office in 1965, there hasn't been any pontificate that has given these matters as much profile and attention as his has. Why is this the case, and what is Pope Francis’ vision for a synodal Church? More fundamentally, what is synodality, according to tradition of the Church, and Pope Francis? Several years into both local and global synodal-type (...) processes and formation gatherings, it seems many people, even prominent Church leaders, readily admit that they still do not fully understand it. For this reason, this article sets out to provide a general overview and introduction. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Tragic Vision of African American ReligionPaul E. CapetzThe Tragic Vision of African American Religion Matthew V. Johnson New York, N.Y.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. 189 pp. $75.00Matthew Johnson’s profound book The Tragic Vision of African American Religion sheds new light upon the distinctive nature of African American religion. Adequate interpretation of this topic requires understanding the traumas inflicted upon Africans sold into slavery, their (...) existential predicaments before and after emancipation, and the ongoing plight of their descendants whose psyches have been indelibly scarred by this traumatic history. Johnson avails himself of the resources of philosophical theology, psychoanalytic theory, and literary criticism to argue his thesis that African American religion expresses a tragic vision of reality. Besides providing an illuminating analysis of the traumatic experience underlying this religious vision, Johnson presents a compelling constructive proposal as to the broader implications of his thesis for Christian theology at large.As a student of David Tracy and Langdon Gilkey, Johnson sees the necessity for rigorous philosophical reflection in theology. Because the spirituality of the black church stands in some real tension with the traditional theological categories inherited from Europe, Johnson proceeds with “a phenomenological orientation grounded in a philosophical hermeneutical approach” that allows him to excavate the traumatic experiences informing this spirituality (4). He skillfully uses the concepts of mourning, loss, longing, and desire developed in psychoanalytical theory to probe the significance of trauma for grasping the dynamics of African American spirituality. He engages literary criticism and argues convincingly for a distinction between “tragedy” as a literary genre and the tragic vision it articulates. Indeed, the tragic vision is prior to tragedy. The tragic is not the encounter with meaninglessness per se but “the always already aesthetic representation of the encounter, which preserves its terrible truth in a transfigured vision of reality” (6). This vision affirms life while facilitating “the recognition and embrace of the darker, more fundamental truths of life” (7).Cognizant that other theologians have declared the incompatibility of Christian faith with a tragic vision of reality, Johnson believes otherwise. He insists that the tragic is fundamental to human experience as such, although it is frequently evaded by strategies of foreclosure—including those of Christian theology—that falsify the experience. Yet the distinctive thing about the black religious experience is the way African Americans made the Christian faith [End Page 215] their own by transforming it at a deep spiritual level through their tragic vision. Mildly critical of previous formulations of black theology, Johnson contends that this involved much more than the affirmation that God cares about the sociopolitical liberation of oppressed people. The Christian tragic vision of the black experience offers the possibility of a new basis for “theology in an African American key” (6). Since he understands himself primarily as a Christian theologian, however, Johnson addresses an audience consisting of more than fellow black theologians. He rightly highlights a profound truth that white theologians have largely failed to grasp: the contribution of the black church “transcends the confines of African American culture to speak meaningfully to a Christian faith struggling to remain viable in a meaningful way” (10).James Cone once issued this challenge: “Why don’t white theologians make racism their issue?” White theologians who ponder Johnson’s book will begin to understand the full import of this challenge: by opening ourselves unreservedly to the pain of our black sisters and brothers, we may discover anew the meaning of that genuine humanity to which the gospel summons all people. A theological reformulation of Christian faith as tragic in the light of the traumas of the black experience could occasion a much needed reformation of the white churches in America.Paul E. CapetzUnited Theological Seminary of the Twin CitiesCopyright © 2012 The Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

Machine vision is one of the main applications of artificial intelligence. In China, the machine vision industry makes up more than a third of the national AI market, and technologies like face recognition, object tracking and automated driving play a central role in surveillance systems and social governance projects relying on the large-scale collection and processing of sensor data. Like other novel articulations of technology and society, machine vision is defined, developed and explained by different actors through (...) the work of imagination. In this article, we draw on the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries to understand how Chinese companies represent machine vision. Through a qualitative multimodal analysis of the corporate websites of leading industry players, we identify a cohesive sociotechnical imaginary of machine vision, and explain how four distinct visual registers contribute to its articulation. These four registers, which we call computational abstraction, human–machine coordination, smooth everyday, and dashboard realism, allow Chinese tech companies to articulate their global ambitions and competitiveness through narrow and opaque representations of machine vision technologies. (shrink)

Logothetis, N.K.: Single units and conscious vision. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Series B-Biological Sciences 353, 1801-1818 (1998) Abstract.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Vanities of the Eye: Vision in Early Modern European CultureDallas G. Denery IIStuart Clark. Vanities of the Eye: Vision in Early Modern European Culture. Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. Pp. xi + 415. Cloth, $75.00.A popular and pervasive historical narrative links the Renaissance development of linear perspective with Europe’s transition from a pre-modern to an early modern society. Erwin Panofsky gave this narrative its (...) definitive form early in the twentieth century and William Ivins boiled it down to a simple idea that served as the title of his most famous book. According to Ivins, single-point perspective, the artistic technique championed by Alberti and perfected in the paintings of Masaccio and Piero della Francesca, allowed for “the rationalization of sight.” In other words, it provided a mathematically and geometrically grounded method for accurately representing the external world. It is a powerful and seductive claim, one that has shaped generations of scholarly work. It is also, Stuart Clark contends in this important new book, patently wrong. Far from exhibiting a renewed or reinvigorated confidence in the accuracy and reliability of vision, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century philosophers, artists, theologians, and doctors worried that sight was susceptible, perhaps permanently so, to all sorts of debilitating derangements, displacements, and delusions.Rather than relate a history of progress, Clark offers a history of exhaustion, failure, and, ultimately, of rejection. Early modern intellectuals inherited a comprehensive theory of vision and cognition from their medieval predecessors known as perspectivist optics. This theory sought to secure the accuracy of human sense perception through regularized causal processes that linked things in the world with our various cognitive faculties. While some fourteenth-century intellectuals, most notably Nicolas of Autrecourt and Nicole Oresme, recognized structural deficiencies in this theory, their critiques were mostly ignored or treated as anomalies. Over the course of the next two and a half centuries, Clark argues, the challenges to this theory multiplied until it collapsed under their weight (20).Clark’s argument is straightforward and, as his evidence mounts, thoroughly convincing. Throughout each of the eight engrossing chapters that form the core of the book, Clark outlines a different threat, a different set of challenges that pointed out problems with the assumption that vision is trustworthy. The range and depth of those challenges are truly amazing. Doctors worried that imbalances in our humoral system, and especially in the black bile that causes melancholy, could render our visual perceptions dubious at best (ch. 2). Theologians, wary of the dangers of witchcraft and eager to prosecute its practitioners, obsessed over the cognitive threats that devils and demons posed to good Christians (ch. 4), while Protestant reformers relegated the entire tradition of Catholic miracles to the counterfeit illusions of the antichrist (ch. 5). For their part, artists believed that perspective undermined vision, depending as it does on the assumption that what we see is always relative, dependent upon our point of view (ch. 3).Clark structures much of his argument around George Hakewill’s 1608 book, The vanitie of the eye, an exposition on the natural, artificial, and demonic sources that forever render visual knowledge suspect. He could just as well have organized it around the opening pages of Descartes’s Meditations, and in many ways Clark’s book serves as a superb rumination on the sources of Descartes’s skeptical arguments. Unlike Etienne Gilson and, more recently, Richard Popkin, both of whom have done so much to open up the scholastic and early modern sources of Descartes’s skeptical thought experiments, Clark does not limit himself to philosophical lineages. Rather, he considers sources of visual skepticism that developed across an entire culture—in natural philosophy, medicine, art, religion, and literature (especially in Shakespeare’s Macbeth). Not only does the sheer volume and variety of such [End Page 103] sources help to explain Descartes’s urgent desire to overturn everything he had learned and begin again from the foundations, but it also contextualizes the specific arguments he employs. None of Descartes’s skeptical arguments were new and most were well known in the Middle Ages. What had changed over the intervening centuries, Clark contends, was how these arguments drew from... (shrink)

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, abstract art has formed a central stream of modern art. To attain purely aesthetic goals, many avant-garde artists turned painting in particular into a pursuit of breaking off the relations with natural forms. Instead of copying them, they have merely relied on their inner visions. When externalizing these visions directly on the canvas or sheets of paper, the practitioners of abstract art have inadvertently used the phenomenological method and its epoché. In (...) this essay I argue that the philosophies of Kupka and Husserl are largely compatible. This is not because the two use the same terminology, but because they virtually mean and do the same thing in their respective fields. Even where there are significant differences between them, these are not as great as it might at first seem. In the essay’s conclusion I sum up some of the most significant implications their compatible theories have for the philosophy of art and for various theories of art today. (shrink)

In questo articolo sostengo che Deleuze, Whitehead e Bergson condividono un simile approccio riguardo all'astrazione, un approccio che fondamentalmente è "pragmatista" (in senso ampio, vicino al pragmatismo "fantastico" di James Williams). Appoggiandosi a William James, un nome per questo approccio metodologico condiviso è empirismo radicale, meglio compreso, nella mia visione, nel contesto della filosofia del processo. Benché quegli autori condividano un approccio simile, evidenzierò alcune differenze tra gli empiristi radicali nel modo in cui essi pensano alle loro astrazioni chiave, che (...) coinvolgono i temi della relazione, del divenire e dello spazio-tempo. Tutti e tre i pensatori ci offrono astrazioni per pensare la vita come creazione del nuovo. (shrink)

Abstract:This essay excavates the “spherical” and “global” ontological optics that have emerged from Martin Heidegger's thought considered in the context of the whole earth image and global climate change, focusing on the work of Timothy Ingold and Timothy Morton. Probing the boundaries of Morton's perspective in particular, I show how his global vision of Being ultimately reinscribes a fundamentally anthropocentric position in which the human “interior” is privileged and universalized while the inhuman “exterior” is either violently incorporated or (...) altogether rejected. I then propose an alternative vision of Being, one which avows a planetary optics while simultaneously emphasizing the unseen and unknown roiling beyond the boundaries of both spherical and global perspectives. I conclude by suggesting that this alternative vision can begin to be cultivated through attending to the works of Georges Bataille, whom a growing host of contemporary theorists have begun to identify as a resource for an ecological perspective that negotiates both the articulation and the transgression of the ontological and perspectival limits that separate the anthropocentric interior and the inhuman exterior. Bataille's exorbitant vision of Being sublates the dialectic of spherical and global perspectives, joining a consciousness of the limits of earth-bound human seeing-being to the ecstatic experience of a dynamic planet in the midst of an unfathomable cosmos. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Enchantment of Art: Abstraction and Empathy from German Romanticism to ExpressionismDavid MorganA familiar tradition since the eighteenth century has invested art with the power to heal a decadent human condition. Inheriting this ability from religion—the romantic enthusiast Wilhelm Wackenroder considered artistic inspiration to originate in “divine inspiration” in the case of his hero, Raphael 1 —art eventually replaced institutionalized belief in an evolutionary schedule of cultural development (...) determined by German idealism. Hegel, for instance, theorized the evolution of spirit from religion to art as a qualitative advancement over time. Rejecting the metaphysics of German idealism, Friedrich Nietzsche nevertheless contended that “Art raises its head where religions decline.” By assuming the “feelings and moods” of religion which had been dismantled by enlightenment, Nietzsche claimed that art gave new form to the life of feeling and imbued human endeavors with a “loftier, darker coloration.” 2 In the early twentieth century Wassily Kandinsky believed that the “spiritual in art” was the historical manifestation of an “inner necessity” that was in itself timeless and universal. Kandinsky portrayed the “life of the spirit” as “a large acute-angled triangle divided horizontally into unequal parts.” In a kind of “trickle down” aesthetic, the compartments of the triangle move slowly upward toward the apex, which is inhabited by the solitary genius of an age whose vision gradually elevates all those who occupy the lower stages. 3 [End Page 317]The point for proponents of the spiritual in art from romanticism to expressionism (and beyond) was to find in works of art what can best be described as an enchantment. 4 As the negotiation of the gaps or disjunctures separating human beings from complete power over their lives, enchantment conjoins the plane of immediate human experience to a desirable state of affairs through the mediation of such symbolic devices as rituals, incantations, or charms. Thus, evil can be warded off by the use of an apotropaic amulet, and fertility can be enhanced by the recitation of a suitable prayer or the performance of a certain ritual. In a modern analogy a sense of impotence is often alleviated by a trip to the mall where the bored therapeutically lose themselves in symbolic acts of self-renewing consumption. In the traditions of philosophy and science, systems of representation such as astrology, the microcosm, the harmony of the spheres, the great chain of being, the celestial hierarchies, or the mechanisms of theurgy and divination situate humanity within a cosmos that follows a particular order accessible to and in some degree manipulable by human beings. Enchantment consists of an apparatus of belief whose form of representation or enactment is thought to exert influence over the realities it configures.But enchantment is not limited to the spells and magic of premodern metaphysics (or modern consumerism). By means of religion, morality, and aesthetics, Nietzsche once averred, “man likes to believe that... he is touching the heart of the world.” 5 This study will focus on the manner in which art as constructed within the idealist tradition of German art theory functioned as an enchantment. Specifically, it will explore what the history of ideas about abstraction and empathy has to tell us about the spiritualization or enchantment of art. After identifying the philosophical and aesthetic wherewithal of enchantment in nineteenth-century Germany, attention focusses on Franz Marc’s early twentieth-century theorization of abstraction. It is certainly more customary to study Kandinsky, whose writings and early efforts at abstraction are much better known, but Marc’s ideas offer more immediate connections to German intellectual history and clarify the aims of his abstract art as a strategy of enchantment. Moreover, Marc was unusually articulate and wrote often, exploring ideas and artistic efforts with great insight. Focusing on Marc therefore offers a corrective to the historiography that has favored Kandinsky’s writings. Finally, Marc differed from his Russian friend over the cause of the war. Manifesting a difference that is portentous for this study, Kandinsky left Germany for Russia in 1914, while Marc enthusiastically took up arms for the fatherland. Given these circumstances and the unfortunate tendency of art historians to valorize expressionist art rather than situate it in the ideological context of... (shrink)

Berkeley, Malebranche, and Vision in God NICHOLAS JOLLEY IN THE SECOND of the Three Dialogues Hylas, the materialist, asks Philonous: "But what say you, are not you too of opinion that we see all things in God? If I mistake not, what you advance comes near it."' In the first edition of the Dialogues Philonous's response was a temperate one; he expressed his agree- ment with Malebranche's emphasis on the Scriptural text that in God we live, move, and have (...) our being, and confined his disagreement with Malebranche to pointing out that, for him, the things we perceive are our own ideas. In the third edition, by contrast, Berkeley inserted a lengthy and rather ill-tempered expression of his differences from Malebranche: Few men think, yet all will have opinions. Hence men's opinions are superficial and confused. It is nothing strange that tenets, which in themselves are ever so different, should nevertheless be confounded with each other by those who do not consider them attentively. I shall not therefore be surprised, if some men imagine that I run into the enthusiasm of Malebranche, though in truth I am very remote from it. He builds on the most abstract general ideas, which I entirely disclaim. He asserts an absolute exter- nal world, which I deny. He maintains that we are deceived by our senses, and know not the real natures or the true forms and figures of extended beings; of all which I hold the direct contrary. So that upon the whole there are no. (shrink)

If a man born blind were to gain his sight in later life would he be able to identify the objects he saw around him? Would he recognise a cube and a globe on the basis of his earlier tactile experiences alone? This was William Molyneux's famous question to John Locke and it was much discussed by English and French empiricists in the eighteenth century as part of the controversy over innatism and abstract ideas. Dr Morgan examines the whole (...) history of this debate: Locke's own (negative) answer to the question, the contributions of Berkeley, Condillac, Diderot and Voltaire and the factual accounts of early cataract operations and modern laboratory studies. He shows how this debate is involved in the development and eventual separation of philosophy and experimental psychology after the eighteenth century and considers why the original question is effectively still unanswered. This is one problem-area with its intricate cluster of connected conceptual and technical difficulties which suggests the need for some reunion or at least collaboration between the two subjects. (shrink)

ABSTRACT If phenomenology is a research methodology uniquely positioned to enable us to learn from others, I aim to demonstrate the idea that cinema is a privileged site from which to investigate the notion of virtuality (sight and reality), even in an age where vision’s predominance is waning. In order to do so, I consider the painfully disruptive mother-daughter relationship found cross-culturally and discourse-analytically in contemporary patriarchal societies. This bond is arguably of central concern to feminists (and women (...) in general) since previous research has found that the fractious nature of this dynamic points to a very specific psychological deformation of the female psyche under conditions of sexist oppression. The views of French psychoanalyst and philosopher Julia Kristeva and other feminist contributors to the debate on this psychological construct are considered. The possibility of a cultural remedy inspired by a secularised trend of Chinese Buddhism in post-Maoist China, a society very different from that of the West, is investigated. This will involve the analysis of the film Curse of the Golden Flower (Chinese Mandarin soundtrack and English subtitles). I subsequently explore whether or not a valuable model for the compromised mother/daughter relationship is available within the context of the notion of a “slave economy” in the comparatively healthier mother/son relationship of (contemporary) Han Chinese culture. By means of cross-cultural analysis as research tool, this article finds confirmation for the proposition of a positive mother/daughter dynamic in the French novelist Colette’s relationship with her mother, Sido. In conclusion, I find that cinema (as an art form serving the eye, i.e. virtuality) is particularly well suited as a site to investigate psychological phenomena by way of interpretative phenomenology as a research methodology, even as vision – as the human sense of choice – has begun to wane amid a global crisis in masculinity. (shrink)

To discuss the developments of mathematics that have to do with the introduction of new objects, we distinguish between ‘Aristotelian’ and ‘non-Aristotelian’ accounts of abstraction and mathematical ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ approaches. The development of mathematics from the 19th to the 20th century is then characterized as a move from a ‘bottom-up’ to a ‘top-down’ approach. Since the latter also leads to more abstract objects for which the Aristotelian account of abstraction is not well-suited, this development has also lead to (...) a decrease of visualizations in mathematical practice. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Subtlety and Moral Vision in FictionEileen JohnIIn Martha Nussbaum’s work in Love’s Knowledge, the subtlety of literary fiction is given a prominent role in explaining literature’s moral influence. 1 Nussbaum argues that the subtlety displayed in certain works of literary fiction can help readers develop habits of perception such that they will perceive their actual moral world more finely and respond to it with a more nuanced (...) range of feeling. We are encouraged to perceive in this way both by encountering good examples of subtle, sensitive moral agents, in characters such as James’s Maggie Verver in The Golden Bowl, and by undergoing the perceiving, responding activity that can be required of a reader. The overarching assumption is that, as moral agents, we need finely-tuned perceptions and felt responses if we are to pick up on the morally relevant elements of our circumstances. We cannot count on finding bold, neat and regular moral patterns to follow; we are rather likely to find ourselves in a complex web of particular contexts, each demanding special moral attention. 2Nussbaum develops these claims in close conversation with the fiction and literary essays of Henry James. 3 Through examples from his novels, she illustrates and elaborates upon the ideal he points to in his essays, the ideal of “being finely aware and richly responsible,” of being a person “on whom nothing is lost.” 4 It seems quite appropriate to dwell on the works of Henry James as displaying—and as demanding from readers—a finer discrimination of elements of experience than we [End Page 308] ordinarily achieve. Discussing the “we” of James’s readers (and leading with a phrase of James’s), Nussbaum puts it: “‘Participators by a fond attention’ in the lives and dilemmas of his participants, we engage with them in a loving scrutiny of appearances. We actively care for their particularity, and we strain to be people on whom none of their subtleties are lost, in intellect and feeling” (p. 162). Having experienced this as readers, we are supposed to be better prepared to approach our own lives and dilemmas with equally scrupulous and caring attention.In general, I am less confident than Nussbaum about the connections between responsible reading of excellent fiction and the pursuit of a responsible moral life. The effects of intense appreciation of fictional moral contexts on real-life decision-making and action are probably quite indirect, requiring encouragement from real-life experiences, from practice with situations in which we have something at stake. But for the moment, I want to develop a suggestion that assumes, in agreement with Nussbaum, that one may take habits of perception learned as a reader and make them count in one’s larger moral life—albeit with reinforcement from one’s judgments and actions in that life.My suggestion involves seeing literary fiction as sometimes playing a subversive role with regard to subtlety. In saying that literary fiction can be “subversive” of subtlety, I am trying to capture the ways in which reading fiction can disrupt a working standard of subtlety. Works of fiction do not provide “normal” perceptual fields, and readers do not approach them with precisely “normal” perceptual habits, so, roughly stated, the reader-fiction interaction has plenty of potential for disrupting epistemic standards of subtlety, bluntness, opacity and so forth. I will illustrate two sorts of subversions of subtlety with an example from Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. In one case, I will argue that the subversion of the standard of subtlety has moral import—this will provide a case to contrast with Nussbaum’s Jamesian examples.By bringing in an example from a non-Henry James novel, I hope to open up the discussion of moral vision in fiction to encompass epistemic qualities besides subtlety. It does not seem that the ideals of subtlety, fine awareness, and missing nothing can be the only epistemic qualities which serve to support literary works’ moral influence. 5 Nussbaum herself acknowledges that, by focusing on one literary paradigm, she pursues only one strand of a larger project (pp. 45–46). Since I here consider just one example from a different style of novel... (shrink)

The question of what kind of city we are trying to have is an urgent one as the world continues its dramatic urbanization. Urban Visions presumes that an understanding of our urban experience is a prerequisite for envisioning what the city could be. In assembling work by distinguished authors from different disciplines and countries, Urban Visions offers a patient examination of what urban experience is and of the city’s necessity, with explicit and implicit propositions about what it could be. The (...) book is illustrated in full color. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 265 concluding chapter (pp. 150-52), Dr. Clair deals with "Comment lire l'oeuvre du P. Thomassin," providing much guidance to anyone who wishes to avail himself of the rich resources in Thomassin's writings. From the point of view of the history of philosophy, the most interesting aspects of Thomassin's thought seem to be (1) his "Cartesianism," that is, the extent to which he early imbibed Descartes' new (...) ideas, and played a role in the fusion of the views of Augustine, B6rulle, and Descartes that developed in the Oratory, (2) his attempt to find a viable theory of the nature of Grace somewhere between Arnauld and Malebranche, and (3) his efforts to formulate a philosophy of history within an Augustinian theology; a philosophy of history that would make historical research and understanding of genuine philosophical and religious value to man. Dr. Clair's too brief discussions indicate that Thomassin was definitely influenced by reading Descartes, but also that Thomassin was much too eclectic to be a Cartesian. With regard to the problem of Grace, where the Cartesian Arnauld fought with the semi-Cartesian Malebranche, Thomassin tried deftly to maintain an Augustinian position that was not quite as rigid as that of the Jansenists, nor as moderate as that of Malebranche (though Arnauld tried to use Thomassin's erudition and authority in his battles with Malebranche). Unfortunately Dr. Clair does not try to evaluate whether Thomassin really found a coherent and theologically acceptable middle-ground between the two antagonists. On the subject of the philosophy of history, Thomassin's views seem most interesting (at least to this reviewer). The short text that Dr. Clair includes on the difference of history from science reveals Thomassin trying to show that the investigation and comprehension of temporal particulars can have significant value for man's understanding of man and that there can be genuine certainty about past facts. Thomassin was writing in the period when modern historical method and outlook were born, when historical study changed from chronicles and ammunition in theological and political disputes to a basic way of understanding human nature. Those concerned with the role of Bayle, Hume, Gibbon, and Vico in developing an historical methodology and a rationale for art historical approach to human problems might well profit from considering Thomassin's writings in this area, and the influence they had on modern historiography and philosophies of history. Dr. Clair's short work certainly helps in filling a lacuna in our picture of the seventeenth century. It also makes one wish he had done more, and had provided a "complete" study of Thomassin's thought and influence. That, perhaps, is one of the major purposes of this new series, in that it will lead scholars to looking into the more hidden portions of the period, and will lead them to filling out in more detail and depth the history of the rise and fall of modern philosophy. It is to be hoped that future volumes in this series will continue to whet our appetites for further investigations, and will transform more of the names we run across into figures about whom we have some information and from whom we can still learn something. RICHARD H. POPKIN University of California, San Diego Berkeley's Theory of Vision..4 Critical Examination of Bishop Berkeley's Essay towards a New Theory of Vision. By D. M. Armstrong. (Melbourne: University Press; London and N. Y.: Cambridge University Press, 1960. Pp. viii + 106. $4.50). Berkeley's brilliant though disconcerting Essay has been rather neglected for some time, except for the able studies of C. M. Turbayne of Rochester University (N. Y.). Armstrong's book is welcome for that reason, also for its freshness, clearness, and rich brevity. A1- 266 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY though a slim volume, it is packed with close yet lucid argumentation, conducted throughout with good manners, and throughout exploratory, clarifying problems, exposing logical and empirical difficulties, not grandly telling us what the truth is but leaving us in a better position to carry on the exploration ourselves. It is an exemplary piece of philosophical discussion. He clears his ground by noting that the Essay, so far as... (shrink)

While I strongly agree with Patrick Grim that abstract relationships are real, and that it is possible to get them right, the danger that we will get them wrong is just as real. The use of visual representation of abstract phenomena, precisely because of our predilection to see patterns in everything and because we don't have to think so hard about visible representations generally, may lead us to see things that aren't there.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Vision of Catholic Social Thought: The Virtue of Solidarity and the Praxis of Human Rights by Meghan J. ClarkJulie Hanlon RubioThe Vision of Catholic Social Thought: The Virtue of Solidarity and the Praxis of Human Rights Meghan J. Clark Minneapolis: Fortress, 2014. 166pp. $39.00In this short, clearly written book, Meghan Clark offers an argument for seeing Catholic social thought (CST) not through its oft-listed (...) principles but through its vision of the human person and its core virtue: solidarity. Against [End Page 227] the protests of left and right, she presents CST as linked to essential Catholic theological claims and radical in its insistence that we are all responsible for promoting the human rights of neighbors near and far.Christians on the left sometimes view CST as well-intentioned but moderate, lacking an analysis of power, and uninspired. Better to read the memoir of an activist or the tract of a radical theologian than to fall asleep over another encyclical on the common good. Clark’s reading of CST counters this portrait with a historical narrative of increasing emphasis on human rights and an ever-more radical understanding of solidarity. Over time, Clark shows, CST moves slowly but surely toward both an affirmation of human rights that includes the duty to promote the rights of others, and a better developed understanding of solidarity as a duty not to serve but to accompany (107–14).While some Catholic conservatives question the authority of CST, Clark ties solidarity and human rights, the “twin pillars” of CST (125), to core theological claims and shows how these concepts develop in the thought of both John Paul II and Benedict XVI (24–39). Her constructive contribution to this tradition is development of the theological foundations of CST, which she accomplishes by drawing on Genesis 1:26–27 and John 17:21–22 (56–60) as well as feminist social reading of the Trinity. She builds on this foundation, claiming that the human community more fully images God as it becomes more united, more equal, and more mutual (60–72). With appropriate social analysis, it becomes clear that “the virtue of solidarity involves an obligation to participate at all levels of human community” (122).It may be that this claim is too sweeping. While Clark rightly questions Amartya Sen’s understanding of “imperfect” or limited positive obligations to distant others (94–96), insisting (with Charles Taylor) on positive responsibility to foster human rights (104), it is difficult to know how an ordinary person goes about discerning obligations in daily life. Once I recognize the enormity of my responsibilities, it is not clear where I ought to begin. Surely I cannot be involved in causes related to every human rights issue. It seems that once Clark’s readers affirm her basic claims, they still need a method of discernment to help them order responsibilities to near and distant others, lest they fall into paralyzing despair.Yet, to see rightly our connections to other human persons and our responsibility for evil is to be appropriately overwhelmed. All of us should tremble in the face of this reality. Insofar as Clark leads readers to this point, she provides an original, timely, and thick description of CST’s claim that “my humanity is bound up with yours” (146). Moreover, she shows that CST contributes something original to human rights discourse by calling solidarity a virtue and rooting it in a relational anthropology (7). By opening up conversation on solidarity as a virtue tied to human rights, Clark constructs a social ethic that is [End Page 228] inseparable from our deepest convictions about life, God, and neighbor. Moving beyond the polarization of right and left, she invites readers to see themselves as inescapably tied to others and calls them not to simple almsgiving but to the much harder task of growing in their capacity to accompany others as they struggle for their own liberation. [End Page 229]Julie Hanlon RubioSt. Louis UniversityCopyright © 2016 The Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Pragmatist Aesthetics and New Visions of the Contemporary Art Museum:The Tate Modern and the Baltic Centre for Contemporary ArtAngela Marsh (bio)John Dewey mandated the repositioning of our experience of art within the realm of the everyday, and recognized the importance of art objects principally with regard to how they operate within an experience as "carriers of meaning."1 In this quote from Art as Experience, Dewey illustrates the segue (...) between art and the perceiver, and his belief that within the profound art experience, lived dichotomies are healed:In art as an experience, actuality and possibility or ideality, the new and the old, objective material and personal response, the individual and the universal, surface and depth, sense and meaning, are integrated in an experience in which they are all transfigured from the significance that belongs to them when isolated in reflection.2Although the ephemeral nature of Dewey's definition of art-as-experience — hinged upon immediacy and the subjective heuristics of the perceiver — may seem difficult to capture and apply, the practicality of the concept, Richard Shusterman argues, lies in its "transformative potential," as a way to reconceive the place of art and its function in our world:Defining art as experience, I argue, also has value in widening the realmof art by challenging the rigid definition between art and action that is supported by definitions that define art as mimesis, poiesis, or the narrow practice as defined by the institutional art world. In other words, I argue that Dewey's definition of art as experience has a very fruitful transformational potential.3By defining art as experience, Dewey also sought to dissolve the binary structures of aesthetic rifts: art and life, high art and low art, body and mind, subject and object, self and world, emphasizing the holistic action in our engagement with art.4 But according to Dewey, the divisor of art from life and thus to blame for the aesthetic barrenness of our lived reality is the museum institution, as Shusterman describes: [End Page 91]The compartmentalization and spiritualization of art as an elevated "separate realm" set "upon a far-off pedestal," divorced from the materials and aims of other human effort, has removed art from the lives of most of us, and thus impoverished the aesthetic quality of our lives.(PA, 19)However, we must keep in mind that Art as Experience was published in 1934. Today, new approaches towards encounter and engagement within public museums are taking form and gaining momentum, with unprecedented directorial visions and mandates designed to nurture and make accessible art-based experiences among diverse audiences — where art and life can meet via multiple approaches. Theoretical synchronicities between pragmatist approaches to aesthetics and fruitful museum experiences can be suggested upon consideration of various innovative programs and approaches initiated at the Tate Modern in London and the Baltic Center for Contemporary Art in Gateshead. The overwhelming success of both venues could signify a reengagement of the general public with contemporary art, fed by "democratic," participatory approaches to exhibiting and programming art that make the museum more accessible to the various mixed publics it serves. In light of these new museological developments, Dewey's polemic oppositions between his conceptualizations of the museum experience and "art-as-experience" should be reexamined and possibly redefined.Dewey was entirely opposed to the concept of "art for art's sake." By exonerating art of any functional value — deeming it "fine" — art was elevated to a position separate from life, and thus rendered impotent to effect a lived aesthetic experience (which is how, Dewey would argue, the arts function most powerfully — as the purveyors of heightened experience). As Shusterman describes:The underlying motive for such attempts to purify art from any functionality was not to denigrate it as worthlessly useless, but to place its worth apart from and above the realm of instrumental value...and this freedom from use would be its defining and ennobling feature.(PA, 9)Dewey (and Shusterman) thus maintained that the very power construct that put the "fine" in art did so by removing the aspect of function from it. As previously stated, Dewey blamed museum institutions for removing art from its... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Pragmatist Aesthetics and New Visions of the Contemporary Art Museum:The Tate Modern and the Baltic Centre for Contemporary ArtAngela Marsh (bio)John Dewey mandated the repositioning of our experience of art within the realm of the everyday, and recognized the importance of art objects principally with regard to how they operate within an experience as "carriers of meaning."1 In this quote from Art as Experience, Dewey illustrates the segue (...) between art and the perceiver, and his belief that within the profound art experience, lived dichotomies are healed:In art as an experience, actuality and possibility or ideality, the new and the old, objective material and personal response, the individual and the universal, surface and depth, sense and meaning, are integrated in an experience in which they are all transfigured from the significance that belongs to them when isolated in reflection.2Although the ephemeral nature of Dewey's definition of art-as-experience — hinged upon immediacy and the subjective heuristics of the perceiver — may seem difficult to capture and apply, the practicality of the concept, Richard Shusterman argues, lies in its "transformative potential," as a way to reconceive the place of art and its function in our world:Defining art as experience, I argue, also has value in widening the realmof art by challenging the rigid definition between art and action that is supported by definitions that define art as mimesis, poiesis, or the narrow practice as defined by the institutional art world. In other words, I argue that Dewey's definition of art as experience has a very fruitful transformational potential.3By defining art as experience, Dewey also sought to dissolve the binary structures of aesthetic rifts: art and life, high art and low art, body and mind, subject and object, self and world, emphasizing the holistic action in our engagement with art.4 But according to Dewey, the divisor of art from life and thus to blame for the aesthetic barrenness of our lived reality is the museum institution, as Shusterman describes: [End Page 91]The compartmentalization and spiritualization of art as an elevated "separate realm" set "upon a far-off pedestal," divorced from the materials and aims of other human effort, has removed art from the lives of most of us, and thus impoverished the aesthetic quality of our lives.(PA, 19)However, we must keep in mind that Art as Experience was published in 1934. Today, new approaches towards encounter and engagement within public museums are taking form and gaining momentum, with unprecedented directorial visions and mandates designed to nurture and make accessible art-based experiences among diverse audiences — where art and life can meet via multiple approaches. Theoretical synchronicities between pragmatist approaches to aesthetics and fruitful museum experiences can be suggested upon consideration of various innovative programs and approaches initiated at the Tate Modern in London and the Baltic Center for Contemporary Art in Gateshead. The overwhelming success of both venues could signify a reengagement of the general public with contemporary art, fed by "democratic," participatory approaches to exhibiting and programming art that make the museum more accessible to the various mixed publics it serves. In light of these new museological developments, Dewey's polemic oppositions between his conceptualizations of the museum experience and "art-as-experience" should be reexamined and possibly redefined.Dewey was entirely opposed to the concept of "art for art's sake." By exonerating art of any functional value — deeming it "fine" — art was elevated to a position separate from life, and thus rendered impotent to effect a lived aesthetic experience (which is how, Dewey would argue, the arts function most powerfully — as the purveyors of heightened experience). As Shusterman describes:The underlying motive for such attempts to purify art from any functionality was not to denigrate it as worthlessly useless, but to place its worth apart from and above the realm of instrumental value...and this freedom from use would be its defining and ennobling feature.(PA, 9)Dewey (and Shusterman) thus maintained that the very power construct that put the "fine" in art did so by removing the aspect of function from it. As previously stated, Dewey blamed museum institutions for removing art from its... (shrink)

Painting as an art: Wollheim and the subjective dimension -- Abstract art and transperceptual space: Wolheim, and beyond -- Truth in art: Heidegger against contextualism -- Space, place, and sculpture: Heidegger's pathways -- Vision in being: Merleau-Ponty and the depths of painting -- Subjectivity, the gaze, and the picture: developing Lacan -- Dimensions in time: Dufrenne's phenomenology of pictorial art -- Conclusion: a preface to post-analytic phenomenology.

Unsupervised statistical learning is the standard setting for the development of the only advanced visual system that is both highly sophisticated and versatile, and extensively studied: that of monkeys and humans. In this extended abstract, we invoke philosophical observations, computational arguments, behavioral data and neurobiological findings to explain why computer vision researchers should care about (1) unsupervised learning, (2) statistical inference, and (3) the visual brain. We then outline a neuromorphic approach to structural primitive learning motivated by these (...) considerations, survey a range of neurobiological findings and behavioral data consistent with it, and conclude by mentioning some of the more challenging directions for future research. (shrink)