Carrie Figdor presents a critical assessment of how psychological terms are used to describe the non-human biological world. She argues against the anthropocentric attitude which takes human cognition as the standard against which non-human capacities are measured, and offers an alternative basis for naturalistic explanation of the mind.

This book starts from a first general observation: there are very diverse ways to frame and convey scientific knowledge in texts. It then analyzes texts on mathematics, astronomy, medicine and life sciences, produced in various parts of the globe and in different time periods, and examines the reasons behind the segmentation of texts and the consequences of such textual divisions. How can historians and philosophers of science approach this diversity, and what is at stake in dealing with it? The book (...) addresses these questions, adopting a specific approach to do so. In order to shed light on the diversity of organizational patterns and rhetorical strategies in scientific texts, and to question the rationale behind the choices made to present such texts in one particular way, it focuses on the issue of text segmentation, offering answers to questions such as: What was the meaning of segmenting texts into paragraphs, chapters, sections and clusters? Was segmentation used to delimit self-contained units, or to mark breaks in the physical appearance of a text in order to aid reading and memorizing, or to cope with the constraints of the material supports? How, in these different settings and in different texts, were pieces and parts made visible? (shrink)

A survey of theories of part, whole and dependence from Aristotle to the Gestalt psychologists, with special attention to Husserl’s Third Logical Investigation “On the Theory of Parts and Wholes”.

Sacred Harp singers the world over gather weekly to sing out ofThe Sacred Harp, a collection of shape-note songs first published in 1844. Their tradition is highly ritualized, and it plays an important role in the lives of many participants. Following the implementation of lockdown protocols to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, groups of Sacred Harp singers quickly and independently devised a variety of means by which to sing together online using Zoom, Jamulus, and Facebook Live. The rapidity and creativity with (...) which Sacred Harp singers developed ways to sustain their activities attests to the strength and significance of this community of practice, and in this article I describe each modality and provide an account of how it came to be developed and widely used. As a participant-observer, I completed extensive fieldwork across these digital sites and conducted semi-structured interviews with 22 other singers. I found that online singing practices have reshaped the Sacred Harp community. Many singers who did not previously have the opportunity to participate now have access, while others have lost access due to technological barriers or lack of interest in online activities. At the same time, geographical barriers have disintegrated, and singing organizers must make an effort to maintain local identity. A stable community of singers has emerged in the digital realm, but it is by no means identical to the community that predated the pandemic. I also identify the ways in which online singing has proven meaningful to participants by providing continuity in their personal and communal practice. Specifically, online singing allows participants to access and celebrate their collective memories of the Sacred Harp community, carry out significant rituals, and continue to grow as singers. While no single modality replicates the complete Sacred Harp singing experience, together they function “like pieces in a puzzle”, allowing individual participants to access many of the elements of Sacred Harp singing that are most meaningful to them. (shrink)

Whether in journalism or medicine, education, law, or television, trans writers and trans studies scholars consistently develop this critique of the representational totalization of trans people, whereby they are and have been made whats, not whos; objects, not subjects; voiceless, not vocal; passive, not active; dehistoricized, not historical; and single, not multiple. In what follows, I aim to supplement this critique by attending to the role of curiosity both as a technique of (trans) objectification and as a practice of (trans) (...) freedom, on both the individual and social level. That is, I trace how curiosity—through the monadic and collective acts of gazing, inquiring, investigating, and imagining—functions as part of the project of the representational totalization of trans people but also as part of trans people’s own praxis of resistant de-totalization. (shrink)

This article catalogs social processes contributing to construction of emotions across three time-scales, covering: natural selection; ontogenesis; and moment-by-moment transactions. During human evolution, genetic and cultural influences operate interdependently, not as separate forces working against each other. Further, leaving infants’ environment-open serves adaptive purposes. During ontogenesis, cultural socialization affects emotion development in various ways, not all of which depend on internalization of cultural meanings as emphasized in some earlier social constructionist accounts. Construction also operates over the moment-by-moment time-scale of real-time (...) interpersonal interactions, as emotions adjust to the constraints and affordances of immediate cultural environments. Claims that emotions are constructed, and that social processes contribute to their construction, are no longer contestable. Now the project is to specify how these processes operate and what materials they use. (shrink)

The radical view, the view we’re kind of pushing, is that the iPhone can be seen literally as a part of my mind. I actually remember things: in virtue of this information being in the iPhone, it is part of my memory. The iPhone isn’t just a tool for my cognition, it’s part of my cognition.

Abstract Stephen Schiffer, in his recent book, Remnants of Meaning, argues against the possibility of any compositional theory of meaning for natural language. Because the argument depends on the premise that there is no possible naturalistic reduction of the intentional to the physical, Schiffer's attack on theories of meaning is of central importance for theorists of mind. I respond to Schiffer's argument by showing that there is at least one reductive account of the mental that he has neglected to consider?the (...) computationalist account known as the Representational Theory of Mind. Not only is this view immune from the criticisms Schiffer mounts against other reductivist theories, but it solves problems that arise on Schiffer's own non?reductive account of the relation between the intentional and the physical. (shrink)

In this paper† we will treat mereology as a theory of some structures that are not axiomatizable in an elementary langauge and we will use a variable rangingover the power set of the universe of the structure). A mereological structure is an ordered pair M = hM,⊑i, where M is a non-empty set and ⊑is a binary relation in M, i.e., ⊑ is a subset of M × M. The relation ⊑ isa relation of being a mereological part . We (...) formulate an axiomatization of mereological structures, different from Tarski’s axiomatization aspresented in [10] . We prove that these axiomatizations are equivalent . Of course, these axiomatizations are definitionally equivalent to thevery first axiomatization of mereology from [5], where the relation of being aproper part ⊏ is a primitive one.Moreover, we will show that Simons’ “Classical Extensional Mereology”from [9] is essentially weaker than Leśniewski’s mereology. (shrink)

A new collection of critical essays from bell hooks takes as its theme the deep longing for a critical voice. I explore some motifs that operate across the divergent topics of her essays. She writes of the dangers of commodification, of “reassuring” images, of individualism. I also explore the paths of hooks's uniquely black postmodernism: her critique of various essentialisms, her philosophically important conception of subjectivity, and her beautiful and powerful transformations of multiple discourses.

The radical view, the view we’re kind of pushing, is that the iPhone can be seen literally as a part of my mind. I actually remember things: in virtue of this information being in the iPhone, it is part of my memory. The iPhone isn’t just a tool for my cognition, it’s part of my cognition.

We study the effects of piece selection principles on cardinal arithmetic (Shelah style). As an application, we discuss questions of Abe and Usuba. In particular, we show that if, then (a) is not (λ, 2)‐distributive, and (b) does not hold.

Aaron Ridley has recently attacked the study of musical ontology—an apparently fertile area in the philosophy of music. I argue here that Ridley's arguments are unsound. There are genuinely puzzling ontological questions about music, many of which are closely related to questions of musical value. While it is true that musical ontology must be descriptive of pre-existing musical practices and that some debates, such as that over the creatability of musical works, have little consequence for questions of musical value, none (...) of this implies that these debates themselves are without value. (shrink)

Apart from Plutarch, whose work is often seen as atypical, there are no substantial pieces of extant writing from named Platonists between the death of Plato and the Enneads of Plotinus in the 3rd century AD. Anybody intent on charting the course of Platonism must therefore be reconciled to working regularly with fragments: piecing them together as our archaeological colleagues would seek to reassemble an example of red-figure pottery. Where most fragments survive, the task ahead is easier, but in (...) more challenging cases one must rely on an idea of what the artist was trying to depict, some comparative material, and the instincts acquired from repeatedly dealing with the same kind of material. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Works, Pieces, and Objects PerformedPaul Thom (bio)IntroductionJames Hamilton has written a book on the philosophy of theater that is admirable for its analytic clarity and for the wide knowledge of theatrical practice that it brings to bear on philosophical questions. The book’s main thesis is that theatrical performances are not presentations or executions or completions of texts, but the meaning of this thesis is not completely clear. Hamilton (...) sometimes expresses the thesis specifically in relation to literary texts:what is of interest in this book is the fact that the history I have been tracing—including the history of these debates—has revealed theatrical performance to be a form of art in its own right, independent of literature. And it is the meaning and truth of that discovery that is the central, indeed the only, concern in this book.1... Theatrical performance is a practice independent of literature.2This is the thesis in its weak form. Sometimes, however, he voices it in a strong form, relating to a class of artworks wider than literary texts: “A performance is... never a performance of some other work.”3Hamilton’s thesis, in either its weak or its strong form, might be understood as a claim about theatrical performance as such, or it might be understood as a generalization about individual theatrical performances. To take it the first way would be to take it intensionally, as a claim about the nature of theatrical performance—a statement about what the very notion of theatrical performance implies and what it excludes. To take it the second way would be to take it extensionally, as a claim about each and every theatrical performance. Thus, the weak thesis—the thesis relating to literary texts—might be understood (intensionally) as stating that theatrical performance as such is an art form that is independent of literary texts. Or it [End Page 67] might be understood (extensionally) as stating that no individual theatrical performance qua artwork depends on a literary text. Similarly, the strong thesis—the thesis relating to artworks in general—might be understood (intensionally) as stating that theatrical performance as such is an art form independent of all artworks that are not theatrical performances. Or it might be understood (extensionally) as stating that no individual theatrical performance qua artwork depends on any artwork that is not itself a theatrical performance.In this article I outline a framework within which I argue that Hamilton’s thesis in either its weak or its strong form should be accepted as an intensional claim about either moral or ontological independence, but it should be rejected as an extensional claim. Then I will discuss a line of reasoning Hamilton uses in support of his thesis, and I will argue that it is invalid.A FrameworkSpectators at a performance are often able to distinguish, at least to some extent, between the performance and what is performed. This must be the case if spectators are ever to be in a position to comment, for example, on whether a particular routine, which is part of what has been performed, is the same routine as was performed on another occasion—or to comment on how well or badly the routine is being executed. The concept of “what is performed” is therefore an important one for the philosophy of the performing arts.It appears that Hamilton is using this concept when he talks about “the performed object.”4 He doesn’t give us an analysis of what exactly a performed object is, but it appears to be more general than what Paul Woodruff means by a “theater piece.” Woodruff defines a theater piece as a kind of theatrical event that may be repeated.5 (I take it that the definition doesn’t imply that all theater pieces are capable, practically speaking, of being repeated—for that would be false—but merely means that the notion of a theatrical event leaves open the possibility of repetition.) A theater piece is, presumably, a performed object, but a performed object need not be a theater piece if theater is defined (following Woodruff) in terms of human action that is worth watching. Some performances—many musical... (shrink)

Volume 33, Issue 8, November 2020, Page 1185-1203.