It is this very contention that sits at the heart of Matthew Flisfeder’s, Algorithmic Desire: Towards a New Structuralist Theory of Social Media (2021). In spite of the accusation that, today, our social media is in fact hampering democracy and subjecting us to increasing forms of online and offline surveillance, for Flisfeder (2021: 3), ‘[s]ocial media remains the correct concept for reconciling ourselves with the structural contradictions of our media, our culture, and our society’. With almost every aspect of our (...) contemporary lives now mediated through the digital, the significance of the algorithm maintains a pertinent importance in making sense of the social and psychic investments that our interactions on social media, as well as other forms of digital media, rely upon and encourage. The socio-political tensions and contradictions that such interaction prescribes remains a reoccurring theme throughout Algorithmic Desire, with Flisfeder masterfully navigating the problems and pitfalls of a burgeoning digital infrastructure that is redefining our lives as social beings. What becomes apparent from Flisfeder’s account is how debates and discussions regarding the algorithm can be couched in a number of pressing concerns, including the proliferation of online misinformation and the contradictions inherent to our freedom and security. While these debates are drawn together through the prism of the algorithm, it is mostly with regards to the medium of social media that Flisfeder examines how our desire and enjoyment are algorithmically organized. This focus is expertly followed throughout the book’s eight chapters, producing a critically engaging inquiry that continually considers the socio-political tensions and ambiguities that frame and sustain our digital media interactions. Ultimately, it is this contention that lends further support to Flisfeder’s assertion that algorithms play a key role in reading our desire. In the discussion that follows, this reading will be critically considered by tracing and outlining a number of key significances underpinning Flisfeder’s approach. Most notably, this will require a discussion of the Lacanian conception of desire; the effects of disavowal and cynical perversion; the importance of ‘maintaining appearances’; and, finally, the significance of the social media metaphor. (shrink)

Why should I be rational? -- Reasonableness-- Scientific objectivity -- Is scientific neutrality a myth? -- Humaneness -- The prevalence of humbug -- The rationality of voting -- Newcomb's problem demystified.

Sport poses a number of important and no less significant questions, which, on the face of it, may not necessarily seem very important or significant to begin with – a peculiarity that we believe to be integral to sport itself. This article introduces, explores and outlines the psychoanalytic significance of this peculiarity. It explores how the emotions stirred by sport are intertwined with a realm of fiction and fantasy. Despite its lack of practical utility, sport carries an undeniable gravity, encapsulating (...) the aspirations of communities, nations and continents. As a result, psychoanalysis can be used to critically reflect on the purpose and meaning of sport: that is, why do we need sport, and why, for large sections of the world’s population, do we rely on it? Ultimately, while psychoanalysis maintains a unique relation to a variety of unexpected fields of study – including art, culture and neuroscience – we seek to add to this expanding list of inquiry by including sport in this critical domain. By utilising sport as a platform to elucidate psychoanalytic concepts, it is recognised that sport can also prompt questions for psychoanalysis. In so doing, theoretical discussions on the social, cultural and political dimensions of sport through psychoanalytic theory are introduced and applied. (shrink)

Author Max Black argues that language should conform to the discovered regularities of experience it is radically mistaken to assume that the conception of language is a mirror of reality.

Author Max Black argues that language should conform to the discovered regularities of experience it is radically mistaken to assume that the conception of language is a mirror of reality.

This article explores Foucault’s two different notions of power: one where the subject is constituted by power–knowledge relations and another that emphasizes how power is a central feature of human action. By drawing out these two conceptualizations of power, Foucault’s work contributes three critical points to the formation of medicalized subjectivities: the issue of medicalization needs to be discussed both in terms of both specific practices and holistically ; we need to think how we as human beings are “disciplined” and (...) “subjectivated” through medicalization, as discourses, practices, and institutions are all crystallizations of power relations; and we need to reflect on how we can “resist” this process of subjectification, since “power comes from below” and patients shape themselves through “technologies of the self.” Ultimately, Foucault’s work does not merely assist us in refining our analysis; rather, it is essential for conceptualizing medicalization in contemporary society. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:It may be too late to avoid the climate crisis, likely to be humanity's most expensive, widespread, and enduring catastrophe. This is a qualitatively different kind of catastrophe, in which increased costs, decreased revenue, and no possibility of bailout force communities to harshly cut budgets, especially in health care. Little is known about making such brutal cuts fair or efficient, nor how to help the public accept them. The crisis presents an opportunity for bioethicists to play a crucial role, but (...) one for which traditional approaches are inherently inadequate. Although often dismissed as heartless, Garrett Hardin's "lifeboat ethics" started a conversation about making ethical choices in global disasters—where all options are painful and unacceptable—and may provide guidance. Bioethics during the climate crisis must focus on communities rather than individuals and help survivors grieve the terrible consequences. Because today's choices will affect many generations, with the burdens falling most heavily on poor communities, we have to construct a radical bioethics to help tomorrow's health care become green, efficient, and fair. (shrink)

The late John Austin's William James Lectures 1 might well have borne the subtitle ‘In Pursuit of a Vanishing Distinction’. Although the chase is remorseless, glimpses of the quarry become increasingly equivocal and the hunter is left empty-handed at last. It is hard to know what has gone awry. Has the wrong game been pursued—and in the wrong direction?

The concept of ‘‘certitude” is central in Arabic discussions of the theory of demonstration advanced by Aristotle in the Posterior Analytics. In the Arabic tradition it is ‘‘certitude,” rather than ‘‘knowledge”, that is usually identified as the end sought by demonstrations. Al-Fārābī himself devotes a short treatise, known as the Conditions of Certitude, to determining the criteria according to which a subject can claim to have absolute certitude of any proposition. In this article the author traces the roots of the (...) concept of certitude to the Arabic translation of the Posterior Analytics. She then offers a close reading of the text of al-Fārābī's Conditions and its parallels in his Epitome of the Posterior Analytics. She argues that the identification of certitude as a cognitive state distinct from knowledge enabled al-Fārābī to introduce a number of interesting and sometimes problematic innovations into Arabic epistemology. Foremost amongst his positive innovations is the recognition that contingent as well as necessary propositions allow for an attenuated form of certitude, and the introduction of reliabilism into the justification of claims to certitude. But al-Fārābī is also one of the first philosophers to articulate explicitly the idea that certitude must include an element of ‘‘knowing that one knows,” a controversial principle that tends to undermine both al-Fārābī’s reliabilism and his efforts to loosen some of the strictures in traditional Aristotelian epistemology. (shrink)

Parts of the book date back to and some of the concluding remarks on ethics and the will may have been composed still earlier, when Wittgenstein admired ...

As a leading member of the Vienna Circle, Rudolph Carnap's aim was to bring about a "unified science" by applying a method of logical analysis to the empirical data of all the sciences. This work, first published in English in 1934, endeavors to work out a way in which the observation statements required for verification are not private to the observer. The work shows the strong influence of Wittgenstein, Russell, and Frege.

An elaboration and defense of the “interaction view of metaphor” introduced in the author's earlier study, “Metaphor” . Special attention is paid to the explication of the metaphors used in the earlier account.The topics discussed include: selection of the “targets” of the theory; classification of metaphors; how metaphorical statements work; relations between metaphors and similes; metaphorical thought; criteria of recognition; the “creative” aspects of metaphors; the ontological status of metaphors.Metaphors are found to be more closely connected with background models than (...) has previously been recognized. (shrink)

Dialogue is a recurring and significant component of Indian religious and philosophical literature. Whether it be as a narrative account of a conversation between characters within a text, as an implied response or provocation towards an interlocutor outside the text, or as a hermeneutical lens through which commentators and modern audiences can engage with an ancient text, dialogue features prominently in many of the most foundational sources from classical India. Despite its ubiquity, there are very few studies that explore this (...) important facet of Indian texts. This book redresses this imbalance by undertaking a close textual analysis of a range of religious and philosophical literature to highlight the many uses and functions of dialogue in the sources themselves and in subsequent interpretations. Using the themes of encounter, transformation and interpretation - all of which emerged from face-to-face discussions between the contributors of this volume - each chapter explores dialogue in its own context, thereby demonstrating the variety and pervasiveness of dialogue in different genres of the textual tradition. This is a rich and detailed study that offers a fresh and timely perspective on many of the most well-known and influential sources from classical India. As such, it will be of great use to scholars of religious studies, Asian studies, comparative literature and literary theory. (shrink)

The Upaniṣads The Upaniṣads are ancient texts from India that were composed orally in Sanskrit between about 700 B.C.E. and 300 B.C.E. There are thirteen major Upaniṣads, many of which were likely composed by multiple authors and are comprised of a variety of styles. As part of a larger group of texts, known as the … Continue reading Upanisads →.

It is a paradox, whose importance familiarity fails to diminish, that the most highly developed and useful scientific theories are ostensibly expressed in terms of objects never encountered in experience. The line traced by a draughtsman, no matter how accurate, is seen beneath the microscope as a kind of corrugated trench, far removed from the ideal line of pure geometry. And the “point-planet” of astronomy, the “perfect gas” of thermodynamics, or the “pure species” of genetics are equally remote from exact (...) realization. Indeed the unintelligibility at the atomic or sub-atomic level of the notion of a rigidly demarcated boundary shows that such objects not merely are not but could not be encountered. While the mathematician constructs a theory in terms of “perfect” objects, the experimental scientist observes objects of which the properties demanded by theory are and can, in the very nature of measurement, be only approximately true. As Duhem remarks, mathematical deduction is not useful to the physicist if interpreted rigorously. It is necessary to know that its validity is unaltered when the premise and conclusion are only “approximately true.” But the indeterminacy thus introduced, it is necessary to add in criticism, will invalidate the deduction unless the permissible limits of variation are specified. To do so, however, replaces the original mathematical deduction by a more complicated mathematical theory in respect of whose interpretation the same problem arises, and whose exact nature is in any case unknown. (shrink)

The sensitivity principle is a compelling idea in epistemology and is typically characterized as a necessary condition for knowledge. This collection of thirteen new essays constitutes a state-of-the-art discussion of this important principle. Some of the essays build on and strengthen sensitivity-based accounts of knowledge and offer novel defences of those accounts. Others present original objections to sensitivity-based accounts and offer comprehensive analysis and discussion of sensitivity's virtues and problems. The resulting collection will stimulate new debate about the sensitivity principle (...) and will be of great interest and value to scholars and advanced students of epistemology. (shrink)

Language and Experience: Evidence from the Blind Child. By BARBARA LANDAU and LILA R. GLEITMAN.