The scientific study of consciousness emerged as an organized field of research only a few decades ago. As empirical results have begun to enhance our understanding of consciousness, it is important to find out whether other factors, such as funding for consciousness research and status of consciousness scientists, provide a suitable environment for the field to grow and develop sustainably. We conducted an online survey on people’s views regarding various aspects of the scientific study of consciousness as a field of (...) research. 249 participants completed the survey, among which 80% were in academia, and around 40% were experts in consciousness research. Topics covered include the progress made by the field, funding for consciousness research, job opportunities for consciousness researchers, and the scientific rigor of the work done by researchers in the field. The majority of respondents (78%) indicated that scientific research on consciousness has been making progress. However, most participants perceived obtaining funding and getting a job in the field of consciousness research as more difficult than in other subfields of neuroscience. Overall, work done in consciousness research was perceived to be less rigorous than other neuroscience subfields, but this perceived lack of rigor was not related to the perceived difficulty in finding jobs and obtaining funding. Lastly, we found that, overall, the global workspace theory was perceived to be the most promising (around 28%), while most non-expert researchers (around 22% of non-experts) found the integrated information theory (IIT) most promising. We believe the survey results provide an interesting picture of current opinions from scientists and researchers about the progresses made and the challenges faced by consciousness research as an independent field. They will inspire collective reflection on the future directions regarding funding and job opportunities for the field. (shrink)

In _Sino-Theology and the Philosophy of History_ Leopold Leeb presents the ideas of an influential Chinese intellectual, Liu Xiaofeng, whose approach to the question of a Christian theology for China is both controversial and inspiring.

劉智與賈米這兩位時隔幾百年、跨越幾千公里的波斯與中國學者沿著古老的絲綢之路，通過兩者的著述和譯文建立了學術與思想上的聯繫。本書以絲綢之路上的人文交流為時代背景，以波斯蘇非典籍從中亞到中國內地的傳播途徑 與方式為切入點，研究明清時期中國穆斯林知識份子群體出現與發展的歷史背景，以及漢文譯著活動的文化動因，並以此為基礎揭示出劉智與賈米哲學思想的淵源。.

A Conversation with Claire Katz about her book, Levinas and the Crisis of Humanism.

本书选辑了作者自1982年以来公开发表的学术论文和学术评论50余篇。学术论文部分主要是围绕重大现实课题,探讨了马克思主义哲学历史观、真理观、价值观和文化研究的方法论等问题;学术评论部分主要针对社会上和 学术理论界存在的思想路线、思维方式、思想作风、学风、文风等方面的问题及其实质和根源,作了分析和评论。.

本书前部为为其生平与学术评传, 正文为文选, 收入其论著58种, 其后为学术年谱和论著目录.

本书内容包括:物质第一性精神第二性关于哲学基本问题的对话、批判林彪“四人帮”的“精神万能论”、论矛盾诸方面同一性在事物发展中的作用、关于实践标准的几个问题等。.

_The View from Within_, edited by the late Francisco Varela in collaboration with Jonathan Shear, was published in 1999 and has proved a major stimulus to the scientific investigation of first-person methodologies in psychology and philosophy of mind. Ten years on, Claire Petitmengin has organized a collection of essays that examine and refine the research program on first-person methods defined in _The View from Within_, with contributions based on empirical research. She has kept close to the spirit of the (...) earlier book, in which Varela encouraged a precise description of the very process of becoming aware of one's experience and describing it, by gathering the contributions of researchers who not only propose first-person descriptions, but who also try to describe the process of description itself, in order to make the description reproducible -- a necessary condition for any scientific undertaking. (shrink)

Challenging previous interpretations of Levinas that gloss over his use of the feminine or show how he overlooks questions raised by feminists, Claire Elise Katz explores the powerful and productive links between the feminine and religion in Levinas’s work. Rather than viewing the feminine as a metaphor with no significance for women or as a means to reinforce traditional stereotypes, Katz goes beyond questions of sexual difference to reach a more profound understanding of the role of the feminine in (...) Levinas’s conception of ethical responsibility. She combines feminist interpretations of Levinas with interpretations that focus on his Jewish writings to reveal that the feminine provides an important bridge between his philosophy and his Judaism. Katz’s reading of Levinas’s conception of the feminine against the backdrop of discussions of women of the Hebrew bible points to important shifts in contemporary philosophy toward the creation of life and care for the other. (shrink)

Reexamining Emmanuel Levinas’s essays on Jewish education, Claire Elise Katz provides new insights into the importance of education and its potential to transform a democratic society, for Levinas’s larger philosophical project.

This special issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies is the sequel to Ten Years of Viewing from Within, JCS Vol. 16, No. 10-12, commemorating the tenth anniversary of the publication of The View from Within, JCS Vol. 6, No. 2-3, where Francisco Varela in collaboration with Jonathan Shear designed the foundations of a research program on lived experienced. The commemorative issue aimed to examine and refine this research program on first-person methods, through contributions based on empirical research.At the end (...) of the Introduction, guest editor Claire Petitmengin invited other researchers to participate in this debate, and in response six further commentaries were received, covering many methodological, epistemological and philosophical issues related to the study of consciousness in the first-person. These form the core of the current issue, and are accompanied in some instances by responses from the authors whose work they discuss.The journal’s editors hope that these two issues make a positive contribution towards establishing possibility of a first-person discipline and strengthening the emerging research community in this field. (shrink)

Solidly grounded in Chinese primary sources, Neo Confucianism: Metaphysics, Mind, and Morality engages the latest global scholarship to provide an innovative, rigorous, and clear articulation of neo-Confucianism and its application to Western philosophy. -/- Contextualizes neo-Confucianism for contemporary analytic philosophy by engaging with today’s philosophical questions and debates Based on the most recent and influential scholarship on neo-Confucianism, and supported by primary texts in Chinese and cross-cultural secondary literature Presents a cohesive analysis of neo-Confucianism by investigating the metaphysical foundations of (...) neo-Confucian perspectives on the relationship between human nature, human mind, and morality Offers innovative interpretations of neo-Confucian terminology and examines the ideas of eight major philosophers, from Zhou Dunyi and Cheng-Zhu to Zhang Zai and Wang Fuzhi Approaches neo-Confucian concepts in an penetrating yet accessible way. (shrink)

A unique new study which extends Deleuze's already radical philosophy into ideas of the post-human, truth, reading, sexual difference and gender politics.

Within a context of rapid growth and diversification in higher degree research programs, there is increasing pressure for the results of doctoral research to be made public. Doctoral students are now being encouraged to publish not only after completion of the doctorate, but also during, and even as part of their research program. For many this is a new and challenging feature of their experience of doctoral education. _Publishing Pedagogies for the Doctorate and Beyond_ is a timely and informative collection (...) of practical and theorised examples of innovative pedagogies that encourage doctoral student publishing. The authors give detailed accounts of their own pedagogical practices so that others may build on their experiences, including: a program of doctoral degree by publication; mentoring strategies to support student publishing; innovations within existing programs, including embedded publication pedagogies; co-editing a special issue of a scholarly journal with students; ‘publication brokering’, and writing groups and writing retreats. With contributions from global leading experts, this vital new book: explores broader issues pertaining to journal publication and the impacts on scholarly research and writing practices for students, supervisors and the academic publishing community takes up particular pedagogical problems and strategies, including curriculum and supervisory responses arising from the ‘push to publish’ documents explicit experiences and practical strategies that foster writing-for-publication during doctoral candidature. _Publishing Pedagogies for the Doctorate and Beyond_ explores the challenges and rewards of supporting doctoral publishing and provides new ways to increase research publication outputs in a pedagogically sound way. It will be a valued resource for supervisors and their doctoral students, as well as for program coordinators and managers, academic developers, learning advisors, and others involved in doctoral education. (shrink)

In this collection of essays, leading cultural theorists consider the meaning and implications of world-scale humanist scholarship by engaging with Immanuel Wallerstein’s world-systems analysis. The renowned sociologist developed his influential critical framework to explain the historical and continuing exploitation of the rest of the world by the West. World-systems analysis reflects Wallerstein’s conviction that understanding global inequality requires thinking on a global scale. Humanists have often criticized his theory as insufficiently attentive to values and objects of knowledge such as culture, (...) agency, difference, subjectivity, and the local. The editors of this collection do not deny the validity of those criticisms; instead, they offer Wallerstein’s world-systems analysis as a well-developed vision of the world scale for humanists to think with and against. Scholars of comparative literature, gender, geography, history, law, race, and sociology consider what thinking on the world scale might mean for particular disciplinary practices, knowledge formations, and objects of study. Several essays offer broader reflections on what is at stake for the study of culture in decisions to adopt or reject world-scale thinking. In a brief essay, Immanuel Wallerstein situates world-systems analysis vis-à-vis the humanities. Contributors. Gopal Balakrishnan, Tani E. Barlow, Neil Brenner, Richard E. Lee, Franco Moretti, David Palumbo-Liu, Bruce Robbins, Helen Stacy, Nirvana Tanoukhi, Immanuel Wallerstein, Kären Wigen. (shrink)

In recent decades, a new scientific approach to understand, explain, and predict many features of religion has emerged. The cognitive science of religion has amassed research on the forces that shape the tendency for humans to be religious and on what forms belief takes. It suggests that religion, like language or music, naturally emerges in humans with tractable similarities. This new approach has profound implications for how we understand religion, including why it appears so easily, and why people are willing (...) to fight-and die for it. Yet it is not without its critics, and some fear that scholars are explaining the ineffable mystery of religion away, or by showing that religion is natural proves or disproves the existence of God. An Introduction to the Cognitive Science of Religion offers students and general readers an accessible introduction to the approach, providing an overview of key findings and the debates that shape it. The volume includes a glossary of key terms, and each chapter includes suggestions for further thought and further reading as well as chapter summaries highlighting key points. This book is an indispensable resource for introductory courses on religion and a much-needed option for advanced courses. (shrink)

Standing in San Marco Cathedral in Venice, you immediately notice the exquisitely decorated spandrels: the triangular spaces bounded on either side by adjoining arches and by the dome above. You would be forgiven for seeing them as the starting point from which to understand the surrounding architecture. To do so would, however, be a mistake. It is a similar mistaken inference that evolutionary biologists have been accused of making in assuming a special adaptive purpose for such biological features as fingerprints (...) and chins. I argue that a mistake of just this sort is being made by ethicists who appeal to the intrinsic value of supererogatory acts in their efforts to make space for supererogation in ethical theory. Many cases of supererogatory action are simply spandrels: by-products of uncontroversial commitments elsewhere in our moral thought. This is not to downplay their value but rather to show that their value need not be the justification for making room for the supererogatory. I demonstrate this by examining two areas: rights and the distribution of burdens among a group. My argument has significance for those who take themselves to be defends of the possibility of supererogatory actions, as well as those who are committed to the contrary and those who believe themselves to be indifferent on the matter. (shrink)

In The Specter of Materialism Petrus Liu examines what "materialism" means for progressive queer theory and Marxist approaches to China's postsocialist economy. Liu recasts the history of queer theory in light of the Beijing Consensus, arguing that North American queer theory's inability to sustain a materialist analysis is the result of its positioning of the United States, rather than China, as the focal point of contemporary global capitalism. Analyzing relations of gender and sexuality that have been reconfigured by China's global (...) capitalist accumulation-such as dagongmei (female migrant laborers in China's export-oriented sunbelt) and money boys (rural-to-urban sex workers)-Liu argues for a materialist queer theory that positions China at the center. (shrink)

As in other countries, Einstein has been one of the most famous scientists in China. In 1970’s, the three volumes Collection of Einstein in Chinese have been selected, translated and published, which was the main sources for Chinese people knowing Einstein for long time, and even had important ideological influence. However, as the background of it, in China, there were very influential political movements related to criticism of science after 1949, which also influenced the decision, selection, progress and the way (...) of the translating and publishing of Einstein’s works. Among the editors and translators, XU Liangying was a special and important person, who was originally a underground revolutionist before establishment of the Republic, and latterly became a historian of science. He spent nearly ten years to finish the most translation when he was a real peasant in countryside and a “righty” because of the “anti-righty“ movement. During the translating work and the publication of Collection of Einstein in that special social, cultural and political context then, there were many things worth to look back and analyze their meanings by a historical perspective reflection. Especially, the ideological symbolic implication related to the Einstein has been a very dominant characteristic in the history mentioned here. (shrink)

Incoherence is usually regarded as a bad thing. Incoherence suggests irrationality, confusion, paradox. Incoherentism disagrees: incoherence is not always a bad thing, sometimes we ought to be incoherent. If correct, Incoherentism has important and controversial implications. It implies that rationality does not always require coherence. Dilemmism and Incoherentism both embrace conflict in epistemology. After identifying some important differences between these two ways of embracing conflict, I offer some reasons to prefer Incoherentism over Dilemmism. Namely, that Incoherentism allows us to deliberate (...) about what we ought to believe using ordinary epistemology, and it does a better job of accommodating the positive features of incoherence. (shrink)

Comme dans les autres pays, Einstein a été l’un des scientifiques les plus célèbres en Chine. Dans les années soixante-dix du 20e siècle, trois volumes des OEuvres complètes d’Einstein ont été traduits et publiés en Chine. Pour de nombreux Chinois ces volumes représentaient une source d’informations sur Einstein et une influence idéologique importante. Le contexte politique en est le suivant: après l’an 1949 des mouvements politiques très influents sont nés en Chine, ayant pour objectif la critique des sciences. Ces mouvements (...) ont beaucoup influencé les décisions, la sélection, le progrès ainsi que la manière de traduire et de publier les oeuvres d’Einstein. Parmi les éditeurs et les traducteurs excellait Xu Liangying. Révolutionnaire clandestin avant la mise en place de la République, il est devenu par la suite historien de la science. Il a investi presque dix ans pour terminer la traduction des oeuvres d’Einstein parce qu’ à l’époque il travaillait comme agriculteur pour ses idées de droite pendant la Révolution culturelle. Dans ce contexte sociologique, culturel et politique, la traduction et la publication des OEuvres complètes d’Einstein offre beaucoup de points qui méritent d’être examinés et analysés dans une perspective historique. Surtout, par exemple, les implications idéologiques, symboliques reliés à Einstein et qui ont été les caractéristiques dominantes de cette époque historique. (shrink)

Autonomy is a vital concept in much of modern theory, defining the Subject as capable of self-governance. Democratic theory relies on the concept of autonomy to provide justification for participatory government and the normative goal of democratic governance, which is to protect the ability of the individual to self-govern. Offering the first examination of the concept of autonomy from a postfoundationalist perspective, _The Autonomous Animal _analyzes how the ideal of self-governance has shaped everyday life. Claire E. Rasmussen begins by (...) considering the academic terrain of autonomy, then focusing on specific examples of political behavior that allow her to interrogate these theories. She demonstrates how the adolescent—a not-yet-autonomous subject—highlights how the ideal of self-governance generates practices intended to cultivate autonomy by forming the individual’s relationship to his or her body. She points up how the war on drugs rests on the perception that drug addicts are the antithesis of autonomy and thus must be regulated for their own good. Showing that the animal rights movement may challenge the distinction between human and animal, Rasmussen also examines the place of the endurance athlete in fitness culture, where self-management of the body is the exemplar of autonomous subjectivity. (shrink)

Giorgio Agamben emerged in the twenty-first century as one of the most important theorists in the continental tradition. Until recently, 'continental' philosophy has been tied either to the German tradition of phenomenology or to French post-structuralist concerns with the conditions of language and textuality. Agamben draws upon and departs from both these lines of thought by directing his entire corpus to the problem of life political life, human life, animal life and the life of art. Influenced by the work of (...) Martin Heidegger, Walter Benjamin and the broader tradition of critical Marxism, Agamben's work poses the profound question for our time just how exceptional are human beings. This beautifully written book provides a systematic, engaging overview of Agamben's writings on theology, aesthetics, political theory and sovereignty. Covering the full range of Agamben's work to date Claire Colebrook and Jason Maxwell explain Agamben's theology and philosophy by referring the concepts to some of today's most urgent political and ethical problems. They focus on the audacious way in which Agamben re-conceptualizes life itself. Assessing the significance of the concepts key to his work such as bio-politics, sovereignty, the ‘state of exception’ and ‘bare life’, they demonstrate his wide-ranging influence across the humanities. They also explore the critical reactions to Agamben's thinking and his reception in philosophical and theoretical circles. This book will be essential reading for students in anthropology, politics, philosophy and related disciplines and anyone interested in finding out more about one of the influential thinkers writing today. (shrink)

The debate on the value of Boyer's minimally counter-intuitive theory continues to generate considerable theoretical and empirical attention. Although the theory offers an explanation as to why certain cultural texts and narratives are particularly well conveyed and transmitted, amidst society and over time, conflicting evidence remains for any mnemonic advantage of minimally counter-intuitive concepts. In an effort to reconcile these conflicting results, Barrett has made a comprehensive attempt in presenting a formal system for quantifying counter – intuitiveness including a distinction (...) between counter-intuitive and counter-schematic concepts. The present article uses this system to generate sentences containing different levels of counter-intuitiveness, and tests whether minimally counter-intuitive items show a mnemonic advantage over concepts which are more counter-intuitive or counter-schematic. Results indicate that MCI concepts hold a mnemonic advantage over counter-schematic and maximally counter-intuitive concepts but only for one-week delayed recall. Interference effects may have masked immediate recall effects. Yes-no recognition after one week delay showed almost 100% accuracy suggesting that availability of retrieval cues is the factor which determines the mnemonic advantage of MCI concepts. (shrink)

Most areas of philosopher Edmund Husserl’s thought have been explored, but his views on logic, mathematics, and semantics have been largely ignored. These essays offer an alternative to discussions of the philosophy of contemporary mathematics. The book covers areas of disagreement between Husserl and Gottlob Frege, the father of analytical philosophy, and explores new perspectives seen in their work.

Wie in anderen Ländern, so galt Einstein auch in China als einer der berühmtesten Wissenschaftler schlechthin. In den siebziger Jahren des 20. Jahrhunderts wurden drei Bände Einstein’scher Schriften zusammengestellt, übersetzt und als Einsteins gesammelte Werke veröffentlicht. Diese Bände dienten lange Zeit vielen Chinesen als Hauptwissensquelle über Einstein; sie übten sogar einen bedeutenden ideologischen Einfluss aus. Im Hintergrund dieses herausgeberischen Projekts standen in der Zeit nach 1949 einflussreiche politische Bewegungen im Zusammenwirken mit wissenschaftskritischen Ansätzen, die ein solches Projekt erst möglich machten (...) und die Textauswahl sowie die Herangehensweise bei der Übersetzung und den Druckvorbereitungen beeinflussten. Unter den Herausgebern und Übersetzern kommt Xu Liangying eine besondere und wichtige Rolle zu, denn er war ursprünglich, vor der Gründung der Republik China, ein Untergrundrevolutionär gewesen. Später wurde er Wissenschaftshistoriker. Es vergingen fast 10 Jahre, bis er die Übersetzung der Einstein’schen Schriften fertigstellen konnte, da er gleichzeitig als Bauer auf dem Lande arbeiten musste und während der „Anti-Rechts-Bewegung” „rechts” stand. Die Übersetzung und Veröffentlichung von Einsteins gesammelten Werken in diesem besonderen soziologischen, kulturellen und politischen Kontext bietet viel Stoff für Rückblicke und Aufarbeitungen aus historischer Perspektive. Vor allem die ideologischen, symbolischen Implikationen in Zusammenhang mit Einstein waren ein dominantes Merkmal jener Zeit. (shrink)