In this paper, I focus on the term ‘immanence’ in Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex and show how it relates to her historical account of sexual oppression. I argue that Beauvoir's use of Hegel's master−slave dialectic and of Claude Lévi-Strauss's reflection on the prohibition of incest lead her to claim that in all societies “woman” is constructed as “absolutely other.” I show that there is an ambiguous logic of abjection at work in Beauvoir's account that explains why men are (...) the only examples of transcendence in history, whereas women lack it. Finally, I discuss the way in which the relation between immanence and abjection helps to explain the intellectual relation between Georges Bataille and Beauvoir. (shrink)

Derrida donne à penser une figure de la subjectivité comme désir qui est influencée par l’hégélianisme de Bataille. Ses premiers travaux interprètent en termes lacaniens le désir métaphysique de présence qui est toujours déjà saboté par le mouvement de différance qui l’a produit : Glas montre ainsi une subjectivité vivante et désirante qui empêche la dialectique hégélienne du désir d’aboutir aux formes totalisantes de l’esprit objectif. En revanche, la pensée tardive de Derrida permet de concevoir une subjectivité éthique et politique (...) dont le caractère aporétique se donne à lire comme déconstruction de l’Autre au sens lacanien. (shrink)

These three volumes assemble the most important essays written on Jacques Derrida's philosophy since he became established in 1967. These volumes make well-known essays easily available and also present many essays never translated in English.

The politics of shame makes part of the politics of affects. It is becoming a prominent form of politics in the age of social media. Social media, insofar as it presents a plurality of perspectives, can be a milieu for public deliberation. Acknowledging that politics of shame can be of different types, this essay considers two different experiences of politics of shame in social media. It compares public shaming as an activist strategy of moral reform in contemporary feminist politics with (...) politics of shame under authoritarianism by concentrating on two cases from Turkey. At first the structure of shame will be articulated by recourse to the phenomenological and psychological theories of shame. In public shaming for feminist moral reform, the publically shamed agent, who is a feminist, is accused by a group for performing an injurious speech act or a deed with mediate pernicious, harmful consequences. It is my contention that a theory of gender or sexual difference can be false, but is not morally equivalent to an attack on somebody’s existence, racism, and acts of genocide denial. Practices of public shaming in feminism are not self-defense; they are repressive and unfair attacks that destroy public deliberation. It is also problematic to attack feminists, on the grounds of arguments that are based on analogies, which do not apply to non-Western geo-political contexts. All politics of shame is not wrong. For example, the practices of politics of shame that concern non-elaborate mourning have moral and political value insofar as they can play a role in challenging an authoritarian political rule. In this case, the public shame results from attesting to injustice done to the other in the public sphere, a public sphere, which is already closed, and highly manipulated by the authoritarian state. (shrink)

Introduces the reader to the positions Derrida took in various areas of philosophy, as well as clarifying how derrideans interpret them in the present.

In The Beast and the Sovereign, Derrida’s last seminar, Derrida criticizes Lacan for making no room for animality in the Other, in the unconscious transindividual normativity of language. In this paper, I take into account the history of Derrida’s interactions with Lacan’s psychoanalysis to argue that Derrida’s early agreement with Lacan’s conception of subjectivity as split by the signifier gives place in his late thought to a deconstruction of Lacan’s fall into humanist metaphysics, which makes a sharp moral distinction between (...) the animal and the human in order to subordinate animals to the domination of mankind. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss how Turkish feminists have approached the phenomenon of male violence in Turkey as a political problem by following the feminist precept that the private is public. In the last twenty years, feminist activists in media have made male violence increasingly visible, by criticizing the framing of femicides as fatalities of jealousy and love. I argue that Turkish feminists do not consider male violence as just a “situation” or a structure of “oppression.” They problematize it as (...) systematic political violence, which calls for a critique of the anti-feminist state policies that restitute masculine supremacy by the promotion of patriarchal values. The political consolidation of masculinity by the rejection of gender equality is a key aspect of authoritarianism. Turkish government does not frame domestic violence as a women’s problem but as a family problem. In contrast, feminist arguments invite the government to confront domestic violence as male violence. I suggest that the male violence that women experience in Turkey can be seen as a manifestation of bio-power at the age of the crisis of neo-liberalism. (shrink)

The value of these volumes lies not only in the fact that it will make many well-known essays easily available, but also that it will present many essays never before translated into English. The names alone of the authors assembled here indicate the importance of this collection, contributors include: Blanchot, Cixous, deMan, Foucault, Gadamer, Habermas, Irigaray, Levinas, Lyotard and Ricoeur.

The social and political problem of immigration forces us to reflect on ethical issues such as the relation of responding and bonding across sharp differences, the role that moral values play in relating to the other, and the possibility of solidarity as a way of being responsible for the others with whom we do not have any ready-made social bond. I take Levinas's notion of the ethical relation with the other as a primal society from which the third is not (...) excluded, as a starting point for thinking of social bond as solidarity. I argue that it allows for ethical social bond making in situations determined by bio-power; even in situations in which people are depersonalized and deprived of their right to rights, and of their ethical agency. I propose that the bond of solidarity with the immigrant can be a model for the ethical social bond. (shrink)

These three volumes assemble the most important essays written on Jacques Derrida's philosophy since he became established in 1967. These volumes make well-known essays easily available and also present many essays never translated in English.

This book examines feminist philosophical analyses of sexual oppression of women by men, and brings them into conversation with phenomenological, ontological and psychoanalytical accounts of erotic experience and sexual difference.

There seems to be a shift in phenomenology in the 20th century from an ethics based on value theory to an ethics based on responsibility. This essay attempts to show the path marks of this transition. It begins with the historical development that led Husserl to address the question of ethical objectivity in terms of value theory, with a focus on Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche. It then explains Husserl’s phenomenology of ethics as grounded in value theory, and takes into account (...) Heidegger’s objections to it. Finally, it considers Sartre as a transitional figure between value theory and an ethics of responsibility and attempts to show in what sense, if at all, Levinas’ phenomenology of ethics could be an absolute break with a phenomenological ethics based on values. (shrink)

This essay argues that his encounter with the Lacanian claims about the imaginary and symbolic functions incited Merleau-Ponty to transform his early phenomenology. “The Mirror Stage Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience” forced Merleau-Ponty to reconsider the primacy of the notion of Leib (corps propre) in his early phenomenology. The modification of his phenomenological starting point culminates in the revision of his position on the relation of the imaginary and the symbolic functions to the (...) real from The Phenomenology of Perception to The Visible and the Invisible. I suggest that Merleau-Ponty’s focus on reversibility in The Visible and the Invisible should be read as an ontological elaboration of what is at the core of ‘The Mirror Stage,’ namely, the role of the imaginary and the symbolic functions in the formation of our corporeal visibility.Cet essai démontre que la convergence de Merleau-Ponty avec les revendications lacaniennes concernant l’imaginaire et les fonctions symboliques l’a incité à modifier sa première phénoménologie. « Le stade du miroir comme formateur de la fonction du Je telle qu’elle nous est révélée dans l’expérience psychanalytique » a forcé Merleau-Ponty à reconsidérer la primauté de la notion de Leib (corps propre) issue de sa première phénoménologie. La modification de son point de départ phénoménologique aboutit, depuis la Phénoménologie de la perception jusqu’à Le visible et l’invisible, à la révision de sa position sur la relation de l’imaginaire et des fonctions symboliques au réel. Je suppose que l’attention portée par Merleau-Ponty sur la réversibilité dans Le visible et l’invisible devrait être lue comme l’élaboration ontologique de ce qui est au coeur du « stade du miroir », à savoir le rôle de l’imaginaire et des fonctions symboliques dans la formation de notre visibilité corporelle.Il presente articolo avanza la tesi che l’incontro di Merleau-Ponty con la dimensione simbolica e la dimensione immaginaria descritte da Lacan, ha indotto il filosofo a trasformare la sua prima riflessione fenomenologica. “Lo stadio dello specchio come formatore della funzione dell’io” costrinse Merleau-Ponty a riesaminare il primato della nozione di Leib (corps propre), proprio della prima fase del suo pensiero e della sua adesione alla fenomenologia. La trasformazione del suo punto di partenza fenomenologico culmina in una revisione delle sue posizioni riguardo alla relazione delle funzioni immaginaria e simbolica rispetto al reale, che investe il passaggio da Fenomenologia della percezione al Visibile e l’invisibile. Attraverso questa lettura propongo di comprendere la nozione di reversibilità presente nel Visibile e l’invisibile, come una rielaborazione ontologica del nucleo centrale dello stadio dello specchio, ovvero il ruolo delle funzioni immaginaria e simbolica nella formazione della nostra visibilità corporea. (shrink)

This essay explores the personalism underlying the ethical dimension of Ricceur’s discussion of the institutional justice. According to Ricoeur, “public justice” refers to civil society’s critical response to the judicial acts of justice, with reference to ethical values as negotiating or mediating between the principles of justice and concrete practices, i.e., how things are done in the world, the existing state of affairs. Public justice can force institutional justice to function when it is not functioning well because of political interference (...) and manipulation. In case the public justice is obstructed, for instance in a totalitarian regime, which intimidates the public debate, all we are left with is “personal justice,” a virtue in the Aristotelian sense that exceeds justice in the institutional sense. If institutional justice collapses and public discussion is silenced, personal justice is the only remaining relation to the third, which is irreducible to friendship. (shrink)

This chapter explores Simone de Beauvoir's relation to Hegel's philosophy beyond her adaptation of the master and slave dialectic to the question of woman's historical relation to man. It focuses on her reading of the Hegelian Absolute, which underlies her rejection of the patriarchal representation of the female alterity as absolute, as manifested in the eternal myth of the feminine. Through a survey of Simone de Beauvoir's early intellectual history, it shows that the idea of the Absolute is more important (...) for Simone de Beauvoir than it is generally acknowledged in the philosophical literature on her. She interprets the Absolute as the idea of freedom, which unfolds itself in historical reality, and from which women cannot be excluded as persons. On personalist grounds, she argues that women's acquisition of political and moral status as persons is a necessary implication of the Absolute, if the Absolute has to overcome the unhappy consciousness the consciousness falls into in patriarchal myths. (shrink)

This article takes up Derrida’s discussion of secularism as a development in Western Christian tradition and history and in his deconstruction of the opposition between secular and religious in “Faith and Knowledge: Two Sources of “Religion”at the Limits of Reason Alone.” What are the implications of Derrida’s discussion of originary faith in Turkey that has a majority of Muslim population, and a history of modernization and secularization? Should Turkey renounce secularism in education because it is not “really” part of its (...) own tradition? Is a secular school system an oppressive institution for people born in a Muslim family because it alienates children from their own cultural traditions? I refer to Derrida’s deconstruction of identity, his discussion of tele-technology, return of the religious, auto-immunity, and sovereignty to find answers to such questions. I think they give us valuable insights to construe a Derridean response to the present problems, even though I am also critical about Derrida’s failure to acknowledge the need for universal secular norms in school education. (shrink)

Although Derrida has determined experience as always "an experience of presence" in Western metaphysics, a double logic of experience can be shown to determine his deconstruction of the phenomenological concept of experience. Derrida's appeal in his recent works to the notion of experience does not only imply that he has renovated the concept of experience but also that deconstruction has to be understood in terms of experience. Derrida's reading of the notion of experience in Husserl's phenomenology leads us to the (...) notion of the experience of the trace--- a condition of the possibility and of the impossibility of experience understood in terms of presence. By investigating the relation between deconstruction and experience, I point out to the fact that deconstruction subverts the desire for an originary experience and thus opens the way for a new politics of memory. By showing the connection between the experience of the trace as an impossible experience and the aporetic notion of experience, I discuss how Derrida reads the chiasm between ethics and politics in Levinas' philosophy. Finally, I investigate the way in which sexual difference partakes in the notion of aporetic experience and cannot be excluded from it. (shrink)

This article is a response to Robert Bernasconi’s critical philosophy of race. I start by speaking of the specific style in which life and philosophy are related in his work. I argue that he devises a political phenomenology which considers the lived experiences of racialization and inquires into their historical conditions, which have become “practico-inert” in facticity. Bernasconi’s thesis that the history of race is not determined by racial essentialism and his account of race as a border concept call for (...) an expansion of the notion of race that will better serve the cause of the global fight against racism. (shrink)

In this paper I address the questions posed to me by Bret Davis, Zeynep Direk, and Charles Mills, by focusing on, first, the eurocentrism of academic philosophy in the West and strategies to overcome it; secondly, the interface of critical philosophy of race and global politics, especially as the latter touches on Islamophobia; and, thirdly, the role of critical philosophy of race in challenging the complacency of philosophy departments in the face of the discipline’s long-standing complicity with racism.

While the Prophet's articulation of the message of tawhid resulted in the clustering of his followers around him, it also led to reactions from the majority of his interlocutors. At first, he was tried to be discouraged by not taking his message seriously or by humiliating him, and when it was seen that his followers increased over time, he was tried to be prevented by harsher methods. The polytheists claimed that the Prophet was a magician who spoke incantations from his (...) mouth, a liar who reported news he had learned from others as if it had been revealed to him, and a person who made statements contrary to the religion of ancestors because he had lost his sanity and needed to be treated. In this context, this article deals with the slander of the polytheists that the Prophet was a "majnun" and tries to understand what they meant by this claim. When the translations of the Qur'anic verses that remind us of the allegations of the polytheists are taken into consideration, it is seen that most of the translations give the word "majnun" the meaning of "madness". When we examine the meaning attributed to the expression by the Jahiliyyah Arabs, the word takes on a completely different meaning, and it is understood that the polytheists meant that the word revealed to the Prophet was taught to him not by Allah but by the jinn whom he had befriended. (shrink)

Introduction: a peculiar experiment -- Kinaesthetic knowing: the nineteenth-century biography of another kind of knowledge -- Looking: Wölfflin's comparative vision -- Affecting: Endell's mathematics of living feeling -- Drawing: the Debschitz school and formalism's subject -- Designing: discipline and introspection at the Bauhaus -- Epilogue.

The prevailing paradigm in Internet privacy literature, treating privacy within a context merely of rights and violations, is inadequate for studying the Internet as a social realm. Following Goffman on self-presentation and Altman's theorizing of privacy as an optimization between competing pressures for disclosure and withdrawal, the author investigates the mechanisms used by a sample (n = 704) of college students, the vast majority users of Facebook and Myspace, to negotiate boundaries between public and private. Findings show little to no (...) relationship between online privacy concerns and information disclosure on online social network sites. Students manage unwanted audience concerns by adjusting profile visibility and using nicknames but not by restricting the information within the profile. Mechanisms analogous to boundary regulation in physical space, such as walls, locks, and doors, are favored; little adaptation is made to the Internet's key features of persistence, searchability, and cross-indexability. The author also finds significant racial and gender differences. (shrink)

Marshall McLuhan’s Laws of Media, which describe the evolution of artifacts in terms of enhancement, obsolescence, retrieval, and reversal are extended to create Laws of Media Environments and Laws of Media Users. It is shown that the environment or ground in which the figures of the artifacts in the LOM operate and the users of those artifacts undergo, respectively, a similar evolution of enhancement, obsolescence, retrieval, and reversal paralleling McLuhan’s original LOM.

In this paper, I defend the metalinguistic solution to the problem of mathematical omniscience for the possible-worlds account of propositions by combining it with a computational model of knowledge and belief. The metalinguistic solution states that the objects of belief and ignorance in mathematics are relations between mathematical sentences and what they express. The most pressing problem for the metalinguistic strategy is that it still ascribes too much mathematical knowledge under the standard possible-worlds model of knowledge and belief on which (...) these are closed under entailment. I first argue that Stalnaker's fragmentation strategy is insufficient to solve this problem. I then develop an alternative, computational strategy: I propose a model of mathematical knowledge and belief adapted from the algorithmic model of Halpern et al. which, when combined with the metalinguistic strategy, entails that mathematical knowledge and belief require computational abilities to access metalinguistic information, and thus aren't closed under entailment. As I explain, the computational model generalizes beyond mathematics to a version of the functionalist theory of knowledge and belief that motivates the possible-worlds account in the first place. I conclude that the metalinguistic and computational strategies yield an attractive functionalist, possible-worlds account of mathematical content, knowledge, and inquiry. (shrink)

Consensus around what constitutes researcher conflicts of interest (COIs) and awareness of their influence on our research are two critical steps in ensuring the integrity of our science. In this research, data were collected from individual scholars via 2 surveys 5 years apart and from journals and associations to examine the level of social consensus and moral awareness among scholars, journals, and associations regarding researcher COIs. Although we observed increases in level of social consensus and moral awareness between 2012 and (...) 2017, results still revealed limited agreement about what relationships constitute a COI and limited awareness about the presence of and the ethical issues surrounding COIs. Although all journals and associations we examined supported COI disclosure, most did not provide researchers with detailed COI-related information, guidance, or disclosure tools. Limited social consensus and moral awareness regarding COIs is problematic because it inhibits the recognition, disclosure, and management of COIs and limits ethical decision making. We need to continue and enhance discussions about COIs and aim to create consensus and awareness where we do not have it with the goal of reducing potential scientific misconduct related to COIs. (shrink)

Vulnerability and resistance have often been seen as opposites, with the assumption that vulnerability requires protection and the strengthening of paternalistic power at the expense of collective resistance. Focusing on political movements and cultural practices in different global locations, including Turkey, Palestine, France, and the former Yugoslavia, the contributors to Vulnerability in Resistance articulate an understanding of the role of vulnerability in practices of resistance. They consider how vulnerability is constructed, invoked, and mobilized within neoliberal discourse, the politics of war, (...) resistance to authoritarian and securitarian power, in LGBTQI struggles, and in the resistance to occupation and colonial violence. The essays offer a feminist account of political agency by exploring occupy movements and street politics, informal groups at checkpoints and barricades, practices of self-defense, hunger strikes, transgressive enactments of solidarity and mourning, infrastructural mobilizations, and aesthetic and erotic interventions into public space that mobilize memory and expose forms of power. Pointing to possible strategies for a feminist politics of transversal engagements and suggesting a politics of bodily resistance that does not disavow forms of vulnerability, the contributors develop a new conception of embodiment and sociality within fields of contemporary power. -/- Contributors. Meltem Ahiska, Athena Athanasiou, Sarah Bracke, Judith Butler, Elsa Dorlin, Basak Ertür, Zeynep Gambetti, Rema Hammami, Marianne Hirsch, Elena Loizidou, Leticia Sabsay, Nükhet Sirman, Elena Tzelepis. (shrink)

This paper reports the results of a survey study examining the knowledge, motivations and concerns of egg-share donors and recipients, and assesses the clinical and policy implications of these findings. The survey, combining quantitative and qualitative items, was completed by 48 donors and 38 recipients who took part in an egg-sharing scheme at the London Women's Clinic between 2007 and 2009. Although the most important motivation for all egg-sharers was to have a baby, both donors and recipients displayed multiple motivations, (...) including elements of self-interest and altruism. Many viewed egg-sharing as a reciprocal process in which two women with different needs help one another. The results are reassuring from an ethical and policy perspective: they suggest that if information about egg-sharing was more widely available (especially through general practitioners), more women may consider becoming egg-share donors, gaining swift access to their own treatment and reducing the UK's egg donor shortage. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue from a metasemantic principle to the existence of analytic sentences. According to the metasemantic principle, an external feature is relevant to determining which concept one expresses with an expression only if one is disposed to treat this feature as relevant. This entails that if one isn’t disposed to treat external features as relevant to determining which concept one expresses, and one still expresses a given concept, then something other than external features must determine that one (...) does. I argue that, in such cases, what determines that one expresses the concept also puts one in a position to know that certain sentences are true—these sentences are thus analytic relative to this determination basis. Finally, I argue that there are such cases: some sentences are analytic relative to what determines that we express certain key concepts, and these sentences include ones that have always been thought to be the best candidates for being analytic, namely, stipulative truths, and first principles of mathematics. (shrink)

The current study investigated whether there are significant relationships between life satisfaction and meaning in life, hope and COVID-19 fear and the extent to which life satisfaction is predicted by these variables. The study group of this research consists of 1,186 adults with the mean age of 41.04. Study group participants are consists of different cities of different regions of Turkey. As the data collection tools, the life satisfaction scale, the meaning in life scale, the dispositional hope scale and the (...) COVID-19 fear scale were used. The results of the analyses have revealed that meaning in life, hope are significant predictors of life satisfaction as positively. Besides, it is seen COVID-19 fear, age, gender and the presence of people infected with COVID-19 around aren’t significant predictors of life satisfaction in adults. (shrink)

In this paper, I introduce and defend a notion of analyticity for formal languages. I first uncover a crucial flaw in Timothy Williamson’s famous argument template against analyticity, when it is applied to sentences of formal mathematical languages. Williamson’s argument targets the popular idea that a necessary condition for analyticity is that whoever understands an analytic sentence assents to it. Williamson argues that for any given candidate analytic sentence, there can be people who understand that sentence and yet who fail (...) to assent to it. I argue that, on the most natural understanding of the notion of assent when it is applied to sentences of formal mathematical languages, Williamson’s argument fails. Formal analyticity is the notion of analyticity that is based on this natural understanding of assent. I go on to develop the notion of formal analyticity and defend the claim that there are formally analytic sentences and rules of inference. I conclude by showing the potential payoffs of recognizing formal analyticity. (shrink)

Sosyal, siyasî, iktisadî, psikolojik, kültürel boyutları dönemlere ve coğ-rafyalara göre çeşitlilik arz etse de savaş mefhumu insanlık tarihi kadar eski-dir. Savaşın, dünya hayatının durum ve problemlerinden kaynaklanan yönlerinin yanı sıra dinî sâiklerinin bulunması, onun tarihe mal olmuş sürekliliğinde oldukça etkilidir. Eski Ahit ve Kur’an dâhil kutsal metinlerin söz konusu sâikler arasında yer alması, pek çok farklı okumaya tâbî tutulabilecek bu metinlerin savaşa dair anlatımlar bağlamında değerlendirilmesini mümkün ve hatta gerekli kılmaktadır. Bu makalede Kur’an ve Eski Ahit’in tarih boyu insan hayatını (...) doğrudan etkilediği olgulardan biri olarak savaşla ilgili anlatımları bir araya getirilmiş, bunlar çeşitli yönlerden mukayese edilerek aralarındaki benzerlik ve farklılıklar belirlenmeye çalışılmıştır. Bu mukayeseden ulaşılan sonuçlardan hareketle, her iki metnin kendi muhataplarının zihninde oluşturduğu savaş algısına dair ipuçları elde etmek hedeflenmiştir. Savaşa dair anlatımlar incelenirken Kur’an’ın Arapça metni, Eski Ahit’in ise ulaşabildiğimiz en eski İngilizce metni ve Türkçe tercümesi esas alınmıştır. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In Power Without Knowledge, Jeffrey Friedman develops a critique of social science to argue that current technocratic practices are prone to predictive failures and unintended consequences. However, he does not provide evidence that the cause he singles out—“ideational heterogeneity”—is in fact a non-negligible source of technocratic limitations, more than or alongside better-known problems such as missing data, measurement issues, interpretive difficulties, and researcher bias. Even if we grant ideational heterogeneity, Friedman’s preferred institutional solution of exitocracy does not necessarily follow. (...) His critical epistemology would also be compatible with radical forms of collective action. (shrink)

While discussions of the debate between Karl Löwith and Hans Blumenberg over ‘secularisation’ focus primarily on the methodological utility of the concept, the difference between them was also one of the philosophical commitments and substantive claims about modernity. This difference is not always obvious. One way of bringing it out is to address the different contexts in which they produced their most famous statements about secularisation. But another, and one that will be pursued here, is to consider the critical dialogue (...) that both thinkers engaged in with Nietzsche. Put briefly, while Löwith thought that Nietzsche misunderstood the ancients, Blumenberg thought that he misunderstood the moderns. For Löwith, Nietzsche's doctrine of the eternal return is not Greek, but an aggressive countergospel that owes much to the Christian culture it seeks to oppose; for Blumenberg, Nietzsche assumes, wrongly, that the self-belittlement of man by theology has been succeeded by the self-belittlement of man by science. In addition, Blumenberg – unlike both Nietzsche and Löwith – thinks that he can mount a robust defence of both modern science and progress. (shrink)

According to the iterative conception of sets, standardly formalized by ZFC, there is no set of all sets. But why is there no set of all sets? A simple-minded, though unpopular, “minimal” explanation for why there is no set of all sets is that the supposition that there is contradicts some axioms of ZFC. In this paper, I first explain the core complaint against the minimal explanation, and then argue against the two main alternative answers to the guiding question. I (...) conclude the paper by outlining a close alternative to the minimal explanation, the conception-based explanation, that avoids the core complaint against the minimal explanation. (shrink)