There are growing discontinuities between the research practices of data science and established tools of research ethics regulation. Some of the core commitments of existing research ethics regulations, such as the distinction between research and practice, cannot be cleanly exported from biomedical research to data science research. Such discontinuities have led some data science practitioners and researchers to move toward rejecting ethics regulations outright. These shifts occur at the same time as a proposal for major revisions to the Common Rule—the (...) primary regulation governing human-subjects research in the USA—is under consideration for the first time in decades. We contextualize these revisions in long-running complaints about regulation of social science research and argue data science should be understood as continuous with social sciences in this regard. The proposed regulations are more flexible and scalable to the methods of non-biomedical research, yet problematically largely exclude data science methods from human-subjects regulation, particularly uses of public datasets. The ethical frameworks for Big Data research are highly contested and in flux, and the potential harms of data science research are unpredictable. We examine several contentious cases of research harms in data science, including the 2014 Facebook emotional contagion study and the 2016 use of geographical data techniques to identify the pseudonymous artist Banksy. To address disputes about application of human-subjects research ethics in data science, critical data studies should offer a historically nuanced theory of “data subjectivity” responsive to the epistemic methods, harms and benefits of data science and commerce. (shrink)

Frederick Taylor's 1907 `Lecture on Management' is an important text for what it reveals about the constitution of the working subject in Taylorist discourses of management. This article reads Taylor's lecture in order to contribute to the debate about bodies at work in recent literature. Taylor's lecture is read using insights from recent feminist scholarship on corporeality and subjectivity. It is suggested that the application of these bodies of theory to the theorization of the working body has the potential (...) to contribute to a richer understanding of embodied labour. (shrink)

This chapter discusses problems for informational patternism and the popular soul theory of personal identity, suggests that they are incoherent, and urges that the self does not really exist. It employs the science fiction pseudotechnology of a teleporter and presents the example of split brains from actual neuroscience cases. There are two theories about what persons are, and what is involved in a person's continued existence over time. On the Ego Theory, a person's continued existence cannot be explained except as (...) the continued existence of a particular Ego, or subject of experiences. According to the Bundle Theory we must claim that there are long series of different mental states and events, each series being what we call one life. The split‐brain cases provide one argument for one view about the nature of persons. In the other, a person's brain is divided, and the halves are transplanted in two different bodies. (shrink)

Abstract:“Modern Sexual Organicity” (《现代性器》 Xiàndài Xìngqì) and “Super Killer” (《大杀器》 Dà Shaqì) by Han Bo, which I translate and discuss here, unfold around the poet’s playfully sustained series of observations of the irreconcilable gaps and irreducible dissonances between Western modernity and Chinese contemporaneity. Focusing on the (post)structural dimension of the extreme intricacy and intensity of Han’s language game that polysemically intersects with traditional Chinese poetic moves as well, which itself mirrors the structurally (bi)polarized and gendered social realities in China, this (...) essay highlights the unfused/able figure of the woman, a “farmwoman” on the train in particular, a moving image of precarious mobility, transience, and vitality. (shrink)

At the end of the Sixth Book of the Republic Plato explains the Idea of Good by means of the Figure of the Sun. As the sun is the cause both of the becoming of that which is subject to becoming and of our apprehension of it and of its changes through the eye, so the idea of good is the cause of the being of that which is and also of our knowledge of it. As the sun is (...) beyond γxs22EFνεσις, so the Idea of Good is beyond Being. Glaucon says he does not understand. The simile is further elucidated by means of a line, divided into two parts, of which one stands for the νιητxs22EFν γxs22EFνος τε καxs22EF τxs22EFπος, where the Idea of Good bears rule, the other for the xs22EFρατxs22EFν γxs22EFνος τε καxs22EF τxs22EFπος, over which the sun is lord. The line is to be divided unequally , and subdivided in the same proportions. Thus we get a line consisting of four parts in the ratio 4 : 6 : : 6 : 9. Let us call the four parts A B C D respectively, A being the smallest, D the greatest, B and C necessarily equal. A stands for εxs1F31κxs22EFνες, shadows, images in water and on polished surfaces, and the like: B stands for animals, plants, and the creations of human industry: C for the objects of that enquiry in which the objects denoted by B are treated as images, i.e. mathematical enquiries: D for the objects apprehended by dialectic, the Ideas themselves. The first equation asserted is—The objects of opinion : objects of knowledge : : representation : original . There follows an explanation of the inferiority of mathematical to philosophical reasoning, and an explanation of the statement that the objects denoted by B are used as images or symbols by the enquiry concerned with C; as a result of which Glaucon perceives that the general distinction between C and D is that between the τxs22EFχναι , i.e. those sciences in which the Guardians were to be educated, and Philosophy or Dialectic. Finally a special πxs22EFθημα or affection of the soul is allotted to each of the four divisions of the line, to A εxs1F31κασxs22EFα, to B πxs22EFστις, to C διxs22EFνοια, to D νxs22EFησις, each πxs22EFθημα being clear in the same degree in which the objects it is concerned with are true. (shrink)

It may seem strange, in view of the spate of recent literature on the subject, that yet another article should be forthcoming on what is certainly the most familiar, as well as the most vexed, of all Platonic passages. But it is precisely this spate of literature that has impelled me to write. The time seems to have come for an article which, rather than seeking desperately for something new, sets out instead to reaffirm those facts and conclusions that (...) even the most resolutely original of scholars could hardly venture to dispute. This article will therefore be based, not on any of the numerous modern interpretations, but on what Plato himself actually wrote. It will contain a number of tentative suggestions which, to the best of my knowledge, have not been made before. They can, and probably will, be rejected. But its primary purpose remains to restate, whenever possible in Plato's own words, a number of important facts that are at once so simple and so obvious that they seem repeatedly, and especially in recent years, to have been quite forgotten. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the implications of adopting one model of self rather than another in respect to one particular feature of our mental life. The need to explain synchronic unity in normal subjectivity, and also to explain the apparent and puzzling absence of synchronic unity in certain symptoms of severe mental disorder, I show, becomes more pressing with one particular model. But in the process of developing that explanation we learn something about subjectivity and perhaps also something about (...) brain functioning. (shrink)

This chapter presents the advantages of the use of functional regions of interest along with its specific concerns, and provides a reference to Karl J. Friston related to the subject. Functionally defined ROI help to test hypotheses about the cognitive functions of particular regions of the brain. fROI are useful for specifying brain locations and investigating separable components of the mind. The chapter provides an overview of the common and uncommon misconceptions about fROI related to assumptions of homogeneity, factorial (...) designs versus independent localizers, a summary measure, and the naming of fROI. (shrink)

The well-known behaviorist revolt against consciousness is largely in the past, although that does not mean that the new interest in consciousness is without many unsolved problems. Cognitive psychology, as an alternative, is not necessarily a consciousness psychology, and humanistic psychology, friendly to consciousness, has difficulty in maintaining scientific status. One approach to consciousness is by way of dissociation, the phenomena of which can be found in everyday experience but can be studied in more detail through hypnosis. One aspect of (...) hypnosis research has led to the concept of a “hidden observer,” a metaphor used to indicate that some information is processed and has consequences without being in the focus of consciousness at the time, but is recoverable through hypnosis. The evidence comes mostly from subjects highly responsive to hypnosis, so that generalizations must be used with caution. The divisions of consciousness lead to consideration of its executive and monitoring functions-normal functions, but subject to some alterations through hypnosis. (shrink)

How should a political society be structured so as to legitimately distribute political power? One principle advanced to answer this question is the principle of subsidiarity. According to this principle, the default locus of political power is with the lowest competent political unit. This article argues that subsidiarity is a structural principle of a conception of political legitimacy informed by epistemic considerations. Broadly, the argument is that political societies organised according to the principle of subsidiarity can more effectively achieve political (...) decisions that can justifiably appear to be correct from the point of view of those subject to them. The article presents two considerations in order to establish a pro tanto case for acting separately before presenting five additional epistemic considerations that establish a prima facie case for acting separately. The article then shows that political legitimacy and the epistemic aim of decision-making can sometimes be served more effectively and efficiently by allowing higher-level political units to assist lower-level political units. (shrink)

English Abstract In Art as Experience, John Dewey decried the estrangement of art from lived human experience, both by artificial conceptual walls and the physical walls that secluded art within museums. Instead he argued that making and enjoying art are crucial organic functions that sustain communities and integrate individuals within their environments. In the 1920’s Diego Rivera became one of the luminaries of the Mexican muralist movement by creating frescoes that were rooted in Mexican life, both in their subject (...) matter and public location. Rivera and the other artists working within the government cultural program guided by José Vasconcelos created murals that boldly expressed the new values of democracy, peaceful revolution, racial equality and cultural pride. This essay explores the deep resonance between Rivera’s most prominent murals from this period and Dewey’s argument that art is a refined and integral feature of human experience. In particular, this essay will examine the great extent to which these men independently came to the common understanding that for people to thrive and grow they need to create and experience art that grows out of and remains rooted in their culture. Without claiming that either thinker influenced the other, this essay argues that their works mutually inform and enrich each other. Both men sought to free art from the museum, but where Dewey urged us tear down the walls that separated art from lived experience, Rivera transformed walls themselves into murals that unified and educated the people of Mexico and restored their culture. (shrink)

Traditional accounts of the perception/cognition divide tend to draw it in terms of subpersonal psychological processes, processes into which the subject has no first-person insight. Whatever betides such accounts, there seems to also be some first-personally accessible difference between perception and thought. At least in normal circumstances, naïve subjects can typically tell apart their perceptual states from their cognitive or intellectual ones. What are such subjects picking up on when they do so? This paper is an inconclusive search for (...) an answer. At its end, I conclude, without joy, that we may have to simply accept the perception/cognition distinction as a primitive and inexplicable bright line within the sphere of conscious phenomena. (shrink)

Theories of well-being are typically divided into subjective and objective. Subjective theories are those which make facts about a person’s welfare depend on facts about her actual or hypothetical mental states. I am interested in what motivates this approach to the theory of welfare. The contemporary view is that subjectivism is devoted to honoring the evaluative perspective of the individual, but this is both a misleading account of the motivations behind subjectivism, and a vision that dooms subjective theories to (...) failure. I suggest that we need to revisit and reinstate certain features of traditional hedonism, in particular the idea that felt experience plays a role that no theory of welfare can afford to ignore. I then offer a sketch of a theory that is subjective in my preferred sense and avoids the worst sins of hedonism as well as the problems generated by the contemporary constraints of subjective theorists. (shrink)

Children bring intuitive arithmetic knowledge to the classroom before formal instruction in mathematics begins. For example, children can use their number sense to add, subtract, compare ratios, and even perform scaling operations that increase or decrease a set of dots by a factor of 2 or 4. However, it is currently unknown whether children can engage in a true division operation before formal mathematical instruction. Here we examined the ability of 6- to 9-year-old children and college students to perform symbolic (...) and non-symbolic approximate division. Subjects were presented with non-symbolic or symbolic dividends ranging from 32 to 185, and non-symbolic divisors ranging from 2 to 8. Subjects compared their imagined quotient to a visible target quantity. Both children and adults were successful at the approximate division tasks in both dots and numeral formats. This was true even among the subset of children that could not recognize the division symbol or solve simple division equations, suggesting intuitive division ability precedes formal division instruction. For both children and adults, the ability to divide non-symbolically mediated the relation between Approximate Number System acuity and symbolic math performance, suggesting that the ability to calculate non-symbolically may be a mechanism of the relation between ANS acuity and symbolic math. Our findings highlight the intuitive arithmetic abilities children possess before formal math instruction. (shrink)

This paper takes off from a growing preoccupation in Western political-social philosophy on the thinkability of the materiality of change, that became most pronounced in Alain Badiou's philosophy of the event. It traces the development of the discourse of radical change tied to a materialist theory of subjectivity beginning from Badiou, down to the strong criticism posed against it by Slavoj Žižek. This is then followed by the discussion of Bruno Bosteels' potent defense of Badiou's philosophy. Finally, the last part (...) takes off from this debate and highlights how this tension in Badiou's philosophy was possible in the first place. Using Adrian Johnston's key insight on pre-evental and post-evental time, this paper argues that Žižek and Bosteels respectively employ pre-evental and post-evental lenses in reading the relation of event to being. Furthermore, these two lenses are themselves the effect of the split readability of the event at the moment of its rupture: the parallax-effect that divides the event into two. This paper asserts that neither of the two is sufficient. Both are fundamental in outlining what sort of sustained disciplines are necessary before and after events take place. (shrink)

This essay explores the challenges of dual loyalty in the emergency setting. The author, an emergency room psychiatrist, finds himself caring for a patient who has been detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for potential deportation under circumstances that the author finds unjust. He also recognizes that the patient's reported psychiatric symptoms are likely not of the nature or severity to justify a psychiatric admission that might forestall deportation. While the author has taught the subject of dual loyalty (...) in medicine for many years, he struggles with the question of how to balance his duties to further his patient's welfare with his legal obligations to the state and the rule of law. (shrink)

How can we build a path from the binary of gender to the unity of common humanity? What kind of difference can the “different voice” of feminism make as a human voice? In this article, Naoko Saito argues that the way we talk about the difference of a “different voice” needs to be radically transformed. To envision a route to such a transformation, she explores an alternative possibility of feminism in the American transcendentalism of Margaret Fuller and Ralph Waldo Emerson. (...) First, Saito critically examines the politics of recognition and suggests a susceptibility to binary thinking in its approach. Second, as a way of transcending the binary mode of thinking, Saito introduces the humanist feminism of the nineteenth-century American transcendentalist Margaret Fuller. Third, as a way of elucidating the radicality of Fuller's transcendentalist feminism, Saito introduces the feminine voice of two male philosophers — Ralph Waldo Emerson and Stanley Cavell — as her conversational partners. By radically converting the way we talk about difference of voice, the transcendentalist feminism of Fuller, Emerson, and Cavell provides a third way that lies beyond the politics of recognition and care ethics. In conclusion, Saito proposes that the cultivation of the feminine subject requires an alternative political education that resists assimilation into political realism. This would realize our common humanity and, in its crossing of divides between men and women, would create democracy from within. (shrink)

Gadow's understanding of nursing as a relational narrative anchored in a dialectic between the fundamental subjectivity of the individual client and the objectification of his illness poses some interesting questions for nursing ethics and care. For Gadow, nursing is an encounter with the immediate vulnerability of the client and also lends it responsibilities to the medical objectification of illness aiming at disease treatment and control. Hence, nursing agency is divided between its responsibilities induced by the personal vulnerability of the (...) patient and the more impersonal, but benevolent intention shaped by medical knowledge. Medical knowledge is impersonal in the sense that it is knowledge detached from the subjectivity of the patient. But how is nursing able to reconcile the interests derived from personal and experienced vulnerability with the more impersonal and often conflicting demands of medical knowledge? This question is even more intriguing because there seems to be an objective dimension within a patient's subjectivity itself: an autonomous person can critically evaluate his own subjectivity as a basis for informed self‐interest. The sick person is thus confronted with objectivity on two important levels: the objective facts of his disease and his detachment from his own experiential vulnerability when engaged in the critical evaluation of his self‐interest. This paper will discuss the normative dimensions of these complex and, frequently, conflicting perspectives from the theoretical perspectives of Thomas Nagel's normative responsibility and Sally Gadow's clinical epistemology and relational narratives. The empirical basis for the discussion will be an ongoing study of the ethical dimensions of pain relief and sedation in an intensive care unit. (shrink)

The problematique addressed by the article is the growth of a dominant discourse in early childhood education and care, which has a strong effect on policy and practice, paralleled by an increasing number of other discourses which problematise most of the values, assumptions and understandings of the former. Yet there is very little engagement between these discourses, in large part because they are situated within different paradigms—modernity in the former case, postfoundationalism in the latter. The author argues that the absence (...) of dialogue and debate impoverishes early childhood and weakens democratic practice. The article considers whether and in what conditions the concept of agonistic pluralism might provide a framework for political engagement among at least some on either side of the paradigmatic divide, and takes evaluation as one example of a subject for an agonistic politics of early childhood. (shrink)

The problematique addressed by the article is the growth of a dominant discourse in early childhood education and care, which has a strong effect on policy and practice, paralleled by an increasing number of other discourses which problematise most of the values, assumptions and understandings of the former. Yet there is very little engagement between these discourses, in large part because they are situated within different paradigms—modernity in the former case, postfoundationalism in the latter. The author argues that the absence (...) of dialogue and debate impoverishes early childhood and weakens democratic practice. The article considers whether and in what conditions the concept of agonistic pluralism might provide a framework for political engagement among at least some on either side of the paradigmatic divide, and takes evaluation as one example of a subject for an agonistic politics of early childhood. (shrink)

The new science of genomics endeavors to chart the genomes of individuals around the world, with the dual goals of understanding the role genetic factors play in human health and solving problems of disease and disability. From the perspective of indigenous peoples and developing countries, the promises and perils of genomic science appear against a backdrop of global health disparity and political vulnerability. These conditions pose a dilemma for many communities when attempting to decide about participating in genomic research or (...) any other biomedical research. Genomic research offers the possibility of improved technologies for managing the acute and chronic diseases that plague their members. Yet, the history of particularly biomedical research among people in indigenous and developing nations offers salient examples of unethical practice, misuse of data, and failed promises. This dilemma creates risks for communities who decide either to participate or not to participate in genomic science research. Some argue that the history of poor scientific practice justifies refusal to join genomic research projects. Others argue that disease poses such great threats to the well-being of people in indigenous communities and developing nations that not participating in genomic research risks irrevocable harm. Thus, some communities particularly among indigenous peoples have declined to participate as subjects in genomic research. At the same time, some communities have begun developing new guidelines, procedures, and practices for engaging with the scientific community that offer opportunities to bridge the gap between genomic science and indigenous and/or developing communities. Four new approaches warrant special attention and further support: consulting with local communities; negotiating the complexities of consent; training members of local communities in science and health care; and training scientists to work with indigenous communities. Implicit is a new definition of “rigorous scientific research,” one that includes both community development and scientific progress as legitimate objectives of genomic research. Innovative translational research is needed to develop practical, mutually acceptable methods for crossing the divide between genomic researchers and indigenous communities. This may mean the difference between success and failure in genomic science, and in improving health for all peoples. (shrink)

Language not only objectively expresses the thought of a proposition but also indicates the speaker’s emotion, attitude, and viewpoints toward a proposition, which is called subjectivity in the study. Subjectivity is one of the main topics in philosophy. However, the phenomenon of subjectivity is mainly discussed at the word, construction, or syntactic level from the perspective of linguistics. To better the characteristics of speakers as subjects in social practice activities and cognitive activities, an analytical framework of subjectivity in discourse from (...) the perspective of philosophy was constructed to investigate subjectivity at the discourse level. Three aspects, that is, experience, mental and communicative models, were explored. The results show that (1) the constructed analytical framework clearly shows the social characteristics of subjectivity in discourse; (2) the experience model is divided into the speaker’s social and cultural experience; (3) the mental model is construed as the speaker’s mental cognition, reflected by the speaker’s mental stance and emotion; (4) the communicative model is represented by the speaker’s communicative intention and communicative practice, including appeal, command and announcement. The study provides an analytical framework to dig up the subjective nature of language and the relationship among speakers, society and discourse. This study also enriches the research on subjectivity and discourse analysis. (shrink)

Who are the best subjects for judgment tasks intended to test grammatical hypotheses? Michael Devitt ( [2006a] , [2006b] ) argues, on the basis of a hypothesis concerning the psychology of such judgments, that linguists themselves are. We present empirical evidence suggesting that the relevant divide is not between linguists and non-linguists, but between subjects with and without minimally sufficient task-specific knowledge. In particular, we show that subjects with at least some minimal exposure to or knowledge of such tasks tend (...) to perform consistently with one another—greater knowledge of linguistics makes no further difference—while at the same time exhibiting markedly greater in-group consistency than those who have no previous exposure to or knowledge of such tasks and their goals. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:diacritics 33.2 (2005) 71-97 [Access article in PDF] The Subject of Religion Lacan and the Ten Commandments Kenneth Reinhard Julia Reinhard Lupton Despite Freud's Nietzschean unmasking of religion as ideology, psychoanalysis has frequently been attacked as itself a religion, a cabal of analyst-priests dedicated to the worship of a dead master. Such critics "do not believe in Freud" in much the same way as atheists "do not believe (...) in God," and their rejections of psychoanalysis in the name of the secular partake in the very structure of religious thought they claim to repudiate. In Seminar XXI: Les non-dupes errent, Lacan comments on the blindness of the atheistic insight concerning religion: "I know that you're not believers, right? But that doesn't mean that you aren't all the more conned... because even if you are not believers, you still believe in that aspiration [for the love of God]. I won't say that you suppose it; rather, it supposes you" [Dec. 18, 1973; our trans.]. In Lacan's analysis, it is not that secular intellectuals suffer from unexamined religious "suppositions" or assumptions, to be swept away through a little ideology-critique or time on the couch. The case is rather, in Lacan's strong formulation, that religious discourse supposes us—supports and underwrites our very structures of being, subjectivity, and social interaction. That is, the secular subject is produced by the religious discourses that precede and continue to speak through it; the challenge for the contemporary critic is not to silence or debunk those discourses, but rather to bring the modern subject to assume responsibility for their enunciation.Throughout the decades of his seminar, Lacan addressed the monotheistic foundations of Western subjectivity as a set of discursive ruptures or cuts which continue to scar and brand the modern subject beyond their secular abrogation. Distinguishing between Freud "the individual with his atheistic profession of faith" and "the Freud who was the first to acknowledge the value and relevance of [the] myth... we call the death of God" [S VII 192–93], Lacan insists that Freud regarded monotheism as an epochal divide that irrevocably altered all that came before and after it: "On the left of this [monotheistic] message, there are some things that are henceforth outdated, obsolete; they no longer hold beyond the manifestation of the message. On the right, things are quite different" [172]. What, in Lacan's analysis, is the difference that monotheism has made, both during its periods of dominance and after? The laws, narratives, and symbols of monotheism continue to undergird key fantasies of personhood, nationhood, and neighborhood in the modernity that purports to have supplanted them. In Lacan's formulation, monotheism "supposes" the subject of these fantasies, precipitating it from out of the expanse of signifiers and in relation to a sublime object of both unbearable enjoyment and social obligation. Moreover, it is the scandal and the gift of monotheism that it not only creates moments of traumatic singularity, but also thinks the singular as trauma, rending the fabric of an animistic nature which would unite every polarity of being in the fullness of a sexual relation. Unlike the gods of Greek philosophy, the monotheistic God is not part of the nature he creates. In its decisive thinking of singularity, monotheism elicits and eludes all rapprochement with philosophical conceptions of the One, whether in the guise of Hellenized Judaism, Pauline theology, or Arab Aristotelianism. Lacan extends the monotheistic project of thinking singularity [End Page 71] by insisting that "there is something of One" [il y a de l'Un]—not the self-identical One of Greek logic, mathematics, and cosmology, but the One of a violent rupture that creates subjects and their worlds around a void, an un that un-does the primacy it speaks.If, from the Lacanian vantage, the singular invention of the God shared by the People of the Book forever separates religion from philosophy, we would also insist that religion is not simply a subset of "culture," understood as the symbolic practices that unify a people... (shrink)

The book shares Žižek's central problem of how to revitalize the radical political left through theory. It initially follows the argument developed in The Ticklish Subject that contemporary leftist thought is divided by antagonism between a Marxist revolutionary politics founded on Enlightenment philosophy and a politics of identity founded on post-modern post-structuralism. How Žižek used Lacan's theory of character structures is examined here to describe this theoretical deadlock and explain how the dominant contemporary ideologies of liberal tolerant multiculturalism (...) and reactionary "pseudo-fundamentalism" compete to mobilize the individual subject's unconscious drive to enjoyment. The book thus emphasizes the moments in which Žižek hints that Lacanian theory may describe a practice that facilitates the resolution of antagonisms that placate radical leftist politics. It challenges prevalent interpretations of Lacanian ends of analysis, to ultimately connect the psychoanalytic cure to the leftist project of social and political liberation. The Subject of Liberation argues that if Lacan is to be useful to leftist politics, then the left has to develop its own definitions of the post-analytic subject, and proposes one such definition developed out of Lacanian and Zizekian theory. (shrink)

Although Cultural Studies has directed sustained attacks against sexism and racism, the question of the animal has lagged behind developments in broader society with regard to animal suffering in factory farming, product testing, and laboratory experimentation, as well in zoos, rodeos, circuses, and public aquariums. The contributors to Animal Subjects are scholars and writers from diverse perspectives whose work calls into question the boundaries that divide the animal kingdom from humanity, focusing on the medical, biological, cultural, philosophical, and ethical concerns (...) between non-human animals and ourselves. The first of its kind to feature the work of Canadian scholars and writers in this emergent field, this collection aims to include the non-human-animal question as part of the ethical purview of Cultural Studies and to explore the question in interdisciplinary terms. (shrink)

Aren Z. Aizura's Mobile Subjects: Transnational Imaginaries of Gender Reassignment is one of the best nonfiction books I have read recently. I was interested in Aizura's work because of the several ways in which this book's subjects resonated with my reflections on gender nonconforming subjects, gender reassignment, and the medical-industrial complex with a focus on interrogating the West/non-West binary. It focuses on trans and gender nonconforming people, issues of mobility, and access to various technologies for bodily modification. This book, (...) class='Hi'>divided in two parts, will be of interest to a variety of readers, especially scholars doing feminist studies, queer theory, feminist science and technology... (shrink)

This paper concerns content externalism and privileged access. I argue that externally-individuated concepts are not just subject to a causal constraint, but are also subject t an epistemic constraint. Their possession requires not merely that certain background presuppositions be true but, further, that the subject be in possession of true justified beliefs concerning their referents.

At the turn of the century, Russell, Husserl and Couturat singled out Leibniz the logician as an important precursor of the way they thought philosophy should be done. Like their most gifted contemporaries they conceived of philosophy as essentially argumentative and - as Russell put it in a 1911 talk in French - analytic. Unsurprisingly, the search for the best arguments and analyses meant that good philosophy was cosmopolitan. William James and Ernst Mach were read everywhere. James studied Mach and (...) the pupils of Brentano, whom Stout introduced to Cambridge. Moore recognised the deep kinship between his work on ethics and that of Brentano. Russell was influenced by Peano, used and criticised Meinong and was attacked by Poincaré. Pragmatism was subjected to a series of criticisms by realists in German and in English but gradually began to win adherents, for example in Italy, where Vailati and Calderoni introduced both pragmatism and Austrian philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Descartes’s Method: The Formation of the Subject of Science provides a systematic interpretation of Descartes’s method in Rules for the Direction of the Mind and related texts. The book reconstructs Descartes’s method in its entirety and concretely demonstrates both the efficacy of the method in the sciences as well as the unity of the method from Rules for the Direction of the Mind (1620s) to Principles of Philosophy (1644). The principal thesis of the book is that Descartes’s method is (...) a problem-solving cognitive disposition (or habitus) that can be actualized in a variety of well-defined ways, depending always on the nature of problem. The book divides into five parts and eleven chapters. Parts I–II (Chapters 1–4) develop an interpretation of the historical and conceptual foundations of Descartes’s method (its operations and acquisition), while the remainder of the book (Parts III–V, which include Chapters 5–11) demonstrates the fruits of the method in solutions to problems in the sciences (above all, mathematics and optics). (shrink)

The schism between ‘ordinary’ and scientific perception and knowledge implies that we lack any total or systematic means of describing the world or identifying any framework -independent reality. Philosophers as diverse as Kant, Putnam, Strawson, Barthes, and Foucault have attempted to overcome this epistemological divide by constructing a unified, continuous theory of knowledge capable of accounting simultaneously for an allegedly primitive, unreflective, unmediated view of the world and an abstract, highly technical, scientific product. Rather than identifying analytic and continental epistemologies, (...) adverting to continental philosophy to resolve the analytic problems of defining knowledge or determining its necessary and sufficient conditions, as in Gettier problem cases, or homogenizing ordinary and scientific cognition, I assess diverse epistemological responses to the Cartesian problem of bridging perceptual experience and conceptual knowledge in order to catalog and validate the turn from a structuralist phenomenology to a historical deconstruction of isolated, ahistorical notions of subjectivity and objectivity. However, in place of Foucault’s closed, tripartite model of space, time, and power, I use certain late nineteenth-century, neo- Kantian scientific models to develop and justify an open, critical, pragmatically validated, historical heuristic for scientific explanation able to account nonreductively for ordinary experience, ordinary perception, and ordinary knowledge. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that Karl Rahner’s theological method, properly understood as a method of transcendental hermeneutics, overcomes the impasse in contemporary theology between foundationalist and nonfoundationalist methods. Though Rahner is indeed a metaphysical foundationalist, his method is nevertheless epistemologically nonfoundational. In short, Rahner’s understanding of the radical contingency of subjectivity disallows the possibility of reliance on certain and indubitable principles of knowledge. I contend that an understanding of the nonfoundational elements of Rahner’s method will point towards the continued (...) relevance of his method for our present period. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that Karl Rahner’s theological method, properly understood as a method of transcendental hermeneutics, overcomes the impasse in contemporary theology between foundationalist and nonfoundationalist methods. Though Rahner is indeed a metaphysical foundationalist, his method is nevertheless epistemologically nonfoundational. In short, Rahner’s understanding of the radical contingency of subjectivity disallows the possibility of reliance on certain and indubitable principles of knowledge. I contend that an understanding of the nonfoundational elements of Rahner’s method will point towards the continued (...) relevance of his method for our present period. (shrink)

Though most neomaterialists share a commitment to the Copernican decentring of humans from the world stage, there is disagreement on the purposes of such an endeavour. The polemic stems from a fundamental discrepancy about what the return to materiality entails: is matter the principle of the non-thinking as such, or is it always already imbued with some sort of subjectivity? Is the new materialism’s goal to come to terms with the non-living origin of life? Or is it rather to recognize (...) that seemingly dead materials are always in some sense incipiently alive? For convenience, we can think of two neomaterialist perspectives: the rationalist or eliminative neomaterialism, and the vitalist or panpsychist neomaterialism. I explore some of the conceptual problems faced by both camps and, drawing from the recently developed theory of consciousness as integrated information, as well as its quantum physical construal by Max Tegmark, I suggest some provisional ways to address those issues. (shrink)

The body may be the object we know the best. It is the only object from which we constantly receive a flow of information through sight and touch; and it is the only object we can experience from the inside, through our proprioceptive, vestibular, and visceral senses. Yet there have been very few books that have attempted to consolidate our understanding of the body as it figures in our experience and self-awareness. This volume offers an interdisciplinary and comprehensive treatment of (...) bodily self-awareness, the first book to do so since the landmark 1995 collection The Body and the Self, edited by José Bermúdez, Naomi Eilan, and Anthony Marcel. Since 1995, the study of the body in such psychological disciplines as cognitive psychology, cognitive neuroscience, psychiatry, and neuropsychology has advanced dramatically, accompanied by a resurgence of philosophical interest in the significance of the body in our mental life. The sixteen specially commissioned essays in this book reflect the advances in these fields. The book is divided into three parts, each part covering a topic central to an explanation of bodily self-awareness: representation of the body; the sense of bodily ownership; and representation of the self. ContributorsAdrian Alsmith, Brianna Beck, José Luis Bermúdez, Anna Berti, Alexandre Billon, Andrew J. Bremner, Lucilla Cardinali, Tony Cheng, Frédérique de Vignemont, Francesca Fardo, Alessandro Farnè, Carlotta Fossataro, Shaun Gallagher, Francesca Garbarini, Patrick Haggard, Jakob Hohwy, Matthew R. Longo, Tamar Makin, Marie Martel, Melvin Mezue, John Michael, Christopher Peacocke, Lorenzo Pia, Louise Richardson, Alice C. Roy, Manos Tsakiris, Hong Yu Wong. (shrink)

The bone of contention that divides Alfred Schutz and Talcott Parsons in their 1940–1941 debate is that Schutz acknowledges an ontological break between the commonsense and scientific worlds whereas Parsons only considers it “a matter of refinement.” Schutz’s ontological distancing that disconnects the “world of consociates” where social reality is directly experienced in face-to-face contacts, and the “world of contemporaries” where the Other is experienced in terms of “types” has been crucial to social scientists. Implicated in the break is that (...) all intellectual attempts to understand experiences of Others must be based on the “models” constructed in the “world of contemporaries” (or “predecessors”); hence, epistemologically, to grasp the subjective point of view with a here-and-now understanding is an outright impossibility. Based on a Schutzian perspective, the author suggests that the sociologist must objectivize the Thou-orientations involved in his/her analysis in order that s/he can possibility grasp the subjective point of view in objective terms. (shrink)

Teaching and research are organised differently between subject domains: attempts to construct typologies of higher education institutions, however, often do not include quantitative indicators concerning subject mix which would allow systematic comparisons of large numbers of higher education institutions among different countries, as the availability of data for such indicators is limited. In this paper, we present an exploratory approach for the construction of such indicators. The database constructed in the AQUAMETH project, which includes also data disaggregated at (...) the disciplinary level, is explored with the aim of understanding patterns of subject mix. For six European countries, an exploratory and descriptive analysis of staff composition divided in four large domains (medical sciences, engineering and technology, natural sciences and social sciences and humanities) is performed, which leads to a classification distinguishing between specialist and generalist institutions. Among the latter, a further distinction is made based on the presence or absence of a medical department. Preliminary exploration of this classification and its comparison with other indicators show the influence of long term dynamics on the subject mix of individual higher education institutions, but also underline disciplinary differences, for example regarding student to staff ratios, as well as national patterns, for example regarding the number of PhD degrees per 100 undergraduate students. Despite its many limitations, this exploratory approach allows defining a classification of higher education institutions that accounts for a large share of differences between the analysed higher education institutions. (shrink)

De Synthèse breaks with the concept of the organic body as a producer of meaning. By dividing identity and opening it up to the transcendent, the novel challenges the fundamental Cartesian distinction between a singular body and a soul. Using everything in her power, the protagonist-narrator aspires to complete liberation from her organic body. For the protagonist, blood and flesh gradually become more abstract than the virtual augmented bodies she creates for herself. Instead of defining her individuality through her organic (...) body, the protagonist transfers her existence to a virtual place, degrading her organic body into a body-machine that is definitively outside her subjectivity. In the end, the protagonist’s effort to transform herself into an image merely distracts from the fact that the story in fact follows the most classic pattern of novels, that of the family quest. (shrink)

The issue of how to identify the liability of subjects after a traffic accident takes place remains a puzzle regarding the SAE classification system. The SAE system is not good at dealing with the problem of responsibility evaluation; therefore, building a new classification system for self-driving cars from the perspective of the subject's liability is a possible way to solve this problem. This new system divides automated driving into three levels: i) assisted driving based on the will of drivers, (...) ii) automated driving based on the will of the manufacturers, and iii) fully automated driving based on social will. The corresponding responsible subjects for level one, level two, and level three are the drivers, the manufacturers, and society, respectively. (shrink)

Arthur O. Lovejoy famously referred to thirteen pragmatisms. If he were called on to enumerate postmodernisms, no doubt he would increase this number tenfold.1 Fortunately I need not follow his lead for the task at hand, namely, to discuss whether the pragmatic tradition can narrow the divide between modernism and postmodernism on the topic of cosmopolitanism. To do so I will focus on specific sets of ideas that have been associated with these terms. So, for example, modernists have been viewed (...) as defenders of some form of universality, ethical or conceptual, and of a responsible, self-actuating, authentic subject. Postmodernists look toward particularity and alterity, and stress that notions of a unitary subject .. (shrink)

Originally published in 1991, this volume tackles the diverse teachings of the great psychoanalyst and theoretician. Written by some of the leading American and European Lacanian scholars and practitioners, the essays attempt to come to terms with his complex relation to the culture of contemporary psychoanalysis. The volume presents useful insights into Lacan’s innovative theories on the nature of language and the subject. Many of the essays probe the importance of psychoanalysis for problems of signifier and referent in the (...) philosophy of language; others explore the difficulties men and women have in negotiating the sexual differences that divide them. A major contribution to the new reception of Jacques Lacan in the English-speaking world, _Lacan and the Subject of Language_ will challenge those who believe that they have already ‘mastered’ Lacanian thought. The insights offered here will pave the way for further developments. (shrink)

“Deus fons veritatis”: the Subject and its Freedom. The Ontic Foundation of Mathematical Truth is the title of Gaspare Polizzi’s long biographical-theoretical interview with Imre Toth. The interview is divided into eight parts. The first part describes the historical and cultural context in which Toth was formed. A Jew by birth, during the Second World War Toth became a communist and a partisan, enduring prison, torture, and internment in a concentration camp from 1940 until 6 June 1944. In (...) the second part Toth presents his mathematical training as a “vocation” that led him to rethink the whole tradition of mathematical thought critically, on the basis of non-Euclidean geometry. In the third part Toth describes his research in the history of mathematics, which begin with his studies on Aristotle and mathematical thought and on Plato and the negative ontology of the irrational recognizable in the theory of the infinite dyad and of the One. In the fourth part Toth criticizes the positions of Frege, who came to deny non-Euclidean geometry, viewing it as an expression of irrationality and mysticism. In the fifth part Toth maintains that mathesis and poiesis have similar ontological structures, and he speaks of his collages métaphysiques. In the sixth part Toth recalls how the birth of the idea of freedom made possible the highest political, social and artistic achievements, as well as the entire movement of human emancipation. And this was thanks to philosophy, which is not a science but a knowledge of the subject on the subject’s part. In the seventh and eighth parts Toth speaks of the value and the role of mathematics in the affirmation of the phenomenology of freedom, and remarks on his relations with French and Italian cultures. (shrink)

_Beyond the Subjectivity Trap_ challenges the paradigm of the hard problem of consciousness by contesting the relevance and primacy of human thought. By tracing the evolved egocentricity of the 'I' as an entrapping limitation on our thinking the book argues that once the Subjectivity Trap is understood and escaped we can appreciate the non-existence of the mind–body divide, the pure functionality of the brain, and the limitlessness of our potential.

The history of what the title of Baghramian and Marchetti’s book refers to as the ‘Great Divide’ between Analytic and Continental philosophy has been the subject of much debate and controversy in r...

This essay is divided into four sections, the communal aim of which is to provide essential pathways to experiential bodily truths, thereby bringing to light the essential nature of the first-person body, the body subject. The essential pathways are anchored in Husserlian insights concerning the animate nature of the body subject. To arrive at these insights, it is necessary first to clear the field of conceptual obstacles, notably those stemming from idiosyncratic notions of proprioception that fail to (...) accord with the human realities of animate life. Accordingly, Section I provides essential clarifications of proprioception. The Husserlian insights that constitute Section II first draw attention to Husserl’s... (shrink)

Within Hegel's system of science, judgement(Urteil)is thought's original dividing from identity into difference. In the same context, judgement is also an act of predication where “subject” must be understood in both a grammatical and psychical sense. Thus, judgement expresses a language act that is a self-positing into the difference of being. This article looks at two examples where Hegel's ontological notion of judgement obtains, then finds, the roots of this notion in Hölderlin and Fichte.

Despite the belief that autism is an empathy disorder, autistics declare their ability to empathize. To explore this experiential vision, we present the alternative explanation for social impairments in autism offered by the Intense World Theory (IWT) and substantiate it through the phenomenological analysis of empathy as an experienced phenomenon. According to IWT, autistics are characterized by hyper-emotionality and therefore their detachment is not the sign of a disrupted empathy, but a strategy to face a world of overwhelming stimuli. Taking (...) the phenomenological account of empathy as a tendency to minimize the emotional and conceptual space dividing embodied and conscious subjects, our purpose is to explain that although autistics seem to expand this space, they may still be considered empathetic. (shrink)