© 2017. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.We present new observations of the low-mass companion to HD 984 taken with the Gemini Planet Imager as a part of the GPI Exoplanet Survey campaign. Images of HD 984 B were obtained in the J and H bands. Combined with archival epochs from 2012 and 2014, we fit the first orbit to the companion to find an 18 au orbit with a 68% confidence interval between 14 and 28 au, an eccentricity (...) of 0.18 with a 68% confidence interval between 0.05 and 0.47, and an inclination of 119°with a 68% confidence interval between 114°and 125°. To address the considerable spectral covariance in both spectra, we present a method of splitting the spectra into low and high frequencies to analyze the spectral structure at different spatial frequencies with the proper spectral noise correlation. Using the split spectra, we compare them to known spectral types using field brown dwarf and low-mass star spectra and find a best-fit match of a field gravity M6.5 ±1.5 spectral type with a corresponding temperature of K. Photometry of the companion yields a luminosity of log=2.88 ± 0.07 dex with DUSTY models. Mass estimates, again from DUSTY models, find an age-dependent mass of 34 ±1 to 95 ±4 M Jup. These results are consistent with previous measurements of the object. (shrink)

The patterns of ecological devastation that mark the present unexpectedly enable an ancient and many-storied question to resurface with renewed force: the question of the arts of living — that is, of learning how to live and die well with others on a precarious Earth. Modernity has all but forgotten this question, which has long been buried under the dreams of progress and infinite growth, colonial projects, and the enthroning of technoscience. But what might it mean to reclaim the question (...) of the arts of living today? In this article Martin Savransky reclaims the connection between pragmatism, education, and the arts of living by proposing both that (1) William James's pragmatist philosophy can be read as an ongoing and unfinished experiment in weaving a certain art of living, and (2) James's pragmatism might provide us with uniquely generative elements to begin to experiment with the profoundly educational and ecological challenge of learning to inhabit the Earth otherwise. (shrink)

In his lectures on pragmatism, William James famously proposed that the question of ‘the one and the many’ constitutes the most central of all philosophic problems, and that it is ‘central because so pregnant’. Prompted by James’ proposition, this article explores the intimately political connection in James’ thought between his pluralistic metaphysics and the nature of the problematic as a generative force that impregnates worlds and thoughts with differences: what I here call ‘the pluralistic problematic’. Exploring the generative significance of (...) the problematic in James’ philosophy, I propose that, where James is concerned, the pluriverse has a thoroughly problematic mode of existence. And pluralism, rather than a celebration of the many, rather than a philosophical exposition on multiple worlds and ontologies, or a theory of the organisation of a diverse polis, is first and foremost a pragmatics of the pluriverse – a political, experimental and pragmatic response to the ongoing insistence of the pluralistic problematic. (shrink)

At a time where the relevance of the social sciences is under threat, this innovative book offers a speculative experimentation on the philosophy and methodology of the social sciences to rethink what 'relevance' is, and to cultivate a new ethos of knowledge-making for an eventful world. Engaging a diverse a range of thinkers including Alfred North Whitehead, Gilles Deleuze and Isabelle Stengers, as well as the American pragmatists John Dewey and William James, Martin Savransky challenges longstanding assumptions in the (...) social sciences and argues that relevance is an event that is part and parcel of the immanent and situated processes by which things come to matter. He develops new conceptual tools for cultivating an empiricist ethos of inquiry that is attuned to the question of how things come to matter- an ethics that turns social inquiry into a veritable adventure. The result is an original and rigorous book that infuses knowledge-practices in the social sciences with new sensibilities, creative possibilities, and novel habits of thinking, knowing, and feeling. (shrink)

In _Around the Day in Eighty Worlds_ Martin Savransky calls for a radical politics of the pluriverse amid the ongoing devastation of the present. Responding to an epoch marked by the history of colonialism and ecological devastation, Savransky draws on the pragmatic pluralism of William James to develop what Savransky calls a “pluralistic realism”—an understanding of the world as simultaneously one and many, ongoing and unfinished, underway and yet to be made. Savransky explores the radical multifariousness (...) of reality by weaving key aspects of James's thought together with divergent worlds and stories: of Magellan's circumnavigation, sorcery in Mozambique, God's felt presence among a group of evangelicals in California, visible spirits in Zambia, and ghosts in the wake of the 2011 tsunami in Japan. Throughout, he experiments with these storied worlds to dramatize new ways of approaching the politics of radical difference and the possibility of transforming reality. By exploring and constructing relations between James's pluralism and the ontological turn in anthropology, Savransky offers a new conceptualization of the pluriverse that fosters modes of thinking and living otherwise. (shrink)

The article provides a close hermeneutical reading and philosophical interpretation of a short text by Mikhail Bakhtin from 1943, quoted and translated in the beginning. Contra the modern Cartesian interpretation of the subject as always open to itself in an act of self-reflection, it is argued that one’s self is not immediately accessible and fully transparent to itself. Looking at oneself in the mirror stands for an attempt of self-cognition, in which one both recognizes and misses oneself, seeing oneself as (...) another with no “seamy side.” Thinking oneself, then, constitutes a constant dialogue with oneself, in which one is always involved in a process of non-finalizable explanation of oneself to oneself as one’s own other. (shrink)

While Western political scientists have a variety of opinions on democracy and how its institutions could be improved, they almost never argue about the validity of democracy as a form of government. Of course, it would be unfair here to ignore the presence of an authoritarian streak in Western thought. Thomas Hobbes comes to mind most immediately. Yet the views of those thinkers with an authoritarian bent have become marginalized in present-day discourse; or, to be more precise, it is assumed (...) that their views on the importance of a strong government are irrelevant to the present. The assumption that a strong regime might be necessary in non-Western societies is thought to be the product of these authoritarian/totalitarian societies' elite classes—that is, a justification for imposing the power of the elite upon the people. Most Western political scientists are convinced that democracy is the best of all possible forms of government. (shrink)

Besieged by ongoing economic crises, global health emergencies, geopolitical instabilities, ecological devastation, and growing political resentments, the intractable nature of the problems that configure the present has never loomed larger or more darkly. But what, indeed, is a problem? Problematising the modern image that treats problems as obstacles to be overcome by the progress of technoscientific knowledge and policy, this introductory article lays the groundwork for a generative conceptualisation of problems. Reweaving intercontinental connections between traditions of French philosophy and American (...) pragmatism, it proffers a conception of the problematic as a mode of existence that is irreducible to the subjective, the methodological, or the epistemological. Problems go all the way down and up, requiring nothing less than an art of metamorphosis capable of engendering processes of creation, invention, and transformation in whose hold bodies and practices, knowledges and lives, thoughts and worlds, are done and undone, made and remade. (shrink)

In their useful logic for a computer network Shramko and Wansing generalize initial values of Belnap’s 4-valued logic to the set 16 to be the power-set of Belnap’s 4. This generalization results in a very specific algebraic structure — the trilattice SIXTEEN 3 with three orderings: information, truth and falsity. In this paper, a slightly different way of generalization is presented. As a base for further generalization a set 3 is chosen, where initial values are a — incoming data is (...) asserted, d — incoming data is denied, and u — incoming data is neither asserted nor denied, that corresponds to the answer “don’t know”. In so doing, the power-set of 3, that is the set 8 is considered. It turns out that there are not three but four orderings naturally defined on the set 8 that form the tetralattice EIGHT 4 . Besides three ordering relations mentioned above it is an extra uncertainty ordering. Quite predictably, the logics generated by a –order (truth order) and d –order (falsity order) coincide with first-degree entailment. Finally logic with two kinds of operations ( a –connectives and d –connectives) and consequence relation defined via a –ordering is considered. An adequate axiomatization for this logic is proposed. (shrink)

The first question I wanted to ask you has to do with the manner in which you do philosophy, in the sense that the concepts that you create, develop and experiment with, always resist the temptation to tell others what to do. In fact, at the very beginning of your “The Cosmopolitical Proposal”, you begin with a question that I think resonates with this. You write: “How can we present a proposal intended not to say what is, or what ought (...) to be, but to provoke thought?” So what I wanted to ask you is, how would you characterize the importance of this challenge of creating concepts that provoke thought, rather than instruct others on how to think?Well, probably you never know why you do what you do as you do it.... (shrink)

In the chapter of Gilles Deleuze’s The Fold: Leibniz and The Baroque where Whitehead makes a surprising and crucial appearance, Deleuze chooses to introduce the English mathematician and philosopher as the successor, or “diadoche,” of what he describes as a somewhat secret school. The reason for the secrecy of this school is itself something of a mystery. Even when Deleuze alludes to the question “What is an Event?” as a thread weaving its members together, it cannot be a coincidence that (...) the term he uses to characterize these connections is that of an “echo.” For its secrecy speaks not of a desire from its members to remain unknown, isolated, hermetically closed upon themselves, but rather of the fact that the... (shrink)

Collected writings on Plato’s unwritten teachings.

In their useful logic for a computer network Shramko and Wansing generalize initial values of Belnap’s 4-valued logic to the set 16 to be the power-set of Belnap’s 4. This generalization results in a very specific algebraic structure — the trilattice SIXTEEN3 with three orderings: information, truth and falsity. In this paper, a slightly different way of generalization is presented. As a base for further generalization a set 3 is chosen, where initial values are a — incoming data is asserted, (...) d — incoming data is denied, and u — incoming data is neither asserted nor denied, that corresponds to the answer “don’t know”. In so doing, the power-set of 3, that is the set 8 is considered. It turns out that there are not three but four orderings naturally defined on the set 8 that form the tetralattice EIGHT4. Besides three ordering relations mentioned above it is an extra uncertainty ordering. Quite predictably, the logics generated by a–order and d–order coincide with first-degree entailment. Finally logic with two kinds of operations and consequence relation defined via a–ordering is considered. An adequate axiomatization for this logic is proposed. (shrink)

This brief article, appearing in Issue #2 of The Cambridge Journal of Law, Politics and Art, published online on 22 November 2022), explores Nietzsche's perspective on the perils of mass psychosis in modern society and the threat it entails in accommodating increasingly repressive systems of social control against the background of the COVID pandemic, and drawing on the example of Novak Djokovic's deportation from Australia in January 2022.

In what may seem like an uncharacteristic passage by someone who otherwise described himself as the typical example of the Victorian Englishman, Alfred North Whitehead once wrote that “[t]he notion of pure thought in abstraction from all expression is a figment of the learned world. A thought is a tremendous form of excitement”. It is the patterned signature of its expression that not only gives thought its own distinct character, but also propels it out into the world, exciting its environment (...) with a new variation of interests. Without this ability to repattern, even if just slightly, the atmosphere of feeling in which they are immersed, to make a difference by shifting the way in which a situation may... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Dmitry Khanin THE POSTMODERN POSTURE Postmodernists—the sectarians ofour day—proclaim that the old kingdom of historical narrative and historical subject has perished, and is now being replaced by a new one of ahistorical discourses and ahistorical characters. According to these prophets, "history" is anyway just changes in ways of talking about history. Anyone who does not agree with the ahistoricity of the postmodern world oudook may be accused—and tried (...) on the spot—of defending the cause of the totalitarian Reason against the most liberating movement of today. This postmodernist abuse of history is paradoxical, since the very notion of history coming to its end and giving way to the ahistorical kingdom of freedom and merry debauchery is itself a very old idea, even a mythological one. The description ofhistory as marching toward its own demise relies on a whole tradition which portrays history as a drama. Aristode's conception of tragedy as a sequence of actions culminating in a dénouement has no doubt shaped this view of historical process. Christian and other religious millenarians have announced the end of history already many times. Yet another notorious instance of such eschatological daydreaming is the futurology of Karl Marx, who envisaged the kingdom of communism as occupying this same ahistorical space. A rather obsolete idea, perhaps, but it seems still to attract postmodernists, though they give it a characteristic twist, since they sincerely believe theory, discourse, écriture (i.e., theoretico-symbolical activity) are much more important than any actual historical contentprocesses and events. One of the most notable spokesmen for this approach is Arthur Danto, who insists that world history evolved in a good Hegelian manner until the theorists came to understand that history depends on their Philosophy and Literature, © 1990, 14: 239-247 240Philosophy and Literature texts much more than theorists themselves depend on historical processes and events.1 Many theoreticians working in an otherwise Marxist tradition similarly are glad to assert with FredricJameson that we must say farewell to Marx's positivistic illusion that history is driven by laws disguised as economic forces.2 In the epoch of "late capitalism," says Jameson, consumption gains the upper hand over production and becomes the mainspring of history. Of course, in light of recent doings in Europe I am tempted to ask if we owe it to postmodernists—and their ahistorical, inconsistent, and generally confounding claims about history lying in ruins—that the Berlin Wall actually is in ruins and Vaclav Havel is president of Czechoslovakia. Even more daring theorists may now declare an era of "very late capitalism." Here it will not be merely the mass media that act transformatively on society (as McLuhan claimed), but rather consumer goods themselves, like state-of-the-art washing machines or French perfumes, which create a new aura of intellectual discourse. TL· Postmodern Scene: Excremental Culture and Hyper-AesÜietics, a book by two Canadian authors, Arthur Kroker and David Cook, promotes such a sea change in the theoretical landscape and along the way presents a joyous recapitulation ofthe latest fads in postmodern thinking. The new apostolic generation ofpostmodern critics seems to enjoy the beautiful new things that can be bought for bucks, worrying at the same time that bucks may be losing some of their purchasing power. Like Hari-Krishnas dancing in the street they luckily possess a sort of happy consciousness which also recalls their puritanical great grandfathers who regarded profligacy as the greatest sin and much preferred saving to spending. In what follows I want to draw a portrait of this new postmodern posture. A few main assumptions underlie Kroker's and Cook's wake for postmodernism, which, in its peculiar genre of philosophic obituary, epitomizes and thus prepares for future oblivion views which were exceedingly popular in the preceding decade. First of all, the authors adopt Baudrillard's equation of Marx and Nietzsche: "Marx and Nietzsche shared a deep and common affinity in meditating upon historical (Christian) and materialistic (capitalist) expressions ofthewill ofpower."3 From Baudrillard's perspective Marx appears as a pathetic romantic who tried to defend the "referential illusion" by renaturalizing concrete labor even though its entirely abstract character was brilliandy revealed in Das Kapital. Baudrillard... (shrink)

The sources of religious tolerance but also of religious nationalism in post-soviet Russia can be found basically in the group identification of nationality and religion. In crisis situations, the historical religion of the Russian society - Orthodoxy - becomes the criterion for identifying the national identity. However, despite the fact that the majority of Russians in our times consider themselves Orthodox, many of them are not believers. The observable effect of the “external belief” results in the fact that the religion (...) tends to become a matter of personal choice and an individual value. It assumes a nationalistic function and to become an ideology. As a result, the political elite considers religion as a means of achieving different non- religious purposes. The Russian Orthodox Church, the official church, is compelled to take this fact into consider- ation and even support it. This is why religious intolerance and religious nationalism in modern Russia are often directed towards religion. (shrink)

The paper deals with the analysis of Block's notion of two kinds of consciousness: phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness. Following Block, it is argued that insufficient attention has been paid to phenomenal aspects of our mental life in contemporary philosophy of mind. And it is exactly due to these aspects the task of explanation of consciousness turns out to be the hard problem. But Block's approach to phenomenal consciousness has a number of disadvantages. First of all it allows epiphenomenalism. To (...) avoid negative consequences of epiphenomenalism Dennett's suggestion to consider the problem of phenomenal consciousness as the matter of "richness of content" and "degree of influence" is adopted in the paper. In accordance with his ideas it is proposed to consider phenomenal consciousness as informational processes that achieve certain level of complexity and integrity. (shrink)

Представление о шарообразном Солнце было стандартным для греческой культуры уже во времена Аристотеля, однако происхождение этого представления настолько мало освещено в источниках, что современная наука даже не попыталась взяться за решение этого вопроса. Между тем правдоподобная реконструкция вполне возможна. Греческая религия, в сущности, не препятствовала возникновению естествознания, а его основатели, Фалес и Анаксимандр, совмещая научные и философские интересы, стремились к построению всеобъемлющей космологии, в рамках которой было необходимым не только описать движение Солнца, но и объяснить, что это за тело и (...) почему с ним связаны свет и тепло. Модель Анаксимандра, описывавшая Солнце как скопление огня, пребывающего внутри колесообразного контейнера из сгустившегося воздуха и обнаруживающего себя сквозь единственное отверстие, которое кажется незначительным, но в действительности размером с Землю, оказалась несовместимой с фактами, ставшими доступными в следующем поколении в связи с расширением географического кругозора греков. В частности, было надежно установлено, что полуденное Солнце, которое в Средиземноморье неизменно видно на юге, для наблюдателей, находящихся южнее тропика Рака, в разгар лета оказывается на севере. Необходимость пересмотреть концепцию Анаксимандра с учетом новых данных вызвала идейный поиск, который привел к убеждению в том, что Солнце должно иметь форму шара. Это представление утвердилось, судя по всему, не в силу какого-либо остроумного довода, выдвинутого влиятельным мыслителем, сколько на основании согласия круга профессионалов, рассмотревших вопрос с разных сторон. Солнечный шар, однако, было трудно представить огненным, поскольку огонь сам по себе не образует компактных, очерченных тел. С этим связаны распространенные в V в. до н. э. попытки приписать свету Солнца зеркальную природу. Признание же наличия в космосе трех огромных шаров – Солнца, Луны и Земли способствовало выдвижению идеи, согласно которой земной шар, как и прочие два, является движущимся небесным телом. (shrink)

This book is a philosophical study of two major thinkers who span the period of late antiquity: Plotinus, who establishes many of the central themes for later debate and establishes strategies of argument and interpretation, and Proclus, who develops a grand philosophical synthesis and provides original insights into a number of important problems regarding being and thinking, matter and evil.

This paper considers the views of Alexander Dugin, a leading proponent of Eurasianism in contemporary Russia. The point of his teaching is the preservation of the traditional social/cultural make-up of each civilization. He also believes that the Russian Slavs together with the minorities of the Russian Federation constitute a quasi-unity of Eurasian civilization. He emphasizes that globalism, led by the USA, is a mortal threat to the cultural identity of Russia/Eurasia and all other civilizations. For this reason the USA and (...) Russia are locked in mortal conflict with one other. At the outset of his intellectual career, in post-Soviet Russia, Dugin believed that Putin would follow the Eurasian road. It would be wrong to see Dugin as an intellectual guru at the head of the post-Soviet elite. Still, his views are important, for they indicate the kinds of ideas that circulate in the minds of the Russian elite. (shrink)

Most of the core concepts of the Western philosophical tradition originate in antiquity. Yet boredom is strikingly absent from classical thought. In this philosophical study, Dmitri Nikulin explores the concept's genealogy to argue that boredom is the mark of modernity. Nikulin contends that boredom is a specifically modern phenomenon. He provides a critical reconstruction of the concept of the modern subject as universal, rational, autonomous, and self-sufficient. Understanding itself in this way, this subject is at once the protagonist, playwright, director, (...) and spectator of the staged drama of human existence. It is therefore inevitably monological, lonely, and alone, and can neither escape its own presence nor get rid of it. In other words, it is bored-and this boredom is the fundamental expression and symptom of the modern condition. Considering such thinkers as Descartes, Pascal, Kant, Kierkegaard, Kracauer, Heidegger, and Benjamin, Critique of Bored Reason places boredom on center stage in the philosophical critique of modernity. Nikulin also considers the alternative to the notion of the autonomous subject in the-nonbored and nonboring-dialogic and comic subject capable of shared existence with others. (shrink)

We explore a possibility of generalization of classical truth values by distinguishing between their ontological and epistemic aspects and combining these aspects within a joint semantical framework. The outcome is four generalized classical truth values implemented by Cartesian product of two sets of classical truth values, where each generalized value comprises both ontological and epistemic components. This allows one to define two unary twin connectives that can be called “semi-classical negations”. Each of these negations deals only with one of the (...) above mentioned components, and they may be of use for a logical reconstruction of argumentative reasoning. (shrink)