In this article, I attempt to answer the famous analyses of Benjamin Constant and Isaiah Berlin that the Classical Athenian Democracy had no conception of negative, individual, freedom. I do this by excavating an Athenian democratic concept of individual liberty from Classical Athenian texts. I go on to show that, whilst this has notable links to the later neo-Classical idea of freedom (excavated by the work of Quentin Skinner and Philip Pettit), there are also a number of important differences. This (...) means that we should perhaps stop arguing over whether there are one, or two, or three, concepts of freedom, but investigate instead (and, then, apply, in contemporary political philosophy) different historical uses of the word `'liberty' (as here), though these, interestingly, might well contain a similar basic meaning (of non-interference). (shrink)

It remains unclear what is being processed in blindsight in response to faces, colours, shapes, and patterns. This was investigated in two hemianopes with chromatic and achromatic stimuli with sharp or shallow luminance or chromatic contrast boundaries or temporal onsets. Performance was excellent only when stimuli had sharp spatial boundaries. When discrimination between isoluminant coloured Gaussians was good it declined to chance levels if stimulus onset was slow. The ability to discriminate between instantaneously presented colours in the hemianopic field depended (...) on their luminance, indicating that wavelength discrimination totally independent of other stimulus qualities is absent. When presented with narrow-band colours the hemianopes detected a stimulus maximally effective for S-cones but invisible to M- and L-cones, indicating that blindsight is mediated not just by the mid-brain, which receives no S-cone input, or that the rods contribute to blindsight. The results show that only simple stimulus features are processed in blindsight. (shrink)

Here lies the vocation of those who preserve our understanding of past theories, who sharpen our sense of the subtle, complex interplay between political experience and thought, and who preserve our memory of the agonizing efforts of intellect to restate the possibilities and threats posed by political dilemmas of the past. —Sheldon S. Wolin, “Political Theory as a Vocation”In the same way in which the great transformation of the first industrial revolution destroyed the social and political structures as well as (...) the legal categories of the ancien regime, terms such as sovereignty, right, nation, people, democracy, and general will by now refer to a reality that no longer has anything to do with what these concepts used to designate—and those who continue to use these concepts uncritically literally do not know what they are talking about. —Giorgio Agamben, Means without Ends: Notes on PoliticsLooking obliquely at the edges of things, where they come together with other things, can tell you as much about them, often, as can looking at them directly, intently, straight on. —Clifford Geertz, “The Near East in the Far East”. (shrink)

This article, a contribution to the Common Knowledge symposium “Fuzzy Studies,” criticizes a prominent form of philosophical account of rational activity. Rational activity includes actions as varied as kicking a soccer ball and speaking a language. The philosophical accounts examined — which may be called “intellectualist” — share two features: they originate in skeptical doubt about whether what appears to be rational activity really is, and they ascribe knowledge of the norms of her activity to the person doing it. Given (...) their first feature, intellectualist accounts seek to reassure us. But they fail: the phenomenon to which they appeal in explaining rational activity — a person's grasping its norms — itself presupposes such activity. The question whether a person knows the norms of her activity is a central way of organizing the disputes of the last sixty years over whether the humanities are as intellectually legitimate as the sciences. One prominent thing it can mean to call humanities work “fuzzy” is that it is without authoritative method. Critics of the humanities may be understood as insisting that intellectual work is genuinely rational only where the thinker has in view sharply defined norms. Thus, such critics evince the same kind of concern about the legitimacy of literary or historical studies as intellectualist philosophers do about the reality of apparent soccer kicks or meaningful speech. Whatever the merit of these concerns, there is no comfort to be had in ascribing knowledge of the norms of her activity to either the literary critic or the soccer player. (shrink)

In a survey of issues in philosophy of mind some years ago, I observed that "it is widely granted these days that dualism is not a serious view to contend with, but rather a cliff over which to push one's opponents." (Dennett, 1978, p.252) That was true enough, and I for one certainly didn't deplore the fact, but this rich array of essays tackling my book amply demonstrates that a cliff examined with care is better than a cliff ignored. And, (...) as I have noted in my discussion of the blind spot and other gaps, you really can't perceive an edge unless you represent both sides of it. So one of the virtues of this gathering of essays is that it permits both friend and foe alike to take a good hard look at dualism, as represented by those who are tempted by it, those who can imagine no alternative to it, and those who, like me, still find it to be--in a word--hopeless. (shrink)

A leading figure in the emerging field of extinction studies, Thom van Dooren puts philosophy into conversation with the natural sciences and his ethnographic encounters to vivify the cultural and ethical significance of modern-day extinctions. Unlike other meditations on the subject, _Flight Ways_ incorporates the particularities of real animals and their worlds, drawing philosophers, natural scientists, and general readers into the experience of living among and losing biodiversity. Each chapter of _Flight Ways_ focuses on a different species or group of (...) birds: North Pacific albatrosses, Indian vultures, an endangered colony of penguins in Australia, Hawaiian crows, and the iconic whooping cranes of North America. Written in eloquent and moving prose, the book takes stock of what is lost when a life form disappears from the world--the wide-ranging ramifications that ripple out to implicate a number of human and more-than-human others. Van Dooren intimately explores what life is like for those who must live on the edge of extinction, balanced between life and oblivion, taking care of their young and grieving their dead. He bolsters his studies with real-life accounts from scientists and local communities at the forefront of these developments. No longer abstract entities with Latin names, these species become fully realized characters enmeshed in complex and precarious ways of life, sparking our sense of curiosity, concern, and accountability toward others in a rapidly changing world. (shrink)

As the international academic enterprise settles into the first decade of the twenty-first century, the future of our work is in flux. Academic specializations established a century ago no longer adequately reflect the growing points of human thought, and the opening of higher education to wider populations of students has challenged the relevance of traditional disciplines for future lives and careers. In this context, teachers and scholars have been rethinking the academic enterprise and the functions it serves for their students; (...) new centers are being organized around what was once thought to mark the edge of knowledge-making. At Bryn Mawr College in the USA, where many of the contributors of this special issue teach, the Center for Science in Society has been an important locus for such restructuring. (shrink)

The importance of history has been powerfully reaffirmed in recent years by the appearance of major new authors, pathbreaking works, and fresh interpretations of historical events, trends, and methods. Responding to these developments, Roger Chartier engages several of the most influential writers of cultural history whose works have spread far beyond academic audiences to become part of contemporary cultural argument. Challenging the assertion that history is no more than a "fiction-making operation" Chartier examines the relationships between history and fiction and (...) proposes new foundations for establishing history as a specific kind of knowledge. Michel de Certeau's description of Michel Foucault's writings as "on the edge of the cliff," provides Chartier with an image he finds appropriate not only for Foucault but for many other recent historians--including de Certeau. Exploring the relationships between discursive practices and nondiscursive practices, Chartier examines the "heterology" of de Certeau pursues the "chimera of origin" and the causes of the French Revolution in Foucault's work and raises four pertinent questions for the metahistory of Hayden White. He follows the work of Louis Marin into the distinctions between interpreting a painting and interpreting a text. And a trio of essays treats the historical sociology of Norbert Elias and his work on power and civility. Throughout, Chartier keeps his focus on historians who have stressed the relations between the products of discourse and social practices. (shrink)

(1984). At the edge of science: Joseph Henry, ‘Visionary Theorizers’, and the Smithsonian institution. Annals of Science: Vol. 41, No. 5, pp. 445-461.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:388 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Beyond the Edge of Certainty: Essays in Contemporary Science and Philosophy. Edited with an Introduction by Robert G. Colodny. (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1965.) This is the second volume of lectures on various current topics in the philosophy of the physical, biological, and social sciences which has been published under the auspices of the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University (...) of Pittsburg. Volume I, Frontiers o] Science and Philosophy, also edited by Professor Colodny, appeared in 1962. Five of the seven lectures contained in this volume treat topics which fall within the philosophy of physics. The persistent student who is without a technical background in either logic or physics will find these for the most part quite readable. Considering this, it is worthy of note that, while the lectures are not of uniform quality in this respect, several problems are treated with sufficient freshness of insight to justify the interest of the philosopher of science as such. Since I cannot discuss all of the lectures, I will restrict my comments, for the most part, to those the significance of which I think I understand best and which deal significantly with some aspect of the history of philosophy. In "Newton's First Law: A Philosopher's Door into Natural Philosophy," Norwood Russell Hanson exhibits what has become a widely accepted analysis of Newton's First Law as a model to be applied to theories in science which must be regarded as, in some sense, true, but which, in principle, are not empirically demonstrable. Briant Ellis, in "The Origin and Nature of Newton's Laws of Motion," deals in a somewhat parallel way with all three of Newton's laws of motion. It is argued that these laws are primarily conceptual in origin. Evidence is marshalled that they were derived from Cartesian physics. That no amount of empirical work could establish or provide support for a principle of natural motion is held by Ellis to be due to the fact that "force" is conceived as something that exists only in order to explain effects. "Since we are at liberty to choose to regard whatever changes or states we please as natural (i.e., as not being effects) it follows that the forces which we should say are operative in nature depend upon the choices we actually make" (65). It would, I think be difficult to show that any one of the points Ellis makes, with the exception of his interesting historical note on the probable origin of Newton's laws of motion, has not previously been made. All, or nearly all, of these points were set forth, at least in outline, for example, by William Werkmeister in A Philosophy o] Science. The approach Ellis makes to his development of the concept of "force," however, is both fresh and incisive and worthy of careful study. In "A Philosopher looks at Quantum Mechanics," Hillary Putnam exhibits the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics of Bohr and Heisenberg, viewed in historical perspective, as the most adequate of several unsatisfactory theories. He finds the locus of the problem to lie in a suitable definition of "measurement." Noting that Heisenberg's definition (improperly) appeals to the macrocosm conceived in terms of classical mechanics, he seeks to clarify some of the issues that must follow the attempt to define measurement within the context of quantum mechanics. Putnam holds the relative sharpness of macroobservables for Bohr and Heisenberg to be an underived assumption of their theory. Since the quantities of which macro-observables are supposed to be averages are not (in quantum mechanics) required always to exist, this assumption cannot be derived from a plausible definition of macro-observables together with a suitable formulation of the laws of quantum mechanics. Moving from Bohr and Heisenberg's conclusion that measurement requires interaction of a system (or part of a system) measured with respect to an outside system, and that macroobservables do not exist unless measured, measurement for quantum mechanics is defined as "an interaction in which a system A (the 'measured' system), which was previously isolated, interacts with a system B (the 'measuring' system) in such a way as to cause a... (shrink)

É difícil afirmar que o império português na Índia tenha sido, antes de mais, um “império da informação”, tal como Christopher Bayly se esforçou por comprovar, no caso do congénere inglês. Nesta matéria, como em muitas outras, faltam-nos ainda mais estudos. No entanto, parece óbvio que nos domínios portugueses na Índia – relativamente diminutos e muito descontínuos –, o conhecimento e a informação tiveram um papel muito importante no processo de assegurar o poder político, social e militar. O recurso às (...) informações das redes de espiões, “línguas”, funcionários da administração, comerciantes e diplomatas foi fundamental para o recíproco conhecimento das sociedades e para desenvolvimento da presença portuguesa no Índico. Foi o que sucedeu com as informações veiculadas pelos comerciantes indianos residentes na África oriental setecentista. O principal objectivo deste artigo é perceber por que razão a elite indiana utilizou os jesuítas como intérpretes da sua língua, o marwari e o guzerate, para comunicar com a administração portuguesa. (shrink)

Modern and Postmodern Cutting Edge Films closely examines a wide variety of major filmic texts that have established permanent, iconic shifts in modern and postmodern US culture and filmic practices. These films and their often visionary, trend-setting auteurs each introduced new manners of seeing that were imitated by later directors and ultimately, absorbed by popular culture itself. The primary rationale for writing this collection was quite simple: it is new and different. No anthology exists that examines the concept of (...) the cutting edge film across such a remarkably wide variety of genres and with such a diversity of theoretical approaches and subject matter. Equally important, all the contributors bring a unique voice and multi-disciplinary perspective to their respective chapters. This anthology will be of great interest to scholars from a variety of disciplines, including film studies, historical studies, and gender and genre studies. As far as possible, contributors have minimized a great deal of typical theoretical terminology so that lay readers who possess some familiarity with basic film analysis and theory can understand the text. It can be used as a classroom text in both graduate and upper-level undergraduate film classes. Modern and Postmodern Cutting Edge Films is an anthology that instructors of film theory and history can use for many years to come. Indeed, we feel that this remarkable collection of essays will itself become an indispensable, cutting edge text of film scholarship. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Stepping Off the Edge of the Earth:A bariatric patient’s journey out of obesityNikki MassieI have been overweight my entire life. When I was born—three weeks early—I weighed 9 lbs., 3 oz. I proceeded to trend on the high end of the weight percentile for my age. By the time I was 14 years old I’d surpassed 200 lbs. By the time I graduated high school I’d hit 250 (...) lbs.Even today, after losing a considerable amount of weight from having Roux–en–Y gastric bypass surgery, I am still considered overweight according to the body mass index.All this is to say that the way I think about my health, my body and my life is very much from the perspective of someone who has never experienced the so–called condition of being “normal.”Enough is EnoughI’ve been asked many times how I decided to have bariatric surgery. The answer isn’t simple. Because I’d been overweight all my life, the notion of being anything but overweight seemed a bit absurd to me. Not absurd as in, “I would not be happy if I were smaller” but more like, “I don’t know if this could ever happen for me and, if it did, who would I be?”Truth be told, I wasn’t entirely unhappy as an overweight woman. By the account of my primary care physician I also was not necessarily unhealthy for an overweight person. I didn’t have high blood pressure or diabetes (I wasn’t even pre–diabetic). My heart seemed to work fine. I was just very, very large.However, I’d been large (or larger than others) my entire life. In many ways my very identity was inextractable from that fact. While I can’t speak for my entire culture, my experience as an African–American woman is one where women of size were not reviled, but celebrated. Being too thin was always presented to me as a negative cultural value, I believe because it was associated with drug use.That means that growing up I didn’t have some of the experiences other obese people had. There were a few people who teased me but they were the exception, not the norm. I don’t recall being lonely because of my size. I dated avidly throughout my adolescence. I was asked to, and went to, both my proms.I proceeded into young adulthood with a few bumps along the way. I suffered a bout of depression in my sophomore year of college and just after my 21st birthday I found the first signs of what would be massive hair loss from alopecia areata (although did not know that’s what it was at the [End Page 107] time). Otherwise, I was fairly healthy and no more or less happy than any other 21 year–old I knew.At age 22, I had my first child, a daughter. This was the beginning of an upward weight climb that took me from being very overweight into very obese. At age 21, I weighed about 240 lbs. (I am 5 ft. 8 inches tall). By the time I was 26 (and after I had a second daughter), I weighed in at 340 lbs.At this point I began to want to lose weight. I no longer liked the way I looked in pictures. My increased clothing size and cost depressed me even further. My attempts at dieting, however, failed miserably. I did seek help from my primary care physicians (I went through several throughout my young adulthood). Each time I’d be given a copy of the food pyramid and a pamphlet explaining the health benefits of losing weight.But how? How exactly does one lose weight? In my mind it was some strange combination of sadistic exercise and starvation. That’s what I saw in magazines. Women who ate the equivalent of one meal per day who exercised many hours a day. I had no desire to do either and so I continued on my trend upward.During that time my mother (now deceased) worried about my weight a lot. I’d... (shrink)

Experiments show that psi differs from known physical processes in a variety of ways, and these differences are described herein. Because of these, psi cannot be accounted for in terms of presently known physical laws. A number of theories, of which we review a sampling, suggest ways in which known physical laws might be expanded in order to account for psi. However, there is no agreement on which of these theories, if any, will ultimately provide a general explanation. A further (...) problem in studying psi is that it is elusive, i.e., methods are not presently known by which it can be reliably produced. However, if psi is real, its study can open the door to a new frontier of knowledge and contribute to our understanding of consciousness. (shrink)

The phrase "personalized medicine" has a built-in positive spin. Simple genetic tests can sometimes predict whether a particular individual will have a positive response to a particular drug or, alternatively, suffer costly and debilitating side effects. But little attention has been given to some challenging issues of justice raised by personalized medicine. How should we determine who would have a just claim to access particular treatments, especially very expensive ones? How effective do those treatments need to be?If there were a (...) thick, bright line separating minimal responders from maximal responders, then we could allocate these treatments in a fair and cost-effective way. But there is no bright line. The .. (shrink)

I BEGIN WITH A PUZZLE of sorts. Time is one; space is two—at least two. Time comes always already unified, one time. Thus we say “What time is it now?” and not “Which time is it now?” We do not ask, “What space is it?” Yet we might ask: “Which space are we in?”. Any supposed symmetry of time and space is skewed from the start. If time is self-consolidating—constantly gathering itself together in coherent units such as years or hours (...) or semesters or seasons— space is self-proliferating. Take, for example, the dimensionality of space. One dimension in space is represented by a point or a line, whose radically reduced format mocks the extensiveness of cosmic space. Two dimensions, as in a plane figure, also falls far short of our sense that space spreads out indefinitely far beyond the perceiving subject. Only with three dimensions do we begin to approach an adequation between the structure and the sense of space. For then the subject is surrounded by something sufficiently roomy in which to live and move. Indeed, as Aristotle, Kant, and Merleau-Ponty all remark, the three-dimensionality of space directly reflects our bodily state, that is, the fact that as upright beings three perpendicular planes implicitly meet and intersect in us. Even here, proliferation abounds: our bilateral symmetry means that each dimension is doubled: one vertical plane bifurcates into “up” and “down,” the other vertical plane into “front” and “back,” and the horizontal plane into “right” and “left.” Thus subject-centered space is triple, only to be redoubled. Further, if we think of spatiality not as body-based but as locatory—as determined by landmarks and other locales in the environment—the proliferation is more striking still. There are the four cardinal directions, which themselves split easily into the thirty two points of a compass. Nor need we be so arithmetically well-rounded. Even apart from fancy mathematical models of n –dimensional space, and recent technological instantiations of virtual space, there is no end to the number or ways in which we can be oriented in space—in accordance with what Deleuze and Guattari call “the variability, the polyvocity of directions” by which we can move in any given spatial scene. Beyond direction, however, is place. Heidegger remarks that “space has been split up into places.” The fact is that we continually find ourselves immersed in a multiplex spatial network whose nodal points are supplied by particular places. If space is infinitely large, place is indefinitely many. (shrink)

I BEGIN WITH A PUZZLE of sorts. Time is one; space is two—at least two. Time comes always already unified, one time. Thus we say “What time is it now?” and not “Which time is it now?” We do not ask, “What space is it?” Yet we might ask: “Which space are we in?”. Any supposed symmetry of time and space is skewed from the start. If time is self-consolidating—constantly gathering itself together in coherent units such as years or hours (...) or semesters or seasons— space is self-proliferating. Take, for example, the dimensionality of space. One dimension in space is represented by a point or a line, whose radically reduced format mocks the extensiveness of cosmic space. Two dimensions, as in a plane figure, also falls far short of our sense that space spreads out indefinitely far beyond the perceiving subject. Only with three dimensions do we begin to approach an adequation between the structure and the sense of space. For then the subject is surrounded by something sufficiently roomy in which to live and move. Indeed, as Aristotle, Kant, and Merleau-Ponty all remark, the three-dimensionality of space directly reflects our bodily state, that is, the fact that as upright beings three perpendicular planes implicitly meet and intersect in us. Even here, proliferation abounds: our bilateral symmetry means that each dimension is doubled: one vertical plane bifurcates into “up” and “down,” the other vertical plane into “front” and “back,” and the horizontal plane into “right” and “left.” Thus subject-centered space is triple, only to be redoubled. Further, if we think of spatiality not as body-based but as locatory—as determined by landmarks and other locales in the environment—the proliferation is more striking still. There are the four cardinal directions, which themselves split easily into the thirty two points of a compass. Nor need we be so arithmetically well-rounded. Even apart from fancy mathematical models of n –dimensional space, and recent technological instantiations of virtual space, there is no end to the number or ways in which we can be oriented in space—in accordance with what Deleuze and Guattari call “the variability, the polyvocity of directions” by which we can move in any given spatial scene. Beyond direction, however, is place. Heidegger remarks that “space has been split up into places.” The fact is that we continually find ourselves immersed in a multiplex spatial network whose nodal points are supplied by particular places. If space is infinitely large, place is indefinitely many. (shrink)

This massive study of the history of scientific ideas covers the period from Galileo to Einstein in a way that no other single work so far has. It is not a ‘straight’ history of science; it contains scarcely any diagrams or equations; it has no footnotes, while its order is historical, not logical or systematic. Its aim is to discover a structure in the history of science by interrelating the philosophies, the techniques, and the personalities that have moulded it, and (...) in this way to illuminate not only the past development but also the present state of science. All of the natural sciences are brought into the story, but Dr. Gillispie wisely concentrates on the central figures, the great moments of discovery and the dominant currents of thought in each. This genre of writing is becoming increasingly popular and influential, though it requires a varied competence that its exponents do not always display. When well done, as in this instance, it helps to cast an easily-traversed and much-needed bridge between the humanities and science. Like the author’s previous From Genesis to Geology, this book is full of sparkling insights, and presents a quite personal evaluation of the people and movements of ideas that cross its pages. (shrink)

Previous research with video game play and moral development with adolescents, found both positive and negative relationships. This study aimed to extend this research to explore moral development and video game play with University students. One hundred and thirty-five undergraduate students (M = 20.29 SD = 2.70) took part in an online survey. The results suggested higher moral reasoning for participants who described themselves as gamers and those which do not players, compared to the those who play but do not (...) identify as gamers. It was suggested that males had higher moral scores and more mature reasoning than females. The results of a regression analysis suggested that there were no significant predictors for moral development from either game play or the demographic variables. The findings suggest that moral development could be less influenced by sex, age, and video game play factors such as video game content and amount of game play, than was previously thought. (shrink)

Taking on the stigma of inauthenticity : Adorno's critique of genuineness -- Is experience still in crisis? : reflections on a Frankfurt school lament -- Mourning a metaphor: the revolution is over -- Cultural relativism and the visual turn -- Scopic regimes of modernity revisited -- No state of grace : violence in the garden -- Visual parrhesia? : Foucault and the truth of the gaze -- The Kremlin of modernism -- Phenomenology and lived experience -- Aesthetic experience and historical (...) experience : a twenty-first-century constellation -- Still waiting to hear from derrida -- Pseudology : Derrida on Arendt and lying in politics -- The menace of consilience : keeping the disciplines unreconciled -- Can there be national philosophies in a transnational world? -- Straddling a watershed? -- Allons enfants de l'humanité : the French and human rights -- Intellectual family values : William Phillips, Hannah Arendt, and the Partisan review -- Still sleeping rough : Colin Wilson's the outsider at fifty. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:388 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Beyond the Edge of Certainty: Essays in Contemporary Science and Philosophy. Edited with an Introduction by Robert G. Colodny. (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1965.) This is the second volume of lectures on various current topics in the philosophy of the physical, biological, and social sciences which has been published under the auspices of the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University (...) of Pittsburg. Volume I, Frontiers o] Science and Philosophy, also edited by Professor Colodny, appeared in 1962. Five of the seven lectures contained in this volume treat topics which fall within the philosophy of physics. The persistent student who is without a technical background in either logic or physics will find these for the most part quite readable. Considering this, it is worthy of note that, while the lectures are not of uniform quality in this respect, several problems are treated with sufficient freshness of insight to justify the interest of the philosopher of science as such. Since I cannot discuss all of the lectures, I will restrict my comments, for the most part, to those the significance of which I think I understand best and which deal significantly with some aspect of the history of philosophy. In "Newton's First Law: A Philosopher's Door into Natural Philosophy," Norwood Russell Hanson exhibits what has become a widely accepted analysis of Newton's First Law as a model to be applied to theories in science which must be regarded as, in some sense, true, but which, in principle, are not empirically demonstrable. Briant Ellis, in "The Origin and Nature of Newton's Laws of Motion," deals in a somewhat parallel way with all three of Newton's laws of motion. It is argued that these laws are primarily conceptual in origin. Evidence is marshalled that they were derived from Cartesian physics. That no amount of empirical work could establish or provide support for a principle of natural motion is held by Ellis to be due to the fact that "force" is conceived as something that exists only in order to explain effects. "Since we are at liberty to choose to regard whatever changes or states we please as natural (i.e., as not being effects) it follows that the forces which we should say are operative in nature depend upon the choices we actually make" (65). It would, I think be difficult to show that any one of the points Ellis makes, with the exception of his interesting historical note on the probable origin of Newton's laws of motion, has not previously been made. All, or nearly all, of these points were set forth, at least in outline, for example, by William Werkmeister in A Philosophy o] Science. The approach Ellis makes to his development of the concept of "force," however, is both fresh and incisive and worthy of careful study. In "A Philosopher looks at Quantum Mechanics," Hillary Putnam exhibits the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics of Bohr and Heisenberg, viewed in historical perspective, as the most adequate of several unsatisfactory theories. He finds the locus of the problem to lie in a suitable definition of "measurement." Noting that Heisenberg's definition (improperly) appeals to the macrocosm conceived in terms of classical mechanics, he seeks to clarify some of the issues that must follow the attempt to define measurement within the context of quantum mechanics. Putnam holds the relative sharpness of macroobservables for Bohr and Heisenberg to be an underived assumption of their theory. Since the quantities of which macro-observables are supposed to be averages are not (in quantum mechanics) required always to exist, this assumption cannot be derived from a plausible definition of macro-observables together with a suitable formulation of the laws of quantum mechanics. Moving from Bohr and Heisenberg's conclusion that measurement requires interaction of a system (or part of a system) measured with respect to an outside system, and that macroobservables do not exist unless measured, measurement for quantum mechanics is defined as "an interaction in which a system A (the 'measured' system), which was previously isolated, interacts with a system B (the 'measuring' system) in such a way as to cause a... (shrink)

Drawing on interviews, this article examines how the third wave of the straight edge hardcore music scene can promote a gender-progressive image in light of evidence that suggests men's continued advantage over women in the scene. The author argues that this discrepancy can be explained by straight edgers' use of going rate comparisons that highlight the scene's “doings” and “not-doings” in ways that portray sXe favorably. By insisting that gender is no longer relevant, straight edgers then set up a (...) going rate of authenticity that is purportedly attainable by men and women. This going rate, however, ultimately reinstates gender boundaries sXers claim to erase. The author concludes the article by discussing the larger implications of doings and not-doings in going rate constructions and the performance of gender. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 12.3 (2005) 229-234 [Access article in PDF] Nonlinear Dynamics at the Cutting Edge of Modernity: A Postmodern View Gordon Globus Keywords nonlinear dynamics, modernity, postmodernity, quantum brain theory, free will, self-organization, autopoiesis, autorhoesis Although nonlinear dynamical conceptu-alizations have been applied to psychia-try for over 20 years,1 they have not had significant impact on the field. Unfortunately Heinrichs' very thoughtful contribution to the discussion is (...) unlikely to move such disinterest. Pragmatically successful paradigms in the phase of Kuhnian "normal science" are highly resistant to change. There is no crisis that besets triumphalist biological psychiatry that might lead to clinical or scientific revolution. At the same time, as I suggest at the end of this commentary, the ideas of nonlinear dynamics may not be revolutionary enough, remaining staunchly within the framework of modernity.In what follows I discuss four issues related to Heinrichs' article. First, I try to enrich his presentation of nonlinear dynamics by bringing in the role of self-organization in the evolution of nonlinear dynamical brain systems and by making the nonlinear dynamics "tunable." Second, I discuss whether Heinrichs succeeds in avoiding the dualism of the biopsychosocial model that he criticizes. Third, I look at the issue of "free will," which Heinrichs would understandably like to avoid. Finally, I mention a new form of dynamics, namely thermofield dynamics, which I think is more promising than nonlinear dynamics. Self-Organizing Self-Tuning Nonlinear Dynamical Systems In the case of psychiatry, we are not considering nonlinear dynamical systems like the weather or an ecosystem, but the brain's neural networks in terms of nonlinear dynamics with all its chaos. There is a principle of such systems of neural networks that Heinrichs does not bring out, although it is extremely important for them. These systems are self-organizing under a Hamiltonian principle of "least energy." To use Hopfield and Tank's (1986) terms, nonlinear dynamical neural networks self-organize toward attractors that minimize the "computational energy" of the system, or for Smolensky (1988), self-organize toward "harmony," or for Globus (1995, 2003), in a Heideggerian vein, self-organize to maximize "belonging-together." In this elaborated framework, rational deliberation is one constraint among many on a self-organizing nonlinear dynamical process. [End Page 229]Heinrichs brings out beautifully the nonlinear dynamical way of thinking clinically. This is not the dynamics of mechanistic psychodynamics, which features psychological forces in vectorial conflict—id versus superego and their compromises—but a flowing evolution of states in which small changes in initial state may have large effects (nonlinearity) on the state trajectory. To live a life is often to feel surprise, which nonlinear dynamics with its chaotic regimes well portrays.But there is a way that classical Freud and nonlinear dynamical neural networks do come together—in the "economics," discharges and conservations of libidinal energy, expenditures and credits in Derrida's (1978) accounting. Heinrichs does not mention this similarity. The economic principles differ between Freud's late nineteenth-century thermodynamics and Heinrichs' late twentieth-century nonlinear dynamics, it is true, but it is all economics.Freud called this economic functioning the "pleasure principle" in which "libido" seeks to discharge its instinctual energy store, reducing the level of instinctual tension. This "primary process" proceeds to an attractor by the quickest, most direct way possible, whereas the "secondary process" defers reduction in instinctual tension, subjecting the primary process to thought. Self-organizing directly to the attractor is the primary process with which the secondary process interferes, introducing deferral.The economy of nonlinear dynamics pictures a "landscape," a variegated topography with peaks and valleys. Each point on the topography represents a state. Peak points are repellors—for example, states in which the phobic object is approached—and the lowest points of the valleys are attractors—for example, obsessions and compulsions. The path of occupied states self-organizes away from repellors and toward attractors. This topography is an energy landscape. Its dynamics spontaneously tends—"self-organizes"—toward least energy/high-constraint satisfaction. Freud's pleasure principle is just the Hamiltonian least energy... (shrink)

(1993). Fantasies on the fringe: Romantic concepts of nationalism in utopias set at the edges of nineteenth-century Europe. History of European Ideas: Vol. 16, No. 4-6, pp. 647-654.

With the rapid development of sensor technology for automated driving applications, the fusion, analysis, and application of multimodal data have become the main focus of different scenarios, especially in the development of mobile edge computing technology that provides more efficient algorithms for realizing the various application scenarios. In the present paper, the vehicle status and operation data were acquired by vehicle-borne and roadside units of electronic registration identification of motor vehicles. In addition, a motion model and an identification system (...) for the single-vehicle lane-change process were established by mobile edge computing and self-organizing feature mapping. Two scenarios were modeled and tested: lane change with no vehicles in the target lane and lane change with vehicles in the target lane. It was found that the proposed method successfully identified the stochastic parameters in the process of driving trajectory simulation, and the standard deviation between simulation and the measured results obeyed a normal distribution. The proposed methods can provide significant practical information for improving the data processing efficiency in automated driving applications, for solving single-vehicle lane-change applications, and for promoting the formation of a closed loop from sensing to service. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Porch: Meditations on the Edge of Nature by Charlie HaileyBruce B. JanzThe Porch: Meditations on the Edge of Natureby charlie hailey Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2021Charlie Hailey’s The Porch is a difficult book to review. This is not because I have to be measured in my praise—it is an excellent book, well written, with a mix of close observations and rigorous research. It (...) is also not difficult to review because it is challenging to read—it is an absolute joy to read. Hailey is a writer with a sense of rhythm and scene; this work could easily be taught in a course on creative nonfiction as it has that sense of writing craft along with its phenomenological acuity.No, The Porch is difficult to review because I get the sense that Hailey is asking us to do something other than evaluate it for the adequacy of its arguments or the originality of its points, or even the beauty of its writing. He is asking us to enter a world with him, to see things we haven’t seen and see those we have seen in a new way. The chapters are titled “Porch,” “Tilt,” “Air,” “Screen,” “Blue,” and “Acclimate,” and these give an idea of the space he is opening up. It is a space somewhere between a material world and the sense we make of it. The author is entirely committed to both, but not fooled by the illusions or uplifting promises of either.The primary porch of the book is on his cabin on the Homosassa River in Florida. It is a porch that is under threat of rising waters due [End Page 142] to climate change and catastrophe due to hurricanes. It is a porch on an estuary fed by a spring, which means that the water quality and clarity varies greatly over the nine miles of the river’s flow. Animal life abounds. It is, in other words, a porch where one is not going to be easily lulled to sleep, at least if paying the slightest bit of attention.It is perhaps unavoidable that talking about this book means talking about the environment. Indeed, on a first reading, this reminded me more of nature writing than architecture writing. The book is, to be sure, a reflection on architecture at its best, which is to say, the lived aspect of built space, the almost imperceptible but nonetheless real ways in which the liminal space of the porch affords the experience of the membrane between nature and culture, the outside and the inside, the public and the private. But it is also nature writing, inasmuch as a common thread in nature writing is to place us in the middle of nature, as part of it. We are not the designers, nor are we the inhabitants; we are those in the milieu, the middle of cause and effect, actor and acted upon, subject and object. It is a rare book on architecture, even vernacular architecture, that achieves this. The tendency is to always look for the optimization of the built environment, the tweak that will succeed in drawing us out into our best selves or the cute or trendy new feature. That is not Hailey’s goal here.If the porch is one of the best places in the built environment to understand the milieu, it must present itself in those terms beyond the author’s own circumstance. Otherwise, this would just be a paeon to a much-loved place. But the book is full of examples of porches, both literary and real, not just as objects or as liminal spaces between nature and culture, but as sites that show us their inhabitants and guests in unguarded and exploratory moments. If the trope of human vs. nature in American letters is of the human coming to terms with his or her own individuality, striving to tame, dominate, or at least fit into nature, and the trope of human in the built environment often ends up as the externalization of our internal, as-yet unrealized natures, this porch does something entirely different. We neither have the self/other... (shrink)

In this paper I investigate Hilary Putnam’s conception of scientific realism by examining the so-called “no miracles argument.” According to a widespread reconstruction of his thought, Putnam has been moving from scientific realism, through internal realism to natural realism of common sense. Nonetheless, I show that, in fact, the American philosopher has always been a scientific realist. This notion needs however to be made clearer, because Putnam tends to move constantly on the razor’s edge between metaphysical realism and anti-realism. (...) I argue that Putnam’s mature conception of scientific realism can be thought of as “open realism,” insofar as it is the result of the combination of the acceptable intuitions of metaphysical realism, with conceptual relativity, natural realism and pragmatism. (shrink)

Ethics of Health Care: A Guide for Clinical Practice, 3E is designed to guide health care students and practitioners through a wide variety of areas involving ethical controversies. It provides a background in value development and ethical theories, including numerous real-life examples to stimulate discussion and thought.

This collection of eighteen readings provides a basic text for undergraduates taking sociology of science courses. A general survey of articles published between 1961 and 1981, the book is also a useful overview for students taking courses in social and political studies of science; science, technology, and society; and "social issues" components of courses in the environmental sciences, geography, philosophy, and history of science. The editors have organized the book around "the relationship between the subculture of science and the wider (...) culture which surrounds it. Looked at from this perpective, science is primarily a source of knowledge and competence.... Thus to stress its interaction with its context not only highlights these aspects of science which most people find of overriding pragmatic interest, but also raises important basic issues concerning credibility, the distribution of authority in society, and the nature of the interaction between different forms of culture." Essays are grouped in five sections: The Organization of Academic Science: Communication and Control; The Culture of Science; The Interaction of Science and Technology; The Interaction of Science and Society; Science as Expertise. The editors have added a general introduction, part introductions, bibliographical notes, and a lengthy bibliography. Barry Barnes is Lecturer at the Science Studies Unit, University of Edinburgh, and editor of an earlier version of this book, The Sociology of Science, published in the Penguin Sociology Readings series and now out of print. David Edge is Director of The Science Studies Unit at the University of Edinburgh and a joint editor of the journal, Social Studies of Science. (shrink)

Although Norris, McQueen & Cutler have provided convincing evidence that there is no need for contributions from the lexicon to phonetic processing, their simplification of the communication between levels comes at a cost to the processes themselves. Although their arrangement may ultimately prove correct, its validity is not due to a successful application of Occam's razor.

What paths are taken by post-posi tiv ist so - cial the ory?. Be yond the three ba sic types of contemporarty the o ries stud ied in this pa per, the pre sup po si tions of which com bine struc ture and agent, the study of so ci ety in which ac knowl - edge ment of the prop er ties of dis tinct..

In what arrived belatedly as an announced, but delayed, preface to Marquis de Sade’s Philosophy in the Bedroom, Jacques Lacan interrogates the relations Sade could be said to have had with, on the one hand, Sigmund Freud, and, on the other, Immanuel Kant.1 Despite the presuppositions at the time of its writing, the text was first published as “Kant avec Sade” in the journal Critique in 1963 and only later reappeared as the preface it had been conceived as: announcing the (...) dogma of de Sade as an introduction to one of his key works. What had happened in the meantime, Lacan cryptically suggests, is that his – Lacan’s – collection of lectures and essays, Écrits, had arrived with a certain acclaim on the French cultural scene, and what had at first appeared to the publisher as inconsequential ravings had morphed into a profound and potentially significant enframing of de Sade’s “philosophy.” -/- What is it we find here? It is stupid, says Lacan, to pronounce – as too many “literary types” do – that de Sade’s perversions prefigured Freud’s interrogation of sexual mores. True, they both have the appearance of schooling, and so serve to prepare, Lacan informs us, the way for a new science. To understand the difference between them we need to arrive at some conception of Freud’s ethics of pleasure. -/- With what is known as the pleasure principle – announced in 1911 – Freud ordained a mechanism whereby pleasure is maintained at the lowest possible level.2 Lacan elsewhere referred to this principle as a homeostatic device, since it seeks to secure the functioning of the organism with as little excitement as possible. -/- Freud’s principle is different from traditional ethics in that it doesn’t disallow some sexual practices that had hitherto been condemned as wrong. However, such a realization doesn’t relieve us from approaching the principle as ethical. To Lacan, Freud’s homeostatic device is what “preordains the creature to its good.” In other words, it is by indulging in just enough pleasure to avoid unpleasure, either by becoming abstinent or consumptive, that we maintain our experience of goodwill. -/- What is remarkable, Lacan notes in his foreword to de Sade, is that Freud did not find it necessary to explicitly refer to this principle as an ethical prerogative. The only reason we can find for this, Lacan claims, is the 19th century obsession with the theme of “happiness in evil.” -/- The “happiness in evil” – or, as we should say, happiness in the will – has its precursor in Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason, which was published eight years prior to de Sade’s Philosophy in the Bedroom.3 To Lacan, de Sade subverts the Enlightenment directive inaugurated by Kant, and it is as such that it is possible to say that de Sade offers the truth of Kant’s Critique. -/- This “happiness in evil” becomes de Sade’s Being-Supreme-in-Wickedness. Recall that this is quite a different notion of perversion – of which the Marquis figures as the first and predominant example in Lacan – from that which reigned in the “literary” epoch, i.e., prior to Freud, as well as from Freud’s own inflection of the term. Perversion is no longer reducible to a catalogue of abominations – whipping, homosexuality, you name it – such as was the case prior to Freud, nor to a more select line of such – Freud famously excluded homosexual love from the list, while retaining sadomasochism. Lacan would draw the conclusion of Freud’s tentative first step by positing that perversion is a position, and specifically a location in relation to the phallus. -/- The novelty and force of this perspective should become clear to those who study the present volume. It is not a clinical attempt, nor the final word on a philosophy of mind without psychoanalysis. Rather, it should be regarded as situated in between these two domains, and with eyes to both. (shrink)

The concepts of philosophy and imaginative literature have unclear boundaries and blurred edges; they can hardly be defined essentially in any fruitful manner. But we can talk of indicators of a text being philosophical or literary. The concepts of philosophy and literature are contestable. Further, there are no clear‐cut signs of cognitive progress in philosophy and literature. It is also far from certain that there are any philosophical or literary truths. Actually, works of philosophy and literature deal more in possibilities (...) than in actualities. In addition, fictional narratives play an important role in both philosophical and literary texts. Moreover, philosophy and literature share a tendency to thematize themselves, reflect on themselves. If, however, argumentation were to disappear entirely from all philosophical texts, while every literary text is dominated by argumentative discourse, then the concepts of literature and philosophy would become almost devoid of content. Despite this, there is no gap between philosophy and imaginative literature. (shrink)

The traditional dispute over whether there are one or two ‘concepts’ of freedom has recently been reignited. Despite this, Isaiah Berlin’s distinction between positive and negative freedom retains a significant amount of influence over academic and popular disputes about freedom, continuing to withstand recent attempts, in Eric Nelson’s words, to ‘lift the shadow’ of Berlin’s famous dichotomy. Berlin’s distinction has traditionally been assailed by two separate schools of thought. One line of argument, propounded by Quentin Skinner and Philip Pettit, has (...) suggested that Berlin’s account includes (at least) one concept of freedom too few. Another line of attack, however, propounded by the likes of Nelson, Efraim Podoksik and Gerald MacCallum, has suggested that, to the contrary, Berlin’s account contains one concept of liberty too many. In this article, I will attempt to clear up this confusing picture by discussing how both of these lines of attack have a role to play in helping to dismantle Berlin’s ultimately misleading account of freedom. In the second half of the article, I then go on to explore the implications of this for contemporary political theory in the construction of a theory of freedom for modern political communities, discussing how the ‘spectrum’ of liberty I explore in the first half leads, naturally, to a social model of individual liberty. (shrink)

Do the humanities have a future? In the face of an increased emphasis on the so-called practical applicability of education, some educators worry that the presence of humanistic study in schools and universities is gravely threatened. In the short-term, scholars have rallied to defend the humanities by demonstrating how they do, in fact, advance our practical interests. Martha Nussbaum, for example, argues that the humanities uniquely support democratic citizenship by cultivating critical thinking and narrative imagination — two skills needed for (...) the development of sympathetic and autonomous judgment. Defending the humanities in this manner, however, puts practitioners of the humanities in an impossible position. In this essay, Megan Laverty explains that while arguments such as Nussbaum's, which defend the instrumental value of the humanities, are persuasive and strategic, their use is double-edged. They belie the fact that the humanities are valuable for their own sake. Such arguments imply that the humanities derive their value from their ability to provide extrinsic benefits such as critical thinking and narrative imagination. Moreover, they can prevent individuals from discovering that the value of the humanities is revealed over time and from the inside out. In fact, having to answer the question of why the humanities matter puts us in an impossible position precisely because humanistic study is what Laverty describes, drawing upon the work of Talbot Brewer and R. F. Holland, as a form of dialectical activity: one in which the activity's constitutive ideals and internal goods are progressively clarified by means of the individual's ongoing engagement in the activity itself. Having redescribed the humanities as intrinsically valuable, Laverty goes on to distinguish humanistic study from other forms of dialectical activity, arguing that the humanities call upon students to imagine alternative linguistic and conceptual possibilities — thereby connecting us with others. It is in the pursuit of this question about the nature of our humanity — not its answer, but the question itself — that the meaning of humanistic study continues, indefinitely, to unfold. (shrink)

Jonathan Moreno argues that a pragmatic approach is the best approach for bioethicists and health care practitioners to use when confronted with difficult ethical problems. There is no one formula to which to appeal in determining which course of action is right or wrong when making decisions about hastening or prolonging life, for example. Instead the best decision that can be expected under the circumstances emerges as the result of a slow process of consensus building, negotiation, and compromise. Decision makers’ (...) interpretive and reflective skills need to be strengthened to achieve this type of ethical decision. (shrink)

Current United States guidelines for neonatal resuscitation note that there is no mandate to resuscitate infants in all situations. For example, the fetus that at the time of delivery is determined to be so premature as to be non-viable need not be aggressively resuscitated. The hypothetical case of an extremely premature infant was presented to neonatologists from the United States and four other European countries at a September 2006 international meeting sponsored by the World Health Organization Collaborating Center in Reproductive (...) Health of Atlanta (currently, the Global Collaborating Center in Reproductive Health). Responses to the case varied by country, due to differences in legal, ethical and related practice parameters, rather than differences in medical technology, as similar medical technology was available within each country. Variations in approach seemed to stem from physicians’ perceptions of their ability to remove the neonate from life support if this appeared non-beneficial. There appears to be a desire for greater convergence in practice options and more open discussion regarding the practical problems underlying the variability. Specifically, the conference attendees identified four areas that need to be addressed: (1) lack of international consensus guidelines in viability and therapeutic options, (2) lack of bodies capable of generating these guidelines, (3) variation in laws between countries, and (4) the frequent failure of physicians and families to confront death at the beginning of life. (shrink)

The Benefits and Potential Harms of Genetic Testing for Huntington's Disease: A Case Study Content Type Journal Article Pages 14-19 Authors Kathryn Edge, BSC, Rheumatic Diseases Centre, CSB, Hope Hospital, The University of Manchester, Stott Lane, Salford M6 8HD, England Journal Human Reproduction & Genetic Ethics Online ISSN 2043-0469 Print ISSN 1028-7825 Journal Volume Volume 14 Journal Issue Volume 14, Number 2 / 2008.