We examine a number of investigations of perceptual economy or, more specifically, of minimum tendencies and minimum principles in the visual perception of form, depth, and motion. A minimum tendency is a psychophysical finding that perception tends toward simplicity, as measured in accordance with a specified metric. A minimum principle is a theoretical construct imputed to the visual system to explain minimum tendencies. After examining a number of studies of perceptual economy, we embark on a systematic analysis of this notion. (...) We examine the notion that simple perceptual representations must be defined within the "geometric constraints" provided by proximal stimulation. We then take up metrics of simplicity. Any study of perceptual economy must use a metric of simplicity; the choice of metric may be seen as a matter of convention, or it may have deep theoretical and empirical implications. We evaluate several answers to the question of why the visual system might favor economical representations. Finally, we examine several accounts of the process for achieving perceptual economy, concluding that those which favor massively parallel processing are the most plausible. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Rhetoric as a Balancing of Ends:Cicero and MachiavelliGary RemerIn his youthful work on rhetoric, De inventione (published about 86 B.C.E.), Cicero lists the ends for deliberative (political) oratory as honestas and utilitas (the good or honorable and the useful or expedient). In more mature writings, like De oratore (55 B.C.E.) and De officiis (44 B.C.E.), Cicero maintains a similar position: that the morally good and the beneficial are reconcilable. (...) For example, Cicero assumes in De officiis the identity of the honestum and the utile. He states there that "there is one rule for all cases;... either the thing that seems beneficial must not be dishonorable, or if it is dishonorable, it must not seem beneficial" (On Duties 3.81).1 In recent years, Victoria Kahn (1994) and J. Jackson Barlow (1999) have offered Machiavelli's "rhetorical politics"—a politics "attuned to the rhetorical concerns of effective political action" (Kahn 1994, 24)—as a more coherent and intellectually honest alternative to Cicero's attempt to reconcile irreconcilables.2 They contend that, unlike Cicero, Machiavelli accepts the impossibility of simultaneously upholding the morally good and the useful. For Machiavelli, the successful political actor must choose the utile over the honestum.Cicero, however, is not alone in his inconsistency. As Kahn demonstrates, Machiavelli's account of virtù is itself inconsistent. For example, he sometimes includes morality as an element of excellence (virtù) and at other times does not. I contend in this article, however, that Kahn's interpretation [End Page 1] of Machiavelli's contradictoriness as only "apparent," a variability, she argues, that is rhetorically inspired rather than logically deficient, applies not only to Machiavelli, as Kahn would have it, but also to Cicero. I argue that both Machiavelli and Cicero eschew "clear-cut or permanent distinctions" within virtù and between the honestum and the utile, respectively, because they wish to signal the political actor's need for flexibility (Kahn 1994, 30). Insofar as Cicero's internal contradictions, like Machiavelli's, are apparent but not real, I hold that Machiavelli does not offer a political approach that is superior to Cicero's, at least not in the sense of greater intellectual coherence.Despite their similarities, however, Cicero and Machiavelli differ from each other in that Cicero, in contrast to Machiavelli, openly affirms that politics is incomplete without a dual commitment to the good and the beneficial. I examine Machiavelli's focus on the useful and public as opposed to Cicero's additional commitment to the honorable and to the private. I analyze, in particular, the pursuit of glory in Machiavelli as it derives from early classical culture, which was preoccupied with appearances and the search for immortality. I argue that Cicero, while not abandoning the quest for glory, also vests this concept (under Stoic influence) with a private, moral character. In doing so, Cicero adheres to the rhetorical principle of decorum, which obliges orators to adapt themselves to context. This principle, I maintain, is not only a matter of expediency for Cicero but also a moral duty. While Cicero accommodates himself to a Roman world in which private morality was already an important part of one's life, Machiavelli violates decorum, attempting to resurrect a heroic ideal that disappeared long ago.Although most recent work on the revival of rhetorical ethics focuses on Aristotle (see Allen 2004, 140–59; Furley and Nehamas 1994; Garver 1994; Rorty 1996), I discuss Cicero in this essay. Not only has Cicero been the dominant influence on the Western tradition of rhetoric, but he also (unlike Aristotle) includes the honorable as one of the ends of deliberative oratory. Thus Cicero states in De inventione that while "Aristotle accepts advantage as the end [of deliberative oratory],... I prefer both honor and advantage" (2.52.156). And while Aristotle's position on deliberative oratory's ends does not mean that he ignores moral considerations, Cicero's decision to promote the good as an explicit rhetorical end forces his readers (and Machiavelli) to confront the relationship between virtue and expediency in a way that Aristotle's readers do not (Cox 1997, 1113). I concentrate, in particular, on Cicero's De officiis because... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Gary Borjesson A SOUNDING OF WALDEN'S PHILOSOPHICAL DEPTH It is hard to make up one's mind about Waiden. One expects die spiritual landscape to be familiar, so familiar perhaps diat you need not read die book to feel you know it. But Waiden disappoints this expectation. Having read it, one may wonderjust what is so familiar or American about Thoreau's sensibility. And righdy so. Waiden is long on (...) observation and short on plot, as tedious in its detail as it is devoid of action. It is a wondrously slow, contemplative work and would be demanding enough for this reason alone, to say nothing of the enormous vocabulary, the abundant allusions to classical mythology, and die Latin and Greek scattered tiiroughout—all of which hint that despite his democratic rhetoric, Thoreau addresses himself to a rather small audience. Like the lusty chanticleer, "standing on his roost, ifonly to wake his neighbors up," Waiden speaks to the best part of the soul, to that in us which is divinely awake or mindful.1 Such speeches necessarily transcend not only America's borders, but common-sense understanding as well, "the sense ofmen asleep, which they express by snoring" (p. 325). As Thoreau puts it: "I desire to speak somewhere widiout bounds; like a man in a waking moment, to men in dieir waking moments" (p. 324). This desire "to speak somewhere without bounds" is philosophical. Waiden witnesses to die philosophical experience of the world. Originating in wonder and die desire to understand, Waiden moves dirough die senses, experience, the arts, and science. But its specifically philosophical character lies in Thoreau's evident desire to situate all tilings, including himself, in dieir ultimate context. Recognizing the integrity of this desire means appreciating that the full realization of one's nature requires discovering one's place in die cosmos. Philosophy and Literature, © 1994, 18: 287-308 288Philosophy and Literature The tiiree parts of this essay articulate what I take to be philosophical about Thoreau's sensibility. The first part considers Thoreau as a surveyor of the whole of things, a traditionally philosophical endeavor. The second part examines Thoreau's desire for truth and shows how it must be distinguished from the tenets of transcendental philosophy generally and Emerson's transcendentalism in particular. Contrary to a common opinion, a true estimation of Walden's philosophical depth hinges on seeing why Thoreau is not a transcendentalist. Some may worry that attention to these universal, theoretical features ofThoreau's workjeopardizes doingjustice to his famously idiosyncratic individualism. But Thoreau does not ask one to choose either allegiance to oneself or to universal laws: such a dichotomy is false and must be sublated. Thus the final part of this essay explicates how Thoreau envisions the web of particular and universal, the alignment of individual and cosmos. I conclude by framing my disagreement with Stanley Cavell's reading of Waiden. As the only well-known philosopher to have devoted a book-lengtii study to Waiden, his influence has been great, and on central points his reading sanctions the common emphasis on subjectivity.2 Two last prefatory remarks. First, Waiden is not a work in philosophy, at least not a treatise, for Thoreau does not explain his insights thematically. Nevertheless, the work has a distinct philosophical character, one I shall try to sketch with die degree of precision appropriate to it. This raises my second point. Precision does not sit easily with comprehensiveness or with the need to praise. All three are relevant to philosophical understanding, yet Thoreau evidently felt that synoptic contemplation and all its fruits, including "any memorable praise of God," were in die shorter supply (p. 78). As Thoreau tells it, he wished to "cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms," "to front only the essential facts," "and if [life] proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to die world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion" (pp. 90—91). If Thoreau is right... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Gary Shapiro THE OWL OF MINERVA AND THE COLORS OF THE NIGHT Hegel is known to many readers mainly for a few striking figurative passages which he himself excluded from the central structures of his major texts as extrinsic remarks. His mature system justifies this exclusion by claiming that philosophy operates in the realm of the pure concept, having surpassed the sensuous narrative images of art and religion. (...) Nevertheless, the very forcefulness of the passages themselves indicates that the mature Hegel may never have peacefully aufgehoben the young man who believed in 1796 that philosophy, in order to resume its original role as educator of mankind, must become aesthetic, mythological, and poetic. (I am assuming that Hegel either wrote "the earliest system-program of German idealism" or endorsed its principles.) A reading of the famous elegiac passage in the "Preface" to the Philosophy of Right suggests not only problems of meaning, but of philosophical rhetoric: One more word about giving instruction as to what the world ought to be. Philosophy in any case always comes on the scene too late to give it. As the thought of the world, it appears only when actuality is already there cut and dried after its process of formation has been completed. The teaching of the concept, which is also history's inescapable lesson, is that it is only when actuality is mature that the ideal first appears over against the real and that the ideal apprehends this same real world in its substance and builds it up for itself into the shape of an intellectual realm. When philosophy paints its gray in gray, then has a shape of life grown old. By philosophy's gray in gray it cannot be rejuvenated but only understood. The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.1 The first focus of attention here is usually on the mood of philosophical resignation in which completion of a rational development leaves no room for action or advice. Theory must necessarily give up any Utopian 276 Gary Shapiro277 or activist pretentions it may have harbored once it sees that it can only describe what has been. Despite the fact that Hegelian actuality (Wirklichkeit) is the result of a rational and dialectical process, ascetic renunciation of any relation to action puts Hegel in the strange company of nineteenth century positivists and empiricists; it also establishes a tone fundamentally different from classical European political philosophy of thinkers like Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Rousseau, a tone which Marx, provoked by Hegel, was to revive. The statement can also be read on a scale much larger than the political, in which it suggests a resigned acceptance of the completion of Western philosophy and civilization. Hegel is notorious for his view that spirit (Geist), the fundamental reality, has completed itself through the self-knowledge which it attains in his system of philosophy. That he sometimes speaks of his enterprise as a Wissen or Wissenschaft (knowledge, science, or wisdom) suggests how far he has come from the Socratic conception of philosophy as always characterized by a lack of that which it loves. It would be intriguing to explore these themes. Such exploration would involve a more thorough knowledge of what Hegel understands by end, completion, and fulfillment when he speaks of political life and the higher forms of spirit—art, religion, and philosophy. We might even be led by such an inquiry into Hegel's meaning to see his claims as historically and philosophically plausible and to reconsider our own resistance to believing that we live in a deepening twilight. What I wish to do, however, is to call attention to the manner in which Hegel speaks of Minerva's owl and to juxtapose both the manner and the substance of his thought about the twilight of philosophy and civilization with some of Hölderlin's dichterisch and Heidegger's denkerisch meditations on similar themes. For if Hegel has announced the coming of the night, Hölderlin and Heidegger have sought to make the night their very own territory and to comprehend it from within. If Hegel has rather gingerly allowed himself to lapse into that famous figurative discourse of the... (shrink)

Artificial intelligence tools used in employment decision-making cut across the multiple stages of job advertisements, shortlisting, interviews and hiring, and actual and potential bias can arise in each of these stages. One major challenge is to mitigate AI bias and promote fairness in opaque AI systems. This paper argues that the equal opportunity merit principle is an ethical approach for fair AI employment decision-making. Further, explainable AI can mitigate the opacity problem by placing greater emphasis on enhancing the understanding of (...) reasonable users and affected persons as to the AI output. Both the equal opportunity merit principle and explainable AI should be integrated in the design and implementation of AI employment decision-making systems so as to ensure, as far as possible, that the AI output is arrived at through a fair process. (shrink)

Through interviews with twelve distinguished philosophers—including atheists, agnostics, and believers—Talking God works toward a philosophical understanding and evaluation of religion. Along the way, Gary Gutting and his interviewees challenge many common assumptions about religious beliefs. As tensions simmer, and often explode, between the secular and the religious forces in modern life, the big questions about human belief press ever more urgently. Where does belief, or its lack, originate? How can we understand and appreciate religious traditions different from our own? (...) Featuring conversations with twelve skeptics, atheists, agnostics, and believers—including Alvin Plantinga, Philip Kitcher, Michael Ruse, and John Caputo—Talking God offers new perspectives on religion, including the challenge to believers from evolution, cutting-edge physics and cosmology; arguments both for and against atheism; and meditations on the value of secular humanism and faith in the modern world. Experts offer insights on Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism, as well as Judaism and Christianity. Topical and illuminating, Talking God gives readers a deeper understanding of faith today and how philosophers understand it. From Talking God: “[Some say] Buddhism is not a religion because Buddhists don’t believe in a supreme being. This simply ignores the fact that many religions are not theistic in this sense. Chess is a game, despite the fact that it is not played with a ball, after all.” —Jay Garfield, from chapter 10, “Buddhism: Religion Without Divinity” “Why think that the creator was all-knowing and omnipotent?— Maybe the creator was a student god, and only got a B minus on this project?” —Louise Antony, from chapter 2, “A Case for Atheism” “There are a large number—maybe a couple of dozen—of pretty good theistic arguments. None is conclusive, but each, or at any rate the whole bunch taken together, is about as strong as philosophical arguments ordinarily get.” —Alvin Plantinga, from chapter 1, “A Case for Theism” “If you cease to ‘believe’ in a particular religious creed, like Calvinism or Catholicism, you have changed your mind and adopted a new position— But if you lose ‘faith,’—everything is lost. You have lost your faith in life, lost hope in the future, lost heart, and you cannot go on.” —John Caputo, from chapter 3, “Religion and Deconstruction”. (shrink)

In Love as a Moral Emotion David Velleman rejects the conative analysis of love arguing instead for a conception which is modelled after Kantian respect. The general problem associated with conative views of love according to Velleman is that they cut love loose from morality, sometimes characterizing its aims as in conflict with morality.

Political theorists had vigorous debates about nuclear weapons in the 1980s but have been largely silent about them recently. This article seeks to reopen those discussions. It evaluates the main justifications for nuclear proliferation since 1945: arguments from consistency, nationalism, democratic legitimacy, self-defense, peaceful effects, and supreme emergency. Most of these arguments are badly flawed, as are the arguments for retaining the nuclear arsenals of many of the established nuclear powers. Instead, this article proposes a first cut at a stringent (...) standard for judging the acquisition of strategic nuclear weapons, drawing on jus ad bellum and jus in bello principles. (shrink)

I pulled weeds out of half-mile rows of soybeans on grandma and grandpa’s farm long before I heard of the controversy surrounding herbicide resistance and genetic engineering. Twenty years ago, Gordie, Richard, Greg, and I “walked beans,” not knowing that our fists and scythes were not the only means available to Grandpa for killing weeds. We knew little then about uprooting thistles with tractors and discs or about spraying chemicals onto mustard. We knew only that a cool thermos of lemonade (...) and some stem looks from Mom would motivate our troop into action because every good Iowan hated volunteer corn and sunflower shoots. The hatred stemmed as much from the fact that the weeds made a field “look messy from the highway” as from the fact that they cut down yields; Grandma had aesthetic sensibilities as highly developed as any character in Greg Brown’s song. (shrink)

This article examines Guattari’s broad political investment with regard to a molecular revolution of institutions through his reflection on one complex event, the 22nd of March Movement at Nanterre. I want to consider this example for two reasons. First, it is general enough to provide a non-clinical foundation for specific kinds of innovations that preoccupy many of his readers who comment on these issues and centre their work on historical clinical examples within the trajectory of institutional psychotherapy from Saint-Alban to (...) La Borde. And second, it is not so far divorced from the orbit of cure where institutional analysts cut their teeth, as it were, in the early 1960s left-wing student groups devoted to health issues. The question of cure, here, remains tied to the recognition of the influence of an institution and how it may be changed, but shifts in my example from clinic to campus and factory and, ultimately, to all of French society. (shrink)

Abstract: This essay explores recent trends and major issues related to gay and lesbian philosophy in ethics (including issues concerning the morality of homosexuality, the natural function of sex, and outing and coming out); religion (covering past and present debates about the status of homosexuality and how biblical and qur'anic passages have been interpreted by both sides of the debate); the law (especially a discussion of the debates surrounding sodomy laws, same-sex marriage and its impact on transsexuals, and whether the (...) law should be used to enforce morality); scientific research into the origins of homosexuality (including discussion of arguments against such research); and metaphysics (especially the question of whether homosexuality is socially constructed during particular times and in particular cultures, or whether sexual orientation is an essential trait cutting across times and cultures). (shrink)

This article addresses counter-Islamist discourses by NU Garis Lucu (NU’s Funny Brigade) through its social media accounts. Instead of a clear-cut theological debates, NU Garis Lucu offers humour as method to counter attack Islamit’s arguments through its social-media activism. Using a discourse analysis approach, this article examines tweets of the NU Garis Lucu’s during the course of 2015-2020. It further reveals the account strategies to counter attack Islamist’s discourse which include questioning the legitimacy of the religious authority of Islamist groups, (...) promoting religious moderation, supporting democracy as an ideal political system, promoting ‘smiling’ Islam, and putting to an end religious polarization. _ _. (shrink)

A major contribution to Descartes studies, this book provides a panorama of cutting-edge scholarship ranging widely over Descartes's own primary concerns: metaphysics, physics, and its applications. It is at once a tool for scholars and--steering clear of technical Cartesian science--an accessible resource that will delight nonspecialists. The contributors include Edwin Curley, Willis Doney, Alan Gabbey, Daniel Garber, Marjorie Grene, Gary Hatfield, Marleen Rozemond, John Schuster, Dennis Sepper, Stephen Voss, Stephen Wagner, Margaret Welson, Jean Marie Beyssade, Michelle Beyssade, Michel (...) Henry, Evert van Leeuwen, Jean-Luc Marion, Genevieve Rodis-Lewis, and Jean-Pierre Seris. Combining new textual sensitivity with attentiveness to history, they represent the best established scholars and most exciting new voices, including both English speaking and newly-translated writers. Part I examines the foundations of Descartes's philosophy: Cartesian certainty; the phenomenology of the cogito and its modulations in the passions; and the defensibility and comprehensibility of the Cartesian God. The second part examines Descartes's groundbreaking metaphysics: mind's distinctness from and interaction with body; imagination; perception; and language. Part III examines Cartesian science: the revolutionary rhetoric of the Rules and the Discourse; the metaphysical foundations of physics; the interplay of rationalism and empiricism; the mechanics and human biology that flow from Descartes's physics. (shrink)

The burgeoning literature on global value chains has recast our understanding of how industrial clusters are shaped by their ties to the international economy, but within this context, the role played by corporate social responsibility continues to evolve. New research in the past decade allows us to better understand how CSR is linked to industrial clusters and GVCs. With geographic production and trade patterns in many industries becoming concentrated in the global South, lead firms in GVCs have been under growing (...) pressure to link economic and social upgrading in more integrated forms of CSR. This is leading to a confluence of “private governance”, “social governance”, and “public governance”. This new form of “synergistic governance” is illustrated with evidence from recent studies of GVCs and industrial clusters, as well as advances in theorizing about new patterns of governance in GVCs and clusters. (shrink)

Psychopathology is the study of the signs and symptoms of psychiatric disorders - delusions, hallucinations, phobias, depression, for example. This book gives an account of the terms currently in use and attempts an in-depth analysis of the nature of each. The matter is examined both from a philosophical perspective and from the point of view of what is known about the function of the hemispheres of the brain.

This is the first detailed assessment of the life and work of Felix Guattari--"Mr. Anti" as the French press labelled him--the friend of and collaborator with..

This book offers a detailed look at Guattari's working methods in transdisciplinary experimentation from the time of his youth to his final years.His youthful adventures in the post-war Youth Hostels movement, decisive contact with institutional pedgagogy and the mentor figures of Fernand Oury and his brother Jean, give rise to an extraordinary penchant for organizational innovation in his life at Clinique de La Borde in Cour-Cheverny, France, and collective forms of expression manifested in publishing ventures and diverse collaborative research formations.Guattari's (...) highly original and hitherto neglected theories of a-signifyng semiotics and minor cinema are explored in depth with reference to the political goals of the critique of infoculture and the molecular revolutionary tendencies that are released in the search for a people to come.Guttari's engagement with eco-politics and art practices displays his originality as a political thinker and is firmly grounded on his exporation of how subjectivity is produced inlate capitalism.Guattari's ground-breaking conception of transversal politics is fully explored in relation to Michel Foucault's sense of the concept and its role in global political theory. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:IRBs Under the MicroscopeJonathan D. Moreno (bio)The spring and summer of 1998 were seasons in the sun for institutional review board (IRB) aficionados. Rarely have the arcana of the local human subjects review panels been treated to so much attention in both the executive and the legislative branches of government, not only at the federal but also at the state level. And it looks as if the attention will (...) continue for some time. The spate of interest is due to a series of coincidences: a powerful House of Representatives subcommittee held hearings after its chairman learned about the IRB system during a previous session on research in underdeveloped communities; the Department of Health and Human Services’s Inspector General (DHHS-IG) released a report on IRBs; the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Extramural Research completed a report on clinical trial monitoring; the National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC) readied a report on research involving persons with mental disorders; the states of Maryland and New York completed studies of research with subjects who lack decision-making capacity; and advocacy groups protested a psychiatric research project involving inner city children.Underlying these proximate causes for the IRB blitz is a growing realization that the already considerable clinical trial enterprise will expand significantly over the next few years. Congress is talking about giving the politically popular NIH half again the budget it currently receives, which in turn will stimulate more commercially supported research. The director of the National Cancer Institute is considering a five-fold increase in the number of subjects enrolled in oncology studies over the next several years. Phase I cancer studies are among the most ethically sensitive, so IRBs will have more work cut out for them if this goal is reached. Adding to the rush of interest in IRBs are the government’s recent apology to the survivors of the syphilis study in Tuskegee, continuing congressional dissatisfaction with the way the Pentagon handled its vaccine distribution during the Gulf War, and the controversy about AZT trials in developing countries.On the HillCongressman Christopher Shays, the moderate Connecticut Republican who has developed an interest in human research issues, convened hearings on human [End Page 329] subjects research and the IRB system on 11 June 1998. Shays chairs the House Government Reform/Human Resources Subcommittee. The committee’s ranking minority member is Edolphus Towns of Brooklyn, NY, who shares Shays’s interest in this area.The immediate rationale for the hearings was the release that day of the DHHS-IG report, Institutional Review Boards: A Time for Reform. The subtitle was changed from A System in Jeopardy apparently after some people in DHHS expressed reservations about its seemingly alarmist tone, but the IG staffers who testified before Shays’s subcommittee insisted that they stood behind the message that the IRB system is in trouble if considerable reforms are not undertaken. Among the factors in the research environment cited as support for the bleak forecast: managed care, commercialization, multi-site trials, high IRB workloads, minimal IRB oversight of approved studies, conflicts of interest, insufficient training of IRB members and investigators, and lack of IRB self-studies (DHHS-IG 1998).As is normally the case for congressional oversight hearings, the first panel of witnesses consisted of executive branch officials, including Eric Meslin, Executive Director of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, and Gary Ellis, Director of the Office for Protection from Research Risks (OPRR). Shays pressed Ellis on the extent to which OPRR conducts on-site investigations of complaints about abuse of human subjects. Admitting that on-site investigations are rare, Ellis suggested that the agency is inadequately staffed to follow up on complaints as quickly as it might wish. The members of Congress who were present at the hearings generally expressed concern about the DHHS-IG’s findings.The second panel that day, which Shays was unable to attend, set a different tone. Four of the panelists—Paul Appelbaum of the University of Massachusetts at Worcester, Robert Levine of Yale University, Angela Bowen of the Western IRB (a private clinical trials review firm), and I—were invited as authorities on the current condition of the IRB system. Bert Spilker... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 8.4 (2001) 337-338 [Access article in PDF] On Kimura's Écrits de psychopathologie phénomenologique John Cutting This book is a French translation of six articles that the Japanese psychiatrist, Kimura Bin, wrote in the 1970s and 1980s. There is the usual long introduction in such books by the translator. There is also the mandatory explanation of the whole matter as a postface by philosopher Henry (...) Maldiney as if the meaning of anything these days has to be in the form of a sandwich.The first article by Kimura Bin deals with the meaning of certain Japanese words pertaining to self and inter-subjectivity. The critical Japanese word is aida, which means something like interpersonal bonding and is that primordial state of the human being that founds both everyday sociality and the individual self, the latter both in its external and internal composition and orientation: "From time immemorial, the Japanese understood interpersonal social existence, the being between, life in the aida of itself and of others, as the essential trait of an individual human. The interpersonal aida is in some sense the quintessence of known individuality." Schizophrenia, for Kimura, stems from a disturbance in this aida at the most fundamental level, and all its manifestations follow from this.The second article is entitled "Time and Anxiety (Angoisse)." This sets out his major psychopathological thesis—judging from these six articles—which is that schizophrenia and depressive illness differ fundamentally in their temporality. In schizophrenia the subject is geared toward the future: "Subjects with a schizophrenic tendency give sufficient proof in their daily life of a marked inclination to imagine future possibilities or ideas whose feasibility is impossible or implausible." In depressive illness there is a preoccupation with the past: "The lived time of the melancholic type of person has a preponderance towards the past, or, more precisely, towards lived being up to the present."The third article, entitled "Schizophrenic Temporality," amplifies this thesis and introduces his terminology for these, respectively, as the Latin terms, ante festum and post festum. The French translation gives the meaning of the latter as "apres la fête" and "trop tard"—after the holiday, too late. (I shall deal with the potpourri of languages involved below.) This article is the most elaborate, and in it Kimura attempts to derive the core characteristics of the two nosological entities from these two underlying anomalous temporalities.The fourth article is about borderline states, a nosological entity that I have no sympathy for, and I shall not discuss it.The fifth article is entitled "Reflection and Self in Schizophrenia." Again, it concerns a fundamental difference between the mode of reflection in schizophrenia and that in depressive illness, but I cannot say, despite numerous readings, [End Page 337] that I understand it. The reason for this may be my poor French, an inadequate translation, or a confused formulation in the first place, or all three. The gist of it seems to be that in schizophrenia the "other" is a "stranger" projected by the thinking self, whereas in depressive illness the "other" is a "familiar" inhabitant of the sociality adherent to this condition.The sixth article, "Pathology of Immediateness," is an attempt to seek philosophical, theoretical, psychopathological, and even nosological and biological backing for what Kimura has set out earlier, particularly in the third article. Hegel, Lacan, Bergson, Heidegger, Derrida, and Husserl are brought in as philosophical support. Blankenburg and Binswanger provide psychopathological backing. A third prong is the nosological tradition, prevalent in Germany and Japan in the twentieth century, of promoting the concept of an atypical or third type of psychosis with a biological resemblance to epileptic psychosis. All this is then brought together and complicated by a discussion of language and 'mediation' to support the notion that there is a third psychopathological principle—in addition to the ante festum pertaining to schizophrenia and the post festum pertaining to depressive illness—which is that of an intra festum: a preoccupation with the now, characteristic of atypical psychoses with an epileptic basis.These articles tax one's linguistic and conceptual repertoire to the... (shrink)

There is no doubt science is currently suffering from a credibility crisis. This thought-provoking book argues that, ironically, science's credibility is being undermined by tools created by scientists themselves. Scientific disinformation and damaging conspiracy theories are rife because of the internet that science created, the scientific demand for empirical evidence and statistical significance leads to data torturing and confirmation bias, and data mining is fuelled by the technological advances in Big Data and the development of ever-increasingly powerfulcomputers. Using a wide (...) range of entertaining examples, this fascinating book examines the impacts of society's growing distrust of science, and ultimately provides constructive suggestions for restoring the credibility of the scientific community. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Joanne Cutting-Gray HANNAH ARENDT'S RAHEL VARNHAGEN Hannah Arendt fled Nazi Germany in 1933, a year she called the end of Jewish history. She was 27 years old at the time and carried with her a manuscript that was later to become the peculiar biography of an eighteenth-century German-Jewish "pariah," Rahel Varnhagen (1771-1833). The Life of a fewish Woman, subtitle of the biography by Arendt, distills the largely unpublished (...) Varnhagen correspondence and marks the impact of that life upon German-Jewish history.1 Published more than "half a lifetime" later in 1957, it assays the politics of form in a highly unusual manner. By expunging all detail in order to analyze Varnhagen's introspection, Arendt implicitly questions selfhood as the form for identity and as the appropriate form for biography. She reveals that seeking to preserve the self determines the blank dumbness of an unnarratable life. Rahel Levin (Antonie Friederike Robert) Varnhagen, or simply "Rahel " as Arendt calls her, lived a life as complicated as her many names. The tortured relation she had to her identity, her insatiable preoccupation with self, reflects an effort to eradicate herJewishness by baptism and marriage and becomes a paradigm of a story about a woman lost to a sense of others and herself. Neither rich, cultivated, nor beautiful, Rahel lived her unhappiness fervently, with an ecstasy that made her appear to others as startlingly original. This helps to explain how she came to preside over the most important intellectual salon in Germany during the late eighteenth century. Princes, intellectuals, and artists flocked to her attic apartment, attracted by the impenetrable spectacle of her despair. Rahel's intensity pulled others into her orbit—including, one-hundred years later, the intense and self-absorbed Arendt at the beginning Philosophy and Literature, © 1991, 15: 229-245 230Philosophy and Literature of her university education.2 Each woman suffered the private failure of a love affair complicated by the broader, historical issue of racial identity that connected their lives. Prewar Nazi Germany taught Arendt what Varnhagen learned during the period of German-Jewish assimilation in the nineteenth century—"one does not escape Jewishness."3 It is no wonder that, in analogous moments of personal and civic upheaval, Rahel Varnhagen and Hannah Arendt "corresponded," the one by writing letters about her life, the other by giving that life to a world. Like Arendt, Varnhagen was unclassifiably exotic, an unattached, Jewish female seemingly without a history, aligned with no one and nothing. If"Jewishness" meant letting life "rain upon" her, Rahel Varnhagen let it strike her "like a storm without an umbrella." And like Arendt, she refused to hide the traits and talents of her personality under cover of morality and convention. Her letters are not self-congratulatory, for she never wittingly chose notoriety. Indeed, she spent much of her life trying to escape the stigma ofJewishness that marked her destiny. Notwithstanding the milieu of nineteenth-century German romanticism that drew the biographer toward her subject, various events surrounding the text make more compelling narratives than Varnhagen 's life: how the manuscript survived World War II, Arendt's emigration to the United States, and, especially, the public and private influence of Martin Heidegger.4 At the age of 18 (1925), Arendt had discovered Varnhagen during her brief love-affair with the 35-year-old philosophy professor at the University of Marburg. Though Heidegger would later call Arendt the "passion of his life" and inspiration for his work—he was writing Being and Time during that period—his brush with Nazism precipitated their breach. Since the Heidegger-Arendt correspondence remains closed, much about their youthful relationship and life-long intellectual affair remains a mystery open only to speculation. From Arendt's biographer, Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, we know that Varnhagen's story became a consolation to her in her sorrow, a means ofgiving significance to the ambiguities of a private relationship as it was caught up in public history.5 Certainly Heidegger's retreat from political events for the sake of thinking was as strong an influence on Arendt's political development as was Varnhagen's retreat from her Jewish destiny. Nonetheless, it would be a mistake to expect... (shrink)

In the voluminous literature on the subject of bovine growth hormone (bGH) we have yet to find an attempt to frame the issue in specifically moral terms or to address systematically its ethical implications. I argue that there are two moral objections to the technology: its treatment of animals, and its dislocating effects on farmers. There are agricultural biotechnologies that deserve funding and support. bGH is not one of them.

We model happiness as a measurement tool used to rank alternative actions. Evolution favors a happiness function that measures the individual’s success in relative terms. The optimal function, in particular, is based on a time-varying reference point –or performance benchmark –that is updated over time in a statistically optimal way in order to match the individual’s potential. Habits and peer comparisons arise as special cases of such updating process. This updating also results in a volatile level of happiness that continuously (...) reverts to its long-term mean. Throughout, we draw a parallel with a problem of optimal incentives, which allows us to apply statistical insights from agency theory to the study of happiness. (shrink)

A new position in the philosophy of mind has recently appeared: the extended mind hypothesis (EMH). Some of its proponents think the EMH, which says that a subject's mental states can extend into the local environment, shows that internalism is false. I argue that this is wrong. The EMH does not refute internalism; in fact, it necessarily does not do so. The popular assumption that the EMH spells trouble for internalists is premised on a bad characterization of the internalist thesis—albeit (...) one that most internalists have adhered to. I show that internalism is entirely compatible with the EMH. This view should prompt us to reconsider the characterization of internalism, and in conclusion I make some brief remarks about how that project might proceed. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt's early biography of Rahel Varnhagen, an eighteenth-century German-Jew, provides a revolutionary feminist component to her political theory. In it, Arendt grapples with the theoretical constitution of a female subject and relates Jewish alterity, identity, and history to feminist politics. Because she understood the "female condition" of difference as belonging to the political subject rather than an autonomous self, her theory entails a "politics of alterity" with applications for feminist practice.

Hannah Arendt's early biography of Rahel Varnhagen, an eighteenth-century German-Jew, provides a revolutionary feminist component to her political theory. In it, Arendt grapples with the theoretical constitution of a female subject and relates Jewish alterity, identity, and history to feminist politics. Because she understood the "female condition" of difference as belonging to the political subject rather than an autonomous self, her theory entails a "politics of alterity" with applications for feminist practice.

At least 177 scales are available to researchers who want to measure religiosity, but questions exist as to exactly what these scales are measuring and in whom they are measuring it. A review of these scales found a lack items designed to measure ethical action in society or the world as a prophetic response to the experience of the divine. Instead, the vast majority of scales focus on internal experiences and beliefs or institutional relationships. A review of scale norm groups (...) found that norm groups often are not fully described, particularly in the area of race/ethnicity, and when they are described, they reveal an over-reliance on convenience samples of college students and an under-representation of racial/ethnic minority groups. Examples of scales with more fully described and more representative norm groups are given, and recommendations are offered for researchers using and developing religiosity scales. (shrink)

Popular movies present chunk-like events that promote episodic, serial updating of viewers’ representations of the ongoing narrative. Event-indexing theory would suggest that the beginnings of new scenes trigger these updates, which in turn require more cognitive processing. Typically, a new movie event is signaled by an establishing shot, one providing more background information and a longer look than the average shot. Our analysis of 24 films reconfirms this. More important, we show that, when returning to a previously shown location, the (...) re-establishing shot reduces both context and duration while remaining greater than the average shot. In general, location shifts dominate character and time shifts in event segmentation of movies. In addition, over the last 70 years re-establishing shots have become more like the noninitial shots of a scene. Establishing shots have also approached noninitial shot scales, but not their durations. Such results suggest that film form is evolving, perhaps to suit more rapid encoding of narrative events. (shrink)

Bovine growth hormone is a protein that occurs naturally in cattle. A chain of 190 amino acids, bGH is produced by the pituitary gland and helps to regulate a cow’s lactational cycle; generally speaking and up to a certain point, the more bGH a cow has, the more milk she gives. Using the techniques of genetic engineering, researchers at Monsanto Company have isolated the gene that produces the protein and devised low-cost techniques to manufacture it. Bacteria are placed into fermentation (...) chambers where they multiply rapidly; lab technicians then extract and purify the final product, which is identical to the naturally occurring protein in 189 of the 190 amino acids; and the product is then injected into cows. (shrink)

We have Nietzsche to thank for some of the most important accomplishments in intellectual history, but as Gary Shapiro shows in this unique look at Nietzsche’s thought, the nineteenth-century philosopher actually anticipated some of the most pressing questions of our own era. Putting Nietzsche into conversation with contemporary philosophers such as Deleuze, Agamben, Foucault, Derrida, and others, Shapiro links Nietzsche’s powerful ideas to topics that are very much on the contemporary agenda: globalization, the nature of the livable earth, and (...) the geopolitical categories that characterize people and places. Shapiro explores Nietzsche’s rejection of historical inevitability and its idea of the end of history. He highlights Nietzsche’s prescient vision of today’s massive human mobility and his criticism of the nation state’s desperate efforts to sustain its exclusive rule by declaring emergencies and states of exception. Shapiro then explores Nietzsche’s vision of a transformed garden earth and the ways it sketches an aesthetic of the Anthropocene. He concludes with an explanation of the deep political structure of Nietzsche’s “philosophy of the Antichrist,” by relating it to traditional political theology. By triangulating Nietzsche between his time and ours, between Bismarck’s Germany and post-9/11 America, Nietzsche’s Earth invites readers to rethink not just the philosopher himself but the very direction of human history. (shrink)

A properly programmed artificially intelligent agent may eventually have one duty, the duty to satisfice expected welfare. We explain this claim and defend it against objections.

In The Tragedy of the Self, Gary F. Greif attributes social violence and individual isolation to a contemporary neglect of a fundamental human need for support that only human culture and interaction can promote and reinforce. Greif bases this interpretation on the works of Heinz Kohut, a psychoanalyst who by degrees transformed Freud's theory of the instincts into a theory of the self. Kohut maintains that every individual fundamentally requires continual human support in order to live with confidence and (...) hope. Greif introduces Kohut's understanding of the nature, development, and disintegration of the self, analyzes modern and contemporary assumptions regarding the individualistic, anti-social nature of humans, and concludes that contemporary societal assumptions regarding the acceptance of individualism reflect and perpetuate a tragic human condition. Greif argues that the inability of the self to experience a human, fulfilling life is a tragedy intensified by a century of economic and cultural forces promoting social antagonism. A unique and stimulating book, The Tragedy of the Self will appeal to professionals in psychoanalytic psychology, self-psychology, and philosophy as well as academics and students in the Humanities and Social Sciences. (shrink)

We submit this brief in support of the Nonhuman Rights Project’s efforts to secure habeas corpus relief for the elephant named Happy. We reject arbitrary distinctions that deny adequate protections to other animals who share with protected humans relevantly similar vulnerabilities to harms and relevantly similar interests in avoiding such harms. We strongly urge this Court, in keeping with the best philosophical standards of rational judgment and ethical standards of justice, to recognize that, as a nonhuman person, Happy should be (...) released from her current confinement and transferred to an appropriate elephant sanctuary, pursuant to habeas corpus. (shrink)

"... Shapiro's book is bursting with thoughts, and if one is willing to mine them, one is sure to find items of interest or provocation." —The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism Taking issue with a widely held view that Nietzsche's writings are essentially fragmentary or aphoristic, Gary Shapiro focuses on the narrative mode that Nietzsche adopted in many of his works. Such themes as eternal recurrence, the question of origins, and the problematics of self-knowledge are reinterpreted in the (...) context of the narratives in which Nietzsche develops or employs them. (shrink)

Of the theologians and philosophers now writing on biblical narrative, Hans Frei and Paul Ricoeur are probably the most prominent. It is significant that their views converge on important issues. Both are uncomfortable with hermeneutic theories that convert the text into an abstract philosophical system, an ideal typological structure, or a mere occasion for existential decision. Frei and Ricoeur seem knit together in a common enterprise; they appear to be building a single narrative theology. I argue that the appearance of (...) symmetry is an illusion. There is a fundamental conflict between the ‘pure narrativism’ of Frei and the ‘impure narrativism’ of Ricoeur. I give reasons for thinking that Ricoeur’s is the stronger position. (shrink)

Who am I? How do I live a good life? What is reality? Such perennial questions may seem remote from the pleasures of playing videogames for entertainment and fantasy. yet gamers too, in the midst of having fun, are potentially embarked upon a quest for understanding and for meaning. Missions for thoughtful gamers presents a sequence of 40 challenges, ranging from thought experiments to design exercises, each one inviting players to become more creatively curious and self-aware."--Back cover.