Embora a relação entre subjectividade e tempo seja fulcral para a fenomenologia, é-o sempre com o intuito de fundamentar ontologicamente a consciência na sua verdade A grande originalidade de Levinas consiste em abandonar o plano do cogito e, consequentem.

This volume consists of a collection of articles published by Spencer in leading Victorian periodicals, such as The Westminster Review, The Fortnightly Review and Mind. The wide range of subjects explored includes science, philosophy, aesthetics, ethics, psychology and politics.

Political economy and economic sociology have developed in relative isolation from each other. While political economy focuses largely on macro phenomena, economic sociology focuses on the embeddedness of economic action. The article argues that economic sociology can provide a microfoundation for political economy beyond rational actor theory and behavioral economics. At the same time political economy offers a unifying research framework for economic sociology with its focus on the explanation of capitalist dynamics. The sociological microfoundation for understanding of capitalist dynamics (...) should focus on the expectations actors have regarding future states of the world. Based on a discussion of what I call the four Cs of capitalism, I argue that under conditions of uncertainty, expectations are contingent and should be understood as “fictional expectations.” The capability of humans to imagine future states of the world that can be different from the present is the central basis for a sociological microfoundation of the dynamics of economic macro phenomena. Macroeconomic dynamics are anchored in these “fictional expectations,” which create motifs for engaging in potentially profitable but ultimately incalculable outcomes. This shifts attention to the “management of expectations” as a crucial element of economic activity and to the institutional, political, and cultural foundations of expectations. The reproduction of capitalism is precarious also because of the contingency of expectations conducive to its growth. (shrink)

Herbert Clark argues that language use is more than the sum of a speaker speaking and a listener listening. It is the joint action that emerges when speakers and listeners, writers and readers perform their individual actions in coordination, as ensembles. In contrast to work within the cognitive sciences, which has seen language use as an individual process, and to work within the social sciences, which has seen it as a social process, the author argues strongly that language use (...) embodies both individual and social processes. (shrink)

Under the influence of groundbreaking work by John Meyer and Brian Rowen, as well as Paul DiMaggio and Walter Powell, over the last 30 years research in the new sociological institutionalism has focused on processes of isomorphism. I argue that this is a one-sided focus that leaves out many insights from other institutional and macrosociological approaches and does not do justice to actual social change because it overlooks the role played by divergent institutional development. While the suggestion of divergent trends (...) is not new, there have been few attempts to integrate divergence into the theoretical premises of the new sociological institutionalism. Based on the typology proposed by DiMaggio and Powell, I show that the mechanisms identified by them as sources of isomorphic change can support processes of divergent change as well. The theoretical challenge is to identify conditions under which these mechanisms push institutional change toward homogenization or divergence. (shrink)

Free-variable semantic tableaux are a well-established technique for first-order theorem proving where free variables act as a meta-linguistic device for tracking the eigenvariables used during proof search. We present the theoretical foundations to extend this technique to propositional modal logics, including non-trivial rigorous proofs of soundness and completeness, and also present various techniques that improve the efficiency of the basic naive method for such tableaux.

This note on my exchange with G. Kirchgässner points to a possible misunderstanding and one serious difference of opinion. On the empirical side I tried to make visible social values and norms which cannot be reduced to economic preferences. On the normative side I tried to criticise the rational-choice-approach for being either obviously wrong or empirically empty.

Starting from the assumption that decision situations in economic contexts are characterized by fundamental uncertainty, this article argues that the decision-making of intentionally rational actors is anchored in fictions. “Fictionality” in economic action is the inhabitation in the mind of an imagined future state of the world and the beliefs in causal mechanisms leading to this future state. Actors are motivated in their actions by the imagined future and organize their activities based on these mental representations. Since these representations are (...) not confined to empirical reality, fictional expectations are also a source of creativity in the economy. Fictionality opens up a way to an understanding of the microfoundations of the dynamics of the economy. The article develops the notion of fictional expectations. It discusses the role of fictional expectations for the dynamics of the economy and addresses the question of how fictional expectations motivate action. The last part relates the notion of fiction to calculation and social macrostructures, especially institutions and cultural frames. The conclusion hints at the research program developing from the concept of fictional expectations. (shrink)

This is a detailed reply to Kurtuluş Gemici’s article, in this issue of Theory and Society, “Uncertainty, the problem of order, and markets: a critique of Beckert, Theory and Society, May 2009.”.

The central debate of natural theology among medieval Muslims and Jews concerned whether or not the world was eternal. Opinions divided sharply on this issue because the outcome bore directly on God's relationship with the world: eternity implies a deity bereft of will, while a world with a beginning leads to the contrasting picture of a deity possessed of will. In this exhaustive study of medieval Islamic and Jewish arguments for eternity, creation, and the existence of God, Herbert Davidson (...) provides a systematic classification of the proofs, analyzes and explains them, and traces their sources in Greek philosophy. Throughout the study, Davidson tries to take into account every argument of a philosophical character, disregarding only those arguments that rest entirely on religious faith or which fall below a minimal level of plausibility. (shrink)

George Herbert Mead (1863-1931) had a powerful influence on the development of American pragmatism in the twentieth century. He also had a strong impact on the social sciences. This classic book represents Mead's philosophy of experience, so central to his outlook. The present as unique experience is the focus of this deep analysis of the basic structure of temporality and consciousness. Mead emphasizes the novel character of both the present and the past. Though science is predicated on the assumption (...) that the present is predictable based on a thorough knowledge of the past, the experience of the present, says Mead, is an utterly unique moment comparable to no other, and when it is past the novel character of that unique experience is irrevocable. The emergence of novelty within the perceived rational order of reality is the crux of the problem that Mead explores. The present, in his words, is "the emergent event . . . something which is more than the processes that have led up to it and which by its change, continuance, or disappearance, adds to later passages a content they would not otherwise have possessed." The present as "the seat of reality" heavily conditions our retrospective view of the past as much as it helps to shape the future. The novelty of every present experience causes us to reconstruct our preceding experiences to make sense of the past, which is naturally assumed to be the main cause of what we presently experience. Our perspective on reality is thus relative to the conditioning of each new event and it changes continuously as the effects of the present shift our view of the past and future. This emphasis on the integrative, holistic nature of reality, in which everything past, present, and future is a condition of everything else, makes Mead's philosophy highly relevant to today's scientific picture of a quantum universe, where chance and probability play a role in the emergence of reality. Also of great interest is the way in which he extends his basic analysis of temporal-spatial reality to the emergence of mind and consciousness as a natural development of the evolutionary process. This stimulating and provocative work attests to John Dewey's praise of Mead as "the most original mind in philosophy in America" of his generation. (shrink)

Alfredo Traps in Durrenmatt’s tale discovers that he has brought off, all by himself, a murder involving considerable ingenuity. The mock prosecutor in the tale demands the death penalty “as reward for a crime that merits admiration, astonishment, and respect.” Traps is deeply moved; indeed, he is exhilarated, and the whole of his life becomes more heroic, and, ironically, more precious. His defense attorney proceeds to argue that Traps was not only innocent but incapable of guilt, “a victim of the (...) age.” This defense Traps disavows with indignation and anger. He makes claim to the murder as his and demands the prescribed punishment—death. (shrink)

A Mathematical Introduction to Logic, Second Edition, offers increased flexibility with topic coverage, allowing for choice in how to utilize the textbook in a course. The author has made this edition more accessible to better meet the needs of today's undergraduate mathematics and philosophy students. It is intended for the reader who has not studied logic previously, but who has some experience in mathematical reasoning. Material is presented on computer science issues such as computational complexity and database queries, with additional (...) coverage of introductory material such as sets. Increased flexibility of the text, allowing instructors more choice in how they use the textbook in courses. Reduced mathematical rigour to fit the needs of undergraduate students. (shrink)

Moses Maimonides, scholar, physician, and philosopher, was the most influential Jewish thinker of the Middle Ages. In this magisterial new biography, the work of many years, Herbert Davidson provides an exhaustive guide to Maimonides' life and works. After considering Maimonides' upbringing and education, Davidson expounds all of his voluminous writings in exhaustive detail, with separate chapters on rabbinic, philosophical, and medical texts. This long-awaited volume is destined to become the standard work on this towering figure of Western intellectual history.

本书紧扣《论语》的文本,分析了《论语》中孔子的思想观念,力图呈现孔子的思想特质。.

A study of problems, all revolving around the subject of intellect in the philosophies of Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes, this book starts by reviewing discussions in Greek and early Arabic philosophy which served as the background for the three Arabic thinkers. Davidson examines the cosmologies and theories of human and active intellect in the three philosophers and covers such subjects as: the emanation of the supernal realm from the First Cause; the emanation of the lower world from the transcendent active (...) intellect; stages of human intellect; illumination of the human intellect by the transcendent active intellect; conjunction of the human intellect with the transcendent active intellect; prophecy; and human immortality. Davidson shows that medieval Jewish philosophers and the Latin Scholastics had differing perceptions of Averroes because they happened to use works belonging to different periods of his philosophic career. (shrink)

For people to contribute to discourse, they must do more than utter the right sentence at the right time. The basic requirement is that they add to their common ground in an orderly way. To do this, we argue, they try to establish for each utterance the mutual belief that the addressees have understood what the speaker meant well enough for current purposes. This is accomplished by the collective actions of the current contributor and his or her partners, and these (...) result in units of conversation called contributions. We present a model of contributions and show how it accounts for a variety of features of everyday conversations. (shrink)

Social robots serve people as tutors, caretakers, receptionists, companions, and other social agents. People know that the robots are mechanical artifacts, yet they interact with them as if they were actual agents. How is this possible? The proposal here is that people construe social robots not as social agents per se, but as depictions of social agents. They interpret them much as they interpret ventriloquist dummies, hand puppets, virtual assistants, and other interactive depictions of people and animals. Depictions as a (...) class consist of three physical scenes with part-by-part mappings between them: (a) a base scene (the raw physical artifact), (b) the depiction proper (the artifact construed as a depiction), and (c) the scene depicted (the scene people are to imagine). With social robots, evidence shows people form the same three scenes plus mappings: They perceive the raw machinery of a robot, construe it as a depiction of a character, and, using the depiction as a guide, engage in the pretense that they are interacting with the character depicted. With social robots, people also recognize three classes of agents – the characters depicted, the intended recipients of the depictions (those who view or interact with the robots), and the authorities responsible for the robots (the designers, makers, and owners). Construing social robots as depictions, we argue, accounts for many phenomena not covered by alternative models. (shrink)

The hundred years covered by this book, from the death of Hegel to the establishment of the Third Reich, is often regarded as the heyday of German philosophy, of metaphysics in the grand style and of what J. S. Mill characterised as 'the German or a priori view of human knowledge'. Yet apart from selective attention to individual figures, such as Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Husserl or Heidegger, little is known by English-speaking philosophers of most of the animating concerns and continuing traditions (...) of German philosophy of the time. This book sets out to present a detailed history of the period, adopting a thematic approach which emphasises the more distinctive German approach. It is hoped that the growing but piecemeal interest in German philosophy will be both stimulated and consolidated by this book, which should also interest individuals working in related areas such as the history of ideas, religious studies and the history of science. (shrink)

The civic sociology of Herbert Blumer speaks to the fundamental problem of modernity: how freedom and equity can be ensured when institutional and personal ...

In everyday joint activities, people coordinate with each other by means not only of linguistic signals, but also of material signals – signals in which they indicate things by deploying material objects, locations, or actions around them. Material signals fall into two main classes: directing-to and placing-for. In directing-to, people request addressees to direct their attention to objects, events, or themselves. In placing-for, people place objects, actions, or themselves in special sites for addressees to interpret. Both classes have many subtypes. (...) Features of material signals were examined in pairs of people who were videotaped as they assembled TV stands, built Lego models, planned furnishings for a house, played piano duets, or bought coffee at Starbucks. In these activities, the pointing and placements were often sustained, creating three phases of signals – initiation, maintenance, and termination – each with its own interpretation. (shrink)

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

And his writing captures the best of his speaking. In this book we have: . Hippocrates and his Oath validated anew for modern times, . Luke the Physician, .