Cooperation during territorial defense allows social groups of African lions to defend access to resources necessary for individual reproductive success. Some forms of cooperation will be dependent upon cognition: reciprocity places greater cognitive demands on participants than does kinship or mutualism. Lions have well-developed cognitive abilities that enable individuals to recognize and interact with others in ways that seem to enhance their inclusive fitness. Male lions appear to cooperate unconditionally, consistently responding to roaring intruders regardless of their male companions’ (...) kinship or behavior. Female lions, however, do keep track of the past behavior of their female companions, apparently using the reliability of a companion as one means of assessing the risks posed by approaching intruders. Some “laggard” females may exploit the cooperative tendencies of “leaders” during territorial encounters. Although leader females clearly recognize laggards as such, the costs of tolerating laggards may be less than the benefits leaders gain through territorial defense behavior. Thus, although lions clearly have the cognitive ability to base cooperation on reciprocity, territorial defense cooperation appears instead to be based primarily on mutual benefits to participants for both male and female lions. (shrink)

Several contemporary philosophical theories of introspection have been offered, yet each faces a number of difficulties in providing an explanation of the exact nature of introspection. I contrast the inner-sense view that argues for a causal awareness with the acquaintance view that argues for a non-causal or direct awareness. After critically examining the inner-sense and the acquaintance views, I claim that these two views are complementary and not mutually exclusive, and that both perspectives, conceived of as modes of introspective (...) access, actually broaden the notion of introspection. I then propose a useful distinction between stimuli-induced introspection—i.e., a receptive process whereby some specific mental states induce introspection—and self-triggered introspection—i.e., a selective process whereby the individual’s own interest and volition initiates introspection. I argue that that distinction may eliminate the false dichotomy which claims that only one of those types of awareness, either the causal one or the direct one, is conducive to introspection or is defined as introspection. (shrink)

Object identification via a perceptual-demonstrative mode of presentation has been studied in cognitive science as a particularly direct and context-dependent means of identifying objects. Several recent works in cognitive science have attempted to clarify the relation between attention, demonstrative identification and context exploration. Assuming a distinction between ‘ demonstrative reference' and ‘perceptual-demonstrative identification', this article aims at specifying the role of attention in the latter and in the linking of conceptual and non conceptual contents while exploring a spatial context. First, (...) the analysis presents an argument to the effect that selection by overt and covert attention is needed for perceptual-demonstrative identification since overt/covert selective attention is required for the situated cognitive access to the target object. Second, it describes a hypothesis that makes explicit some of the roles of attention: the hypothesis of identification by epistemic attention via the control of perceptual routines. (shrink)

This essay presents William Wainwright’s conception of religious reasoning. He rejects the view that proper reasoning in religion must be limited to “neutral technical reason” (NTR), modes of reasoning that are neutral and acceptable to all parties in a religious disagreement. He emphasizes that religious reasoning, as seen in outstanding practitioners from different religious traditions, incorporates additional elements, such as appeals to revelation, emphasis on religious reading, rhetoric, acknowledgment of mystery, and especially “passional reason,” in which the arguments presented (...) and the conclusions accepted depend essentially on the state of the reasoner’s heart. The essay goes on to consider how Wainwright deals with issues surrounding religious diversity: he rejects all of the standard methods by which it has been argued that differences in belief between traditions either do not really exist or do not ultimately matter. Special attention is given to religious pluralism, as advocated by John Hick and Peter Byrne. This leads to a consideration of exclusivism, in which it is held that the fundamental doctrines of one religion are true, and those of other religions, insofar as they differ from those of the favored religion, are false. Wainwright finds the standard objections against exclusivism to be ineffective or inconclusive. Finally, the essay addresses a question suggested but not resolved by Wainwright’s work: Does religious diversity have the consequence that truth in religion is not accessible to us? (shrink)

The aim of the article is to answer the question if accession can be maintained as a separate and independent mode of acquisition and loss of ownership in the Lithuanian civil law. Although this mode takes its beginning in the Roman law and is well-known in other European jurisdictions, the situation in Lithuania is less clear because the accession is almost totally absent from the legal texts of the Lithuanian positive civil law, court decisions and legal doctrine as well. Thus, (...) a legal analysis confined to the linguistic analysis of law would come to the conclusion that Lithuanian law functions without the accession. Nevertheless, a deeper analysis of the Lithuanian Civil Code and case law reveals a different view. To respond to the posed question, the article analyses the functions and the concept of accession as one of the aspects of a broader property law principle, namely, of unity. The essence of the latter is that one thing presupposes one right of ownership and it is inconceivable to hold several full ownerships into the same thing. In this respect, accession plays an important role protecting the legal interests of the third parties. Also, the application of accession in other continental European countries and the solutions proposed by the Draft Common Frame of Reference is analysed. Further, the analysis turns to the Lithuanian positive law and case law. In spite of the lack of express reference to the accession rule, careful analysis shows that, in fact, the accession rule is established in the Lithuanian Civil Code, albeit it could be found in various forms and in several different units of the Civil Code. Also, Lithuanian courts routinely apply the rules on accession in practice. Even more, the analysis shows that the Lithuanian Civil Code is not devoid of the rules of accession, but, on the opposite, this legal institute is over-regulated and, in part, incoherent. This quality can be explained as a consequence of an imprecise legal drafting. The final conclusion is drawn that accession is a separate and fully working legal institute of Lithuanian civil law, although to reach its coherent application a certain interpretative position should be adopted. (shrink)

A highly accessible reading of Whitehead's writings on education and their connection to his metaphysics.

_A highly accessible reading of Whitehead's writings on education and their connection to his metaphysics._.

This paper aims to connect philosophy of chemistry, green chemistry, and moral philosophy. We first characterize chemistry by underlining how chemists: co-define chemical bodies, operations, and transformations; always refer to active and context-sensitive bodies to explain the reactions under study; and develop strategies that require and intertwine with a molecular whole, its parts, and the surroundings at the same time within an explanation. We will then point out how green chemists are transforming their current activities in order to act upon (...) the world without jeopardizing life. This part will allow us to highlight that green chemistry follows the three aforementioned characteristics while including the world as a partner, as well as biodegradability and sustainability concerns, into chemical practices. In the third part of this paper, we will show how moral philosophy can help green chemists: identify the consequentialist assumptions that ground their reasoning; and widen the scope of their ethical considerations by integrating the notion of care and that of vulnerability into their arguments. In the fourth part of the paper, we will emphasize how, in return, this investigation could help philosophers querying consequentialism as soon as the consequences of chemical activities over the world are taken into account. Furthermore, we will point out how the philosophy of chemistry provides philosophers with new arguments concerning the key debate about the ‘intrinsic value’ of life, ecosystems and the Earth, in environmental ethics. To conclude, we will highlight how mesology, that is to say the study of ‘milieux’, and the concept of ‘ecumeme’ proposed by the philosopher and geographer Augustin Berque, could become important both for green chemists and moral philosophers in order to investigate our relationships with the Earth. (shrink)

The work of David R. Lachterman, The Ethics of Geometry, subtitled A Genealogy of Modernity, concerns essentially the status of geometry in Euclid’s Elements and in Descartes’s Geometry. It is a remarkable work, at once by the declared breadth of its ambitions and by the very great precision of its analyses, which are always supported by a prodigious philosophical culture. David Lachterman’s concern is to grasp, by way of an in-depth commentary of certain, particularly crucial passages of these two foundational (...) works, the change in geometry’s status from the one to the other, and this, as a sort of symptom of what the Moderns, since Descartes, will always experience as a necessary, inaugural rupture with regard to tradition. This change is underlaid, according to the author, by a profound change in the philosophical ethos, and in particular, in the geometer’s ethos. One must understand ethos, Lachterman explains, in the manner of Aristotle: those characteristic means that human beings have by which to act in the world or to behave in relation to one another, or to themselves. There is thus an “ethics” of geometry, namely, in the manner and the style of doing geometry, of behaving as a mathematician both toward apprentices and toward the veritable nature of the “entities” which are to be taught or learnt, and which give their discipline its name. That there is a difference of ethos between Euclid and Descartes implies, according to Lachterman, that there is also a difference in the source of intelligibility of the “mathematical,” understood in the most general sense. This in turn implies a deeper difference in the mode of being in general: it suffices to note that, in the ancient case, the source of intelligibility of the geometric figure lies in the nature of the figure itself, and that in the modern case, the same source is found in the “strategies” and “tactics” suited to bringing the figure to its visibility or to its embodiment, 315 in order to notice that this change in the mode of access to intelligibility must have had profound repercussions upon philosophical thought. It is in this sense that the author’s design is also, at the same time, not genetic, but genealogical. The break between ancient and modern mathematics pleas in favor of a consideration of the rupture of modern thought relative to ancient thought; thus, implicitly—and it is one of the great merits of this book that it shows this—against all homogenizing levelling, in Heidegger’s fashion, of the history of thought down to the history of “the” discipline of metaphysics. If there is something Heideggerian, in the best sense of the term, in Lachterman’s way of considering ethos as coextensive with modes of being, there is, on the other hand, and we ought to be very glad of it, something anti-Heideggerian in his original manner of bringing out the effective novelty of modern thought. For, according to him, modern thought is no longer to be defined, explicitly or exclusively, by the so-called “metaphysics of subjectivity.” Instead, it is defined by a self-regulated, operative, and constructive productivity of thought—and this as much with regard to itself as to its objects. To put it briefly, whereas ancient thought is rather polarized by the logico-eidetic, modern thought is polarized by a sort of methodical constructivism, the status of which is, in reality, very complex. If Descartes speaks of “the construction of a problem,” while Leibniz speaks of the “construction of an equation,” and Kant of the “construction of a concept,” everything depends—as we might guess—upon the multiple meanings that the term ‘construction’ may take on. Is it to be taken in the sense of an absolute creation, a quasi ex nihilo creation, which would render mathematics divine? Is it the creation of artefacts, or again, is it the methodical exploration of problems posed to thought by the existence of objects or corresponding ideas, themselves supposed to be somewhere in the divine understanding? We already discern the breadth and the depth of the debate, and we sense that the essential will be played out in Lachterman’s commentaries on the famous Cartesian solution of the problem of Pappus—the birth certificate, as we know, of analytic geometry. (shrink)

When we speak of language we usually use the concept of a particular language. In this sense the concept denoted with the word language may vary from one language to another. Real language (=the language spoken) on the contrary is the reality lived by speakers thus encompassing complex and multifarious activities. Depending on the language spoken, the modes of thinking, modes of being in the conception of things, and systems of beliefs transmitted by means of particular languages, denote (...) the living reality of language with different grammatical categories. The concept “language” is expressed sometimes with a noun, thus denoting something existing in it; sometimes with a verb, thus denoting an action or an activity; and sometimes with an adverb, thus denoting the mode of an activity. The reality or degree of reality implicit in these grammatical categories involves a particular mode of thinking, prompted with a particular mode of being in the conception of things. Because of this it is necessary to distinguish the concept of language as something different from the reality of language. But first of all it is necessary to determine the reality or degree of reality of both the reality lived by speakers and the thing usually conceived of as language or a language. (shrink)

I argue that we can understand the de se by employing the subjective mode of presentation or, if one’s ontology permits it, by defending an abundant ontology of perspectival personal properties or facts. I do this in the context of a discussion of Cappelen and Dever’s recent criticisms of the de se. Then, I discuss the distinctive role of the first personal perspective in discussions about empathy, rational deference, and self-understanding, and develop a way to frame the problem of lacking (...) prospective access to your future self as a problem with your capacity to imaginatively empathize with your future selves. (shrink)

Philosophers of science turned to historical case studies in part in response to Thomas Kuhn's insistence that such studies can transform the philosophy of science. In this issue Joseph Pitt argues that the power of case studies to instruct us about scientific methodology and epistemology depends on prior philosophical commitments, without which case studies are not philosophically useful. Here I reply to Pitt, demonstrating that case studies, properly deployed, illustrate styles of scientific work and modes of argumentation that are (...) not well handled by currently standard philosophical analyses. I illustrate these claims with exemplary findings from case studies dealing with exploratory experimentation and with interdisciplinary cooperation across sciences to yield multiple independent means of access to theoretical entities. The latter cases provide examples of ways that scientists support claims about theoretical entities that are not available in work performed within a single discipline. They also illustrate means of correcting systematic biases that stem from the commitments of each discipline taken separately. These findings illustrate the transformative power of case study methods, allow us to escape from the horns of Pitt's "dilemma of case studies," and vindicate some of the post-Kuhn uses to which case studies have been put. (shrink)

In this article I argue that a methodological challenge to an integrated history and philosophy of science approach put forth by Ronald Giere almost forty years ago can be met by what I call the Kuhnian mode of History and Philosophy of Science (HPS). Although in the Kuhnian mode of HPS norms about science are motivated by historical facts about scientific practice, the justifiers of the constructed norms are not historical facts. The Kuhnian mode of HPS therefore evades the naturalistic (...) fallacy which Giere’s challenge is a version of. Against the backdrop of a discussion of Laudan’s normative naturalism I argue that the Kuhnian mode of HPS is a superior form of naturalism: it establishes contact to the practice of science without making itself dependent on its contingencies. (shrink)

This essay uses the philosophy and theology of John Paul II to argue that re-enchanting the world requires various modes depending on whether disenchantment is due to religious beliefs being deemed false or irrelevant. The former is countered through philosophical arguments for God's existence and the plausibility of religious belief, the latter through accepting the human condition and the connection between self-fulfillment and adherence to the laws of life, reason, other-centered love, and God-centered spirituality. These laws, especially as embodied (...) in Christianity, facilitate the familial love of God that is so necessary for re-enchanting the world. (shrink)

La prophétie inspirée et la divination par les signes impliquent des activités distinctes et requièrent des compétences différentes de ceux qui les pratiquent. Une relecture des sources anciennes débouche sur l’idée que la suprématie de la prophétie directe ne peut être écartée comme une invention platonicienne. Des modes de prophétie sont loin d’être une interprétation moderne et ils étaient déjà perçus ainsi au second millénaire avant notre ère. La prophétie extatique, phénomène précieux, dépendant de la volonté des dieux, était (...) imprévisible et difficile à manipuler. Il n’est pas étonnant que la plupart des spécialistes définissent la divination directe en Mésopotamie comme secondaire par comparaison avec la divination traditionnelle par les signes; c’est la situation en Grèce, où la corrélation est inverse, ce qui demande une explication. Abandonner la dichotomie entre prophétie directe et indirecte revient à retirer à la culture grecque une de ses caractéristiques principales. (shrink)

Constructions having the surface form NP be ADJ enough to VP are examined. It is shown that when ADJ in this construction belongs to a small class of adjectives including lucky or to a larger class including wise, a structural ambiguity appears in the complement of enough which is related to the distinction between implied and non-implied complements made in Karttunen . The underlying syntactic structure of NP be ADJ enough to VP when ADJ is lucky or wise is examined (...) and the ambiguity in the complement of enough is explained through a generalization of syntactic properties of implied complements. The analysis proposed depends crucially on the use of complex semantic features to relate syntactic structures which are not derivable from one another transformationally. Hence it represents a certain innovation in syntactic theory. (shrink)

The notion of intersubjectivity has achieved a primary status in contemporary psychoanalytic debate, stimulating new theoretical proposals as well as controversies. This paper presents an overview of the main contributions on inter-subjectivity in the field of neurosciences. In humans as well as—probably—in other species, the ability for emotional resonance is guaranteed early in development. Based on this capacity, a primary sense of connectedness is established that can be defined inter-subjective in that it entails sharing affective states and intentions with caregivers. (...) We propose to define such a form of inter-subjectivity ascontingent, since the infant’s early abilities for resonance do not imply the more generalized capacity to permanently conceive of the relationship outside the realm of current interactions and the infant-caregiver’s mutual correspondence of internal states. This form of connection, hence, results in a self-referential, bodily, and affectively codified, context- and time dependent, like-me experience of interactions. The gradual maturation of brain structures and processes as well as interactive experiences allow proper intersubjectivity exchanges, grounded on new intentional and representational capacities, to evolve. In this more mature form of intersubjectivity, the individual is allowed to conceive of her own psychic space both as distinct and as possibly connected with the other’s contents and experience, even in the absence of current behavioral indicators of such correspondence. This multi-layered model of intersubjectivity, which is embraced by current neuroscience research, seems to allow for new interpretations of psychoanalytic models of human relatedness based upon classic clinical observations. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to grasp the relevant distinctions between various ways in which models and simulations in Artificial Intelligence (AI) relate to cognitive phenomena. In order to get a systematic picture, a taxonomy is developed that is based on the coordinates of formal versus material analogies and theory-guided versus pre-theoretic models in science. These distinctions have parallels in the computational versus mimetic aspects and in analytic versus exploratory types of computer simulation. The proposed taxonomy cuts across the (...) traditional dichotomies between symbolic and embodied AI, general intelligence and symbol and intelligence and cognitive simulation and human/non-human-like AI. -/- According to the taxonomy proposed here, one can distinguish between four distinct general approaches that figured prominently in early and classical AI, and that have partly developed into distinct research programs: first, phenomenal simulations (e.g., Turing’s “imitation game”); second, simulations that explore general-level formal isomorphisms in pursuit of a general theory of intelligence (e.g., logic-based AI); third, simulations as exploratory material models that serve to develop theoretical accounts of cognitive processes (e.g., Marr’s stages of visual processing and classical connectionism); and fourth, simulations as strictly formal models of a theory of computation that postulates cognitive processes to be isomorphic with computational processes (strong symbolic AI). -/- In continuation of pragmatic views of the modes of modeling and simulating world affairs, this taxonomy of approaches to modeling in AI helps to elucidate how available computational concepts and simulational resources contribute to the modes of representation and theory development in AI research—and what made that research program uniquely dependent on them. (shrink)

-/- The aim of this paper is to grasp the relevant distinctions between various ways in which models and simulations in Artificial Intelligence (AI) relate to cognitive phenomena. In order to get a systematic picture, a taxonomy is developed that is based on the coordinates of formal versus material analogies and theory-guided versus pre-theoretic models in science. These distinctions have parallels in the computational versus mimetic aspects and in analytic versus exploratory types of computer simulation. The proposed taxonomy cuts across (...) the traditional dichotomies between symbolic and embodied AI, general intelligence and symbol and intelligence and cognitive simulation and human/non-human-like AI. -/- According to the taxonomy proposed here, one can distinguish between four distinct general approaches that figured prominently in early and classical AI, and that have partly developed into distinct research programs: first, phenomenal simulations (e.g., Turing’s “imitation game”); second, simulations that explore general-level formal isomorphisms in pursuit of a general theory of intelligence (e.g., logic-based AI); third, simulations as exploratory material models that serve to develop theoretical accounts of cognitive processes (e.g., Marr’s stages of visual processing and classical connectionism); and fourth, simulations as strictly formal models of a theory of computation that postulates cognitive processes to be isomorphic with computational processes (strong symbolic AI). -/- In continuation of pragmatic views of the modes of modeling and simulating world affairs, this taxonomy of approaches to modeling in AI helps to elucidate how available computational concepts and simulational resources contribute to the modes of representation and theory development in AI research—and what made that research program uniquely dependent on them. (shrink)

The paper emphasizes the inadequacy of formal semantics, the classical paradigm in semantics, in treating contextual dependence. Some phenomena of contextual dependence threaten one central assumption of the classical paradigm, namely the idea that linguistic expressions have a fixed meaning, and utterances have truth conditions well defined. It is possible to individuate three forms of contextual dependence: the one affecting pure indexicals, the one affecting demonstratives and "contextual expressions", and the one affecting all linguistic expressions. The third (...) type of dependence is top-down: context, and not only linguistic material, shows which variables must be instantiated, relying on context itself. The generalization of underdetermination to all linguistic expressions is in fact a kind of metadependence: the mode of dependence itself depends on context. (shrink)

We study the effects of density dependent migrations on the stability of a predator-prey model in a patchy environment which is composed with two sites connected by migration. The two patches are different. On the first patch, preys can find resource but can be captured by predators. The second patch is a refuge for the prey and thus predators do not have access to this patch. We assume a repulsive effect of predator on prey on the resource patch. Therefore, (...) when the predator density is large on that patch, preys are more likely to leave it to return to the refuge. We consider two models. In the first model, preys leave the refuge to go to the resource patch at constant migration rates. In the second model, preys are assumed to be in competition for the resource and leave the refuge to the resource patch according to the prey density. We assume two different time scales, a fast time scale for migration and a slow time scale for population growth, mortality and predation. We take advantage of the two time scales to apply aggregation of variables methods and to obtain a reduced model governing the total prey and predator densities. In the case of the first model, we show that the repulsive effect of predator on prey has a stabilizing effect on the predator-prey community. In the case of the second model, we show that there exists a window for the prey proportion on the resource patch to ensure stability. (shrink)

In the third Whitehead Psychology Nexus Studies, we have discussed (i) the dual-aspect-dual-mode proto-experience (PE)-subjective experience (SE)framework of consciousness based on neuroscience, (ii) its implication in war, suffering, peace, and happiness, (iii) the process of sublimation for optimizingthem and converting the negative aspects of seven groups of self-protective energy system (desire, anger, ego, greed, attachment, jealousy, and selfishlove)into their positive aspects from both western and eastern perspectives (Vimal, 2009b). In this article, we summarize the recent development since then as follows. (...) (1) In (Vimal, 2010), we rigorously investigated the classical and quantum matching and selection processes for precisely experiencing a specific SE in a specific neural-network. (2) In (Vimal, 2009i), we unpacked the quantum view of superposition related to the superposition-based hypothesis H1 of our framework in terms of subquantum dual-aspect primal entities (bhutatmas) and addressed the related explanatory gaps. (3) We developed alternative hypotheses of our framework, namely, the superposition-then-integration-emergence based H2, the integration-emergence based H3, the intelligent mechanism based H4, and the vacuum/Aether based H5. We concluded that our framework with H1 is the most optimal one because it has the least number of problems (Vimal, 2009j). (4) We found over 40 different but overlapping meanings attributed to the term ‘consciousness’ and suggested that authors must specify which aspect ofconsciousness they refer to when using this term to minimize confusion (Vimal, 2009f). (5) We proposed definitions of consciousness, qualia, mind, and awareness (Vimal, 2009h). (6) We investigated the necessary ingredients for access (reportable) consciousness: wakefulness, re-entry, attention, working memory and so on (Vimal, 2009g). (7) We discussed Nâgârjuna’s philosophy of dependent co-origination with respect to our PE-SE framework (Vimal, 2009a). (8) We linked dynamic systems theory and fractal catalytic theory with standard representation theory using our framework (Vimal, 2009d). (9) We introduce the PE-SE aspects of consciousness in theoretical classical and quantum physics including loop quantum gravity and string theory (Vimal, 2009k). (10) In (Vimal, 2009c), we proposed that the SE of subject or ‘self’ in self-related neural-network is tuned to the self-related SEs/PEs superposed in other innumerable entities during samadhi state via matching and selection processes. This leads to bliss, ecstasy, or exceptionally high degree of climax at samadhi state. We conclude that, so far, the dualaspect-dual-mode PE-SE framework with hypothesis H1 is the most optimal framework for explaining our conventional reality because it has the least number of problems. Keywords: Evolution of consciousness; Internal representation; Sensorimotor interaction; Dual-aspect model; Subjective experience; Protoexperiences, Explanatory gap; Mind-brain problem; Purusha; Prakriti; Eastern and Western perspectives; Yoga; Sublimation process; Whitehead; Process and Reality; Occasions of experience; Superposition; Subquantum dual-aspect primal entities (bhutatmas); Superposition-then-integration-emergence; Integration-emergence; Intelligent mechanism; Vacuum/Aether; qualia; Mind; Awareness; Nâgârjuna; Classical and quantum physics; Loop quantum gravity; String theory. (shrink)

Ascidians have evolved alternate modes of development in which the conventional tadpole larva is remodeled or eliminated. Adultation, the precocious development of adult features in the larval head, is caused by superimposing the larval and adult differentiation programs. Caudalization, the addition of muscle cells to the larval tail, is caused by enhancing muscle induction or increasing the number of muscle cell divisions before terminal differentiation. Adultation and caudalization are correlated with increased egg size, suggesting dependence on maternal processes. (...) Anural development, the elimination of the larval stage, is caused by maternal and zygotic events resulting in abbreviation and deletion of larval developmental programs. An example of a maternal change in anural species is the modification of the egg cytoskeleton during oogenesis, whereas a zygotic change may involve altered cell interactions during embryogenesis. Interspecific hybridization experiments suggest that some aspects of anural development may be caused by loss‐of‐function mutations. The dissociation of developmental programs is a key process in changing the mode of development in ascidians. (shrink)

Brentanians defend the view that there are distinct types of object, but that this does not entail the admission of different modes of being. The most general distinction among objects is the one between realia, which are causally efficacious, and irrealia, which are causally inert. As for being, which is equated with existence, it is understood in terms of “correct acknowledgeability.” This view was defended for some time by Brentano himself and then by his student Anton Marty. Their position (...) is opposed to Bolzanian, Husserlian, and Meinongian ontologies, in which a distinction in the (higher) types of object implies a distinction in their mode of being. These Austro-German discussions anticipate much of the contemporary debate between Quineans, who accept only differences in objects, and neo-Meinongians or other ontological pluralists, who accept different modes of being. My paper first presents the Brentanian view in detail and then evaluates its philosophical significance. (shrink)

In this article, we will describe two theistic modes of “paradoxical detachment” from the Presence of the Infinite, implying the coexistence of attachment and detachment. We will analyze two forms of Christianity-based paradoxical detachment: being dependent on the Ground of soul, while being detached from the representations of the Infinite ; being absolutely dependent on the Infinite, while being detached from any religious morality. The nontheistic mode of detachment from the Presence of the Infinite requires an absolute detachment. We (...) will examine two forms of absolute detachment towards the Presence of the Infinite: on one hand, the all-encompassing emptiness in the Kagyü and Gelug lineages of Tibetan Buddhism; on the other hand, the Heideggerian notion of “groundless abyss.” In the Kagyü and Gelug lineages of Tibetan Buddhism, being absolutely detached is searching for the Enlightenment, while being detached from all concepts. Heideggerian notions of “groundless abyss” and “de-hominization” allow us to reach absolute detachment, while remaining in a non-theistic way of thinking. (shrink)

Recent technological innovation has made video doctoring increasingly accessible. This has given rise to Deepfake Pornography, an emerging phenomenon in which Deep Learning algorithms are used to superimpose a person’s face onto a pornographic video. Although to most people, Deepfake Pornography is intuitively unethical, it seems difficult to justify this intuition without simultaneously condemning other actions that we do not ordinarily find morally objectionable, such as sexual fantasies. In the present article, I refer to this contradiction as the pervert’s dilemma. (...) I propose that the method of Levels of Abstraction, a philosophical mode of enquiry inspired by Formal Methods in computer science, can be employed to formulate at least one possible solution to the dilemma. From this perspective, the permissibility of some actions appears to depend on the degree to which they are abstracted from their natural context. I conclude that the dilemma can only be solved when considered at low levels of abstractions, when Deepfakes are situated in the macro-context of gender inequality. (shrink)

In the third Whitehead Psychology Nexus Studies, we have discussed (i) the dual-aspect-dual-mode proto-experience (PE)-subjective experience (SE)framework of consciousness based on neuroscience, (ii) its implication in war, suffering, peace, and happiness, (iii) the process of sublimation for optimizingthem and converting the negative aspects of seven groups of self-protective energy system (desire, anger, ego, greed, attachment, jealousy, and selfishlove)into their positive aspects from both western and eastern perspectives (Vimal, 2009b). In this article, we summarize the recent development since then as follows. (...) (1) In (Vimal, 2010), we rigorously investigated the classical and quantum matching and selection processes for precisely experiencing a specific SE in a specific neural-network. (2) In (Vimal, 2009i), we unpacked the quantum view of superposition related to the superposition-based hypothesis H1 of our framework in terms of subquantum dual-aspect primal entities (bhutatmas) and addressed the related explanatory gaps. (3) We developed alternative hypotheses of our framework, namely, the superposition-then-integration-emergence based H2, the integration-emergence based H3, the intelligent mechanism based H4, and the vacuum/Aether based H5. We concluded that our framework with H1 is the most optimal one because it has the least number of problems (Vimal, 2009j). (4) We found over 40 different but overlapping meanings attributed to the term ‘consciousness’ and suggested that authors must specify which aspect ofconsciousness they refer to when using this term to minimize confusion (Vimal, 2009f). (5) We proposed definitions of consciousness, qualia, mind, and awareness (Vimal, 2009h). (6) We investigated the necessary ingredients for access (reportable) consciousness: wakefulness, re-entry, attention, working memory and so on (Vimal, 2009g). (7) We discussed Nâgârjuna’s philosophy of dependent co-origination with respect to our PE-SE framework (Vimal, 2009a). (8) We linked dynamic systems theory and fractal catalytic theory with standard representation theory using our framework (Vimal, 2009d). (9) We introduce the PE-SE aspects of consciousness in theoretical classical and quantum physics including loop quantum gravity and string theory (Vimal, 2009k). (10) In (Vimal, 2009c), we proposed that the SE of subject or ‘self’ in self-related neural-network is tuned to the self-related SEs/PEs superposed in other innumerable entities during samadhi state via matching and selection processes. This leads to bliss, ecstasy, or exceptionally high degree of climax at samadhi state. We conclude that, so far, the dualaspect-dual-mode PE-SE framework with hypothesis H1 is the most optimal framework for explaining our conventional reality because it has the least number of problems. Keywords: Evolution of consciousness; Internal representation; Sensorimotor interaction; Dual-aspect model; Subjective experience; Protoexperiences, Explanatory gap; Mind-brain problem; Purusha; Prakriti; Eastern and Western perspectives; Yoga; Sublimation process; Whitehead; Process and Reality; Occasions of experience; Superposition; Subquantum dual-aspect primal entities (bhutatmas); Superposition-then-integration-emergence; Integration-emergence; Intelligent mechanism; Vacuum/Aether; qualia; Mind; Awareness; Nâgârjuna; Classical and quantum physics; Loop quantum gravity; String theory. (shrink)

Within some ontological theories, bare or thin particulars are the “kernel” of ordinary substances and they are supposed to clarify some key features of the latter, including their nature. In this article, I wish to offer a new theory of bare particulars, based on an interpretation of properties as modes and on a new reading of the dependence relations holding among entities in terms of respects of dependence. In Section 1, I shall introduce bare particulars, modes (...) and respects of dependence. In Section 2, I shall consider the relationships between bare particulars, clothed particulars (i.e., ordinary substances) and their properties. I shall present two models and I shall examine some of their problems. In Section 3 and in Section 4, I shall present a new model by invoking modes and respects of dependence. This will ground my theory of the relationships between bare particulars, clothed particulars and their properties. Finally, in Section 5, I shall compare my model with the second model presented in Section 2 and, in Section 6, I shall deal with some objections against bare particulars and against my own theory. (shrink)

“Artworks are not being but a process of becoming” —Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory In the everyday use of the concept, saying that something is grotesque rarely implies anything other than saying that something is a bit outside of the normal structure of language or meaning – that something is a peculiarity. But in its historical use the concept has often had more far reaching connotations. In different phases of history the grotesque has manifested its forms as a means of (...) subversive resistance against society’s prevailing notions of form and power. What aids this impact and distinguishes two of its basic stylistic features is the grotesque’s dissolution of form and its hyperbole. Such grotesqueries, however, soon solidify into new forms, new structures of meaning, hierarchy and practice, and in this sense the history of the grotesque is, on one hand, a continual opposition and transgression of the prevailing notions of art as well as of God and humanity, while on the other hand it offers continual resistance to its own solidifying process. As such the grotesque will not and cannot be contained in form without it losing the very thing that makes it grotesque. Even though it is somewhat easy to point out certain stylistic features of the grotesque, the sum of those features tell us very little about what is at play within it. Definitions concerned with the grotesque’s content rather than its form faces similar difficulties. Throughout history, expressions relating to the grotesque have been used in defense of a whole host of different social and cultural discourse including, for instance, Catholicism (See Erhard Schön’s Der Teufel mit der Sackpfeife , 1536), Protestantism (See Lucas Cranach’s Der Papstesel , 1523), a material folk culture (see Mikhail Bakhtin’s Rabelais and his World , 1984) and an idealistic romantic structure of meaning (see Wolfgang Kayser’s The Grotesque in Art and Literature , 1957). Thus though the grotesque cannot be reduced to the expression of certain forms or meanings, in order to examine what the grotesque is about one has to try to see how it’s relationship to flow and process and how, by maintaining this relationship, it attempts to avoid solidifying into form and meaning. The process of the grotesque alluded to here revolves around a play between periphery and center, the marginalized and the dominant. Most often this is expressed as a direct negation of the center of power. In the medieval grotesque tradition of the carnival, for example, it is expressed by its emphasis on the nether regions of the body as the center of creation of meaning. Spirit does not come from above, but from the belly, buttocks and genitals, and there is, expressed in this manner, a mockery of the predominant Christian notion of truth and meaning. Such inversions of the sites of meaning most often explicitly express an increased interest in materiality instead of ideal content which comes to the fore through the play between periphery and center. Even in early grotesque Renaissance art (for example in the works of Raphael) the depiction of the mythological or ideal reveals an exploration of the possibilities of the material. The works of art thus explore their own boundaries rather than act as vessels of the divine and in this way the grotesque explores the limits of form and materiality. This in turn brings to the fore a metaphysical dimension in the workings of the grotesque: It is an immanent exploration of its own boundaries. Materiality and metaphysics are joined together, because it is through the awareness of itself as a structuring (dis)order that it places itself in opposition to the prevailing notions of form and power. This way the grotesque expresses an awareness of the division of sign and reality and a search for this reality. It implicitly expresses the awareness that meaning is not something God-given and static, but fluctuating and man-made. In modern explorations of the history of the grotesque it is commonly seen as a form of realism that manifests a shift from the ideal towards the material, freeing art from representing some hidden higher order and instead making the work of art the very site of creation and meaning. Going even further, the grotesque actively opposes the notions of the ideal by marking a shift from an ahistorical view of the world towards the historical. However, this also makes clear why the grotesque has a tendency to solidify into new static forms of meaning, for by establishing itself as a subversive counterforce there is an idea of transgression and emancipation. That is why the grotesque often historicizes and relativizes only to repeat the mistakes of that which it negates: putting itself in the king’s chair. The exploration of the material seems to create new forms and notions of the ideal. The representation of an otherness outside the prevailing notions of meaning and truth becomes a positive manifestation of this otherness as truth itself. Thus the historical “truths” of the grotesque are superseded by history itself. When the expressions of the grotesque solidify into static form and meaning, they become mere objects like anything else in the world. Instead of being this elusive thing of process and flow, it becomes tangible to the existing hierarchy of power as well as history itself. In this way the grotesque can be expunged, included or simply revealed as yet another false notion of truth, which is precisely what has happened with the grotesque throughout the course of history. If from the beginning the expression of the grotesque has not already been in the service of some structure of meaning and truth, it has quickly been included or has quickly included itself in such a structure. But by doing so it rejects its own basis: the tension between periphery and center is replaced by the attempt to create a new center, a new structure of meaning and truth. The doubleness, ambiguity and flow of the grotesque are then rejected by the grotesque itself. THE NON-FORM OF FORM In the critical thinking of Theodor W. Adorno (1903-69) the problem of art, caught between a reductive and prevalent notion of truth and meaning and a peripheral and alienated otherness, is reexamined and reformulated. For Adorno, the instrumental rationality of Enlightenment itself reverts into a new form of mythology which is every bit as static and exclusive as the hierarchies of religion it supersedes. All is excluded that is non-identical to the instrumental mastery of the objects of the world, "For the Enlightenment, anything which cannot be resolved into numbers, and ultimately into one, is illusion; modern positivism consigns it to poetry." 1 As such the non-identical has been banished from the realm of thought and action, and banished specifically to the realm of art. But the realm of art is not able to provide a decent home for it because even modern art is not something entirely autonomous. While it is excluded from the notions of truth and meaning provided by instrumental rationality, it still originates from society. Just like instrumental rationality art is about mastery, structuring and exclusion. Therefore, the problem for art is that it cannot directly provide a space for the non-identical because its mode of operation is similar to that of instrumental rationality. Even worse, art has very few possibilities to free itself from this. If it becomes l’art pour l’art it is at the same time reduced to the very thing instrumental rationality claims it to be: a subjective judgment of taste.expressionism also stands as an example of this. Conversely, art cannot work within the framework of the identity-thinking of society, because any notion of freedom or emancipation would reproduce the exclusive practices of instrumental rationality. For example: Explicit socialist literature may establish itself in opposition to instrumental rationality while at the same time reproducing it. Its language may seem different, but in reality it merely provides a different set of reductive schematics for human life and experience. The problem for the art of the grotesque was, as I mentioned earlier, that far too often it was merely a symbolic manifestation of a notion of otherness—not otherness itself. Because of this the subversive character of the grotesque ends up shaping and containing otherness instead of providing a space for it. According to Adorno the only way to avoid this is to radicalize the grotesque. In order to avoid solidifying into form the work of art has to be an object which cannot be contained in thought or form—a non-form of form. The work of art has to work in a way that it strives for autonomy but without entirely leaving a discernible reality. In other words, it has to pull in two directions at once. Thus the work of art is a paradox. It is autonomous in the sense that it closes itself off from everything outside of the work of art, trying to shy away from the contaminating influence of the identity thinking of instrumental rationality. At the same time though the work of art is heteronomous in the sense that it originates from a specific historical context and is bound to be what society is not. Autonomy and heteronomy are inseparably intertwined. Unable to display otherness itself, but still trying to be a refuge for it, there is only one option for art: It has to turn against itself and destroy its own logic of form, thereby demonstrating how any representation of otherness is impossible. Art becomes a lamentation of the victims of the identity thinking of instrumental rationality and shows the traces of the otherness that is unable to appear. Adorno’s pessimistic theory of art and history stages art as a negative dialectical process where the work of art closes itself off and rejects everything outside, while the individual elements in the work of art destroys its very own logic of form from within: Artworks synthetize ununifiable, nonidentical elements that grind away at each other; they truly seek the identity of the identical and nonidentical processually because even their unity is only an element and not the magical formula of the whole […]. The resistance to them of otherness, on which they are nevertheless dependent compels them to articulate their own formal language, to leave not the smallest unformed particle as remnant. This reciprocity constitutes art’s dynamic; it is an irresolvable antithesis that is never brought to rest in the state of being. 2 Relative to a traditional understanding of the grotesque, Adorno radicalizes the tension between center and periphery, autonomy and heteronomy. In the traditional understanding of the grotesque, as we find it for example in the writings of Mikhail Bakhtin, the grotesque establishes the display of otherness as a new center of meaning and truth. However Adorno rejects such notions and argues instead for a modernism of the grotesque in which both center and periphery are included in a negative dialectical process and continually synthesizing and destabilizing each other’s positions. A modernism of the grotesque works on the inside of the sign or the artwork, continually outlining and questioning the boundaries between materiality and form. This moves the focus away from the relation between the sign or work of art as a conceptual manifestation on one side and the object it refers to on the other side. Instead it implicitly points to the amorphous mass from which the signs and thereby meaning have been carved, the remnants that have been left behind. Modernism of the grotesque does not imply that it is emancipatory or that it reconciles man with nature, and does not represent a new position or a new ideology. It merely remembers and insists on the double nature of man and art: to write or paint yourself or an artwork whole by inscribing meaning in life or by applying form on a canvas is at the same time both creation and destruction. The very signs we use to center meaning in our lives carry its own alienation in them. Meaning surfaces only when process and flow comes to a halt—solidifying, but at the same time excluding parts that do not fit into that particular structure of meaning. NOTHING DONE AND NOTHING UNDONE It has always been difficult for art historians to find a suitable category for the works of the Danish artist Leif Lage (b. 1933). In his paintings the sensitive figuration seems so fragile that it is on the verge of turning into abstraction. Or conversely: the figurative emerges cautiously and hesitantly out of abstraction. As an art critic once wrote, he can almost paint things away. 3 Working in some undefinable space between abstraction and figuration, the Lage’s works shy away from the realm of words, and as a result few critics have been able to write anything meaningful about his works. In fact even fewer have been able to write more than one or two pages. The Danish author and art critic Leif Hjernøe is one of those few, but even he starts off by saying how impossible it is to write about Lage, confessing that his works exist both as process and in a field of in-between which words cannot reach. He writes: Always you find yourself in a place where nothing is done and nothing left undone, and where the elements of the work of art rest in a continuous motion. Always there is the open wound, where infection rather than surgical intervention is considered as an opportunity. And the conflict between matter and antimatter makes all diagnoses uncertain and allows conditions of uncertainty to spread in a place of raw presence. 4 The art works against the diagnosis and the certainty. Words are being eaten up by what is outside the realm of words: tension, process and doubleness. An approach to an understanding of the work of Lage could be to follow his connection to Samuel Beckett (1906-89). One can note, therefore, that Lage has illustrated several of the Danish translations of Beckett’s works. Though one is an author and the other a painter both seek a place where figuration, where the word, erodes. For both this entails an attempt to question and examine and so move in behind the façade of the surface in an exploration of that something or nothing that may be behind representation. At the same time even in the vanishing point of figuration or words, the meaningless words or the disjointed lines still stand as signs of human activity—signs of movement in emptiness. With very few exceptions Lage’s artworks revolve around one motif: Man—most often “en face.” But unlike traditional portraitures Lage’s people are found within. The artworks do not sense the reality of appearances, but rather the existential dimensions within man. As a seismograph they are sensitive to the utmost subjectivity in order to display an objective, sensuous depiction of the very problem of subjectivity. Instead of a static façade of a man, Lage’s “en face” shows the process-character of man. The people in Lage’s paintings are always in process—in the midst of becoming or dissolving. I will take a closer look in the following at the ways in which Lage establishes this sense of being in constant process, of being in-between modes or categories. THE DOUBLENESS OF THE STROKE Lage’s etchings attract attention in particular for the tension conveyed there between the material and the form. The material physically opposes the violence of the needle. But instead of embracing the violence of the needle and the victory over matter—instead of making the artistic creation and figuration express a heroic mastery of the background it is made out of—Lage uses the stroke to express the very tension between stroke and material, figuration and background. In the drypoint etching Untitled from 1983, which illustrated the Danish translation of Beckett’s Ill Seen, Ill Said , the needle tears up the material in long rough lines: Together, the primarily horizontal and vertical lines form a face. Thus the force needed to etch a line in the metal-plate draws attention to itself: It is there in the absence of curves and nuances. Man emerges on the metal-plate after great exertion and in a very simplistic form. This way Lage enhances the nature of the material, as the material’s resistance is not something to overcome. On the contrary the figuration is smitten by its very resistance and as such expresses the violence of its own becoming. Even more pronounced is the fact that the lines do not just show the violence of creation—it actively erases figuration in the same process that creates it. For example the mouth consists of 8-10 horizontal strokes, of which some seem to be connected to each other as if the mouth has been quickly scratched out. The mouth speaks of the inability to speak. In the same way, the eyes are black holes due to a large amount of criss-cross cuts, which together form a dark middle. Those lines, at the same time, form the eyes of the figuration and scratch out the eyes of the figuration. The extroverted aspects of the face—connected to speech and sight—are portrayed as introverted as well. Just as the etchings down into the metal-plate makes something appear. Leif Lage, Untitled , 1983 (etching) The figuration of the etching is connected to creation. It expresses that something is wrought into existence out of nothing by sheer artistic force. However, this force is at the same time presented as a violence of creation, which makes it impossible for form to truly emerge. Herein lies one of the basic principles of Lage’s art, namely that art cannot be that nothing or something behind the realm of words or signs. Without form, art would lose its ability to express anything at all. Form is a necessity if art is to avoid becoming as devoid of expression as the reality is that we cannot reach behind the appearance of things. On the other hand, art cannot raise itself above its own material in joyous celebration of the beauty of form. This would use the material in the manner of an instrument and thus would suppress the otherness it attempts to rescue. When art becomes mere form, any traces of otherness will have dissolved. Then art would be a question of technique, in no way different from the instrumental rationality of society. Therefore art works in a particular space between form and non-form. As Hjernøe says of the works of Lage, it is in the center of the event, in the in-between where things neither are nor are not, "And everything takes place just before it changes character. As the blood just before it coagulates, as the milk just before it separates, as fried egg just before it turns white […]." 5 The precise emphasis on the in-between of Lage’s art points in particular to the work of art as both outside of and in time. The work of art is a singular point in time, but at the same time it is continually in process. In the borderland between form and non-form, between creation and destruction, it shimmers like a fata morgana . The work is done but at the same time undone. It is only there as a cry in response to the inability to come into being. Akin to the etching is the drawing, but while both, of course, use the stroke or line as their main instrument, the paper does not resist the line in the same sense as the metal-plate of the etching. As a result in Lage’s drawings the stroke frolics in a space with almost no tension at all. There is nothing there to keep the pencil stroke at bay, but at the same time this means that there is nothing there to keep it together. One of the more expressive examples of this is found in an untitled drawing from Tegninger og Text ( Drawings and Text ) from 1999. The drawing consists of one unbroken pencil stroke. It is as if the stroke is confused—it darts around on the paper making doodles on the way or gathers itself in more straight lines in the center of the paper. It is in this manner that the semblance of a body is established. A couple of small circles serve as eyes and are the reason that the rest can be read as both face and body instead of pure abstraction. In fact the unbroken stroke serves as both abstraction and figuration as on the one hand it is the stroke that seemingly outlines the shape of a figure, while on the other hand the unbroken stroke dissolves any truly recognizable figuration by continuously, without end or aim, overflowing the boundaries of the figure. Seen again here is a doubleness to the stroke and the act of creation. In the etching it was all about the tension between the resistance of the material which created the doubleness. Here it is the opposite. It is the lack of tension. The stroke is free to do anything, but has no aim: without some kind of resistance, there is nothing to hold figuration together. It threatens to dissolve into nothingness. Conversely, the drawing can also be seen as a process of becoming. Like a form of automatic writing, the pencil darts around until it finds a point of densification. But even in such an interpretation of the drawing, the figuration appears artificial—it points to itself as the result of the artistic act of creation. The stroke is primarily stroke and only secondarily figuration. With its wild movement it calls attention to itself as stroke. Thus the figuration never becomes something in its own right. It points to the basic principle of creation: Someone has drawn me, I am the result of artistic endeavors, and therefore I am not for myself but always overflowing the boundaries that contain me. It is the stroke that in the very same movement creates figuration and dissolves it. Leif Lage, Untitled , 1999 (drawing) THE LIGHTNESS OF COLOR, THE DENSITY OF PAPER Often the watercolor is used as a precursor for larger paintings, because it has an immediacy in which one can quickly paint the main lines of a composition. However, Lage’s watercolors are not temporary points in a process leading to another final painting. They are not sketches, later to be filled with details in another material. For him watercolor is an end in itself. This also implies that he doesn’t try to work against the paper’s absorption of the water color and its tendency to absorb detail. On the contrary, he examines the possibilities inherent in this blurring of the line and absorption of color. As in the previous examples, there are of course recognizable shapes in Lage’s water colors. But these shapes are rarely separable from color, line or even paper. In other words: the figurative and the abstract more or less become one. One of the reasons for this is that Lage often works on wetted paper which means that the paper hungrily absorbs color into its fabric instead of it being on top of the paper. The paper becomes line because it is the absorption of the color which, together with the brush stroke itself, separates the colors from each other. The line is also color and the color is also line, because there is no separation between the different colors other than the colors themselves. At times this results in almost complete abstraction. In such cases Lage add lines with a pencil as if he wants to hold some sort of figuration together. At other times it is the other way around: the strokes of the pencil are a being dissolved by the water color blurring out the figuration. Untitled 1 from 1999 displays various tones of green. The contour of the colors appears unusually rough. Most of all it is reminiscent of a shoreline which has found its form through the work of thousands of years between water and land. Pockets of resistance surface as islands not yet drowned in color—as paper or color not yet consumed by the dominant color. The shape of the colors does not seem created by the hand of the artist, but rather by the inner workings of the watercolor: color against color over time has resulted in this very image, as if it is all a part of a natural process of change and decay. Despite the fact that there are no strong differences in color there seems to be a struggle taking place in the watercolor. For example, inexplicable holes in the dark color, which cover most of the right side of the watercolor, appear as if the underlying color is eating away the dark color, or that the dark color is in the process of covering up the underlying color. The small pockets of resistance demonstrate a process and development that, almost as a happy accident, evokes a couple of small eyes and a large mouth. Behind the colors a few slanted lines can be discerned, but the hand of the artist has long ago disappeared behind the life of the colors. Thus the watercolor seems to be held at precisely the point in time where figuration randomly appears. The small eyes and wide mouth seemingly express the realization of the figuration’s temporality. It is just a moment in time, soon to be consumed again in the life of the colors. The nature, the background it stems from and is part of, moves on undeterred, continuing its everlasting process of creation and decay. In this sense, the watercolor provides an experience of how neither artist nor man is able to transcend the materiality they consist of. The colors of man, the materials man consists of are “becoming” and “progress” but also “decay” and “disappearance”. The artist’s pencil strokes have been eaten up long ago, and the figuration is living on borrowed time. Human or artistic activity is about creating form, transcending mere matter by shaping and applying meaning to it. But Untitled 1 shows the doubleness of such creation: the transience and fragility of human life. Should the figuration come into being, should it rise and transcend the material, which binds it to its temporal existence, it would become nothing because its very existence is conditioned by the life and work of the colors. In the same sense man cannot escape his own temporality. He too, for better or worse, must accept a life in the volatility of sensation. Leif Lage, Untitled 1 , 1999 (watercolor) In most of Lage’s watercolors there seem to be a stronger artistic control than in Untitled 1 . Most often both the arrangement of colors and the technique in which they are painted express the hand of the artist. An example of this is Untitled 2 from 1999. While figuration in Untitled 1 seemed to appear as a happy accident, the figuration is much more “created” in Untitled 2 . Here the most important parts of the figuration, the eyes, the mouth and part of the skull, are colored black and painted on top of the background’s play of colors. The background primarily consists of blue and yellow tones. Only parts of the paper are covered in color, however, which yet again stresses the act of painting: There is a surface which is being filled by color by an artist. The blue tones are concentrated in the figuration, while the yellow tones surround it. All this means that the figuration stands out more clearly in this watercolor. This is also underlined by the fact that the blue and dark tones cover part of the yellow tones as spots here and there. Thus it is not a background which is in the process of consuming figuration, but rather the emerging figuration which blots out the background. Such an understanding is even suggested by how the mouth and eyes are placed in the larger blue color field. The eyes and mouth are in the center of the watercolor, while the blue color field is placed from center out towards the left side. This gives the impression of a face turned slightly to the right and slightly upwards, which again makes the mouth appear to emerge from the paper. It also helps that the mouth cuts the center axis of the watercolor. In other words, the arrangement of the blue and black colors create some depth and perspective which gives the illusion of a figuration, seen partially in profile, emerging from the background. Seen in profile, the eyes and mouth seem extroverted—they almost seem as if they are put on top of the face. But at the same time they are painted as black holes, sucking in the gaze of the onlooker. The watercolor is even more challenging if one follows what may be the faint outline of the skull, which, on the right side of the watercolor, no longer works together with the blue color, but rather alone postulates the outline of the skull. If not the blue color field, but this line, is the outline of the skull, then all of a sudden the face is not in profile but “en face”—staring directly towards the onlooker. Outline and color seemingly work against each other and establish two different expressions. Without the slightly upward tilted expression of the profile, the eyes and mouth do not seem to emerge from the paper. On the contrary, seen “en face,” the eyes and mouth are really gaping pits of darkness. In this sense Untitled 2 is at the same time surface and depth of perspective. The line gives form but at the same time it dissolves the form created by the colors, and vice versa. Leif Lage, Untitled 2 , 1999 (watercolor) As the last example of Lage’s artistic method, I have chosen another untitled work (as indeed nearly all of Lage’s artworks are)—this time from 2000. This is perhaps one of the most figurative watercolors Lage has created, though that doesn’t tell us too much. The painting depicts a human face in blue and green tones on a yellow toned background. The colors create a clear demarcation between the figure and the background, which compensate for the watercolor’s lack of outline. Beneath the face darker tones imply the beginning of the torso, and nuances of color even hint at something which could be a collar. The hair is in even darker tones and its structure is emphasized using pencil strokes on top of the water color. One eye is marked by a brown spot with a darker spot in the middle, while the other eye is added by pencil. The mouth is a round, red dot. In Untitled from 2000 the work between abstraction and figuration is much less pronounced than in the previous examples cited here. Nonetheless the watercolor has a delicacy to it which almost makes the figuration disappear, even as it appears. This has something to do with the fact that all the individual brush strokes have dissolved. The only outlines are those created by the clash of colors. Even the red mouth seems to be more paint than mouth—unable to be formed truly as anything other than a speck of color with some small semblance to a mouth. In contrast to the other watercolors, there is no movement, no progress or decay, just a vibrating standstill. The figure is not emerging or disappearing but embedded in and as surface, and as such it makes the figure seem stuck in its condition rather than freed by the act of giving form: mouth open as a wound. Pencil strokes add detail and life to the hair as an attempt to help the figure emerge. But all this does is create two levels in the watercolor: The pencil strokes are put on top of the figuration rather than being part of it. Thus they end up highlighting the endless distance between the movement and form-giving of the pencil strokes and the static and stuck figure behind these strokes. Leif Lage, Untitled , 2000 (watercolor) MAN AND THE VIEW OF THE ONLOOKER Lage’s works seem at the same time to be an examination of tensions between form and material in art and a display of an image of man full of the same tensions. This is because the people who are emerging in Lage’s images are not just in his works, They are his works. This means that man is not something emerging from a background but is part of this background and vice versa. The art of Lage inscribes man in its surroundings and background. Man is not the ruler of nature. Man does not rise above matter; there is no truly transcendent position for man to occupy in the art of Lage. Instead man is a part of the very matter, it, at the same time, tries to distance itself from in order to distinguish itself from its surroundings. Man emerges in an attempt not to be line, stroke, color. In an attempt to free itself of matter. Should it succeed in this, however, it would turn into nothing. On the other hand, if man fully accepted itself as mere matter it would disappear in it—in instincts, urges and lack of reflection. The appearance of man is thus subject to a state of being in-between. Only in the tension between material and its negation can the outlines of man be traced. However this also means that in the art of Lage man is never something in itself but always in process—on the way to its freedom and its loss. However, Lage’s art is not just about showing the tensions inherent in man but also about showing such tension on the verge of breaking point. In the moment before everything is done, or when nothing yet has been done, the delicate tension between form and material has been stretched to its utmost in such a way that man’s character of process emerges and is contained on the paper or canvas. Therefore, Lage’s art contain traces of human life. Not only is it an autonomous unity of tensions where man is stretched out between its singularity and the surroundings it is a part of. It is also this pulsation between figuration and material which brings about the traces of human endeavor and activity. Even when man almost seems to have disappeared into the material, strokes and lines are still there as a reminder of human activity and potential creative power—as a reminder that hope is still possible and that man is still there. The view of the onlooker seeks out forms and meaning. It seeks outlines and edges. But first and foremost it is the eyes in Lage’s works of art that allow the onlooker to decode the figuration at play. This creates a distinctive relationship between the onlooker and the artwork. The onlooker tries to wrest the enigma from the artwork, tries to reduce it to solid, meaningful form. But the very same moment that hints at such a possibility sees the view of the onlooker confronted with a gaze of its own. The eyes of the figure in the work of art are most often dark pits, as if they were an illustration of the violence committed against the eyes of the onlookers and their search for meaning. Or as if they were a dark reflection of the onlooker’s failed attempts to delineate the traces of life in the artwork to a solid meaningful form. Therefore, the gaze of the figuration speaks not only of its own powerlessness but also of the powerlessness of the onlooker. When the view or sight has trouble finding solid meaningful forms, it has something to do with the fact that the precondition for sight, light, no longer stems from something transcendent. In Lage’s art there is nothing outside the works of art, nothing outside of human life, and as such nothing to shed light on the works of art or human life and reveal solid meaningful forms. All light comes from within. In a western context, light as a medium for sight is central to the understanding of meaning. People speak of the clarity of thought, while knowledge is tied together with enlightenment, and so forth. But the light no longer originates from a divine point of view. It originates from man, who has created himself in the image of God. The problem with this is that light always covers up its own base. Light illuminates something but at the same time it hides itself. 6 While it was previously God who was unknowable, now it is man. It is also problematic that sight and the medium of sight stem from the same place. Following this thought one can posit two final problems. Firstly, the immediacy and presence established by light by making forms and objects accessible to sight is fake. Light is not some independent entity which present things in a neutral manner for the onlooker. It is inextricably tied together with the gaze’s desire after meaning. In other words: Light perverts the appearance of things because it doesn’t originate from some objective entity which allows them to appear as they are. Instead light is based upon and originates from the subject and its conquering gaze, seeking out meaning and form constantly. Secondly, the joining of sight and light makes introspection within human life impossible. Everything can be illuminated by its use value for the subject but only as long as it is separated from the subject, as long as it is an object. But the subject itself cannot be illuminated. Lage’s art tears down such a dividing line between subject and matter, but it does so without reestablishing a divine position from where the light emanates. Therefore, the light in Lage’s art may not illuminate very well. It may not have the certainty presented by modern science or the religions of yesterday. But it does show what such light tries to hide, namely, the subject as it is in its material reality—inscribed in time and death, which are the basic conditions of materiality, but at the same time also full of life in its joy and will to create. For the onlooker the meeting of the gaze in Lage’s works of art is thus also a destruction of the view of the onlooker. The ability to see is challenged in a radical way. Those outlines will not solidify into static form, as if the light was too dim to see. Just as in Lage’s figurations, the view of the onlooker turns to black: turns towards the onlooker in recognition and becoming—or disappearance. NOTES Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno. Dialectic of Enlightenment . (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2002): 4-5. Theodor W. Adorno. Aesthetic Theory . (London & New York, 2002): 176. Carsten Bach-Nielsen. “Mere glæde end gru.” Kristeligt Dagblad . September 24, 2002. Leif Hjernøe. “Den yderliggående inderlighed.” LEIF LAGE—Retrospektiv udstilling 1983 . (Copenhagen: Brøndum, 1983): 18. Ibid. Maurice Blanchot. The Infinite Conversation . (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993): 162-163. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 34.4 (2001) 292-307 [Access article in PDF] The Rhetoric of the Geometrical Method Spinoza's Double Strategy Christopher P. Long A double strategy may be apprehended in the first definitions, axioms and propositions of Spinoza's Ethics: the one is rhetorical, the other, systematic. Insofar as these opening passages constitute a geometrical argument that leads ultimately to the strict monism that lies at the heart of Spinoza's (...) philosophy, they function systematically as grounding principles. However, insofar as they are designed to uncover errors at the heart of the Cartesian system, they function rhetorically as a critique of Descartes's equivocal theory of substance. The geometrical mode of presentation lends an aura of necessity to the systematic strategy and tends to eclipse the rhetorical strategy that functions as a critique of Cartesian dualism. 1 To this extent, the systematic strategy itself functions rhetorically. On the other hand, to the extent that any seventeenth-century attempt to establish a monistic system would inevitably have had to involve a critique of Cartesian dualism, the rhetorical strategy itself functions systematically. Thus, although two distinct strategies are simultaneously discernible in the opening passages of the Ethics, the two work together, each arguing on a different front, to establish Spinoza's monism. By focusing on the rhetorical side of this double strategy, the underlying nature of Spinoza's critique of Descartes can be clarified and certain gaps in the systematic, geometrical argument for monism can be explained. Descartes's theory of substance The rhetorical strategy Spinoza employs at the outset of the Ethics involves a brilliant use of equivocation and ambiguity designed to draw a reader dedicated to Cartesian dualism into the heart of an argument designed to [End Page 292] undermine this dualism itself. The impetus behind this rhetorical critique is surely Spinoza's dissatisfaction with Descartes's theory of substance. 1. Descartes's equivocation Descartes's theory rests upon a fundamental equivocation: on the one hand, the term "substance" is meant strictly to designate that which is absolutely self-sufficient, namely, God; on the other hand, Descartes allows for a weaker understanding of substance, which pertains to those things (specifically res cogitans and res extensa) that require only the concurrence of God in order to exist (Principles I, 51-52; AT VIIIA24-25). 2 Thus, for Descartes, although God is, strictly speaking, the only substance, there remains a sense in which both res cogitans and res extensa may be understood as substances as well.Ultimately, this equivocal understanding of substance may be traced to a tension internal to Descartes between the Aristotelian notion of substance as underlying subject and the seventeenth-century mutation of that notion, which came to be defined in terms of causal self-sufficiency. 3 Jonathan Bennett traces the source of this mutation back to the view held by Aristotle that the existence of some property depends upon its being instantiated--that is, there can be no courage unless there exists someone courageous. He continues his interesting argument thus: This suggests that there is a relation of dependence running from properties to the things that have them and not conversely. The dependence would be logical: the thesis must be that "existent but uninstantiated property" is conceptually defective, not merely contrary to physics. Thus, one mark of a genuine thing, or substance, is its not being logically dependent for its existence on anything else. (Bennett 1984, 56) The development of this line of thinking leads to the conception of substance we find both in Descartes's Principles and in Spinoza's Ethics, namely, that a substance must not causally depend on anything outside of itself for its existence. 4 However, with Descartes, what emerges out of this tradition is a hybrid understanding of substance in which the term "substance" is not reserved simply for that which is utterly self-sufficient (God), but extends to those things that depend only upon the concurrence of God for their existence (rescogitans and resextensa). This bifurcated understanding of substance seems to stem from the distinction at work in [End Page 293] Aristotle... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Constructive Criticism: The Human Sciences in the Age of TheoryWilliam BywaterConstructive Criticism: The Human Sciences in the Age of Theory, by Martin Kreiswirth and Thomas Carmichael; 223 pp. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995, $45.00 cloth, $17.95 paper.This book contains twelve essays based on papers presented at “The Human Sciences in the Age of Theory” conference sponsored by the Center for the Study of Theory and Criticism at (...) the University of Western Ontario and held at the University in 1993. Versions of six of the essays are published elsewhere.In After Virtue Alasdair MacIntyre offers the choice of Nietzsche or Aristotle. Authors in these essays offer a far greater variety. For Christopher Norris it’s Nietzsche or (late) Foucault, for Tilottama Rajan its Nietzsche and Lacan or Hegel, for Martin Kreiswirth and Gary Wihl (in separate essays) its Nietzsche or narrative, and for L. M. Findlay its Nietzsche or Ricoeur and narrative. This range of options reveals the extent to which these authors are attempting to escape the cul-de-sac created by the skeptical and nihilistic dimensions of Nietzsche which appear in deconstruction and postmodernism. “Constructive criticism” is an apt title for these essays. As a group they struggle to offer a way of understanding the complexities involved in resisting dominating discourses, while not giving in to despair or skepticism or nihilism.Diane Elam observes that “the age of theory begins when theories fail, when no single theoretical discourse is possible any longer.” The variety of alternatives to Nietzsche listed above is one manifestation of the truth of Elam’s claim. A second is the fact that none of these authors proposes wholesale adoption of the thinker who is being contrasted with Nietzsche. Each is selecting certain specific dimensions of the thinker’s position to be used to maintain contact with the complexity which they sense in the world around them.A third and more profound recognition is that these authors are not proposing their choices in the same spirit as MacIntyre [End Page 268] proposed his. The meaning of “either/or” is shifting. MacIntyre’s opposition between Nietzsche and Aristotle opposes two systems the latter of which represents a way to keep safe from the danger of moral chaos contained in the former. MacIntyre’s either/or contains this sense of opposition which is also a sense of salvation, of protection from having to grapple with things that are confusing, messy, dangerous. In the age of theory when theoretical discourse becomes impossible we can no longer be protected. “Either/or” shifts polarity. It no longer means my position will trump yours: it now means “either closed theoretical discourse or complexity and multiplicity.” The authors in Constructive Criticism choose complexity and multiplicity because to choose closed theoretical discourse is to choose insensitivity to all sorts of injustice.Heterogeneity is the watchword of all the authors in this volume and many of them see narrative as the mode of access to multiplicity. Kreiswirth argues that the meaningfulness of narrative depends on overdetermination and “complex accumulations and conjunctions of desire.” Little narratives, not master ones, are best able to show complexity. Findlay urges the use of metaphor to keep us in a place between the center and the margin. Wihl uses Rorty, Kundera and Nussbaum to underline “the moral significance of detailed, richly descriptive vocabularies” in contrast to the ascetic language of philosophy which does not permit the irony required for “perspicuity in the areas of ethical conflict and competing social agendas.” However, Victor Li is not at all happy about Rorty (or Habermas) both of whom, in criticizing others, appeal to “modernity’s own totalizing view of itself” instead of possessing, as they should, a sense of “the complex cultural logic of the in-between, of cultural hybridity and exchange.”However, there are two authors who—happily, I must say—make it clear that they do not want to throw theory out with the bath water. They are willing, it seems, to take the risk of both preserving what they do (theory) and maintaining a sense of the complexity of competing social agendas, overdetermination and cultural “hybridity.” John Fekete advocates both “utopia (radical... (shrink)

In the debates on phenomenal consciousness that occurred over the last 20 years, Sartre’s analysis of pre-reflective consciousness has often been quoted in defence of a distinction between first- and third-personal modes of givenness that naturalists reject. This distinction aims both at determining the specificity of the access one has to their own thoughts, beliefs, intentions, or desires, and at justifying the particular privilege that one enjoys while making epistemic claims about their own mental states. This chapter defends (...) an interpretation of Sartre’s theory of pre-reflective consciousness that does not put him completely at odds with the naturalist critique and stresses that one’s pre-reflective experience should not be understood in terms of first-/third-person differentiation. This pre-reflective dimension of experience nevertheless allows a peculiar access to oneself, which grants no infallible epistemic privilege to the first-person, but lays the ground for a transformative process that makes self-knowledge possible. (shrink)

This paper analyses the way in which discourse and argumentation may vary depending on participants’ educational level and gender. Men and women from three different educational levels (literacy, advanced level and university students) participated in discussion groups that debated about women and work, the sharing of housework and the way in which girls and boys are educated. The results showed important differences depending on participants’ educational level and gender. In general, the main differences were related to educational level, while gender (...) tended to interact with educational level, as a moderating factor. (shrink)

The question of what ontological insights can be gained from the knowledge of physics (keyword: ontic structural realism) cannot obviously be separated from the view of physics as a science from an epistemological perspective. This is also visible in the debate about 'scientific realism'. This debate makes it evident, in the form of the importance of perception as a criterion for the assertion of existence in relation to the 'theoretical entities' of physics, that epistemology itself is 'ontologically laden'. This is (...) in the form of the assumption that things (or entities) in themselves exist as such and such determined ones (independent of cognition, autonomously). This ontological assumption is not only the basis of our naïve understanding of cognition, but also its indispensable premise, insofar as this understanding is a fundamentally passive, 'receptive' one. Accordingly, just as 'perception' is the foundation, ('objective') description is the aim of cognition, that which cognition is about. In this sense, our idea of cognition and our idea of the things are inseparably linked. Without the ontological premise mentioned we just would not know what cognition is, but it is basically just a kind of image that we have in our minds (an assumption that helps us understand 'cognition'). Epistemology not only shares this basic assumption (which it also shares with metaphysics), but it revolves (unlike metaphysics) entirely around it by making the idea and demand of 'certainty' a condition of 'real' knowledge. As 'certainty' is a subjective criterion this entails the 'remodelling' of the real, holistic cognitive situation (to which metaphysics adheres) into a linear subject-object-relation (which results in the strict 'transcendence' of the objects). And it also establishes, due to its 'expertise' in matters of cognition, the 'primacy of epistemology' over all other sciences. Now, on closer inspection, however, the expertise of epistemology seems not all that dependable, because it basically consists only of paradigms which, from the point of view of the holism of the real cognitive situation itself, are nothing more than relatively simplistic interpretations of this situation. However, we do not yet know what another conception of cognition might look like (which is not surprising given the high rank of the phenomenon of cognition in the hierarchy of phenomena according to their complexity). 'Certainty' as a criterion of cognition is thus excluded from the outset, and thus the linear relational model of cognition appears as what it is, a gross distortion of the real, holistic cognitive situation. The significance of this argumentation with regard to physics is that the linear epistemological model of cognition itself is a major obstacle to an adequate epistemological understanding of physics. This is because it is fixed 'a priori' to an object-related concept of cognition, and to 'description' as the only mode of ('real') cognition. But physics (without questioning our naïve notion of cognition on the level of epistemology) simply works past it and its basic assumptions. Its cognitive concept (alias heuristic) is fundamentally different from that of metaphysics. The acceptance of the real, holistic cognitive situation is, in my opinion, the condition for an adequate understanding of physics' heuristic access to objects, its transcendental, generalizing cognitive concept, as well as its ontological relevance and dimension of its own. (shrink)

Traditionally, the ideas of “intuitive” and “discursive” forms of understanding have been seen as near opposites. Whereas an intuitive understanding could have a direct grasp of something, a discursive understanding would always depend on what is given to it, as mediated by concepts. In this essay, I suggest that Paul Ricoeur’s conception of analogy presents a way of overcoming this opposition. For Ricoeur, an analogy works within discursive understanding, but it depends on an eventful insight that leads beyond what is (...) merely given in discourse. The analogy “gives more” for thought. Yet, as I argue, what analogy gives for thought is always explicable in conceptual terms: any intuitive understanding is commensurate with a discursive one. I illustrate Ricoeur’s mediation of discursive and intuitive understanding in particular with his conception of metaphor, which vividly depends on overcoming a discursive contradiction by analogical and intuitive means. Before introducing Ricoeur’s conception, I discuss the Kantian background of the intuitive/discursive distinction. In particular, I suggest how Goethe’s attempt to revitalize a notion of intuitive understanding can be compared to Ricoeur’s conception, though Ricoeur improves upon Goethe by grounding intuition in the specific phenomenon of analogy. (shrink)

There are many alternative ways that a mind or brain might represent that two of its representations were of the same object or property, the 'Strawson' model, the 'duplicates' model, the 'synchrony' mode, the 'Christmas lights' model, the 'anaphor' model, and so forth. I first discuss what would constitute that a mind or brain was using one of these systems of identity marking rather than another. I then discuss devastating effects that adopting the Strawson model has on the notion that (...) there are such things as modes of presentation in thought. Next I argue that Evans' idea that there are 'dynamic Fregean thoughts' has exactly the same implications. I argue further that all of the other models of thought discussed earlier are in fact isomorphic to the Strawson model. a search for the source of these difficulties reveals the classical notion of modes of presentation as resting on two assumptions, neither of which I recommend. It depends on denying that the way the mind reacts to or understands the thoughts or ideas that it harbours has any bearing on their intentional contents. And it depends on an internalist view of thought content, in particular, on denying that the natural informational content carried or potentially carried by a thought has any bearing on its intentional content. (shrink)

Habits usually come in the form of skilled action. Then, accurately explaining the nature of habitual actions requires to say something on skilled actions. Here we focus on the debate on skilled actions in the philosophical literature informed by motor neuroscience. The main question in the literature is whether practical knowledge can be reduced to propositional knowledge and, if not, how these different forms of knowledge can be related when skilled motor performance is in play. But this, ipso facto, also (...) represents a crucial question in the case of habitual actions. In this respect, we suggest that skilled action performance at the basis of habitual actions is the result of an information processing that is shared, within the motor brain, by both epistemic and practical states (of which we specify the nature and the relation). We offer a description of how this information processing works, so as to shed new light on how to conceive habitual skilled action, while also taking into account the practical mode of access to the epistemic states about this action. (shrink)

The HIT model comes close to a view suggested by Donald Hebb, that cognitive representations are organized as distributed neuron webs, cell assemblies, whose components are mutually connected and whose internal connections provide continuous information exchange among sub-components of the representation. Two questions are asked related to (1) the organization of internal connections of a concept representation and (2) the conditions under which information exchange between components are assumed in the HIT model.

Constantius, as though the Temple of Janus had been closed and all enemies had been laid low, was longing to visit Rome and, following the death of Magnentius, to hold a triumph, without a victory title and after shedding Roman blood. For he did not himself defeat any belligerent nation or learn that any had been defeated through the courage of his commanders, nor did he add anything to the empire, and in dangerous circumstances he was never seen to lead (...) from the front, nor even to be among the front ranks. But he wanted to display an exaggeratedly long procession, standards stiff with gold and the beauty of his attendants, to a population who were living more peacefully, neither anticipating nor wishing to see this or anything like it. For perhaps he was unaware that some earlier emperors had been content with lictors in peacetime, but when the heat of battle could not allow inactivity, one of them had entrusted himself to a small fishing boat, blasted by raging gales, another had followed the example of the Decii and offered up his life in a vow for the state, and another had himself explored the enemy camp alongside the regular soldiers; that, in short, various of them had won renown for magnificent deeds, and so committed their glories to the distinguished memory of posterity. …When he was approaching the city, observing with a serene expression the respectful attendance of the Senate, and the venerable likenesses of the patrician families, he thought, not like Cineas, the legate of Pyrrhus, that a multitude of kings had been assembled together, but rather that this was the refuge of the whole world [cumque urbi propinquaret, senatus officia, reuerendasque patriciae stirpis effigies, ore sereno contemplans, non ut Cineas ille Pyrrhi legatus, in unum coactam multitudinem regum, sed asylum mundi totius adesse existimabat]. Next, when he turned his gaze to the general populace, he was astonished at the speed with which every type of men from everywhere had flowed into Rome. As though he were trying to terrify the Euphrates or the Rhine with the sight of arms, with the standards in front of him on each side, he sat alone in a golden chariot, glittering with the shimmer of many different precious stones, whose flashes seemed to produce a flickering light. After many others had preceded him, he was surrounded by dragons, woven from purple cloth and affixed to the golden, bejewelled tips of spears, open to the wind with their broad mouths and so hissing as though roused with anger, trailing the coils of their tails in the wind [eumque post antegressos multiplices alios, purpureis subtegminibus texti, circumdedere dracones, hastarum aureis gemmatisque summitatibus illigati, hiatu uasto perflabiles, et ideo uelut ira perciti sibilantes, caudarumque uolumina relinquentes in uentum]. Then there came a twin column of armed men, with shields and plumed helmets, shining with glittering light, clothed in gleaming cuirasses, with armoured horsemen, whom they call clibanarii, arranged among them, masked and protected by breastplates, encircled with iron bands, so that you might have thought them to be statues finished by the hand of Praxiteles, not men [sparsique catafracti equites, quos clibanarios dictitant, personati thoracum muniti tegminibus, et limbis ferreis cincti, ut Praxitelis manu polita crederes simulacra, non uiros]. Slender rings of metal plates, fitted to the curves of the body, clothed them, spread across all their limbs, so that, in whatever direction necessity moved their joints, their clothing moved likewise, since the joins had been made to fit so well.When he was hailed as Augustus with favourable cries, [Constantius] did not shudder at the din that thundered from hills and shores, but showed himself unmoved, as he appeared in his provinces. For, when passing through high gates, he stooped his short body, and, keeping his gaze straight, as though his neck were fixed, he turned his head neither right nor left, as though an image of a man, and he was never seen to nod when the wheel shook, or to spit or wipe or rub his face or nose, or to move his hand [nam et corpus perhumile curuabat portas ingrediens celsas, et uelut collo munito, rectam aciem luminum tendens, nec dextra uultum nec laeua flectebat, tamquam figmentum hominis, nec, cum rota concuteret, nutans, nec spuens, aut os aut nasum tergens uel fricans, manumue agitans uisus est umquam]. Although this behaviour was an affectation, it, and other aspects of his more private life, were however indications of extraordinary endurance, granted to him alone, as it was given to be supposed. This passage, which describes the aduentus of Constantius II into Rome in 357, is one of the best-known episodes in the Res Gestae of Ammianus Marcellinus. This historical work was completed by the retired military officer in around 390, with the surviving books covering the period from 353 to the aftermath of the Battle of Adrianople in 378. Unsurprisingly, this passage is also one of the most debated. Throughout his work, Ammianus regularly criticized Constantius as a weak, vicious ruler, influenced by women and, in particular, eunuchs, and so contrasted him with his cousin and successor Julian, the emperor who receives the most favourable treatment within this text. The degree and nature of criticism within this particular passage has, however, been the subject of a variety of wildly differing interpretations. It is clear that, at the outset, Ammianus is inveighing against the notion of holding a triumph for victory in a civil war, but there has been debate over whether Constantius was actually celebrating a triumph or merely the anniversary of his accession. Similarly, the description of the Senate as ‘the refuge of the whole world’ has been read in contrasting ways, being regarded as derogatory by Johannes Straub, as neutral, or even positive, by Pierre Dufraigne, and as respectful by R.C. Blockley. While this passage as a whole is generally read as an attack on Constantius for his pretentions to ill-deserved military glory, it also raises the question of whether Ammianus was also criticizing Constantius for the way in which he performed his aduentus, emphasizing his pompous and autocratic behaviour in order to contrast him with Julian, who preferred to behave more like a ciuilis princeps in public. Of course, such a reading almost inevitably produces a portrait of Ammianus as an impractically nostalgic figure, harking back to a style of rule which was anachronistic in the post-Diocletianic Later Roman Empire. In addition, Ammianus also presented Julian as performing an aduentus into Constantinople in 361, employing some phrases that were similar to those used to describe Constantius’ procession in 357. Furthermore, as John Matthews has illustrated, Ammianus’ presentations of the occasions when Julian eschewed late-antique imperial protocol are not without tinges of criticism, and his judgement on the propriety of different modes of imperial behaviour varied dependent on the context. (shrink)

This article returns to the debate about the relative importance of the productive forces and the relations of production in the feudal mode of production. It argues, using western medieval evidence, that this relation is an empirical one and varies between modes, maybe also inside modes; and that, in the specific case of feudalism, not only were the relations of production the driving force, but developments in the productive forces actually depended upon them.

Amidst the climate of crisis surrounding the rise in opioid-related overdose in the USA, early in 2019, Google and Deloitte launched ‘Opioid360’. Here came a platform combining browser histories, credit, insurance, social media, and traditional survey data to sell the service of risk calculation in population health. Opioid360's approach to automating risk calculation not only promised to identify persons ‘at risk’ of opioid dependence, but also paved the way for broader applications anticipating common chronic diseases and coordinating logistical operations (...) involved in pandemic response. Beginning with this experimental platform, this paper develops an analysis of the Big Data mode of risk calculation - an epistemological and political shift that involves technology companies, investors, insurers, governments, and public health institutions. The analysis focuses on the re-emergence of ‘social determinants of health’ in the rhetoric accompanying novel analytic platforms that estimate, calculate, and compute individual health risks. While the treatment of SDOH has always been a site of political contestation within the discipline of public health, powerful interests are crystallising around the concept and instrumentalising it in platforms that sell algorithmic prediction. Silicon Valley's breed of asset-oriented technoscience appears not only to be amplifying the behaviouralist elements of public health. Among the stakes of the Big Data mode is the paradoxical retreat from changing social conditions that contribute to the prevalence of health and illness in populations; and instead, the promotion of an apparatus for pricing and exchanging individual risk or excluding from services those who bear risk most acutely. (shrink)

ABSTRACT. Richard Hooker’s (1554-1600) adaptation of classical logos theology is exceptional and indeed quite original for its extended application of the principles of Neoplatonic apophatic theology to the concrete institutional issues of a particular time and place—the aftermath of the Elizabethan Religious Settlement of 1559. Indeed, his sustained effort to explore the underlying connections of urgent political and constitutional concerns with the highest discourse of hidden divine realities—the knitting together of Neoplatonic theology and Reformation politics—is perhaps the defining characteristic of (...) Hooker’s distinctive mode of thought. Hooker’s ontology adheres to a Proclean logic of procession and reversion (processio and redditus) mediated by Aquinas’s formulation of the so-called 'lex divinitatis' whereby the originative principle of law remains simple and self-identical as an Eternal Law while it emanates manifold, derivative and dependent species of law, preeminently in the Natural Law accessible to human reason and Divine Law revealed through the Sacred Oracles of Scripture. For Hooker, therefore, ‘all thinges’—including even the Elizabethan constitution in Church and Commonwealth, are God’s offspring: ‘they are in him as effects in their highest cause, he likewise actuallie is in them, the assistance and influence of his deitie is theire life.’. (shrink)

In the debates on phenomenal consciousness that occurred over the last 20 years, Sartre’s analysis of pre-reflective consciousness has often been quoted in defence of a distinction between first- and third-personal modes of givenness that naturalists reject. This distinction aims both at determining the specificity of the access one has to their own thoughts, beliefs, intentions, or desires, and at justifying the particular privilege that one enjoys while making epistemic claims about their own mental states. This chapter defends (...) an interpretation of Sartre’s theory of pre-reflective consciousness that does not put him completely at odds with the naturalist critique and stresses that one’s pre-reflective experience should not be understood in terms of first-/third-person differentiation. This pre-reflective dimension of experience nevertheless allows a peculiar access to oneself, which grants no infallible epistemic privilege to the first-person, but lays the ground for a transformative process that makes self-knowledge possible. (shrink)

Nagarjuna and Quantum physics. Eastern and Western Modes of Thought. Summary. The key terms. 1. Key term: ‘Emptiness’. The Indian philosopher Nagarjuna is known in the history of Buddhism mainly by his keyword ‘sunyata’. This word is translated into English by the word ‘emptiness’. The translation and the traditional interpretations create the impression that Nagarjuna declares the objects as empty or illusionary or not real or not existing. What is the assertion and concrete statement made by this interpretation? That (...) nothing can be found, that there is nothing, that nothing exists? Was Nagarjuna denying the external world? Did he wish to refute that which evidently is? Did he want to call into question the world in which we live? Did he wish to deny the presence of things that somehow arise? My first point is the refutation of this traditional translation and interpretation. 2. Key terms: ‘Dependence’ or ‘relational view’. My second point consists in a transcription of the keyword of ‘sunyata’ by the word ‘dependence’. This is something that Nagarjuna himself has done. Now Nagarjuna’s central view can be named ‘dependence of things’. Nagarjuna is not looking for a material or immaterial object which can be declared as a fundamental reality of this world. His fundamental reality is not an object. It is a relation between objects. This is a relational view of reality. Reality is without foundation. Or: Reality has the wide open space as foundation. 3. Key terms: ‘Arm in arm’. But Nagarjuna did not stop there. He was not content to repeat this discovery of relational reality. He went on one step further indicating that what is happening between two things. He gave indications to the space between two things. He realised that not the behaviour of bodies, but the behaviour of something between them may be essential for understanding the reality. This open space is not at all empty. It is full of energy. The open space is the middle between things. Things are going arm in arm. The middle might be considered as a force that bounds men to the world and it might be seen as well as a force of liberation. It might be seen as a bondage to the infinite space. 4. Key term: Philosophy. Nagarjuna, we are told, was a Buddhist philosopher. This statement is not wrong when we take the notion ‘philosophy’ in a deep sense as a love to wisdom, not as wisdom itself. Philosophy is a way to wisdom. Where this way has an end wisdom begins and philosophy is no more necessary. A.N. Whitehead gives philosophy the commission of descriptive generalisation. We do not need necessarily a philosophical building of universal dimensions. Some steps of descriptive generalisation might be enough in order to see and understand reality. There is another criterion of Nagarjuna’s philosophy. Not his keywords ‘sunyata’ and ‘pratityasamutpada’ but his 25 philosophical examples are the heart of his philosophy. His examples are images. They do not speak to rational and conceptual understanding. They speak to our eyes. Images, metaphors, allegories or symbolic examples have a freshness which rational ideas do not possess. Buddhist dharma and philosophy is a philosophy of allegories. This kind of philosophy is not completely new and unknown to European philosophy. Since Plato’s allegory of the cave it is already a little known. The German philosopher Hans Blumenberg has underlined the importance of metaphors in European philosophy. -/-. (shrink)