The domain of numbers provides a paradigmatic case for investigating interactions of culture, language, and cognition: Numerical competencies are considered a core domain of knowledge, and yet the development of specifically human abilities presupposes cultural and linguistic input by way of counting sequences. These sequences constitute systems with distinct structural properties, the cross-linguistic variability of which has implications for number representation and processing. Such representational effects are scrutinized for two types of verbal numeration systems—general and object-specific ones—that were in parallel (...) use in several Oceanic languages. The analysis indicates that the object-specific systems outperform the general systems with respect to counting and mental arithmetic, largely due to their regular and more compact representation. What these findings reveal on cognitive diversity, how the conjectures involved speak to more general issues in cognitive science, and how the approach taken here might help to bridge the gap between anthropology and other cognitive sciences is discussed in the conclusion. (shrink)

In this incisive and thought-provoking book, Francois Venter illuminates the issues arising from the fact that the current language of constitutional law is strongly premised on a particular worldview rooted in the history of the states around the North Atlantic Ocean. Highlighting how this terminological hegemony is being challenged from various directions, Venter explores the problem that all constitutional comparatists face: that they all must use the same words to express different meanings. Offering a compact but comprehensive constitutional history, Venter (...) investigates the ways in which the standard vocabulary does not fit comfortably in many contemporary constitutional orders, as well as examining how its cogency is increasingly being questioned. Chapters contextualize comparative constitutional methods to demonstrate how the language choices made by comparatists are shaped by their own perspectives, arguing that careful explanation of the meanings attached to constitutional terms is imperative in order to be persuasive or even understood. Tackling the foundational elements of the field, this book will be a critical read for constitutional scholars across the globe. It will also be of interest to high-level practitioners of constitutional law and political scientists for its investigation of terminology that is crucial to their work. (shrink)

By its nature, comparative education values diversity. Respectfully studying how different groups pursue education provides opportunities to learn about the variety of human experience, expand the boundaries of the field, and ultimately re-understand ourselves. At its core, the field leverages the dynamic space between life as culturally located and being human. This chapter contributes value to comparative education from an Oceanic viewpoint. Oceania is the world region with more water and languages than any other. Because of its diversity (...) and colonial histories, Oceania is a site of creative tension between regionalism and self-determination. Unsurprisingly, conflict exists in the region. However, a key need in our ‘sea of islands’ for sustainability is to live well together. Faced with the uncertainties of the future such as climate change, mutual understanding and support is at a premium. The collaboration of writers; Solomon Islander, Tongan, and Anglo-Welsh, embodies this, as does the chapter’s woven mat-based structure. The thrust of this chapter is that through walking backwards into the future and embracing solidarity through diversity, we can promote a sustainable educational journey that offers the hope of continuity in the face of the challenges ahead. (shrink)

Ragnar Rommetveit University of Oslo Let me start this introduction to Professor O'Connell's Critical essays on language use and psychology with some reflections on psychologists and crabs. It so happens that the first professor of psychology in Norway had the middle name Krabbe ("Crab") His full name was Harald Krabbe Schjelderup. Hence, the crab became our symbol for the psychologist. For many years a "crab feast" was held every autumn in Oslo in order to celebrate the material union of crabs (...) and psychologists and ponder (symbolically and metaphorically) their shared fate. A comparison between the predicament of the crab and that of the modern psychologist may indeed be illuminating, once we make certain assumptions about their unique epistemic missions and systematically explore the severe constraints on their heroic search for knowledge. The crab is ordained to unravel the mysteries of the ocean, yet doomed to crawl sidewise on the is most of the time mollusks and bottom. His catch, alas, cadavers of sea creatures, and he cannot help envying the fish swimming freely above him. The psychologist's mission is to unravel the mysteries of His obligation to seek insight into essential the human soul. (shrink)

Journal Name: Cognitive Linguistics Issue: Ahead of print.

Cet article datant de l’an 2000 proposait un survol visionnaire de la façon dont des media alors émergeants aux débuts de l’internet questionnaient la prémisse identifiant le succès d’un média avec la maximisation chiffrée de son audience. L’auteur passe en revue des « media intimes », des « media socialisés », des « media souverains » et des « media phatiques » pour dépasser les idées héritées du XX e siècle sur l’utilité et la qualité des mass-médias.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reframing Baudelaire: Literary History, Biography, Postcolonial Theory, and Vernacular LanguagesFrançoise Lionnet* (bio)In A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf quips: “History is too much about wars; biography too much about great men;” literary history, she might have added, is too much about sons murdering their fathers. Canonical readings of the canon have often insisted on the vaguely Freudian (if not biblical) model of literary creation susceptible both to “anxieties (...) of influence” and to creative revisions imposed by strong misreadings. Criticism has followed the same reactive pattern in order to clear new ground for further research: the debate between “traditionalists” and proponents of “cultural studies” all but repeats this familiar and combative dialectic. Between formalist and sociopolitical readings, French texts have been mined by many different critical trends; but the perspectives that do not fit neatly into one or the other of these agonistic moves tend to be left out. Dominick LaCapra has suggested that “one issue for readers today is whether a different, ‘noncanonical’ reading of the canon, which resists symbolic resolutions as well as narrowly formalistic interpretations, may be one force in reopening texts to the[ir] broader sociopolitical effects” [731].In the case of Baudelaire, the way to do this “noncanonical” reading might well be to go back to a discursive field which includes biography and oral histories, and to resist the temptation either to eulogize the innovations of the poet of modernity or to denounce the patent racism of his images. The challenge today is to return to the scene of writing and the conditions of production of the early poetry—in other words, to look at the text from outside of conventional literary, critical or cultural history, to reclaim it for our side, that of a more global francophonie. To do so might mean to map out once again the contested terrain of culturally and politically sensitive readings such as the ones Christopher Miller and Gayatri Spivak claim to do. Their readings, however, do not take into account the residual cultural element of the poetry, that is, the vernacular language it appropriates. This language is all but buried beneath the emergent theoretical practices of postcolonial criticism and its vaguely nationalist agendas. 1 Critics have tended to look for [End Page 63] symbolic resolutions and to settle cultural scores at the expense of historical and geographical specificity, despite claims to the contrary.The facts of Baudelaire’s youthful travels in the Indian Ocean have remained relatively obscure. While doing research in the islands of Mauritius and Réunion on two separate occasions during the past few years, I came across written documents and watercolors that helped me reconstruct the historical and visual contexts that appear to have been Baudelaire’s in 1841. By re-examining the criticisms that have been lodged against the exoticizing rhetoric of his poetry, I want to foreground the links between the Creole culture with which Baudelaire became familiar and the now canonical texts he produced. These links can allow us to bypass the sterile opposition between “literary studies” and “cultural studies” or between aesthetics and politics; they demonstrate the urgency of re-visioning the canon not just from the perspectives of its margins, but as an important source of muted cultural knowledge. The questions with which I begin, then, are the following: where did Baudelaire actually go on his travels in 1841? and why does this matter to the field of French studies?Il faut en finir avec la légende de l’Inde parcourue par Baudelaire. Elle était séduisante, Gautier l’a adoptée, Banville ne l’a pas négligée.... Mais la vérité vraie est que Baudelaire, embarqué malgré lui, brûla la politesse à l’Inde.... Peut-être Baudelaire abandonnait-il complaisamment au commun public ces bruits de longues pérégrinations en pays fabuleux, parce qu’il en tirait, avec des couleurs de mystère, l’air de revenir de loin. Dans tous les cas, il ne nous parlait jamais de ces voyages. A peine, à son retour, nous dit-il quelques mots d’une station dans l’île Maurice ou l’île Bourbon. 2[It is time to put a stop to... (shrink)

This article discusses the Homeric background of the Republic with the aim of elucidating Plato’s critique of Homeric nostos. It argues that the Republic unfolds as a nostos voyage, with Socrates striving to steer the soul home. Even though Segal has already argued for seeing the Republic as an Odyssean voyage, this article suggests that Plato does more than simply borrow the idea of a voyage as a metaphor for the wanderings of the soul. Rather, there is an implicit critique (...) of Homer as the “poet of Becoming” in the dialogue. Thus, reading the Republic in the context of other Platonic dialogues such as the Cratylus and Theaetetus where Socrates identifies Homer as the source of the view that Ocean is the origin of all things and that everything is in flux allows us to better appreciate Socrates’ critique of poets in the Republic. At stake in this critique is ultimately the question of the soul’s true nostos, which Plato identifies with a vertical ascent to Being rather than with a temporary homecoming within Becoming. This article contributes to the elucidation of the Homeric and pre-Socratic background of Platonic philosophy. It undertakes a literary reading of the Republic against the background of the hero’s journey motif. Specifically, it argues that Plato critiques and emends the Odyssean nostos in order to make space for Parmenidean ontology, thus forging a new understanding of salvation. (shrink)

Carl Mika claims in the symposium’s lead essay that we need more myth today. In fact, an “unscientific” attitude can potentially reorient the alienation from the world. For Mika, a philosophical mātauranga Māori incorporates such a way of being in the world. Through it, an unmediated and co-existent relationship with the world can be built up. Some of Mika’s co-symposiasts invite Mika to substantiate aspects about this bold claim. Carwyn Jones nudges Mika to discuss the parallels between tikanga Māori—a system (...) that seeks to incorporate Māori law—and the common-law tradition that is adopted in New Zealand today. W. Julian Korab-Karpowicz agrees with Mika that to understand the world through an indifferent “scientific” investigation is to understand the world only partially, while the Māori scientist Ocean Ripeka Mercier illustrates how she seeks to develop a third space in her work that reconciles the fear of the unknown with the propensity to control the world through knowing. Helen Verran invites Mika to think about whether, and how, his understanding of a philosophical mātauranga Māori can help to facilitate the cultivation of a naturalism that is able to generate a cosmopolitics in New Zealand. (shrink)

Oceanic languages typically make a grammatical contrast between expres- sions of alienable and inalienable possession. Moreover, further distinctions are made in the alienable category but not in the inalienable category. The present research tests the hypothesis that there is a good motivation for such a development in the former case. As English does not have a grammaticalized distinction between alienable and inalienable possession, it provides a good testing ground. Three studies were conducted. In Study 1, participants were asked (...) to write down the first interpretation that came to mind for possessive phrases, some of which contained inherently relational possessums, while o thers contained possessums that are not inherently relational. Phrases with non-relational possessums elicited a broader range of interpretations and a lower consistency of a given interpretation across possessor modifiers than those with relational possessums. Study 2 demonstrated that users assign a default interpretation to a possessive phrase containing a relational possessum even when another reading is plausible. Study 3, a corpus-based analysis of possessive phrase use, showed that phrases with relational possessums have a narrower range of interpretations than those with other possessums. Taken together, the findings strongly suggest that grammatical distinctions between different types of alienable possession are motivated. (shrink)

First published in 1982. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Name der Zeitschrift: Journal of Ancient History Jahrgang: 5 Heft: 2 Seiten: 280-303.

The papers collected in this volume exemplify some of the trends in current approaches to logic, language and computation. Written by authors with varied academic backgrounds, the contributions are intended for an interdisciplinary audience. The first part of this volume addresses issues relevant for multi-agent systems: reasoning with incomplete information, reasoning about knowledge and beliefs, and reasoning about games. Proofs as formal objects form the subject of Part II. Topics covered include: contributions on logical frameworks, linear logic, and different approaches (...) to formalized reasoning. Part III focuses on representations and formal methods in linguistic theory, addressing the areas of comparative and temporal expressions, modal subordination, and compositionality. (shrink)

Already translated into ten languages, this brief testament to the transformative power of ideas is resonating with readers—especially the rising generation—throughout the world. _Nobility of Spirit _is a spiritual journey to the source of those values—especially truth, freedom and dignity—that must be sustained in order for civilization to flourish. Riemen explores the tradition from Socrates and Spinoza, to Goethe, Whitman, and Thomas Mann—singular individuals who courageously refused to compromise their ideals, and he engages with them with great insight, intimacy (...) and invention. It is the anti-fascist Mann with whom Riemen feels a particular affinity, and who serves as a beacon to a world free of barbarism. Mann’s 1945 volume, _Nobility of Spirit: Sixteen Essays on the Problem of Humanity_, inspires the form of Riemen’s inquiry. Indeed, Riemen’s eloquent meditation on "nobility of spirit" begins with an extraordinary encounter with Elisabeth Mann Borghese, guardian of the oceans, and the last surviving daughter of the great author of _The Magic Mountain_ and other masterworks. Riemen’s slim, powerful volume ends with an essay on Leone Ginsberg, an Italian Jewish intellectual murdered by the Nazis, who implores his wife—the novelist Natalia Ginsburg—to “be brave” as he is taken to his death. Ultimately, Riemen calls for all of us to “be brave” as we battle those forces—terror, hate and ignorance—that are conspiring against humanity. (shrink)

This book features writing by 17 authors from Germany and from African and Latin American countries on highly diverse aesthetic phenomena as seen from their own different points of view. The texts in this volume all deal with the imperative of ‘decolonization’: they try to highlight aesthetic strategies for the (re)discovery of unthematized, misappropriated, transcultural and even transcontinental histories and memories and aesthetic practices that are absent from or too little perceived within national consciousnesses. Novels, poems and musical performances from (...) the East African region are analysed as intertwined histories of the Indian Ocean and its different languages. Artworks of the Black Atlantic and perceptions of Africa are discussed from, for example, Brazilian perspectives. Within the German context, decolonisation strategies in exhibition practices in ethnological or art museums developed by Nigerian artists are evaluated; new terms such as ‘dividuation’ are proposed to describe these contemporary composite-cultural entanglements, and so on. A stimulating, wide-ranging and heterogeneous portrait of contemporary interwoven world cultures! (shrink)

PREFACE WORD -/- Hilmi Ziya Ülken was born in Istanbul during the last period of the Ottoman Empire, was educated during this period and worked in many areas of the intellectual life of the newly established Republic. Although he was interested in many fields of social sciences, he gained fame in philosophy, sociology, history of thought and literature. Again, he undertook important tasks in revealing and introducing medieval Islamic thinkers and post-Tanzimat Turkish thought, and due to his deep knowledge of (...) Eastern and Western philosophies, he made comparative studies in these fields and tried to reveal the similarities and differences in both cultures. Many graduate studies, book chapters and articles have been written about such an important thinker whose works are also recognized abroad. Among the thinkers of the Republican Era, Ülken is one of the most studied names. In this study, Ülken's biography, his intellectual adventure, his understanding of philosophy and his ideas about the life of thought are discussed panoramically, and the bibliographic information obtained about his articles and other works that have not yet been fully revealed has been added to the study. Another important document added to this study is Ülken's biography written in his own handwriting. Our hope is that with the completion of the information missing in this study, a complete portrait of Ülken will be revealed. When Ülken's works are taken into consideration, it is understood that he wrote works in many fields of social sciences. The fact that he did not concentrate on a certain field but worked in many fields has been a frequently criticized aspect of him. In this sense, we think that the phrase "A Thinker of Mütebahhir", which we wrote as a subtitle to the title of our study, defines him very well. Many names have used the adjective mütebahhir, which means ocean and depth in Ottoman Turkish, about Ülken. While Necati Öner used it in a positive sense, names such as Cemil Meriç (1916-1987) and İsmail Tunalı (1923-2015) used it in a sense that includes negative connotations, such as saying words in every field, his knowledge is unlimited but formless and non-systematic, and Salâh Birsel (1919-1999) wrote on every subject. On the other hand, scholars such as Kurtuluş Kayalı and Ali Utku, who have recently conducted competent studies on Ülken, have emphasized that Ülken - contrary to popular belief - thought and worked within a system and was very sensitive about his system of thought. When Ülken's works are examined in general, it is seen that many of them were formed by turning lecture notes into books, and this situation caused many problems. This situation led to problems such as the disorganization of his works, the lack of a certain systematization, the lack of the necessary methodological sensitivity in footnotes and citations, and the use of some terms in their original language instead of their Turkish equivalents. When we look at the life stories of important thinkers in the history of thought, we observe that they were not only influenced by the social, political, economic, etc. conditions of the period in which they lived, but also that they influenced these conditions in the period in which they lived. The best example of this situation among the thinkers of the early years of the Republic is Ülken. When his works are examined in chronological order, it is noticeable that his ideas constantly changed, that he had to defend the ideas he criticized from time to time, and that he was in a constant search. He explained his works in many fields by saying that he wrote works that would be a source for his own works and that he served as a bridge to the past. The fact that he was a doyen in many fields of social sciences despite having a Mülkiye education can be explained by his self-education. Ülken, who set an example for academics and thinkers with his hard work, diligence, and lifestyle of constantly reading, researching and writing, carried out very important works in his 73 years of life. As Öner, a student of his who knew him closely, says: "In his daily life, Ülken was either reading, writing or philosophizing." Again, Tunalı says about his diligence that "when he was finishing a book, he would have written another book!" It can be said that one of Ülken's efforts was to establish a tradition of sociology and philosophy in Turkey by recognizing the disconnect in our world of thought. Ülken expressed this to his student Necati Öner by saying, "We are a quarter in philosophy, you will be half, and then we will be complete!" While the influence of philosophers and sociologists who came to our country with the educational reforms was quite limited, Ülken succeeded in establishing a tradition in Istanbul Sociology and Ankara Theology. For this reason, important sociologists and philosophers of our country, such as Baykan Sezer (1938-2002) and Kurtuluş Kayalı (born 1949), admitted that "we are students of the Ülken tradition" even though they were not his direct students. Ülken provided an important opening in the social sciences with his methodology that analyzed the problems he dealt with in depth, tried to deal with all aspects of the issues and made synthesis attempts between different ideas. In addition, with the newly established Republic, he made great efforts to collect and translate sources in many fields, especially philosophy, and to carry out activities on a philosophical basis. The fact that his works continued to attract attention in every period after him and were reprinted and read again and again reveals the centrality of his role in the intellectual life of the Republican period. In this study, in which the life, philosophy and thoughts of Hilmi Ziya Ülken, whose valuable contributions to Turkish-Islamic thought are undeniable, have been tried to be presented in general terms, the articles and book chapters I have written about Ülken in various journals and book chapters and whose titles I have given in the bibliography and bibliography section have also been utilized. I hope that this monographic study will make a small contribution to the studies on Ülken, who deserves to be remembered with mercy and gratitude. -/- . (shrink)

Sometimes, it seems as if scientists know everything about the world. They've recorded the songs of humpback whales, dug up the bones of dinosaurs, and tracked the storms of Jupiter. But the child scientist in What Will I Discover? knows there is so much more to explore. Do different trees speak different languages to one another through their tangled rainforest roots? Do faraway suns have planets like ours, with air and oceans and land? How do ideas pop into our (...) heads, and where do our questions come from? (shrink)

Our encounters with the physical world are filled with miraculous puzzles-wind appears from somewhere, heavy objects float on oceans, yet smaller objects go to the bottom of our water-filled buckets. As adults, instead of confronting a whole world, we are reduced to driving from one parking garage to another. The Child's Conception of Physical Causality, part of the very beginning of the ground-breaking work of the Swiss naturalist Jean Piaget, is filled with creative experimental ideas for probing the most sophisticated (...) ways of thinking in children. The strength of Piaget's research is evident in this collection of empirical data, systematically organized by tasks that illuminate how things work. Piaget's data are remarkably rich. In his new introduction, Jaan Valsiner observes that Piaget had no grand theoretical aims, yet the book's simple power cannot be ignored. Piaget's great contribution to developmental psychology was his "clinical method"-a tactic that integrated relevant aspects of naturalistic experiment, interview, and observation. Through this systematic inquiry, we gain insight into children's thinking. Reading Piaget will encourage the contemporary reader to think about the unity of psychological phenomena and their theoretical underpinnings. His wealth of creative experimental ideas probes into the most sophisticated ways of thinking in children. Technologies change, yet the creative curiosity of children remains basically unhindered by the consumer society. Piaget's data preserve the reality of the original phenomena. As such, this work will provide a wealth of information for developmental psychologists and those involved in the field of experimental science. Jean Piaget is known for investigations of thought processes. He was professor at Geneva University and director of the International Center for Epistemology. He is the author of The Language and Thought of the Child, Judgment and Reasoning in the Child, The Origin of Intelligence in Children, and The Early Growth of Logic in the Child. Jaan Valsiner is professor of psychology at Clark University, and a recognized authority on the life and work of Piaget. (shrink)

Thinking History Globally means thinking about the past and the present beyond national borders, language barriers, and enclosed regions. There are four thinking strategies to gain global perspectives: comparing, connecting, conceptualizing, and contextualizing. Comparing is about contrasting between several cases and drawing new conclusions. Connecting is tracking the interdependences between cases and assessing their importance. Conceptualizing is recognizing that developments in one or several cases belong within a larger recurring pattern. Contextualizing is making sense of one case amidst developments world-wide. (...) This book offers a practical guide into these strategies of thinking by applying them to multiple historical cases, ranging from the first civilizations and up to the First World War. While doing that, Olstein also presents the twelve branches of history that outstand in the application of these four strategies and in thinking history globally: comparative, relational, international, transnational, oceanic, global, world, and big histories, historical sociology, civilizational analysis, world-system approach, and history of globalization. (shrink)

walt whitman writes: “The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth have probably the fullest poetical nature”. Naoko Saito is an American philosopher and something of a Whitmanesque philosophical poet. Saito’s book is “the product of many years spent reading and studying American philosophy”. She further indicates: “Mostly I have done this from a remote part of the world—far from America across the Pacific Ocean—and, like so many others, in a language that is not my own”. Saito (...) is a scholar in and of translation.Saito states that the “tensioned relationship between Dewey and Emerson, and more broadly pragmatism and American transcendentalism... is carried forward into the present... (shrink)

To understand the history of Advaita Vedānta and its rise to prominence, we need to devote more attention to what might be termed “Greater Advaita Vedānta,” or Advaita Vedānta as expressed outside the standard canon of Sanskrit philosophical works. Elsewhere I have examined the works of Niścaldās (ca. 1791–1863), whose Hindi-language Vicār-sāgar (“The Ocean of Inquiry”) was once referred to by Swami Vivekananda as the most influential book of its day. In this paper, I look back to one of Niścaldās’s (...) major influences: Sundardās (1596–1689), a well-known Hindi poet and a direct disciple of Dādū Dayāl (d. 1604). Sundardās is typically classified as a bhakti poet rather than an Advaita Vedāntin; certainly he is not included in existing surveys or histories of Vedānta. In his youth, however, he studied Sanskrit and Vedānta in Banaras, and his poems present us with a mind that found no contradiction in claiming Dādū as his master and at the same time embracing the teachings of Advaita Vedānta. I argue that not only should Sundardās be included in histories of Advaita Vedānta, he should be credited for his originality: not only did he “Vedānticize” the Dādū Panth, he “Dādūized” Vedānta. I conclude by comparing Sundardās to two Sanskrit intellectuals from roughly the same period: Mahādeva Sarasvatī Vedāntin and Annambhaṭṭa, both of whom, like Sundardās, had commitments to Advaita Vedānta as well as to other intellectual traditions. (shrink)

Many schools of Indian philosophy stress the importance of knowledge on the path to liberation, but what kind of knowledge is meant? Is it the kind of knowledge that can be had through philosophical thinking, through a path of intellectual inquiry? In this presentation I will sketch the position of Niścaldās, a late Advaita Vedāntin whose magnum opus, The Ocean of Inquiry, though not well known today, was once referred to by Vivekananda as having “more influence in India than any (...) that has been written in any language within the last three centuries.” For Niścaldās, the central practice on the path to liberation is inquiry, an intellectual process of raising and removing doubts which, I argue, is closely related to the dialectical method employed throughout Indian philos­ophy. The practice of inquiry presupposes a high level of moral and spiritual qualifications, but once these qualifications are met, philosophical thinking itself becomes, for Niścaldās, a spiritual practice. This practice is the chief means for bridging the gap between purely theoretical awareness and a deeper, liberating knowledge. (shrink)

A growing number of geologists, geophysicists, and other Earth scientists now claim that human caused changes in the chemistry of the atmosphere, oceans, and land are so pervasive as to constitute a new geological epoch characterized by humanity’s impact on the planet. They argue that these changes are so profound that future geologists will easily recognize a discernible boundary in the stratigraphy of rock separating this new epoch from the previous geological epoch, i.e., the Holocene. They propose to name this (...) new geological epoch the “Anthropocene,” a term meaning the age of man. Common to this view is the claim that humans are now the ecologically dominant force on Earth. This paper compares the understanding of human self-identity developed by the defenders of the Anthropocene discourse with the understanding of human self-identity developed by radical ecologists. It concludes by arguing that only an ecologically and dialogically informed conception of human self-identity can provide an adequate point of departure for an ecologically benign form of human dwelling on this planet. (shrink)

L'actualité sociolinguistique des Départements français de la Caraïbe et de l'Océan indien illustre les contradictions internes qui agitent les sociétés créoles. Elle souligne également la difficulté que rencontrent ces territoires pour envisager leurs rapports entre eux. L'action de l'État destinée à valoriser les langues et cultures régionales dans la République, a relancé le débat public sur la question linguistique dans les aires créolophones françaises. L'existence d'un ou plusieurs créoles, les modalités de son écriture, les critères de sa généralisation dans le (...) cadre de son enseignement comme langue, sont au coeur du débat. Les défenseurs du créole écrit chercheraient à substituer une langue déviante et savante aux langues vernaculaires, niant de fait les particularités linguistiques de chaque territoire au profit d'un espéranto créole. L'analyse du développement d'un mouvement de revendications linguistique et culturelle dans les aires créoles françaises montre l'existence d'une dynamique identitaire revisitée à partir de la diversité culturelle de ces territoiresFrom a sociolinguistic standpoint the French “Departments” of the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean currently illustrate internal contradictions within Creole societies. These territories are also confronted with difficulties in establishing relationships between themselves. State action destined to promote regional languages and cultures in France has renewed public debate on the linguistic issue in French Creole speaking areas. The existence of one or several varieties of Creole, their modes of writing, the criteria of their generalisation in the context of how they are taught as a language, are all at the very centre of the debate. It is possible that the defenders of written Creole try to substitute a deviant and academic language for vernacular languages thus denying in fact the linguistic particularities of each territory in favour of a kind of Creole esperanto. The analysis of the development of a linguistic and cultural movement claiming a better status in French Creole areas shows the existence of revisited identity dynamics from the cultural diversity in those territories. (shrink)

The nineteenth-century poet, critic and philosopher, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, once characterized the mind of William Shakespeare as "oceanic". Oceans, of course, teem with myriad forms of life: is philosophy one such form in the oceanic vastness of Shakespeare 's creative genius? If so, how do we identify philosophic elements in his plays and assess the place they occupy? What sense does it make to speak of "philosophical criticism" of individual plays? How does Shakespeare incorporate epistemologies of his own (...) time and how dramatically appropriate are they? To what extent is Shakespeare of use to contemporary philosophers and how does he anticipate them; and, vice-versa, can such philosophies refine our understanding of certain issues to which literary critics may fail to do justice? That is, can philosophy take us beyond the purely literary examination of plot structure, character, poetic imagery, speech rhythms, dialogues, settings, etc. to grant us new insight into the problematical issues the plays raise? In the time at my disposal, I am going to attempt some answers to at least some of these questions, by dwelling briefly on The Merchant of Venice, Romeo and Juliet, and Hamlet. (shrink)

Inquiries about existence in Mesopotamia started with the Sumerians. They set an example for the civilizations established in this geography and affected them deeply. According to Sumerian mythology, they are cosmic forces identified with fresh water, salt water and mist that are eternal. With the combination of these cosmic elements, the sky and the earth, which are symbolized by the gods, were formed. The whole they formed was separated from each other by Enlil, who was identified with air, and celestial (...) bodies were formed with the expansion of air. The Semites continued this understanding with its main lines. In the Babylonian Epic of Creation, the beginning of the cosmic process is based on the generational conflict between the gods and is explained with the sacrifice of Tiamat, one of the first cosmic forces. The Chief God Marduk shattered Tiamat and created the universe from her remains, and man from the remains of Kingsu. According to the Mesopotamian mythological tradition, gods were derived from the first cosmic elements, which were eternal, and then they created the universe and man from these cosmic remains. According to Egyptian mythology, the eternal is the ocean. The primary gods, who existed in the eternal ocean, created the universe and humans with their natural secretions. According to many mythological narratives, the dominant god has performed the act of creation by expressing his thoughts or the imagination of the heart. As in Mesopotamian mythology, gods and natural beings were identified with a symbolic language in Egyptian mythology. Greek mythological approaches are gathered in outlines in the works of Homer and Hesiod, who are considered to be the founders of religion. Homer stated that the eternal, the divine ocean, is the source of everything. According to Hesiod, in the beginning, chaos (emptiness) occurred, and then the universe, gods and human beings emerged from this chaos, respectively. These understandings of existence also contain a significant amount of philosophical content. There is a parallelism between the understanding of being in myths and those of philosophers. (shrink)

The eminent 20th-century Polish philosopher Tadeusz Kotarbiński (1886–1981) is the author of a novatory philosophy of combating global suffering. Kotarbiński’s theory states that although humans are by nature rational, and additionally endowed with goodwill, human life nonetheless offers an endless stream of pain and suffering. Some of this suffering results from the essence of the human condition and can not be helped, mostly, however, it is the effect of the meanderings of the human mind and can be eliminated by education. (...) More than by anything else, the human mind is brought to err by so-called phantasmats, or emotion-laden intellectual mirages, mainly of a religious, national and political nature. Such phantasmats are the source and fundament of humanity’s divisions into hostile cultures, nations and political systems, which in turn gives rise to conflict between civilizations, countries and ideologies, inadvertently accompaniedby mounting mistrust, suspiciousness, xenophobia, hatred, armaments—and ultimately war. All this means an ocean of suffering for countless individuals. Both in philosophy and praxis Kotarbiński strove to eliminate all sources of suffering, including that stemming from differences in culture, development, nationality, and politics. He believed in the motivating powers of reason and the creative powers of persuasion, and consequently sought to attain his goal by rationalization, or focusing solely on the logic-driven and common experiencing of the human fate in a bid to eradicate cultural, national and political difference. Thus united, humanity would melt into one big human state devoted to lingering inevitable suffering. Today similar views are promoted as “global humanism”—which makes Kotarbiński a pioneer of the Humanistic Manifesto 2000. An Appeal for New Global Humanism brochure. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:PHILOSOPHY AND STYLE: WITTGENSTEIN AND RUSSELL by John Hughes Was there ever a great philosopher who was not also a distinctive stylist, whose modes of elucidation or comprehension were not inseparable from wholly individual ways of writing? If it is true that this is a fact often noted by commentators or philosophers, it is also true that its implications are somewhat neglected. A study of a philosopher 's characteristic (...) uses of language can suggest a great deal about the relationships between thought and personality—between what is said or written, and how or why. The aim of what follows is briefly to compare Wittgenstein and Russell in these terms, to suggest something of how a study of this kind can deepen our understanding of the personal sources and contexts of philosophy. Russell's daughter Katherine once wrote of her father that although he was "a passionate believer in liberty and equality" he was, in practice, incapable of "fraternity," an aristocrat "who had been taught to think himselfsuperior."1 Such paradoxes and blind spots are, ofcourse, often noted in men of vision and principle, and it would be invidious to lay too uncharitable an emphasis on these words. However, the comment does indicate a track of vision fundamentally characteristic of Russell. In intellectual terms he was capable of imposing upon phenomena of the most diverse kinds a synoptic perspective of supreme sweep and rigor which, nevertheless, coexists with all sorts of necessary simplifi332 John Hughes333 cation, even evasiveness. As an aspect ofthis his prose can come to seem both satisfied in its own superior lucidity, and tendentious. An obvious, if perhaps slighdy unfair, example of the personal aspect of this is a passage from the beginning of the Autobiography: "Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither... over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair...."2 The self-esteem which sustains and is sustained by this prose lacks relation to words, reader, and world. The vocabulary, sentiments, and syntax of this sentence assume an impossible grandeur which merely encloses Russell within his own expansive sense of his destiny. The comparisons here are worth pursuing. Russell depends on a congenial sense of an historic philosophical mission, and is adept at conveying his sense of this to the reader. However, he remains unreflective about the implications or nature of the process, and this may excite orirritate us depending on how we react to thewriter's assumption of our acquiescence in his own estimation of himself. The later Wittgenstein, in contrast, is far more suspicious of the way philosophy can be compromised by self-satisfaction: "A beautiful garment that is transformed (coagulates, as it were) into worms and serpents if its wearer looks smugly at himself in the mirror...."3 As has been implied, for Wittgenstein philosophy, in one aspect, was an attempt to authenticate self-presentation, as it was also an attempt to evade "the edifice of... pride."4 The unremitting grappling with words reveals the man to the reader, while the exacting inner focus and process ofthe philosophy exclude any composed consciousness of self. What of Russell's writing on other topics? Here is an example picked more or less at random from On Education: But that is not the real issue; the real issue is: should we, in education, aim at filling the mind with knowledge which has direct practical utility, or should we try to give our pupils mental possessions which are good on their own account? It is useful to know that there are twelve inches in a foot, and three feet in a yard, but this knowledge has no intrinsic value; to those who live where the metric system is in use it is utterly worthless. To appreciate Hamlet, on the other hand, will not be much use in practical life, except in those rare cases where a man is called upon to kill his uncle; but it gives a man a mental possession which he would be soriy to be without, and makes... (shrink)

continent. 1.2 (2011): 125-128. What is the nature of sound? What is the nature of volume? William James, in attempting to address these simple questions wrote, “ The voluminousness of the feeling seems to bear very little relation to the size of the ocean that yields it . The ear and eye are comparatively minute organs, yet they give us feelings of great volume” (203-­4, itals. original). This subtle extensivity of sensation finds its peer in the subtle yet significant influence (...) of habituated action upon our lives. This expansive quality of habit­making is what Craig Dongoski's bodies of work enable us to appreciate. Nearly ten years ago Dongoski had a habit of turning on his audio recorder every day at three o'clock for three minutes. No matter what the setting, what the activity, Dongoski recorded the ambient sounds in his environment at that moment. As it happened, one day he was teaching a drawing class and he recorded the sounds of their pencils scratching across their respective surfaces. This was a critical moment for him. Later he would place a contact mic onto a drawing surface and record the sound of his signature. Signatures change over time, they respond to the conditions in which they are performed. Signatures speak volumes about the author, but a practice of attunement is required for the volume to be audible. To hear all that a signature can tell about its author, the listener must tune into the frequency at which this information is being broadcast. Dongoski's drawings and video works draw­out the peculiar artifact that habit makes of living: habits establish a tempo of living and it seems that one's habitus is the signature of habitual living. I sat down with Craig in an attempt to sound­out some of the depths of thought in his practice. What follows is selected from our conversation. Paul Boshears (PB): Clearly your work is dealing with time: from the painstaking action of rendering the drawing to the free­form approach of launching a microphone into a body of water and waiting to see what's recorded. Craig Dongoski (CD): Are we talking about the films or the drawings? PB: Well, it's a bit of both in my mind. I know the drawings on first glance seem to be these flows of lines without concern but I realize that there is this painstaking action involved. CD: I'm interested in time because I'm interested in forms outside of control, outside of politics, and outside of economics. I think that art, when it's alive, does go beyond those. I'm interested in duality and paradox—a stream of contradiction, I suppose. For instance, scale and size. There is a tendency to think that these are the same thing. But really you can have something small that has a lot of scale—look at Goya's drawings, Los Caprichos , they're very small but they have a lot of scale. Likewise things that are spontaneous don't necessarily mean that they take only two or three seconds to do. This latter distinction is what I'm most interested in. Having that appearance of spontaneity. The image has rhythm, you can latch onto it; but the reality is that it took many hours—and many months in some cases—to arrive at. And this is in keeping with geological time. I like to insert this series of thoughts into my work sometimes as an attempt to make some of this stuff comprehensible. There are all these distractions inundating us throughout our days now. Time gets tweaked by all these technologies that we interact with daily. There's more than just digital time or the mechanical time of your watch. There's biological time, that time in which you're growing. PB: I'm reminded of McLuhan here: he made his career by making that strong claim that the humans of today are not the same humans of three generations ago because technology has fundamentally changed us. Are we not the same human beings as a hundred years ago? CD: I mean, I don't think we're the same human beings that we were when he was around! It's my understanding that before painting a flower, monks would meditate for hours on that flower and then they would complete the painting of that flower in less than a minute. That's what I want to point out about our world today, we have all this information, but how much of it are we metabolizing? PB: Is there a message you're looking for? Or that you're trying to share? CD: These drawings set­up the circumstances for me to continue them forever. I'm only about six years into it, but with more time, things can unfold. You know? If you take this cup of coffee and vow to restrict your work to only this material and medium for seven years—you'll make interesting work. The problem is that most people can't hold on to things or they give up or they get distracted. They don't trust that anything is possible; anything is potential material. Staying with this cup of coffee example, we can get enveloped in the history of the recycling logo, or the process for harvesting coffee and so on. The same is true for my work as it has lead me into places like graphical music scores. I had, of course, known about John Cage's notations and I'd always been interested in sound itself, but this drawing practice made it feasible to explore the intersections in a meaningful way. I think that if you trust your instincts and your curiosities and your abilities, then the bus drives itself. Look at Roman Opalka, he's kind of the patron saint of time painting. The claim is that no one can count to a billion in a lifetime so he's set­out to paint to seven sevens (7,777,777). He began with white numbers on a black field but over the years he has gradually reduced the black field to ever­lightening grays. His plan is to paint these seven sevens on what ostensibly will be white on white. PB: It occurs to me that I've never thought of the actual, literal, meaning of “microphone” in relation to “microscope.” The mic has made everything loud, the world's not allowed to be quiet anymore. Maybe we should call them “macrophones” since telephone's already taken... CD: Well, a microscope is a lens. What got me interested in sound was that a microphone acts like a lens. There are wide angle lenses, or a lens that gets your eye up close to something far away, or at a tiny level. The same is true of the microphone. You can use a parabolic mic to hear what the coach is saying on a sports field or a mic that picks­up the sound from the entire cathedral. There's this whole gamut... I'm kind of playing with the words here. I'm into the minuteness of the sound, but I'm interested in the minuteness of the mark itself. PB: I guess it's a Deluezean, generative, statement, then? It's not a metaphor, it's an actual thing with which we can work. CD : That's right. PB: While doing some background work on you I found myself at interesting places on the internet. For example, Konstantin Raudive and a brief jog into Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP); perhaps this was just synchronicity. But, it's a happy coincidence nonetheless because the them of this issue of continent. is “the moraine” and one of the nuances of this term is “what remains.” Is there a metaphysical or epistemological problem that you're sorting­out here? CD: Think about fossils: fossils are the first recording device, you know? It's the first, natural, recording device. It's in this way that I think my works are fossilized time. Artifacts of that process. Van Gogh is a strong source for me in this regard: it's not what he's painting it's how. You're seeing his nervous system at work. The what is so incidental, the chairs, the flowers, etc. It's funny: when I first started doing this, before I started drawing voices, I was doing these things in cemeteries. I was doing automatic drawings. And when I took this experiment to its maximum I was taking hydrophones and burying them in abandoned graves. I was thinking about the mic rig as the south coordinate and I'd use a shortwave radio as the north coordinate. Usually it was just white noise, but on the east and west I'd station a writer and a drawer. So I'd have these things going on simultaneously and I'd be mixing them at the same time. PB: How'd it come out? CD: Well, just like you'd expect. It was a lot of white noise. But I think that Raudive was on to something. Burroughs used to say something similar when he'd talk about being in a foreign country where he didn't know the language and then he'd start to hear things. At the base, what I'm doing is pattern recognition. I do have a writing component to the drawings. I haven't exploited it in a while but... I use a vocoder, which was developed to encrypt spy signals during one of the World Wars. The mechanism takes two channels, one being the spy's signal combined with noise and then the other channel is a sine wave so that the intended recipient can pick out the words. So I did something like this with Beowulf. I tried combining the spoken word with other television and radio sources, but that didn't work because a book on tape is usually read in a very steady clip and the result was too garbled. So the second try, instead of drawing I was writing, trying to articulate the sounds that I could hear in this garbled transmission of Beowulf. You start to think you hear something, so you start to write what you think you're hearing. But what you're hearing is just being triggered by this articulating action. When the sound of the drawing lines up with the sound of the word you get something. But it's not ever what you're really hearing. You start writing and you're trying to keep up with what you think you're hearing and it is truly, in the most true sense of the phrase, automatic writing. You can contrive and go into a “spirit trance” or whatever, but... PB: It's uninteresting to you? CD: Well, it's unbelievable. It's just listening to sounds and following along. The magic is out there, there are no tricks or anything. You do this exercise with twenty people and you will get twenty totally different writings. But, you're creating the sound and you're creating the writing as an interpretation. That's the thing with EVP, it's homophonic translation. PB: Do you trust a straight line? I know you start with these meticulous lines at the beginning of the drawings but they do change over time. CD: I'm trying to show that there are these imperfections in structures and that over the reiterations of these structures these imperfections become amplified. But you can see them in tree formation as well. The rings alter their shape as the trees grow. PB: Is that your transmission then? You're not just receiving these sounds but you're broadcasting this message as well? CD: Things exist because of their opposites. These drawings are really about nothing. It's the first body of work I've had where people project so much of stuff onto the works. So there you go, things existing because of their opposites. It's kind of like with Mike Kelley: the work was about a critique of commodity culture and commodifying emotions. Using toys this was a critique of production. But then suddenly people were saying it was about abuse and the abuse that Mike Kelley had suffered. And it wasn't but he heard that and said, “I'll go with it,” and so he did. I think that's the nature of communication: I send this but you receive that instead and this makes me think about what I sent in a different way. (shrink)

The purpose of this essay is to discuss Deleuze and Guattari's concept of the Third World. For Deleuze and Guattari, however, the Third World is not only a geographical term, but also one that denotes the linguistic zones, another term of the minority. The essay argues that the concept of the Third World is related to minor literature, the minor or intense use of language. This ‘transcendental exercise’ of writing is an opposition to the initial purpose of language, namely representation. (...) Language must escape from its normative usage, and then be liberated to a new spatio-temporality, in other words, the linguistic Third World zones. My conclusion is that the creation of Third World linguistic zones is the repetition of differences against the generalisation of representation, such as becoming non-human and non-European, not in imitation of the molar form of the animal or a non-continent extending terrestrial power into the ocean, but as the right way to invent the people missing in the Third World. Inventing the people of the Third World is the right condition in which alternative political subjects can be produced through desubjectification, not domestication, by capitalist axiomatics. In this way, Deleuze's political philosophy aims to use the virtual politics of the Third World to radicalise the actual representation of the existing Left. (shrink)

This Article explores the process of discovering legal scholarship. One may read, read, and read cases and statutes and articles to generate one's own piece of scholarship. But research, though necessary, does not produce durable scholarship. Lasting scholarship is like discovering penicillin. It is like capturing a fleeting revelation. It is an experience reported in language. True legal scholarship is researched poetry of the highest order. Rumi, Frost, Keats would have been great legal scholars. (This article might benefit new law (...) professors who are striving to make their scholarship float in the ocean of words.). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 22 (2002) 105-112 [Access article in PDF] A Response to Reflections on Buddhist and Christian Religious Practices Ursula King University of Bristol I appreciate the opportunity to respond to these essays of personal reflections, comparing Buddhist religious practices with some Christian examples. The different essays are rich in detail, engaging and challenging; they explore new vistas but also point to larger horizons that remain to be explored. (...) Each contribution is so different; each can be read in multiple ways, and further questions can be asked about all of them. Although each contributor has chosen a specific focus, a particular way of interpreting Buddhist religious experience and practice, for me a common thread connects them all. The overarching question, implicitly present even when not explicitly formulated, seems to concern what religious and spiritual practices are really all about.What is the nature and content, and even more, what is the purpose of religious practice? Can very different practices be compared across different religious traditions? Is it legitimate to compare Buddhist and Christian religious practices, even when they occur in very different contexts and are undergirded by different histories and systems of thought? Is the purpose of all religious practice always spiritual growth and transformation, or is the ultimate goal (if there is such a goal) utterly different and distinct from all such strivings?There can be no doubt that both external and internal religious practices can be compared at some level, that certain common patterns, shared meanings, and significance, can be discerned in a wide variety of religions. It is these commonalities that phenomenological approaches to the study of religions have extensively explored and classified, but theological, philosophical, and spiritual comparisons are more difficult to delineate. Yet they do exist and have been investigated by many Eastern and Western thinkers. The religious practitioner, who may or may not be a scholar, more often than not remains unaware of the myriad of subtle scholarly distinctions that inhabit a long-trained rational mind. For such a practitioner the strength of spiritual commitment and the practical help in the business of daily living seems to count most when assessing the benefits or otherwise of religious practice. Somehow I find it impossible to capture the ultimate significance of religious practices, whether Buddhist [End Page 105] or Christian, within the limits of ordinary language. We always seem to deal with preliminaries, with passing realities rather than abiding truth and ultimate wisdom. Yet we all know of the paradox that there is no other way to the Ultimate than through the Ordinary. It is through the manifold religious practices, however routine and repetitive, that spiritual experience patiently plots its path and weaves its pattern in order to arrive at some eventual destination or be engraced by the gratuitous joy of sudden transformation.These essays by academic colleagues and friends appealed to my spiritual imagination, and some passages moved me deeply. Their Buddhist insights are enriching and thought-provoking, their references to numerous Christian parallels—whether perceived in meditation, prayer, confession, almsgiving, asceticism, vows, gestures, use of religious texts, or reference to the need for community—sometimes drew my attention to links not seen before, comparisons not encountered earlier. From a Christian perspective I also recognized that some comparisons are only made in passing, so that several comments on Christian religious practices are not as developed as one might expect from an insider's point of view.All religious traditions, not just Buddhism and Christianity, involve movement, process, and transformation. Each faith tradition, grown over so many centuries and practiced in different societies and cultures by so many different individuals, possesses an ocean of riches that none of us can receive fully. There are major directions and patterns, there are mainstream and marginal practices, but no one would be able to follow them all, nor even want to practice them all, and some may even need to be discarded as obsolete or spiritually unhelpful.There exists always an excess of spiritual and ritual resources, an abundance of means whereby to find spiritual advance and fulfillment, just as there... (shrink)

Reinvention of the form of expression is a conceptual approach characteristic for the evolution of all arts. This research study provides one such step forward in the advancement of scientific paper, a standard form of expression in natural sciences, toward more progressive terrains. The paper adopts the form of a theatrical play where a scientific family of four attempts to find the way around a writer’s block (Act I). Their idealess sense of confinement is overcome through arts or, more specifically, (...) through scientific research implementing the aesthetics of music as its key element. The characters record compositions differing in the degrees of consonance, rhythmicity and tonality, and play them to birds to observe their vocal and behavioral responses (Act II). They note that the birdsong volume drops significantly when the piano tunes, especially the compositionally complex ones, are played to the birds and increases signifcantly when the white noise of ocean waves is played. The bird count experiment proves indirectly that the birdsong volume reduction is an auditory response of the birds to music rather than the effect of their migrating to or away from the sound source. This science with the flavor of art elevates the characters beyond the limits of their confinement and they, exalted and uplifted, gain ideas for creative research in their own disciplines of biomedical science (Act III). They relinquish the newly gained freedom in favor of embracing love for humanity that underlies medical research and return to their confinement, where they conduct, in the coda of the paper, a series of experiments that venture beyond musicology and ornithology and fall in the domains of tissue engineering and drug delivery, but also psychology (Act III). First, sparrow nests are used as templates for tissue engineering constructs, which facilitate the growth of human fibroblastic cells better than their artificial, gridded replicas. Next, the shell of an Easter egg, predominantly calcite in composition, is used with success as a drug delivery carrier. Lastly, the bird nest drawing experiment demonstrates a greater mental health of children than that of the adults, correlating with one of the overarching points of the paper, which is to present children as a model for grownups to follow rather than the other way around. Over the course of the play, the characters discuss the value of the various fusions between art and science, question the limits of human language and repeatedly go off-topic to celebrate the freeness of the creative thinking process. The play reports on real-life research methods and scientific results through a narrative, without diminishing their empirical rigor and analytical accuracy. (shrink)