Peter Bornedalprovides an interpretation of Nietzsche's philosophy as a whole in the context of 19th century philosophy of mind and cognition.

In the 21st century, the screen - the Internet screen, the television screen, the video screen and all sorts of combinations thereof - will be booming in our visual and infotechno culture. Screen-based art, already a prominent and topical part of visual culture in the 1990s, will expand even more. In this volume, digital art - the new media - as well as its connectedness to cinema will be the subject of investigation. The starting point is a two-day symposium organized (...) by the Netherlands Media Art Institute Montevideo/TBA, in collaboration with the _L&B _ series and the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis. Issues which emerged during the course of investigation deal with questions such as: How could screen-based art be distinguished from other art forms? Could screen-based art theoretically be understood in one definite model or should one search for various possibilities and/or models? Could screen-based art be canonized? What are the physical and theoretical forms of representation for screen-based art? What are the idiosyncratic concepts geared towards screen-based art? This volume includes various arguments, positions, and statements by artists, curators, philosophers, and theorists. The participants are Marie-Luise Angerer, Annette W. Balkema, René Beekman, Raymond Bellour, Peter Bogers, Joost Bolten, Noël Carroll, Sean Cubitt, Cãlin Dan, Chris Dercon, Honoré d'O, Anne-Marie Duquet, Ken Feingold, Ursula Frohne, hARTware curators, Heiner Holtappels, Aernout Mik, Patricia Pisters, Nicolaus Schafhausen, Jeffrey Shaw, Peter Sloterdijk, Ed S. Tan, Barbara Visser and Siegfried Zielinski. (shrink)

"How do we go about weighing evidence, testing hypotheses and making inferences? According to the model of 'inference to the Best explanation', we work out what to inter from the evidence by thinking about what would actually explain that evidence, and we take the ability of a hypothesis to explain the evidence as a sign that the hypothesis is correct. In inference to the Best Explanation, Peter Lipton gives this important and influential idea the development and assessment it deserves." (...) "The second edition has been substantially enlarged and reworked, with a new chapter on the relationship between explanation and Bayesianism, and an extension and defence of the account of contractive explanation. It also includes an expanded defence of the claims that our inferences really are guided by diverse explanatory considerations, and that this pattern of inference can take us towards the truth. This edition of Inference to the Best Explanation has also been updated throughout and incudes a new bibliography."--BOOK JACKET. (shrink)

Negative characteristics are sometimes attributed to racial groups on the basis of culture. Sometimes these cultural characteristics are invoked to explain racial disparities. Many antiracist activists and intellectuals argue that such attributions are racist and, in this respect, are no different than attributions of negative characteristics to a racial group based on biology. In a recent essay, Lawrence Blum provides a typology of different kinds of views that attribute negative cultural characteristics to racial groups. One of the views that Blum (...) identifies treats the relevant cultural characteristics as malleable but does not attribute those characteristics to existing structural factors. Blum characterizes this type of thinking as a form of racist thought. I argue that Blum is mistaken in doing so and that there are good reasons for academics not to treat cultural explanations for racial disparities as too taboo to even consider. (shrink)

Near the beginning of his huge bestseller How to Be an Antiracist, Ibram X. Kendi says, “Some of my most consequential steps toward being an antiracist have been the moments when I arrived at basic definitions. To be an antiracist is to set lucid definitions of racism/antiracism, racist/antiracist policies, racist/antiracist ideas, racist/antiracist people” (p. 17). Unfortunately, for those who wish to be antiracists, Kendi’s definitions are anything but lucid. In fact, they are quite murky. This is particularly the case with (...) respect to Kendi’s definitions of racist and antiracist. (shrink)

The debate between Derrida and Searle has received much critical attention, with the commentary often being Derrida-friendly. Even when commentators detect weaknesses in Derrida’s argument, they ap...

In three exemplary essays, author Peter Bornedal promotes Deconstruction as a cogent analytical method whose distinctive critical object is foundational knowledge. In this, he wants to restore Deconstruction as a rational discourse, while continuing to emphasize it as a critique of metaphysics.

What is the relationship between common-sense, or 'folk', psychology and contemporary scientific psychology? Are they in conflict with one another? Or do they perform quite different, though perhaps complementary, roles? George Botterill and Peter Carruthers discuss these questions, defending a robust form of realism about the commitments of folk psychology and about the prospects for integrating those commitments into natural science. Their focus throughout the book is on the ways in which cognitive science presents a challenge to our common-sense (...) self-image - arguing that our native conception of the mind will be enriched, but not overturned, by science. The Philosophy of Psychology is designed as a textbook for upper-level undergraduate and beginning graduate students in philosophy and cognitive science, but as a text that not only surveys but advances the debates on the topics discussed, it will also be of interest to researchers working in these areas. (shrink)

Recently, Eric Mack, Edward Feser, and Daniel Russell have argued that self-ownership justifies a constraint on the use of property such that an owner’s use of property may not severely negate the ability of others to interact with the world. Mack has labeled this constraint the self-ownership proviso. Adopting this proviso promises right-libertarians a way of avoiding the extreme implications of a no-proviso view, while maintaining a consistent and cohesive position. Nevertheless, I argue that self-ownership cannot ground the constraint on (...) property use that Mack, Feser, and Russell think that it can. (shrink)

Libertarians are defenders of the free market. On their view, only the free market is compatible with the freedom of each individual to lead her own life according to her own choices. In a book and a series of articles, Serena Olsaretti argues that libertarians are wrong to believe that their commitment to individual freedom justifies the free market. According to her, libertarians rely on a problematic account of voluntary action. As part of her argument, Olsaretti develops her own account (...) of voluntary action. I offer two criticisms of Olsaretti’s argument. First, I argue that accepting her account of voluntary action does not compel libertarians to alter their position in the way that she claims. Second, I argue that her account of voluntary action has unwelcome implications by her own lights. (shrink)

Negative characteristics are sometimes attributed to racial groups on the basis of culture. Sometimes these cultural characteristics are invoked to explain racial disparities. Many antiracist activists and intellectuals argue that such attributions are racist and, in this respect, are no different than attributions of negative characteristics to a racial group based on biology. In a recent essay, Lawrence Blum provides a typology of different kinds of views that attribute negative cultural characteristics to racial groups. One of the views that Blum (...) identifies treats the relevant cultural characteristics as malleable but does not attribute those characteristics to existing structural factors. Blum characterizes this type of thinking as a form of racist thought. I argue that Blum is mistaken in doing so and that there are good reasons for academics not to treat cultural explanations for racial disparities as too taboo to even consider. (shrink)

Over the course of only a few decades during the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, part of mainstream Buddhist education underwent a striking shift in China. From being a secluded practice within monastery walls taught by monastics for monastics with a strict focus on Buddhist scripture, it became one where monastics and laypeople study together, guided by teachers, both monastic and lay, studying a curriculum of both Buddhist and secular subjects. Although general reforms within the Buddhist community of the (...) times received considerable scholarly attention, the topic of education development was discussed in only a few instances. Therefore, the present article sets out to explore why this radical methodological shift happened, and more concretely, how the individual learning trajectories of the reforms’ leading actors, and their involvement in specific communities, influenced the way the reforms unfolded. The author analyses the work and life of three generations of Buddhist reformers, namely the layman Yang Wenhui, and the monastic masters Taixu, Hsing Yun and Cheng Yen, employing Étienne Wenger’s social theory of learning. The theory’s main assertion that communities of practice provide the main fora of learning for individuals, and its description of the concrete ways in which this learning takes place can provide new insights regarding the specific unfolding of late-nineteenth to early-twentieth-century Buddhist education reforms in China. (shrink)

This study reads Anselm of Canterbury's enigmatic work De grammatico as his introduction to dialectic, covering a model for discourse, a theory of fallacies, and a theory of signification. It provides a new perspective on Anselm's dialectical thought, on dialectic in the 11th century, and on the continuity with 12th Century logical thought.

This article is a critique of the flawed logic Derrida employed in articulating his program of a Grammatology for “deconstructing” Western philosophy. I argue that Derrida in several instances built his arguments around what Kant called the “paralogism.” I look at an often cited case in order to substantiate my claim: Derrida’s reading of Saussure, where his argument is based on a paralogism. Derrida misinterprets Saussure by seeing his alleged rejection of graphical writing as a rejection of his own idiosyncratic (...) notion of “writing”, which only corresponds to Saussure’s own notion of “linguistic value,” produced in a system of differences without positive terms. (shrink)

This paper attempts to outline a model for introducing students to philosophical analysis based on presentations of the aporia by Nicholas Rescher. It isdeveloped from the premise that philosophy is a distinct culture of its own wherever it can be identified and that such basic exercises in critical thinking represent one of the common denominators running through all philosophical activity: namely, rational analysis of linguistic terms and logical possibilities. Dr. Rescher’s work over the years in logic is rightfully admired; however, (...) not enough attention has been paid to the many fruitful applications his work has for pedagogical purposes in philosophy. (shrink)

Most judgmental biases are found at the level of samples, but do not apply to each person; they reflect prevailing, but not universal, response tendencies. We suggest that it is more promising to study differences between biased and unbiased persons, and between easier and more difficult tasks, than to generalize from a majority of research participants to humans in general.

Taking as a point of departure three basic assumptions in Henri Bergson – that consciousness forms part of a pragmatic and of a refl exive circuit; that the formation of bodily habits and of contents of consciousness has an irreducible morphogenetical duration; that a basic asymmetry subsists between the given and the non-given, between knowledge and non-knowledge – some consequences of this asymmetry are sketched out: that learning is rythmical, that knowledge and ability are stratified, that the creative process is (...) of central pedagogical importance, that ideas of utility are unable to providea motivation for learning. The difference between linguistic and mathematical understanding is then outlined. From the irreducible morphogenetical duration, the maxims ‘as early and as much as possible’ are deduced, as well as the notion that curricula cannot aim entirely at applicability. Finally a notion of pedagogical seduction is presented, as well as a “founding aporia” for pedagogy: between problematization and automatization, seduction and interest, knowledge and ability. (shrink)

The essay introduces an interpretation of Nietzsche's Eternal-Recurrence-Thought distinct from traditional 'cosmological' as well as 'ethical' interpretations. The interpretation suggests that eternal recurrence is a conceptualization of intellectual and volitional processes. External recurrence is understood as a concept articulating peculiarities about mental processes related to knowledge and pleasure.Der Aufsatz stellt ein Interpretation von Nietzsches Gedanken der Ewigen Wiederkunft vor, die weder 'kosmologisch' noch 'ethisch' sein möchte. Diese Interpretation hält die Ewige Wiederkunft für eine Konzeptualisierung von Verstandes- und Willensakten. Der Begriff (...) der Ewigen Wiederkunft wäre somit entworfen, um Besonderheiten der Prozesse des Scelenlebens zu artikuliern, die mit Erkenntnis und Lust zu tun haben. (shrink)

The present article explores the historical sections of Grotius's De iure praedae Commentarius bearing the following fundamental but very important questions in mind: What did Grotius actually know about the Portuguese Estado da Índia at the time of drafting the treatise between 1604 and 1606/8? What did he know about the Luso-Asian trading regime or Asian trading practices at large? Using the published correspondence of Grotius, archival documentation, manuscript fragments as well as unpublished reading notes and drafts, a case will (...) be made that he had in fact few sources at his fingertips. This insight serves fundamentally to refute older assumptions, expounded notably by Robert Fruin and C.H. Alexandrowicz, that the young Grotius conducted independent research in the VOC company archives, or had immersed himself with Asian maritime codes or commercial practices. (shrink)