Throughout the present paper, I propose an analysis of René Magritte’s artwork Les mots et les images (La Révolution surréaliste, 1929) in connection with a reflection on the associated theories he formulated in the handout for his London lecture (1937). Read in reference to selected writings (and in erratic observation with other artworks of his oeuvre), the eighteen propositions of Les mots et les images, along with their development in the 1937 document, might help at investigating the aesthetic (...) principles that guide and characterise Magritte’s reflection around language. In this same regard, in the last part of my article I will focus on Michel Foucault’s Ceci n’est pas une pipe (1973) and, particularly, on the distinction between resemblance (ressemblance) and similitude (similitude). These last remarks, I argue, offer the opportunity not only to think about the way in which images and words are related to each other in Magritte’s works, but also to inves- tigate the vital issue of language, which has occupied a crucial place within French thought. (shrink)

In the twentieth century, science and art had a grand paradigmatic shift each other. This study aims at comparing the epistemologies of surrealism and quantum mechanics that emerged in the 1930s and interpreting the paintings from a physical viewpoint, with a focus on the Copenhagen interpretation. In terms of epistemologies, the arbitrary relationship between an object and an image advocated by Magritte may correspond to the indeterminacy between physical entities and measurement. This study analysed the paintings of Magritte (...) from the point of view of the features of the Copenhagen interpretation categories of wave–particle duality, indeterminacy, probabilistic interpretation and quantum hypothesis. Based on such discussions, this study gives some implications for enhancing creativity through an interdisciplinary approach. (shrink)

This essay is prompted, in part, by a spate of alarmist articles in the media over the past several years concerning what journalists have called "the creativity crisis,"2 articles claiming, in other words, that American creativity is in decline. A corresponding call has arisen to seek remedies and determine how creativity might be fostered in the lives of children so as to stem the tide of this (alleged) decline. While taking these dramatic concerns and pronouncements cum grano salis, this article (...) responds, nevertheless, by extracting a set of themes drawn from the childhoods of three individuals whose remarkable contributions to the disparate fields of science, classical music, and visual art are beyond.. (shrink)

L'œuvre de René Magritte est très populaire, c'est sûr. Pourtant, les théoriciens de la peinture affichent parfois à son égard un certain dédain. Mauvaise peinture, ose-t-on dire. Chacun en juge comme il l'entend... mais ces critiques ont-ils saisi l'intention attachée à cette œuvre? Car un travail de la pensée la traverse. J'irais jusqu'à dire que l'œuvre de Magritte est cela même : l'exercice d'une pensée en images. Dans ce livre, je propose une enquête. Prenant appui sur les dits (...) et écrits du peintre, je tente de retrouver cette pensée en images. En eux-mêmes les tableaux 'y donnent pas accès : on aurait beau les interpréter, on ne découvrirait pas encore leur nécessité. Alors je les mets en rapport avec des concepts philosophiques. Je montre, à partir de sept études, que les images créées par Magritte sont comparables à des arguments et qu'elles témoignent, au sein de l'œuvre, d'une ressemblance avec la réflexion de philosophes tels que Platon, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein ou Sartre, sans compter Michel Foucault."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Magritte et les philosophes, written by a Belgian semiotician, puts in dialogue some paintings by René Magritte with some thoughts of Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Sartre, Foucault, and, in a chapter on La condition humaine, even Plato. Painted in 1933, La condition humaine represents a garden as seen from a salon, but in the room there is already a painting on an easel that represents the same garden. Because the second-order painting (the painting in the painting) is (...) placed in front of the window, we cannot see the full garden of the first-order painting. In it we see only the bottom of a hill and a part of a hedge, but in the second-order painting we see, in perfect continuity, the rest of the hill and the hedge. Thus we are inclined to think that the second-order painting covers exactly the reality it reproduces from the first-order painting and that, if we removed the second-order painting, we would see the same garden with a tree in the middle—a tree that for the moment we see only in the second-order painting.Therefore, some perceive in La condition humaine (and also in a similar painting, La belle captive) a parable of the transparency of painting. Opposing this position, Badir claims instead that “the pictures that are represented [that is, the second-order pictures] seem transparent; they give the sensation of transparency,... but their nature is totally different, and the painted landscapes in the [second-order] painting cannot make the representation [of the first-order painting] disappear.” We cannot superpose the painting over the reality to see whether the strokes of the painting cover exactly the lines of reality, since, if we do so, the painting gets between us and the garden. Still, we as observers cannot help but think that the second-order painting reproduces the reality behind it. But from where does that irresistible intuition come? Not from the resemblance between the picture and what it represents (since we know nothing about what is hidden by the picture), but from the continuity of the brushstrokes in the second-order painting and the lines of reality in the first-order picture.As in Plato's cave, in Magritte's room we have access to a semblance of reality, but in contrast to Plato, who regarded those shadows as pale imitations, Magritte offers us what may be a method of connecting semblance to reality less invidiously. The relation between the second-order picture and the first-order picture, between painting and reality, is not primarily a relation of analogy, since the analogy between the two orders is insinuated by other, nonanalogical relations—those of continuity and proximity between the brushstrokes of the painting and the lines of the garden. Even if Gilles Deleuze is not mentioned in Badir's book, this option seems to me to capture the gist of his critique of Platonism. When we are inclined to see a relation of analogy, Deleuze, like Magritte, wants us to pay attention to other, more diverse and more creative relations: nonanalogical relations that in some cases induce the sensation of resemblance.The title of Badir's book is Magritte and Philosophers, but it could just as well have been Magritte as Philosopher, because the classical philosophers he deals with play only a minor role as possible interlocutors for the painter. Magritte's thinking, as developed in his artwork, constitutes the main subject of this study. We learn while reading this book that painting can be a powerful tool for developing complex concepts and not merely percepts. Its argument may indeed be a critique of Deleuze's too-categorical distinction between the percepts proper to art and the concepts developed by philosophers. (shrink)

The rise of big digital data is changing the framework within which linguists, sociologists, anthropologists, and other researchers are working. Semiotics is not spared by this paradigm shift. A data-driven computational semiotics is the study with an intensive use of computational methods of patterns in human-created contents related to semiotic phenomena. One of the most promising frameworks in this research program is the Semantic Vector Space (SVS) models and their methods. The objective of this article is to contribute to the (...) exploration of the SVS for a computational semiotics by showing what types of semiotic analysis can be accomplished within this framework. The study is applied to a unique body of digitized artworks. We conducted three short experiments in which we explore three types of semiotic analysis: paradigmatic analysis, componential analysis, and topic modelling analysis. The results reported show that the SVS constitutes a powerful framework within which various types of semiotic analysis can be carried out. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.3 (2001) 459-460 [Access article in PDF] Reinhard Brandt. Philosophie in Bildern: Von Giorgione bis Magritte. Hamburg: Dumont, 2000. Pp. 470. Paper, NP. Reinhard Brandt, professor for Philosophiegeschichte, offers in his latest book a multi-faceted history of philosophy and art through his detailed interpretations of major paintings in the European tradition, beginning with Giorgione's "The Three Philosophers" and a young Raphael's "The (...) Dream of the Knight,"and stretching to René Magritte's "La condition humaine." In these paintings, as Brandt claims, different philosophical positions are expounded, which he then, in the role of interpreter, attempts to elucidate.In the introduction Brandt explains how this paradoxical phenomenon of philosophizing paintings can even exist. That one can find not only philosophical themes but well-wrought positions in such paintings, and, most importantly, not read these positions into them, is shown in more than thirty short essays, spanning from ancient Greek philosophy and literature, through the Renaissance and on to present-day Italian, French, Spanish, and German literature/philosophy. In almost every interpretation, Brandt critically reviews previous research, exposing and correcting some deeply rooted mistakes and constantly providing new impulses; in light of his philosophical-philological method, some major paintings in the European tradition are interpreted anew.His detailed analysis of Raphael's "The School of Athens" forces a persuasive revision of previous interpretations; the sitting figure in the foreground is not, as previously assumed, Heraclitus, but Democritus. On account of this carefully proven and convincing allotment, an unnoticed field of vision is discovered between the materialist and solid-state physicist Democritus, who with the gestus melancholicus is concentrating on a problem, and Plato, standing perpendicularly over him. Could this problem be the stone cube, on which the philosopher is leaning? From this conjecture we now have a bridge leading to Albrecht Dürer's engraving "Melancholia."Diego Velazquez's "Las Meninas" is interpreted anew on account of the surprising solution to the painting's puzzling construction. Brandt shows that the whole picture is viewed from the vantage point of the princess inside the painting, not of an observer outside it. The princess stands before a mirror and Velazquez paints everything exactly as the princess sees it. So the painting, which hangs in the Prado Museum, is the mirror image of a complete reflection of the Self; perhaps it is no coincidence that the painting belongs to the same historical period as Descartes' famous cogito ergo sum dictum. Or Jacques Louis David's "The Death of Socrates": although the painting has been correctly referred back to Plato's Phaidon, until now a Platonic ground position was falsely attributed to the painting. Brandt shows that the painting was conceived with Stoic philosophical positions in mind: death is portrayed as immanently present, coupled with the un-Socratic maxim mortem spernere. The virtuous stance that Socrates still shows on the threshold of death is decisive. And as an added bonus he includes his influential, previously published essay on the title-page emblem of Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan.Perhaps the greatest strength of this book is Brandt's technical know-how. He combines an encyclopedic knowledge of the European intellectual tradition with a [End Page 459] fluid, easy-to-read style, which not only instructs the reader, but entertains as well. At no time does this book approach mere philosophical pedantry; his treatment of some of the lesser known, albeit important, figures in the history of philosophy, e.g., Justus Lipsius and Diogenes of Sinope, is not a lesson in obscurity. The reader feels himself taken on a journey through a history of Western philosophy, always being provided with thought-provoking material. His style, however, is in no way used to mask the often shaky scholarship that has a tendency to go hand-in-hand with such interdisciplinary studies. In every essay Brandt exhausts all the sources; he works with razor-sharp exactness, proceeding with the meticulousness of an outstanding and seasoned scholar.A problem which always accompanies such books is the question: Cui bono? Are either the philosophers... (shrink)

I have always considered that the two questions respecting God and the Soul were the chief of those that ought to be demonstrated by philosophical rather than ...

This edition contains Donald Cress's completely revised translation of the Meditations (from the corrected Latin edition) and recent corrections to Discourse on Method, bringing this version even closer to Descartes's original, while maintaining the clear and accessible style of a classic teaching edition.

In 1988, Nadine Dormoy conducted a series of interviews with Rene Girard after a number of books and conferences had situated his work in a new context of research on self-organizing systems. In these interviews, Girard discusses the intellectual activity that followed the 1982 Stanford University conference, Disorder and Order. Girard also discusses Theater of Envy, his book on Shakespeare, as well as corrects several misunderstandings of his mimetic hypothesis.

In Descartes's Meditations, one of the key texts of Western philosophy, the thinker rejects all his former beliefs in the quest for new certainties. Discovering his own existence as a thinking entity in the very exercise of doubt, he goes on to prove the existence of God, who guarantees his clear and distinct ideas as a means of access to the truth. He develops new conceptions of body and mind, capable of serving as foundations for the new science of nature. (...) Subsequent philosophy has grappled with Descartes's legacy, questioning many of its conclusions and even his basic approach, but his arguments set the agenda for many of the greatest philosophical thinkers, and their fascination endures.This new translation includes the Third and Fourth Objections and Replies in full, and a selection from the rest of Descartes's exchanges with contemporaries that helped to shape and expound his philosophy. (shrink)

Dernier ouvrage publie par Descartes, le Traite des Passions de l'ame (1649) est le fruit de toute sa philosophie. Ce traite, qui s'appuie sur un resume de la biologie cartesienne, s'oriente vers une medecine concrete des affections psycho-physiologiques et s'epanouit en une apologie de la generosite. Aux observations scientifiques, Descartes ne dedaigne pas d'adjoindre des notations psychologiques dont la finesse evoque parfois ces maximes qui fleurissaient dans les salons au XVIIe siecle. Ainsi l'ampleur des conclusions scientifiques, morales et metaphysiques, sources (...) d'etudes toujours renaissantes pour les specialistes, se colore par surcroit d'une richesse vecue qui fait de ce Traite, ecrit pour une princesse et offert a une reine, le modele des ouvrages accessibles au plus grand public. (shrink)

Theory of Literature was originally published in 1949. It is not a textbook introducing the young to the elements of literary appreciation nor a survey of the techniques employed in scholarly research. The authors have sought to unite "poetics" (or literary theory) and "criticism" (evaluation of literature) with "scholarship" ("research") and "literary history" (the "dynamics"of literature, in contrast to the "statics" of theory and criticism).

These two volumes provide a translation of the philosophical works of Descartes, based on the best available Latin and French texts. They are intended to replace the only reasonably comprehensive selection of his works in English, by Haldane and Ross, first published in 1911. All the works included in that edition are translated here, together with a number of additional texts crucial for an understanding of Cartesian philosophy, including important material from Descartes' scientific writings. The result should meet the widespread (...) demand for an accurate and authoritative edition of Descartes' philosophical writings in clear and readable modern English. (shrink)

Law-enforcement agencies are increasingly able to leverage crime statistics to make risk predictions for particular individuals, employing a form of inference that some condemn as violating the right to be “treated as an individual.” I suggest that the right encodes agents’ entitlement to a fair distribution of the burdens and benefits of the rule of law. Rather than precluding statistical prediction, it requires that citizens be able to anticipate which variables will be used as predictors and act intentionally to avoid (...) them. Furthermore, it condemns reliance on various indexes of distributive injustice, or unchosen properties, as evidence of law-breaking. (shrink)

The avant-garde has been popular for some time, but its popularity has tended to fly under the radar. This ¿popular avant-garde,¿ conceived as the meeting ground of the avant-garde and popular, avoids the divorce of art and praxis of which the avant-garde has been accused. The Popular Avant-Garde takes stock of the debates about both the ¿historical¿ (¿modernist¿) and posterior avant-gardes, and sets them in relation to popular culture and art forms. With a critical introduction that examines the concepts of (...) ¿the avant-garde,¿ ¿the popular,¿ and ¿the popular avant-garde,¿ the series of essays analyzes the way in which the avant-garde employs popular genres for political purposes, as well as how the popular acquires a critical function with respect to the avant-garde. Each of the volume¿s three sections considers a different aspect of the productive exchange between the avant-garde and popular: the popular avant-garde as a culturally hybrid and cross-border phenomenon; the play between the popular avant-garde and developments in media and technology; and the popular avant-garde¿s upending of conventional ideas about ¿the people¿ and ¿the popular.¿ The Popular Avant-Garde takes a fresh look at the now canonical Dadaist, Futurist, and Surrealist movements from the perspectives of gender and sexuality, and cultural and critical theory, while at the same time exploring less well-known avant-garde work in literature, film, television, music, photography, dance, sculpture, and the graphic arts. This volume¿s coverage of the American and Afro-American, Luso-Brazilian and Latin-American, East-European, and Scandinavian avant-gardes, in addition to the vanguards of Spain and other parts of Western Europe, will appeal to all those interested in avant-garde and popular art forms. (shrink)

René Descartes's Regulae ad directionem ingenii ('Rules for the Direction of the Understanding') is his earliest surviving philosophical treatise, and in many respects his most puzzling text. It is a profoundly original work with few intellectual precursors, and offers the fullest account anywhere in Descartes's work of his theory of method. Yet Descartes left it unfinished, and unpublished, at his death in 1650. The versions currently known to modern readers are all posthumous: a manuscript copied for Leibniz in the late (...) seventeenth century, a Dutch translation of 1684, and the version printed in 1701 in Amsterdam. As a result, the details and date of its composition, its fragmentary, unfinished state, and its philosophical content have long puzzled scholars. The discovery by Richard Serjeantson in 2011 of a previously unknown, early manuscript draft of the Regulae in Cambridge University Library was a hugely significant event in Cartesian scholarship. This edition presents the Cambridge manuscript of the Regulae alongside the 1701 Amsterdam version of the text to allow comparison between the early manuscript draft and the version best-known to modern readers, together with a full English translations of both texts. It is also the first critical edition of the Regulae to take into account the full range of textual witnesses to the text, both manuscript and printed. The new Cambridge manuscript sheds important light on the composition, date, and philosophical content of the Regulae, and will provoke scholars to rethink key questions about Descartes's early philosophical development. (shrink)

Existenzphilosophie fragt nach dem Sinn menschlichen Lebens. Für den Konstruktivismus ist diese Frage schon beantwortet, ja, sinnlos: Für ihn ist die Wirklichkeit des Einzelnen ohnehin die ganze Wirklichkeit - es gibt keine »Objektivität«. So fremd sich beide Denkweisen also gegenüberstehen, so nahe sind sie sich in ihrer radikalen Subjektivität. René Weiland nimmt diese fremde Nähe in den Blick, indem er sich von der Kategorie der Innen-Außen-Differenz als eines Schaltbegriffs leiten lässt, der beide Denkweisen untergründig miteinander verbindet: als Nahtstelle alles (...) Systemischen wie als Nadelöhr unserer Individuationen. Ein Buch für Philosophen und Psychologen - und für Resilienz-Forscher. (shrink)

Existenzphilosophie fragt nach dem Sinn menschlichen Lebens. Für den Konstruktivismus ist diese Frage schon beantwortet, ja, sinnlos: Für ihn ist die Wirklichkeit des Einzelnen ohnehin die ganze Wirklichkeit - es gibt keine »Objektivität«. So fremd sich beide Denkweisen also gegenüberstehen, so nahe sind sie sich in ihrer radikalen Subjektivität. René Weiland nimmt diese fremde Nähe in den Blick, indem er sich von der Kategorie der Innen-Außen-Differenz als eines Schaltbegriffs leiten lässt, der beide Denkweisen untergründig miteinander verbindet: als Nahtstelle alles (...) Systemischen wie als Nadelöhr unserer Individuationen. Ein Buch für Philosophen und Psychologen - und für Resilienz-Forscher. (shrink)

Perceptual experiences inform us about objective properties of things in our environment. But they also have perspectival character in the sense that they differ phenomenally when objects are viewed from different points of view. Contemporary representationalists hold, at a minimum, that phenomenal character supervenes on representational content. Thus, in order to account for perspectival character, they need to indentify a type of representational content that changes in appropriate ways with the perceiver’s point of view. Many representationlists, including Shoemaker and Lycan, (...) argue that such contents are best construed in terms of mind-dependent properties. Other representationalists, including Tye and Dretske, hold that these contents involve only mind-independent properties. Susanna Schellenberg has recently developed an account of perceptual experience that would serve these latter representationalists extremely well. She suggests that we can do justice to the perspectival character of perceptual experience by appeal to representations of a certain type of relational properties, so-called ‘situation-dependent properties.’ In this paper, I critically engage with Schellenberg’s proposal in order to show how mind-independent representationalists can explain perspectival character. I argue that appeal to situation-dependent properties is problematic. I then show that mind-independent representationalists can account for perspectical character by means of scenario contents in Christopher Peacocke’s sense. (shrink)

'Those most capable of being moved by passion are those capable of tasting the most sweetness in this life.'Descartes is most often thought of as introducing a total separation of mind and body. But he also acknowledged the intimate union between them, and in his later writings he concentrated on understanding this aspect of human nature. The Passions of the Soul is his greatest contribution to this debate. It contains a profound discussion of the workings of the emotions and of (...) their place in human life - a subject that increasingly engages the interest of philosophers and intellectual and cultural historians. It also sets out a view of ethics that has been seen as a radical reorientation of moral philosophy.This volume also includes both sides of the correspondence with Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia, one of Descartes's keenest disciples and shrewdest critics, which played a crucial role in the genesis of The Passions, as well as the first part of The Principles of Philosophy, which sets out the key positions of Descartes's philosophical system.ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. (shrink)

This study evaluated the integration of psychology ethics into an introductory psychology course. Students in two general psychology sections were exposed to an infusion of psychology ethics in teaching, research, and clinical practice, whereas students in two sections were exposed to traditional course content. Students completed a pre and post-test assessment including a psychology ethics questionnaire and open-ended responses to three ethics case studies. Students in the ethics group displayed a statistically significant increase in scores on both measures from pre (...) to post-test. However, students in the traditional group showed no improvement in scores. (shrink)

Il s’agit d’une édition de fragments (titres et extraits de traités entrepris ou simplement projetés) et de commencements d’œuvres de Descartes qui nous sont parvenus par des sources variées mais parfaitement fiables, et dont Descartes lui-même a fait mention à un moment ou à un autre dans sa Correspondance ou dans le Discours de la méthode, mais qui n’ont jamais été pris en considération pour eux-mêmes. Nous avons réuni ces textes, nous les avons traduits quand ils étaient en latin ou (...) en néerlandais – tout en plaçant les originaux en regard –, présentés, datés et annotés historiquement et philosophiquement. Nous insistons sur la Licence en droit (placard découvert en 1987), l’Étude du bon sens, dont nous restituons l’objet et l’ensemble des fragments non identifiés jusqu’ici, et La recherche de la vérité, pour la première fois traduite en français à partir de sa version néerlandaise et datée de façon sûre. Ces textes ainsi réunis et datés présentent pour la première fois un Descartes inédit, travaillant en philosophe, et non seulement en savant, dans les deux décennies qui précèdent le Discours de la méthode. (shrink)

Der 'Discours de la Méthode', 1637 anonym publiziert, gilt als das erste und wirkmächtigste Manifest des neuzeitlichen Rationalismus und wissenschaftlichen Methodenbewusstseins. Beachtenswerter noch als die von Descartes angeführten vier Regeln selbst, die er als die Grundregeln für die methodische Erlangung wahrer Erkenntnis hervorhebt, erscheint aus heutiger Sicht die autobiographische Perspektive, aus der heraus der Autor das breite Publikum dafür gewinnen will, ihm auf seinem Wege zu folgen, der ihn zu der Entdeckung einer universalen wissenschaftlichen Methode und von lediglich auf die (...) autonome Vernunft gegründeten metaphysischen Prinzipien aller Wissenschaften geführt habe. Nach der 2011 erschienenen zweisprachigen Neuausgabe des 'Discours' (PhB 624), die sich – wie beinahe alle später verbreiteten Ausgaben – auf den Kerntext der Schrift beschränkt, also den 'Entwurf der Methode seine Vernunft richtig zu leiten und die Wahrheit in den Wissenschaften zu suchen', folgt jetzt die erste vollständige Ausgabe des Werks in deutscher Übersetzung, die auch die der Erstausgabe von 1637 angefügten drei Proben (Essais) der Anwendung dieser Methode auf Gegenstände der wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnis umfasst: die Versuche zur Dioptrik, zu den Meteoren und zur Geometrie. Das Ziel dieser Versuche ist nicht, den Lesern zu erklären, was Meteore sind oder wie Licht sich in durchsichtigen Medien verhält, sondern auf drei besonders »kuriosen« Gebieten, die stellvertretend angeführt werden, den Nachweis zu erbringen, dass diese Methode – als universale Methode – allen anderen überlegen ist: Die neue Methode ist universal, weil sie auf alle möglichen Gegenstände unseres Wissens angewendet werden kann. (shrink)

In convential democratic decison making, a contradiction has evolved between the demands of long term planning and democratic participation. In this article I will analyse, in how far new modes of decison making, such as national ethics committees, consensus conferences and participatory policy making on the basis of a precautionary principle, has been succesfull in coping with this contradiction. I will conclude that only participatory policy making could meet.

... Lorsque j'ai connu René Boylesve, il lui advint de me parler de son renom et de sa vente. Je reviendrai là-dessus. En tout cas, il pouvait rentrer dans la classe de ces auteurs qui, faute de savoir se montrer dangereux - car alors on vous respecte par crainte -, faute de savoir intriguer pour se faire rendre justice, et parce que les critiques notables les tiennent pour des artistes sans relief, restent dans l'ombre de leur vivant. Il est (...) entendu au demeurant que l'ombre, en France, appartient de droit au talent. Victor Hugo eut un mal infini à percer, et l'Académie l'élut à sa cinquième candidature... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Thomas Reid on MemoryRené van Woudenbergthis paper is a discussion of Thomas Reid’s views on memory as an “avenue of knowledge.” Part 1 deals with various remarks Reid makes concerning memory, knowledge, and belief which he holds to be “obvious and certain.” Part contains a more detailed discussion of Reid’s thesis that “memory is unaccountable.” Part 3 inquires how Reid’s critique of the Way of Ideas fits with his (...) own views on memory.Reid’s dealings with memory are part of his broader inquiries into the intellectual faculties of the human mind. In the Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man Reid discusses not only memory, but other avenues of knowledge as well, such as perception and reasoning. In these essays Reid is doing straight epistemology. This is not to deny that Reid addresses other topics as well. In the essay on memory, for instance, Reid criticizes John Locke’s account of personal identity. But even then his discussion focusses on epistemological matters; one of his conclusions, for example, is that Locke confounded personal identity with the evidence we have of our personal identity, a thesis, Reid points out, that is bristled with absurd consequences. Although, then, Reid’s views on memory are related with his views on personal identity, I will abstain from a discussion of the latter. His epistemology of memory, I think, warrants attention in its own right.11. memory, knowledge, and beliefI.IIn Essay III of his Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man [1784],2 entitled “Of Memory,” Reid writes: [End Page 117]It is by memory that we have an immediate knowledge of things past. The senses give us information of things only as they exist in the present moment.(EIP 339)Memory, says Reid, gives us knowledge of things past, whereas sense perception gives us knowledge of things present. Reid takes it to be “obvious and certain” (as the title of the first chapter of Essay III indicates) that “The object of memory, or thing remembered, must be something that is past; as the object of perception... must be something which is present. What now is, cannot be an object of memory; neither can that which is past and gone be an object of perception” (EIP 340).These remarks may, however, occasion some doubts. One way of explaining Reid’s remark that the object of memory is something that is past, is that whenever someone, S, remembers something, viz., that p, p will be a proposition about something that is past.3 This explanation gives the right result for such propositions as there was snowfall in late August, and she once visited Finland4 But, as Norman Malcolm has observed, it does not always give the right results.5 For, he says, there are cases of S remembering that p, where p is not a proposition about the past. Let p be his telephone number is 2 79-289-59 75, or his car is in the garage. What is remembered, in these cases, is a proposition about something that is not past, but present (or: about what is presently the case). It is, so it seems at least, possible for S to remember the present.It even seems possible for S “to remember the future” (something Aristotle deemed impossible).6 S can remember, for instance, that the game starts at 8:00 P.M., or that there will be elections next year.No doubt some will find these suggestions preposterous. Still, we say such things as “I remember my telephone number” and “I remember the game starts at 8:00 P.M.” Someone who balks at the suggestion that we can remember present and even future things, therefore, has to find a way of dealing with these quite common modes of saying. One way would be to argue that these manners of saying are incorrect, another that they are elliptical. Since the first thesis is unconvincing (it is, after all, correct, i.e., correct English to use the expressions under consideration), we are left with the second, viz., that these modes of saying are elliptical. Can this be made acceptable? Let us see.Might... (shrink)

Neue Musik ist eine Verkörperungsform von Aufklärungskultur und somit im akustischen Medium tätige Vernunft. René Thun erweist die Stichhaltigkeit dieser musikphilosophischen Perspektive, indem er statt von einer rein begrifflich deduzierten Ontologie vorrangig von einer medientheoretischen Pragmatik in ideengeschichtlicher Hinsicht ausgeht. Seine interdisziplinäre Verschränkung von Philosophie, Musik und Musikwissenschaft ermöglicht es, die kritischen Bezüge Neuer Musik zu Begriffen wie Aufklärung, Tradition, Natur sowie zur Politik, Anthropologie und Musikpädagogik zu explizieren. Der innovative Ansatz erlaubt es zudem, einen Ausblick auf eine mögliche (...) Musikkultur geben zu können. (shrink)

Presentation times of study words presented in the Deese/Roediger and McDermott (DRM) paradigm varied from 20 to 2000 ms per word in an attempt to replicate the false memory effect following extremely short presentations reported by . Both in a within-subjects design (Experiment 1) and in a between-subjects design (Experiment 2) subjects showed memory for studied words as well as a false memory effect for related critical lures in the 2000-ms condition. However, in the conditions with shorter presentation times (20 (...) ms in Experiment 1; 20 and 40 ms in Experiment 2) no memory for studied words, nor a false memory effect was found. We argue that there is at present no strong evidence supporting the claim for a nonconscious basis of the false memory effect. (shrink)

The book covers ways in which educators can develop social-emotional learning competencies of self-awareness, self-management, responsible decision-making, relationship skills, and social awareness in themselves and then within their students.