The philosophy of “presence” seeks to challenge current understandings of meaning and understanding. One can trace its origins back to Vico, Dilthey, and Heidegger, though its more immediate exponents include Jean-Luc Nancy, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, and such contemporary philosophers of history as Frank Ankersmit and Eelco Runia. The theoretical paradigm of presence conveys how the past is literally with us in the present in significant and material ways: Things we cannot touch nonetheless touch us. This makes presence a post-linguistic (...) or post-discursive theory that challenges current understandings of “meaning” and “interpretation.” Presence provides an overview of the concept and surveys both its weaknesses and its possible uses. In this book, Ethan Kleinberg and Ranjan Ghosh bring together an interdisciplinary group of contributors to explore the possibilities and limitations of presence from a variety of perspectives—history, sociology, literature, cultural theory, media studies, photography, memory, and political theory. The book features critical engagements with the presence paradigm within intellectual history, literary criticism, and the philosophy of history. In three original case studies, presence illuminates the relationships among photography, the past, memory, and the Other. What these diverse but overlapping essays have in common is a shared commitment to investigate the attempt to reconnect meaning with something “real” and to push the paradigm of presence beyond its current uses. The volume is thus an important intervention in the most fundamental debates within the humanities today. Contributors: Bill Ashcroft, University of New South Wales; Mark Bevir, University of California, Berkeley; Susan A. Crane, University of Arizona; Ranjan Ghosh, University of North Bengal; Suman Gupta, Open University Ethan Kleinberg, Wesleyan University; John Michael, University of Rochester; Vincent P. Pecora, University of Utah; Roger I. Simon. (shrink)

It is these complex interrelationships that are the focus of the contributors to this volume, among them such distinguished scholars as Paul Ricoeur, Johan ...

Premise: our representational system has had a relatively invariant core throughout human history (cf. Sellars's manifest image). Major theses: (i) When philosophical argument establishes the existence of an entity, that entity is a representing, not a represented. (ii) Most of the documents in the history of philosophy are on a par (as dialogical resources) with current philosophical literature for establishing or controverting such existence claims. (iii) The use of mathematics (initially the mathematized neo-Platonism of classical mechanics) allowed modern physical (...) science to break with the perennial system of representation; in consequence, a portion of the representings of modern physical scientists do not belong to the historically invariant core. This limits the dialogical resources of physical science and the applicability of arguments from perennial philosophy to science. It also explains the relative irrelevance of pre-17th century science to contemporary physical scientists in contrast to the relevance of pre-17th century philosophy to contemporary philosophers. It also supports thesis (iv), that logic (broadly conceived) in central to all serious philosophical enterprises, since logic is the central tool for exhibiting and criticizing the rationale(s) of our representational system(s). Support for these theses will be found in the paper. (shrink)

Most historians of science eagerly acknowledge that the early modern period witnessed a shift from a prevailing Aristotelian, spherical, centered conception of space to a prevailing Cartesian, rectilinear, oriented spatial framework. Indeed, this shift underlay many of the important advances for which the period is celebrated. However, historians have failed to engage the general conceptual shift, focusing instead on the particular explanatory developments that resulted. This historical lacuna can be attributed to a historiographical problem: the lack of an adequate unit (...) of analysis by which to investigate the conceptual change. Here, a philosophical argument is made for representations of space as an appropriate category of historical investigation, and methods of textual interrogation are suggested to this end. Finally, two examples, taken from Aristotle and Newton, demonstrate the feasibility and importance of this project. (shrink)

This book is the first to explore in detail the role that symbolic representation plays in the architecture of Kant's philosophy. Symbolic representation fulfills a crucial function in Kant's practical philosophy because it serves to mediate between the unconditionality of the categorical imperative and the inescapable finiteness of the human being. By showing how the nature of symbolic representation plays out across all areas of the practical philosophy - moral philosophy, legal philosophy, (...) philosophy of history and philosophy of religion - Heiner Bielefeldt offers a unique perspective on how these various facets of Kant's philosophy cohere. (shrink)

Scientific concepts, laws, theories, models and thought experiments are representations but uniquely different. In On Scientific Representation each is given a full philosophical exploration within an original, coherent philosophical framework that is strongly rooted in the Kantian tradition (Kant, Hertz, Vaihinger, Cassirer). Through a revisionist historical approach, Boniolo shows how the Kantian tradition can help us renew and rethink contemporary issues in epistemology and the philosophy of science.

Philosophy, Society and the Cunning of History in Eastern Europe charts the intellectual landscape of twentieth century East-Central Europe under the unifying theme of 'precariousness' as a mode of historical existence. Caught between empires, often marked by catastrophic historic events and grand political failures, the countries of East-Central Europe have for a long time developed a certain intellectual self-representation, a culture that not only helps them make some sense of such misfortunes, but also protects them somehow from a (...) collapse into nihilism. An interdisciplinary study of this sophisticated culture of survival and endurance has been long overdue. Not only is it charming and worth studying in its own right, but with the re-integration of the 'new Europe' into the 'old' one and the emergence on the 'Western' European intellectual scene of many authors from the 'East,' such a culture will also shape the European mind of the 21st century. This volume decodes and explores this culture of 'precariousness' from the complementary angles of philosophy, political theory, intellectual history and literary studies. Expert contributors look at a wide range of topics, from philosophical martyrdom to collective suffering to geographical fatalism, and explore the works of key authors in the field including Cioran, Kołakowski, Kertész, Bauman and Žižek. This book was originally published as a special issue of Angelaki: The Journal of the Theoretical Humanities. (shrink)

Redner (politics, Monash U., Melbourne, Australia) builds on the thesis that crucial changes in human cultural history correlate with fundamental transformations in modes of representation. He traces human development from primitive culture to that of the present age to construct a comprehensive theory of culture. His theory challenges some established approaches in disciplines such as philosophy, semiotics, sociology, political theory, aesthetics, and history itself. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

We undeniably live in an information age—as, indeed, did those who lived before us. After all, as the cultural historian Robert Darnton pointed out: ‘every age was an age of information, each in its own way’ (Darnton 2000: 1). Darnton was referring to the news media, but his insight surely also applies to the sciences. The practices of acquiring, storing, labeling, organizing, retrieving, mobilizing, and integrating data about the natural world has always been an enabling aspect of scientific work. Natural (...) history and its descendant discipline of biological taxonomy are prime examples of sciences dedicated to creating and managing systems of ordering data. In some sense, the idea of biological taxonomy as an information science is commonplace. Perhaps it is because of its self-evidence that the information science perspective on taxonomy has not been a major theme in the history and philosophy of science. The botanist Vernon Heywood once pointed out that historians of biology, in their ‘preoccupation with the development of the sciences of botany and zoology… [have] diverted attention from the role of taxonomy as an information science’ (Heywood 1985: 11). More specifically, he argued that historians had failed to appreciate how principles and practices that can be traced to Linnaeus constituted ‘a change in the nature of taxonomy from a local or limited folk communication system and later a codified folk taxonomy to a formal system of information science [that] marked a watershed in the history of biology’ (ibid.). A similar observation could be made about twentieth-century philosophy of biology, which mostly skipped over practical and epistemic questions about information management in taxonomy. The taxonomic themes that featured in the emerging philosophy of biology literature in the second half of the twentieth century were predominantly metaphysical in orientation. This is illustrated by what has become known as the ‘essentialism story’: an account about the essentialist nature of pre- Darwinian taxonomy that used to be accepted by many historians and philosophers, and which stimulated efforts to document and interpret shifts in the metaphysical understanding of species and (natural) classification (Richards 2010; Winsor 2003; Wilkins 2009). Although contemporary debates in the philosophy of taxonomy have moved on, much discussion continues to focus on conceptual and metaphysical issues surrounding the nature of species and the principles of classification. Discussions centring on whether species are individuals, classes, or kinds have sprung up as predictably as perennials. Raucous debates have arisen even with the aim of accommodating the diversity of views: is monism, pluralism, or eliminativism about the species category the best position to take? In addition to these, our disciplines continue to interrogate what is the nature of these different approaches to classification: are they representational or inferential roles of different approaches to classification (evolutionary taxonomy, phenetics, phylogenetic systematics)? While there is still much to learn from these discussions—in which we both actively participate—our aim with this topical collection has been to seek different entrypoints and address underexposed themes in the history and philosophy of taxonomy. We believe that approaching taxonomy as an information science prompts new questions and can open up new philosophical vistas worth exploring. A twenty-first century information science turn in the history and philosophy of taxonomy is already underway. In scientific practice and in daily life it is hard to escape the imaginaries of Big Data and the constant threats of being ‘flooded with data’. In the life sciences, these developments are often associated with the socalled bioinformatics crisis that can hopefully be contained by a new, interdisciplinary breed of bioinformaticians. These new concepts, narratives, and developments surrounding the centrality of data and information systems in the biological and biomedical sciences have raised important philosophical questions about their challenges and implications. But historical perspectives are just as necessary to judge what makes our information age different from those that preceded us. Indeed, as the British zoologist Charles Godfray has often pointed out, the piles of data that are being generated in contemporary systematic biology have led to a second bioinformatics crisis, the first being the one that confronted Linnaeus in the mid-18th century (Godfray 2007). Although our aim is to clear a path for new discussions of taxonomy from an information science-informed point of view, we continue where others in the history, philosophy, and sociology of science have already trod. We believe that an appreciation of biological taxonomy as an information science raises many questions about the philosophical, theoretical, material, and practical aspects of the use and revision of biological nomenclatures in different local and global communities of scientists and citizen scientists. In particular, conceiving of taxonomy as an information science directs attention to the temporalities of managing an accumulating data about classified entities that are themselves subject to revision, to the means by which revision is accomplished, and to the semantic, material, and collaborative contexts that mediate the execution of revisions. (shrink)

It is supposed to be common knowledge about the history of ideas that one of the few medieval philosophical contributions preserved in modern philosophical thought is the idea that mental phenomena are distinguished from physical phenomena by their intentionality, their directedness toward some object. As is usually the case with such commonplaces about the history of ideas, this claim is not quite true. Medieval philosophers routinely described ordinary physical phenomena, such as reflections in mirrors or sounds in the air, as (...) exhibiting intentionality, while they described what modern philosophers would take to be typically mental phenomena, such as sensation and imagination, as ordinary physical processes. Still, it is true that medieval philosophers would regard all acts of cognition as characterized by intentionality, on account of which all these acts are some sort of representations of their intended objects. This course is going to provide a broad survey of the conceptual relationships between intentionality, cognition and mental representation as conceived by some of the greatest medieval philosophers, including Aquinas, Scotus, Ockham and Buridan, and some of their lesser known contemporaries. The clarification of these conceptual connections sheds some light not only on the intriguing historical relationships between medieval and modern thought on these issues, but also on some fundamental questions in the philosophy of mind as it is conceived today. (shrink)

The notions of mental representation and intentionality are thought to have originated with Descartes in the seventeenth century. The authors in this book challenge this assumption and show that the history of these ideas can be traced back to the medieval period. They conclude that there is no clear dividing line between western late medieval and early modern philosophy.

Accounts of the evolutionary past have as much in common with works of narrative history as they do with works of science. Awareness of the narrative character of evolutionary writing leads to the discovery of a host of fascinating and hitherto unrecognized problems in the representation of evolutionary history, problems associated with the writing of narrative. These problems include selective attention, narrative perspective, foregrounding and backgrounding, differential resolution, and the establishment of a canon of important events. The narrative aspects (...) of evolutionary writing, however, which promote linearity and cohesiveness in conventional stories, conflict with the underlying chronicle of evolution, which is not linear, but branched, and which does not cohere, but diverges. The impulse to narrate is so great, however, and is so strongly reinforced by traditional schemes of taxonomic attention, that natural historians have more often abandoned the diverging tree than they have abandoned the narrative mode of representation. If we are to understand the true nature of the evolutionary past then we must adopt tree thinking, and develop new and creative ways, both narrative and non-narrative, of telling the history of life. (shrink)

The mental and the social are ‘two sides of the same coin’. In other words, ‘social relations are internal relations’. In showing how this was the point of Wittgenstein’s discussion of the practice of ‘following a rule’, Peter Winch has made an important contribution to social philosophy.

Accounts of the evolutionary past have as much in common with works of narrative history as they do with works of science. Awareness of the narrative character of evolutionary writing leads to the discovery of a host of fascinating and hitherto unrecognized problems in the representation of evolutionary history, problems associated with the writing of narrative. These problems include selective attention, narrative perspective, foregrounding and backgrounding, differential resolution, and the establishment of a canon of important events. The narrative aspects (...) of evolutionary writing, however, which promote linearity and cohesiveness in conventional stories, conflict with the underlying chronicle of evolution, which is not linear, but branched, and which does not cohere, but diverges. The impulse to narrate is so great, however, and is so strongly reinforced by traditional schemes of taxonomic attention, that natural historians have more often abandoned the diverging tree than they have abandoned the narrative mode of representation. If we are to understand the true nature of the evolutionary past then we must adopt “tree thinking”, and develop new and creative ways, both narrative and non-narrative, of telling the history of life. (shrink)

This first extensive study of Spinoza's philosophy of mind concentrates on two problems crucial to the philosopher's thoughts on the matter: the requirements for having a thought about a particular object, and the problem of the mind's relation to the body. Della Rocca contends that Spinoza's positions are systematically connected with each other and with a principle at the heart of his metaphysical system: his denial of causal or explanatory relations between the mental and the physical. In this way, (...) Della Rocca's exploration of these two problems provides a new and illuminating perspective on Spinoza's philosophy as a system. (shrink)

Danto's Analytical Philosopy of History is one of the undisputed classics of post-war reflection on the nature of historical writing. Upon its publication in 1965 it was immediately recognized to be a major contribution to contemporary historical thought. Strangely enough, however, little effort was made by philosophers of history to penetrate into the depth of Danto's argument. The explanation is, perhaps, that there was more than a hint of historicism in Danto's conception of historical writing and for which philosophers of (...) history at that time were not yet prepared. This explanation is all the more plausible since German philosophers of history - most notably Hans Michael Baumgartner - were far more sensitive to the book's message than their Anglo-Saxon colleagues. The result is, however, that the book still awaits its proper reception in contemporary philosophy of history. (shrink)

The ArgumentBehind the dispute over the relative priority of theory and experiment lie conflicting philosophical images of the nature of scientific inquiry. One crucial image arose in the 1920s, when the logical positivists agitated for a “unity of science” that would ground all meaningful scientific activity on an observational foundation. Their goals and rhetoric dovetailed with the larger movements of architectural, literary, and philosophical modernism. Historians of science followed the positivists by tracking experimental science as the basis for scientific progress. (...) After World War II, historians and philosophers of science created an antipositivist movement, inverting the positivist idea that observation had epistemic priority. But this counter-movement retained the modernist aspiration to unity, now chaining observation to theory. Once again historians of science, following their philosophical colleagues, illustrated the new modernism with historical instances of observation dominated by theory.Either reductionist scheme, by privileging one activity over the other, dictates an overly constrictive periodization. We need a wider class of periodization models that will allow instrumentation, experimentation, and theory a partial autonomy without granting any one the sole legitimate narrative standpoint. Such a heterogeneous representation of historical traditions may, surprisingly, make better sense of the perceived coherence of activity across theoretical transitions than the monolithic modernist representation of science it displaces. (shrink)

Bringing together diverse theoretical and empirical contributions from the fields of social and cognitive psychology, philosophy, and science education, this volume explores representational pluralism as a phenomenon characteristic of human cognition. Building on these disciplines' shared interest in understanding human thought, perception, and conceptual change, the volume illustrates how representational plurality can be conducive to research and practice in varied fields. Particular care is taken to emphasize points of convergence and the value of sharing discourses, models, justifications, and theories (...) of pluralism across disciplines. The editors give ample space for philosophers, cognitive scientists and educators to explicate the history and current status of representational pluralism in their own disciplines. Using multiple forms of research from the relational perspective, this volume will be of interest to students, scholars and researchers with an interest in cognitive psychology, as well as educational psychology and philosophy of science. (shrink)

This thesis is concerned with John Stuart Mill’s democratic theory. In chapter I, I examine the relations between political philosophy and political theory and science before providing a detailed outline of the aims of the dissertation. In chapter II, I argue that in order to reconcile the concepts of progress and equality within a utilitarian theory, a Millian political system needs to devise institutions that promote general happiness, protect individual autonomy, safeguard society from mediocrity. Chapter III discusses what different (...) authors have said about Mill and liberty, then explores James Mill’s theory of education and Coleridge’s influence on John Stuart Mill’s thought. I conclude by criticising Richard Arneson’s interpretation according to which the Considerations and On Liberty are inconsistent, and some of Gregory Claeys’ conclusions on Mill and paternalism. Chapter IV explores the methodology of the social sciences and the philosophy of history as found in Mill’s writings; then it considers Mill’s thought in regard to his father’s Radical proposals. I also discuss at some length the idea of the tyranny of the majority. Chapter V begins with a discussion of Hanna Pitkin’s theory of representation. I then provide a critical account of Richard Krouse and Nadia Urbinati’s interpretations of Mill. I conclude by arguing that, in a Millian democracy, the higher is the degree of complexity or the need for expertise in dealing with affairs, the greater is the bearing of the principle of competence in assessing whether a representative should act as a trustee or a delegate. I also introduce the idea of rational debate as a sort of ‘influence multiplier’, arguing that this would help to make a democracy rational and effective along Millian lines. In the last two chapters, I stress the relevance of Mill’s political philosophy as for some contemporary issues (nationalism, European federalism, current social and economic changes) while suggesting some potential further investigations, and summarise my conclusions. (shrink)

This dissertation analyzes the philosophical theories and politics of Kitaro Nishida , the founder of modern Japanese philosophy, and Tetsuro Watsuji , the second most famous philosopher in Japan. Both Nishida and Watsuji develop a "spatialized" conception of history to contrast with a temporal model which had the effect of situating Europe as the most advanced form of modern culture. According to their view, the representation of world history should take into account the contemporaneous developments of all cultures. (...) ;Positioning themselves as non-European thinkers but sharing in the modern European intellectual tradition, Nishida and Watsuji develop original philosophical positions in the language of Western philosophy. After the initial formulation of the theory of "pure experience" under the influence of William James, Nishida develops a metaphysical theory of "place," a dialectical system inspired by Hegel. Using Heideggerian phenomenology, Watsuji develops his own theories of "milieu" and "Being-between" . In an attempt to go beyond Eurocentrism, these theories sought to widen the context of Western philosophy from a non-Western point of view. ;However, in the 1940s when Japan became an imperialist state, Nishida and Watsuji used their philosophical theories to justify wartime political ideology. Their anti-Eurocentrism thus allied with Japanese nationalism. However, their philosophical theories could have been developed to critique nationalism rather than endorse it. Their error resulted from the persistent framework of "East vs. West" which essentialized Japan's identity vis-a-vis the West. (shrink)

This book probes the cultural forces and legacies at play in three events in sports history, exploring how racial, national, sporting, and personal identities overlap and conflict. The author taps into a deep well of Western philosophy and literature to read the resonances in these three moments.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A History of Scottish PhilosophyC. Jan SwearingenA History of Scottish Philosophy by Alexander Broadie Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009. 400 pp. $120.00, cloth; $45.00, paper.Alexander Broadie’s prolific work on Scottish philosophy, particularly the Scottish Enlightenment’s roots in much earlier Scottish thought, deserves to be better known outside of Britain. While its relevance to rhetoric is more indirect than direct, A History of Scottish Philosophy illuminates (...) several strands in Scottish philosophies of the mind and will, doctrines of freedom and liberty, and assessments of moral sense and reason, culminating in a masterful appraisal of the commonsense philosophy that in the eighteenth century became widely associated with prominent Scottish thinkers who were also philosophers of rhetoric, among them Francis Hutcheson, Adam Smith, and Thomas Reid. The innovative senior-level course in rhetoric and moral philosophy created by these thinkers crossed the Atlantic and had a profound influence, still much debated, on the rhetoric, language, and thought of the American founding era. Many Americans are unaware of the sensitivity within Britain that is still attached to the very notion of a Scottish Enlightenment, a fraught context Broadie addresses in his introduction, beginning with elegantly calm descriptions of the Scottishness of Scottish philosophy and the distinctive figures and ideas that converged in the Scottish Enlightenment. Contesting the commonly held view that the [End Page 186] Scottish Enlightenment fizzled out at the end of the eighteenth century, supplanted by a cultural decline into tartan kitsch and maudlin recherché romanticism, Broadie provides solid evidence of ongoing developments in Scottish moral philosophy and theology and of continued Scottish responses to post-Kantian German idealism.Because Kant rebuked Hume’s philosophy, later Scottish responses to Kant were part of a family of ideas that, Broadie explains, continued in conversation with their predecessors and with the influential German philosophers of the nineteenth century. Although Kant sees himself as refuting Hume’s skepticism, Broadie finds in Kant’s thinking a more sophisticated version of Hume’s ideas. He notes commonsense philosopher Thomas Reid’s view that a theory of ideas, the model of mental representations, always ends in skepticism, a view that led Reid and other commonsense philosophers to focus on commonsense perception and liberty: “an account of the relation between the knower and the known, a relationship between a cognitively active subject and an object located in the real world” (319). It need not be said how much these issues of language and mind relationships continue to be debated in philosophical and rhetorical theory. Today’s skepticism, like that of the eighteenth century, defends a profound doubt about the possibility of knowledge, the perception of reality by individuals and groups, the possibility of any communication or rhetorical interactions that are not “always already” spoken. Revisiting these debates in eighteenth-century Scottish thought, Broadie’s commentary provides a number of illuminating recognition scenes.Broadie’s larger point throughout the book is that the idea that liberty is simultaneously intellectual, volitional, moral, and political—that it represents a capacity for intellectual freedom as well as a civic duty to promote liberty—recurs in Scottish philosophy, self-consciously understood as such, from the time of Duns Scotus to the present. Broadie’s meticulous exposition of the self-understood Scottishness of Scottish philosophy and philosophers is a major achievement of the book. American readers will find particularly interesting the discussions of John Witherspoon in the eighteenth century and James McCosh in the nineteenth, who came from Scotland to become presidents of the College of New Jersey/Princeton. I would add to Broadie’s account that Witherspoon’s influence on the American founding era and his role as the only clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence is substantially rhetorical. Alongside many other Scottish clergy professors in the colonies, he disseminated the Scottish [End Page 187] curriculum in rhetoric and moral philosophy and followed the practice of holding weekly moots and a senior-year matriculation oration that trained students in the practical arts of oral rhetorical composition. James Madison was a protégé among many others and sought Witherspoon’s as well as the Aberdonian James Wilson’s counsel while working on the much-debated... (shrink)

Cet article s’appuie sur des manuscrits foucaldiens des années 1950 afin d’analyser le chantier théorique à partir duquel le jeune Foucault inaugure la réflexion qui l’amènera à une mise en question radicale des sciences humaines. En particulier, l’article suit la piste d’un ouvrage inédit que Foucault a consacré à l’analyse existentielle de Ludwig Binswanger à l’époque de son enseignement à Lille. Ce manuscrit représente le maillon manquant entre l’« Introduction » à Le rêve et l’existence (1954) et la thèse que (...) Foucault publie en 1961, Folie et déraison. Tout en adjoignant à l’analyse du manuscrit la lecture de notes et fiches de lecture de la même époque, l’article montre que la critique que Foucault finit par adresser à l’anthropologie et la phénoménologie au début des années 1960 serait déjà présente de manière implicite dans l’« Introduction » à Le rêve et l’existence. Dans cette étude, en effet, Foucault aurait déjà abandonné son enthousiasme initial pour l’anthropologie phénoménologique de Binswanger pour focaliser plutôt son attention sur le problème du langage et de l’historicité des formes d’expériences. (shrink)

Scientific representation is a currently booming topic, both in analytical philosophy and in history and philosophy of science. The analytical inquiry attempts to come to terms with the relation between theory and world; while historians and philosophers of science aim to develop an account of the practice of model building in the sciences. This article provides a review of recent work within both traditions, and ultimately argues for a practice-based account of the means employed by scientists to (...) effectively achieve representation in the modelling sciences. (shrink)

The vocabulary of representation is better suited to an understanding of historiography than the vocabularies of description and interpretation. Since both art and historiography represent the world, they are closer to science than are criticism and the history of art because the interpretation of meaning is the specialty of the latter two fields. Historiography is less secure in its attempt to represent the world than art is; historiography is more artificial, more an expression of cultural codes than art itself. (...) Historiography is a suitable paradigm for studying certain philosophical problems, particularly epistemology, or codified representation. Representation always requires the presence of two sets of non-referential logical dummies; disturbing the symmetry between these logical dummies gives rise to the position of realism and idealism. Epistemology is strongly inclined to disturb this symmetry. The parallels between recent developments in art and those in historiography demonstrate how much historiography is part of the contemporary cultural world. The deficiencies of modern philosophy of history can largely be explained by its tendency to neglect the cultural significance of the writing of history. (shrink)

Representations seem to play a major role in many neuroscientific explanations. Philosophers have long attempted to properly define what it means for a neural state to be a representation of a specific content. Teleosemantic theories of content which characterize representations, in part, by appealing to a historical notion of function, are often regarded as our best path towards an account of neural representations. This paper points to the anti-representationalist consequences of these accounts. I argue that assuming such teleosemantic views (...) will deprive representations of their explanatory role in computational explanations. My argument rests on the claim that many explanations in cognitive neuroscience are entirely independent of any historical considerations. In making this claim, I will also offer an adapted version of the famous Swampperson thought experiment, which is better suited to discussions of subpersonal neural representations. (shrink)

Reflection names the central activity of Western philosophical practice; the mirror and its attendant metaphors of reflection are omnipresent in the self-image of Western philosophy and in metaphilosophical reflection on reflection. But the physical experiences of being reflected by glass mirrors have been inadequately theorized contributors to those metaphors, and this has implications not only for the self-image and the self of philosophy but also for metaphilosophical practice. This article begins to rethink the metaphor of reflection anew. Paying (...) attention to the history of the glass mirror in Europe reveals and challenges the modern emergence of clear ontological distinctions between disembodied subjects and the objects of their knowledge, and suggests a compelling terrain of metaphilosophical analysis. On the reading offered by the article, the inherent complexity of the relationship between selves and their mirror images, a complexity mediated by social location, historical situation, and particular projects, points to significant spaces of unknowing, of indeterminacy, and of ontological ambiguity. (shrink)

The fifteen essays in this volume represent the state of the art when it comes to the contemporary study of medieval philosophy of mind. The contributors are well-established scholars in the field who build on their previous work, and most advance an original argument in these essays. The focus is on western Christian philosophers and theologians from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and “the intricacies and varieties of the conceptual relationships among intentionality, cognition, and mental representation” in their (...) thought. As editor Gyula Klima points out, intentionality plays a role in non-cognitive as well as cognitive processes for the medievals. But when these thinkers attempted to explain the.. (shrink)

"The chief business of twentieth-century philosophy” is “to reckon with twentieth-century history," claimed R. G. Collingwood. In this remarkable collection of essays, Frank Ankersmit demonstrates the prescience of that remark and goes a long way toward meeting its challenge. Responding to the work of Hayden White, Arthur Danto, and Hans-Georg Gadamer, he examines such issues as the difference between historical representation and artistic expression, the status of metaphor in historical description, and the relation of postmodernism to historicism. Ankersmit's (...) fluent grasp of European thought and his ability to incorporate concepts from literary theory, art history, the philosophy of science, and political thought into his analyses assure that this collection will interest readers throughout the humanities. (shrink)

리쾨르는 역사를 실증적 지식이 아니라 해석학적 관점에서 이해하고자 한다. 역사는 절대적으로 부재하는 과거와 그것의 흔적으로 남겨진 유산의 두 측면 사이를 진동하고 있다. 우리는 역사를 과거의 한때 존재했었던 것이라는 점에서 역사의 실재성을 말할 수 있지만, 결코 현재에는 존재하지 않는다는 점에서 부재성을 간과할 수 없다. 이런 역사의 부재성으로 인해 역사적 사실보다 역사적 사건과 그것을 수용하는 주체의 역할이 중요하다. 특히 역사 연구는 단지 사실의 차원에만 머무는 것이 아니라 최종적으로 과거 인간들의 행위와 그 결과에 대한 연구를 기반으로 하고 있다. 그러기에 역사 연구자는 역사적 사실을 (...) 통해 과거의 주체를 만나며, 이런 만남이 결국 연구자의 주관에게도 영향을 미친다. 이런 이유로 리쾨르는 역사 연구가 끊어놓은 기억과 역사의 고리를 다시금 복원하고자 한다. 이미 아리스토텔레스에게서 기억은 언제나 과거가 남겨 놓은 유산에 기반하면서 동시에 부재하는 과거로 향하는 통로가 된다. 이런 점에서 기억은 역사의 존재론적 위상과 유사성을 갖는다. 하지만 역사 혹은 역사 연구는 과거에 대한 객관적 지식을 추구하는 반면, 기억은 주관적이고 단편적인 지식을 추구한다. 기억이 과거에 대한 충실성과 확신에 기반한 반면, 역사 연구는 이런 충실성에 대해 의심하면서 객관성을 확보하고자 한다. 하지만 역사 연구가 주장하는 객관성 혹은 역사적 사실만을 추구할 경우 역사적 사태를 기억하는 주관을 상실할 위험을 갖고 있다. 이런 점에서 리쾨르는 역사 연구에서 주관의 위상을 고려하기 위해서 기억의 역할을 강조한다. 또한 역사 연구가 단순한 사실의 집합이 아니라 부재하는 과거에 대한 시적인 재형상화작업이라는 관점에서 그 의의를 찾는다. 여기서 역사 연구의 시적 형상화와 함께 우리는 역사 연구에 있어 설명의 한계를 살펴보고자 한다. 이처럼 역사 연구는 단지 객관적 설명으로만 해명할 수 없는 근원적 책임의 영역이 있다. 리쾨르는 역사 연구의 해석학적 근거를 따라서 기억의 의미와 역사 연구의 가능성을 확인하고자 한다. 우리는 이런 리쾨르의 사유를 통해 역사 속에서의 기억의 중요성과 실천적 의미를 살펴보고자 한다. (shrink)

The idea of representation has been central in discussions of intentionality for many years. But only more recently has it begun playing a wider role in the philosophy of mind, particularly in theories of consciousness. Indeed, there are now multiple representational theories of consciousness, corresponding to different uses of the term "conscious," each attempting to explain the corresponding phenomenon in terms of representation. More cautiously, each theory attempts to explain its target phenomenon in terms of _intentionality_, and (...) assumes that intentionality is representation. (shrink)

Recent work on the hole argument in general relativity by Weatherall has drawn attention to the neglected concept of models’ representational capacities. I argue for several theses about the structure of these capacities, including that they should be understood not as many-to-one relations from models to the world, but in general as many-to-many relations constrained by the models’ isomorphisms. I then compare these ideas with a recent argument by Belot for the claim that some isometries “generate new possibilities” in general (...) relativity. Philosophical orthodoxy, by contrast, denies this. Properly understanding the role of representational capacities, I argue, reveals how Belot’s rejection of orthodoxy does not go far enough, and makes better sense of our practices in theorizing about spacetime. (shrink)

This essay discusses the role of the notions of reference, truth, and meaning in historical representation. Four major claims will be argued. First, conditional for all meaningful discussion of historical representation is that one radically discards from one's mind the paradigm of the true statement and all the epistemological and ontological problems occasioned by it. Second, representation is not a two-place, but a three-place operator: in representation a represented reality is represented by a representation focusing (...) on certain aspects of represented reality . Third, applying the notions of reference, truth, and meaning to historical representations compels us to give them a content basically different from the ones they have in contemporary philosophy of language and science. Fourth, it will be shown that in representation, meaning precedes truth—and not the other way around as in most of contemporary philosophy of language. (shrink)

Recent discussions in the philosophy of psychology have examined the use and legitimacy of such notions as “representation”, “content”, “computation”, and “inference” within a scientific psychology. While the resulting assessments have varied widely, ranging from outright rejection of some or all of these notions to full vindication of their use, there has been notable agreement on the considerations deemed relevant for making an assessment. The answer to the question of whether the notion of, say, representational content may be (...) admitted into a scientific psychology has often been made to hinge upon whether the notion can be squared with our “ordinary” or “folk” style of psychological explanation, with its alleged commitment to the idiom of beliefs and desires. In this article, I proceed the other way around, starting with experimental psychology itself and asking whether such notions as the above play a legitimate role within a particular area of contemporary theory, the psychology of perception. My conclusion will be that especially the first three have a legitimate place in theories of perception, albeit one that differs from that ascribed to them in a significant portion of the philosophical literature. Along the way I develop a notion of noncognitive functional analysis, which separates the notion of contentful perceptual processing and perceptual representation from cognitive or conceptual content. (This paper has been reprinted, with stylistic revisions, in Perception and Cognition, Essays in the Philosophy of Psychology, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 2009, pp. 50-87.). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Towards a Realist Philosophy of History by Adam TimminsAviezer TuckerTIMMINS, Adam. Towards a Realist Philosophy of History. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2022. 192 pp. Cloth, $95.00The debate about scientific realism, whether science represents reality or just discovers measurements and correlations that are followed by theoretical stories about them, is at the center of the philosophy of science. One potent and frequently discussed antirealist argument has (...) been Larry Laudan’s “pessimistic induction”: Historically, all scientific theories, especially in physics, have been proven false. Hence, all contemporary scientific theories will be proven false and science cannot represent reality. This pessimistic induction relies on knowledge of the history of science, on historiographic realism. Luckily for the pessimistic induction, the history of historiography, the scientific representation of the human past, supports an optimistic induction: Since the revolutions associated with Ranke in historiography, Lyle in geological history, and Darwin in biological history, the historical sciences have made progress but have not [End Page 368] overhauled the founders’ representations of the past. We know more about the human past than Ranke did and much more about the biological past than Darwin did, but the modern historical sciences have not overturned their theories and conclusions. Though there are many new methodologies, historians still go to the archives to compare primary sources, and biologists still study fossils and assume natural selection.Though scientific antirealism assumes historiographic realism, it has received scant philosophic attention. Often it is perceived or presented as a naive “empiricist” concept of historiography that imagines historians “observe” history and then describe it in historiography. Radical antirealist theories of historiography that reduce it to fiction, myth, or manipulative ideology use this image of realism as naive empiricism to dialectically support its equally naive antirealist antithesis. Both ignore the evidential, mostly testimonial, justifications of historiography.Adam Timmins’s project is to articulate and justify a sophisticated historiographic realism that fits historiographic practices and premises. He argues that historiography is “successful in providing information and understanding about the historical past that is constrained by and reflects what actually happened in the past itself.”Timmins’s historiographic realism springs out of the philosophy of language rather than epistemology or philosophy of science. This distinguishes it from Murray Murphey’s historiographic realism, which argued that historiographic ontology is theoretical. Famously, Murphey compared George Washington to the electron as two well-corroborated but unobservable theoretical entities. Timmins retorts that Washington is a proper name and not a theoretical concept, and it is impossible to conduct experiments with Washingtons. Timmins inquires how the language historians use may be interpreted as referring to past events and how historiography can represent history. He does not devote much attention to how historians justify their statements about history to a degree that may warrant a realistic interpretation of historiography. Rather, Timmins assumes so. He proceeds through polemical dialogues with philosophers of historiography who took antirealist stances like Leon Goldstein, Frank Ankersmit, and Jouni Kuukkanen.Timmins’s realism is founded on the belief in a universally accepted core of historiographic facts. He does not inquire about the theoretical foundations of historiographic inferences that allow the emergence of such a consensus. Rather than consider historiographic epistemology, the critical methods of historiography, Timmins considers linguistic communities and entrenched uses of language. He confronts the problem of reference to the past in the absence of its perception by asserting that historiographic representations are of “mental files” that have names (for example, “the Renaissance,” “the Second World War”) and evolving core facts about those historical events (for example, Petrarch and Da Vinci in the Renaissance, the main battles in the war). Though the exact contents of these files may differ between historians, they still refer to the same events and have the same labels. Timmins suggests that experts gradually introduce fluid norms of reference on the basis of broadly accepted facts [End Page 369] whose references caused information chains that led to them. He suggests that complex or colligated concepts are in the mind but refer through mediation to some directly referenced events. For example, the First World War is a concept that through the mediation of facts like its main battles refers to real... (shrink)

The Death of the Past argues that critical problems in the philosophy of history, such as the the truth of historical texts, how texts relate to the past that they are about, and the nature of historical explanation, can be successfully investigated if we accept the claim that historical writing is historicist--perspectival (from the standpoint of the historian) rather than purporting to be like an eyewitness account (as in the first-person "presentist" views critiqued by Enzo Traverso). This approach admits (...) all relevant evidence as subject to analysis in order to determine the widest point of view, as opposed to the biased "eyewitness" approach, which observes only partially. The link between the past itself and historical knowledge is radically broken, giving the latter the wisdom of hindsight across a broader temporal field from the events examined up to the present. The truth about the past is only accessible from a later point in time; "the past" itself is not a reality for the historian; it no longer exists. Frank Ankersmit offers a surprising foundation for the historicist notion of history: Leibniz' monadological universe, in which each monad or substance has its own point of view. There is no deeper ontology to which they owe their status--just an infinity of monads and a corresponding infinity of points of view on other monads. So with historical representations, statements about the past that can be either true or false but not depictions of the past itself. In striking contrast to Hayden White's view, Ankersmit insists that historical writing is no less rational than the sciences-- mathematical and scientific writing has its counterpart in the writing of history. (shrink)

J. S. Silverberg, The Most Obscure and Inconvenient Tables ever Constructed.- D. J. Melville, Commercializing Arithmetic: The Case of Edward Hatton.- C. Baltus, Leading to Poncelet: A Story of Collinear Points.- R. Godard, Cauchy, Le Verrier et Jacobi sur le problème algébrique des valeurs propres et les inégalités séculaires des mouvements des planètes.- A. Ackerberg-Hastings, Mathematics in Astronomy at Harvard College Before 1839 as a Case Study for Teaching Historical Writing in Mathematics Courses.- J. J. Tattersall, S. L. McMurran, "Lectures (...) for Women" and the Founding of Newnham College, Cambridge.- D. Waszek, Are Euclid's Diagrams "Representations"? On an Argument by Ken Manders.- B. Buldt, Abstraction by Embedding and Constraint-Based Design.- W. Meyer, The Birth of Undergraduate Modern Algebra in the United States.- P. Liu, History as a Source of Mathematical Narrative in Developing Students' Interpretations of Mathematics.- F. Kamareddine, J. P. Seldin, Thoughts on Using the History of Mathematics to Teach the Foundations of Mathematical Analysis. (shrink)

This paper defends the deflationary character of two recent views regarding scientific representation, namely RIG Hughes’ DDI model and the inferential conception. It is first argued that these views’ deflationism is akin to the homonymous position in discussions regarding the nature of truth. There, we are invited to consider the platitudes that the predicate “true” obeys at the level of practice, disregarding any deeper, or more substantive, account of its nature. More generally, for any concept X, a deflationary approach (...) is then defined in opposition to a substantive approach, where a substantive approach to X is an analysis of X in terms of some property P, or relation R, accounting for and explaining the standard use of X. It then becomes possible to characterize a deflationary view of scientific representation in three distinct senses, namely: a “no-theory” view, a “minimalist” view, and a “use-based” view – in line with three standard deflationary responses in the philosophical literature on truth. It is then argued that both the DDI model and the inferential conception may be suitably understood in any of these three different senses. The application of these deflationary ‘hermeneutics’ moreover yields significant improvements on the DDI model, which bring it closer to the inferential conception. It is finally argued that what these approaches have in common – the key to any deflationary account of scientific representation – is the denial that scientific representation may be ultimately reduced to any substantive explanatory property of sources, or targets, or their relations. (shrink)

Does the death of Hayden White mark the end of an era in philosophy of history? Although White’s personal presence is sorely missed, White’s work is unlikely soon to lose its prominent position in philosophy of history. This is because no other author occupies a position in the field that is remotely as central as White’s. His oeuvre serves as a shared reference point for scholars working on issues ranging from explanation and representation to deconstruction and presence. (...) From whatever school or persuasion they are, philosophers of history relate to White’s work, either by building upon it or by dissociating themselves from it. In explaining this unique position of White’s work, this essay reflects as much on the field called philosophy of history as on White’s interventions in it. It argues that philosophy of history is not a discipline in a recognizable sense of the word, but a loosely knit network of scholars working on different “questions about history.” Only when this network status of the field is taken into account, it becomes possible to see why White’s work has such a central place in current philosophy of history. (shrink)

Why do major historical events such as the Holocaust occupy the forefront of the collective consciousness, while profound moments such as the Armenian genocide, the McCarthy era, and France's role in North Africa stand distantly behind? Is it possible that history "overly remembers" some events at the expense of others? A landmark work in philosophy, Paul Ricoeur's _Memory, History, Forgetting_ examines this reciprocal relationship between remembering and forgetting, showing how it affects both the perception of historical experience and the (...) production of historical narrative. _Memory, History, Forgetting_, like its title, is divided into three major sections. Ricoeur first takes a phenomenological approach to memory and mnemonical devices. The underlying question here is how a memory of present can be of something absent, the past. The second section addresses recent work by historians by reopening the question of the nature and truth of historical knowledge. Ricoeur explores whether historians, who can write a history of memory, can truly break with all dependence on memory, including memories that resist representation. The third and final section is a profound meditation on the necessity of forgetting as a condition for the possibility of remembering, and whether there can be something like happy forgetting in parallel to happy memory. Throughout the book there are careful and close readings of the texts of Aristotle and Plato, of Descartes and Kant, and of Halbwachs and Pierre Nora. A momentous achievement in the career of one of the most significant philosophers of our age, _Memory, History, Forgetting_ provides the crucial link between Ricoeur's _Time and Narrative_ and _Oneself as Another_ and his recent reflections on ethics and the problems of responsibility and representation. “His success in revealing the internal relations between recalling and forgetting, and how this dynamic becomes problematic in light of events once present but now past, will inspire academic dialogue and response but also holds great appeal to educated general readers in search of both method for and insight from considering the ethical ramifications of modern events.... It is indeed a master work, not only in Ricoeur’s own vita but also in contemporary European philosophy.”—_Library Journal _“Ricoeur writes the best kind of philosophy—critical, economical, and clear.”— _New York Times Book Review _. (shrink)

This paper investigates Danto’s claims that the narrative of art is over. In this state, which Danto sees as ideal, art is free from any master narrative, and its direction cannot be predicted. The claim that art ought to remain in its current state—pluralistic, free and with no further historical development—is problematic. Danto is correct that late 20th c. art could not be explained through a single narrative, and the myriad forms art takes demonstrate its pluralism. But Danto’s claim that (...) freedom is the outcome of inexplicability, and progress is measured by amenability to narrative, does not follow. Based on Gombrich’s theory of pictorial representation, I provide an alternative explanation of Danto’s claim that art no longer manifests the narrative of the era of art, arguing that the shift in art’s preferred form of presentation, though no longer supporting narrative explanation, is developing as a language of disclosure. (shrink)

Bonifac Badrov, a Neo-Scholastic philosopher, in his “History of Philosophy”, a textbook for students at Franciscan Theology in Sarajevo, defines the scholarly subject of the history of philosophy as a systematic representation of solving philosophical problems in various historic periods and a critical examination of their internal dynamics. Considering this clear and informative, well-structured, balanced and goaloriented text, we should not forget that his “History of Philosophy” was written for very specific type of students, with full (...) awareness that some of these students are encountering philosophy for the first time, and that, complementary to the educational system in theological universities, they are listening to it in parallel with scholastic philosophy. We should also bear in mind the author’s Neo-Scholastic philosophical orientation, and also mention that the religious aspect was not emphasised because the author was merely informing about some philosopher’s position on God and divine. This paper deals with Greek-Roman philosophy, and in accordance with Badrov’s structure it offers a review of the development of Greek-Roman philosophy in three periods with three distinctions: cosmological in Presocratics, emphasising monism, evolutionism, hylozoism, pantheism, anti-intellectualism and finally naturalism, metaphysical in classical antiquity, with an emphasis on subjectivism, relativism, agnosticism, ethics and monotheism, and dualism in all areas, that is metaphysics, and finally, ethical in Hellenistic period. The focus of the paper is Badrov’s critique of philosophers and philosophical systems, while historical data is put aside. For some philosophers, other places in Badrov’s other works are mentioned. (shrink)

Although not a professional historian, the author raises several issues pertinent to the state of history today.Qualifying the "non-historian" as an "able" interventionist in historical studies, the author explores the relationship between ...

Michael Della Rocca’s marvelous book is devoted to Spinoza’s treatment of two topics—mental representation and the relation of mind to body—that are central to much of Spinoza’s philosophy. Della Rocca has clearly read Spinoza with extraordinary care, sensitivity, and insight. His writing is remarkably lucid, his argumentation is almost always compelling, and his care in spelling out exactly what he thinks does and does not follow—both from Spinoza’s philosophical arguments and from his own interpretive ones—is exemplary. The result (...) is a book that does not merely add one more “new interpretation” of Spinoza to those already in existence on various issues in the philosophy of mind. Rather, it is a book that definitely establishes an impressive number of the interpretive theses for which it argues, thereby illuminating a wide range of previously murky areas in Spinoza’s philosophy—including many that extend far beyond his philosophy of mind. In doing so, it genuinely advances our understanding of Spinoza to an extent matched by only a very few previous works on this great but difficult philosopher. For this reason, it deserves to be counted among the most important and valuable books ever written on Spinoza. (shrink)

Leading theorists examine the self-representational theory of consciousness as an alternative to the two dominant reductive theories of consciousness, the representational theory of consciousness and the higher-order monitoring theory. In this pioneering collection of essays, leading theorists examine the self-representational theory of consciousness, which holds that consciousness always involves some form of self-awareness. The self-representational theory of consciousness stands as an alternative to the two dominant reductive theories of consciousness, the representational theory of consciousness and the higher-order monitoring theory, combining (...) elements of both RTC and HOM theory in a novel fashion that may avoid the fundamental deficiencies of each. Although self-representationalist views have been common throughout the history of both Western and Eastern philosophy, they have been largely neglected in the recent literature on consciousness. This book approaches the self-representational theory from a range of perspectives, with contributions from scholars in analytic philosophy, phenomenology, and history of philosophy, as well as two longer essays by Antonio Damasio and David Rudrauf and Douglas Hofstadter. The book opens with six essays that argue broadly in favor of self-representationalist views, which are followed by five that argue broadly against them. Contributors next consider connections to such philosophical issues as the nature of propositional attitudes, knowledge, attention, and indexical reference. Finally, Damasio and Rudrauf link consciousness as lived with consciousness as described in neurobiological terms; and Hofstadter compares consciousness to the "strange loop" of mathematical self-reference brought to light by Gödel's incompleteness theorems. Contributors Andrew Brook, Peter Carruthers, Antonio Damasio, John J. Drummond, Jason Ford, Rocco J. Gennaro, George Graham, Christopher S. Hill, Douglas R. Hofstadter, Terry Horgan, Tomis Kapitan, Uriah Kriegel, Keith Lehrer, Joseph Levine, Robert W. Lurz, David Rudrauf, David Woodruff Smith, John Tienson, Robert Van Gulick, Kathleen Wider, Kenneth Williford, Dan Zahavi. (shrink)

The philosophy of mind and cognition has been transformed by recent advances in what is loosely called cognitive science. This book is a thoroughly up-to-date introduction to and account of that transformation, in which the many strands in contemporary cognitive science are brought together into a coherent philosophical picture of the mind. The book begins with discussions of the pre-history of contemporary philosophy of mind - dualism, behaviourism, and early versions of the identity theory of mind - and (...) moves through discussions of functionalism in autonomy of psychology, to topics such as eliminative materialism, individualism and the problems of content and representation. The synoptic nature of the discussion makes it ideal as the foundation of an undergraduate course in the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

This volume explores the work and thought of Edith Stein (1891-1942). It discusses in detail, and from new perspectives, the traditional areas of her thinking, including her ideas about women/feminism, theology, and metaphysics. In addition, it introduces readers to new and/or understudied areas of her thought, including her views on history, and her social and political philosophy. The guiding thread that connects all the essays in this book is the emphasis on new approaches and novel applications of her (...) class='Hi'>philosophy. The contributions both extend the interdisciplinary implications of Stein's thinking for our contemporary world and apply her insights to questions of theatre, public history and biographical representation, education, politics, autism, theological debates, feminism, sexuality studies and literature. The volume brings together for the first time leading scholars in five language-groups, including English, German, Italian, French and Spanish-speaking authors, thereby reflecting an international and cosmopolitan approach to Stein studies. (shrink)

We critically engage two traditional views of scientific data and outline a novel philosophical view that we call the pragmatic-representational view of data. On the PR view, data are representations that are the product of a process of inquiry, and they should be evaluated in terms of their adequacy or fitness for particular purposes. Some important implications of the PR view for data assessment, related to misrepresentation, context-sensitivity, and complementary use, are highlighted. The PR view provides insight into the common (...) but little-discussed practices of iteratively reusing and repurposing data, which result in many datasets’ having a phylogeny—an origin and complex evolutionary history—that is relevant to their evaluation and future use. We relate these insights to the open-data and data-rescue movements, and highlight several future avenues of research that build on the PR view of data. (shrink)