This book asks whether evolution can help us to understand human behaviour and explores diverse evolutionary methods and arguments. It provides a short, readable introduction to the science behind the works of Dawkins, Dennett, Wilson and Pinker. It is widely used in undergraduate courses around the world.

This work constitutes the Proceedings of the Bar-Ilan International Symposium on the topic ?Sense and Nonsense in Philosophy and Psychopathology.? The symposium was held at Bar-Ilan University (Israel) from June 7-8, 1993, with lectures given in three languages (English, Hebrew and French). Through this symposium an outline of a philosophy of psychopathology related to biology and ethics was presented. It is now clear, especially from clinical experience, that the notions of sense and nonsense cannot be grasped (...) directly, but must be constructed through a reflective process connected with concepts. Furthermore, since psychopathology is for the most part concerned with the disturbance of intersubjective experience, it is directly related to ethics. For this reason, as clearly illustrated by this symposium, psychopathology could provide an excellent basis for philosophical interrogation. (shrink)

No longer viewed by scientists as the cell’s fixed master molecule, DNA is a dynamic script that is ad-libbed at each stage of development. What our parents hand down to us is just the beginning. Genetic Explanations urges us to replace our faith in genetic determinism with scientific knowledge about genetic plasticity and epigenetic inheritance.

Several important terms in biology have recently been criticized for not being "operational." In this paper the course of operationism in physics, psychology and genetics is sketched to show what effect this particular view on the meaning of scientific terms had on these disciplines. Then the biological species concept and the concept of homology are examined to see in what respects they are or are not "operational." One of the primary conclusions of this investigation is that few terms in science (...) are completely operational or completely nonoperational. Some scientific terms, especially theoretical terms, are a good deal less operational than others; but, far from being regrettable, this situation is essential if theoretical terms are to fulfill their systematizing function and if scientific theories are to be capable of growth. (shrink)

"This translation is based upon the revised third edition, issued by Nagel in 1961. English translation c1964 by Northwestern University Press. First published 1964 ny Northwestern University Press."--Title page verso.

This essay argues that sense depends on the circulation of nonsense. A realisation of the reciprocal relation can result in a micro-level praxis that helps us, as educators, to free ourselves from the polarisations that have occurred in the field of literacy, such as the phonics/whole language debate, replacing the antagonism with a more generative pragmatics.

I offer an interpretation of Carnap and Quine’s views on cognitive significance and insignificance. The basic idea behind their views is as follows: to judge an expression is insignificant is to recommend it not be used in or explicated into languages used to express truth-valued judgments in inquiry; to judge an expression is significant is to recommend it be used in or explicated into such languages. These judgments are pragmatic judgments, made in light of purposes for language use in inquiry. (...) For Carnap at least, these pragmatic judgments are non-cognitive. This basic idea is only a roughly correct statement of their views. This is because the details of the scientific languages they recommend for inquiry are necessary to understand their views and the way they understand their own views. Even so, I offer two reasons to suggest that this basic idea is worthy of our consideration today. First, it provides a conception of significance that captures the natural thought that epistemological concerns can lead us to consider expressions to be insignificant without requiring an objectionable form of verificationism. Second, if we appeal also to Carnap and Quine’s pluralistic attitude toward explication, we can make a pragmatic judgment that an expression is insignificant while judging it to be significant on a distinct explication of significance fit for describing and explaining natural language. (shrink)

In that ‘Cock and Bull’ story, Tristram Shandy , Laurence Sterne satirises philosophic disputation. Since the subject is a nose, the philosophers, divided already along Catholic and Lutheran lines, become Nosarians and Anti-nosarians. The doctors belong to the two universities of Strasburg. On ‘which side of the nose [would] the two universities split’? 'Tis above reason, cried the doctors on one side. 'Tis below reason, cried the others. 'Tis faith, we cried. 'Tis a fiddle-stick, said the other. 'Tis possible, cried (...) the one. 'Tis impossible, said the other. God's power is infinite, cried the Nosarians, he can do anything. He can do nothing, cried the Antinosarians, which implies contradictions. He can make matter think, said the Nosarians. As certainly as you can make a velvet cap out of a sow's ear, replied the Antinosarians. (shrink)

These are reflections of an outstanding artist on his traumatic experience in the time of war and hatred through overcoming suffering and anguish towards a radical change of mentality: reconciliation is what we vitally need today as we are all responsible for the fate of the world.

“What kind of psychological theory could relate our use of words to sets of possible worlds?” So queries a recent author, but the question is rhetorical, the insinuation being that any analysis or explanation of semantical notions in terms of possible worlds will involve an account that won't square with a naturalistic view of language acquisition or use. Such feelings are widespread; my purpose here is to argue that they are unjustified.

Melds philosophical analysis with early cinematic history to develop a fresh theory of the notion of comedy.

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 12, Page 17-20, December 2011.

I will briefly discuss the history of research-related projects that Mark Burgin and I worked on together. I will then discuss our joint research related to the circle of sense and nonsense. One paper was entitled In a search for deeper meanings: navigating the circle of Sense and Nonsense and in turn articulating logical varieties as knowledge illuminators and the second was entitled In the Circle of Sense and Nonsense, Including A Mathematic Model of (...) Meaning. This research represents a bridge between the media arts and sciences (my artwork) as a means of embodying ideas exploring a particular approach to meaning production and related computation, as well as Burgin’s concepts related to logical varieties and mathematical models of meaning. I will refer to the full papers and links because they present a very robust and full articulation of the concepts discussed here. In this paper, I will briefly touch on the areas of research, supply short definitions, and refer to the relevant historical publications. (shrink)

Unless the title is a McLuhanesque play on words--which Finkelstein would never allow himself--the book is mistitled, for Finkelstein dwells almost exclusively on what he considers to be the nonsense of McLuhan. Writing with all the venom of an anti-smut campaigner whose moral principles are threatened because they are too weak and too inflexible, Finkelstein wages his polemics against McLuhan in an effort to discredit him and expose him as a false prophet. What nettles Finkelstein most is that McLuhan, (...) a professor--a guardian of truth and goodness--should be so irresponsible as to fail to denunciate T.V. commercials, Madison avenue mind-manipulators, T.V.'s causing the atrophy of the ability to read and think, and the other bogeymen of humanist dogma. How dare McLuhan, the Albert Schweitzer Professor of Humanities at a great University, challenge the foundations of the humanities themselves? Finkelstein is at least thorough in his refusal to come to grips with what is valid in McLuhan: he does us the service of pointing out the errors in McLuhan's reading of history, in his dictum that the medium is the message, in his suggestion that media are extensions of man, and in his advocacy of media involvement. The final and the least weak chapter draws a parallel between McLuhan and Marx, showing how McLuhanism can lead to a world totalitarian monolith. We should pay Finkelstein the courtesy, however, of pointing out that there is a sense in which his criticisms, if not always valid, are at least important to keep in mind while seeking to understand McLuhan without being seduced by him.--S. O. H. (shrink)

The city of Johannesburg pulsates with rhythms that are driven by some of its most fundamental characteristics: pressured economic activity, the mingling and movement of bodies, commuting, and a history of race and class segregation. The collaborative Jozi Rhythmanalogues project attempts to make sense of these rhythms by employing sensory experience as a process of explorative thought. In the course of this project, public spaces are documented over long periods through time-lapse films, which are analysed to reveal patterns of (...) movement. The resulting graphs, representing a kind of ‘automatic writing’ of the city’s rhythms, are interpreted as a graphic score by musical ensembles, producing music, sound and noise. This article reflects on the explorations of spaces, methods and concerns that has led to the development of the Jozi Rhythmanalogues project’s different manifestations, and looks at the ways in which two very different ensembles have interpreted the graphic score. The key questions that emerge relate to the nature of the information that is captured or ‘written’ in the graphs, and what it means to attempt, over and over, to make sense of this information. The idea of ‘sensory thought’ is critical here, as the project in its entirety is concerned with the work of the senses as a thinking process. This phenomenological angle is complicated by the flirtation with abstract data in the measurements that comprise the production of the graphs, revealing a question of movement between poetic and analytical modes of apprehension. (shrink)

This text deals with the interpretation of where the meaningfulness of existence and our being in the world in Emmanuel Levinas’s conception originates in its contrast to the similar conception developed by phenomenology of appearing - which is represented by M. Heidegger and H. Maldiney. I want to show on what premises Levinas argues that the epiphany of sense can only emerge in the case of a continuous overcoming of the nonsense of appearing and thus of Being as (...) such. Therefore, I intend to go through the steps of Levinas’ reasoning, which he never developed systematically, and explain why he can view Being as nonsensical and what this notion of nonsense could possibly mean in Levinas’s philosophy. As a result, I would like present an implicit argumentation behind Levinas’s well-known claim that the birth of sense must be of ethical origin and cannot arise through the process of appearing or Being alone. (shrink)

Herman Philipse’s Heidegger’s Philosophy of Being is an attempt to interpret, analyze, and ultimately discredit the whole of Heidegger’s thought. But Philipse’s reading of the texts is uncharitable, and the ideas he presents and criticizes often bear little resemblance to Heidegger’s views. Philipse relies on a crude distinction between “theoretical” and “applicative” interpretations in arguing that Heidegger’s conception of interpretation as a kind of projection is, like the liar’s paradox, formally self-defeating. But even granting the distinction, the charge of reflective (...) incoherence is fallacious and question-begging. Finally, Philipse advances the astonishing “interpretive hypothesis” that the seemingly morbid existential themes in Being and Time were part of a deliberate “Pascalian strategy” to win converts to Heidegger’s own idiosyncratic “postmonotheist worship of Being.” In short, notwithstanding its nearly comprehensive coverage of Heidegger’s works, the book does not represent a sufficiently serious effort to understand the complexities and obscurities of Heidegger’s thinking. (shrink)