O objetivo deste artigo é apresentar a analogia básica entre arquitetura e retórica antiga a partir dos tratados De Architectura, de Vitrúvio, e o De Oratore, de Cícero. A analogia se verifica na definição do artífice, dos gêneros e partes das técnicas e dos fins de cada uma delas. Para tanto, tomaram-se como referência as fontes do tratado vitruviano, que menciona a influência de Varrão na gramática, de Lucrécio na filosofia e de Cícero no método oratório. A analogia com Cícero (...) serve tanto para conferir autoridade ao modelo de arquiteto vitruviano quanto para diferenciar a arquitetura das demais ciências, sobretudo a filosofia, objeto de debate na obra ciceroniana. (shrink)

Este trabalho é parte de um relatório de investigação que tem oito projetos de pesquisa integrados em rede, atrelados à pesquisa matricial do Grupo LEPEL/FACED/UFBA, que se articula ao grupo PAIDÉIA/FAE/UNICAMP, que coordena uma pesquisa cujas bases têm vinculação e é intitulada: Produção do conhecimento em Educação Física: Impacto do sistema de pós-graduação das regiões sul e sudeste do Brasil na formação e produção de mestres e doutores que atuam nas instituições de ensino superior da região nordeste – EPISTEFNORDESTE. A (...) investigação promove análise epistemológica e visa formação de pesquisadores com pensamento teórico-metodológico planejado com base no materialismo histórico dialético. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to show my research in the Graduation Program in Comparative History from Federal University of Rio de Janeiro whose essential set of problems is the analysis of the making of imperial landscape into the city of Augusta Emerita as a roman imperial domain’s representation.

An increasing sensitivity towards films and other forms of visual experience has become apparent in social theory. Recent explorations of new media of communication and entertainment have criticized the emphasis on the hegemonic or manipulative power of cultural industries and popular forms of leisure. Films, like many other discursive and visual forms, have been considered as signifying practices and investigated as processes of production, exhibition and reception. This article takes these recent contributions as its point of departure and investigates two (...) Brazilian films, made in the 1950s and 1990s, based on a play that retells the Greek legend of Orpheus in Brazilian social and cultural settings. This article considers the different historical contexts, explores discursive and visual forms of representation, struggles for power within the narratives, unconscious systems of signification, and makes some considerations about the aesthetic dimension present in each film. (shrink)

RESUMOO presente estudo aborda a questão da heterogeneidade decorrente do desdobramento do eu, tal como compreendido por Bakhtin mediante a ideia de autoconsciência, aquela que gera sempre um outro para garantir sua própria subjetividade, através do contato com possíveis alteridades: outros gerados como alteridade a partir do mesmo. De acordo com o conjunto ternário e trinitário, teorizado por Benveniste e analisado por Dufour, nossa análise circunscreve-se à abordagem de três contos de Jorge Luis Borges, a saber: O outro, 25 de (...) agosto de 1983 e Borges e eu, em que o duplo e o duplicado são abordados como o mesmo, ainda que outros, pois é a alteridade o que confere condições para o conhecimento do mesmo.ABSTRACTThis study addresses the issue of heterogeneity derived from the unfolding of the self, as understood by Bakhtin. It is based on the idea of self-consciousness, i.e., the one that always generates another to ensure their own subjectivity by means of contact with possible alterities: others are generated as alterity from the self. According to the ternary and trinitarian set, theorized by Benveniste and analyzed by Dufour, our analysis is circumscribed to three short stories of Jorge Luis Borges, namely: "The Other," "August 25, 1983," and "Borges and I," in which the double and the duplicate are approached as the self, even being others, for it is alterity that gives the means to know the self. (shrink)

To our knowledge, this is one of the first studies to test different theoretical models of working memory in childhood based on a computerized assessment. We tested this across several countries: Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Italy, and UK. The present study addressed the wider macro-cultural context and how this impacts working memory. We used two economic indices to characterize the participating countries and ranked the countries based on the Global Index of Cognitive Skills and Educational Attainment. Children between 5 and 10 (...) years completed the same set of short-term and working memory tests. There were two main findings. First, there was a similar pattern in verbal working memory across countries, which suggests that this skill may be relatively consistent across different cultural groups. In contrast, the pattern for visuo-spatial working memory was different across countries, which may explained by cultural differences and educational rankings of the countries. The second main finding was that both a domain-general model and a domain-specific model provided a reasonably good fit with the data, there was the high relationship between the verbal and visuo-spatial working memory constructs across the countries in the latter model. Thus, it may be a more parsimonious choice to rely on a three-factor model. The data also suggest culture-similar patterns in a computerized assessment of working memory. (shrink)

This study assesses the retractions of scientific articles in engineering journals indexed on the Web of Science from 1945 to 2015. The data set was built based on documents containing the keywords retracted, retraction, withdrawal, or redress. We used database exploration techniques, including Structured Query Language and analysis of variance, for data analysis. We analyzed 238 retractions published by 117 journals. The most common reason for retraction was unethical research, and higher impact factors journals tended to publish more retractions. In (...) conclusion, most of the analyzed retractions were the result of unethical research and were retracted by editors. (shrink)

Introduction: Empathy is a complex human experience that involves the subjective intersection of different individuals. In the context of nursing care in the geriatric setting, the benefits of empathetic relationships are directly related to the quality of the practice of nursing. Objective: Analyze scientific production on the benefits of empathy in the nurse–patient relationship in the geriatric care setting. Methods: An integrative review of the literature was performed using the PubMed, Cochrane, CINAHL, Scopus, PsycINFO, and Web of Science databases. The (...) articles retrieved were organized, evaluated, and classified based on the level of scientific evidence. Results: Relationships of empathy between nurses and older people were analyzed in quasi-experimental studies using different assessment tools, the majority of which had moderate levels of validity and reliability. Studies with a qualitative approach discussed the meaning of empathy in terms of the quality of care offered, compassion, and vulnerability. Discussion: Levels of empathy increase when activities are developed with the aim of teaching, sensitization, and training for relational care between nursing staff and older people. The analysis of empathetic relationships is important to the evaluation of the quality of care provided to older people. Conclusion: Empathy in the nurse–patient relationship in the geriatric care setting is an important ethical aspect that contributes to the quality of the practice of nursing. The present findings indicate the need for more robust assessment tools with adequate psychometric properties and the descriptive analysis of empathy. (shrink)

This article proposes to analyse some aspects of the appropriation of New School thinking in Brazil, particularly Deweyan pragmatism, in the 1950s and 1960s. The analysis is based on the assumption that the developmentalist ideology that punctuated the debate on the economic, political and social restructuring of the country in these two decades constituted fertile ground for the return and expansion of pragmatist thinking amongst Brazilian educators, articulating itself, sometimes in contradictory ways, with this ideology. The focus of the analysis (...) will be on the writings of the group of educators which circulated around the figure of Anísio Teixeira, at the time director of the National Institute for Pedagogic Studies, an organ linked to the Ministry of Education and Culture, which set itself the task of producing research that would support public policy in the field of education, as well as constituting itself as a center for teacher education and the stimulus and development of innovative experiences in the public school system. The appropriation of Deweyan pragmatism, in this context, had a triple perspective: pragmatism as scientific method, implying a specific conception of science, particularly the social sciences, with emphasis on the application of scientific knowledge in the solution of practical problems; as a way of democratic life; and as a synonym for experimentalism, in the sphere of schooling. (shrink)

In this article, our objective was to analyze the emotions expressed regarding the Covid-19 vaccine in content published in Brazilian Portuguese on TikTok, a video sharing platform that has recently experienced global popularity. Our data set for this investigation was comprised of posts including the hashtag #vacina (vaccine), extracted using the Python TikTokAPI library. Emotions were identified and classified using standardized descriptors from the Human-Machine Interaction Network on Emotion (HUMAINE) and the Core Affect Model. Given the diversity of content on (...) TikTok, videos with emotional content were also separated into categories. Results revealed a prevalence of positive emotions such as contentment, enthusiasm, and interest regarding the vaccines, especially in videos of a personal and informative character. Negative emotions, such as doubt and disapproval, were associated with contextual and strategic factors, with significant expression in humorous and infotainment publications. (shrink)

Chronic migraine is a difficult disease to diagnose, and its pathophysiology remains undefined. Its symptoms affect the quality of life and daily living tasks of the affected person, leading to momentary disability. This is a pilot, randomized, controlled, double-blind clinical trial study with female patients between 18 and 65 years old with chronic migraine. The patients underwent twelve mindfulness sessions paired with anodal transcranial direct-current stimulation over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, with current intensity of 2 mA applied for 20 (...) min, three times a week for 4 weeks. In addition, 20 min of mindfulness home practices were performed by guided meditation audio files. A total of 30 participants were evaluated after the treatment, and these were subdivided into two groups—active tDCS and sham tDCS, both set to mindfulness practice. The FFMQ-BR, MIDAS, and HIT-6 questionnaires were used to evaluate the outcomes. After the treatment, the active mindfulness and tDCS group showed better results in all outcomes. The sham group also showed improvements, but with smaller effect sizes compared to the active group. The only significant difference in the intergroup analysis was the outcome evaluated by HIT-6 in the post treatment result. Our results provide the first therapeutic evidence of mindfulness practices associated with left DLPFC anodal tDCS with a consequent increase in the level of full attention and analgesic benefits in the clinical symptoms of patients with chronic migraine. (shrink)

Trata-se de pesquisa de natureza bibliográfica e de caráter exploratório, que tem por finalidade, apresentar os principais pressupostos teóricos da concepção multiculturalista de Charles Taylor. Assim, o presente trabalho visa fazer uma crítica, a partir do pensamento do filósofo Charles Taylor, ao modelo de sociedade habitualmente denominado liberalismo procedimental, ou liberalismo igualitário, no sentido de que esse modelo não corresponde, dentro de suas pretensões, a um modelo possível de sociedade livre e com padrões de justiça compatíveis com o (...) fato do pluralismo que caracteriza a sociedades contemporâneas. (shrink)

Our question, in this paper, is about the plausibility of the expressivist account of one’s self- attribution of mental states. More to the point, we will strictly follow the principle of charity as a mean to show that an expressivist philosopher can have good and reasonable answers to the set of objections put together in so called “Geach’s point”. Using this method, we hope to give enough evidences that an expressivist philosopher has enough resources to build a plausible explanation for (...) one’s attribution of mental states to herself. (shrink)

Los principios ontológicos de la unidad y continuidad del ser constituyen los dos rasgos fundamentales de la categoría de la identidad dentro del pensamiento filosófico del autor. La importancia de los mismos se manifiesta, desde el primer momento, en el hecho de que su antropología filosófica esté polarizada a partir de las categorías de la identidad, alteridad y diferencia ontológicas. Dado que la complejidad del pensamiento unamuniano no nos permite, en un único estudio, el análisis conjunto de las tres categorías, (...) optamos por centrarnos en la categoría de la identidad y en sus principios de unidad y continuidad del ser que constituyen la dimensión más positiva de su proyecto antropológico. (shrink)

Analiso neste artigo a presença na cosmologia de Tomás de Aquino da hipótese real do vacuum in natura afirmada no contexto da discussão sobre a geração e os primeiros instantes da locomoção natural dos corpos simples sublunares. Para tanto, o texto possui três partes. Primeiro, mostro porque o vaccuum in natura é uma discussão pertencente ao domínio da cosmologia entendida como matriz disciplinar cujo objeto é o cosmo enquanto conjunto dos corpos simples. Na segunda parte, por sua vez, apresento a (...) discussão geral sobre a noção de vazio que Tomás estabelece com Aristóteles. Enfim, na terceira parte, exponho, por um lado, a crítica de Tomás à tese de Averróis segundo a qual a resistência é necessária para a locomoção natural e, por outro lado, a hipótese tomista baseada nas noções de generans e vis sobre a locomoção natural e finita no vazio. Abstract:In this article I analyze the presence in the cosmology of Thomas Aquinas of the real hypothesis of the vacuum in natura affirmed in the context of the discussion about the generation and the first instants of the natural locomotion of the sublunary simple bodies. To do so, the text has three parts. Firstly I show why the vaccuum in natura is a discussion belonging to the domain of cosmology understood as a disciplinary matrix whose object is the cosmos as a set of simple bodies. In the second part, I present the general discussion of the notion of void that Aquinas establishes with Aristotle. Finally, in the third part, I present, on the one hand, Aquinas’s critique of Averroes’ thesis that resistance is necessary for natural locomotion and, on the other hand, the Thomistic hypothesis based on the notions of generans and vis on locomotion natural and finite in the void. (shrink)

In this essay, we discuss the relationship between education, human education and ethics in the context of orthodox neoliberalism, as well as some challenges presented to educational policy in Brazil. It is characterized as an exploratory study of a theoretical nature and is part of a set of three research projects at the doctoral level, carried out at a university in southern Brazil from 2017 to 2020. By contextualizing the current moment of neoliberalism in the country and presenting some foundations (...) of a human and ethical formation, we point to the current challenges present for the consolidation of an educational policy whose horizon is full human formation. The studies show that educational policy from the perspective of human formation today needs to guarantee conditions that articulate, within the school, access to scientific knowledge, creativity and self-organization of the subjects of the pedagogical process in its entirety. Keywords: Education. Human formation. Ethics. Neoliberalism. Education policy. (shrink)

Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) foi um proeminente escritor e um dos maiores intelectuais europeus do movimento positivista do século XIX. Filósofo, sociólogo, biólogo, educador e cientista, fortemente influenciado pela teoria da evolução de Charles Darwin, foi também autor de prolíficas obras filosóficas e educativas, como Os Princípios da Sociologia, A Educação Intelectual, Moral e Física. Do livro intitulado The Philosophy of Style, publicado originalmente na Inglaterra, em 1852, apresenta-se as traduções de seis ensaios filosófico-literários ao português brasileiro, nos quais Spencer (...) discorreu sobre a aplicação da economia às palavras, ao texto literário e traços peculiares da linguagem estética.Palavras-chave: Herbert Spencer. Filosofia. Linguagem. Estilo. (shrink)

Resumo O presente estudo aborda a articulação entre ciência natural e cosmologia em Tomás de Aquino. Para tanto, são investigadas as concepções da noção de cosmo, mediante a questão: o cosmo pode ser o assunto central da ciência natural em Tomás? No intuito de refletir sobre essa questão, são apresentadas três concepções de cosmo. A primeira é a concepção da metafísica, na qual o cosmo é uma hierarquia de entes. A segunda, por sua vez, é a concepção da cosmografia segundo (...) a qual o cosmo é a relação de esferas intercaladas. A terceira, por fim, é a concepção da cosmologia que entende o cosmo como o conjunto dos corpos simples em perene locomoção natural.The present study aims to articulate natural science and cosmology in Thomas Aquinas. Accordingly, I want to investigate the conceptions of cosmos by the following question: can the cosmos be the central topic of natural science in Aquinas? I present three conceptions of cosmos in order to reflect upon this question. The first is the metaphysical one in which the cosmos is a hierarchy of entities. The second is related to cosmography according to which the cosmos is a relation of intercalated spheres. The third, finally, is the cosmological conception that understands the cosmos as the set of simple bodies in perennial natural locomotion. (shrink)

For a discourse on the spectacle of the transcendental world to be received in its comprehensible and coherent totality, its needs to get rid of the arbitrariness of the dominion of tremulous shapes of the sensitive, which is merely the sphere of opinions. This is what Plato suggests, following the course of reflection of the first thinkers: in order to compensate the deficiencies that entail elision of reality and to transform language into a vehicle of authentic intellection of the fundamental (...) concepts of philosophical thinking, he sets it into the center of a rigorous speculation. In the same way as his predecessors Heraclitus and Parmenides, the philosopher reveals logofilia at exerting himself to build a new discursive structure, different from that of common man and thereby stirring, in the field of philosophy, a revolution that had become indispensable: he elaborates a founding model - the beginning of a permanent order as the prelude to the edification of a formal and abstract language that refers to entities that the majority of humans cannot visualize by themselves. Only through it will the universal truth of the divine Forms be able to shine, which, at lending their names to the endless series of sensible particulars, clarifies them and confers them signification. Through the theories he develops based on them and exposes in the Dialogues,the philosopher aims at inducing the reader to prepare himself to methodically operate the conversion of his soul to the level of these super-sensitive ideal beings and grasp, thus, the reality that founds and turns everything cognizable.Para que um discurso sobre o espetáculo do mundo transcendente seja acolhido como totalidade inteligível e coerente, urge desvencilhar-se da arbitrariedade do domínio de trêmulos contornos do sensível, esfera de opiniões apenas. É o que propõe Platão, na esteira das reflexões dos primeiros pensadores: para suprir deficiências que causam a elisão da realidade e transformar a linguagem num veículo de intelecção autêntica dos conceitos essenciais de um pensar filosófico, ele a coloca no centro de uma especulação rigorosa. Tal como seus antecessores Heráclito e Parmênides, Platão revela logofilia ao empenhar-se na construção de uma nova estrutura discursiva, diferente daquela do homem comum, desencadeando no campo da Filosofia uma revolução que se tornara indispensável: elabora um modelo fundador - princípio de uma ordem permanente propedêutica à construção de uma linguagem formal e abstrata - referente a entes que os homens, na maioria, por si mesmos não conseguem visualizar. Somente nela poderá reverberar a verdade universal das Formas que, ao emprestarem seus nomes à infindável série dos particulares sensíveis, os clarifica e lhes confere significação. Com as teorias que a partir das Formas desenvolve e expõe nos Diálogos, o filósofo visa induzir o leitor a preparar-se para operar, metodicamente, a conversão de sua alma ao plano desses seres ideais, supra-sensíveis, e apreender, assim, a realidade que tudo fundamenta e torna cognoscível. (shrink)

Aquinas’ conception of causality, especially when associated to the notions of creation and nature, grounds his cosmology as presented in the Summa contra gentiles. Two theses are central to this cosmology. The first claims that the divine causality bestows order upon the world. The second in turn maintains that the set of stars, the heaven, rules and moves the sublunar realm, which necessarily occurs due to divine causality. There is therefore an articulation conceived by Aquinas between the two theses. To (...) show this articulation is the aim of this paper. For this, I investigate how Aquinas understands and associates the notions of causality, creation and nature in such a way that it guarantees both divine creation and the operation proper to natural beings, among which stands out the heaven, which, in virtue of continuous locomotion, sets the condition for the actualization of beings’ potentialities. (shrink)

The metaphor of culture as a space or environment of meaning is widely employed. Going beyond metaphor, we present a model of culture as a 3-dimensional Euclidean space, using data from Brazil on cultural models of life goals. The dimensions of this space are defined by degree of sharing of culture (cultural competence); alternate configurations of that shared meaning (residual agreement); and social practice (cultural consonance). A cultural distance metric calculated within those dimensions identifies an individuals’ proximity to prototypical goals; (...) greater distance from these goals is associated with higher psychological distress. Cultural distance is in turn influenced by one’s sense of personal agency. Finally, in a set of open-ended interviews, the more individuals employ spatial metaphors in talking about culturally defined life goals, the higher their sense of personal agency and cultural consonance. This model moves the discussion of culture as a space of meaning from metaphor to measurement. (shrink)

One does not have to share William Connolly's vitalist affiliations in order to have serious reservations about Ruth Leys's essay and response.1 Simple phenomenological concerns will do to make one suspicious of her core claim:From my perspective, intentionality involves concept-possession; the term intentionality carries with it the idea that thoughts and feelings are directed to conceptually and cognitively appraised and meaningful objects in the world. The general aim of my paper is to propose that affective neuroscientists and the new affect (...) theorists are thus making a mistake when they suggest that emotion or affect can be defined in nonconceptual or nonintentional terms.2I worry about the difficulty of defining the boundaries of a notion like conceptual, especially since on the next page Leys claims an equivalence between cognition and signification. There seems at least a tendency toward tautology in equating “nonconceptual” with “nonintentional,” as if one could be used to define the other. But then signification enters the picture, although criteria for signification involve simple recognition and do not implicate the awareness of logical connectives that seem necessary for conceptual and cognitive appraisal. And the Wittgenstein in me worries even more why Leys thinks that intentionality should be confined to only one set of traits despite the fact that a great variety of language games depend on something like intentional awareness. (shrink)

One of the motivations for the researches leaded by the members of Vienna Circle with regard to the foundations of scientific language is found on Wittgenstein’s “Tractatus Logico-Philophicus”. Even though there are divergences about the legitimacy of this influence, thebook was, in effect, taken as a theoretical motivation for the structuring of scientific language, developed by logical empiricists. This paper will present the theories developed by members of Vienna Circle emphasizing the elements presents in Tractatusthat were taken, largely, as influence (...) over the “criterion of meaning” of a philosophical proposition adopted by logical empiricists in an attempt to set a foundation for knowledge. (shrink)

To what extent do people attribute meanings to “nonsense” words? How general is such attribution of meaning? We used a set of words lacking conventional meanings to elicit drawings of made‐up creatures. Separate groups of participants rated the nonsense words and the drawings on several semantic dimensions and selected what name best corresponded to each creature. Despite lacking conventional meanings, “nonsense” words elicited a high level of consistency in the produced drawings. Meaning attributions made to nonsense words corresponded with meaning (...) attributions made by separate people to drawings that were inspired by the name. Naïve participants were able to recover the name that inspired the drawing with greater‐than‐chance accuracy. These results suggest that people make liberal and consistent use of non‐arbitrary relationships between forms and meanings.Open Research Badges This article has been awarded Open Materials and Open Data badges. All materials and data are publicly accessible via the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/8juyc/. Learn more about the Open Practices badges from the Center for Open Science: https://osf.io/tvyxz/wiki. (shrink)

Recent arguments concerning the nature of causation in evolutionary theory, now often known as the debate between the 'causalist' and 'statisticalist' positions, have involved answers to a variety of independent questions – definitions of key evolutionary concepts like natural selection, fitness, and genetic drift; causation in multi-level systems; or the nature of evolutionary explanations, among others. This Element offers a way to disentangle one set of these questions surrounding the causal structure of natural selection. Doing so allows us to clearly (...) reconstruct the approach that some of these major competing interpretations of evolutionary theory have to this causal structure, highlighting particular features of philosophical interest within each. Further, those features concern problems not exclusive to the philosophy of biology. Connections between them and, in two case studies, contemporary metaphysics and philosophy of physics demonstrate the potential value of broader collaboration in the understanding of evolution. (shrink)

A theory of intergenerational justice consists in the study of the moral and political status of the relations between present and past or future people, more specifically, of the obligations and entitlements they can potentially generate. The challenges that justify talking about responsibilities between generations are myriad. And the disputes they prompt can focus on the past just as much as on the present, even though the fact that the human species has reached a state of technological progress that enables (...) it to have an irredeemable impact on the planet and perhaps even endanger future human existence tends to make concerns about the future more pressing. Debates on intergenerational justice are twofold. The first revolves around the issue of whether claims of justice across generations whose members' lifetimes do not necessarily overlap could be justified. And the second revolves around the specific conception of justice in play, that is, around the nature of the standard that must be applied as well as around the identification of the contents of the duties that present generations supposedly have vis-à-vis past or future generations. This survey article depicts the conceptual and argumentative framework in which these debates are set. It aims to outline certain of the main features shared by the most influential contemporary theories of intergenerational justice, and the problems inherent in them. It concludes by suggesting that, even though the idea of succeeding generations is merely an abstraction, there are specific empirical states of affairs that require different theoretical responses to intergenerational justice. (shrink)

It is an irony perhaps worthy of John Ashbery that the critics who made his reputation as our premier contemporary poet have virtually ignored the innovations which in fact make his work distinctively of our time. The received terms show us how Ashbery revitalizes the old wisdom of Keats or the virile fantasies of Emersonian strength but they do so at the cost of almost everything about the work deeply responsive to irreducibly contemporary demands on the psyche. Such omissions not (...) only distance Ashbery from the urgencies of the present, they also make it far more difficult to appreciate just how the best contemporary art actually defines the challenges and possibilities created by that present. By banishing writers like Ashbery to literary tradition, we leave the domain of the postmodern to two dominant discourses. One is driven by post-structural theory’s idealization of the nomadic, the undecidable, and the profusion of simulacra. The other champions Marxist values which cast as the most significant contemporary art the rather slight oppositional devices of artists like Sherrie Levine, Hans Haacke, and Barbara Kruger. These critical idealizations then ignore what might be the central historical problem facing contemporary art. Can it continue to elaborate new dimensions of that late fifties postmodernism which set the values of Marcel Duchamp, John Cage, and Robert Rauschenberg against the increasingly formalist versions of modernism that then dominated the art world and the poetry workshops? Or does the age demand the emergence of a new sensibility, strands of which are being woven in post-structuralist mills? Charles Altieri is professor of English and comparative literature at the University of Washington. Author of books on contemporary poetry and literary theory, he has just completed a book on abstraction in modern poetry and painting. This essay lays some groundwork for a book, Bourgeois Utopians, attempt to keep the arts central to our discussion of postmodernism. (shrink)

If Milton is the grand expositor of human culture as a middle realm, Williams can be seen as in many respects his secular heir, an heir careful to work out how the poetic imagination serves to make man's expulsion from Edenic origins bearable and even invigorating. Williams' poetics begins, as Riddel makes clear, in the awareness that there is no inherent or even recoverable correspondence between words and facts in the world, but Williams then devotes most of his energies to (...) denying the metaphysical alternative to that position—the claim that all language can do is reflect on and play with the emptiness or fictiveness of its signifiers. If words do not copy but produce meanings, then they can be used significantly to focus our attention on the activities of the artist and his constructed characters as they engage in that process of production. The act of producing meanings can be the process by which to achieve another kind of reference, for the act of expression can itself become the focus generating a poem's significance by calling attention to the various ways authors and characters station themselves in relation to specific situations. Fiction then is not so much a term describing the ontological status of certain kinds of language but a term characterizing a particular way of using language to reflect upon forms of behavior in which we are not fully conscious of the quality of our activities. Williams' position on the artist's language is clearest in his frequent metaphor of the artist as farmer. The initial activity of both men is a kind of violence, an assertion of the difference between human desires and indifferent "blank fields." But what begins as antagonism does not result in the creation of self-referential fictive structures or the gay wisdom of maintaining and disseminating differences. Rather antagonism is the precondition for what Williams richly labels "composition": the farmer-poet organizes the blank field into a fertile, life-sustaining set of relationships which are not simply linguistic.1 · 1. Williams, Imaginations, ed. Webster Schott , pp. 98-99. Williams' image of arts as antagonistic composing has important parallels with the Russian Formalist concept of "defamiliarization," but for Williams it is not simply a scene but a total human act that is revealed by this process. Charles Altieri teaches modern literature and literary theory in the English department at the University of Washington. The author of Enlarging the Temple: New Directions in American Poetry of the 1960s, he has just completed a study of literary meaning. "Culture and Skepticism: A Response to Michael Fischer" was contributed to Critical Inquiry in the Winter 1979 issue. (shrink)

I argue that ‘conspiracy theory’ and ‘conspiracy theorist’ as commonly employed are ‘tonkish’ terms (as defined by Arthur Prior and Michael Dummett), licensing inferences from truths to falsehoods; indeed, that they are mega-tonkish terms, since their use is governed by different and competing sets of introduction and elimination rules, delivering different and inconsistent results. Thus ‘conspiracy theory’ and ‘conspiracy theorist’ do not have determinate extensions, which means that generalizations about conspiracy theories or conspiracy theorists do not have determinate truth-values. Hence (...) conspiracy theory theory – psychological or social scientific research into conspiracy theorists and what is wrong with them – is often about as intellectually respectable as an enquiry into bastards and what makes them so mean. (shrink)

O presente artigo tem como objetivo articular um diálogo entre as propostas de Charles Taylor e Nancy Fraser acerca das políticas de reconhecimento e identidade. Nesta tarefa, apresentamos a ligação fundamental que Charles Taylor estabelece entre identidade e reconhecimento, a partir de uma dimensão dialógica que privilegia o contato significativo com os outros. Posteriormente, discutimos a concepção de um modelo de status como alternativa ao modelo de identidade na proposta de Nancy Fraser, que compreende o reconhecimento como uma (...) questão de justiça desvinculada de avaliações éticas. Por fim, são contrastadas as concepções de reconhecimento de ambos os pensadores em relação à centralidade da identidade e autorrealização nas políticas de reconhecimento, destacando como as críticas de Fraser a Taylor desconsideram a dimensão intersubjetiva da concepção de identidade do filósofo canadense. (shrink)

Nominalism is the view that abstract mathematical objects like numbers, functions, and sets do not exist. The chapter articulates and defends a variety of nominalism, based on a reading of mathematical statements in terms of possible linguistic constructions. The chapter responds directly to a recent study of nominalism by Gideon Rosen and John Burgess, and develops a reply to the Quine-Putnam indispensability argument for the existence of mathematical objects.

Professor Flathman's main aim in this interesting paper is to set forth what we might call the “moderation thesis.” It holds that there may be occasions when the best thing to do, all things considered, is to violate a right – at least if the violation takes the form of what Flathman calls “civil encroachment” or “civil non-enforcement.” Moreover, it would be desirable, in a society whose practices include rights, for this belief to be generally accepted, so that those who (...) engaged with good reason in “civil encroachment” would receive the sympathetic support of the community. Let me begin by trying to explain the source of the problem to which this thesis is a response. As Flathman notes, rights have a discretionary character: if I have a right to do or to have something, it is up to me whether to do it or to have it. Having a right, I am entitled to make a choice. Since we cannot say, in advance, what choice I will make, we cannot say, in advance, what will be the state of the world after I make it. But since it seems plain that some states of the world are more desirable than others, it will always be possible that the consequences of my choice will be worse, on the whole, than the consequences of some other choice that I might have made but did not. To moderate rights is apparently to act in ways that redress or compensate for the undesirable results of their exercise. (shrink)

Both the commonsensical and leading theoretical accounts of entrepreneurship, democracy, and solidarity fail to describe adequately entrepreneurial, democratic, and solidarity?building practices. These accounts are inadequate because they assume a faulty description of human being. In this article we develop an interpretation of entrepreneurship, democratic action, and solidarity?building that relies on understanding human beings as neither primarily thinking nor desiring but as skillful beings. Western human beings are at their best when they are engaged in producing large?scale cultural or historical changes (...) in the way people and things are dealt with. The three domains of human activity where these historical changes are most clearly accomplished are entrepreneurship, democratic action, and solidarity. Section I, guided by a roughly Kuhnian notion of holding on to an anomaly until it re?gestalts the way we see things, offers a general interpretation of how skillful human beings open up new worlds by changing their shared background practices in three ways: reconfiguring, which makes a marginal practice central; cross?appropriation, in which one domain of practices takes over useful practices from another domain; and articulating, whereby dispersed or confused practices are brought into clearer focus. An entrepreneur creates a product which reconfigures the practices. This interpretation of entrepreneurial skills is contrasted with current accounts that overlook ehtrepreneurship to concentrate on instrumental or theoretical models of business activities. Section II claims that the most exemplary kind of political action in a liberal democracy is that of political action groups. Such groups produce a change in a nation's background practices through a kind of speaking that leads to massive cross?appropriation. We describe Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) and suggest that it both satisfies the requirements for genuine democratic action that we have established in our examination of other views and lacks their disadvantages. We conclude that the relatively detached action suggested by current theories of liberal democracy fail to do justice to democratic practice. The final section argues that those who claim that a single highest value or procedure provides a source of solidarity that satisfies all the competing interests in a multi?cultural nation always arrive at a solidarity that is too thin to provide for the serious sort of commitments that one would be willing to die for. We propose that solidarity in multi?cultural states implies commitment to a set of thick values, and that when one realizes that these thick values construct one's identity one is willing to die for them. While political action concerns itself with ordering values, solidarity involves the cultivation of them in such a way that no ordering of them matters. But solidarity is not to be understood as a subjective feeling. It is rather the experience of a group identity, a ?we?, that sees things and deals with things in terms of shared concerns. This ?we? comes to recognize itself when the actions it engages in transform it. The paradigmatic action that transforms such a ?we? occurs when a culture figure articulates some forgotten concern or value. As in the cases of entrepreneurship and democratic action, a culture figure cultivates solidarity by changing the background practices in a historical manner. It is concluded that traditional theoretical accounts, by overlooking the primacy of involved skillful activities and the importance of background change, fail to capture the source, the function, and the point of entrepreneurship, liberal democracy, and solidarity. (shrink)

This is the first book on diving to progress beyond the beginner's stage. although open to the beginner, it will come into full use in the hands of the advanced performer and his coach. A careful balance is maintained between encouraging the instinctive response and encouraging the diver to act in accordance with basic physical principles that are instilled so deeply they become second nature to him.The author abjures the folklore of traditional diving instruction in favor of an approach solidly (...) based on the science of mechanics. Such concepts as the moment of inertia and the conservation of angular momentum are simply and graphically explained. This is by no means empty scientific bravado -- in giving the diver a genuine knowledge of why certain motions produce certain results, the book will impart more confidence than a mere set of precepts telling him what to do.All the main groups of dives are covered in separate chapters. The "saving of dives," an essential development of modern diving, is treated, and there is a chapter on the judging of diving. The book is profusely illustrated with drawings and photographs, including for the first time stroboscopic movie action shots of current National and Olympic champions. (shrink)

Newton’s impact on Enlightenment natural philosophy has been studied at great length, in its experimental, methodological and ideological ramifications. One aspect that has received fairly little attention is the role Newtonian “analogies” played in the formulation of new conceptual schemes in physiology, medicine, and life science as a whole. So-called ‘medical Newtonians’ like Pitcairne and Keill have been studied; but they were engaged in a more literal project of directly transposing, or seeking to transpose, Newtonian laws into quantitative models of (...) the body. I am interested here in something different: neither the metaphysical reading of Newton, nor direct empirical transpositions, but rather, a more heuristic, empiricist construction of Newtonian analogies. Figures such as Haller, Barthez, and Blumenbach constructed analogies between the method of celestial mechanics and the method of physiology. In celestial mechanics, they held, an unknown entity such as gravity is posited and used to mathematically link sets of determinate physical phenomena (e.g., the phases of the moon and tides). This process allows one to remain agnostic about the ontological status of the unknown entity, as long as the two linked sets of phenomena are represented adequately. Haller et. al. held that the Newtonian physician and physiologist can similarly posit an unknown called ‘life’ and use it to link various other phenomena, from digestion to sensation and the functioning of the glands. These phenomena consequently appear as interconnected, goal-oriented processes which do not exist either in an inanimate mechanism or in a corpse. In keeping with the empiricist roots of the analogy, however, no ontological claims are made about the nature of this vital principle, and no attempts are made to directly causally connect such a principle and observable phenomena. The role of the “Newtonian analogy” thus brings together diverse schools of thought, and cuts across a surprising variety of programs, models and practices in natural philosophy. (shrink)

We present a probabilistic extension to active path analyses of token causation (Halpern & Pearl 2001, forthcoming; Hitchcock 2001). The extension uses the generalized notion of intervention presented in (Korb et al. 2004): we allow an intervention to set any probability distribution over the intervention variables, not just a single value. The resulting account can handle a wide range of examples. We do not claim the account is complete --- only that it fills an obvious gap in previous active-path approaches. (...) It still succumbs to recent counterexamples by Hiddleston (2005), because it does not explicitly consider causal processes. We claim three benefits: a detailed comparison of three active-path approaches, a probabilistic extension for each, and an algorithmic formulation. (shrink)

The papers by Ronald de Sousa and Steve Davis raise very interesting issues. I think that they have the issue almost right between us, but I want to make some small amendments, which will make a big difference.First, de Sousa: with all the talk about the ‘significance feature,’ I’m not trying to make an in principle argument against the reduction of purpose/action to physical movement/change. Perhaps such an argument is possible, perhaps not. For the moment, all we have is the (...) a posteriori. But that involves our making the most dear-headed possible judgments about our actual intellectual predicament, using this term as a shorthand for a whole set of issues to do with the nature of the phenomena we face, and how they relate or don't relate to the theories on offer. Philosophy can help in this, not because philosophers wheel in bright, shiny a priori possibility arguments, but rather by clarifying what is at stake, and what is going on. (shrink)

This paper details research which investigated a probable causal connection between taking an introductory logic course and significant improvement in logical skills. The authors first detail the setting (a two-year, open-access unit of the University of Cincinnati), the student body (the authors note that many students enter the college with several notable types of academic disadvantage), and the content of an introductory logic course. Following this, they summarize and defend their research protocol and the results of their study. Findings include (...) a statistically significant increase in students’ logical skills after enrollment in a one-quarter introductory logic course. After a statistical analysis of their findings, the authors discuss several possible applications, extensions, and improvements of their research protocol, concluding that the generalizability of their study is limited due to the myriad variables that attend teaching. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Against the Greek LogiciansCharles E. ButterworthIbn Taimiyya. Against the Greek Logicians. Translated with an introduction and notes by Wael B. Hallaq. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. Pp. lviii + 204. $55.00.Wael Hallaq's most readable translation of Ibn Taimiyya's famous work is complemented by a masterful introduction and intelligent, relevant footnotes. In addition, he has taken care to help the reader in many ways, adding, for example, a list of (...) the emendations he has made to the Arabic text as well as a table that details the correspondence between the paragraphs of his translation and the pages and lines within the more standard Arabic texts.The editor-translator's introduction sets forth Ibn Taimiyya's teaching in a clear and well-argued manner, something that is necessary given the repetitiveness and confusing arguments that characterize the original. Though Hallaq tends to reveal himself to be something of a partisan of Ibn Taimiyya's doctrines and thus to overstate the case for his author, this is a minor flaw. The strength of the Introduction is such that the student of logic or philosophy is compelled to indicate the problems in Hallaq's presentation, that is, to identify the reasons for not being persuaded by his exposition. [End Page 273] To do so, however, is merely a means of carrying the argument a step further and thus a compliment of sorts to Hallaq.As I see it, there are five areas where one might take issue with the editor-translator's presentation of Ibn Taimiyya's teaching. First, because he follows his author too closely, Hallaq relies too much on Avicenna and on Avicenna's commentators to present the position of the philosophers. He seems to ignore that the teaching of Avicenna—he whom Averroes would identify only as "that man"-—is problematic even for the philosophers. Second, Hallaq relies too much on secondary literature in order to present the history of philosophy. He would have been far better advised to trace the history of philosophy for himself, especially the history of medieval Islamic philosophy. By relying on others, especially those whose interpretations are open to major objections, he weakens his own presentation. This tendency becomes especially evident in what I take as a third point of criticism, namely, Hallaq's too ready conflation of the history of philosophy and consequent willingness to blame ancient and medieval philosophers for the folly of modern philosophers (see xxx, n. 98 and xviii:17-18). Worse, Hallaq eventually becomes so carried away with the desire to refute the ancient and medieval philosophers that he no longer cares about the evil consequences of modern philosophy (see xviii:8-xlix:20, esp. xlviii:8-29). Indeed, and this is the fourth criticism, so intent is Hallaq on confirming that Ibn Taimiyya has refuted the philosophers that he is content to call anyone a philosopher, even al-Suhrawardī, al-Baghdādī, al-Tūsī, and, wonder of wonders, Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (see xliv:4). Though he has good guidance for this from Ibn Taimiyya, one would hope for more objectivity from the critical scholar than from the engaged defender of the faith. Finally, Hallaq actually introduces Ibn Taimiyya's wider teaching rather than the argument of this book, thereby neglecting the primary function of an introduction to a book. Thus, of 91 notes in the Introduction that refer to Ibn Taimiyya's works, only slightly more than half (52) cite this work. The other 39 are to Ibn Taimiyya's other writings. Moreover, many of the 52 notes to this work also refer to other writings by Ibn Taimiyya.Thankful as we must be to Hallaq for this translation, it is most unfortunate that he chose not to be consistent in his translation of Arabic terms. Apparently, he thought he could make more sense of Ibn Taimiyya's argument by translating terms in accordance with what he took to be the sense of what Ibn Taimiyya wished to say rather than in accordance with what he actually says. Consequently, tasdīq (a term I would translate as "assent") is rendered as "judgment"; but so is hukm (see ¶¶ 5 and... (shrink)

Este artigo analisa oficinas de leitura efetuadas com alunos do primeiro ano do Ensino Médio de uma escola pública e de uma escola particular da cidade de Dourados/MS. Tais oficinas foram constituídas por textos que reconfiguravam a personagem Chapeuzinho Vermelho ao longo do tempo, e a mediação de leitura visava a buscar, nas interpretações dos estudantes, novas leituras acerca dos textos Chapeuzinho Vermelho, nas versões de Charles Perrault e dos irmãos Grimm; além do conto Fita Verde no Cabelo: nova (...) velha estória, de Guimarães Rosa. A expectativa era perceber como o público das distintas realidades tem interpretado textos, tomando como base os Modos de Leitura defendidos pelo teórico Rildo Cosson como mecanismos para interpretar textos literários em suas indagações durante as atividades. Portanto, apresentamos aqui a análise das transcrições de áudios gravados durante as Oficinas de Leitura. A metodologia adotada está baseada nos estudos de Alves e Silva para análises qualitativas. Ao final, concluímos que os estudantes da escola pública e da escola particular se valem dos Modos de Leitura para interpretações de textos literários, entretanto, os primeiros se mostram mais apegados às temáticas dos textos por identificação de suas realidades, tornando assim a leitura mais pessoal, sem recorrer a teorias literárias para suas interpretações, enquanto os outros, mais conhecedores de teorias e conceitos de literatura, tornam suas interpretações menos pessoais e mais práticas. Como referencial teórico, dialogamos com Cosson e com o Referencial Curricular da Educação Básica da Rede de Estadual de Ensino/MS – Ensino Médio, dentre outros. (shrink)

There is perhaps no more important value than fundamental human equality. And yet, despite large percentages of people affirming the value, the resources available to explain and defend the basis for such equality are few and far between. In his newest book, Charles Camosy provides a thoughtful defense of human dignity. Telling personal stories like those of Jahi McMath, Terri Schiavo, and Alfie Evans, Camosy, a noted bioethicist and theologian, uses an engaging style to show how the influence of (...) secularized medicine is undermining fundamental human equality in the broader culture. And in a disturbing final chapter, Camosy sounds the alarm about the next population to fall if we stay on our current trajectory: dozens of millions of human beings with dementia. Heeding this alarm, Camosy argues, means doing two things. First, making urgent and genuine attempts to dialogue with a secularized culture which cannot see how it is undermining one of its most foundational values. Second, religious communities which hold the Imago Dei sacred must mobilize their existing institutions (and create new ones) to care for a new set of human beings our throwaway culture may deem nonpersons. (shrink)

Preview: “America does not think much of its philosophers,” Douglas Anderson writes in his introduction to Philosophy Americana. “We do not teach philosophy in our high schools. A majority in America have no idea what philosophy is about or why it might be interesting, if not important.” Perhaps that lack of appreciation for philosophy is coeval with its beginnings when the ancient Athenians put Socrates to death. Anderson’s lament is clearly present from the supposed birth of Western philosophy, and vividly (...) so in 1486 in Italian humanist Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s discourse known as The Dignity of Man, where he states, “The whole of philosophy is occasion for contempt and contumely, rather than honor and glory. The deadly and monstrous persuasion has invaded practically all minds, that philosophy ought not to be studied at all or by very few people; as though it were a thing of little worth to have before our eyes and at our fingertips....Thus,” Pico said six centuries ago, “we have reached a point, it is painful to recognize, where the only persons accounted wise are those who can reduce the pursuit of wisdom to a profitable traffic.” So it seems today in America and so it has apparently been and will ever be. Nevertheless, Anderson hopes to open a discussion about how philosophy does and does not manifest itself in American culture, how its practitioners remain “invisible,” and largely misunderstood “in rural, laboring, underclassed, and unschooled settings.” It is not his intention, at least in this book, to take up the issue of race in a discipline as overwhelmingly white as Western philosophy. Yet this has been for me, a black American philosopher, a lifelong meditation, which I will attempt to address in this essay. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 29.3 (1999) 40-62 [Access article in PDF] Syncretism and Its Synonyms: Reflections on Cultural Mixture Charles Stewart * The subject matter of anthropology has gradually changed over the last twenty years. Nowadays ethnographers rarely search for a stable or original form of cultures; they are usually more concerned with revealing how local communities respond to historical change and global influences. The burgeoning literature on transnational flows of (...) ideas, global institutions, and cultural mixture reflects this shift of attention. This increased awareness of cultural interpenetration has, furthermore, been instrumental in the critique of earlier conceptions of "culture" that cast it as too stable, bounded, and homogeneous to be useful in a world characterized by migrations (voluntary or forced), cheap travel, international marketing, and telecommunications. 1 Contemporary social theory has accordingly turned to focus on phenomena such as globalization, transnational nationalism, and the situation of diaspora communities. In this body of literature the word syncretism has begun to reappear alongside such related concepts as hybridization and creolization as a means of portraying the dynamics of global social developments.In what follows I consider some current attempts to theorize mixture before turning to examine the suitability, or not, of the terms listed above. Anthropologists and other social scientists have expressed ambivalence about all three terms--syncretism, hybridity, and creolization. I discuss these reservations before presenting a genealogical consideration of the single term syncretism. My purpose in considering the history of syncretism up to the present is not to enforce a standard usage confined to the domain of religion; nor is it my goal to promote syncretism to a position of primus inter pares in the company of all other terms for mixture. I see my approach instead as an attempt to illustrate historically that syncretism has an objectionable but nevertheless instructive past. If this past can be understood, then we are in a position to consciously reappropriate syncretism [Shaw and Stewart 2] and set the ethnographic study of cultural mixture on new tracks.This might seem too minimalist to readers who currently have no reservations about the term, but many anthropologists, on both sides of the Atlantic, have personally expressed to me strong reservations about ever employing the word syncretism. If asked why they hold this view, they are often unable to articulate a specific reason. Some, however, did express one or both of the following objections: (1) syncretism is a pejorative term, one that derides mixture, and/or (2) syncretism presupposes "purity" in the [End Page 40] traditions that combine. Both of these reservations will be considered below, but it is the broad disagreement within the anthropological community on the appropriateness of the very term syncretism that has stimulated this inquiry. Such ambivalence reflects basic uncertainties about how to conceptualize cultural mixture. Current Discussions of Mixture Cultures, if we still wish to retain this term (and I do), are porous; they are open to intermixture with other, different cultures and they are subject to historical change precisely on account of these influences. 2 This has no doubt always been the case. Certainly decolonization and the entry into a postmodernity where master narratives of purity and homogeneity are vulnerable to doubt have contributed to valorizing recognitions of mixture where formerly they had been stigmatized as inauthentic and hence uninteresting for anthropological study. Research in the Caribbean, in Sidney Mintz's view, started relatively late precisely because this region "was considered theoretically unfruitful... its peoples supposedly lacked culture, or were culturally bastardized" [303].Cultural borrowing and interpenetration are today seen as part of the very nature of cultures [Glissant 140-41; Rosaldo, Foreword xv]. To phrase it more accurately, syncretism describes the process by which cultures constitute themselves at any given point in time. Today's hybridization will simply give way to tomorrow's hybridization, the form of which will be dictated by historico-political events and contingencies. In examining cultural hybridity, writers such as Edward Said and James Clifford [Predicament 14-15] have lifted syncretism out of the framework of acculturation. Syncretism is no longer a transient "stage" which will disappear when, with time, assimilation occurs. As Said... (shrink)

The presence of parasites in a population has an impact on mate choice and has substantial evolutionary significance. A relatively unexplored aspect of this dynamic is whether or not the presence of parasites increases the likelihood of hybridization events, which also have a significant role in ecological adaptation. One explanation of increased hybridization in some areas and not others is that stress from parasites results in selection for an increase of novel genotypes. Two swordtail species Xiphophorus birchmanni and Xiphophorus malinche (...) maintain an active hybrid zone. The patterns of hybridization are unique in that they do not match up directly with expectations. We set out to test whether or not individuals can sense, using chemical cues, whether conspecifics in their immediate vicinity have high parasite loads and also whether this has an effect on mating and association behavior toward both conspecific and hybrid mates. Our hypothesis being that females will have greater association times with hybrid/heterospecific mates if conscpecifics are heavily parasitized. We found that females exposed to parasitized males had a weaker preference for conspecific odor than those exposed to unparasitized males, both relative to a water control and relative to hybrids. The empirical investigation described above is coupled with a historical and philosophical discussion of some of the issues surrounding the acceptance and understanding of the concept of hybridization. This discussion takes as its major themes: an analysis of the role that social views have on the formation of scientific hypothesis; the lag between epochal change in the scientific community and the assimilation of the consequences into social beliefs; the survival of hierarchical and teleological thinking in our concept of species and purity; and the failures of contemporary evolutionary theory to provide satisfactory explanations about the meaning and upshot of hybridization. Two specific misconceptions about hybridization are addressed. First, that hybridization clashes with the belief in kinds/types/species having separate and pure identities. Secondly, the teleological view that reads purpose into nature and places all instances of variation on a hierarchical scale; the top and bottom of which are determined by estimated closeness to the predetermined perfection of a type. < <. (shrink)

Our capacity for impersonal reflection, for looking at our own perspective from without, as part of a world that exists independently of us, is our most distinctive trait as human beings. It finds its most striking expression in our moral thinking. For we are moral beings insofar as we stand back from our individual concerns and see in the good of others, in and of itself, a reason for action on our part. It is not, to be sure, in morality (...) alone that we exercise this power of impersonal reflection. We do so too, whenever we set about weighing the evidence for some belief without regard for what we would like to be true or for what common opinion would say. Yet nowhere does this self-transcendence show forth more vividly than when we turn our attention from our own happiness to that of another, taking the same immediate interest in that person's goodas we naturally harbor for our own. In this essay, I explore the way that the moral point of view is shaped by the nature of impersonal reflection and thus constitutes a signal expression of our humanity. (shrink)

Conclusions reached using common sense reasoning from a set of premises are often subsequently revised when additional premises are added. Because we do not always accept previous conclusions in light of subsequent information, common sense reasoning is said to be nonmonotonic. But in the standard formal systems usually studied by logicians, if a conclusion follows from a set of premises, that same conclusion still follows no matter how the premise set is augmented; that is, the consequence relations of standard logics (...) are monotonic. Much recent research in AI has been devoted to the attempt to develop nonmonotonic logics. After some motivational material, we give four formal proofs that there can be no nonmonotonic consequence relation that is characterized by universal constraints on rational belief structures. In other words, a nonmonotonic consequence relation that corresponds to universal principles of rational belief is impossible. We show that the nonmonotonicity of common sense reasoning is a function of the way we use logic, not a function of the logic we use. We give several examples of how nonmonotonic reasoning systems may be based on monotonic logics. (shrink)

Part of Frege's concern about whether number words are properties of objects was that if they could be construed as such it would lend support to the view that truths of arithmetic were empirical truths. Such concern is ill-founded. Even if number words do apply to objects as predicates, this does not entail that numerical truths would be empirical, any more than the fact that ‘bachelor’ and ‘unmarried’ are predicates of objects entails that their relationship is an empirical one. The (...) account of number words as predicates given here, consequently, should not be taken as supportive of any one particular theory concerning arithmetic truth rather than another.The view of number words that emerges above from the criticism of Frege's arguments is that sentences containing number words can and do say something about objects in a collective and syncategorematic way. That is, they say something about classes of objects, when it is clear what is to count as an object. Whether this view commits us to accepting certain ontological entities, classes of individuals, above and beyond individuals themselves, I am not prepared to say, and at any rate this question falls beyond the intended scope of this essay. To those who would eschew abstract entities, however, it may be noted that the ontological problems that arise are not peculiar to this view; they seem no more or less severe than those that arise in connection with other collective predicate statements, as, for example, “Blue whales are becoming extinct.”The view presented here also does not pretend to be a fatal criticism of the logicist program. Taking our cue from the above noted fact that syncategorematic predicates share in a common ‘partial’ abstract sense, it seems reasonable to say that it is just the set of such partial senses of number words, and the relationships that hold between such senses, that the logicist and the pure number theorist investigate. (shrink)

The creative imagination changes itself and the world in ways we cannot anticipate. This restless creativity gathers not just refutable facts; it hunts self-transforming revelations, semiotic prizes acclaimed and defended in the realms of inner awareness and political power. So doing, it eludes final description in any one set of signs. This means, I argue here, that sign systems must themselves give chase. Texts of this kind will not be the fixed embalmed arrays of signs and symbols that have sustained (...) our civilizations to date. These texts will be a new kind of artificial life, creative agents that rewrite and re-express themselves on-the-fly, in ways unpredictable by their founding authors. The deconstructive turn in postmodern theory sought interpretive vistas and strange loops to be teased, once upon a time, from each embalmed text. Beyond postmodernity is an aesthetics and a critical theory of empowered texts — sign arrays never quite the same and that, like time itself, sit still for no one. After an initial push by us, they self-evolve. Human sociobiology, asking how culture rewrites the agenda of replicating genes, provides a first glimpse of this new adventure in semiotics and human self-discovery. (shrink)