By "theory" we mean a special project in literary criticism: the attempt to govern interpretations of particular texts by appealing to an account of interpretation in general. The term is sometimes applied to literary subjects with no direct bearing on the interpretation of individual works, such as narratology, stylistics, and prosody. Despite their generality, however, these subjects seem to us essentially empirical, and our argument against theory will not apply to them.Contemporary theory has taken two forms. Some theorists have sought (...) to ground the reading of literary texts in methods designed to guarantee the objectivity and validity of interpretations. Others, impressed by the inability of such procedures to produce agreement among interpreters, have translated that failure into an alternative mode of theory that denies the possibility of correct interpretation. Our aim here is not to choose between these two alternatives but rather to show that both rest on a single mistake, a mistake that is central to the notion of theory per se. The object of our critique is not a particular way of doing theory but the idea of doing theory at all.Theory attempts to solve—or to celebrate the impossibility of solving—a set of familiar problems: the function of authorial intention, the status of literary language, the role of interpretive assumptions, and so on. We will not attempt to solve these problems, nor will we be concerned with tracing their history or surveying the range of arguments they have stimulated. In our view, the mistake on which all critical theory rests has been to imagine that these problems are real. In fact, we will claim such problems only seem real--and theory itself only seems possible or relevant—when theorists fail to recognize the fundamental inseparability of the elements involved.The clearest example of the tendency to generate theoretical problems by splitting apart terms that are in fact inseparable is the persistent debate over the relation between authorial intention and the meaning texts. Some theorists have claimed that valid interpretations can only be obtained through an appeal to authorial intentions. This assumption is shared by theorists who, denying the possibility of recovering authorial intentions, also deny the possibility of valid interpretations. But once it is seen that the meaning of a text is simply identical to the author's intended meaning, the project of grounding meaning in intention becomes incoherent. Since the project itself is incoherent, it can neither succeed nor fail, hence both theoretical attitudes toward intention are irrelevant. The mistake made by theorists has been to imagine the possibility or desirability of moving from one term to a second term , when actually the two terms are the same. One can neither succeed nor fail in deriving one term from the other, since to have one is already to have them both.In the following two sections we will try to show in detail how theoretical accounts of intention always go wrong. In the fourth section we will undertake a similar analysis of an influential account of the role interpretive assumptions or beliefs play in the practice of literary criticism. The issues of belief and intention are, we think, central to the theoretical enterprise; our discussion of them is thus directed not only against specific theoretical arguments but against theory in general. Our examples are meant to represent the central mechanism of all theoretical arguments, and our treatment of them is meant to indicate that all such arguments will fail and fail in the same way. If we are right, then the whole enterprise of critical theory is misguided and should be abandoned. (shrink)

We are grateful to Stanley Fish for demonstrating what “Against Theory” had merely assumed, that the only kind of theory worth attacking is the kind which claims to be more than just another form of practice. Some readers have thought that our arguments were directed against all general reflection about literature or criticism. Others have thought that we were resisting the encroachment on literary study of themes derived from politics, or psychoanalysis, or philosophy. These are plausible misreading of our intention, (...) since the term “theory” is indeed sometimes applied to any critical argument marked by historical or aesthetic generalization or by the reading of literature in terms of themes derived from other disciplines. But, as Fish shows, neither empirical generality nor thematic novelty is enough to make an argument theoretical in more than a trivial sense, that is, in a sense that marks it as importantly different in kind from other critical arguments. Theory in a nontrivial sense always consists in the attempt “to stand outside practice in order to govern practice from without,” and this strong kind of theory is the kind whose coherence we deny . It is also the kind of theory engaged in by the vast majority of those who consider themselves theorists—including many who might prefer to think of themselves as practicing theory in some weaker sense.At the conclusion of “Philosophy without Principles,” Richard Rorty appears to join those who think we are attacking theory in its weaker senses as well as in the strong sense just described. He suggests that eliminating the writing and teaching of theory would deprive literary scholars of “an opportunity to discuss philosophy books—as well as novels, poems, critical essays, and so forth—with literature students” . If this were the only issue between Rorty’s version of pragmatism and ours, our disagreement would come to an immediate end, since nothing could be further from the aims of “Against Theory” than rendering a judgment about what books should be discussed in literary classrooms. But our disagreement runs deeper than debates about the curriculum. It involves, first, a fundamental disagreement about language and, second, an equally fundamental disagreement about the nature and consequences of pragmatism. Steven Knapp is an assistant professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley; his book Personification and the Sublime: Milton to Coleridge is forthcoming. Walter Benn Michaels, an associate professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, is working on the relation between literary and economic forms of representation in nineteenth-century America. A previous contribution to Critical Inquiry, “Sister Carrie’s Popular Economy,” appeared in the Winter 1980 issue. The authors’ joint contribution to Critical Inquiry, “Against Theory,” and “A Reply to Our Critics,” appeared respectively in the Summer 1982 and June 1983 issues. (shrink)

In “Against Theory” we argued that a text means what its author intends it to mean. We argued further that all attempts to found a method of interpretation on a general account of language involve imagining that a text can mean something other than what its author intends. Therefore, we concluded, all such attempts are bound to fail; there can be no method of interpretation. But the attempt to imagine that a text can mean something other than what its author (...) intends is not restricted to writers interested in interpretive method. In fact, the denial that meaning is determined by intention is central to projects as indifferent to method as hermeneutics and deconstruction. For hermeneutics, a text means that its author intends but also necessarily means more, acquiring new meanings as readers apply it to new situations. For deconstruction, an author can never succeed in determining the meaning of a text; every text participates in a code that necessarily eludes authorial control. Since both these projects are committed to the view that a text from mean something other than what its author intends, they are also committed to the view that a text derives its identity from something other than authorial intention. The text is what it is, no matter what meaning is assigned to it by its author and no matter how that meaning is revised by its readers.What gives a text its autonomous identity? On most accounts, the answer is linguistic conventions—the semantic and syntactic rules of the language in which the text is written. One of our aims in the present essay is to criticize the particular notions of textual identity advanced by hermeneutics and deconstruction, but our more general target is the notion that there can be any plausible criteria of textual identity that can function independent of authorial intention. Because there can be no such criteria, nonmethodological versions of interpretive theory are as incoherent as methodological ones and, like the methodological ones, should be abandoned. Steven Knapp is associate professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, and is the author of Personification and the Sublime: Milton to Coleridge. Walter Benn Michaels, professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, is the author of The Gold Standard and the Logic of Naturalism. (shrink)

Our sense of culture is characteristically meant to displace race, but part of the argument of this essay has been that culture has turned out to be a way of continuing rather than repudiating racial thought. It is only the appeal to race that makes culture an object of affect and that gives notions like losing our culture, preserving it, stealing someone else’s culture, restoring people’s culture to them, and so on, their pathos. Our race identifies the culture to which (...) we have a right, a right that may be violated or defended, repudiated or recovered. Race transforms people who learn to do what we do into the thieves of our culture and people who teach us to do what they do into the destroyers of our culture; it makes assimilation into a kind of betrayal and the refusal to assimilate into a form of heroism. Without race, losing our culture can mean no more than doing things differently from the way we now do them and preserving our culture can mean no more than doing things the same—the melodrama of assimilation disappears.41 If, of course, doing things differently turns out to mean doing them worse, then the change will seem regrettable. But it’s not the loss of our culture that will make it regrettable; it’s the fact that the culture that will then be ours will be worse than the culture that used to be ours. It is, of course, always possible and often likely that things will get worse; abandoning our idea of culture, however, will not make them worse. Walter Benn Michaels is professor of English and the humanities at The Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of The Gold Standard and the Logic of Naturalism and of a monograph on American literature in the Progressive period, forthcoming in the Cambridge History of American Literature. His previous contributions to Critical Inquiry include “Against Theory” and ”Against Theory 2,” both written in collaboration with Steven Knapp. (shrink)

Walter Benn Michaels's The Shape of the Signifier: 1967 to the End of History makes the ostensive cul-de-sac of identity politics the dominant symptom of postmodernism per se. The Shape connects its argument to the controversy over intention and interpretation created by Steven Knapp and Walter Benn Michaels's twenty-year-old essay "Against Theory." This very connection, however, highlights the not-quite-acknowledged presence of a certain type of romanticism in both works that each also wants to attack. Misunderstanding Paul de (...) Man's notion of materiality, Michaels becomes the latest thinker hoping to free us from the inchoateness of romantic sensation, both as the indulgence of sensory experience and the cognitive sloppiness of nonmeaning as the sense of meaning. Far from a Fukuyama-inspired postmodern condition, Michaels's scenario actually adumbrates a basic problem between romanticism and modernism-as-modernity. (shrink)

My colleague E. D. Hirsch has skillfully developed the consequences for literary interpretation of a “realistic” epistemological position which he formulates as follows: “If we could not distinguish a content of consciousness from its contexts, we could not know any object at all in the world.” Given that premise, it is easy for Hirsch to infer that “without the stable determinacy of meaning there can be no knowledge in interpretation.”1 A lot of people disagree with Hirsch on the latter point, (...) and they look to philosophy for replies to the premise from which it was inferred. But it is not clear where in philosophy they should look: To epistemology? Ethics?2 Philosophy of language? What Jacques Derrida calls “a new logic, … a graphematics of iterability”?3 Where do we find first principles from which to deduce an anti-Hirsch argument?I want to argue that there is no clear or straight answer to this question and that there need be none. I shall begin by criticizing the strategy used against Hirsch and others by my fellow pragmatists Steven Knapp and Walter Benn Michaels. They think that one can start with philosophy of language and straighten things out by adopting a correct account of meaning. I share their desire to refute Hirsch, their admiration for Stanley Fish, and their view that “theory”—when defined as “an attempt to govern interpretations of particular texts by appealing to an account of interpretation in general”—has got to go . But they want to defend this position by exposing a mistake which they think common to all theory so defined: an error about the relation between meaning and intention. They assert that “what is intended and what is meant are identical” and that one will look for an “account of interpretation in general” only if one fails to recognize this identity . Such failure leads to an attempt to connect meaning and intention or to disconnect them . But such attempts must fail, for they presuppose a break “between language and speech acts” which does not exist . 1. E. D. Hirsch, Jr., The Aims of Interpretation , pp. 3, 1.2. See ibid., where Hirsch offers a “fundamental ethical maxim for interpretation” which, he says, “claims no privileged sanction from metaphysics or analysis” . Here and elsewhere Hirsch suggests that it may be ethics rather than epistemology which provides the principles that govern interpretation. There remain other passages, however, in which he retains the view, conspicuous in his earlier writings, that an analysis of the idea of knowledge is the ultimate justification for his approach.3. Jacques Derrida, “Limited Inc abc … , ” Glyph 2 : 219. Richard Rorty is Kenan Professor of Humanities at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Consequences of Pragmatism , among other works, and is currently writing a book on Martin Heidegger. His previous contribution to Critical Inquiry, “Deconstruction and Circumvention,” appeared in the September 1984 issue. (shrink)

Imagine a world where everyone is healthy, intelligent, long living and happy. Intuitively this seems wonderful albeit unrealistic. However, recent scienti c breakthroughs in genetic engineering, namely CRISPR/Cas bring the question into public discourse, how the genetic enhancement of humans should be evaluated morally. In 2001, when preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) and in vitro fertilisation (IVF), enabled parents to select between multiple embryos, Julian Savulescu introduced the principle of procreative bene cence (PPB), stating that parents have the obligations to choose (...) the child that is expected to have the best life. In this paper I argue that accepting the PPB and the consequentialist principle (CP) that two acts with the same consequences are morally on par, commits one to accepting the parental obligation of genetically enhancing one's children. (shrink)

The relationship of consciousness to brain, which Schopenhauer grandly referred to as the "world knot," remains an unsolved problem within both philosophy and science. The central focus in what follows is the relevance of science---from psychoanalysis to neurophysiology and quantum physics-to the mind-brain puzzle. Many would argue that we have advanced little since the age of the Greek philosophers, and that the extraordinary accumulation of neuroscientific knowledge in this century has helped not at all. Increas- ingly, philosophers and scientists have (...) tended to go their separate ways in considering the issues, since they tend to differ in the questions that they ask, the data and ideas which are provided for consideration, their methods for answering these questions, and criteria for judging the acceptability of an answer. But it is our conviction that philosophers and scientists can usefully interchange, at least to the extent that they provide co~straints upon each other’s preferred strategies, and it may prove possible for more substantive progress to be made. Philosophers have said some rather naive things by ignoring the extraordinary advances in the neurosciences in the twentieth century. The skull is not filled with green cheese! On the other hand, the arrogance of many scientists toward philosophy and their faith in the scientific method is equally naive. Scientists clearly have much to learn from philosophy as an intellectual discipline. Manifestations of Mind: Some Conceptual and Empirical Issues Walter B. Weimer Pages 5-31 The Mysterious “Split‘: A Clinical Inquiry into Problems of Consciousness and Brain Peter H. Knapp Pages 37-69 Mind, Brain, and the Symbolic Consciousness Irwin Savodnik Pages 73-98 Brain and Free Will John C. Eccles Pages 101-121 An Old Ghost in a New Body C. Wade Savage Pages 125-153 How Dogmatic Can Materialism Be? John C. Eccles Pages 155-160 Mental Phenomena as Causal Determinants in Brain Function R. W. Sperry Pages 163-177 Consciousness as an Emergent Causal Agent in the Context of Control System Theory E. M. Dewan Pages 181-198 Reductionism, Levels of Organization, and the Mind-Body Problem William C. Wimsatt Pages 205-267 Mind, Structure, and Contradiction Gordon G. Globus Pages 271-293 Problems Concerning the Structure of Consciousness Karl H. Pribram Pages 297-313 The Role of Scientific Results in Theories of Mind and Brain: A Conversation among Philosophers and Scientists E. M. Dewan, John C. Eccles, Gordon G. Globus, Keith Gunderson, Peter H. Knapp, Grover Maxwell et al. Pages 317-328 Scientific Results and the Mind-Brain Issue: Some Afterthoughts Grover Maxwell Pages 329-358. (shrink)

Suppose a computer prints out the following little "poem": The shooting of the hunters she heardBut to pity it moved her not. What can we say about the meaning of this "poem"? We can say that it is ambiguous. It could mean: She heard the hunters shooting at animals, people, etc., but she had no pity for the victims. . . . She heard the hunters being shot but did not pity them. . . . She heard the hunters shooting (...) at someone or something and she heard the hunters being shot but did not pity either. An author could use the above word sequence to convey either , , or . But since we cannot treat the text produced by the computer as anyone's use of the words in question, it would not make sense to decide among its linguistically possible readings, just as it would not make sense to choose among the linguistically possible readings of an ambiguous sentence if it is considered in abstraction from its use by a speaker on a particular occasion. For example, it would not make sense to say of the sentence "He saw the man carrying the suitcase" that it just means "He saw the man who is carrying the suitcase" if we know that and in which what ways the sentence is ambiguous. If someone did say this, we would be inclined to think either that he does not know that the sentence is ambiguous or that he is talking not about the sentence but about an utterance of that sentence by a speaker on some occasion. Hence all we can do in interpreting the computer "poem" is to specify the set of its linguistically possible readings, namely, {, , }. But it would not make sense to select , for example, and say, "That is what the computer poem means, not , nor ." P. D. Juhl is an assistant professor of German at Princeton University. The present essay, in a different form, will appear in his forthcoming book, The Nature of Literary Interpretation. See also: "Against Theory" by Steven Knapp and Walter Benn Michaels in Vol. 8, No. 4. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ronald Shusterman IN DEFENSE OF ELITISM I One recent trend in criticism, starting notably widi die work of Steven Knapp and Walter Benn Michaels,1 has suggested diat literary theory is either useless, harmful, or bodi. This pragmatist line ofargument can be seen to go hand in hand widi contemporary attacks on the distinction between "high" and "low" art, claiming that a rap text deserves die same attention (...) or esteem as a poem by Eliot. My purposes here are predetermined by die polemical nature of this debate. I shall endeavor to show diat tiieory is useful and diat diere is a valid distinction between low and high. I intend to do so, somewhat negatively, notby giving examples—diough diis would be easy enough— but rather by underlining die contradictions inherent in some of these arguments. I shall also deal widi anodier debate, which may at first appear unrelated, concerning die limits of interpretation. I diink it can be noted that the criteria of judgment involved in distinguishing between high and low are connected to die criteria of interpretation which, though diey do not close die open work, do permit the identification of misreadings. If judgment involves refined analysis, then theory is necessary as an instrument of refinement. If misreadings exist, dien absolute interpretive relativism cannot be justified. One might expect me to begin by defining "literary tiieory," but one of my main points is that such a definition is futile. The dieoretical endeavor is myriad. The term theory can be fruitfully used to designate a wide continuum of discourses about literature diat range from pure explication to pure philosophy. I see no need to find a common denominator diat would bring togedier under a single description narratology, stylistics, deconstructionist criticism, and so on. Philosophy and Literature, © 1994, 18: 242-252 Ronald Shusterman243 Indeed, in dieir original attack on literary theory, Knapp and Michaels were careful to set aside the more "empirical" approaches such as narratology as not relevant to their criticisms (p. 11). Their basic complaint has to do widi theories of interpretation, and they conclude:... theory is nothing else but the attempt to escape practice... theory is notjust another name for practice. It is the name for all the ways people have tried to stand outside practice in order to govern practice from without. Our thesis has been that no one can reach a position outside practice, that theorists should stop trying, and that the theoretical enterprise should therefore come to an end. (p. 30) The point seems to be that criticism, as a practice, can and must be undertaken widiout die interference of a supposed realm of independent principles or axioms. That was ten years ago. Joel Weinsheimer has recently defended similar conclusions in an article entitled "Suppose Theory Is Dead."2 He invokes Gadamer to argue diat "understanding can and does succeed even widiout die imprimatur of theoretical self-consciousness" (p. 252). Weinsheimer refuses what he sees as the "first principle of the first theorist of literature: that only theory counts as knowledge" (p. 263). This, of course, echoes pragmatist philosophy's new emphasis on praxis as a valid form of knowledge: The kind of knowledge involved in acting or story-telling or teaching or practical criticism is practical knowledge, and if it cannot satisfactorily explain orjustify from principles what it practices, that is not its fault but its nature—even its particular significance.... Literature is to be practiced, is the practice of it, its own practice, and in this light at least theory is merely the self-defeating attempt to abstract literature from its presentations, from the concrete practice diat is itself. (Weinsheimer, p. 263) To those who would argue that any practice presupposes theoretical principles, Weinsheimer retorts that such presuppositions need not be considered as tiieory: "Interpretation supposes a form of life, perhaps, but a form of life is not a theory" (p. 255). I admit to being somewhat confused when he writes that practical criticism "involves tacit knowledge, certainly, but such knowledge is not necessarily dieoretical" (p. 255). I do not think diat what we do when 244Philosophy and Literature reading critically can be assimilated to what we do when, say, riding a bicycle... (shrink)

Nothing I wrote in Is There a Text in This Class? has provoked more opposition or consternation than my claim that the argument of the book has no consequences for the practice of literary criticism.1 To many it seemed counterintuitive to maintain that an argument in theory could leave untouched the practice it considers: After all, isn’t the very point of theory to throw light on or reform or guide practice? In answer to this question, I want to say, first, (...) that this claim is unsupportable. Here, I am in agreement with Steven Knapp and Walter Benn Michaels, who are almost alone in agreeing with me and who fault me not for making the “no consequences” argument but for occasionally falling away from it. Those dislike Is There a Text in This Class? tend to dislike “Against Theory” even more, and it is part of my purpose here to account for the hostility to both pieces. But since the issues at stake are fundamental, it is incumbent to begin at the beginning with a discussion of what theory is and is not. 1. See my Is There a Text in This Class?: The Authority of Interpretive Communities , p. 370. For a response to the “no consequences” claim, see Mary Louise Pratt, “Interpretive Strategies/Strategic Interpretations: on Anglo-American Reader Response Criticism,” Boundary 2 11 : 222. Stanley Fish is the William Kenan, Jr., Professor of English and the Humanities at the Johns Hopkins University. His most recent contributions to Critical Inquiry are “Profession Despise Thyself: Fear and Self-Loathing in Literary Studies” and “Fear of Fish:”A Reply to Walter Davis” . The present essay is the concluding chapter of Change. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to connect the Brazilian Paulo Freire’s well known educational thinking with the “philosophy for children” movement. It considers the relationship between the creator of philosophy for children, Matthew Lipman and Freire through different attempts to establish a relationship between these two educators. The paper shows that the relationship between them is not as close as many supporters of P4C have claimed, especially in Latin America. It also considers the context of Educational Policies in our time (...) and why Freire’s understanding of the politics of education makes it impossible to be Freirean and at the same time be neutral or favorable to the actual status quo. Finally, after presenting Lipman’s understanding of the relationship between philosophy, education and democracy and their connection to capitalism, it proposes ways to begin the political path of philosophizing with children inspired by Paulo Freire’s educational thinking. As a result, a more politically committed path to doing philosophy with children is offered. (shrink)

The theories I have outlined suggest that by displacing but not excluding theory, art historical practice at once grounds itself in empiricism and implies an acceptance of theory’s claim that it cannot be so grounded. But beyond descriptions like this, the theories are not a helpful way to understand practice because they cannot account for its persistence except by pointing to its transgressions and entanglements in self-contradiction. Nor does it help to say, pace Steven Knapp, Walter Benn Michaels, (...) and Stanley Fish, that strong theory can have no consequences, because the reason theory has no consequences in this instance is not the impossibility of theory’s transcendence , but a combination of the conventions, desires, and beliefs of practicing historians.14 Theoretical approaches must bypass the concerns of practice because practice has no position which can be argued alongside theory’s positions. There are two reasons why a “Defense of Empiricism in Art History” has not been written. First, art historical practice does not incorporate even a local or heuristic theory to explain or discuss itself. Second, its “position” is not a latent theory, waiting to be eloquently stated, but something which is presupposed in a vague and variable manner by the art historical texts themselves. Art historical practice, for example, has an objectivist intention: it takes itself to be “a science, with definite principles and techniques,” which can exclude theory and generate texts by appealing only to previous nontheoretical texts and to the facts.15 This intention is rarely stated, exasperatingly slippery to formulate clearly, and even incoherent when it is applied to existing texts; but this is so precisely because it works by not being included in the texts. If some version of it were stated at the outset of a monograph, it would cast doubt on the entire enterprise and lead the reader to conclude incorrectly that practice is dependent on theory, and uncertain theory at that. In its unstated form, the objectivist intention allows narrative practice to continue unimpeded. James Elkins is a doctoral candidate at the University of Chicago. This article is from a work in progress concerned with the influence of writing conventions on the history of art. (shrink)

The Principle of Ariadne, formulated in 1988 ago by Walter Carnielli and Carlos Di Prisco and later published in 1993, is an infinitary principle that is independent of the Axiom of Choice in ZF, although it can be consistently added to the remaining ZF axioms. The present paper surveys, and motivates, the foundational importance of the Principle of Ariadne and proposes the Ariadne Game, showing that the Principle of Ariadne, corresponds precisely to a winning strategy for the Ariadne Game. (...) Some relations to other alternative. set-theoretical principles are also briefly discussed. (shrink)

uber das Programm der kommenden Philosophie. ZUr Kritik der Gewalt. SChicksal und Charakter. GEschichtsphilosophische Thesen. THeologisch-politisches Fragment.

In his Treatise on the Figure of the Stars (1732), Maupertuis described bright and elliptic phenomena in the night sky. Based on Maupertuis’s account of these astronomical observations, Kant developed an explanation of his own in his early book on the Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens (1755). For him, these figures were seemingly stars, suns and even whole galaxies, subsystems orbiting a central body or a central sun, held by Kant to be the middle of the universe (...) and a whole, an immense and immeasurable system of many uncountable solar systems. Since Kant did not read Maupertuis’s treatise, he derived his knowledge from a review of the Collected Essays of Maupertuis, in which the Treatise was published (1744). This review appeared in the Nova Acta Eruditorum in April 1745. Alongside this known source, another possible and complementary source on Maupertuis’s theory may have influenced Kant in his thinking: Gottsched’s philosophical textbook First Elements of all Philosophical Disciplines (5th edition, Theoretical part, Vol. I, 1748). The plate beneath the front matter of this book shows a picture of many solar systems. It depicts in detail, and according to Maupertuis’s account, comets signifying the center of different solar systems by the alignment of their tails, pointing in the opposite direction of the center. Gottsched’s book was known to Kant, who mentioned it in at least three lectures on logic. In addition, it was widely read in Königsberg’s intellectual and academic circles, since Gottsched was born not far from Königsberg and was a friend of Knutzen, Flottwell, Scheffner, the Imperial Countess of Keyserlingk, and others. (shrink)

There are two foundational, but not fully developed, ideas in paraconsistency, namely, the duality between paraconsistent and intuitionistic paradigms, and the introduction of logical operators that express meta-logical notions in the object language. The aim of this paper is to show how these two ideas can be adequately accomplished by the Logics of Formal Inconsistency (LFIs) and by the Logics of Formal Undeterminedness (LFUs). LFIs recover the validity of the principle of explosion in a paraconsistent scenario, while LFUs recover the (...) validity of the principle of excluded middle in a paracomplete scenario. We introduce definitions of duality between inference rules and connectives that allow comparing rules and connectives that belong to different logics. Two formal systems are studied, the logics mbC and mbD, that display the duality between paraconsistency and paracompleteness as a duality between inference rules added to a common core– in the case studied here, this common core is classical positive propositional logic (CPL + ). The logics mbC and mbD are equipped with recovery operators that restore classical logic for, respectively, consistent and determined propositions. These two logics are then combined obtaining a pair of logics of formal inconsistency and undeterminedness (LFIUs), namely, mbCD and mbCDE. The logic mbCDE exhibits some nice duality properties. Besides, it is simultaneously paraconsistent and paracomplete, and able to recover the principles of excluded middle and explosion at once. The last sections offer an algebraic account for such logics by adapting the swap-structures semantics framework of the LFIs the LFUs. This semantics highlights some subtle aspects of these logics, and allows us to prove decidability by means of finite non-deterministic matrices. (shrink)

A non-inferiority design accepts the possibility of some efficacy loss, as part of a “successful”, statistically significant result. That loss may be excessive when the non-inferiority threshold is lenient. However, even stringent significance thresholds and safety monitoring may fail to adequately protect study participants when the primary outcome is death. The OPTIMAAL trial, a large randomized clinical trial performed in high-risk patients, is discussed as an example, using the Belmont Report principles as an ethical frame of reference. OPTIMAAL compared losartan, (...) a new drug, to captopril, a drug known to reduce the risk of death in patients with heart failure after a myocardial infarction. Serious ethical challenges occurred in that study. Firstly, subjects had to tolerate captopril to participate, meaning that participation implied the possibility of higher risk of death if randomized to the losartan arm, as compared to the standard of care. Additionally, the stopping rules had to ensure enough powe... (shrink)

Michael Psellos ist ein Philosoph, der wie kein anderer für die byzantinische Epoche steht. Das Denken dieses Großintellektuellen – der in subtilen Auseinandersetzungen mit antiken und spätantiken Positionen in Theologie, Ontologie und Ethik eine selbständige christliche Philosophie formuliert – findet in diesem Band erstmalig eine monographische Gesamtdarstellung. Die Arbeit liefert durch ihren systematischen Charakter, durch die Einbeziehung bisher nicht interpretierter Texte, durch die Darlegung der bisherigen Forschungsergebnisse und durch die Aufdeckung von Traditioinslinien eine wichtige Grundlage für die weitere Erforschung der (...) byzantinischen Philosophie. (shrink)

In this radical reinterpretation of Aristotle's Metaphysics, Walter E. Wehrle demonstrates that developmental theories of Aristotle are based on a faulty assumption: that the fifth chapter of Categories is an early theory of metaphysics that Aristotle later abandoned.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 9.3 (2002) 265-269 [Access article in PDF] The Psychology and Physiology of Depression Walter Glannon Trauma and stressful events can disrupt the physiologic homeostasis of our bodies and brains. The physiologic stress response consists of neural and endocrine mechanisms whose function is to reestablish homeostasis. These mechanisms include the secretion of glucocorticoids (cortisol) and catecholemines (epinephrine and norepinephrine). Once an external event has ceased (...) to be a stressor or threat to a human organism, an integrated system of negative feedback loops inhibits the continued production of these hormones and effectively shuts down the stress response. These mechanisms are adaptive in the sense that they ensure the survival of the organism by reestablishing homeostasis. But prolonged exposure to real or perceived stressors can trigger prolonged secretion of stress hormones, thereby disrupting the feedback systems and causing a cascade of pathogenic events. The stress response is a double-edged sword. An acute stress response can protect an organism from external threats and reestablish homeostasis. But a chronic stress response can cause the body's defenses to become damaging rather than protective and to result in various disorders. Acute stress responses are adaptive. Chronic stress responses are often maladaptive and pathogenic.In "Depression as a Mind-Body Problem," I characterized major clinical depression as a disorder resulting from a maladaptive chronic stress response (Glannon 2003). Specifically, I argued that depression often results when our beliefs and emotions are out of proportion to the true nature of external events. The mind prolongs rather than constrains the physiologic stress response. Depression is not a disorder of the brain alone or the mind alone, however. Endocrine and immune dysfunction can contribute to the dysfunction in the brain and central nervous system that are involved in depression. Moreover, the contents of the mental states that initiate the sequence of events leading to depression are reflections of the person's natural and social environment. Thus, a satisfactory account of depression requires an analysis of the interconnections among the central nervous, endocrine, and immune systems, as well as the mind and the environment. All of these factors support the description of depression as a psychoneuroimmunologic disorder.Mike Martin (Martin 2003) and Thomas Fuchs (Fuchs 2003) discuss important aspects of depression that I did not elaborate in my paper. Martin argues that I fail to distinguish between depression as a mood and depression as a disorder. This is pertinent to the distinction evolutionary psychiatrists draw between moods that are adaptive and moods that are maladaptive. In contrast to my negative characterization of depression, Martin also makes a case for the positive [End Page 265] contributions of depression to meaningful life. Fuchs explores the notion of the brain as an organ of translation enabling patients to have meaningful subjective experience. The emphasis on subjectivity has important implications for potential preventive and therapeutic interventions for depression. For whether a person perceives an external event as a stressor may play a crucial role in the physiologic stress response. I will address the main points of these two authors in turn.Contrary to what Martin claims, I explicitly defined chronic depression as an affective (mood) disorder. My focus was on the clinical definition of major depression as a moderately severe to severe chronic disorder. It consists of affective, cognitive, and even physical dysfunction that interferes with a person's ability to carry out the normal tasks of daily life. This characterization of major chronic depression distinguishes it from milder forms of depression, such as dysthymia. Because these milder forms do not involve the same type or degree of dysfunction as more severe forms, they are not appropriately characterized as pathologies. For this reason, I focused on Nesse's (2000) discussion of depression rather than on his discussion of low mood. In fairness to Nesse and Stevens and Price (2000), not all forms of depression are pathologic according to the evolutionary view they defend. Some passive aspects of mild depression may be useful in alerting us to dangerous or wasteful behavior. It does seem plausible to describe depressed moods as falling along a continuum from those that... (shrink)

Evaluation studies of the Bayh-Dole Act are generally concerned with the pace of innovation or the transgressions to the independence of research. While these concerns are important, I propose here to expand the range of public values considered in assessing Bayh-Dole and formulating future reforms. To this end, I first examine the changes in the terms of the Bayh-Dole debate and the drift in its design. Neoliberal ideas have had a definitive influence on U.S. innovation policy for the last thirty (...) years, including legislation to strengthen patent protection. Moreover, the neoliberal policy agenda is articulated and justified in the interest of competitiveness. Rhetorically, this agenda equates competitiveness with economic growth and this with the public interest. Against that backdrop, I use Public Value Failure criteria to show that values such as political equality, transparency, and fairness in the distribution of the benefits of innovation, are worth considering to counter the policy drift of Bayh-Dole. (shrink)

Adamson argues that Marxism "teaches us how to interpret social and historical reality, and to relate that interpretation to our current political concerns.".

Helmut Fleischer has distinguished three different approaches to history in the development of Marx's thinking: the "anthropological" , the "pragmatological" , and the "nomological" . However, these represent a less continuous and coherent development than Fleischer claims. The 1857 Introduction to the Grundrisse can be instanced as a fourth view, more focused than the others on historiography, and at variance with what Marx says elsewhere. The sequence and overlapping of these four views call into question both the interpretation of Marx's (...) development as smoothly continuous and the interpretation of his development as "ruptured" into "early" and "late.". (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Klio Jahrgang: 98 Heft: 2 Seiten: 796-799.

Ever since John Leslie Mackie’s ‘popularization’ of moral error theories in meta-ethics, increasing attention has been focused on how to escape the force of nihilism. For many opponents of the moral error theory, ‘moral nihilism’ is used as a derogatory synonym associated with immorality and selfishness, but such a defamatory usage of the label is obviously not very helpful for a serious philosophical examination of the view. The goal of this paper is to draw on insights by David Hume and (...) other Humean philosophers such as J.L. Mackie, Richard Joyce, and Richard Garner, in order to turn ‘moral nihilism’ from a term of abuse to a ‘badge of honour’. (shrink)

According to the conventionalist doctrine of space elaborated by the French philosopher-scientist Henri Poincaré in the 1890s, the geometry of physical space is a matter of definition, not of fact. Poincaré’s Hertz-inspired view of the role of hypothesis in science guided his interpretation of the theory of relativity (1905), which he found to be in violation of the axiom of free mobility of invariable solids. In a quixotic effort to save the Euclidean geometry that relied on this axiom, Poincaré extended (...) the purview of his doctrine of space to cover both space and time. The centerpiece of this new doctrine is what he called the ‘‘principle of physical relativity,’’ which holds the laws of mechanics to be covariant with respect to a certain group of transformations. For Poincaré, the invariance group of classical mechanics defined physical space and time (Galilei spacetime), but he admitted that one could also define physical space and time in virtue of the invariance group of relativistic mechanics (Minkowski spacetime). Either way, physical space and time are the result of a convention. (shrink)

The axiom of transitivity has been challenged in economic theorizing for over seventy years. Yet, there does not seem to be any movement in economics towards removing classical rational choice models from introductory microeconomics books. The concept of rationality has similarly been employed in the cognitive sciences and biology, and yet, transitivity has here not only been shown to be violated, but also rationally so. Some economists have thus responded with attempts to develop alternative theories that give up on the (...) axiom of transitivity. In this paper, I argue that there is a conceptual confusion in this debate that rests on the mistaken idea that there is something like the “one true theory of rationality” that can determine axioms like transitivity to be true or false. Instead, I defend a shift towards a pluralism of concepts of rationality as well as models in which transitivity should play a role depending on the purposes of the model at hand. (shrink)

Powers ontologies are currently enjoying a resurgence. This would be dispiriting news for the moderns; in their eyes, to imbue bodies with powers is to slide back into the scholastic slime from which they helped philosophy crawl. I focus on Descartes’s ‘little souls’ argument, which points to a genuine and, I think persisting, defect in powers theories. The problem is that an Aristotelian power is intrinsic to whatever has it. Once this move is accepted, it becomes very hard to see (...) how humble matter could have such a thing. It is as if each empowered object were possessed of a little soul that directs it and governs its behavior. Instead of attempting to resurrect the Aristotelian power theory, contemporary philosophers would be best served by taking their inspiration from its early modern replacement, devised by John Locke and Robert Boyle. On this view, powers are internal relations, not monadic properties intrinsic to their bearers. This move at once drains away the mysterious directedness of Aristotelian powers and solves the contemporary version of the little souls argument, Neil Williams’s ‘problem of fit.’. (shrink)