Este ensayo plantea una cuestión filosófica perseguida como investigación histórica que desemboca en una explicación sociológica en torno a la medición de la ciencia. Medir, etimológicamente relacionado con una praecisio adquiere su sentido más profundo en una era postontológica para describir las implicaciones culturales de un mundo privado de metafísica. Basado en un relato sucinto del surgimiento del pensamiento bibliométrico enmarcado por el debate historiográfico de principios del siglo XX entre historiadores seriales e historiadores del evento, este ensayo une tanto (...) el significado postontológico como la evidencia histórica en un análisis sociológico de la ciencia y políticas tecnológicas en la Colombia del cambio de siglo que conlleva una transformaciónradical de la universidad como institución social, del estatus del conocimiento en la sociedad contemporánea y de la identidad de nosotros los académicos que habitamos ese espacio. (shrink)

RESUMO Busco traçar uma articulação teórica em torno de duas obras póstumas de Mikhail Bakhtin e Yuri Lotman, expoentes chave para pensar a cultura sob uma perspectiva semiótica. Nessas produções tardias, os dois pensadores expõem um interesse compartilhado em refletir como o medo se materializa, podendo-se ler em textos concretos que buscam explicar os fenômenos que estão ocorrendo no horizonte cultural. Nesse sentido, Lotman e Bakhtin estão focados em investigar a aparência regular de um conjunto de princípios e motivos (...) que seriam sistematicamente atualizados na relação entre laços sociais e medo. Meu objetivo vai além do descritivo para delinear aparatos críticos sobre o medo na perspectiva semiótica, à luz da interpretação desses artigos que mantêm o poder heurístico e fornecem um instrumento para iniciar uma reflexão sobre esse modo cultural de sentimento.ABSTRACT I seek to draw a theoretical articulation around two posthumous works by Mikhail Bakhtin and Yuri Lotman, key exponents to think about culture from a semiotic perspective. In these late productions, both thinkers expose a shared interest in reflecting how fear materializes, being able to be read in concrete texts that seek to account for the phenomena that are occurring on the cultural horizon. In this sense, Lotman and Bakhtin focus on investigating the regular appearance of a set of principles and motives that would be systematically updated in the relationship between social ties and fear. My purpose is not only to describe, but also to outline a critical apparatus about fear from a semiotic perspective, in light of the interpretation of these articles that keep heuristic power and provide an instrument to initiate a reflection on this cultural mode of feeling.RESUMEN Busco trazar una articulación teórica en torno a dos trabajos póstumos de Mikhail Bakhtin y Yuri Lotman, exponentes clave para pensar la cultura desde una perspectiva semiótica. En estas producciones tardías, ambos pensadores exponen un interés compartido por reflexionar de qué manera el miedo se materializa, pudiendo leerse en textos concretos que buscan dar cuenta de los fenómenos que van produciéndose en el horizonte cultural. En tal sentido, Lotman y Bakhtin se abocan a indagar sobre la aparición regular de un conjunto de principios y motivos que se actualizarían, sistemáticamente, en la relación entre lazo social y miedo. Mi propósito irá más allá de lo descriptivo para esbozar aparato crítico sobre el miedo en perspectiva semiótica, a la luz de la interpretación de estos artículos que guardan potencia heurística y proveen de un instrumental para iniciar una reflexión sobre este modo cultural del sentir. (shrink)

I argue that the social dimension of alienation, as discussed by Williams and Railton, has been underappreciated. The lesson typically drawn from their exchange is that moral theory poses a threat to the internal integrity of the agent, but there is a parallel risk that moral theory will implicitly construe agents as constitutively alienated from one another. I argue that a satisfying account of agency will need to make room for what I call ‘genuine ethical contact’ with others, both as (...) concrete objects in the world external to ourselves and as subjects who can recognize us reciprocally. (shrink)

What makes a biological entity an individual? Jack Wilson shows that past philosophers have failed to explicate the conditions an entity must satisfy to be a living individual. He explores the reason for this failure and explains why we should limit ourselves to examples involving real organisms rather than thought experiments. This book explores and resolves paradoxes that arise when one applies past notions of individuality to biological examples beyond the conventional range and presents an analysis of identity and (...) persistence. The book's main purpose is to bring together two lines of research, theoretical biology and metaphysics, which have dealt with the same subject in isolation from one another. Wilson explains an alternative theory about biological individuality which solves problems which cannot be addressed by either field alone. He presents a more fine-grained vocabulary of individuation based on diverse kinds of living things, allowing him to clarify previously muddled disputes about individuality in biology. (shrink)

BackgroundThis article aims to contribute to a better conceptualization of pain and suffering by providing non-essential and non-naturalistic definitions of both phenomena. Contributions of classical evidence-based medicine, the humanistic turn in medicine, as well as the phenomenology and narrative theories of suffering and pain, together with certain conceptions of the person beyond them are critically discussed with such purpose.MethodsA philosophical methodology is used, based on the review of existent literature on the topic and the argumentation in favor of what are (...) found as better definitions of suffering and pain.ResultsPain can be described in neurological terms but cognitive awareness, interpretation, behavioral dispositions, as well as cultural and educational factors have a decisive influence on pain perception. Suffering is proposed to be defined as an unpleasant or even anguishing experience, severely affecting a person at a psychophysical and existential level. Pain and suffering are considered unpleasant. However, the provided definitions neither include the idea that pain and suffering can attack and even destroy the self nor the idea that they can constructively expand the self; both perspectives can b e equally useful for managing pain and suffering, but they are not defining features of the same. Including the existential dimension in the definition of suffering highlights the relevance of suffering in life and its effect on one’s own attachment to the world. An understanding of pain and suffering life experiences is proposed, meaning that they are considered aspects of a person’s life, and the self is the ever-changing sum of these experiences.ConclusionsThe provided definitions will be useful to the identification of pain and suffering, to the discussion of how to relieve them, and to a better understanding of how they are expressed and experienced. They lay the groundwork for further research in all these areas, with the twofold aim of a) avoiding epistemological mistakes and moral injustices, and b) highlighting the limitations of medicine in the treatment of suffering and pain. (shrink)

Bioregionalists have championed the utility of the concept of the watershed as an organizing framework for thought and action directed to understanding and implementing appropriate and respectful human interaction with particular pieces of land. In a creative analogue to the watershed, permaculturist Arthur Getz has recently introduced the term “foodshed” to facilitate critical thought about where our food is coming from and how it is getting to us. We find the “foodshed” to be a particularly rich and evocative metaphor; but (...) it is much more than metaphor. Like its analogue the watershed, the foodshed can serve us as a conceptual and methodological unit of analysis that provides a frame for action as well as thought. Food comes to most of us now through a global food system that is destructive of both natural and social communities. In this article we explore a variety of routes for the conceptual and practical elaboration of the foodshed. While corporations that are the principal beneficiaries of a global food system now dominate the production, processing, distribution, and consumption of food, alternatives are emerging that together could form the basis for foodshed development. Just as many farmers are recognizing the social and environmental advantages to sustainable agriculture, so are many consumers coming to appreciate the benefits of fresh and sustainably produced food. Such producers and consumers are being linked through such innovative arrangements as community supported agriculture and farmers markets. Alternative producers, alternative consumers, and alternative small entrepreneurs are rediscovering community and finding common ground in municipal and community food councils. Recognition of one's residence within a foodshed can confer a sense of connection and responsibility to a particular locality. The foodshed can provide a place for us to ground ourselves in the biological and social realities of living on the land and from the land in a place that we can call home, a place to which we are or can become native. (shrink)

In 2021, the men’s English national football team reached their first final at a major international tournament since winning the World Cup in 1966. This success followed their previous achievement of reaching the semi-finals (knocked-out by Croatia) at the 2018 World Cup. True to form, the defeats proved unfalteringly English; with the 2021 final echoing previous tournament defeats, as England lost to Italy on penalties. However, what resonated with the predictability of an English defeat, was the accompanying chant, ‘it’s coming (...) home’. A ubiquitous presence throughout the course of both tournaments—while chanted at England football matches, it was also repeated across social media, the press and commercial advertising—the chant originates from the 1996 single, Three Lions (Football’s Coming Home), performed by David Baddiel, Frank Skinner and The Lightning Seeds. In what follows critical attention will be given to examining how the song offers what will be argued is a melancholic outlook. By re-approaching examples of English nostalgia and hubris, this chapter will expose how illustrations of English melancholy offer the potential for promoting collective forms of expression, which, when contextualized alongside England’s lack of footballing success (for the men’s team, at least), can be offset against a melancholic mediation that is cognizant of the centrality of loss—both for the subject and our collective sporting endeavours. (shrink)

This paper develops a hybridization of Newcomb’s Problem and the Frustrater (Spencer and Wells 2019 paper ‘Why take both boxes?’), underscoring how difficult it is to reconcile the rationality of taking both boxes in Newcomb’s Problem and the rationality of taking the envelope in the Frustrater.

The Psychosis of Race offers a unique and detailed account of the psychoanalytic significance of race, and the ongoing impact of racism in contemporary society. Moving beyond the well-trodden assertion that race is a social construction, and working against demands that simply call for more representational equality, The Psychosis of Race explores how the delusions, anxieties, and paranoia that frame our race relations can afford new insights into how we see, think, and understand race's pervasive appeal. With examples drawn from (...) politics and popular culture--such as Candyman, Get Out, and the music of Kendrick Lamar--critical attention is given to introducing as well as explicating on several key concepts from Lacanian psychoanalysis and the study of psychosis, including foreclosure, phallus, the Name-of-the-Father, sinthome, and the objet petit a. By elaborating a cultural mode to psychosis and its understanding, an original and critical exposition of the effects of racialization, as well as our ability to discern the very limits of our capacity to think through, or even beyond, the idea of race, is provided. The Psychosis of Race speaks to an emerging area in the study of psychoanalysis and race, and will appeal to scholars and academics across the fields of psychology, sociology, cultural studies, media studies, and the arts and humanities. (shrink)

Abordar el tema del hombre es de suyo arriesgado, teniendo en cuenta que su dinámica de búsqueda constante limita la reflexión filosófica al campo de los hechos históricos; cabe afirmar también que toda acción humana, tratada con cierto rigor y sistematicidad requiere acudir a la filosofía para indagar, entre otras cosas, por sus fundamentos. Este es el caso del proceso educativo, una realidad que involucra al hombre en sociedad y le ofrece las bases para tomar conciencia de su “ser persona”; (...) así, la antropología filosófica se postula como la reflexión sobre el hombre desde su realidad dinámica e interpersonal de relación consigo mismo y con el entorno que le rodea. Es necesario, pues, buscar el marco argumentativo del hecho y del discurso que constituyen el proceso educativo, labor propia de la filosofía de la educación, y caracterizada como “el saber racional y crítico de las condiciones de posibilidad de la realidad experimental educativa en su conjunto” (Fullat, 1992, pp. 89-90). Desde esta doble perspectiva, se considerarán los fundamentos del proceso educativo. (shrink)

El presente artículo busca, tras una breve mirada del significado histórico de la ciudad, de situarla en el ámbito de la Teoría de las Necesidades Humanas, argumentando cómo la ciudad ha sido el satisfactor sinérgico más importante de las necesidades. Considerando que las necesidades son universales e identificables, se muestra cómo la ciudad es el lugar donde mejor se han satisfecho éstas, y cómo una de ellas, la participación, obtiene un especial significado dado su carácter sinérgico y transversal. No obstante, (...) el desbordamiento de la ciudad con el desarrollo del capitalismo la ha desmembrado, zonificando sus funciones y segregando a los diferentes grupos sociales, perdiéndose el espacio público como espacio político. Reconstruir una democracia urbana, precisa de una (re)vuelta a la ciudad considerando múltiples dimensiones del cambio que son a su vez condiciones y síntomas práxicos para reconstruir el espacio público como espacio político. (shrink)

En los últimos años estamos asistiendo a un renovado interés por la participación, orientándose éste hacia la idea de democracia participativa. Esto se pone de relieve a través de diversos síntomas: en la enorme eclosión de organizaciones sociales, en el desarrollo de los nuevos movimientos sociales y en las significativas experiencias innovadoras de participación relacional que se están produciendo en numerosos municipios. Cabe preguntarse si estos síntomas son el esbozo de un nuevo paradigma social donde la Democracia Participativa alcanza una (...) significativa centralidad.En este trabajo se aportan algunas pinceladas conceptuales sobre la participación relacional. Para ello se desarrollan cuatro miradas que combinándose entre sí ayudan a construir este concepto que, por otro lado, es imprescindible para consolidar la alianza entre la gobernación local y las entidades sociales, tan necesaria para reorientar un modelo socioeconómico que es crecientemente entrópico. Si bien la cultura política realmente existente y las estructuras administrativas y societarias asociadas a la misma deben transformarse radicalmente aplicando principios como el de subsidiariedad, cooperación, coordinación y corresponsabilidad. Este nuevo paradigma se identifica con la idea de modelo de gestión relacional, para ello se esboza como “tipo ideal” en contraste con otros tipos de gestión municipal. (shrink)

En los últimos años y en particular en el primer lustro del siglo XXI hemos asistido a sucesivos e inquietantes acontecimientos de muy distinta naturaleza, pero entrelazados entre sí, de enorme complejidad y gran impacto, que exigen respuestas urgentes e igualmente complejas. Estos acontecimientos (catástrofes naturales, grandes atentados terroristas, guerras globales denominadas “preventivas”, etc.) que se producen en un contexto de globalización, más que otra cosa van confirmando una sociedad del riesgo en la que nos vamos instalando haciéndonos a todos (...) los seres vulnerables. Una sociedad que cabalga en un modelo desbocadamente entrópico e irremediablemente mundial, pero crecientemente injusto, desigual e insostenible. Los movimientos sociales, y particularmente los movimientos antisistémicos, considerados como sujetos históricos de cambio, tienen ante sí múltiples desafíos para reorientar y construir un nuevo paradigma. En este texto, a la luz de las respuestas inteligentes(frente a las respuestas desesperadas), de las nuevas experiencias participativas, de la emergencia de un sujeto ético, de las nuevas alianzas que intuimos en, por ejemplo, los Foros Sociales Mundiales; se quiere dar cuenta de la convergencia posible, probable, necesaria para asumir la complejidad de la acción colectiva. Cuatro son los desafíos que abstraemos de las nuevas experiencias societarias y todas ellas tienen que ver con la calidad de la democracia, de una democracia reflexiva y por tanto compleja: la democracia participativa, la democracia económica sustentada en la economía social y solidaria, la democracia ambiental fundamentada en la sostenibilidad y la democracia cultural expresada en un sentido de la interculturalidad. (shrink)

Se analiza en el presente artículo la historia del Estado-nación, artefacto político-jurídico construido por la cultura occidental que contiene y fija las tensiones dentro de su marco, y no es en general dinamizante de los derechos de ciudadanía. Señala que el último exponente histórico del Estado-nación es el Estado del Bienestar, estrechamente vinculado a la democracia representativa que es incapaz de incorporar plenamente a los ciudadanos en los asuntos públicos, motivando, por tanto, una ciudadanía de naturaleza pasiva. Argumenta que enfrentamos (...) una pérdida de legitimidad del Estado del Bienestar y que aparece una cuarta generación de derechos, de la mano de “nuevos movimientos sociales” Pone de relieve que la pérdida de operatividad y legitimidad del Estado-nación, impele a extensionar e intensionar la democracia, lo que demanda una nueva cultura política. (shrink)

According to the 2020 docudrama, The Social Dilemma, our very addiction to “social media” has, today, become encapsulated in the tensions between its facilitation as a mode of interpersonal communication and as an insidious conduit for machine learning, surveillance capitalism and manipulation. Amidst a variety of interviewees – many of whom are former employees of social media companies – the documentary finishes on a unanimous conclusion: something must change. By using the docudrama as a pertinent example of our “social media (...) malaise,” and while remaining aware of the problems and unethical practices encompassing international digital/social media companies, this paper will argue that we continually refrain from the very question(ing) that would call these companies to account: what does the algorithm desire? In approaching this question, this article will draw from Lacan’s ‘hysterical’ position in accordance with Robert Pfaller’s notion of interpassivity. Together, these concepts will be used to provide a psychoanalytic account of how our subjectivization in social media renders an unconscious endorsement that both frames our awareness of the dilemmas encompassing social media, while also positing an inherent limitation that may offer a possible path out of its impeding affects. This subjective ambivalence – delegated yet reluctantly disavowed – offers an opportunity to realign discussions on the lost object of desire (objet a) and its reproduction in social media algorithms. In so doing, the case will be made that an account of interpassivity can help lay bare the hysterical significance underscoring our digital subjectivization. (shrink)

In what ways is comedy subversive? This vital new book critically considers the importance of comedy in challenging and redefining our relations to race and racism through the lens of political correctness. -/- By viewing comedy as both a constitutive feature of social interaction and as a necessary requirement in the appraisal of what is often deemed to be ‘politically correct’, this book provides an innovative and multidisciplinary approach to the study of comedy and popular culture. In doing so, it (...) engages with the social and cultural tensions inherent to our understandings of political correctness, arguing that comedy can subversively redefine our approach to ‘PC Debates’, contestations surrounding free speech and the popular portrayal of political correctness in the media and society. Aided by the work of both Slavoj Žižek and Alenka Zupančič, this unique analysis adopts a psychoanalytic/philosophical framework to explore issues of race, racism and political correctness in the widely acclaimed BBC ‘mockumentary’, The Office (UK), as well as a variety of television comedies. -/- Drawing from psychoanalysis, social psychology and philosophy, this book will be highly relevant for postgraduate students and academic researchers studying comedy, race/racism, multiculturalism, political correctness and television/film. (shrink)

The present study focuses on a grammatical category called evidentiality. The primary meaning of evidentiality is concerned with information source. That is, it expresses whether something has been seen, heard or inferred. The aim here is to conduct a conceptual study of evidentiality in which use is made of formal tools. The fundamental intuition is that the distinction between ‘evidence’as ‘proof’and ‘evidentiality’as ‘to do with proof’is a crucial one. Evidentiality is a dynamic notion to be analysed through the use of (...) knowledge by the agents, a knowledge in action, which involves an in-coming state and an out-coming state that is typical of the transmission of information. We propose our own approach in which the dynamics of knowledge in action is grasped in the context of a dynamic epistemic logic. (shrink)

Covid-19 presents itself as a strange catastrophe. It has neither destroyed the planet nor has it erased humanity… but it has, in many ways, served to upend and alter what was previously considered ‘normal.’ As a result, what is perhaps the most notable characteristic of the Covid catastrophe is the very way it endures. Beyond any notion of catastrophic shock, the Covid catastrophe continues, indeed, it lingers in daily news cycles, changes to working environments and restrictions on travel. It is (...) an enduring presence, from which any determination of its ‘end’ is either nullified by an unending stream of Covid reports, or worse, ignored altogether. On this basis alone, is it even possible to discern an ‘end’ to Covid? (shrink)

El modelo de cultura sirvió para mostrar cómo el hombre podría simultáneamente ser un individuo, único en el orden biológico y psicológico y ser, al mismo tiempo, fundamentalmente social, viviendo y pensando en función de su grupo de acuerdo con concepciones compartidas gracias a su capacidad de comunicación simbólica. Los conceptos de contacto cultural, de resistencia cultural, de choque cultural, de aculturación, de cambio social y cultural, y más tarde de cambio social aparecen en el campo de la Antropología en (...) la segunda mitad del siglo XIX, en el marco de la expansión capitalista mundial. (shrink)

A myth has arisen concerning Turing's paper of 1936, namely that Turing set forth a fundamental principle concerning the limits of what can be computed by machine - a myth that has passed into cognitive science and the philosophy of mind, to wide and pernicious effect. This supposed principle, sometimes incorrectly termed the 'Church-Turing thesis', is the claim that the class of functions that can be computed by machines is identical to the class of functions that can be computed by (...) Turing machines. In point of fact Turing himself nowhere endorses, nor even states, this claim (nor does Church). I describe a number of notional machines, both analogue and digital, that can compute more than a universal Turing machine. These machines are exemplars of the class of _nonclassical_ computing machines. Nothing known at present rules out the possibility that machines in this class will one day be built, nor that the brain itself is such a machine. These theoretical considerations undercut a number of foundational arguments that are commonly rehearsed in cognitive science, and gesture towards a new class of cognitive models. (shrink)

Mirativity is a grammatical category or a linguistic strategy that makes explicit the surprising aspect of a piece of information. Different mirativity strategies appear in different languages. Evidentiality is a grammatical category that explicitly expresses the source of information, i.e. if something has been seen, heard or inferred. Whether mirativity forms part of evidentiality is an open question. An agent makes use of a mirativity marker when she or he expresses something about a surprising fact with respect to her or (...) his background knowledge. But there are different kinds of mirativity markers. Some of them are simple and direct and others, more complex, involve inferential processes. Here, we focus on complex mirativity and we compare it with inferred evidentials and deferred realizations. Our proposal goes beyond the purely linguistic analysis, since we try to interpret mirativity, and its role in interaction, as forming part of or involving a particular kind of inference, namely abduction. Mirativity can be used to express the surprising state that triggers an abductive reasoning but it can also encapsulate its result in such a way that it can be understood in relation to evidentiality. Thus, at least in some cases of complex mirativity, mirativity may convey indication about the source of information. Interesting for studies on dialogue is that they also indicate the degree of commitment of the speakers with the content of their own utterances. (shrink)

Accelerated Turing machines are Turing machines that perform tasks commonly regarded as impossible, such as computing the halting function. The existence of these notional machines has obvious implications concerning the theoretical limits of computability.

Exploring the relationship between humans and AI chatbots, as well as the ethical concerns surrounding their use, this paper argues that our relations with chatbots are not solely based on their function as a source of knowledge, but, rather, on the desire for the subject not to know. It is argued that, outside of the very fears and anxieties that underscore our adoption of AI, the desire not to know reveals the potential to embrace the very loss AI avers. Consequently, (...) rather than proposing a knowledge that seeks to disavow loss, we can instead recognize the potential in loss itself: an opportunity to assert and define the gap inherent to both the subject and AI we create. (shrink)

This volume celebrates the various facets of Alan Turing (1912–1954), the British mathematician and computing pioneer, widely considered as the father of computer science. It is aimed at the general reader, with additional notes and references for those who wish to explore the life and work of Turing more deeply. -/- The book is divided into eight parts, covering different aspects of Turing’s life and work. -/- Part I presents various biographical aspects of Turing, some from a personal point of (...) view. -/- Part II presents Turing’s universal machine (now known as a Turing machine), which provides a theoretical framework for reasoning about computation. His 1936 paper on this subject is widely seen as providing the starting point for the field of theoretical computer science. -/- Part III presents Turing’s working on codebreaking during World War II. While the War was a disastrous interlude for many, for Turing it provided a nationally important outlet for his creative genius. It is not an overstatement to say that without Turing, the War would probably have lasted longer, and may even have been lost by the Allies. The sensitive nature of Turning’s wartime work meant that much of this has been revealed only relatively recently. -/- Part IV presents Turing’s post-War work on computing, both at the National Physical Laboratory and at the University of Manchester. He made contributions to both hardware design, through the ACE computer at the NPL, and software, especially at Manchester. Part V covers Turing’s contribution to machine intelligence (now known as Artificial Intelligence or AI). Although Turing did not coin the term, he can be considered a founder of this field which is still active today, authoring a seminal paper in 1950. -/- Part VI covers morphogenesis, Turing’s last major scientific contribution, on the generation of seemingly random patterns in biology and on the mathematics behind such patterns. Interest in this area has increased rapidly in recent times in the field of bioinformatics, with Turing’s 1952 paper on this subject being frequently cited. -/- Part VII presents some of Turing’s mathematical influences and achievements. Turing was remarkably free of external influences, with few co-authors – Max Newman was an exception and acted as a mathematical mentor in both Cambridge and Manchester. -/- Part VIII considers Turing in a wider context, including his influence and legacy to science and in the public consciousness. -/- Reflecting Turing’s wide influence, the book includes contributions by authors from a wide variety of backgrounds. Contemporaries provide reminiscences, while there are perspectives by philosophers, mathematicians, computer scientists, historians of science, and museum curators. Some of the contributors gave presentations at Turing Centenary meetings in 2012 in Bletchley Park, King’s College Cambridge, and Oxford University, and several of the chapters in this volume are based on those presentations – some through transcription of the original talks, especially for Turing’s contemporaries, now aged in their 90s. Sadly, some contributors died before the publication of this book, hence its dedication to them. -/- For those interested in personal recollections, Chapters 2, 3, 11, 12, 16, 17, and 36 will be of interest. For philosophical aspects of Turing’s work, see Chapters 6, 7, 26–31, and 41. Mathematical perspectives can be found in Chapters 35 and 37–39. Historical perspectives can be found in Chapters 4, 8, 9, 10, 13–15, 18, 19, 21–25, 34, and 40. With respect to Turing’s body of work, the treatment in Parts II–VI is broadly chronological. We have attempted to be comprehensive with respect to all the important aspects of Turing’s achievements, and the book can be read cover to cover, or the chapters can be tackled individually if desired. There are cross-references between chapters where appropriate, and some chapters will inevitably overlap. -/- We hope that you enjoy this volume as part of your library and that you will dip into it whenever you wish to enter the multifaceted world of Alan Turing. (shrink)

This essay explores the interrelationship between tragedy and comedy, with specific focus given to the potential that comedy can provide in transforming the most tragic of situations. In building this claim, the very dynamics and distinctions that divide the tragic from the comic are considered in view of the self-negation that the comic posits. That is, while tragedy requires a certain acceptance of the finite, from which destiny and circumstance come to certify the hero’s tragic predicament, in comedy, what succeeds (...) is that which functions through an act of self-negation. This, it is argued, offers a subversive redefining of tragedy, one that proves constitutive of a comic fatalism that does not mourn one’s tragic predicament or fated end, but, instead, fully identifies with our comic predicament. Going beyond the pitfalls of political nicety and moral condemnation, which seek easy gratification or cynical distance, the conclusion examines the conceptual artist, Vanessa Place, and her performance of rape jokes. (shrink)

Teresa of Avila's desire for suffering cannot be interpreted as the mere passive assumption of a feminine sacrificial role. On the contrary, Teresa was able to transform her suffering into the incarnated performance of her relationship with God: By desiring suffering and by understanding it and her ability to confront it as proof of divine love, she was able to reinforce her self‐confidence and strength. This article discusses Teresa of Avila's experience and interpretation of suffering in the context of the (...) female ascetic‐mystic Christian tradition. It criticizes Teresa's positive conceptualization of suffering but examines in depth the potential of her ability to actively manage and control it. Although Teresa was able to affirm her personality through ascetic practices such as self‐humiliation and mortification, the general applicability of such practices to the management of suffering is fraught since they leave the suffering individual in a vulnerable position. Although Teresa of Avila finds fulfillment and, paradoxically, self‐actualization through self‐denial and the surrender of her will, such practices entail the substantial risk of total self‐annihilation. (shrink)

The importance of writing as a means of communication in a society formerly without it, or where writing has been confined to particular groups, is enormous. It objectifies speech, provides language with a material correlative, and in this material form speech can be transmitted over space and preserved over time. In this book the contributors discuss cultures at different levels of sophistication and literacy and examine the importance of writing on the development of these societies. All the articles except the (...) first were specially written for this book and the extensive introduction unites and synthesizes the material. (shrink)

Karl Popper and Friedrich von Hayek became close friends soon after they first met in the early 1930s. Ever since, they discussed their ideas intensively on many occasions. But even though an analysis of the origins and contents of their ideas and correspondence reveals a number of important and fundamental differences, they rarely criticize each other in their published work. The article analyzes in particular the different ideas they have on the role of reason in society and on rationalism and (...) the roots of these differences. Popper’s “Towards a Rational Theory of Tradition” of 1948 contains a criticism of Hayek’s idea—published, for instance, in “Individualism: True and False” of 1945—that we must accept tradition without trying to change it. An analysis of the differences between the two authors touches on topics such as the possibility of public intervention in society, the role of social science in this, the methodology of social science, and the differences between liberalism and social democracy. The article concludes with some possible explanations for Popper and Hayek downplaying their differences in public. The fact remains that they never resolved the tension between Popper’s critical rationalism and Hayek’s conservative rationalism. (shrink)

What the COVID-19 pandemic serves to reveal is the inherent limitations and contradictions of a symbolic order that must now be perceived via an “impossible subjectivity”: what this essay will refer to as the “in-human.” (Zizek, 2020). Indeed, this in-human perspective transpires not through our fetishization of the virus, as some form of justification for humanity’s impact on the world, but from a position of impossibility that renders “the whole situation into which we are included.” (Monbiot, 2020; Zizek, 2020). It (...) is on this basis that the virus confers a confrontation with the Real: an antagonism steered by the isolation of an “impossible phenomenon,” grounded in a certain level of “disengagement” that obliges us to “perceive reality as it were viewed from outside.” (Zizek, 2020). Importantly, this “view from outside” does not—and now, cannot—avoid our engagement with the impossible, but must instead be rendered via a form of approachment that conceives of the “virus” as an in-human phenomenon that is our universal condition. The following sections will serve to clarify this in-human approach. (shrink)

Turing machines define polynomial time on strings but cannot deal with structures like graphs directly, and there is no known, easily computable string encoding of isomorphism classes of structures. Is there a computation model whose machines do not distinguish between isomorphic structures and compute exactly PTime properties? This question can be recast as follows: Does there exist a logic that captures polynomial time ? Earlier, one of us conjectured a negative answer. The problem motivated a quest for stronger and stronger (...) PTime logics. All these logics avoid arbitrary choice. Here we attempt to capture the choiceless fragment of PTime. Our computation model is a version of abstract state machines . The idea is to replace arbitrary choice with parallel execution. The resulting logic expresses all properties expressible in any other PTime logic in the literature. A more difficult theorem shows that the logic does not capture all of PTime. (shrink)

Much current work in the social sciences seeks to understand the effects of trust and social capital on economic and political outcomes. However, the sources of trust remain unclear. In this article, the authors articulate a basic theory of the relationship between institutions and trust. The authors apply this theory to industrial districts, geographically concentrated areas of small firm production, which involve extensive cooperation in the production process. Changes in power relations affect patterns of production;the authors suggest that they also (...) have knock-on consequences for trust and cooperation among actors. (shrink)

Sources include the data‐base of the Institute of Management Information Centre, Management House, Cottingham Road, Corby, Northants NN17 1TT, England (tel 0536 204222), to whom acknowledgement is made.

Drawing on respective ideas from within both liberal political philosophy and Frankfurt School critical theory, this paper seeks to examine claims about autonomy and empowerment made on behalf of educational policies such as teacher-led codeswitching; a policy that seeks to empower students from racially marginalised groups by facilitating their proficiency in the language and cultural expressions of societally dominant groups. I set out to evaluate such claims by first sketching two competing formulations of autonomy; namely, liberal autonomy concomitant to political (...) power, and autonomy that arises out of the practice of critical self-reflection. I proceed by testing codeswitching within each formulation to reveal how – in this case – these two conceptualisations of autonomy are educationally incompatible with each other. I conclude by suggesting that educational interventions such as codeswitching may ultimately be complicit in the longer term processes of racialisation and marginalisation that they seek to diminish, not only because they carry the potential to damage minority students’ self-integrity, but also because they limit possibilities for both majority and minority students to engage in dialectical encounters that may open avenues to new principles of social and political organisation. (shrink)

: This response to Nikolaus Knoepffler's paper in the same issue of the Journal agrees that if the arguments supporting the first two of the eight human embryonic stem cell research policy options discussed are unsound, as Knoepffler argues, then it seems natural to move to the increasingly permissive options. If the arguments are sound, however, then the more permissive options should be rejected. It is argued that three of the rejected arguments, taken together, constitute very good reasons to hold (...) that a human embryo is endowed with dignity from fertilization onward. Thus, countries that want their public policies to match the moral imperative of respect for human beings should refrain from allowing destructive human embryo research and should devote considerable energy and public funds to research and clinical trials using non-embryonic ("adult") stem cells. (shrink)