The concept of the subject, of what Hegel calls absolute negativity, already appears early in the logic of being.1 Absolute negativity, negation of the negation, occurs throughout the logic as identity in difference understood as self-identification under different descriptions. First, the subject refers to itself merely under an incomplete description. Secondly, it refers to something other than itself under a second description which is logically required by the first. (For example, the description of being in general requires some determinate description (...) of being in particular). But this second description is dialectically excluded by the assumption that the first description is complete. Thirdly, the subject negates its negation of the other. It discovers itself in the other, under the other description, and thus comes to refer to itself less incompletely. This is Hegel in the analytic mode. (shrink)

SummaryThis is an attempt to show a relationship between the notion of primordiality and that of analyticity be defining them in a similar way.RésuméTentative de montrer une relation entre la notion de primordialitéet celle ?on;analyticité en les définissant de manière semblable.ZusammenfassungEs wird versucht, eine Beziehung zwischen Strolls Begriff der Vorgangigkeit und demjenigen der Analytizitat herzustellen, indem man sie in ähnlicher Weise definiert.

The central topic of this paper is to study joint intention to perform a joint action or to bring about a certain state. Here are some examples of such joint action: You and I share the plan to carry a heavy table jointly upstairs and realize this plan, we sing a duet together, we clean up our backyard together, and I cash a check by acting jointly with you, a bank teller, and finally we together elect a new president for (...) our country. In these cases the participants can be said to have a joint intention jointly or as a group to carry the table upstairs: the content of the intention involves our performing something together and the pronoun “we” refers to us, viz. you and me and the possible other participants considered together. When we jointly intend to carry the table, each of us can be said to.. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to explore an affinity between early critical theory and analytical philosophy. The affinity is in a fairly unexpected area: philosophy of science. I argue that early critical theory embraces a view of science which is a natural if somewhat unfamiliar extension of the pragmatist one defended by Quine. In particular, I argue that Horkheimer has a version of the Quine-Duhem thesis (“underdetermination of theory choice by the evidence”). How do the Frankfurt and analytical versions (...) of the underdetermination thesis differ? Quine and others have taken the thesis to motivate a form of pragmatism. What this means is that it is certain interests that ultimately determine the choice of theory: chief among them, an interest in simplicity of our theories. However, the Critical Theorists offer us a distinctly historical materialist version of the underdetermination thesis, in which it is the imperatives of the prevailing mode of production, for example, capitalism, which are decisive. The result is an unfamiliar Marxist version of an otherwise familiar thesis from the analytic tradition. (shrink)

Through a detailed analysis of the various modes of argumentation employed by Aristotle throughout his natural scientific works, I aim to contribute to the growing scholarship on the relation between Aristotle’s theory of science and his actual scientific practice. I challenge the standard reading of Aristotle as a methodological empiricist and show that he permits a variety of non-empirical arguments to support controversial theses in properly scientific contexts. Specifically, I examine his use of logical (logikôs) argumentation in the discussion of (...) mule sterility in Generation of Animals II 8, rational (kata ton logon) argumentation in his discussion of cardiocentrism throughout the biological works, and the method of division in Posterior Analytics II 13. (shrink)

Modes-of-being figure centrally in Heidegger's masterwork Being and Time. Testimony to this is Heidegger's characterisation of two of his most celebrated enquiries—the Existential analytic and the Zeug analysis—as investigations into the respective modes-of-being of the entities concerned. Yet despite the importance of this concept, commentators disagree widely about what a mode-of-being is. In this paper, I systematically outline and defend a novel and exegetically grounded interpretation of this concept. Strongly opposed to Kantian readings, such as those advocated by (...) Taylor Carman and Cristina Lafont, I interpret a mode-of-being as a universal that defines a district —that is, a natural class of entities that ought to be conceptualised in a special way. As such, every mode-of-being plays an important metaphysical and epistemic role: serving both to unify a natural class of a high degree of generality and as the interpretandum of an act yielding the basic-concepts pertaining to the entities therein. In explicating and arguing for this interpretation, I attribute a characteristically Aristotelian philosophical position to the early Heidegger, encompassing both metaphysical and epistemological realism and a conceptualist theory of universals. (shrink)

In the few years since the advent of ‘Big Data’ research, social media analytics has begun to accumulate studies drawing on social media as a resource and tool for research work. Yet, there has been relatively little attention paid to the development of methodologies for handling this kind of data. The few works that exist in this area often reflect upon the implications of ‘grand’ social science methodological concepts for new social media research. By contrast, we advance an abductively oriented (...) methodological suite designed to explore the construction of phenomena played out through social media. To do this, we use a software tool – Chorus – to illustrate a visual analytic approach to data. Informed by visual analytic principles, we posit a two-by-two methodological model of social media analytics, combining two data collection strategies with two analytic modes. We go on to demonstrate each of these four approaches ‘in action’, to help clarify how and why they might be used to address various research questions. (shrink)

A number of single- and dual-process theories provide competing explanations as to how reasoners evaluate conditional arguments. Some of these theories are typically linked to different instructions—namely deductive and inductive instructions. To assess whether responses under both instructions can be explained by a single process, or if they reflect two modes of conditional reasoning, we re-analysed four experiments that used both deductive and inductive instructions for conditional inference tasks. Our re-analysis provided evidence consistent with a single process. In two new (...) experiments we established a double dissociation of deductive and inductive instructions when validity and plausibility of conditional problems were pitted against each other. This indicates that at least two processes contribute to conditional reasoning. We conclude that single-process theories of conditional reasoning cannot explain the observed results. Theories that postulate at least two processes are needed to account for our findings. (shrink)

An essay in the "new" metaphysics which has been emerging from English analytic philosophy. Acknowledging his debt to Wittgenstein, Shwayder concedes that what he has to offer "is nothing but philosophical theory in pretty much the old-fashioned sense." The three foci are referring, properties, and natural numbers. The multifarious and subtle distinctions are the source both of the book's strength and weakness. The concern and care for detailed shades of meaning frequently gets in the way of a more general (...) metaphysical view of the problems treated. --R. J. B. (shrink)

Globalization processes are propelling a transformation of governance. As political problems become more transnational, public as well as private actors increasingly perform governance activities beyond the level of individual states. This book examines the wide variety of forms that governance can take in the global system and their consequences. An overarching analytical framework is applied to global institutions and initiatives in areas such as trade liberalization, financial market regulation, privacy protection, cybercrime, and food safety.

That there are analytic truths may challenge a principle of the homogeneity of truth. Unlike standard conceptions, in which analyticity is couched in terms of "truth in virtue of meanings", Frege's notions of analytic and a priori concern justification, respecting a principle of the homogeneity of truth. Where there is no justification these notions do not apply, Frege insists. Basic truths and axioms may be analytic (or a priori), though unprovable, which means there is a form of (...) justification which is not (deductive) proof. This is also required for regarding singular factual propositions as a posteriori. A Fregean direction for explicating this wider notion of justification is suggested in terms of his notion of sense (Sinn)—modes in which what the axioms are about are given—and its general epistemological significance is sketched. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to grasp the relevant distinctions between various ways in which models and simulations in Artificial Intelligence (AI) relate to cognitive phenomena. In order to get a systematic picture, a taxonomy is developed that is based on the coordinates of formal versus material analogies and theory-guided versus pre-theoretic models in science. These distinctions have parallels in the computational versus mimetic aspects and in analytic versus exploratory types of computer simulation. The proposed taxonomy cuts across (...) the traditional dichotomies between symbolic and embodied AI, general intelligence and symbol and intelligence and cognitive simulation and human/non-human-like AI. -/- According to the taxonomy proposed here, one can distinguish between four distinct general approaches that figured prominently in early and classical AI, and that have partly developed into distinct research programs: first, phenomenal simulations (e.g., Turing’s “imitation game”); second, simulations that explore general-level formal isomorphisms in pursuit of a general theory of intelligence (e.g., logic-based AI); third, simulations as exploratory material models that serve to develop theoretical accounts of cognitive processes (e.g., Marr’s stages of visual processing and classical connectionism); and fourth, simulations as strictly formal models of a theory of computation that postulates cognitive processes to be isomorphic with computational processes (strong symbolic AI). -/- In continuation of pragmatic views of the modes of modeling and simulating world affairs, this taxonomy of approaches to modeling in AI helps to elucidate how available computational concepts and simulational resources contribute to the modes of representation and theory development in AI research—and what made that research program uniquely dependent on them. (shrink)

-/- The aim of this paper is to grasp the relevant distinctions between various ways in which models and simulations in Artificial Intelligence (AI) relate to cognitive phenomena. In order to get a systematic picture, a taxonomy is developed that is based on the coordinates of formal versus material analogies and theory-guided versus pre-theoretic models in science. These distinctions have parallels in the computational versus mimetic aspects and in analytic versus exploratory types of computer simulation. The proposed taxonomy cuts (...) across the traditional dichotomies between symbolic and embodied AI, general intelligence and symbol and intelligence and cognitive simulation and human/non-human-like AI. -/- According to the taxonomy proposed here, one can distinguish between four distinct general approaches that figured prominently in early and classical AI, and that have partly developed into distinct research programs: first, phenomenal simulations (e.g., Turing’s “imitation game”); second, simulations that explore general-level formal isomorphisms in pursuit of a general theory of intelligence (e.g., logic-based AI); third, simulations as exploratory material models that serve to develop theoretical accounts of cognitive processes (e.g., Marr’s stages of visual processing and classical connectionism); and fourth, simulations as strictly formal models of a theory of computation that postulates cognitive processes to be isomorphic with computational processes (strong symbolic AI). -/- In continuation of pragmatic views of the modes of modeling and simulating world affairs, this taxonomy of approaches to modeling in AI helps to elucidate how available computational concepts and simulational resources contribute to the modes of representation and theory development in AI research—and what made that research program uniquely dependent on them. (shrink)

When it first appeared in 1933, Experience and its Modes was not considered a classic. But as philosophical fashion moved away from the analytic philosophy of the 1930s, this work began to seem ahead of its time. Arguing that experience is 'modal', in the sense that we always have a theoretical or practical perspective on the world, Michael Oakeshott explores the nature of philosophical experience and its relationship to three of the most important 'modes' of non-philosophical experience - science, (...) history and practice - seeking to establish the autonomy and superiority of philosophy. In recognition of its enduring importance, this book is presented in a fresh series livery for a new generation of readers, featuring a specially commissioned preface written by Paul Franco. (shrink)

The notion that Jesus Christ is one person with two natures has been the venue of much philosophical theological work in the past 40 years. One mode of engagement with this idea has been to defend the coherence of the idea. This has been done by, for example, revising standard conceptions of divinity and humanity or predicate attribution. Another mode of engagement with the doctrine is to offer models for how the state of affairs of the Incarnation might (...) work. This could involve retrieving models from thinkers of the past. Finally, the constructive mode applies the reasoning of the two natures/one person conception to other areas of Christian theology such as the atonement or the Eucharist. Examples of each of these modes from the contemporary analytic literature are presented. (shrink)

Analytic skill can contribute to a theology of the Bible and a theological hermeneutic in two ways, by refining the formulation of a doctrine of Scripture and a correlative hermeneutic, and by illuminating how problematic hermeneutical presuppositions have in some cases become part of exegetical practice. The contribution that the analytic style of reflection can make to the theological enterprise need not be vitiated by a common criticism of analytic modes of engaging with texts, namely, that they (...) tend toward being ahistorical, though the objection deserves to be considered carefully. (shrink)

In one of his last texts, Foucault defined his philosophical enterprise as an “analysis of the conditions in which certain relations between subject and object are formed or modified, insofar as they are constitutive of a possible knowledge”1, or again as “the manner in which the emergence of games of truth constituted, for a particular time and place and certain individuals, the historical a priori of a possible experience”2. Despite its eclipse during the genealogical period, the notion of the historical (...) a priori is thus reaffirmed as central by later Foucault. There is, however, an essential modification with respect to its archaeological problematisation: in The Order of Things, the various historical a priori were characterized by a specific relation between being and language, a relation in which the subject of knowledge did not always nor necessarily have a place. The Renaissance episteme was defined by the homogeneity of words and things, and its Classical counterpart, by the transparent distance between being and representation, which excluded any positioning for the subject (the “place of the king”). Thus within the archaeological configuration, only the contemporary historical a priori was characterized by the invention of a new position for the subject of knowledge, that of Man, which generated the Analytic of Finitude and ultimately resulted in the “anthropological sleep” criticised at the end of The Order of Things. So although later Foucault re-focuses his work around the notion of the historical a priori, he gives the notion a considerable twist whereby the conditions of truth saying are no longer referred back to an implicit connection between being and language, but to the various relations historically established between “modes of subjectivation”3 and “modes of objectification”4. Correspondingly, these relations are not to be analysed from discourse, as in archaeology, nor from the constituting structures of subjectivity, as in phenomenology, but genealogically, i.e.. (shrink)

In the 1940s and 1950s, nuclear magnetic resonance , one of the most important analytical techniques in chemistry, grew to maturity in the intermediate research field of chemical physics. Chemists and physicists adapted the new technology to the experimental culture of molecular spectroscopy which was based on a pragmatic experimental style. In molecular spectroscopy, the purpose of experiments was the establishment of methods that suited both the physicists' quest for precision and theoretical model building and the chemists' longing for empirical (...) data and understanding of structural formulae and reaction courses. In this process, an experimental style emerged that can be characterized as reliance on self‐built instrumentation, theoretical foundation in quantum mechanics, and proof of utility in the solution of structural and dynamical questions. This article focuses on the early development of NMR at Harvard University, with particular emphasis on the contributions of the first chemist working in the field of NMR, Herbert S. Gutowsky. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION Philosophy is a discipline of fundamental diversities and extremely divergent modes of thought some of which occupy center stage in Western ...

The aim of this chapter is to examine the philosophical conditions of understanding. It is based on Wittgenstein’s talk on understanding recorded by Moritz Schlick. The first two sections contain an overview of the meaning of ‘understand’ and the diversity of language games in which ‘understand’ is used, respectively. The third part deals with the mode in which psychological states are expressed and analyses fallacies produced by the combining of scientific with prescientific expressions. The fourth section is dedicated to (...) the nature of ambiguous concepts and the role of grammar. Finally, the question of what it means to understand a piece of art is discussed by comparing visual language to verbal language. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 11.1 (2004) 71-80 [Access article in PDF] Some Reflections on the (Analytic) Philosophical Approach to Delusion Louis A. Sass There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." —Hamlet, Act I, Scene 5 The peculiar, often problematic phenome na of psychopathology have been attract ing the attention of analytic philosophers in recent years. The topic of (...) delusion has been a particular draw, with a number of analytic philosophers attempting to use their conceptual tools, usually combined with ideas from cognitive neuroscience, to criticize the traditional understanding and to clarify the nature of this central psychiatric topic. It is useful to have this kind of interdisciplinary dialogue. Indeed, there is good reason to hope that concepts honed in the philosophy of mind and other philosophical subfields will help to sort out our understanding of a phenomenon (or set of phenomena) for which contemporary psychiatric definitions and conceptualizations are clearly inadequate and, in some respects, downright misleading (see Parnas and Sass 2001; Spitzer 1990).1Here, however, I would like to call attention to some weaknesses that, it seems to me, are rather common (I do not say universal) in many analytic philosophical approaches to psychopathology. In my opinion, there is a tendency to formulate issues and arguments in overly polarized, even dichotomous terms, and then to rely too uncritically on these essentialistic formulations in exploring the domain of inquiry. Although this polarizing tendency sometimes has the salutary effect of clarifying conceptual domains, it can, when taken too far, actually hamper our understanding of phenomena that are often fraught with ambiguities and complexities that defy many standard conceptualizations.The relationship between philosophy and psychopathology is obviously a two-way street—we are familiar, for example, with disorders that challenge deep philosophical assumptions about self and mind (e.g., blindsight, split-brain phenomena, perhaps also Dissociative Identity Disorder, and the first rank symptoms of schizophrenia). I am suggesting that, in their work on delusions, philosophers may need to put more emphasis on moving from the natural phenomena [End Page 71] of psychopathology and to the domain of philosophical analysis.I believe that a greater sensitivity to the modes of knowing associated with the phenomenological tradition, and to the forms of conceptual self-critique fostered by Ludwig Wittgenstein, are crucial ingredients for any adequate approach to delusion as well as many other topics in psychopathology. In my opinion, the work of many analytic philosophers interested in psychopathology would be enriched if they spent more time trying to discover and imagine what it might be like to experience certain kinds of abnormal psychiatric conditions, and also speculating about what implications such experiential modalities might have for action and verbal expression. I believe they would also be wise to spend more time questioning, and attempting to transcend, the philosophically derived conceptual distinctions and dichotomies that appear to organize their conceptual universes. Phenomenological imagination and Wittgensteinian critique can show how to move outside the conceptual capsule and into the rich and strange realms of actual experience, both normal and abnormal.So far I have offered only slogans. Let me use the articles by Tim Bayne and Elisabeth Pacherie (2004) and Robert Klee (2004) to flesh out the criticisms I have offered. There is much that is intelligent and much that is worthwhile in both their articles. (For example, I was largely convinced by the criticisms of John Campbell and of Donald Davidson that are central to the articles by Bayne and Pacherie and by Klee, respectively.) Here, however, I will focus only on issues that illustrate the above-mentioned tendencies—tendencies that, in my view, tend to infect even the best writings on the (analytic) philosophy of psychiatry. I will also make some remarks about the works of Campbell and Davidson, the two philosophers criticized in the articles by Bayne and Pacherie and by Klee. Because the article by Eugenie Georgaca (2004) is in a different tradition, I will say only a few words about it at the end. Bayne and Pacherie on the Preservation-Of-meaning... (shrink)

An essay in the "new" metaphysics which has been emerging from English analytic philosophy. Acknowledging his debt to Wittgenstein, Shwayder concedes that what he has to offer "is nothing but philosophical theory in pretty much the old-fashioned sense." The three foci are referring, properties, and natural numbers. The multifarious and subtle distinctions are the source both of the book's strength and weakness. The concern and care for detailed shades of meaning frequently gets in the way of a more general (...) metaphysical view of the problems treated. --R. J. B. (shrink)

There is a difference between the tasks of interpreting Sextus Empiricus and contesting his arguments. Usually, one does the latter relying on some version of the former. Though this seems obvious, it is easy to make mistakes in this endeavor. From this point, I draw two basic recommendations which we should follow, lest we take Sextus to hold implausible positions regarding his Five Modes. However, these recommendations lead us to interpret Sextus’ Pyrrhonism as a limited skepticism. In the final section, (...) as I suggest a counter-example to this commitment, I reconsider the notion of infinite (apeiron) in the Five Modes to better explain interpretation and criticism of Sextus’ arguments. (shrink)

One of the topics that appears regularly in even the most casual inventories of philosophical problems is the problem of time. Time is such a pervasive, resilient feature of experience that it cannot be ignored. But time is also so vague that almost any analysis or tracking procedure we use to enhance and purify its signals overrides or baffles those signals. We begin a study of the phenomena of temporality and find that our attention is displaced from the temporal continuum (...) to different ways of being seated in it. (shrink)

In this collection of essays Samuel Wheeler discusses Derrida and other “deconstructive” thinkers from the perspective of an analytic philosopher willing to treat deconstruction as philosophy, taking it seriously enough to look for and analyze its arguments. The essays focus on the theory of meaning, truth, interpretation, metaphor, and the relationship of language to the world. Wheeler links the thought of Derrida to that of Davidson and argues for close affinities among Derrida, Quine, de Man, and Wittgenstein. He also (...) demonstrates the propinquity of Plato and Derrida and shows that New Criticism shares deconstruction’s conception of language. Of the twelve essays in the collection, four are published here for the first time. The fundamental resemblance between Derrida and such analytic thinkers as Quine, Wittgenstein, and Davidson, the author argues, is that they deny the possibility of meanings as self-interpreting media constituting thoughts and intentions. Derrida argues that some form of magic language has determined the very project of philosophy, and his arguments work out the consequences of denying that there are such self-interpreting mental contents. In addition, Derrida and Davidson agree in denying any “given.” Without a given, questions about realism and idealism cease to have a point. Derrida and Davidson are both committed to the textuality of all significant marks, whether in neurons or on paper. They argue that there is no mode of representation more direct than language. (shrink)

A square tabular array was introduced by R. C. Punnett in (1907) to visualize systematically and economically the combination of gametes to make genotypes according to Mendel’s theory. This mode of representation evolved and rapidly became standardized as the canonical way of representing like problems in genetics. Its advantages over other contemporary methods are discussed, as are ways in which it evolved to increase its power and efficiency, and responded to changing theoretical perspectives. It provided a natural visual decomposition (...) of a complex problem into a number of inter-related stages. This explains its computational and conceptual power, for one could simply “read off” answers to a wide variety of questions simply from the “right” visual representation of the problem, and represent multiple problems, and multiple layers of problems in the same diagram. I relate it to prior work on the evolution of Weismann diagrams by Griesemer and Wimsatt (What Philosophy of Biology Is, Martinus-Nijhoff, the Hague, 1989), and discuss a crucial change in how it was interpreted that midwifed its success. (shrink)

This paper sets out an agenda for the study of the history of analytic and post-analytic political philosophy. It builds on a growing literature on the history of analytic philosophy to make three main suggestions. First, analytic philosophy arose as part of a wider shift from the developmental historicism of the nineteenth century to more modernist modes of knowledge. Second, analytic philosophy included a wide range of approaches to moral and political issues, many of which (...) reflected distinctive concepts of analysis, logic, and science. Third, analytic philosophy only became widespread when the work of Quine and Wittgenstein moved it in a more post-analytic direction. Crucially, the move toward post-analytic philosophy inspired people to rediscover and reinvent other traditions, including liberal humanism, democratic republicanism, virtue ethics, and historicism. The resulting history provides a fluid and diverse understanding of arguably the most powerful philosophical movement of the twentieth century. (shrink)

Buddhist philosophers draw a distinction between two kinds of entities: ultimately real entities and conventionally real entities. Among Abhidharma Buddhist philosophers, who accept the fundamental existence of ultimately real entities, there is a debate over the existential status of conventionally real entities. The most prevalent interpretation of the general Abhidharma position is an anti-realist one: conventionally real entities do not exist. Here, however, I will argue that there is at least one Abhidharma philosopher who is not an anti-realist about conventionally (...) real entities. Saṅghabhadra, a fifth-century CE Indian Buddhist philosopher belonging to the Vaibhāṣika-Sarvāstivāda tradition of Abhidharma Buddhism, offers an account of conventionally real entities that takes them to be real. According to him, conventional entities exist, although in a derivative and degenerate way—a way that is supervenient on and grounded in what is ultimately real. Saṅghabhadra’s view substantiates, in his specific case, Kris McDaniel’s argument that Abhidharma accounts of conventional reality are profitably interpreted as the view that conventional entities exist but enjoy a mode of being that is distinct from the fundamental mode of being enjoyed by ultimately real entities. In what follows, I will argue that the pluralist framework that McDaniel lays out for understanding the mode of being that non-fundamental entities enjoy fits well with and makes the most sense of, the account of conventional entities offered by Saṅghabhadra. (shrink)

This essay argues that post-analytic philosophy finds its origins not only in an invented tradition—that of ‘analytic philosophy’—but also in an invented dilemma: namely, the response to the allegedly overweening dominance of ‘positivism’ in American philosophy. I begin by surveying the problems with the folk wisdom about positivism and analytic philosophy. This pervasive narrative locates the emergence of post-analytic philosophy after a period of hegemony for logical positivism and cognate philosophical subfields. Taking seriously evidence indicating a (...) distinct overlap in the construction of the analytic and post-analytic traditions, I return to the founding moment of American analytic philosophy in the years immediately following World War II. What we see, I suggest, is not a reaction against a clearly defined and powerful logical positivist mainstream, but the careful, piecewise co-ordination of what would become characteristic ‘analytic’ modes of argument, problematics, and tool kits. Willard Van Orman Quine played a central role in this process, and for this reason I focus on the circumstances in which his field-defining 1951 article, ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’ was written and received. I conclude with the claim that both analytic and post-analytic philosophers relied on a peculiar image of the failure of logical positivism, and of the opportunities that failure presented. (shrink)

This text relates the evolution of the author’s posture as a researcher during the realization of his doctoral thesis and its link with the choice of an analytical approach. Incidentally, this narrative has the dimensions of an autobiographical research. This text illustrates how, within the framework of a thesis, the author implemented a slow evolutionary process of his researcher posture thanks to an analytical approach in writing mode. A return to handwritten writing, considered here as an analyst’s “trick of (...) the trade”, allowed the deployment of the thinking necessary for the conceptualization and transformation of his professional and personal « self » through a method of analysis taking place in five steps, from the transcription to the final writing of the report. (shrink)

The paper has a twofold aim. On the one hand, it provides what appears to be the first game-theoretic modeling of Napoleon’s last campaign, which ended dramatically on 18 June 1815 at Waterloo. It is specifically concerned with the decision Napoleon made on 17 June 1815 to detach part of his army against the Prussians he had defeated, though not destroyed, on 16 June at Ligny. Military historians agree that this decision was crucial but disagree about whether it was rational. (...) Hypothesizing a zero-sum game between Napoleon and Blücher, and computing its solution, we show that it could have been a cautious strategy on the former's part to divide his army, a conclusion which runs counter to the charges of misjudgement commonly heard since Clausewitz. On the other hand, the paper addresses methodological issues. We defend its case study against the objections of irrelevance that have been raised elsewhere against “analytic narratives”, and conclude that military campaigns provide an opportunity for successful application of the formal theories of rational choice. Generalizing the argument, we finally investigate the conflict between narrative accounts – the historians' standard mode of expression – and mathematical modeling. (shrink)

‘Globalization’ has become in recent years one of the central themes of social scientific debates. Social theories of globalization may be regarded as specific academic and analytic manifestations of wider forms of ‘global consciousness’ to be found in the social world today. These are ways of thinking and perceiving which emphasize that the whole world should be seen as ‘one place’, its various geographically disparate parts all being interconnected in various complex ways. In this article we set out how (...) both a general ‘ecumenical sensibility’ involving such ways of thinking, and its specifically academic variant, an ‘ecumenical analytic’, are simultaneously responses to ‘globalizing conditions’ and also products of the latter. We demonstrate how social theories of globalization, locatable in the overall set we call the ‘ecumenical analytic’, are reflexive thought-products, in that they both seek to investigate, and are made possible by, ‘globalizing conditions’. Rejecting the view that both an ecumenical sensibility and an ecumenical analytic are solely products of modernity, we show how such modes of consciousness and analysis were present in the period of Greek history between the death of Alexander the Great and the rise of the Roman Empire. We show how at that period a socio-political situation akin in certain ways to modern ‘globalizing conditions’ generated both an ecumenical sensibility and an ecumenical analytic, the latter most forcefully represented by a revolutionary new genre in historiography called Universal History. By examining the ideas of its most famous practitioner, the historian Polybius, we demonstrate that Universal History both provided a framework for understanding what we today would call ‘globalization’, and exhibited a remarkable degree of reflexive awareness about its own conditions of possibility. We seek to show that an attentiveness to ‘global’ processes and a reflexive understanding of what makes that form of thinking possible in the first place, are not solely confined to modernity but were identifiable features of intellectual production in the Hellenistic period of ancient Greece. In this way we argue that scholars today should not imagine that the contemporary ‘global turn’ in social thought is either unique or wholly historically unprecedented. (shrink)

Many attempts have been made to define analytic philosophy in a nonhistorical or otherwise deictic way, and to provide a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for a piece of philosophical work to be part of analytic philosophy. This is more difficult than might appear, for the conditions appealed to are normative and must be claimed by non-analytic philosophers to apply to their production as well. In fact, no such set of conditions has been forthcoming, and it (...) is unlikely that it ever will. Instead, I offer a holistic characterization of analytic philosophy as a mode of organization of philosophical work modeled on science. This accounts for analytic philosophy’s success in the academic world, its pedagogic virtues, and its ability to expand beyond its initial boundaries. Two related questions remain: one about the indirect justification analytic philosophy might be granted from outside of philosophy, the other about its ability to make contact with cultural realms other than those with which it has until now established a fruitful exchange. The answers are crucial for the potential renewal of analytic philosophy. (shrink)

Theories of linguistic meaning have been a major influence in twentieth century philosophy. This is due, in part, to the assumption that meaning is the crucial and interesting thing about language. To know the meaning of an expression is to understand it, and since understanding is central to philosophy in many different ways, it should be no surprise that the notion of meaning has often taken center stage. The aim of this paper is to briefly explore some influential views concerning (...) linguistic meaning. The final objective will be to demonstrate some alternatives which are open to theory with respect to this notion,for there are those who have wanted to ban talk of meaning from serious scientific discourse. The point is that many of the disadvantages of traditional notions of meaning are avoidable¾in particular, they are avoidable along a path which starts from Frege and moves on via Tarski and Davidson. (shrink)

The modes of thought in Chinese Buddhism and Indian Buddhism refer to the structures of understanding, the modes and methods of thinking about problems and theories of explanation on the part of the Buddhist scholars in China and in India; this belongs to the deeper and higher-level contents of Buddhist culture. To study and compare the Chinese Buddhist and Indian Buddhist modes of thought will help us to understand the framework of response with which the Buddhist scholars of the two (...) countries and cultures respond to external stimuli, and how they approach the task of processing intellectual information. It will help us to comprehend better the specific forms of the intuitive thought, analytical thought, and the thinking in images on the part of the Buddhist scholars of the two countries, as well as their mental and psychological structure and their national character—even the psychological structure and national characteristics of the common Buddhist in the two countries and cultures. This would be significant for the study of religion, of philosophy, of the science of thought, and for the study of psychology. This essay hopes, through focusing on explaining and demonstrating the evolution of the modes of thought of Chinese and Indian Buddhism, to reveal certain similarities as well as differences between the Chinese Buddhist and Indian Buddhist modes of thought, and to arrive at some conclusion with regard to this matter. (shrink)

Amidst the climate of crisis surrounding the rise in opioid-related overdose in the USA, early in 2019, Google and Deloitte launched ‘Opioid360’. Here came a platform combining browser histories, credit, insurance, social media, and traditional survey data to sell the service of risk calculation in population health. Opioid360's approach to automating risk calculation not only promised to identify persons ‘at risk’ of opioid dependence, but also paved the way for broader applications anticipating common chronic diseases and coordinating logistical operations involved (...) in pandemic response. Beginning with this experimental platform, this paper develops an analysis of the Big Data mode of risk calculation - an epistemological and political shift that involves technology companies, investors, insurers, governments, and public health institutions. The analysis focuses on the re-emergence of ‘social determinants of health’ in the rhetoric accompanying novel analytic platforms that estimate, calculate, and compute individual health risks. While the treatment of SDOH has always been a site of political contestation within the discipline of public health, powerful interests are crystallising around the concept and instrumentalising it in platforms that sell algorithmic prediction. Silicon Valley's breed of asset-oriented technoscience appears not only to be amplifying the behaviouralist elements of public health. Among the stakes of the Big Data mode is the paradoxical retreat from changing social conditions that contribute to the prevalence of health and illness in populations; and instead, the promotion of an apparatus for pricing and exchanging individual risk or excluding from services those who bear risk most acutely. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe schism between positivism and interpretivism in the social sciences is usually explained by the explicit epistemological and methodological commitments of social scientists and philosophers. It can be better understood, though, as a collision between two contrasting cognitive modes and sensibilities, rooted in the predominant recruitment of two distinct networks in the human brain. Since the activation of these networks is negatively correlated, the analytic reasoning typical of positivists and the empathetic, intuitive, and holistic thinking employed by intepretivists produce (...) incommensurate versions of social reality. The analytic cognitive mode is fostered and privileged in complex modern societies and in institutionalized social-science research. It is nevertheless inadequate for understanding the social world, as it facilitates the modeling of causal interactions between inanimate objects. (shrink)

Today the way philosophical work is presented is very narrowly circumscribed and as a result, this excludes people who do not want to, or cannot effectively, present their work in a particular manner. This canonization of the mode of presentation of philosophical work also serves to maintain the status quo of analytic philosophy as an exclusively academic discipline. In this paper I argue that diversity in how philosophical thinking is presented should be allowed, and even, encouraged. I argue (...) that it is in philosophy’s interest to expand the ways that it is presented, because not doing so not only limits who can participate in philosophy, but it also limits who philosophy attracts and so how far-reaching philosophy can be. (shrink)