Limited distribution phenomena related to negation and negative polarity are usually thought of in terms of affectivity where affective is understood as negative or downward entailing. In this paper I propose an analysis of affective contexts as nonveridical and treat negative polarity as a manifestation of the more general phenomenon of sensitivity to (non)veridicality (which is, I argue, what affective dependencies boil down to). Empirical support for this analysis will be provided by a detailed examination of affective dependencies in Greek, (...) but the distribution of any will also be shown to follow from (non)veridicality. (shrink)

Hardt and Negri’s Empire series has inspired twenty years of debate and experimentation across the social sciences and humanities in fields as divergent as international re...

In (1990), Jerry Fodor has defended a naturalized conception of meaning for Mentalese expressions which relies on the notion of asymmetric dependence. According to this conception, any naturalized theory of meaning must be able to account for the fact that meaning is robust, namely that any token of a certain Mentalese expression “x” retains the expression’s meaning, X, for any Y (≠ X) which happens to cause it. Now, this robustness of “x”‘s meaning can precisely (...) be explained in terms of the subsistence of an asymmetric dependence of any nomic connection between Ys and “x”‘s tokens on another nomic connection between Xs and “x”‘s tokens. According to Fodor, then, this relation between nomic connections can account in perfectly naturalistic terms for “x” meaning X, by providing a sufficient condition for such a meaning. In what follows, however, I will try to show, first, that the subsistence of asymmetric dependencies of the kind envisaged by Fodor is not enough for assigning meaning to a certain expression. Indeed, there are dependencies of this kind which are meaning-irrelevant. Secondly, I will claim that asymmetric dependence relations are not able even to support for the robustness of meaning. For there are cases in which according to the structure of these relations we would have to conclude that meaning is altered although robustness would require to have it unchanged. (shrink)

Ernest Lepore and Kirk Ludwig correctly observe that Donald Davidson’s account of radical interpretation is in tension with his Swampman thought experiment. Nonetheless, I argue, they fail to see the extent of Davidson’s tension—and so do not handle it adequately—because they fail to appreciate that the thought experiment pits two incompatible response-dependent accounts of meaning against one another. I take an account of meaning to be response-dependent just in case it links the meaning of terms in an (...) a priori manner to the responses that a suitable subject under suitable conditions could or did have to those terms. That Davidson proposes two such accounts is deeply problematic for his program. After explaining the sense in which Davidson endorses two incompatible response-dependent accounts of meaning, I use that explanation to resolve the tension myself. (shrink)

This essay explores aesthetics, affect, and educational politics through the thought of Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Rancière. It contextualizes and contrasts the theoretical valences of their ethical and democratic projects through their shared critique of Kant. It then puts Rancière's notion of dissensus to work by exploring it in relation to a social movement and hunger strike organized for educational justice in Chicago's Little Village neighborhood. This serves as a context for understanding how educational provisions are linked to the aesthetic (...) distribution of perception within the neoliberal city. It also serves as a powerful example of how these orders of perception are resisted and subverted at the local level by aesthetic and affective means. Through the Little Village hunger strike the essay argues that while Rancière allows us to recognize the aesthetic dimensions of the political, he falls short in addressing tactical and/or affective considerations. The essay concludes by seeking to extend the critical efficacy of Rancière's dissensus through a rendering of tactical affect within Deleuzian metaphysics. (shrink)

Andrew von Hirsch and Andrew Ashworth recently argued that there is generally a reason to punish a socially deprived offender less than his non-deprived counterpart (ie someone who is not socially deprived but is otherwise similar to the deprived offender in that he committed the same crime, caused the same harm, with the same degree of foresight, etc), because deprived offenders generally face stronger temptations to offend than their non-deprived counterparts. In reply, I will argue that we should (...) draw a distinction between (i) facing stronger temptations to offend when one offended and (ii) acting on stronger temptations in offending. The distinction is analogous to Antony Duff’s distinction between having a reason for an action and acting on/for that reason. After drawing the distinction, I will argue that while acting on stronger temptations in offending should be a mitigating factor, facing stronger temptations to offend per se should not be a mitigating factor. Moreover, I will argue that since it is not true that deprived offenders generally act on stronger temptations in offending, social deprivation cannot be defended as a general mitigating plea on the basis that deprived offenders generally act on stronger temptations in offending. (shrink)

Jerry Fodor has proposed a causal theory of meaning based on the notion of a certain asymmetric dependency between the causes of a symbol's tokens. This theory is held to be an improvement on Dennis Stampe's causal theory of meaning and Fred Dretske's information theoretic account, because it allegedly solves what Fodor calls the “disjunction problem”, and does so without recourse to the kind of optimal (ideal) conditions to which Stampe and Dretske appeal. A series of counterexamples is (...) proposed to Fodor's account, which, it is argued, can only be met by reintroducing that same appeal to optimal conditions that he had sought to eliminate. It is then argued that Fodor's notion of asymmetric dependence is not fundamental to the explanation of why a symbol means what it does: on the contrary, the symbol's meaning what it does is explanatorily prior to the obtaining of the asymmetry, so the asymmetry cannot be used to explain the symbol's meaning. Finally, it is argued that the “disjunction problem “ as it is defined by Fodor is not a genuine problem for causal theories of meaning. (shrink)

There is no consensus on how to define substance, but one popular view is that substances are entities that are independent in some sense or other. E. J. Lowe’s version of this approach stresses that substances are not dependent on other particulars for their identity. I develop the meaning of this proposal, defend it against some criticisms, and then show that others do require that the theory be modified.

In this wide-ranging conversation, Michael Hardt reflects on recent transformations within Empire. Several unique themes emerge concerning power and pedagogy as they intersect with subjectivity and global crisis. Drawing on the common in conjunction with the tradition of love in education uncovers a different path that attends to today’s real political, ecological, and social needs. Finally, a focus on collectivity points to a possible strategy—collective intellectuality—for educators to revise traditional notions of leadership to encourage more ethical, democratic, and sustainable futures. (...) Yet, what this looks like in practice remains for us to imagine. (shrink)

Michel Foucault was one of the 20th century’s great practitioners of study. Time in the archives and library, teaching, reading, thinking, and writing were all integrated aspects of his tireless la...

A counterlegal is a counterfactual conditional containing an antecedent that is inconsistent with some set of laws. A backtracker is a counterfactual that tells us how things would be at a time earlier than that of its antecedent, were the antecedent to obtain. Typically, theories that evaluate counterlegals appropriately don’t evaluate backtrackers properly, and vice versa. Two cases in point: Lewis’ ordering semantics handles counterlegals well but not backtrackers. Hiddleston’s :632–657, 2005) causal-model semantics nicely handles backtrackers but not counterlegals. Taking (...) Hiddleston’s account as a starting point, I offer steps toward a theory capable of handling both counterlegals and backtrackers. The core contribution of this paper is a means for evaluating counterlegals relative to minimally-illegal models. (shrink)

In this article we study how members of an interdisciplinary research team use an online forum for communicating about their research project. We use the concepts of "community of practice" and "connectivity" to consider the online interaction within a wider question of how people from different academic traditions "do" interdisciplinarity. The online forum for this Grey and Pleasant Land project did not take off as hoped, even after a series of interventions and amendments, and we consider what the barriers were (...) and how they might be overcome. Barriers to involvement included participants' expectations of interaction and collaboration--expectation that real interaction happens elsewhere, tensions between academic discourse and forum talk norms, unfamiliarity with the technology, and different conceptions of appropriate academic discussion. We suggest that common academic practice does not prepare us well for creating interdisciplinary research communities through online collaboration tools, whereas such tools are our best bet currently for including geographically dispersed members in collaborative projects. Therefore, careful planning and competence building would be necessary if such tools are to be used in collaborative research. Suggested interventions, based on our experience, include providing a more focused forum, making technical support easily available, and setting up particular tasks or items to debate, within a preset, synchronous timeframe, focusing on issues relevant to the project at that time. (shrink)

I first discuss Kit Fine's distinctive 'schema-based' approach to metaphysical theorizing, which aims to identify general principles accommodating any intelligible application of the notion(s), by attention to his accounts of essence and dependence. I then raise some specific concerns about the general principles Fine takes to schematically characterize these notions. In particular, I present various counterexamples to Fine's essence-based account of ontological dependence. The problem, roughly speaking, is that Fine supposes that an object's essence makes reference to just what it (...) ontologically depends on, but various cases suggest that an object's essence can also make reference to what ontologically depends on it. As such, Fine's account of ontological dependence is subject to the same objection he raises against modal accounts of essence and dependence---that is, of being insufficiently ecumenical. (shrink)

Objections to the traditional view that God knows all of time eternally stand or fall on what one means by “eternally.” The widely held supposition, shared by both eternalists and those who oppose them, such as Open Theists, is that to say God knows all of time eternally entails that he cannot know all of time from atemporal perspective. In this paper I show that Boethius’s characterization of God’s eternal knowledge employs a different meaning of “eternal,” which is incompatible (...) with this supposition. I argue that Boethius’s claim that “the most excellent knowledge is that which by its own nature knows not only its own proper object but also the objects of all lower kinds of knowledge” entails that God is not limited by perspective and so eternally and simultaneously knows every temporal event from a temporal as well as a timeless perspective. (shrink)

I first discuss Kit Fine's distinctive 'schema-based' approach to metaphysical theorizing, which aims to identify general principles accommodating any intelligible application of the notion, by attention to his accounts of essence and dependence. I then raise some specific concerns about the general principles Fine takes to schematically characterize these notions. In particular, I present various counterexamples to Fine's essence -based account of ontological dependence. The problem, roughly speaking, is that Fine supposes that an object's essence makes reference to just what (...) it ontologically depends on, but various cases suggest that an object's essence can also make reference to what ontologically depends on it, either by way of composition or causation. As such, Fine's account of ontological dependence is subject to the same objection he raises against modal accounts of essence and dependence---that is, of being insufficiently ecumenical. (shrink)

Hebrews 4:15 says that Jesus was tempted like other human beings yet never sinned. Sinlessness is not the same as impeccability. Chalcedonian Christology or some variant of it seems necessary to show that Jesus was metaphysically unable to sin. Metaphysical impossibility to sin, though, appears to rule out temptation as experienced by ordinary human beings. This paper argues that Oliver D. Crisp, T. A. Hart, Brian Leftow, and Gerald O’Collins all fall short in trying to show how Jesus was both (...) impeccable and tempted as we are. (shrink)

I distinguish temptation to do what we think we shouldn't, temptation not to do what we think we should, and the difficulties we experience in customary religious practices like prayer. I ask whether temptation requires a tempter, also whether the phenomena we call ‘weakness of will’ can be explained without postulating a non-cognitive faculty of will. I look at Plato's claim that training the emotions is the main function of education. Finally I consider how obstacles to prayer can be understood (...) consistently with seeing a continuous development from the natural to the supernatural. (shrink)

Ésta es la respuesta a la crítica hecha por Ricardo Salles a mi interpretación del compatibilismo estoico. Aunque en parte admito sus objeciones, intento mostrar que algunos textos nos permiten pensar que, aunque lo que depende de nosotros no implique necesariamente acciones alternativas, eso no significa que no pueda implicarlas. También trato de mostrar que un reexamen de la noción crisipea de posibilidad que tenga en cuenta el deseo y la creencia permite explicar por qué no es posible llevar a (...) cabo las acciones X e Y en un tiempo dado, lo cual indicaría que la posibilidad específica también excluye acciones alternativas. /// This is the reply to Ricardo Salles' criticism of my interpretation of the Stoic compatibilism. Although I partially admit his objections, I intend to show that some texts allow us to think that, even though what depends on us does not necessarily imply alternative actions, this does not mean that it can not imply them. I also endeavour to show that a re-examination of the Chrysippean notion of possibility taking into account desire and belief permits to explain why it is not possible to perform the actions X and Y in a given time, which would indicate that the specific possibility rules out alternative actions as well. (shrink)

Face recognition is a computationally challenging classification task. Deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs) are brain‐inspired algorithms that have recently reached human‐level performance in face and object recognition. However, it is not clear to what extent DCNNs generate a human‐like representation of face identity. We have recently revealed a subset of facial features that are used by humans for face recognition. This enables us now to ask whether DCNNs rely on the same facial information and whether this (...) human‐like representation depends on a system that is optimized for face identification. In the current study, we examined the representation of DCNNs of faces that differ in features that are critical or non‐critical for human face recognition. Our findings show that DCNNs optimized for face identification are tuned to the same facial features used by humans for face recognition. Sensitivity to these features was highly correlated with performance of the DCNN on a benchmark face recognition task. Moreover, sensitivity to these features and a view‐invariant face representation emerged at higher layers of a DCNN optimized for face recognition but not for object recognition. This finding parallels the division to a face and an object system in high‐level visual cortex. Taken together, these findings validate human perceptual models of face recognition, enable us to use DCNNs to test predictions about human face and object recognition as well as contribute to the interpretability of DCNNs. (shrink)

In what follows I will try to show that hinge propositions do not constitute the ultimate ground upon which we stand fast, but rather voice a metaphysical temptation, the temptation to offer an ultimate and undoubtable foundation of which we can be absolutely certain. After a brief sketch of what hinge propositions are, I propose that we read them as exclamations pointing to nonsense, a limit to intelligibility. Interpreted thus, hinge propositions, either ascertained or doubted, show what nonsense in On (...) Certainty might be, namely, the confusion that either their certitude or doubt produce. I will try to substantiate my interpretation showing that Wittgenstein in On Certainty was well aware of the temptation to proclaim hinge propositions as absolute certainties – a temptation he rejects. I will try to establish the above claim by offering a critique of Moyal-Sharrock’s interpretation that we read hinges as merely showing and not as something that we can explicitly acknowledge, say or articulate. (shrink)