Based on a nuanced understanding of immersion and sense of presence as two key aesthetic effects that the application of virtual reality to cinema is believed to innovate, this paper develops the concept of synthetic vision as fundamental to understanding the visual experience of VR media, particularly VR documentaries. The concept contends that viewers’ experience in VR is based on two visions that seemingly contradict each other: first, a disembodied vision that transports them to a simulated world, (...) and second, an embodied vision guaranteed by the freedom to control kinesthetic movement and direction of gaze. This serves to advance the idea that immersion and SoP are not unified but rather multifaceted concepts premised on a nuanced understanding of the varying relationships between the technological system of VR, its media content, and its user. For the concept of synthetic vision points to the paradoxical coexistence of viewers’ presence in the virtual world and their structural absence from the world that lays the groundwork for their immersive experience. By classifying three generic categories of contemporary VR documentaries, and by examining the aesthetic and ethical underpinnings VR brings to each of them, I argue that it hinges upon what kind of cinematic conventions and genres are remediated to determine the effective synthesis of the two visions. The varying effects of synthetic vision in the three subgenres of VR documentary stress that immersion and SoP have different political and ethical consequences of media witnessing. In the conclusion, I recapitulate multiple implications that the concept of synthetic vision has in regards to both the studies on VR and the recently flourishing investigation into cinematic VR artifacts. (shrink)

Morphological engineering is an emerging research area in synthetic biology. In 2008 “synthetic morphology” was proposed as a prospective approach to engineering self-constructing anatomies by Jamie A. Davies of the University of Edinburgh. Synthetic morphology can establish a new paradigm, according to Davies, insofar as “cells can be programmed to organize themselves into specific, designed arrangements, structures and tissues.” It is obvious that this new approach will extrapolate morphology into a new realm beyond the traditional logic of (...) morphological research. However, synthetic morphology is a highly idealized vision of morphology which derives its visionary ideas from morphological engineering and mathematical idealizations in order to understand the principles of molecular morphology. Thus, the question is, if this approach will help to understand morphogenesis better or if it will just enable biologists to engineer morphogenesis. The paper investigates the development of synthetic morphology and its relation to synthetic biology as well as its epistemic gains. (shrink)

British biologist and science populariser J. B. S. Haldane was known as a contrarian, whose myriad ideas and beliefs would shift to oppose whomever he chose to argue with. Yet Haldane's support for synthetic food remained remarkably stable throughout his life. This article argues that Haldane's engagement with synthetic food during the 1930s and 1940s was shaped by his frustration with the status and direction of scientific research in Britain. Drawing upon the Haldane Papers, I reconstruct how Haldane's (...) interest in synthetic food emerged from the biochemical and physiological optimism of the early 20th century. His mid-20th-century writings were an opportunity for Haldane to voice his political opinions. He attempted to erase the conceptual divide between farm and factory, maintained that food shortages were a capitalist construct, and criticised British colonialism. By pointing out the failure of existing economic systems and governments to develop synthetic food, Haldane made the case that food production should be placed under the control of biologists. (shrink)

The artworks in 'Synthetic Times' explore a trajectory of uncanny visions ranging from the desire to transcend the corporal to the construction of synthetic worlds.

Synthetic biology emerged around 2000 as a new biological discipline. It shares with systems biology the same modular vision of organisms, but is more concerned with applications than with a better understanding of the functioning of organisms. A herald of this new discipline is Craig Venter who aims to create an artificial microorganism with the minimal genome compatible with life and to implement into it different 'functional modules' to generate new micro-organisms adapted to specific tasks. Synthetic biology (...) is based on the possibilities raised by genetic engineering, but it aims to engineer organisms, and not simply to modify them, mimicking the practice of computer engineers. Three points will be discussed: In what regard does synthetic biology represent a new epistemology of the life sciences? What are the relations between synthetic biology and evolutionary biology? What is the raison d'être of synthetic biology as a discipline independent of nanotechnologies? (shrink)

Synthetic biology is regarded as one of the key technosciences of the future. The goal of this paper is to present some fundamental considerations to enable procedures of a technology assessment of synthetic biology. To accomplish such an early “upstream” assessment of a not yet fully developed technology, a special type of TA will be considered: Prospective TA. At the center of ProTA are the analysis and the framing of “synthetic biology,” including a characterization and assessment of (...) the technological core. The thesis is that if there is any differentia specifica giving substance to the umbrella term “synthetic biology,” it is the idea of harnessing self-organization for engineering purposes. To underline that we are likely experiencing an epochal break in the ontology of technoscientific systems, this new type of technology is called “late-modern technology.” —I start this paper by analyzing the three most common visions of synthetic biology. Then I argue that one particular vision deserves more attention because it underlies the others: the vision of self-organization. I discuss the inherent limits of this new type of late-modern technology in the attempt to control and monitor possible risk issues. I refer to Hans Jonas’ ethics and his early anticipation of the risks of a novel type of technology. I end by drawing conclusions for the approach of ProTA towards an early societal shaping of synthetic biology. (shrink)

Although the emerging field of synthetic biology looks back on barely a decade of development, the stakes are high. It is a multidisciplinary research field that aims at integrating the life sciences with engineering and the physical/chemical sciences. The common goal is to design and construct novel biological components, functions and systems in order to implement, in a controlled way, biological devices and production systems not necessarily found in nature. Among the many potential applications are novel drugs and pesticides, (...) cancer treatments, biofuels, and new materials. According to the most optimistic visions, synthetic biology may thus lead to a biotechnological revolution by transforming microorganisms into ‘factories’ of sorts, which could eventually displace conventional industrial methods. (shrink)

This article proposes to reconceptualize the Hungarian photographer, artist and educator László Moholy-Nagy’s (1895–1946) inter-war call for a ‘new vision’ in order to grasp how artists presently experiment with photography and adjacent new technologies to explore the environmental, ecological and elemental dimension of media themselves. For Moholy-Nagy, photography represented a new way of seeing and experiencing the increasingly industrialized and automated world and a means of expanding our sensory perception. Drawing on recent scholarship of elemental media theory, I adapt (...) Moholy-Nagy’s interest in the materiality of photography and the atmospheric and medial dimensions of light itself to an environmentally attuned notion of ‘new visions’. Exemplified with discussion of recent works by Emilija Škarnulytė, Lesia Vasylchenko and Istvan Virag, I show how a number of contemporary artists likewise scrutinize photography’s (understood in an expanded way) material basis and atmospheric qualities to explore new forms of image-making, including CGI and synthetic aperture radar images, fitted to reflect the accelerated automation and ecological precarity that mark the early twenty-first century. (shrink)

This paper is a critical reflection on the concepts of Responsible Innovation (RI) and Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). We offer an account of the emergence of these related but different accounts of responsible innovation that have recently been adopted by funders. We further report on our exploration of the knowledge and understanding of these concepts through the views of senior scientists involved in synthetic biology research projects. Though most of our respondents struggled to provide a clear account of (...) RI/RRI we identified that existing “practices of responsibility” include many aspects of RI/RRI but that this often went unrecognized as such. Most respondents associated RI/RRI with risk avoidance. While some visions of RI/RRI see scientists as taking an active role in shaping the future of innovation, we suggest that it is not for such individuals to take decisions alone on the types of futures a society should have available to it. (shrink)

Approaching Martin Luther King Jr. as a constructive political theorist, I present a synthetic view of his thought that is able to make cogent and compelling sense of prominent concepts and lines of reasoning in his writings. I contend that King's political thought, which is grounded in his moral, metaphysical, and theological convictions, is best understood as structurally teleological and oriented to the construction of an inclusive, democratic community as its end. To make this case and fill out the (...) picture of his view, I offer an analysis of King's “Letter from Birmingham Jail” and argue that his account of nonviolence, which provides the key to understanding his political thought, ought to be understood as operating within and on behalf of this teleological vision by patterning what I term dialogical relations between persons. (shrink)

The comparison between natural evolution and the action of a tinkerer has become highly popular since its reintroduction by François Jacob at the end of the 1970s. It has been used as a weapon against the existence of an “intelligent design” as well as a way for synthetic biologists to promote their ambitious projects. I will describe the complex history of this metaphor, and examine its pertinence. Whereas Darwin considered it as a way to describe how evolution proceeded, Jacob (...) linked it with a description of the imperfections of organisms, while Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin criticized what they called the “Panglossian” vision of most evolutionary biologists. The distinction between the work of engineers and that of tinkerers is not obvious. There are limits to the process of evolution, but their alleged description so far reflects the limits of knowledge on the part of evolutionary biologists more than the existence of true barriers to the evolutionary process. And, in their work, synthetic biologists crucially need the optimizing action of natural selection. To give a definition of synthetic biology is no easy task; the false distinction drawn between the work of synthetic biologists and the action of evolution is of no help. (shrink)

Scientists are developing a technique called in vitro gametogenesis or IVG to generate synthetic gametes for research and, potentially, for treating infertility. What would it mean for feminist concerns over the future of reproductive practice and biotechnological development if egg and sperm cells could be produced in laboratory conditions? In this article, I take on the question by discussing the emerging technique of IVG through the speculative feminist analysis of ambiguous reproductive futures. Feminist cultural and science studies scholars have (...) explored the transformative effects of biomedicine on reproduction through science fiction novels and other cultural products. I theorise the speculative and visionary in biomedicine in the context of ethnographic methodology by drawing on ‘thought experiments’ conducted with stem cell scientists as shared acts of future-oriented contemplation. I develop the figure of SF proposed by Donna Haraway to investigate how science facts and speculative fabulation together shape futurities of reproduction. I propose including shifting frontiers in feminist thinking of the SFs in bioscience. Biomedical research aims to shift the borders between what is known and not known in reproductive biology, subsequently raising new technical, ethical and political issues in terms of stratified reproduction. The article shows that synthetic gametes are anticipated to intensify selective procreation. Simultaneously, IVG is seen to forge new biogenetic relationships and possibilities for non-normative reproduction and kin-making. Following Haraway, I argue that by ‘staying with the trouble’ of these biotechnological visions, feminist speculative analytics on technoscience offers a valuable tool to envision more hopeful and equal futures together with scientists. (shrink)

Poetry is frankly regarded by the author as a mode of knowledge; as such, it presupposes a mediating principle, by means of which the mind, in a poetic act reducing experience to meaning, is able to overcome the "tyranny" of the senses. But the dissipation of "tradition," the unavailability of mediating symbols, as once Christianity afforded, has left the modern poet experience only with which to mediate experience; perception itself must somehow be rendered creative of an order at once mimetic (...) and synthetic. It is as venturers in such "unmediated" vision that the subjects of Mr. Hartman's study are taken; he interprets their work with sensitivity and craft.--A. F. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.4 (2003) 58-64 [Access article in PDF] Media Literacy Education in Art:Motion Expression and the New Vision of Art EducationThe Bauhaus, which established the foundation of modern design, has greatly influenced Japanese design and art education. It is a historical fact that the movement views "synthetic art" as an integration of the various fields and the integration of the art and machine (...) technology experimentally. However, the Bauhaus is not just of historical importance but continues to have an influence even in the integration of the art and electronic technology in today's "multimedia." In addition, it can be said that it is very much alive as "the digital Bauhaus" or "the electronic Bauhaus." 1 As we know, today's multimedia and the Internet give us a new life-environment, and expandthe possibility of expression in art. Therefore, current art education must examine how these new medias will be incorporated into the curriculum.In the cases of the photograph, video, or computer, an expression by the image media is added to the art course for the junior high school course of study. 2 Also in school art classes, image media was introduced, expanding the possibilities of self-expression through art. This result can be matched to the needs of the industrial world in Japan as well. As an educational practice, the content of this course of study is promising, even though someproblems must be solved, acquiring new equipment, re-educating the artteacher, and securing additional art school hours. The new content in art education can be summarized as follows:1. The motion picture (animation) which includes time and movement. Motion picture is asequence of continuous images, obviously different from the still images of painting. There are, of course, artworks that express motion or induce the viewer'seye movement. There are also kinetic artworks that do move, such as mobiles. Works of motion picture have, however, a fixed time shaft, and they are formed by the afterimage phenomenon. Thinking about the progress of time shaft is an indispensable element for the production. [End Page 58]2. The synchronism of image and sound. Because time is a factor in the visual expression, the works are compatible with music — the art of time. There is a synchronized relation between the motion picture and music. Image expression with multimedia became synthetic art, just as the Bauhaus looked for "architecture." Currently, this kind of expression transitions from art to entertainment, and permeates daily life.3. The method with interactive art work. Not only artworks of installation, but also TV games and web design have interactive construction as an indispensable interface. The aesthetic value of these visual works will be appreciated when the user starts the action by hitting a touchpad, pushing buttons, or clicking a mouse. To make this kind of artwork, one needs to consider the latent relationships between humans and work, and establish the input-output order for the method of construction.4. The problem of virtual reality. The term "virtual reality" is used by some art teachers as criticism against digital works such as computer graphics. These teachers insist that there is no reality there. One can, however, get an aesthetic feeling through sensory information, imagination, and sensitivity, even though what one sees is an illusion. The feeling of reality a picture of an apple gives, for example, may be equal to a computer graphic apple.Human imagination also creates "virtual reality" beyond reality in the myth, the novel, and so on. It can be said that this is the basis for human creativity.Furthermore, expression by image media raises the problem of a "reality" in which material experience is important to encounterthe world directly. Such an argument discusses multimedia as a tool of expression and a teaching material while reconsidering human reality.More recently, "media literacy" (ability to read and understand media) became an important point of discussion for Japanese educators. Usually, in this discussion, the critical ability to talk back to the television program is emphasized. However, through art... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Ernst Cassirer: The Last Philosopher of CultureSebastian LuftEdward Skidelsky. Ernst Cassirer: The Last Philosopher of Culture. Princeton-Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2008. Pp. ix + 288. Cloth $34.00.This is a curious book, because the soul of its author is torn.On the one hand, the book is a monograph on the philosopher-intellectual Ernst Cassirer. It is scholarly, noticeably well-written (not surprisingly, as the author also writes articles for British and (...) American newspapers), philosophical to the extent that it does not distort its subject matter too much, and a splendid piece of intellectual history, which places its subject, Cassirer, in a rich cultural, historical, and intellectual context. In terms of presenting the gist of Cassirer’s thought in relatively few pages, the author does everything right, disregarding minor quibbles. So far, so good.But already reading the introduction, the author makes a confession that bathes the entire book in a different light. Here we learn that the precursor of the present tome was a “straight-faced” account of the philosopher of culture, Cassirer. But over the course of writing it, Skidelsky admits, doubts crept in. Little by little, he came to see Cassirer as a dinosaur of a past age, his philosophy as a “rearguard action on behalf of a vanishing civilization” (3), which died on the battlefields of the Second World War. The “Olympian” Cassirer had an “enchanting vision” and dreamt a “happy dream” of human culture, all of which went down the drain with the advent of Nazism and has now, in our own age of postmodernism, been completely washed away.Instead, the real hero of the book is Heidegger. It was Heidegger, the existentialist, who rebelled against Western metaphysics, who won the day against Cassirer in the 1929 Davos encounter, and it is to him that we, today, owe our sensibilities. The liberalism of Cassirer—a unified vision, not just some narrowly political manifesto—“lost out to the Existenzphilosophie of Heidegger,” he writes, and, “Such unity of vision [as in Cassirer] is impossible for us. Our political principles find no support in our cultural tastes, religious beliefs, or metaphysical insights. We pay tribute to Cassirer, but Heidegger remains the secret master of our thought” (219). [End Page 116]Hence, the book is written, or rather re-written after the author’s conversion, in an ironic, sometimes melancholy style, looking back at Cassirer as a relic of a different era, his thought being “a stranger to our age” (7). Why read and study him at all then? The argument—the only argument—is weak: “he was the twentieth century’s most accomplished defender of the Humboldtian ideal” (6). Is this all? Yes, and this is how Cassirer is presented: with some sympathy, but at bottom as a creature from a different age that one observes like an exotic animal. Once more, why is this so? Skidelsky explains: “We have inherited Cassirer’s liberal political attitudes, but not the cultural sensibility that underlay them. With our skepticism toward progress, our distaste for ‘bourgeois’ formalities, our fascination with charisma, and our endless talk of commitment, authenticity, and roots, we remain, consciously or not, Heidegger’s children” (8), leaving “us” “with a dilemma” between both sentiments (ibid.).But who is this “we”? This reviewer’s suspicion is that it is first and foremost the author himself. Not denying that this dilemma might ring true to many contemporaries, it seems that the one who is troubled by it is primarily the author, who would like the world to be according to Cassirer, but who has become disenchanted with the latter’s synthetic vision due to the fragmented world around him. He would like to bring himself to believe, but cannot. But why is this? Because he has tacitly bought into the idea of all us being “Heidegger’s children.” There can be no doubt—we simply have to accept this fate.But it is this self-assurance that irks this reviewer about the author’s sentiment. Who is this “we” that he invokes? What right does he have to lump “us” together in this category of Heideggerians and to speak about “us” ex cathedra? That one... (shrink)

When Gilson died in 1978, a great deal of his work on the history of philosophy, and specifically God, the primacy of existence or esse over essence, and the impact of Christianity on philosophy had been translated. A significant amount of material, however, has not yet appeared into English. The publication of Medieval studies represents a vital step in bringing these important works into the English-speaking world. The opening piece revisits a battle now won (and won in great measure by (...) Gilson’s efforts), namely the fight to acknowledge the very existence of medieval philosophy and win its place in the academic world. But the article also makes the effort--which becomes a connecting thread throughout the nine articles--to pinpoint the uniqueness of what Gilson calls Christian philosophy. All the articles give an insight into the great synthetic visions articulated by the better-known works of Gilson like The Spirit of Medieval philosophy. "The Middle Ages and ancient naturalism" contrasts Renaissance humanists and Reformers with the medievals on the defining issue of their attitude toward nature to understand who actually stands closer to the Greeks. In his examination of the Latin Averroist Boethius of Dacia’s book on the eternity of the world, Gilson finds that Boethius never expresses the view attributed to Latin Averroism that there are contradictory truths in religion and philosophy. The closing article studies the profound influence of the great Muslim thinker Avicenna on Latin Europe drawing a parallel between Avicenna’s work and that of the great Christian medievals like Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus. (shrink)

The twelfth-century Neo-Confucian philosopher, Zhu Xi, has often been compared to the thirteenth-century Christian philosopher, Thomas Aquinas. In this essay, I explore the similarities between these two thinkers, focusing on their respective accounts of the metaphysical foundations of moral self-cultivation. I suggestthat both philosophers play similar roles within their respective traditions and share similar aims. In general, both philosophers seek to appropriate ideas of rivalintellectual traditions in order to extend the moral vision of their home traditions, and both hope (...) to achieve their goals without denying the primary orientationsof those traditions. Zhu Xi and Aquinas are shown to employ similar strategies, and to make use of similar metaphysical principles, to unite the humanistic andspiritual dimensions of moral self-cultivation into one synthetic vision. I will conclude by offering some reflections on the following questions: (1) what can the Neo-Confucian and the Thomist ethical traditions learn from one another? And (2) what can those of us engaged in inter-cultural philosophical and religiousdialogue learn from the masters of these traditions? (shrink)

How are we to think of Beckett's fiction? Lyrical, inventive, uncompromising, beautifully precise-an immense achievement—is it really an art that proclaims the disintegration of language and of the imagination, as traditional readings conclude? Eyal Amiran's study demonstrates that Beckett's work does not embody the failure of synthetic vision. Beckett's fiction transposes a large intertextual logic from the Western metaphysics it is said to disown, and so takes its place in a literary and philosophical tradition that extends from Plato (...) to Joyce and Yeats. At the same time, it develops as a serial narrative, from the early novels to the late short fictions, to unravel the story itself that its metaphysical tradition tells. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reduction's FutureTheology, Technology, and the Order of KnowledgeKevin L. HughesLet me begin with something of a confession. When as a young undergraduate I first encountered medieval texts, and so, for the first time, began to know something of the medieval "way of seeing," I was intoxicated. And I was intoxicated, in part, by the comprehensiveness and unity of this worldview, where God, humans, the cosmos, science, theology, philosophy, nature, (...) supernature – all of these elements fit. So often in my thinking I have repaired to those famous last lines of Dante's Comedy, to the "Love which moves the sun and other stars," as the epitome of the comprehension, coherence, and harmony of the medieval worldview.Perhaps this is one of the reasons I have been attracted to the work of St. Bonaventure. We may all be familiar with the statements that now have become almost truisms, that to know Bonaventure at all, one needs to know the whole system, and that the whole system is found in every kind of work that he had done. "Procession, exemplarity, return, this is the whole of our metaphysics."1 This principle of Order in Bonaventure, as described and analyzed by Wayne Hellmann, is a kind of keystone to all of Bonaventure's work.2 [End Page 227]If you understand the "order," you understand Bonaventure. Such admirable consistency and harmony! Such remarkable unity of perspective! And, at least by many accounts, the Reduction of the Arts to Theology3 is a perfect concise instance of Bonaventure's synthetic vision.It is precisely this unity, as found in the Reduction of the Arts to Theology, that Dieter Hattrup finds problematic. For Hattrup, the notion of unity itself is not problematic; rather, it is the unity of knowledge as conveyed in the Reduction that approaches a deeply problematic modern understanding of knowledge. Hattrup believes he has discovered in this brief treatise the seeds of what we might call a technological or manipulative knowledge. Whatever the limits of Dieter Hattrup's historical and textual brief against the authenticity of the Reduction, his theological queries should put us all on guard if we are to imagine a future for any "reduction of the arts to theology," Bonaventurean or otherwise.A Theological QuestionBonaventura zwischen Mystik und Mystifikation4 begins with a basic theological premise: Christian theology is interested in the relationship between faith and reason, and this interest follows from the even more basic Christian claim that God is distinct from the world. If one has an intra-cosmic notion of the divine, wherein gods are the greatest or most powerful beings among all other beings, then the question between faith and reason does not arise. Gods who are beings can be known in the way we know all other beings, i.e., through reason. Faith, on the other hand, describes the kind of knowledge we can have of the One who is not part but [End Page 228] Maker of the created order. From the time of Philo on, Jewish and Christian believers5 have drawn this careful distinction and explored how faith and reason might be related without being reduced one into the other. Hattrup suggests that this perpetual question is raised with particular intensity with the revival of Aristotelian philosophy in the High Middle Ages, and Bonaventure stands as a major figure in scholastic inquiry. But, he tells us, this question remains crucial to our own time under the sign of "secularization."6It is important to note this opening overture, as it tells us that Hattrup is exploring what he takes to be first and foremost a theological puzzle: Does the Reduction of the Arts to Theology faithfully represent Bonaventure's understanding of the relationship between faith and reason as ways of knowing? Is it consistent with what we find (and what Hattrup has studied elsewhere)7 in his Sentence Commentary, Disputed Questions on the Knowledge of Christ, and the Collations on the Hexaëmeron? Most importantly, and more theologically, does the Reduction distinguish properly between faith and reason, as would befit this Doctor of the Church? Or is it the beginning of the collapse of this classic distinction... (shrink)

Faith, Sacraments and Charity. This chapter considers Abelard’s lectures or sententie on faith, sacraments and charity in which he formulated a synthetic vision of theology, recorded by students. It also reviews Abelard’s theology through the perspective of one of his foremost critics, Hugh of St. Victor, in the De sacramentis. While Abelard was always known as a logician, he emerged in the 1130s as one of the most original theologians and theorist of ethics of his generation. The chapter (...) considers the evolution of the Theologia ‘Scholarium’ in the context of his teaching in the schools. It concludes by looking at the evolution of his thinking about the distinction between vice and sin in his Ethics or Scito teipsum, arguing that here he is responding to a longstanding concern of Heloise. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to study bertram wolfe's views of marx and marxism, and in particular to call attention to his insistence on the basic ambiguity of the classical doctrines and the exploitation of that ambiguity within differing concepts of marxist orthodoxy. i suggest that the importance of wolfe's views of marx and marxism lies less in the specific theses he advances or in the details of his discussion. in opposition to the more usual approach to marxism as (...) a unified phenomenon, wolfe stands nearly alone in the analytical form of his historical approach, in which emphasis lies less in the depiction of a synthetic vision than in the patient, historical analysis of the chronological evolution of marx's position, classical marxism, and the wider marxist tradition. (shrink)

This article considers naturalistic analyses of the concepts of health and disease in light of the possibility of constructing novel living systems. The article begins by introducing the vision of synthetic biology as the application of engineering principles to the construction of biological systems, the main analyses of the concepts of health and disease, and the standard theories of function in artefacts and organisms. The article then suggests that reflection on the possibility of artefactual organisms amounts to a (...) challenge to the functional theories of health and disease proposed by Wakefield and Boorse. More specifically, Wakefield and Boorse's theories are reconstructed as responses to a dilemma concerning how to allow for the ascription of health and disease to artefactual organisms without at the same time opening up the possibility of diseased nonliving artefacts such as cars and computers. It is argued that neither response will enable us to ascribe health and disease to artefactual organisms, because both theories, in order to rule out the possibility of ascribing health and disease to nonliving artefacts, make such ascriptions conditional on having a natural-selection history or being part of a species which has been designed by evolution. (shrink)

This book offers a unified collection of published and unpublished papers by Robert Audi, a renowned defender of the rationalist position in ethics. Taken together, the essays present a vigorous, broadly-based argument in moral epistemology and a related account of reasons for action and their bearing on moral justification and moral character. Part I details Audi's compelling moral epistemology while Part II offers a unique vision of ethical concepts and an account of moral explanation, as well as a powerful (...) model of moral realism. Part III extends this account of moral explanation to moral responsibility for both actions and character and to the relation between virtue and the actions that express it. Part IV elaborates a theory of reasons for action that locates them in relation to three of their traditionally major sources: desire, moral judgment, and value. Clear and illuminating, Audi's introduction outlines and interconnects the self-contained but cumulatively arranged essays. It also places them in relation to classical and contemporary literature, and directs readers to large segments of thematically connected material spread throughout the book. Audi ends with a powerfully synthetic final essay. (shrink)

"My work has had nothing to do with gay liberation," Michel Foucault reportedly told an admirer in 1975. And indeed there is scarcely more than a passing mention of homosexuality in Foucault's scholarly writings. So why has Foucault, who died of AIDS in 1984, become a powerful source of both personal and political inspiration to an entire generation of gay activists? And why have his political philosophy and his personal life recently come under such withering, normalizing scrutiny by commentators as (...) diverse as Camille Paglia, Richard Mohr, Bruce Bawer, Roger Kimball, and biographer James Miller? David M. Halperin's Saint Foucault is an uncompromising and impassioned defense of the late French philosopher and historian as a galvanizing thinker whose career as a theorist and activist will continue to serve as a model for other gay intellectuals, activists, and scholars. A close reading of both Foucault and the increasing attacks on his life and work, it explains why straight liberals so often find in Foucault only counsels of despair on the subject of politics, whereas gay activists look to him not only for intellectual inspiration but also for a compelling example of political resistance. Halperin rescues Foucault from the endless nature-versus-nurture debate over the origins of homosexuality ("On this question I have absolutely nothing to say," Foucault himself once remarked) and argues that Foucault's decision to treat sexuality not as a biological or psychological drive but as an effect of discourse, as the product of modern systems of knowledge and power, represents a crucial political breakthrough for lesbians and gay men. Halperin explains how Foucault's radical vision of homosexuality as a strategic opportunity for self-transformation anticipated the new anti-assimilationist, anti-essentialist brand of sexual identity politics practiced by contemporary direct-action groups such as ACT UP. Halperin also offers the first synthetic account of Foucault's thinking about gay sex and the future of the lesbian and gay movement, as well as an up-to-the-minute summary of the most recent work in queer theory. "Where there is power, there is resistance," Michel Foucault wrote in The History of Sexuality, Volume I. Erudite, biting, and surprisingly moving, Saint Foucault represents Halperin's own resistance to what he views as the blatant and systematic misrepresentation of a crucial intellectual figure, a misrepresentation he sees as dramatic evidence of the continuing personal, professional, and scholarly vulnerability of all gay activists and intellectuals in the age of AIDS. (shrink)

B a c k g r o u n d. This scientific investigation conducts a constructive-critical, comprehensive, and systematic analysis of the state, paradigms, and trends in the development of Ukrainian and European fundamental science. It highlights, at a synthetic level, the epistemological and social functions, historical mission, and vision of domestic science in shaping the traditions and values of European culture. The article draws attention to the significant contributions made by domestic scientists to the research of theoretical-methodological, (...) epistemological, and worldview foundations of Ukrainian fundamental science as an intellectual phenomenon. This topic is covered in extensive monographic works, articles, discourses, and scientific investigations by such scientists as B. Paton, A. Zahorodnii, A. Naumovets, D. Zerbino, O. Habovych, V. Kuznietsov, L. Kurylo, N. Semenova, S. Honcharenko, A. Pavko, Z. Partiko, A. Filipenko, and others. Valuable, little-studied, and debatable aspects of this issue have also been highlighted in the works of foreign scientists. Among them, the author of the article includes interdisciplinary publications by J. Barroso, J. Gorgon, V. Humboldt, K. Popper, and other Western thinkers and researchers. At the same time, there are practically no professional generalizing works in domestic socio-humanitarian thought that consider Ukrainian fundamental science from a comprehensive, synthetic perspective as a powerful intellectual factor in shaping the traditions and values of European culture. M e t h o d s. The article uses a set of methods (analysis, synthesis, inductive and deductive methods) as well as general scientific approaches such as dialectical, systematic, and interdisciplinary methods to study this socio-humanitarian problem. This has led to the revelation of the internal contradictory nature of trends in the development of fundamental science, the evaluation of Ukrainian science in the system of European values and culture. Meanwhile, the dialectical method provides the theoretical and methodological foundation for a deep, essential understanding of the intellectual potential of fundamental research. In contrast, the systematic approach used in the article is extrapolated to conduct a correct, comprehensive analysis of the integral components that determine the regularities and features of the development of domestic science in modern conditions. The interdisciplinary approach, creatively applied in the article, made it possible to combine achievements in the field of social humanities, which significantly determine the determinants of the methodological culture of scientific analysis, critical thinking in the process of producing and assimilating scientific knowledge. R e s u l t s. The article identifies the following trends in the development of Ukrainian fundamental science as an institutional factor in shaping the traditions and values of European culture: Powerful, systematic development of fundamental science is a necessary condition for improving the mechanisms of deepening European integration processes in Ukraine. Modern fundamental science is one of the components of the socio-cultural progress of humanity and defines such important characteristics as the differentiation and integration of science, computerization, and humanization of each of them. The historical experience of the development of European civilization shows that science, both in the past and in the present, has been and remains an important intellectual factor, a reliable rational foundation of strong states and nations. C o n c l u s i o n s. The conclusion establishes that the scientific potential of the state is an integral component of European culture and the intellect of the modern Ukrainian nation. It is important to consider that European values should have a profound and irreversible nature for domestic science rather than a temporary one. The preservation and modernization of national intellect, intellectual capital are essential conditions for its integration into the educational, scientific, and cultural space of Europe, and for the preservation and development of Ukraine as a modern, scientifically powerful democratic state with established civilizational traditions. The article emphasizes that the constant pursuit of intellectual and political freedom, patriotism, tireless industriousness, intelligence, education, creativity, intellect, healthy pragmatism, persistence, courage, ingenuity, and a sense of humor are precisely the universal, distinctly defined, characteristic traits of our compatriots that make them resilient and open up a unique intellectual space in Europe, a wonderful European world of existence. (shrink)

This paper highlights the significance of sensory studies and psychophysical investigations of the relations between psychic and physical phenomena for our understanding of the development of the physics discipline, by examining aspects of research on sense perception, physiology, esthetics, and psychology in the work of Gustav Theodor Fechner, Hermann von Helmholtz, Wilhelm Wundt, and Ernst Mach between 1860 and 1871. It complements previous approaches oriented around research on vision, Fechner’s psychophysics, or the founding of experimental psychology, by charting Mach’s (...) engagement with psychophysical experiments in particular. Examining Mach’s study of the senses and esthetics, his changing attitudes toward the mechanical worldview and atomism, and his articulation of comparative understandings of sensual, geometrical, and physical spaces helps set Mach’s emerging epistemological views in the context of his teaching and research. Mach complemented an analytic strategy focused on parallel psychic and physical dimensions of sensation, with a synthetic comparative approach – building analogies between the retina, the individual, and social life, and moving between abstract and sensual spaces. An examination of the broadly based critique that Mach articulated in his 1871 lecture on the conservation of work shows how his historical approach helped Mach cast what he now saw as a narrowly limiting emphasis on mechanics as a phase yet to be overcome. (shrink)

In this paper we focus on the structural approach and structural method developed from Sampedro’s work. We propose that this approach is inside the systemic paradigm and it has two interdependent and necessary ideas. On the one hand, we take as a reference some schools of thought in economics and the structural method with two stages. On the other hand, some macroeconomic principles has been derived from the vision and the methodology, which give the structural approach an analytical, (...) class='Hi'>synthetic, aggregate and historiographical character. In this sense, the main argument is that structural analysis has its own macro-theoretical characterization. In this way, the structural approach allows valid analysis in order to increase our knowledge of the economic reality. En este trabajo se realiza una aproximación al enfoque y método estructural, a partir de los conceptos postulados en la obra de Sampedro y su posterior inclusión dentro de un paradigma sistémico, distinguiéndose dos pilares interdependientes y mutuamente necesarios. Por un lado, para tratar los aspectos epistemológicos se distinguen las escuelas consideradas de referencia en economía y se detalla el método estructural basado en la etapa descriptiva y la de síntesis. Por otro lado, se tratan los principios macroeconómicos que se derivan de la visión y de la metodología y que otorgan al enfoque estructural un carácter analítico, sintético, agregado e historiográfico. En este sentido la tesis principal del artículo es que el análisis estructural posee una caracterización macroeconómica propia que permite realizar análisis válidos de modo sistemático, con el propósito de aumentar los conocimientos sobre la realidad económica. (shrink)

Buchanan and Rawls have reminded us that economic science has neglected the institutional settings of exchange. Buchanan is in keeping with the epistemological fiction of Hobbes, that of envisaging social institutions as the intended result of the interaction of rational rationalities. Rawls uses the Lockean tradition to apprehend the fundamental structure of society as the intended result of agreement between reasonable rationalities. These two visions establish the juxtaposition of human motivations.By contrast, we suggest to combine rationalities. For, if social institutions, (...) and notably justice, encourage – or discourage – the wealth of nations as Smith taught us, they must then be circumscribed with regard to what man is in his more general traits. This combination of abstract rationalities requires then that a synthetic rationality be put forward, that allows the exploration of the complexity of human choice, both in its instrumental and axiological dimension. Aristotle had already discovered this rationality through his studies of prudential rationality, which this paper complements with the notion of customary rationality.Buchanan et Rawls ont rappelé que l’échange possède sa raison institutionnelle que la science économique ne reconnaît plus. Le premier s’inscrit dans la tradition de la fiction épistémologique hobbesienne pour envisager les institutions sociales comme le résultat volontaire de l’interaction de raisons rationnelles. Le second reprend la méthode lockéenne pour appréhender la structure de base de la société comme le résultat volontaire de l’accord de raisons raisonnables. Ces deux démarches consacrent la juxtaposition des rationalités.Par contraste, nous suggérons de les combiner car si les institutions sociales, au coeur desquelles se trouve la justice, favorisent, ou non, la richesse des nations, comme Smith l’enseignait déjà, elles doivent par conséquent être circonscrites en fonction de ce qu’est l’homme dans sa plus grande généralité possible. Cette combinaison de rationalités abstraites suppose donc la mise en perspective d’une rationalité synthétique, permettant de considérer la complexité du choix humain, simultanément instrumental et axiologique. Cette rationalité, Aristote l’avait déjà découverte à travers son étude de la raison prudentielle dont nous proposons ici un complément en y associant la rationalité coutumière. (shrink)

The debate over religion and, more especially, Christianity, seems today as far from being finished as ever. To be sure, Christianity has sharply declined in the West and its fundamental doctrine, belief in God, has become for many incredible or even scarcely intelligible. Yet there is also a sense in which the West cannot help being Christian, for Christianity has so deeply entered into our history and institutions that even when it is explicitly rejected, it still continues to shape thought (...) and action in ways of which we may not be aware. Furthermore, there is nothing ready to take the place of Christianity. This is the dilemma of the West at the present time. Christianity has come to seem more and more remote from the life and ethos of a secular technological society, yet according to some scholars it was Christianity itself which motivated the rise of science and technology, and as the Christian vision has faded, modern society feels itself strangely threatened with emptiness. Some look for a new secular faith that will bring purpose into a post-Christian world, as did John Dewey in his little book, A Common Faith, first published in 1934. But synthetic philosophical creeds never attain to the power that belongs to historical religions, sculpted through centuries of concrete history. The same remark would apply to Karl Jaspers’s “philosophical faith” as adumbrated in the book known in English as The Perennial Scope of Philosophy but originally published in 1948 with the German title, Der philosophische Glaube. In any case, one cannot read either Dewey or Jaspers without recognizing that there is a good deal of residual Christianity in their philosophies. (shrink)

Agriculture and medicine palpably manifest a culture's world view. Correspondingly, changes in agriculture and medicine may be barometers of change in a culture's overall outlook. Conventional industrial agriculture and modern surgical/chemical medicine clearly express the Newtonian mechanical model of nature. The modern classical world view represents nature to be an externally related, atomic, reductive, material, and mechanical aggregate. Modern medicine, correspondingly, treats the body as an elaborate mechanism and industrial agriculture regards soil as a substratum for monocultures assembled from fossil (...) fuels, synthetic fertilizers, and chemical pesticides. The nascent agroecology and wellness movements each express and reflect the new paradigm variously emerging from ecology and quantum physics. Ecology and the new physics, each in its own way, represent nature to be an internally related, systemic, integrated, organic whole. Agroecology translates this abstract new vision into a concrete agricultural vocabulary: The farmstead is regarded as an artificial ecosystem with a multiplicity of diverse plant and animal constituents interacting with one another and with environing natural ecosystems in complex and mutually supporting ways. (shrink)

This paper is intended to elaborate the anthropocentric paradigm in the study of Islamic law which is done for two reasons. The first is the increasing trend of theocentricism within various puritan communities. This trend rejects the contextualization of Islamic law and has the potential to produce radical movements in the name of religion. The second is that, Islamic law studies is still rarely associated with the issues of legal paradigms, even though they are considered as the foundation in the (...) establishment of Islamic law. Thus, this paper is written as an attempt to make the prophetic social science paradigma an analytical tool for puritans’ Islamic law epistemology. This study reveals that the epistemological demystification is very important for the study of contemporary Islamic law. There are two steps in carrying out epistemological demystification: the first is the transformation of the basic structure of Islamic law. This transformation requires a shifting issue from theocentric to the anthropocentrism. The transformative theoanthropocentric paradigm as the basic legal structure has the capability to contextualize Islamic law which is not only relevant to the Muslim community, but also to the community as a whole. The second is the development of a theoretical framework. Concerning with this, Kuntowijoyo offers analytic-synthetic theories which accommodate a demystified vision as a link to a transformative theological foundation. (shrink)

The Western cultural archetype of Narcissus experiences a significant turning point in the 1400s, thanks to Leon Battista Alberti’s work. Indeed, the myth evolves from being a subject embodying a taboo in the Antiquity to become the glance that generates the image; in so doing this myth assumes the rank of science and philosophy. Alberti does not follow Pliny’s reading of Ovid’s Metamorphosis, but handles Philostratus’s version; with his visual description he represents in the “Eikones” the darting glance towards the (...) water. The rendering of this image anticipates the notion of centric ray, on which Alberti establishes his perspective’s theory based on the diaphanous nature of “velum”. The art of painting is compared to an “open vitreous and translucent window”. Narcissus does not see the water, so to say, but the image, as well as the painting’s observer instantly grasps the iconic value of it, rather than the material support. Because of this immediacy, the art of painting becomes the terrain of revelation: it makes clear the emerging progressive visibility of “something”, thus concurring with philosophy; better, the art of painting overtakes philosophy with the simple representation of polysemous complexities. This is the new art of painting, in which “there is nothing that is not philosophy”. Furthermore, in this synthetic role of representation in which the icon becomes all one with the spectator – in addition to the centric ray and to the orthogonality of the vision, topics already analyzed by the author in previous studies – consists an outstanding resemblance between Alberti and Cusanus. The two philosophers show their synergy in exploring a new anthropology. From this point of view can be read Alberti’s explanation, often misinterpreted, of Narcissus’ transformation into a flower: a synthesis between “imaginatio” and “executio”, or inactiveness versus activeness. Among all Narcissus’ portrayals of that time, it would be useful to consider the Pseudo Boltraffio’s version of London; this rendering applies thematically Alberti’s theory in its essential aspects, introducing it within Leonardo Da Vinci’s circle of artists. (shrink)

This paper introduces the philosophy of Grace Andrus de Laguna in order to renew interest in it. I show that, in the 1910s and 1920s, she develops ideas and arguments that are also found playing key roles in the development of analytic philosophy decades later. Further, I describe her sympathetic, but acute, criticism of pragmatism and Heideggerian ontology, and situate her work in the tradition of American, speculative philosophy. Before 1920, we will see, de Laguna appeals to multiple realizability to (...) undermine reductionism in science, to support perspectival, scientific realism and, with help from a private language argument, to favour the view that mental states are classified by behavioural, teleological roles over what came to be called ‘type physicalism’. Her view of speech, mostly developed in the 1920s, tells us that its primary role is coordinating group behaviour rather than expressing thoughts. Belief is understood in terms of its causal role, including its causal relations to other kinds of mental states, when coordinating group behaviour. Thought is similarly understood. In developing her theory of mind, de Laguna rejects the pragmatist claims that belief can be reduced to dispositions to behaviour and that thought’s function is to address specific, rather than general, problems. She also favours meaning holism and rejects the analytic–synthetic distinction. In later work, de Laguna argues that individuals’ activity of self-maintenance brings universals, conceived of as irreducible potentialities, into being and makes them increasingly determinate. Further, she identifies the existence of all individuals with forms of self-maintenance and takes the existence of people to include maintenance of the cultural world. Such a unified treatment of existence, she holds, permits making its evolution intelligible. Heidegger’s view of being is rejected for not permitting this. All de Laguna’s work, we will see, fits a vision of philosophy as the systematic, imaginative and naturalistic examination of being as well as a source of criticism of science. (shrink)

The volume offers the first-ever synthetic overview of the history of modern political thought in East Central Europe. Covering twenty national cultures and languages wedged between Russia, Turkey, Austria and Germany, it goes beyond the conventional nation-centered narrative and offers a novel vision of transnational intellectual history. The authors focus on the ways political thinkers outside of Western Europe sought to bridge the gap between an idealized Western modernity and their own societies. Mapping these discourses and debates from (...) the Enlightenment to the First World War, the volume helps rethinking some of our basic assumptions about the history of modern European culture and politics. (shrink)

Maya in Physics in a synthesis of modern physics and the Advaita Vedanta with an integral thesis emerging out of the confluence. In the exposition of the Advaita Vedanta its philosophy has been reinterpreted in the light of modern science. In this process the vedanta has been demystified and physics dematerialized Instead of being confined to inter school parallelism only this book tries ot present a total vision of the entire cosmos and its dependence on Brahman the transcendental being (...) which is the non dual reality Maya the power of Brahman or the Primordial Unmanifest Nature has been assigned a metaphysical status without violating the traditionality of the Vedanta. Part I of the book deals with classical Newtonian physics, thermodynamics, relativity, quantum physics, particle physics, astrophysics, and cosmology. Part II is a presentation of the Advaita Vedanta, in a modern format. Part III is a confluence of the Advaita Vedanta and modern science (especially physics). An integral thesis emerges out of the confluence. There has been an amalgam of spirituality and science. The whole approach is holistic, synthetic, and integral. (shrink)

Drewermann himself typifies his whole literary theological activity as a therapy. Therefore, we may consider his therapeutic concern as the structural principle of this synthetic survey of his fundamental ideas. Therapy means deliverance from an evil situation. Throughout Drewermann’s oeuvre this evil situation is being approached from a double standpoint. Now it is described as anxiety , then again as psychic imperfection of man who suppresses essential elements of his inner life in the unconscious. This two perspectives are at (...) the origin of two distinctive trains of thought which run like a seam trough Drewermann’s oeuvre. Either develops its own logic which leads to divergent standpoint with regard to religious fundamental convictions which do not lend themselves to one synthesis. The vision on God as deliverer from anxiety maintains the fundamental ideas of traditional Christian theology like the belief in a transcendent personal God and in the unique role of Christ in the mystery of salvation. Typical of this vision is also the pessimistic outlook on man’s natural existence as they are made explicit in the myths of the Jahwistic primitive history. Mythology is to be surpassed by theology. In contrast, archetypal hermeneutics are in the service of man’s perfection, and have totally different, even opposite, theological implication with regard to the essence of man and his relationship with God. Obviously, hermeneutics are based on an optimistic view of man’s natural existence as it is made explicit in the archetypes. At the same time this perspective calls God’s transcendence into question. We find many statements that point to a coincidence of ‘Gottfindung’ and 'Selbstfindung’, Christ’s unique role in the mystery of salvation according to traditional theology runs the risk to get lost. Christ is reduced to one of the many possible phenomena of a generally human retigion which comes to light in the archetypes. Confronted with these fundamental problems, Drewermann claims that Bible reading in the line of depth psychology must be surpassed by theological explanation. The concomitant emphasis on shortcomings, even aberrations which the interpretation of depth psychology exposes leads Drewermann’s line of thought into insoluble aporia. In the healing process as a coming to perfection of fragmented man, the archetypes are considered as components of a human psyche , good as such, which have to be integrated with conscious life. In man’s striving for deliverance from existential anxiety , the myths and archetypes are seen as a description of an inherently disastrous human existence labouring under anxiety. Thus, the interpretation of Drewermann’s theology is faced with an apparently insoluble contradiction: on the one hand, the archetypal dream of mankind is the ‘language of God’; on the other, Drewermann takes the ‘overcoming of the myths’ the starting point of his theology. What comes to light about the relationship between God and man in both the interpretations in depth psychology and in theology runs not not only directly parallel, but the theological interpretation gives a verdict on the ‘archetypal hermeneutics’ which Drewermann’s new contribution to theology wants to be and to which the bulk of his oeuvre is devoted. (shrink)

At the center of_ In Dark Again in Wonder_ are readings of René Char and George Oppen. Both of these poets achieved recognition at a young age, Char among the French surrealists in the 1930s, Oppen among the American objectivists in the same decade. Both were independent individuals who, having found their way to communities of inventive writers, stepped back and shaped their own idiosyncratic paths. Both responded decisively to the social upheavals of the 1930s and ‘40s. Oppen committed himself (...) to radical politics in the ‘30s, a decision that, as it turned out, led to his not writing poetry for nearly twenty-five years. Char fought in the Resistance in the '40s. Both, in their mature work, developed a kind of poetry that is at once a love poetry, a meditative poetry, and a poetry of encounter. The concluding chapter of the book places the questions raised by Char’s and Oppen’s work in a larger context, tracing the cultural history that shapes our modern experience of inhabiting a tension between an historical and a metaphysical horizon of experience, or, as this appears in a different but related light, a tension between a sociological and an existential understanding of our lives. Char and Oppen are both poets concerned with the old philosophical questions that are still with us—the nature of spiritual freedom, the gathering of the self in relation to death, the meditation on the whole, the turn to Nature as the open space of the whole under the conditions of modernity, the clarification of the ground of vision in eros and love, and the search for the good life—while at the same time they fully engage the social predicaments and promises of their world. "A brilliant, philosophical, and aesthetic approach to twentieth-century poetry that casts important light on the great poetic works of René Char and George Oppen. Revealing the ongoing role of wonder in the post-Romantic tradition, it points to two remarkable poets whose work embodies imagination in the knowledge of inevitable loss, renewal in the awareness of despair. This is a book worth reading for its insight into two poets and the larger literary and philosophical currents in which they lived and worked." _—Sandra L. Bermann, Princeton University_ "This is a brilliant, erudite, beautifully written, and compelling book, one that makes an important contribution to our understanding not only of the two poets on whom it focuses but of the period they inhabit and that we, as their inheritors, continue to inhabit. Robert Baker wears his considerable learning lightly, but he has deep knowledge both of the history of European and American poetry and of the history of philosophy. He has thought deeply and passionately about poetry, philosophy, history, and the ways in which they intertwine." —_Henry Weinfield, University of Notre Dame_ "Robert Baker has written a fine and unusual book: a study of two remarkable poets, one French and the other American, and a concluding reflection of considerable literary and intellectual reach on the gap between history and metaphysics in which both poets found themselves and in which we still subsist. Bake'rs style is synthetic, magisterial, drawing on a capacious knowledge of literature and the history of ideas." —_Kevin Hart, University of Virginia_. (shrink)

This book examines Fuller’s pioneering vision of social epistemology. It focuses specifically on his work post-2000, which is founded in the changing conception of humanity and project into a ‘post-‘ or ‘trans-‘ human future. Chapters treat especially Fuller’s provocative response to the changing boundary conditions of the knower due to anticipated changes in humanity coming from the nanosciences, neuroscience, synthetic biology and computer technology and end on an interview with Fuller himself. While Fuller’s turn in this direction has (...) invited at least as much criticism as his earlier work, to him the result is an extended sense of the knower, or ‘humanity 2.0’, which Fuller himself identifies with transhumanism. The authors assess Fuller’s work on the following issues: Science and Technology Studies (STS), the university and intellectual life, neo-liberal political economy, intelligent design, Cosmism, Gnosticism, agent-oriented epistemology, proactionary vs precautionary principles and Welfare State 2.0. (shrink)

This paper discusses the cardinal points of Krąpiec’s metaphysical personalism, in the context of a synthetic reading of his most important works in philosophical anthropology. A new vision of Krąpiec’s thought is proposed, via a discussion of the metaphysical foundations of his anthropology and by emphasizing his notion of the three stages or phases in which personhood reveals itself. Each of these emerges as an integral element when outlining a conception of persons and when demonstrating the overriding importance (...) of the issue of personhood for philosophical anthropology. Firstly, personhood manifests itself in the inner experience of one’s own subjectivity as something universally shared by human beings. Next, this fact is itself shown to be grounded metaphysically in the soul as an immaterial principle organizing the body. As a result, persons emerge as substantial rational beings. An examination of the potentialities of such beings then reveals the transcendence of persons in respect of nature and society, together with their self-fulfillment in intellectual and moral acts, in interpersonal relations, and—ultimately—in their relatedness to the Person of the Absolute. Krąpiec’s personalism relies upon classical Thomistic metaphysics, and presents a person’s life in universal terms as a process culminating in the actively experienced moment of death. (shrink)

Sri Aurobindo is one of the most prominent figures in the Indian Philosophy of twentieth century and yet we barely find any mention of his work in the philosophy circles. He has written extensively on metaphysics, aesthetics, and ethics. Sri Aurobindo’s work is all-encompassing and carries marks of a deep yogic insight into both the individual self (with all its parts and their integrated working) and the universe that ultimately shares a relation of identity with the individual in secret. He (...) talks about a world-process that contains evolution qualified with involution. It is one of the most unique features of Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy. He deals with the questions of ignorance also in the most satisfying way. Sri Aurobindo has an integral vision that sees everything in the movement of one and develops the methods and practices of Integral Yoga. In his yogic vision, he not only tries to solve the problems of humanity but also attempts to make a very bold move of transforming the whole earthly existence into a divine existence through one large stride. The epistemological discussion we find in his work is deeply connected with his metaphysics. He articulates the limits and extents of reason and senses and attempts to surpass them. Sri Aurobindo is not an armchair philosopher; he attempts to salvage the human condition by empowering humanity to consciously guide the march of human evolution towards a divine future. The boldness of his vision, the originality of his philosophical work is spectacular. In this paper, I will discuss his World-process, i.e. the evolution qualified with involution. I will also discuss the epistemological foundation of his philosophy, cosmology and integral yoga psychology. For the sake of clarity in understanding, the paper is divided into five major sections starting with an introduction. Integralism is a central idea in Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy and I have tried to do justice with it throughout this paper. In the end, the paper attempts to deals with three main themes—cosmology, integral yoga psychology and integral experience. All these three themes shall bring out—The integral experience of Sri Aurobindo is deeply intertwined with his cosmology and yogic psychology and shall not be seen in isolation. Integral experience of reality is also intertwined and works in tandem with his Integral Yoga. There is a yogic exploration of oneness between the self and world that informs and shapes both his philosophical and yogic endeavors. The rationale behind undertaking this study is to question whether the observations of the physical world from the standpoint of yogic experience could suggest some new theoretical framework for the metaphysical ontology of the world. Taking perspectives from the states of consciousness described by Sri Aurobindo may furnish us with a deeper understanding of the material and metaphysical character of physical categories, such as matter, energy, force, space, and time. This paper however is an introductory overview of Aurobindo’s relevance for cosmology, psychology and integral experience which provides a philosophical framework to reinterpret and arrive at a synthetic metaphysics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.3 (2001) 442-443 [Access article in PDF] Steven Nadler, editor. The Cambridge Companion to Malebranche. Cambridge Companions. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. xi + 319. Cloth, $54.95. With his own Cambridge Companion, the seventeenth-century French philosopher Nicolas Malebranche has at last arrived in the English speaking world. As editor Nadler puts it, "Malebranche was widely recognized by his philosophical and theological (...) contemporaries... as an intellectual force to be reckoned with, a bold... synthesizer of... St. Augustine and Descartes and a systematic thinker of the first rank" (1). Yet until the relatively recent arrival of books or translations by scholars such as Nadler, McCracken, Jolley, Schmaltz, and Riley, Malebranche has largely been treated by Anglo-American scholars as merely the solitary proponent of the allegedly rather silly doctrine of occasionalism. The tide is now turning, and we may expect that over the next few years Malebranche's wide-ranging sophistication and significance will be more widely appreciated. Invaluable to that end will be Nadler's volume, which is of great interest both to those new to Malebranche and to seasoned scholars, for it presents accessible yet thorough introductions to Malebranche's many interesting doctrines—concerning self-knowledge, vision in God, continuous creation, occasionalism, theodicy, grace, freedom, morality, etc.—as well as raises important questions for future research. All of the essays Nadler has assembled are by well-known scholars, and all are worthwhile.The first point to make is that occasionalism—the view that God is the only true cause, and that finite substances lack all true causal power—was neither silly, nor was Malebranche its only proponent. As Nadler's own essay makes clear, the doctrine (or variations thereof) has roots in medieval philosophy as well as in Descartes, and was favored by other Cartesians preceding Malebranche, such as Cordemoy, la Forge, Geulincx, and Clauberg; further, Malebranche offered numerous distinct arguments for it, and, as evidenced in essays by Schmaltz, Rutherford, Kremer, and Riley, intended it to fit with his other metaphysical views in a complete and coherent system. Even if, as some of these same authors suggest, Malebranche failed to get everything to fit quite right, it's at least clear that the oft-raised charge that occasionalism was merely an ad hoc solution to the Cartesian mind-body problem is unjustified. There is of course room to disagree with certain details here: I've argued elsewhere, for example against Nadler, that despite evidence to the contrary Malebranche does not invoke continuous creation as an argument for occasionalism, and, in effect, against Kremer, that Malebranche can succeed in reconciling occasionalism and his conception of free will. But then the fact that scholars can disagree on points such as these is precisely evidence that Malebranche is a rich subject of study.Different essays have different virtues. Some are especially strong in philosophical analysis. Schmaltz provides penetrating analyses of Malebranche's doctrine that we see [End Page 442] all things "in God" as well as of related issues (such as the distinction between the intellectual and the sensible), and also traces their roots in or ramifications for thinkers such as Augustine, Descartes, Arnauld, and Regis; Kremer, too, does an impressive job disentangling the many discrete threads in Malebranche's theory of free will. Essays by Moreau and Riley are particularly useful for their overview or synthetic nature: Moreau presents the many points of contention in the decades-long dispute between Malebranche and Arnauld, while Riley makes explicit the implications that many of the doctrines discussed by other contributors have for Malebranche's moral theory (in the process perhaps implicitly supporting the claim that Malebranche's moral theory may be essential for understanding his metaphysics). Brown's and Robinet's contributions, the former detailing Malebranche's positive influence on or critical reception by figures such as Locke, Leibniz, Berkeley, Hume, and Reid, the latter focusing on disputes between Malebranche, Arnauld, and Leibniz, are essential for those interested (as all should be) in working Malebranche into standard undergraduate courses on modern philosophy, and will also be... (shrink)

Western philosophy often overlooked the problem of technology. It is a long-standing prejudice of a nominalist or idealist mentality that goes on from ancient Greece up to today. Compared to other contemporary currents of thought, the pragmatist tradition had some interesting ideas because it united in a profound continuum theory and practice, overthrowing any dualism. This move was particularly effective in Peirce’s studies on continuity, logical modalities, logic of abduction, and existential graphs as well as in Dewey’s approach to logic (...) as an integrated tool of inquiry in which technology is part of the human organism. However, also the pragmatist tradition remained somehow only with a good analysis of synthesis and a good theory of practice but did not complete its drive toward a different vision of syntheticity and technology. The philosophy of gesture that I will propose in this paper wants to complete the unfinished work of this tradition relying heavily on pragmatist phenomenology and semiotics. In the first part, I will sum up the main structure of this philosophy of gesture, as I name it (I). In the second part, I will show the fundamental application of this philosophy to technology (II). At the end, I will illustrate an application for blind people to see a museum that is inspired by the Philosophy of gesture (III). (shrink)

For nearly a century and a half after his death, Jonathan Edwards remained America's greatest philosopher. His rigorous, systematic vision coupled with a synthetic, creative imagination were unrivalled until the appearance of that great triumvirate of pragmatic philosophers—C. S. Peirce, William James, and John Dewey—at the close of the nineteenth century.

Neural organization: Structure, function, and dynamics shows how theory and experiment can supplement each other in an integrated, evolving account of the brain's structure, function, and dynamics. (1) Structure: Studies of brain function and dynamics build on and contribute to an understanding of many brain regions, the neural circuits that constitute them, and their spatial relations. We emphasize Szentágothai's modular architectonics principle, but also stress the importance of the microcomplexes of cerebellar circuitry and the lamellae of hippocampus. (2) Function: Control (...) of eye movements, reaching and grasping, cognitive maps, and the roles of vision receive a functional decomposition in terms of schemas. Hypotheses as to how each schema is implemented through the interaction of specific brain regions provide the basis for modeling the overall function by neural networks constrained by neural data. Synthetic PET integrates modeling of primate circuitry with data from human brain imaging. (3) Dynamics: Dynamic system theory analyzes spatiotemporal neural phenomena, such as oscillatory and chaotic activity in both single neurons and (often synchronized) neural networks, the self-organizing development and plasticity of ordered neural structures, and learning and memory phenomena associated with synaptic modification. Rhythm generation involves multiple levels of analysis, from intrinsic cellular processes to loops involving multiple brain regions. A variety of rhythms are related to memory functions. The Précis presents a multifaceted case study of the hippocampus. We conclude with the claim that language and other cognitive processes can be fruitfully studied within the framework of neural organization that the authors have charted with John Szentágothai. Key Words: cognitive maps; computational neuroscience; dynamics; hippocampus; memory; modular architectonics; neural modeling; neural organization; neural plasticity; rhythmogenesis; Szentágothai. (shrink)

This paper extends three decades of work arguing that researchers who discuss consciousness should not restrict themselves only to (adult) human minds, but should study (and attempt to model) many kinds of minds, natural and artificial, thereby contributing to our understanding of the space containing all of them. We need to study what they do or can do, how they can do it, and how the natural ones can be emulated in synthetic minds. That requires: (a) understanding sets of (...) requirements that are met by different sorts of minds, i.e. the niches that they occupy, (b) understanding the space of possible designs, and (c) understanding complex and varied relationships between requirements and designs. Attempts to model or explain any particular phenomenon, such as vision, emotion, learning, language use, or consciousness lead to muddle and confusion unless they are placed in that broader context. A methodology for making progress is summarised and a novel requirement proposed for a theory of how human minds work: the theory should support a single generic design for a learning, developing system that, in addition to meeting familiar requirements, should be capable of developing different and opposed philosophical viewpoints about consciousness, and the so-called hard problem. In other words, we need a common explanation for the mental machinations of mysterians, materialists, functionalists, identity theorists, and those who regard all such theories as attempting to answer incoherent questions. No designs proposed so far come close. (shrink)

The paper describes the conception of logic in Polish didactics authored by the Commission of National Education (KEN), an important educational institution of the European Enlightenment. Since the documents of the Commission refer to a vision of science presented by such influential works then as the Encyclopédie ou dictionnaire universel raisonné [Great French Encyclopedia], the paper compares the requirements from the Commission’s programmer with the encyclopaedic entries that entail logical problems broadly understood. It turns out that the Commission, following (...) the Encyclopédie, not only recommended a list of textbooks of logic but also shared its eclectic vision of logic. Although it is characteristic of modernity to take a relative approach to the importance of traditional logic, transformed into science on method, or literally an outline of epistemology, understood according to É. Condillac as a specific form of metaphysics, nevertheless some elements of logic were eclectically made valid. This logic, from the times of I. Kant, has been defined as formal logic. Practical logical skills were preferred to the knowledge of logical theories. At the same time attention was paid to the meaning of natural logical skills, and drills in logical reasoningwhen studying languages and mathematics. Despite preferences for the analytical method they also noticed the importance of synthetic method. It seems also that although the documents of the Commission do not say anything about the teaching of syllogistic issues, in didactic practice inspired by the Encyclopédie in the schools controlled by the Commission, the room was made to teach these problems. Condillac’s book was preferred in the schools controlled by the Commission, nevertheless, it was not, as in the case of other textbooks, a must on the reading list, an obligatory reading matter, therefore it was not published in Poland. The conception of logic presented by the Commission as modelled on the Encyclopédie managed to avoid the one-sidedness of Condillac’s approach, the approach that in fact eliminated the teaching of logic. (shrink)

Grace A. de Laguna was an American philosopher of exceptional originality. Many of the arguments and positions she developed during the early decades of the twentieth century later came to be central to analytic philosophy. These arguments and positions included, even before 1930, a critique of the analytic-synthetic distinction, a private language argument, a critique of type physicalism, a functionalist theory of mind, a critique of scientific reductionism, a methodology of research programs in science and more. Nevertheless, de Laguna (...) identified herself as a defender of the speculative vision of philosophy, a vision which, in her words, “analytic philosophy condemns.” I outline her speculative vision of philosophy as well as what is, in effect, an argument she offers against analytic philosophy. This is an argument against the view that key parts of established opinion, e.g., our best theoretical physics or most certain common sense, should be assumed to be true in order to answer philosophical questions. I go on to bring out the implications of her argument for the approaches to philosophy of Bertrand Russell, Willard V. Quine and David Lewis, and I also compare the argument to recent, related arguments against analytic philosophy. I will suggest that de Laguna offers a viable critique of analytic philosophy and an alternative approach to philosophy that meets this critique. (shrink)

Artists and designers working in the fields of generative and bio art frequently focus on designing speculative visions of how nature can be reimagined with the use of computational media and synthetic biology. Centered on the unique artistic strategies of reimagining life forms, this paper analyzes and compares a selection of generative software-based projects, in which artists are mimicking different natural phenomena and have the tendency to beautify nature and life, with bio art projects, where ethical considerations are prioritized (...) over other aspects of the work. Experimenting with software and producing code-based generative art can be a relatively accessible creative endeavor while working with synthetic biology requires more demanding and controlled workplace conditions and specialized equipment. Despite the differences in accessibility and usability, both fields of generative and bio art challenge the boundaries of contemporary artistic practice and research by mapping, provoking and contemplating the dramatic changes of life forms, in the era when living matter can be re-engineered into a new material capable of computing. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungAus der Sicht der offenen Transzendentalphilosophie kommt es weniger auf eine physikali‐stische Gesamttheorie der Welt an als auf eine Analyse der normativen Tätigkeiten, die wir in die‐ser ausüben. Es wird gezeigt, wie wir – vor allem auch in der Wissenschaft – selbst die Voraus‐setzungen schaffen, die es uns erlauben, aufgrund von Wertungen ausgewählte Ziele zu erreichen. Pragmatische Erwägungen bedingen in einer gegebenen Situation den Entschluss, einen bestimm‐ten Kontext abzugrenzen, indem wir die dazu erforderlichen Regeln annehmen. Dadurch erzeugen wir ein relatives (...) Apriori, das uns die Mittel liefert, um zwischen analytisch und synthetisch, zwischen Sprache und Theorie etc. zu unterscheiden.Die Methode führt zu einem pluralistischen Weltbild: Nach der Wahl der linguistischen und ontologischen Bestandteile kann die Wahrheitsfrage im Sinne Tarskis nur mehr intern geregelt werden, während sich rivalisierende Systeme als ganze allein aufgrund von pragmatischen Krite‐rien vergleichen lassen.Es werden die deskriptiven und normativen Aspekte der Begriffe des Wertes, der Norm und der Regel erörtert, um schliesslich auf die zentrale Rotle zu verweisen, die Konventionen als nicht der Willkür ausgesetzte, sondern rational begrundete Festlegungen in sämtlichen unseren Aktivitäten spielen.SummaryFollowing my conception of open transcendentalism philosophy is less concerned with a naturalistically conceived theory of the world than with the normative activities we display in this world. By our own cultural and intellectual presuppositions we create the means – scientific or others – required for the achievement of certain goals which have previously been accepted as valuable. Pragmatic considerations induce us to establish, in given situations, what 1 call contexts by adopting particular rules. We thus produce a pragmatically relativized apriori providing us with a clearcut distinction between the analytic and the synthetic, between language and theory etc.The method issues in a pluralistic world view: Once the matter concerning the choice of a linguistic system and an ontology is settled the question of truth in Tarski's sense can only be raised internally while theories as a whole are compared on purely pragmatic grounds.I discuss some descriptive and normative aspects regarding the notions of value, norm and rule in order to ascertain the primary role played by conventions in all our activities. I rid the word of the connotation of arbitrairiness often attached to it in Anglo‐Saxon philosophy by restricting its use to deliberate acts concerned with rationally justified decisions.ResumeSelon ma conception du transcendentalisme ouvert, la philosophic est moins concernée par la recherche?on;une théorie globale du monde, telle que la préconise le naturalisme, que par ľanalyse des activités normatives que nous exerçons dans celuici. Nous créons nous‐mêmes les présuppositions qui nous permettent?on;atteindre un but – scientifique ou autre – dont la valeur a été préalablement admise. Ce sont des délibérations de type pragmatique qui nous incitent, dans une situation donnée, àétablir – en acceptant des règies idoines – ce que j ‘appellerai un contexte. Nous produisons ainsi un a priori relatif dont les préceptes, admettant une distinction stride entre ľanalytique et le synthétique, la langue et la théorie etc., resteront en vigueur tant que le cadre conceptuel en question prévaudra.La méthode mène à une vision pluraliste du monde: Le choix des éléments linguistiques et ontologiques une fois accompli, la question de la vérité, conformément à la définition de Tarski, ne peut être posée que de manière interne, tandis que la comparaison de systèmes rivaux s'opérera àľaide de critères purement pragmatiques.Dans la dernière partie, j'évoque quelques aspects descriptifs et normatifs des concepts de valeur, de norme et de règie afin de dégager le rôle central des conventions dans nos activités culturelles. Je libère la notion de convention de toute connotation ayant trait àľarbitraire en lui conférant le sens?on;un decision rationnellement justifyée. (shrink)

This edited collection covers Friedrich Waismann's most influential contributions to twentieth-century philosophy of language: his concepts of open texture and language strata, his early criticism of verificationism and the analytic-synthetic distinction, as well as their significance for experimental and legal philosophy. -/- In addition, Waismann's original papers in ethics, metaphysics, epistemology and the philosophy of mathematics are here evaluated. They introduce Waismann's theory of action along with his groundbreaking work on fiction, proper names and Kafka's Trial. -/- Waismann is (...) known as the voice of Ludwig Wittgenstein in the Vienna Circle. At the same time we find in his works a determined critic of logical positivism and ordinary language philosophy, who anticipated much later developments in the analytic tradition and devised his very own vision for its future. (shrink)