The twentieth century in Africa, more than elsewhere in the world, has been an era of startling and unprecedented changes. These changes have been most dramatic with respect to the sociopolitical organization of the continent. While at the beginning of the century, most of Africa, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, had hardly emerged from prefeudal or feudal social formations, the advent of European colonialists, whose avarice for conquest and colonial territories was fueled by the blossoming technological capabilities of the Industrial Revolution and (...) the expansionist market demand of a new and burgeoning capitalist economy in Europe, transformed the face of Africa forever. (shrink)

Rönesans ve ardında Aydınlanma dönemiyle beraber gerçekleşen bilimsel ilerlemeler fazlaca dikkat çekmeyi başarmıştır. Bunun sonucunda modern bilim, bilginin en güvenilir kaynağı olarak kabul edilerek onun her meseleyi çözebileceği bir zemine oturtturulmuştur. Öyle ki bilim, Tanrı’nın var olup olmadığına dair de bilgi üretebileceği dillendirilmiştir. Bu aşamada ideolojik yaklaşımların ve din adına sergilenen bazı temelsiz akıl dışı argümanların katkısıyla da bilim artık kutsal bir müesseseye dönüştürülmüştür. Kutsala dönüştürülen bilim, bir diğer kutsal olan dinle artık ortak bir zeminde buluşamayacak hale dönüşmüş ve yanlış (...) bir dikotomiye alet edilmiştir. Dolayısıyla artık ilerleyen bilim, yavaş yavaş “Tanrı’yı yok etmeye” başlamıştır. Artık bu hale dönüşen bilim anlayışı ateistlerin de en büyük destek noktaları olmuştur. Kutsala dönüşen bu bilim anlayışı her ne kadar temelde Hıristiyanlık inancına karşıt olarak ortaya çıkmış olsa da yer yer tüm inançlara yansıtılmaya çalışılmıştır. Oysaki bilimden, “bilimin ilerlemesiyle Tanrı’nın yok olacağına” dair veri sunmasını beklemek aslında bilimin sınırlarından bihaber olmayı gerekli kılmaktadır. Bilimin ilerlemesiyle inancın yok olacağı söylemi, İslam dini açısından kabul edilebilir bir argüman olarak görülmemektedir. Çünkü İslam, aklı dinamik olarak tasvir etmekte ve tabiatı Tanrı’nın varlığının delili olarak sunmaktadır. Diğer taraftan bilimin ilerlemesiyle Tanrı’ya yer kalmayacağını iddia edenlerin unutmaması gereken önemli husus, dinin/imanın bir bilgi eksikliği olmadığı aksine bilginin insanı tasdiğe yönelttiği gerçeğidir. Ayrıca Müslümanların bilimde geri kalmalarının sebebini onların inançlarına bağlayanlar, bunu siyasi, sosyal ve ekonomik bazı sebeplerde araması gerekmektedir. (shrink)

En 2010, une fouille ouverte dans le quartier de Şifa à Izmir a permis de dégager, dans les niveaux de surface, les vestiges d’une grande maison ottomane. Dans ces contextes, la céramique était abondante. Elle illustre les différents types de vaisselle culinaire, de table et de service, employés dans une demeure d'une grande ville cosmopolite de Méditerranée orientale, dans la seconde moitié du XVIIIe s. Aux côtés des productions locales, on trouve un large échantillonnage de céramiques produites dans d’autres ateliers (...) anatoliens et balkaniques mais aussi une grande variété de produits étrangers, en particulier européens, qui témoignent des relations commerciales établies entre deux grands ports de Méditerranée, Marseille et Smyrne. En effet, l’approvisionnement en vaisselle de terre de Smyrne – le port le plus important pour le commerce français, le plus vaste et le plus riche de l’Empire ottoman – a bénéficié des flux commerciaux dont Marseille était l’origine ou le relais. (shrink)

In this study, teleological judgments were examined as having a part of the boundless relationship of reason with the universal and unconditional, based on Kant's critical philosophy. To do this, firstly, the distinction between telos and skopos has been pointed out. The cognitive faculties of the subject as the source of finality in nature and the concepts of purposeless purposefulness were discussed. We emphasized that according to Kant's critical philosophy, the introduction of the concept of God as an internal principle (...) to natural science would be characterized as false belief. This trespassing, which causes a narrative that goes beyond the limits of our knowledge, was discussed in the context of the processes of acquiring knowledge in Kant's philosophy. In this regard, according to Kant the nature of the transition from teleological judgments to theological judgments was investigated. At the beginning of the study, the relation of telos with infinity was discussed. Afterward, the idea of purposefulness, which organizes itself in nature and eliminates blind randomness, was emphasized. The basis of the teleological principle as the inner principle of natural science was analyzed. The possibility of placing the concept of God on this very ground was discussed. It was pointed out that the characteristics of universality and necessity that Kant attributed to purposefulness were not only based on the grounds of experience. At this point, it was stated that to achieve universality, it is necessary to base on an a priori principle at the same time. The possibility that this principle could be an intention (Alm. Absicht) or a final end (Alm. Endzweck) was discussed. We focused on the request of the reason, which is applied to the conditioned and the finite, to reach the unconditional. It was stated that for Kant, the reason for the transition from teleological judgments to theological judgments was the effort to see purposeful regularity in phenomena. It was pointed out that it is a necessary step of the mind to lead this regularity to a higher telos and even to a creator, to the first being. We emphasized that concerning Kant’s critical philosophy if the concept of God was placed on the ground of natural science and the purposefulness in nature would be explained with this, and this method was used to prove the existence of God that would create an internal and non-permanent narrative. It was discussed whether this claim was an illusion. At this point, the task of the imagination performed with telos was examined. Evaluations about the concept of telos as the common ground of the subjective and the universal were included. As a result, it has been investigated how the search for the constant existing in the human mind can lead him to the existence of a God in the chain of causality. (shrink)

Against the background of “arms race” style competitive explanations for complex human cognition, such as the Social Intelligence Hypothesis Growing points in ethology, Cambridge University Press, pp 303–317, 1976; Jolly in Science, 10.1126/science.153.3735.501, 1966), and theories that tie complex cognition with environmental variability more broadly The evolution of intelligence, Lawrence Earlbaum and Associates, 2001), the idea that culturally inherited mechanisms for social cognition would be more capable of responding to the labile social environment is a compelling one. Whilst it is (...) tempting to think that the evolvability of culturally inherited cognitive mechanisms such as Cecilia Heyes’ cognitive gadgets would be akin to culturally inherited tools like axes or canoes, I draw on established theory in evolutionary developmental biology to show that this is a mistake. Their causal translucency, along with the degree to which they would be integrated within the organism, make cognitive gadgets far more like genetically inherited traits with respect to their evolvability. Consequently, their evolution is unlikely to be particularly fast or nimble. In making clear the constraints on the evolution of culturally inherited cognition and how they must influence our theorising the discussion also highlights the value of thinking about evolvability in this domain. (shrink)

I argue that the traditional distinction between hard and easy problems rests on some inaccurate views about explanation in cognitive science. We should distinguish the question of what gives rise to a phenomenon (the generative question) from what that phenomenon is (the nature question). In many cases throughout the special sciences, an answer to the generative question will not shed significant light on the nature question, nor will it eliminate all conceptually possible alternatives. Meanwhile, the apparent easiness of explaining consciousness (...) functions is due to an oversimplification of these problems akin to what is often called 'substitution bias'. Once these issues are clarified, we see that the hard problem is not so hard, the easy problems are not so easy, and the meta-problem is neither a traditional easy problem nor should we expect it to play a special role in illuminating the natural basis of consciousness. (shrink)

The concept of artificial intelligence is not new nor is the notion that it should be granted legal protections given its influence on human activity. What is new, on a relative scale, is the notion that artificial intelligence can possess citizenship—a concept reserved only for humans, as it presupposes the idea of possessing civil duties and protections. Where there are several decades’ worth of writing on the concept of the legal status of computational artificial artefacts in the USA and elsewhere, (...) it is surprising that law makers internationally have come to a standstill to protect our silicon brainchildren. In this essay, it will be assumed that future artificial entities, such as Sophia the Robot, will be granted citizenship on an international scale. With this assumption, an analysis of rights will be made with respect to the needs of a non-biological intelligence possessing legal and civic duties akin to those possessed by humanity today. This essay does not present a full set of rights for artificial intelligence—instead, it aims to provide international jurisprudence evidence aliunde ab extra de lege lata for any future measures made to protect non-biological intelligence. (shrink)

The recently published Report of theAHAG on the Operation of NHS Research Ethics Committees advocates major reforms of the NHS research ethics committees system. The main implications of the proposed changes and their probable effects on the major stakeholders are described.The Ad Hoc Advisory Group on the operation of NHS research ethics committees, set up in November 2004 by Lord Warner on behalf of the Department of Health, submitted its report in June 2005.1 The report advocates major reforms of the (...) research ethics committee system. The primary aim of the report is to streamline the processes around the approval of research projects and to pursue conformity of governance across Europe. Implicit in the report is the contention that failure to achieve this objective would be harmful to everyone with vested interests in improving health and social care. Moreover, it is stated that the reforms will enhance the mechanisms that protect the interests of all parties concerned.1Being mindful of two published critiques of the Warner Report, we suggest that its alleged benefits should not be taken at face value.2,3 In fact, the reformed system will give rise to moral failings akin to those of the existing system, but will differ from the existing system in its effect on the stakeholders. Thus, whereas the outgoing system has given each stakeholder a unique mixture of benefit and harm, the incoming system offers benefit only to sponsors and researchers and nothing but detriment to participants in research and consumers of its products.In the light of this conclusion, we finally suggest that the Warner Report be construed not merely as an ill-considered document, but rather as an ideological reflection of a long-established hegemonic contract fine-tuning itself to contemporary global challenges.To avoid …. (shrink)

Construing the instantiation of a universal by a particular in terms of my theory of aspects resolves the basic mystery of this "non-relational tie", and gives theoretical unity to the four characteristics of instantiation discerned by Armstrong. Taking aspects as distinct in a way akin to Scotus's formal distinction, I suggest that instantiation is the sharing of an aspect by a universal and a particular--a kind of partial identity. This approach allows me to address Plato's multiple location and One (...) over Many problems, Bradley's problem concerning the instantiation of relations, and the problem of change. (shrink)

Augmented reality blends the virtual and physical worlds such that the virtual content experienced by a user of AR technology depends on the user’s geographical location. Games such as Pokémon GO and technologies such as HoloLens are introducing an increasing number of people to augmented reality. AR technologies raise a number of ethical concerns; I focus on ethical rights surrounding the augmentation of a particular physical space. To address this I distinguish public and private spaces; I also separate the case (...) where we access augmentations via many different applications from the case where there is a more unified sphere of augmentation. Private property under a unified sphere of augmentation is akin to physical property; owners retain the right to augment their property and prevent others from augmenting it. Private property with competing apps is more complex; it is not clear that owners have a general right to prevent augmentations in this case, assuming those augmentations do not interfere with the owner’s use of the property. I raise several difficult cases, such as augmenting a daycare with explicit sexual or violent images. Public property with competing apps is relatively straightforward, and most augmentation is ethical; those apps simply function like different guidebooks. Under a unified sphere of augmentation it is unclear whether augmentations should be treated more like public speech or graffiti or some of each. Further consideration is needed to determine what kinds of augmentations we view as ethical. (shrink)

Wolff examines all of Plato's dialogues as oblique fragments of a spiritual autobiography, akin to Augustine's Confessions. Plato's encounter with Socrates--not only with his personality and teaching, but also with his trial and death-had decisive importance in shaping Plato's inner development. The later Plato attempted to give a firm foundation to knowledge and morality, but failed, ending in a partially concealed scepticism.--L. S. F.

In “Real Logic in Philosophy” I argued that the study of logic be conceived to be the study of the human faculty for correct reasoning. I relabeled the field of study, as well as the object studied, “real logic”- thereby introducing an ambiguity akin to that found with ‘grammar’. ‘Grammar’ is a term for both a field of study and for the object studied. The parallel to grammar and ‘grammar’ was not accidental. I proposed that the faculty for correct (...) reasoning is analogous to the faculty for natural language understanding. So, just as one’s knowlege of a NL can be usefully thought of as an “internalized” grammar, so one’s faculty for Reasoning Logically—or for “real logic” —can be thought of as an “internalized” system. The faculty for correct inference is, then, an internalized real logic. (shrink)

This paper examines the work of Nāgārjuna as interpreted by later Madhyamaka tradition, including the Tibetan Buddhist Tsongkhapa (1357–1419). It situates Madhyamaka skepticism in the context of Buddhist philosophy, Indian philosophy more generally, and Western equivalents. Find it broadly akin to Pyrrhonism, it argues that Madhyamaka skepticism still differs from its Greek equivalents in fundamental methodologies. Focusing on key hermeneutical principles like the two truths and those motivating the Svātantrika/Prāsaṅgika schism (i.e., whether followers of Nāgārjuna should offer positive arguments (...) or should proceed on a purely “negative” basis), it argues that the Svātantrika commitment to mere conventional practice is robust and allows for a skepticism consistent with the scientific practices we must take seriously in the modern world. These findings are put forth as an illustration of what the Western tradition might gain by better understanding of non-Western philosophy. (shrink)

The subjectivity of consciousness is widely regarded as a major stumbling block for materialist theories of mind. In this paper I show how Kripkean arguments against identity theories , and in particular a Kripkean argument against qualia-material property identity developed by Frank Jackson are a way of highlighting this problem. As such, Kripkean arguments are akin to recent discussions of subjectivity by Thomas Nagel and Frank Jackson . I then consider some recent attempts to refute Kripkean arguments or otherwise (...) show that subjectivity is not an insurmountable problem for identity theory. The most promising attempt is one that I myself develop, based on some ideas by Keith Gunderson . But I contend that even it, let alone any of the others, is not without problems. Thus, tentatively, Kripkean arguments against property identity succeed. (shrink)

Where does entertaining (or promoting) conspiracy theories stand with respect to rational inquiry? According to one view, conspiracy theorists are open-minded skeptics, being careful not to accept uncritically common wisdom, exploring alternative explanations of events, no matter how unlikely they might seem at first glance. Seen this way, they are akin to scientists attempting to explain the social world. On the other hand, they are also sometimes seen as overly credulous, believing everything they read on the internet, say. In (...) addition to conspiracy theorists and scientists, another significant form of explanation of the events of the world can be found in religious contexts, such as when a disaster is explained as being an “act of God.” By comparing conspiratorial thinking with scientific and religious forms of explanation, features of all three are brought into more clear focus. For example, anomalies and a commitment to naturalist explanation are seen as important elements of scientific explanation, although the details are less clear. This paper uses conspiracy theories as a lens through which to investigate rational or scientific inquiry. In addition, a better understanding of the scientific method as it might be applied in the study of events of interest to conspiracy theorists can help understand their epistemic virtues and vices. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Kant and the Divine: From Contemplation to Moral Law by Christopher J. InsoleChris L. FirestoneChristopher J. Insole. Kant and the Divine: From Contemplation to Moral Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp. v + 409. Hardback, $110.00.The extent to which the philosophy of Immanuel Kant converges with or diverges from Christian thought has been a hotly debated topic in recent years. Central to that debate has been the (...) resurgence of interest in Kant's classic Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (henceforth, Religion). The most insightful interpretations and applications of Religion, it seems, have utilized resources from a broad range of Kant's writings, emphasizing his philosophy considered as an integrated whole. Christopher Insole's recent monograph—Kant and the Divine: From Contemplation to Moral Law—attempts to redirect this debate with an argument spanning Kant's precritical and critical periods in performing a deep dive on the topic of freedom. On the face of it, the argument is not purely theological or even religious. It revolves, instead, around a metaphysical analysis of freedom, both as exemplified in Kant's writings and relative to his historical predecessors.Key to Insole's proposal is that Kant's critical notion of freedom evolves into something very different than that of his predecessors (on which his early writings depend) and, in its development, decisively "ruptures" with the Christian tradition. Human freedom, on Insole's analysis of Kant, must be "end-setting" and not constrained or directed by any type of external compulsion. This suggests that God cannot be understood to influence freedom causally, or at least not without human conscious and free consent. Numerous writers have thought they spied Christian connections in Kant's notion of freedom, such as the need for divine forgiveness, and even grace, to avoid the absurdum practicum. Insole resists all such attempts as being foreign to the novelty of the mature Kant's reflections on freedom. No external force can be brought to bear as a determining causal influence on human freedom, presumably because an end set before us from outside undermines our ability to set an end for ourselves. God is at best the "all-knowing distributor of happiness" (321) that makes end-setting and the kingdom of ends worthwhile moral pursuits. Insole's express intention is to "show the significance of Kant's denial that God can be our final cause" and that "his philosophical religiosity, understood on its own terms, and as expressed across his whole oeuvre" shows that "Kant cannot easily be called a Christian thinker" at all (2–4).Extricating Kant from Christianity proves to be a monumental task. Insole uses eighteen chapters and more than four hundred pages to make his case. The argument distinguishes itself from other such attempts in its rigorous analytic approach to unpacking the metaphysical underpinnings of issues supposedly at the root of Kant's philosophical theology. The book presents a cumulative case argument for Kant's supposed break with "the Christian theological tradition as he would have received it" (13). Much rests on whether or not this argument is cogent. Kant, according to Insole, is something akin to a theological Platonist and moral Stoic, who attempts to establish a unique form of "philosophical religiosity" (3 and 156). This makes Kant similar to the likes of Augustine and Ambrose, but different in terms of his theological aspirations. Insole casts Kant not as a pure philosopher seeking to understand philosophy relative to the Christian tradition, but rather as a philosophical [End Page 164] theologian bent on showing human freedom, free end-setting, and an ethical community of end-setters to be the exclusive means for attaining the highest good. Although this may sound Pelagian, Insole insists it is not, because "the Pelagian could still regard God as our final cause and efficient cause" (299). In other words, in Insole's interpretation, Kant is a strict philosophical humanist or what theologians might term a hyper-Pelagian.The difficult details of Insole's arguments are important to consider but not easily dealt with in the space provided here. Early in the book, Insole takes his reader on a metaphysical tour of "Divine Ideas" and "God... (shrink)

In ‘Of Sensory Systems and the “Aboutness” of Mental States’, Kathleen Akins (1996) argues against what she calls ‘the traditional view’ about sensory systems, according to which they are detectors of features in the environment outside the organism. As an antidote, she considers the case of thermoreception, a system whose sensors send signals about how things stand with themselves and their immediate dermal surround (a ‘narcissistic’ sensory system); and she closes by suggesting that the signals from many sensory systems may (...) not in any familiar sense be about anything at all. Her presentation of the issues, however, overlooks resources available to ‘the traditional view’—or so I shall argue. Akins’s own thumbnail sketch of what is wrong with the traditional view is that it asks, concerning a given sensory system, ‘what is it detecting?’, when we should instead be asking ‘what is it doing?’ (352). Her point is that on the traditional view the function of a sensory system—what it's ‘for’—is to detect or indicate (values of) features of the outside environment. But at least on one version of the traditional view—namely Ruth Millikan’s—this would never be the sole or main proper function of a sensory system. (Akins does not list Millikan as a traditionalist, but Millikan fits squarely Akins’s description of them, since she believes in a naturalistic theory of aboutness and thinks it should begin with the senses.) For Millikan (1989, 1993), the proper function of a sensory system is in the first instance enabling behavioural systems—in the simplest case, motor routines—to perform their proper function. This they do, roughly, by switching on and steering the behavioural routines. Where features of the outside environment come in is as Normal (= assumed-by-the-design) conditions for the successful performance of the sensory system's proper function. That is, the only strategy for switching on and steering that is simple enough for evolution to have hit upon it, and reliable enough for evolution to have liked it, is a strategy which gears the steering to (values of) features of the outside environment. But as soon as one starts fleshing out the details of this story, one notices that they are probably quite different in the case of thermoreception from how they are with ‘distance’ senses such as vision and olfaction--a point which Akins overlooks.. (shrink)

The issue that I wish to address is, why protest and criticize the increasing hegemony of what has been called the “culture of consumerism”? This “why not?” objection encompasses three distinct sets of questions. First, is not resistance to it akin to playing the role of King Canute by the sea? Second, is not acceptance of it dictated by the current liberal philosophical consensus that acknowledges and endorses an inevitable diversity in different individuals’ conceptions of what is good, and (...) must not this consensus itself be taken as a given by all who are opposed to political and religious totalitarianisms? Third, does not cosmopolitanism, regarded as a value-orientation favorable to the dissolution or at least minimization of national boundaries and the practices of exclusivity associated therewith, make common cause in the present historical conjuncture with this same trend? I will argue for a “No” answer to all of these questions. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to understand how common aversions to critical thinking, and, in particular, critical thinking related to deliberation about ethics, is arguably akin to math anxiety (MA). However, unlike ethical-critical thinking anxiety (ECTA), MA has a body of literature and neuroscientific findings supporting it and correlating thoughts about math with neurobiology of pain and fear activation. The crux of the paper lies in the answer to the following question: how is ECTA like and unlike MA? (...) Is there a history—educational and otherwise—similar to MA—that leads to ECTA? In this paper, I argue that there are myriad factors contributing to ECTA but that, ultimately, the result is likely the same: a neurobiology of fear/pain response that inhibits ethical thought and judgment, largely given its dependence on critical thinking. My thesis statement, therefore, is that critical thinking engenders the angst engendered by MA and for similar reasons, and I surmise that current models of teaching applied clinical ethics to health care practitioners would benefit from approaches framing the lack of ethical thinking in our field of health and human services as an ego-defense mechanism or neurobiological constraint. This leads to the question of how workshops aimed at teaching ethics take into account the realities of avoidance, promote critical thinking, and avoid the pitfalls of ECTA. (shrink)

Images come in many varieties, but for evidential purposes, photographs are privileged. Recent advances in neuroimaging provide us with a new type of image that is used as scientific evidence. Brain images are epistemically compelling, in part because they are liable to be viewed as akin to photographs of brain activity. Here I consider features of photography that underlie the evidential status we accord it, and argue that neuroimaging diverges from photography in ways that seriously undermine the photographic analogy. (...) While neuroimaging remains an important source of scientific evidence, proper interpretation of brain images is much more complex than it appears. ‡This work was supported in part by a grant from the Leslie Humanities Center at Dartmouth College. I thank John Kulvicki for helpful comments, and Kim Sterelny, for making it possible for me to spend some time at the ANU with a grant from the Australian Research Council. †To contact the author, please write to: Dartmouth College, Department of Philosophy, Hanover, NH 03755; e-mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

This study, the third in a series of three, draws on a broader Norwegian research project exploring the phenomenon of support for young persons with mental health issues. The aim was to explore and explicate the sense of “nourishing communion”, as a somewhat neglected aspect of support. Fourteen Norwegian young adults, aged 18-25, were interviewed about their experiences of support. Data was analyzed using van Manen’s hermeneutic-phenomenological approach to open up possible meanings of how nourishing communion is concretely lived. Analysis (...) was supplemented by in-depth reflexive dialogues between the first and second author, which fostered a nourishing communion akin to the processes and dimensions of our phenomenon of interest. Findings highlight five intertwined existential themes: a) trusting the other to hold vulnerability safely; b) flourishing in mutual participation; c) acceptance in a felt togetherness; d) feeling found and received; and e) feeling an attuned resonance. The notion of “nourishing communion” as a significant but neglected element of support challenges current practice, suggesting the need for a different approach to collaboration with young persons and their networks. From the perspectives both of individual professional engagement and of policy making, there is a need for further exploration of how young persons might be supported to create and maintain a broader range of nourishing relationships. (shrink)

This book offers the first comprehensive account and re-appraisal of the formative phase of what is often termed the 'Grotian tradition' in international relations theory: the view that sovereign states are not free to act at will, but are akin to members of a society, bound by its norms. It examines the period from the later fifteenth to the mid-seventeenth centuries, focusing on four thinkers: Erasmus, Vitoria, Gentili and Grotius himself, and is structured by the author's concept of international (...) society. Erasmus' views on international relations have been entirely neglected, but underlying his work is a consistent image of international society. The theologian Francisco de Vitoria concerns himself with its normative principles, the lawyer Alberico Gentili - unexpectedly, the central figure in the narrative - with its extensive practical applications. Grotius, however, does not re-affirm the concept, but wavers at crucial points. This book suggests that the Grotian tradition is a misnomer. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Commentary on “Minds, Memes, and Multiples”Timothy Sprigge (bio)In his paper “Minds, Memes and Multiples” Stephen Clark discusses the problem of multiple personality, to some considerable extent in response to Stephen Braude’s recent book First Person Plural, with eloquence, subtlety and some apposite historical references. I am delighted to have been asked to make some comments on it, developing some points I made in discussion when Professor Clark read his (...) paper at a seminar in Edinburgh.Multiple personality is certainly a fascinating subject on which anyone with views about the nature of human persons does well to cast an eye. I am grateful to both Clark and Braude for having raised my awareness of it. Clearly, Clark has been persuaded by Braude of the reality of the phenomenon as something more than just a form of extreme role-playing or play acting, 1 but also agrees with him that there is an ultimate single self behind the genuine multiplicity (Clark 1969; Braude 1991). What this ultimate self is Clark seeks to explain by reference to a single “light” which illumines all the variety (extreme in the case of multiple personality), of ideas, thoughts, emotions etc. by which we are variously swayed.Let us for simplicity take the case where the putatively distinct “persons” associated with the one human organism are three. Prima facie, there are, in these cases, three distinct centers of consciousness associated with a single human organism each capable turn and turn about of being the dominant one (that which is using the first person pronoun out aloud to speak of itself and whose desires and wishes are what is most immediately expressed in behavior).There seem to be three main features of genuine and full blooded multiple personality (as described most famously—I shall assume correctly—in Morton Prince’s The Dissociation of a Personality and Thigpen and Cleckley’s The Three Faces of Eve). First, the different centers of consciousness exhibit very different personalities, so different that the individual seems in some ways even physically altered according as to which is dominant. By personality here I mean a system of character traits rather than the principle of personal identity, whatever we think that to be. The expression “multiple personality” tends rather to blur the distinction between personality in this sense and person. Someone can change quite radically in personality without ceasing to be the same person—or at least that is how we ordinarily look at it. Second, at least one of them does not “remember” the experiences and conscious behavior of at least one of the others, while one of them does. If they really are different persons, some would think that “memory” is the wrong word here. But I am using “memory” to refer to any cognitive relation sufficiently akin to that in which we stand to our own past experiences when we [End Page 31] remember them. Third, they co-exist in the sense that at least one other of the centers is often “looking on” at the contents and public manifestations of the then dominant one.Another important factor is that they have attitudes to one another, often of hostility, which seem much more like the attitudes one can have to another person than one normally does to oneself. However, important as this is, it should not be taken as part of the definition of multiple personality, since so many of these attitudes are ones many people direct at themselves, (e.g. self-hatred and self-pity). To say that these are distinct from the hatred and pity felt towards others just because they are self-directed seems rather to beg the question.It seems to me that unless the first three conditions are met, we do not have multiple personality in a full sense. I cannot consider all possible cases in which only one or two of the conditions are met but here are some examples. Suppose that the first condition is met but not the other two. Then we would have a person subjected to striking mood swings, each mood bringing with it a contrasting set of personal loves and hates, political opinions, aesthetic tastes, sporting enthusiasms, and... (shrink)

In the quest for mental peace and philosophical insight, the most profound approach is to let the mind function freely, without the interference of a controlling thinker. This essay explores the philosophical and cognitive implications of an unimpeded mind, drawing from Eastern traditions such as Zen Buddhism and Taoism, alongside contemporary cognitive science. It argues that the natural rhythm of thought is disrupted by the ego’s need for control, leading to mental fragmentation and turbulence. By embracing the concept of “no-mind” (...) or non-interference, individuals can achieve a harmonious flow of consciousness. Contemporary cognitive science supports this view, showing that reducing self-referential thinking enhances cognitive flexibility and emotional regulation. This harmonious state, akin to the flow experienced by top athletes and artists, offers a path to greater psychological well-being and deeper philosophical understanding. (shrink)

It is tempting to assume that understatement and overstatement, meiosis and hyperbole, are analogous figures of speech, differing only in whether the speaker represents a quantity as larger, or as smaller, than she means to claim that it is. But these tropes have hugely different roles in conversation. Understatement is akin to irony, perhaps a species of it. Overstatement is an entirely different kettle of fish. Things get interestingly messy when we notice that to overstate how large or expensive (...) or distant something is, is to understate how small or inexpensive or close it is, and vice versa. So it may seem, anyway. I propose an account of the two tropes that counts some utterances, in their conversational contexts, as overstatements of a quantity but not understatements of the opposite quantity, and other utterances as understatements only. This account shows why understatement is closely related to irony and overstatement is not. Although overstatement and understatement (or irony) are very different, they are sometimes combined. An understatement of one quantity may be an overstatement of a different one. (shrink)

In Western common sense, one speaks of there being five human senses, a claim apparently challenged by the biological and psychological sciences. Part of this challenge comes in the form of claiming the existence of additional senses. Part of the challenge comes from positing multiple senses where common sense only speaks of one, such as with the fractionation of “touch” into pressure and temperature senses. One conceptual difficulty in thinking about the number and division of senses is that it's not (...) clear whether the different senses constitute natural kinds and, if not, what kind of kind they are. Should we favor antirealism with respect to the senses, akin to the arguments of some concerning the nature of species or race? I will argue that this first problem is compounded by another: that we ought to be pluralists with respect to the senses—what is meant by the term “sense” varies from context to context, varying even between scientific contexts. (shrink)

In our recent article, together with more than 60 of our colleagues, we outlined a proposal for drug policy reform consisting of four specific yet interrelated strategies: (1) de jure decriminalization of all psychoactive substances currently deemed illicit for personal use or possession (so-called “recreational” drugs), accompanied by harm reduction policies and initiatives akin to the Portugal model; (2) expunging criminal convictions for nonviolent offenses pertaining to the use or possession of small quantities of such drugs (and releasing those (...) serving time for these offenses), while delivering retroactive ameliorative relief; (3) the ultimate legalization and careful regulation of currently illicit drugs; and (4) the delivery of a new “Marshall Plan” focused on community-building initiatives, expanded harm reduction programs, and social and health care support efforts (Earp et al. 2021). We were gratified to see so many thoughtful commentaries on our proposal, and we respond to them in part in this reply. (shrink)

We describe a patient LS, profoundly deaf in both ears from birth, with underdeveloped superior temporal gyri. Without hearing aids, LS displays no ability to detect sounds below a fixed threshold of 60 dBs, which classifies him as clinically deaf. Under these no-hearing-aid conditions, when presented with a forced-choice paradigm in which he is asked to consciously respond, he is unable to make above-chance judgments about the presence or location of sounds. However, he is able to make above-chance judgments about (...) the content of sounds presented to him under forced-choice conditions. We demonstrated that LS has faint sensations from auditory stimuli, but questionable awareness of auditory content. LS thus has a form of type-2 deaf hearing with respect to auditory content. As in the case of a subject with acquired deafness and deaf hearing reported on a previous occasion, LS’s condition of deaf hearing is akin in some respects to type-2 blindsight. As for the case of type 2 blindsight the case indicates that a form of conscious hearing can arise in the absence of a fully developed auditory cortex. (shrink)

Au sein de la science politique les approches sociologiques sont les plus réceptives à la psychologie sociale entendue comme cognition sociale. L'étude du politique a longtemps privilégié des objets institutionnels et l'influence des concepts de la psychologie sociale y est ancienne . Aujourd'hui de nouvelles questions de société et formes de mobilisation, comme l'intégration des minorités ou les rapports de genre, apparaissent. L'analyse des institutions et des objets classiques est renouvelée. Les problématiques font une grande place à la dynamique des (...) représentations, aux modes de raisonnement et d'inférences, aux formes de connaissance, à l'utilisation de l'information par les acteurs. Ainsi la science politique utilise de plus en plus les concepts et méthodes des approches cognitives.Within the field of political science, sociological approaches are more and more akin to social psychology understood as social cognition. The study of politics has long been focused on institutional subjects and influenced by concepts derived from social psychology . Today, new questions about society and new forms of mobilization such as the integration of minorities or gender relationships are emerging. As a result, a renewed analysis of institutions and traditional objects is required. Current problems are more and more centred on the dynamics of representations, on ways of reasoning, on forms of knowledge and on the use of information. Political science is increasingly using the concepts and methods of cognitive approaches. (shrink)

Being diagnosed with a disease is like being thrust onto a new path, a biographical bifurcation akin to a mourning process, bringing in its wake a shattering of the social self. The passage from an ideal of perfect health to a state of illness introduces various fractures into the individual's life course, leading to a process of biographization. To illustrate this, the life story of a diabetic person is used to analyze various biographical turning points. The analysis of the (...) subjectivation process highlights different reconstructions of the self through the experience of therapeutic education, seen as a relational space of in-between identities. (shrink)

In a letter to his wife, Marcella, Porphyry invites her to collect her scattered limbs from her body. Commentators have shown little interest in this metaphor, which we propose to explore and understand. Since it cannot be a question of physical limbs (Marcella must gather them up far from the body), what organs is Porphyry talking about? In what sense does the soul have organs, and how can it bring them together? Drawing on other crucial texts by Plotinus and Porphyry, (...) we propose to understand the dismemberment of the soul as that of its power, scattered and divided in the organs of the body when it acts within it. This interpretation enables us to shed light on Porphyry’s thought on alienation in the body, and to identify something akin to a Neoplatonic discourse on sexuality and on the union between two beings. (shrink)

In this Festschrift honoring the work of Timothy L. S. Sprigge, Sprigge summarizes his philosophy (a synthesis of absolute idealism, panpsychism, and utilitarianism), defends his position against criticism raised by philosophers in the preceding chapters of this volume, and offers in an addendum a proof for the existence of the Absolute, namely, a final and all-embracing Consciousness akin in many ways to Spinoza’s God. This defense of his philosophy consists mainly of responses to various points of criticism raised about (...) his view of time, the relation between his metaphysics and ethics, panpsychism, the Absolute, and animal rights. (shrink)

The general ideas of this book are of double origin. One source is akin to the relatively recent current of biological thought named Evo-Devo. Second source belongs to a more ancient French philosophical tradition represented, among others, by Bergson and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Few words about the Evo-Devo research program. Its creation was prompted by the analysis of the developmental processes in the embryos of different species. About fifteen years ago some discoveries related to the dynamics of the (...) embryological development demonstrated a striking structural identity/stability of homeoboxes in different living forms. Homeoboxes are just small genes determining a strictly specific aminoacid sequence of short polypeptides which „act" like hormones, „regulating" the dynamism of the gradually developing body. The parentheses were used deliberately, to stress the arbitrary character of the „signalling". (shrink)

J. L. Schellenberg’s Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason offers an argument for the non-existence of God. He argues that God’s existence isn’t evident and, thus, there exist cases of “reasonable nonbelief”. But, such nonbelief is inconsistent—Schellenberg argues—with the existence of a loving God desiring a personal relationship with others. In short, if (a perfectly loving) God exists, then reasonable nonbelief must be impossible. But, since there is such belief, we have good reason to think God doesn’t exist. In this chapter, (...) I argue that there is a way to resist Schellenberg’s conclusion because there is a reason that God might not make God’s existence evident. I begin by showing that the problem of hiddenness is a version of the problem of evil. Here, the obscurity of God’s existence is a kind of intellectual bad state akin to traditional moral or natural evils. This opens the door to a modified response to hiddenness based on approaches to the standard problem of evil. I take Hick’s soul making theodicy as the guiding theory altered to fit hiddenness. Hick appeals to the moral development in overcoming evil, whereas I focus on the development of faith in God as the kind of soul making feature hiddenness can spur. If God’s existence isn’t evident, the uncertainty here can promote robust trust in God and, through that faith, can provide a good reason that God might remain hidden. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it aims at providing an account of an indirect mechanism responsible for establishing one's power to issue biding directive acts; second, it is intended as a case for an externalist account of illocutionary interaction. The mechanism in question is akin to what David Lewis calls presupposition accommodation: a rule-governed process whereby the context of an utterance is adjusted to make the utterance acceptable; the main idea behind the proposed account is that (...) the indirect power-establishing mechanism involves the use of imperative sentences that function as presupposition triggers and as such can trigger off the accommodating change of the context of their utterance. According to the externalist account of illocutionary interaction, in turn, at least in some cases the illocutionary force of an act is determined by the audience's uptake rather than by what the speaker intends or believes; in particular, at least in some cases it is the speaker, not her audience, who is invited to accommodate the presupposition of her act. The paper has three parts. The first one defines a few terms — i.e., an “illocution”, a “biding act”, the “audience's uptake” and an “Austinian presupposition” — thereby setting the stage for the subsequent discussion. The second part formulates and discusses the main problem of the present paper: what is the source of the agent's power to perform binding directive acts? The third part offers an account of the indirect power-establishing mechanism and discusses its externalist implications. (shrink)

Les débats qui se développent autour de la question du libre accès sont bien souvent menés comme des combats idéologiques, mobilisant des registres d’expression militants autour des notions de biens publics. La très grande visibilité de ces débats occulte deux éléments qui pourraient en relativiser la portée. L’analyse du développement des initiatives de libre accès montre que la dimension politique de la question est loin d’être prédominante dans toutes les disciplines et varie considérablement selon les communautés. Par ailleurs, les modifications (...) profondes que le développement des réseaux numériques entraîne dans les pratiques de communication scientifique pourraient rendre moins pertinente l’approche volontariste et militante du libre accès. La multiplication du nombre de documents disponibles, l’effacement relatif des frontières entre les différents modes de publication, l’abaissement des barrières d’accès à la publication contribuent à relativiser la portée des dispositifs de fabrication de rareté artificielle et à soumettre progressivement le système de communication scientifique à un régime d’économie de l’attention. Il est dès lors possible que le secteur de l’édition scientifique connaisse une évolution comparable à celle des secteurs de la presse et de l’édition musicale.Much of the current debate on the open access issue has been akin to ideological warfare, using militant language registers around the concept of public common goods. The high level of visibility of the debate masks two important points that could change perceptions on its real impact. Our analysis of the development of open access initiatives shows that the political dimension of the issue is by no means predominant in all disciplines and varies considerably among different communities. Furthermore, the profound changes in scientific communication practices brought about by the expansion of digital networks could lessen the relevance of the militant approach to open access. The proliferation of documents, the relative blurring of boundaries between different forms of publishing and the fact that barriers to access to publications are being lowered are lessening the perceived influence of systems that artificially manufacture rarity, and the scientific communication system is gradually being forced to conform to the attention economics. This makes it possible to anticipate changes in scientific publishing comparable to those in the press and music publishing sectors. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 123.2 (2002) 257-273 [Access article in PDF] The Colonial Subject in Ovid's Exile Poetry P. J. Davis IN RECENT YEARS ONE FOCUS FOR THE DISCUSSION of Ovid's poetry, including of course the exile poetry, has been its relationship to the Augustan regime. Although employing essentially the same critical assumptions, scholars have divided into more and less conservative camps, arguing for a pro- or anti-Augustan Ovid. (...) 1 However, in the case of the exile poetry at least, this situation has been altered by a chapter in a recent book by Thomas N. Habinek, in which he argues for what might be termed a conservative (i.e., pro-Augustan) reading, but employing forms of argument that, in classical studies at least, are decidedly unconservative. 2 Drawing on the work of the cultural materialists, 3 Habinek draws an analogy between Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto and later European colonization narratives in order to argue that "Ovid's laments from exile and dispatches from the contact zone of Pontus sentimentalize his own and his readers' involvement in the project of Roman imperialism." 4The suggestion that Ovid's representation of Tomis and the Black Sea region in the first century C.E. has affinities with later European accounts of foreign and especially colonized territories is an intriguing one that clearly merits consideration. Habinek takes the idea still further and suggests that Ovid's mental attitude in Tomis is akin to that of a colonist living in one of the European colonial empires. Indeed, he quotes D. K. Fieldhouse's explanation of the durability of these empires: "The [End Page 257] basis of imperial authority was the mental attitude of the colonist. His acceptance of subordination—whether through a positive sense of common interest with the parent state, or through inability to conceive of any alternative—made empire durable." 5 For us, who are primarily concerned with Ovid, the important issue here is: who is the colonist with whom Ovid is being compared? After all, between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries, across two American continents, Asia, Africa, and Australia, European colonies took many different forms, incorporated many different peoples and embodied widely varying relationships with the metropolitan power. In fact, Fieldhouse's concern here is with the startling character of the American Revolution, for he argues that "loyalty was the norm and rebellion a break with long-established tradition"(1966, 103). For Fieldhouse the colonist whose mental attitude is so important is a male inhabitant of one of Britain's North American colonies in the second half of the eighteenth century. Fieldhouse is not concerned with colonists in general. How appropriate is the situation of this colonist, say, a locally born resident of pre-Revolutionary Boston or New York, as an analogy for that of Ovid among the Tomitans? The resemblance is not immediately striking.Although citing Fieldhouse's analysis of the nascent United States, Habinek makes it clear that in fact he has a very different kind of colony in mind, a colony in which a European power has control over a numerically superior non-European population: "A comparable claim can be made with regard to the agents of Roman imperialism—soldiers, administrators, and culture workers alike—especially as the Roman system was transformed during the Augustan age from what Conrad's Marlow called 'merely a squeeze' to a colonial system of pacification backed up by an idea, namely, the superiority of Roman culture to that of its subject populations." 6 The use of the phrase "White Man's Burden" 7 as the title for this section of the chapter and the reference to Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness 8 suggest that Habinek conceives of Roman Moesia as [End Page 258] analogous to one of Britain's twentieth-century Asian or African colonies. How appropriate is this analogy? No doubt there were soldiers and administrators in the province. Indeed, Ex Ponto 4.7 is addressed to Julius Vestalis, prefect of the maritime coast, 9 while 4.9 refers to L. Pomponius Flaccus, who had held... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:‘Reading’ Greek Death: To the End of the Classical PeriodJoseph W. Day and Leslie Preston DayChristiane Sourvinou-Inwood. ‘Reading’ Greek Death: To the End of the Classical Period. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995. xiv + 489 pp. 11 pls. Cloth, $79.This important book contributes much to the growing, though divided, scholarship on Greek mortuary practice as a system of behavior that reflected and constructed eschatological, religious, and socio-political attitudes and (...) ideologies. Distancing herself strongly from I. Morris’ historical analysis of mortuary data (Burial in Ancient Society [1987]; Death-Ritual and Social Structure in Classical Antiquity [1992]), with its rejection of what he sees as limiting text- and object-based approaches, S-I derives cultural attitudes from texts like Homer and artifacts like the archaic grave monument. Her approach to this conventional material is hardly conventional, however, nor are its results.Chapter 1, which most classicists could read with benefit, explains S-I’s reader-oriented method; but methodology is foregrounded throughout, especially the semiological principle that no element of a text or artifact, independent of its context, has a fixed meaning for readers. S-I recreates ancient readings of grave monuments, epitaphs, literary texts, and other artifacts accordingly, by reconstructing the cultural lenses through which contemporaries would have interpreted such an artifact (that is, their attitudes to death, expectations about relevant genres, and other aspects of their cultural repertoire). To alleviate the dangers of circularity inherent in such approaches, S-I constructs, and criticizes others for failing to construct, several independent arguments to support each point. Though “very idiosyncratic post-structuralist” (113), S-I’s method can be compared to recent semiological, cultural, and functional approaches to literary and artistic “texts” (e.g., C. Dougherty and L. Kurke, Cultural Poetics in Archaic Greece [1993]) and inscriptions (e.g., D. T. Steiner, The Tyrant’s Writ [1994]).Chapter 2 deals with views of the afterlife in the Homeric poems and with beliefs about the dead from the Late Bronze Age to the seventh century. For S-I, Homer represents the culture of eighth-century Ionia, and she uses the poems to show later eighth-century attitudes toward death. This is too facile a solution to complex Homeric problems, and while her analysis of the beliefs reflected in the poems is excellent, she does not apply archaeological evidence to demonstrate that this analysis is relevant to eighth-century Greece. She sees two attitudes in the poems: the predominant belief that “everyone must die,” a simple statement of the inevitability of death without any idea of reward and punishment, and the nascent idea that a few individuals can achieve happiness and even immortality after death. She debunks the theory that this latter concept of Elysion comes from Minoan Crete. What she does not do is use archaeological evidence to support her hypotheses. As she rightly points out, reconstructing “belief systems on the basis of archaeological data is a complex and problematic enterprise” (90); [End Page 645] but given the hundreds of burials excavated all over the Greek world from this period, it seems amazing that she refers to them so little. S-I is not unfamiliar with archaeological evidence and uses it to good account in discussing Minoan and Mycenaean burial practices, and she makes excellent use of sculpture and vase painting in chapters 3 and 5; but she chooses not to use actual burial data for Homeric beliefs, perhaps partly in response to Morris. Chapter 2 supplies a useful background for the study of archaic grave markers, but the unwary classicist should know that a methodologically rigorous archaeologist, in particular, will have trouble with it, as with Morris, although for different reasons.Morris and his methodology come under heavy attack in the lengthy Appendix. While some find Morris’ model-building methodology problematic, it is widely accepted by anthropologists looking for an objective method akin to scientific hypothesis testing. S-I opposes this methodology because of its a priori assumptions, yet no methodology is free of cultural bias. We need a variety of approaches, and archaeology must be allowed to give its evidence without either being forced into Morris’ a priori models or S-I’s (and the traditional... (shrink)

"Professor Mundle's authoritative and acclaimed critique of a way of thinking which still shapes the style of Anglo-Saxon philosophy is here presented in a revised text with a new postscript. Mundle shows how Austin, Ryle and Wittgenstein, among others, not only committed grammatical and logical errors akin to those they themselves detected in others, but misunderstood the relatoins between grammar and philosphy. Professor P.L. Heath contributes a new foreword, and Mundle himself answers his opponents in a subtly provocative manner." (...) --. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviews 85 RUSSELL’S CONTRIBUTION TO PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE James Connelly Philosophy, Trent U. Peterborough, on k9l 1z6, Canada [email protected] Graham Stevens. The Theory of Descriptions: Russell and the Philosophy of Language. Basingstoke, uk: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Pp. xiii, 197. isbn: 978-0230 -20116-3. £50; us$85. ver the past decade, Graham Stevens has built his reputation as a lucid, durable, and oftentimes ground-breaking historian of analytic philosophy. His latest book, entitled (...) TheTheory of Descriptions: Russell and the Philosophy of Language, will only add to that burgeoning scholarly legacy. If it has not been established already, this book will doubtless cement Stevens’ place amongst the leading Russell scholars in the world today. It may very well herald Stevens ’ arrival on the scene as a noteworthy contributor to contemporary philosophy of language as well. The central goal of the book is “to bring the historical and purely philosophical analyses of [Russell’s] work into closer alignment” (p. 3). Stevens hopes to overcome a “striking disparity” (p. 2) in the ways that Russell’s contributions to the philosophy of language have been conceived by expositors of his philosophy, on the one hand, versus philosophers of language, on the other. In particular, though contemporary philosophers of language would tend to view Russell’s enormous contribution to that subject as being “undeniable” (p. 1), and to be “bewildered” (p. 94) by any suggestion to the contrary, expositors of Russell’s philosophy have nevertheless been at pains to emphasize that Russell “was not engaged in the philosophical study of language” (p. 2). As Stevens notes, this situation is especially puzzling since “these two groups [of scholars] overlap to a considerable extent” (p. 2). Stevens’ strategy for overcoming this disparity is two-pronged. First he aims to tackle, head on, the fallacious arguments of Monk,1 Dummett,2 and others, to the effect that Russell was not engaged in the philosophy of language. According to Stevens, such arguments have principally appealed to either (1) ______ 1 Ray Monk, “What Is Analytical Philosophy?”. 2 Michael Dummett, Frege: Philosophy of Language. l= 86 Reviews Russell’s dismissal of ordinary language philosophy, (2) his early, non-linguistic, conception of the nature of propositions, or (3) his view that natural language was inherently defective for philosophical purposes, and so called for replacement by a “logically perfect language”. In regards to (1), Stevens argues in a word that “[o]rdinary language philosophy has had its day” (p. 176). Over the past several decades, in other words, leading philosophers of language have come to agree with Russell in viewing ordinary language philosophy as “an outdated, and rather eccentric, relic of mid-twentieth century British philosophy” (ibid.).The classic Russell– Strawson debate over the question whether ordinary language lacks an exact logic3 has been settled decisively in Russell’s favour, as philosophers of language have transformed “the attempt to systematically specify the semantics of large regions of natural language” (ibid.) into a “central project” (ibid.). In regards to (2), moreover, Stevens notes that by this line of reasoning, absurdly, David Kaplan would not qualify as a philosopher of language since he “explicitly invokes the Russellian non-linguistic conception of a proposition as the conception appropriate for providing the content of properly context-situated indexical sentences” (p. 170). And, of course, Kaplan is not at all unique amongst contemporary philosophers of language in appealing to a Russellian conception of propositional content, as the examples of Nathan Salmon,4 Scott Soames,5 and many others show. In regards to (3), finally, Stevens argues that Russell’s dim view of natural language was grounded in his conception of logical form as non-linguistic, and that that conception, in turn, derives simply from the poverty of syntactic theory available to Russell, prior to the Chomskyian revolution in linguistics during the second half of the twentieth century. In light of the conceptual and analytic resources made available by this revolution, however, there exists “no insurmountable obstacle to assimilating Russell ’s notion of logical form to something akin to the modern notion of lf” (p. 172), where lf is conceived as one of four levels of syntactic representation within Chomsky’s Government and Binding Theory... (shrink)

I submit that philosophy makes progress, but it does so in a way that is distinct from the sense in which the word applies to science, and is more akin to what happens in allied fields such as mathematics and logic. I develop a model of philosophy as “evoking” (to use L. Smolin's term) a series of peaks in conceptually defined but empirically constrained, landscapes, or what N. Rescher calls “aporetic clusters.” I also discuss empirical evidence for the existence (...) of such clusters, following a statistical survey of philosophers’ views about their own field, carried out by D. Bourget and D.J. Chalmers. (shrink)

“Artworks are not being but a process of becoming” —Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory In the everyday use of the concept, saying that something is grotesque rarely implies anything other than saying that something is a bit outside of the normal structure of language or meaning – that something is a peculiarity. But in its historical use the concept has often had more far reaching connotations. In different phases of history the grotesque has manifested its forms as a means of (...) subversive resistance against society’s prevailing notions of form and power. What aids this impact and distinguishes two of its basic stylistic features is the grotesque’s dissolution of form and its hyperbole. Such grotesqueries, however, soon solidify into new forms, new structures of meaning, hierarchy and practice, and in this sense the history of the grotesque is, on one hand, a continual opposition and transgression of the prevailing notions of art as well as of God and humanity, while on the other hand it offers continual resistance to its own solidifying process. As such the grotesque will not and cannot be contained in form without it losing the very thing that makes it grotesque. Even though it is somewhat easy to point out certain stylistic features of the grotesque, the sum of those features tell us very little about what is at play within it. Definitions concerned with the grotesque’s content rather than its form faces similar difficulties. Throughout history, expressions relating to the grotesque have been used in defense of a whole host of different social and cultural discourse including, for instance, Catholicism (See Erhard Schön’s Der Teufel mit der Sackpfeife , 1536), Protestantism (See Lucas Cranach’s Der Papstesel , 1523), a material folk culture (see Mikhail Bakhtin’s Rabelais and his World , 1984) and an idealistic romantic structure of meaning (see Wolfgang Kayser’s The Grotesque in Art and Literature , 1957). Thus though the grotesque cannot be reduced to the expression of certain forms or meanings, in order to examine what the grotesque is about one has to try to see how it’s relationship to flow and process and how, by maintaining this relationship, it attempts to avoid solidifying into form and meaning. The process of the grotesque alluded to here revolves around a play between periphery and center, the marginalized and the dominant. Most often this is expressed as a direct negation of the center of power. In the medieval grotesque tradition of the carnival, for example, it is expressed by its emphasis on the nether regions of the body as the center of creation of meaning. Spirit does not come from above, but from the belly, buttocks and genitals, and there is, expressed in this manner, a mockery of the predominant Christian notion of truth and meaning. Such inversions of the sites of meaning most often explicitly express an increased interest in materiality instead of ideal content which comes to the fore through the play between periphery and center. Even in early grotesque Renaissance art (for example in the works of Raphael) the depiction of the mythological or ideal reveals an exploration of the possibilities of the material. The works of art thus explore their own boundaries rather than act as vessels of the divine and in this way the grotesque explores the limits of form and materiality. This in turn brings to the fore a metaphysical dimension in the workings of the grotesque: It is an immanent exploration of its own boundaries. Materiality and metaphysics are joined together, because it is through the awareness of itself as a structuring (dis)order that it places itself in opposition to the prevailing notions of form and power. This way the grotesque expresses an awareness of the division of sign and reality and a search for this reality. It implicitly expresses the awareness that meaning is not something God-given and static, but fluctuating and man-made. In modern explorations of the history of the grotesque it is commonly seen as a form of realism that manifests a shift from the ideal towards the material, freeing art from representing some hidden higher order and instead making the work of art the very site of creation and meaning. Going even further, the grotesque actively opposes the notions of the ideal by marking a shift from an ahistorical view of the world towards the historical. However, this also makes clear why the grotesque has a tendency to solidify into new static forms of meaning, for by establishing itself as a subversive counterforce there is an idea of transgression and emancipation. That is why the grotesque often historicizes and relativizes only to repeat the mistakes of that which it negates: putting itself in the king’s chair. The exploration of the material seems to create new forms and notions of the ideal. The representation of an otherness outside the prevailing notions of meaning and truth becomes a positive manifestation of this otherness as truth itself. Thus the historical “truths” of the grotesque are superseded by history itself. When the expressions of the grotesque solidify into static form and meaning, they become mere objects like anything else in the world. Instead of being this elusive thing of process and flow, it becomes tangible to the existing hierarchy of power as well as history itself. In this way the grotesque can be expunged, included or simply revealed as yet another false notion of truth, which is precisely what has happened with the grotesque throughout the course of history. If from the beginning the expression of the grotesque has not already been in the service of some structure of meaning and truth, it has quickly been included or has quickly included itself in such a structure. But by doing so it rejects its own basis: the tension between periphery and center is replaced by the attempt to create a new center, a new structure of meaning and truth. The doubleness, ambiguity and flow of the grotesque are then rejected by the grotesque itself. THE NON-FORM OF FORM In the critical thinking of Theodor W. Adorno (1903-69) the problem of art, caught between a reductive and prevalent notion of truth and meaning and a peripheral and alienated otherness, is reexamined and reformulated. For Adorno, the instrumental rationality of Enlightenment itself reverts into a new form of mythology which is every bit as static and exclusive as the hierarchies of religion it supersedes. All is excluded that is non-identical to the instrumental mastery of the objects of the world, "For the Enlightenment, anything which cannot be resolved into numbers, and ultimately into one, is illusion; modern positivism consigns it to poetry." 1 As such the non-identical has been banished from the realm of thought and action, and banished specifically to the realm of art. But the realm of art is not able to provide a decent home for it because even modern art is not something entirely autonomous. While it is excluded from the notions of truth and meaning provided by instrumental rationality, it still originates from society. Just like instrumental rationality art is about mastery, structuring and exclusion. Therefore, the problem for art is that it cannot directly provide a space for the non-identical because its mode of operation is similar to that of instrumental rationality. Even worse, art has very few possibilities to free itself from this. If it becomes l’art pour l’art it is at the same time reduced to the very thing instrumental rationality claims it to be: a subjective judgment of taste.expressionism also stands as an example of this. Conversely, art cannot work within the framework of the identity-thinking of society, because any notion of freedom or emancipation would reproduce the exclusive practices of instrumental rationality. For example: Explicit socialist literature may establish itself in opposition to instrumental rationality while at the same time reproducing it. Its language may seem different, but in reality it merely provides a different set of reductive schematics for human life and experience. The problem for the art of the grotesque was, as I mentioned earlier, that far too often it was merely a symbolic manifestation of a notion of otherness—not otherness itself. Because of this the subversive character of the grotesque ends up shaping and containing otherness instead of providing a space for it. According to Adorno the only way to avoid this is to radicalize the grotesque. In order to avoid solidifying into form the work of art has to be an object which cannot be contained in thought or form—a non-form of form. The work of art has to work in a way that it strives for autonomy but without entirely leaving a discernible reality. In other words, it has to pull in two directions at once. Thus the work of art is a paradox. It is autonomous in the sense that it closes itself off from everything outside of the work of art, trying to shy away from the contaminating influence of the identity thinking of instrumental rationality. At the same time though the work of art is heteronomous in the sense that it originates from a specific historical context and is bound to be what society is not. Autonomy and heteronomy are inseparably intertwined. Unable to display otherness itself, but still trying to be a refuge for it, there is only one option for art: It has to turn against itself and destroy its own logic of form, thereby demonstrating how any representation of otherness is impossible. Art becomes a lamentation of the victims of the identity thinking of instrumental rationality and shows the traces of the otherness that is unable to appear. Adorno’s pessimistic theory of art and history stages art as a negative dialectical process where the work of art closes itself off and rejects everything outside, while the individual elements in the work of art destroys its very own logic of form from within: Artworks synthetize ununifiable, nonidentical elements that grind away at each other; they truly seek the identity of the identical and nonidentical processually because even their unity is only an element and not the magical formula of the whole […]. The resistance to them of otherness, on which they are nevertheless dependent compels them to articulate their own formal language, to leave not the smallest unformed particle as remnant. This reciprocity constitutes art’s dynamic; it is an irresolvable antithesis that is never brought to rest in the state of being. 2 Relative to a traditional understanding of the grotesque, Adorno radicalizes the tension between center and periphery, autonomy and heteronomy. In the traditional understanding of the grotesque, as we find it for example in the writings of Mikhail Bakhtin, the grotesque establishes the display of otherness as a new center of meaning and truth. However Adorno rejects such notions and argues instead for a modernism of the grotesque in which both center and periphery are included in a negative dialectical process and continually synthesizing and destabilizing each other’s positions. A modernism of the grotesque works on the inside of the sign or the artwork, continually outlining and questioning the boundaries between materiality and form. This moves the focus away from the relation between the sign or work of art as a conceptual manifestation on one side and the object it refers to on the other side. Instead it implicitly points to the amorphous mass from which the signs and thereby meaning have been carved, the remnants that have been left behind. Modernism of the grotesque does not imply that it is emancipatory or that it reconciles man with nature, and does not represent a new position or a new ideology. It merely remembers and insists on the double nature of man and art: to write or paint yourself or an artwork whole by inscribing meaning in life or by applying form on a canvas is at the same time both creation and destruction. The very signs we use to center meaning in our lives carry its own alienation in them. Meaning surfaces only when process and flow comes to a halt—solidifying, but at the same time excluding parts that do not fit into that particular structure of meaning. NOTHING DONE AND NOTHING UNDONE It has always been difficult for art historians to find a suitable category for the works of the Danish artist Leif Lage (b. 1933). In his paintings the sensitive figuration seems so fragile that it is on the verge of turning into abstraction. Or conversely: the figurative emerges cautiously and hesitantly out of abstraction. As an art critic once wrote, he can almost paint things away. 3 Working in some undefinable space between abstraction and figuration, the Lage’s works shy away from the realm of words, and as a result few critics have been able to write anything meaningful about his works. In fact even fewer have been able to write more than one or two pages. The Danish author and art critic Leif Hjernøe is one of those few, but even he starts off by saying how impossible it is to write about Lage, confessing that his works exist both as process and in a field of in-between which words cannot reach. He writes: Always you find yourself in a place where nothing is done and nothing left undone, and where the elements of the work of art rest in a continuous motion. Always there is the open wound, where infection rather than surgical intervention is considered as an opportunity. And the conflict between matter and antimatter makes all diagnoses uncertain and allows conditions of uncertainty to spread in a place of raw presence. 4 The art works against the diagnosis and the certainty. Words are being eaten up by what is outside the realm of words: tension, process and doubleness. An approach to an understanding of the work of Lage could be to follow his connection to Samuel Beckett (1906-89). One can note, therefore, that Lage has illustrated several of the Danish translations of Beckett’s works. Though one is an author and the other a painter both seek a place where figuration, where the word, erodes. For both this entails an attempt to question and examine and so move in behind the façade of the surface in an exploration of that something or nothing that may be behind representation. At the same time even in the vanishing point of figuration or words, the meaningless words or the disjointed lines still stand as signs of human activity—signs of movement in emptiness. With very few exceptions Lage’s artworks revolve around one motif: Man—most often “en face.” But unlike traditional portraitures Lage’s people are found within. The artworks do not sense the reality of appearances, but rather the existential dimensions within man. As a seismograph they are sensitive to the utmost subjectivity in order to display an objective, sensuous depiction of the very problem of subjectivity. Instead of a static façade of a man, Lage’s “en face” shows the process-character of man. The people in Lage’s paintings are always in process—in the midst of becoming or dissolving. I will take a closer look in the following at the ways in which Lage establishes this sense of being in constant process, of being in-between modes or categories. THE DOUBLENESS OF THE STROKE Lage’s etchings attract attention in particular for the tension conveyed there between the material and the form. The material physically opposes the violence of the needle. But instead of embracing the violence of the needle and the victory over matter—instead of making the artistic creation and figuration express a heroic mastery of the background it is made out of—Lage uses the stroke to express the very tension between stroke and material, figuration and background. In the drypoint etching Untitled from 1983, which illustrated the Danish translation of Beckett’s Ill Seen, Ill Said , the needle tears up the material in long rough lines: Together, the primarily horizontal and vertical lines form a face. Thus the force needed to etch a line in the metal-plate draws attention to itself: It is there in the absence of curves and nuances. Man emerges on the metal-plate after great exertion and in a very simplistic form. This way Lage enhances the nature of the material, as the material’s resistance is not something to overcome. On the contrary the figuration is smitten by its very resistance and as such expresses the violence of its own becoming. Even more pronounced is the fact that the lines do not just show the violence of creation—it actively erases figuration in the same process that creates it. For example the mouth consists of 8-10 horizontal strokes, of which some seem to be connected to each other as if the mouth has been quickly scratched out. The mouth speaks of the inability to speak. In the same way, the eyes are black holes due to a large amount of criss-cross cuts, which together form a dark middle. Those lines, at the same time, form the eyes of the figuration and scratch out the eyes of the figuration. The extroverted aspects of the face—connected to speech and sight—are portrayed as introverted as well. Just as the etchings down into the metal-plate makes something appear. Leif Lage, Untitled , 1983 (etching) The figuration of the etching is connected to creation. It expresses that something is wrought into existence out of nothing by sheer artistic force. However, this force is at the same time presented as a violence of creation, which makes it impossible for form to truly emerge. Herein lies one of the basic principles of Lage’s art, namely that art cannot be that nothing or something behind the realm of words or signs. Without form, art would lose its ability to express anything at all. Form is a necessity if art is to avoid becoming as devoid of expression as the reality is that we cannot reach behind the appearance of things. On the other hand, art cannot raise itself above its own material in joyous celebration of the beauty of form. This would use the material in the manner of an instrument and thus would suppress the otherness it attempts to rescue. When art becomes mere form, any traces of otherness will have dissolved. Then art would be a question of technique, in no way different from the instrumental rationality of society. Therefore art works in a particular space between form and non-form. As Hjernøe says of the works of Lage, it is in the center of the event, in the in-between where things neither are nor are not, "And everything takes place just before it changes character. As the blood just before it coagulates, as the milk just before it separates, as fried egg just before it turns white […]." 5 The precise emphasis on the in-between of Lage’s art points in particular to the work of art as both outside of and in time. The work of art is a singular point in time, but at the same time it is continually in process. In the borderland between form and non-form, between creation and destruction, it shimmers like a fata morgana . The work is done but at the same time undone. It is only there as a cry in response to the inability to come into being. Akin to the etching is the drawing, but while both, of course, use the stroke or line as their main instrument, the paper does not resist the line in the same sense as the metal-plate of the etching. As a result in Lage’s drawings the stroke frolics in a space with almost no tension at all. There is nothing there to keep the pencil stroke at bay, but at the same time this means that there is nothing there to keep it together. One of the more expressive examples of this is found in an untitled drawing from Tegninger og Text ( Drawings and Text ) from 1999. The drawing consists of one unbroken pencil stroke. It is as if the stroke is confused—it darts around on the paper making doodles on the way or gathers itself in more straight lines in the center of the paper. It is in this manner that the semblance of a body is established. A couple of small circles serve as eyes and are the reason that the rest can be read as both face and body instead of pure abstraction. In fact the unbroken stroke serves as both abstraction and figuration as on the one hand it is the stroke that seemingly outlines the shape of a figure, while on the other hand the unbroken stroke dissolves any truly recognizable figuration by continuously, without end or aim, overflowing the boundaries of the figure. Seen again here is a doubleness to the stroke and the act of creation. In the etching it was all about the tension between the resistance of the material which created the doubleness. Here it is the opposite. It is the lack of tension. The stroke is free to do anything, but has no aim: without some kind of resistance, there is nothing to hold figuration together. It threatens to dissolve into nothingness. Conversely, the drawing can also be seen as a process of becoming. Like a form of automatic writing, the pencil darts around until it finds a point of densification. But even in such an interpretation of the drawing, the figuration appears artificial—it points to itself as the result of the artistic act of creation. The stroke is primarily stroke and only secondarily figuration. With its wild movement it calls attention to itself as stroke. Thus the figuration never becomes something in its own right. It points to the basic principle of creation: Someone has drawn me, I am the result of artistic endeavors, and therefore I am not for myself but always overflowing the boundaries that contain me. It is the stroke that in the very same movement creates figuration and dissolves it. Leif Lage, Untitled , 1999 (drawing) THE LIGHTNESS OF COLOR, THE DENSITY OF PAPER Often the watercolor is used as a precursor for larger paintings, because it has an immediacy in which one can quickly paint the main lines of a composition. However, Lage’s watercolors are not temporary points in a process leading to another final painting. They are not sketches, later to be filled with details in another material. For him watercolor is an end in itself. This also implies that he doesn’t try to work against the paper’s absorption of the water color and its tendency to absorb detail. On the contrary, he examines the possibilities inherent in this blurring of the line and absorption of color. As in the previous examples, there are of course recognizable shapes in Lage’s water colors. But these shapes are rarely separable from color, line or even paper. In other words: the figurative and the abstract more or less become one. One of the reasons for this is that Lage often works on wetted paper which means that the paper hungrily absorbs color into its fabric instead of it being on top of the paper. The paper becomes line because it is the absorption of the color which, together with the brush stroke itself, separates the colors from each other. The line is also color and the color is also line, because there is no separation between the different colors other than the colors themselves. At times this results in almost complete abstraction. In such cases Lage add lines with a pencil as if he wants to hold some sort of figuration together. At other times it is the other way around: the strokes of the pencil are a being dissolved by the water color blurring out the figuration. Untitled 1 from 1999 displays various tones of green. The contour of the colors appears unusually rough. Most of all it is reminiscent of a shoreline which has found its form through the work of thousands of years between water and land. Pockets of resistance surface as islands not yet drowned in color—as paper or color not yet consumed by the dominant color. The shape of the colors does not seem created by the hand of the artist, but rather by the inner workings of the watercolor: color against color over time has resulted in this very image, as if it is all a part of a natural process of change and decay. Despite the fact that there are no strong differences in color there seems to be a struggle taking place in the watercolor. For example, inexplicable holes in the dark color, which cover most of the right side of the watercolor, appear as if the underlying color is eating away the dark color, or that the dark color is in the process of covering up the underlying color. The small pockets of resistance demonstrate a process and development that, almost as a happy accident, evokes a couple of small eyes and a large mouth. Behind the colors a few slanted lines can be discerned, but the hand of the artist has long ago disappeared behind the life of the colors. Thus the watercolor seems to be held at precisely the point in time where figuration randomly appears. The small eyes and wide mouth seemingly express the realization of the figuration’s temporality. It is just a moment in time, soon to be consumed again in the life of the colors. The nature, the background it stems from and is part of, moves on undeterred, continuing its everlasting process of creation and decay. In this sense, the watercolor provides an experience of how neither artist nor man is able to transcend the materiality they consist of. The colors of man, the materials man consists of are “becoming” and “progress” but also “decay” and “disappearance”. The artist’s pencil strokes have been eaten up long ago, and the figuration is living on borrowed time. Human or artistic activity is about creating form, transcending mere matter by shaping and applying meaning to it. But Untitled 1 shows the doubleness of such creation: the transience and fragility of human life. Should the figuration come into being, should it rise and transcend the material, which binds it to its temporal existence, it would become nothing because its very existence is conditioned by the life and work of the colors. In the same sense man cannot escape his own temporality. He too, for better or worse, must accept a life in the volatility of sensation. Leif Lage, Untitled 1 , 1999 (watercolor) In most of Lage’s watercolors there seem to be a stronger artistic control than in Untitled 1 . Most often both the arrangement of colors and the technique in which they are painted express the hand of the artist. An example of this is Untitled 2 from 1999. While figuration in Untitled 1 seemed to appear as a happy accident, the figuration is much more “created” in Untitled 2 . Here the most important parts of the figuration, the eyes, the mouth and part of the skull, are colored black and painted on top of the background’s play of colors. The background primarily consists of blue and yellow tones. Only parts of the paper are covered in color, however, which yet again stresses the act of painting: There is a surface which is being filled by color by an artist. The blue tones are concentrated in the figuration, while the yellow tones surround it. All this means that the figuration stands out more clearly in this watercolor. This is also underlined by the fact that the blue and dark tones cover part of the yellow tones as spots here and there. Thus it is not a background which is in the process of consuming figuration, but rather the emerging figuration which blots out the background. Such an understanding is even suggested by how the mouth and eyes are placed in the larger blue color field. The eyes and mouth are in the center of the watercolor, while the blue color field is placed from center out towards the left side. This gives the impression of a face turned slightly to the right and slightly upwards, which again makes the mouth appear to emerge from the paper. It also helps that the mouth cuts the center axis of the watercolor. In other words, the arrangement of the blue and black colors create some depth and perspective which gives the illusion of a figuration, seen partially in profile, emerging from the background. Seen in profile, the eyes and mouth seem extroverted—they almost seem as if they are put on top of the face. But at the same time they are painted as black holes, sucking in the gaze of the onlooker. The watercolor is even more challenging if one follows what may be the faint outline of the skull, which, on the right side of the watercolor, no longer works together with the blue color, but rather alone postulates the outline of the skull. If not the blue color field, but this line, is the outline of the skull, then all of a sudden the face is not in profile but “en face”—staring directly towards the onlooker. Outline and color seemingly work against each other and establish two different expressions. Without the slightly upward tilted expression of the profile, the eyes and mouth do not seem to emerge from the paper. On the contrary, seen “en face,” the eyes and mouth are really gaping pits of darkness. In this sense Untitled 2 is at the same time surface and depth of perspective. The line gives form but at the same time it dissolves the form created by the colors, and vice versa. Leif Lage, Untitled 2 , 1999 (watercolor) As the last example of Lage’s artistic method, I have chosen another untitled work (as indeed nearly all of Lage’s artworks are)—this time from 2000. This is perhaps one of the most figurative watercolors Lage has created, though that doesn’t tell us too much. The painting depicts a human face in blue and green tones on a yellow toned background. The colors create a clear demarcation between the figure and the background, which compensate for the watercolor’s lack of outline. Beneath the face darker tones imply the beginning of the torso, and nuances of color even hint at something which could be a collar. The hair is in even darker tones and its structure is emphasized using pencil strokes on top of the water color. One eye is marked by a brown spot with a darker spot in the middle, while the other eye is added by pencil. The mouth is a round, red dot. In Untitled from 2000 the work between abstraction and figuration is much less pronounced than in the previous examples cited here. Nonetheless the watercolor has a delicacy to it which almost makes the figuration disappear, even as it appears. This has something to do with the fact that all the individual brush strokes have dissolved. The only outlines are those created by the clash of colors. Even the red mouth seems to be more paint than mouth—unable to be formed truly as anything other than a speck of color with some small semblance to a mouth. In contrast to the other watercolors, there is no movement, no progress or decay, just a vibrating standstill. The figure is not emerging or disappearing but embedded in and as surface, and as such it makes the figure seem stuck in its condition rather than freed by the act of giving form: mouth open as a wound. Pencil strokes add detail and life to the hair as an attempt to help the figure emerge. But all this does is create two levels in the watercolor: The pencil strokes are put on top of the figuration rather than being part of it. Thus they end up highlighting the endless distance between the movement and form-giving of the pencil strokes and the static and stuck figure behind these strokes. Leif Lage, Untitled , 2000 (watercolor) MAN AND THE VIEW OF THE ONLOOKER Lage’s works seem at the same time to be an examination of tensions between form and material in art and a display of an image of man full of the same tensions. This is because the people who are emerging in Lage’s images are not just in his works, They are his works. This means that man is not something emerging from a background but is part of this background and vice versa. The art of Lage inscribes man in its surroundings and background. Man is not the ruler of nature. Man does not rise above matter; there is no truly transcendent position for man to occupy in the art of Lage. Instead man is a part of the very matter, it, at the same time, tries to distance itself from in order to distinguish itself from its surroundings. Man emerges in an attempt not to be line, stroke, color. In an attempt to free itself of matter. Should it succeed in this, however, it would turn into nothing. On the other hand, if man fully accepted itself as mere matter it would disappear in it—in instincts, urges and lack of reflection. The appearance of man is thus subject to a state of being in-between. Only in the tension between material and its negation can the outlines of man be traced. However this also means that in the art of Lage man is never something in itself but always in process—on the way to its freedom and its loss. However, Lage’s art is not just about showing the tensions inherent in man but also about showing such tension on the verge of breaking point. In the moment before everything is done, or when nothing yet has been done, the delicate tension between form and material has been stretched to its utmost in such a way that man’s character of process emerges and is contained on the paper or canvas. Therefore, Lage’s art contain traces of human life. Not only is it an autonomous unity of tensions where man is stretched out between its singularity and the surroundings it is a part of. It is also this pulsation between figuration and material which brings about the traces of human endeavor and activity. Even when man almost seems to have disappeared into the material, strokes and lines are still there as a reminder of human activity and potential creative power—as a reminder that hope is still possible and that man is still there. The view of the onlooker seeks out forms and meaning. It seeks outlines and edges. But first and foremost it is the eyes in Lage’s works of art that allow the onlooker to decode the figuration at play. This creates a distinctive relationship between the onlooker and the artwork. The onlooker tries to wrest the enigma from the artwork, tries to reduce it to solid, meaningful form. But the very same moment that hints at such a possibility sees the view of the onlooker confronted with a gaze of its own. The eyes of the figure in the work of art are most often dark pits, as if they were an illustration of the violence committed against the eyes of the onlookers and their search for meaning. Or as if they were a dark reflection of the onlooker’s failed attempts to delineate the traces of life in the artwork to a solid meaningful form. Therefore, the gaze of the figuration speaks not only of its own powerlessness but also of the powerlessness of the onlooker. When the view or sight has trouble finding solid meaningful forms, it has something to do with the fact that the precondition for sight, light, no longer stems from something transcendent. In Lage’s art there is nothing outside the works of art, nothing outside of human life, and as such nothing to shed light on the works of art or human life and reveal solid meaningful forms. All light comes from within. In a western context, light as a medium for sight is central to the understanding of meaning. People speak of the clarity of thought, while knowledge is tied together with enlightenment, and so forth. But the light no longer originates from a divine point of view. It originates from man, who has created himself in the image of God. The problem with this is that light always covers up its own base. Light illuminates something but at the same time it hides itself. 6 While it was previously God who was unknowable, now it is man. It is also problematic that sight and the medium of sight stem from the same place. Following this thought one can posit two final problems. Firstly, the immediacy and presence established by light by making forms and objects accessible to sight is fake. Light is not some independent entity which present things in a neutral manner for the onlooker. It is inextricably tied together with the gaze’s desire after meaning. In other words: Light perverts the appearance of things because it doesn’t originate from some objective entity which allows them to appear as they are. Instead light is based upon and originates from the subject and its conquering gaze, seeking out meaning and form constantly. Secondly, the joining of sight and light makes introspection within human life impossible. Everything can be illuminated by its use value for the subject but only as long as it is separated from the subject, as long as it is an object. But the subject itself cannot be illuminated. Lage’s art tears down such a dividing line between subject and matter, but it does so without reestablishing a divine position from where the light emanates. Therefore, the light in Lage’s art may not illuminate very well. It may not have the certainty presented by modern science or the religions of yesterday. But it does show what such light tries to hide, namely, the subject as it is in its material reality—inscribed in time and death, which are the basic conditions of materiality, but at the same time also full of life in its joy and will to create. For the onlooker the meeting of the gaze in Lage’s works of art is thus also a destruction of the view of the onlooker. The ability to see is challenged in a radical way. Those outlines will not solidify into static form, as if the light was too dim to see. Just as in Lage’s figurations, the view of the onlooker turns to black: turns towards the onlooker in recognition and becoming—or disappearance. NOTES Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno. Dialectic of Enlightenment . (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2002): 4-5. Theodor W. Adorno. Aesthetic Theory . (London & New York, 2002): 176. Carsten Bach-Nielsen. “Mere glæde end gru.” Kristeligt Dagblad . September 24, 2002. Leif Hjernøe. “Den yderliggående inderlighed.” LEIF LAGE—Retrospektiv udstilling 1983 . (Copenhagen: Brøndum, 1983): 18. Ibid. Maurice Blanchot. The Infinite Conversation . (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993): 162-163. (shrink)

The article aims to present the results of empirical research and theoretical analyses concerning the transfer, co-creation, and utilization of scientific knowledge by various entities, emerging at the intersection of science and practice. The research was conducted using survey techniques and in-depth interviews among scientists engaged in research collaboration with entities outside the university, and through case studies of two institutions acting as external partners. Among them were the Lublin City Office and the Lublin Culture Workshops, a municipal cultural institution. (...) The work falls within the realm of social research, which directly (Zerubavel 1997) or indirectly (Sange 1990, Douglas 2011) addresses the functioning and adaptation of various social systems (in this case, institutions and organizations) from the perspective of the communicatively mediated cognitive processes occurring within them (Luhmann 2018, Weick 1995, Lenartowicz et al. 2016a, 2016b). In this context, the subject of cognition and the user of knowledge is not an individual human, but a social system/organization with the capacity to observe itself and its environment, to learn, and to anticipate its future (Hecker 2012; Walsh 1995, Luhmann 2018; Seidl 2006, Lant, Shapira 2001). It posits the existence of a kind of supra-individual rationality, which does not require something like a system's unique self-consciousness, akin to human consciousness, but operates on the principle of L. Fleck's thought collectives, which are emergent in nature with respect to individuals (Sady 2020, Luhmann 1990, Fleck 1986). The rationality of such collectives is defined by their belonging to a functional area of society, hence they differ in the case of entities belonging to the science, economy, politics systems, etc. The research focused on situations where, due to the need for knowledge, various organizations collaborate with scientific units. This research succeeded in characterizing the main stages of establishing and implementing such collaboration, and the main requirements associated with them. The study sought to determine the impact of the interaction of different rationalities on the nature of the co-created knowledge and to identify the conditions of its usefulness, both for external entities and for the scientific system. The adopted indicator of the usefulness of knowledge for the scientific system is the publication of results in scientific journals, while for external entities, its impact on the decision-making process, such as changing operational strategies. In this case, the mechanism of translating knowledge into changes in organizational practices was also examined, paying attention to the existing mechanisms of collective learning within the organization. (shrink)

I consider the idea of a propositional logic of location based on the following semantic framework, derived from ideas of Prior. We have a collection L of locations and a collection S of statements such that a statement may be evaluated for truth at each location. Typically one and the same statement may be true at one location and false at another. Given this semantic framework we may proceed in two ways: introducing names for locations, predicates for the relations among (...) them and an “at” preposition to express the value of statements at locations; or introduce statement operators which do not name locations but whose truth-conditional effect depends on the truth or falsity of embedded statements at various locations. The latter is akin to Prior’s approach to tense logic. In any logic of location there will be some basic operators which we can define. By ringing the changes on the topology of locations, different logical systems may be generated, and the challenge for the logician is then in each case to find operators, axioms and rules yielding a proof theory adequate to the semantics. The generality of the approach is illustrated with familiar and not so familiar examples from modal, tense and place logic, mathematics, and even the logic of games. To the memory of Ted Dawson, who introduced me to philosophy and the writings of Arthur Prior. (shrink)

Within the otherwise lively debate on neuroethics, little attention has been devoted to the peculiar methodological issues and challenges it faces. My aim is to track down its methodological specificities. Firstly, I will investigate to which traditional debates neuroethics bears similarity and to what extent it actually represents a novelty in ethical thinking. While the ethics of neuroscience is akin to bioethics, the neuroscience of ethics seems akin to moral psychology. And yet they differ as far as the (...) level of explanation of human moral behavior and reasoning is concerned. Thus, while the neuroscience of ethics and moral psychology share a family resemblance, they cannot be reduced to one another. Secondly, I will explore three different philosophical temperaments towards the role empirical findings can and should have in normative ethics and in metaethics. Prudential reasons would recommend openness to new sources of evidence without risking either reductionism nor neglect. -/- I metodi della neuroetica: la neuroscienza dell’etica è davvero una nuova sfida per la filosofia morale? Riassunto: Nonostante il dibattito in ambito neuroetico sia molto vivace, poca attenzione è stata dedicata alla questione relativa al suo metodo specifico e ai problemi a cui va incontro. Il mio scopo è quello di identificare le specificità metodologiche di questa disciplina. Anzitutto cercherò di determinare a quali dibattiti tradizionali la neuroetica può essere avvicinata e in che misura invece questa costituisce una novità all’interno del pensiero etico. Mentre l’etica della neuroscienza ha delle affinità con la bioetica, la neuroscienza dell’etica appare maggiormente simile alla psicologia morale, sebbene tali discipline siano diverse fra loro per via del livello a cui spigano il comportamento morale umano e il ragionamento. Pertanto, nonostante la neuroscienza dell’etica e la psicologia morale rivelino una certa somiglianza di famiglia, non è possibile ridurre l’una all’altra. In secondo luogo esplorerò tre diversi atteggiamenti filosofici rispetto al ruolo che i risultati empirici giocano o dovrebbero giocare rispetto all’etica normativa e alla metaetica. Ragioni di prudenza suggeriscono di rimanere aperti verso nuove fonti di evidenza evitando tanto il riduzionismo quanto la trascuratezza. (shrink)

In this paper I explore a positivist methodological tradition in early demand theory, as exemplified by several common traits that I draw from the works of V. Pareto, H. L. Moore and H. Schultz. Assuming a current approach to explanation in the social sciences, I will discuss the building of their various explanans, showing that the three authors agreed on two distinctive methodological features: the exclusion of any causal commitment to psychology when explaining individual choice and the mandate to test (...) the truth of demand theory on aggregate data by statistical means. However, I also contend, from an epistemological point of view, that the truth of demand theory was conceived of in three different ways by our authors. Inspired by Poincaré, Pareto assumed that many different theories could account for the same data on individual choice, coming close to a kind of conventionalism -though I prefer to refer to this position as theoreticism. Moore was himself akin to Pearson's approach, which could be named descriptivist insofar as it resolved scientific laws into statistical descriptions of the data. Finally, Schultz tried to reconcile both approaches in an adequationist stance with no success, as we shall see. (shrink)

Kant's 'Copernican Revolution', which began in the Critique of Pure Reason (1781/1787), had, by the early 1790s, fundamentally altered the terrain of German philosophy – but not entirely in the way that Kant had foreseen. Skeptical challenges to Kant's discursive account of cognition, in which experience arises from the separate faculties of sensibility and understanding, had led thinkers such as K.L. Reinhold and J.G. Fichte to attempt to provide a first, foundational principle for the critical philosophy. These efforts were enormously (...) influential, but by the middle of the 1790s, they too were facing a great deal of critical scrutiny. The central challenge to the Fichtean project came from an unlikely quarter: a group of young thinkers and poets who are collectively known as the early Romantics. For the Romantics, Fichte's project remains too 'subjectivist', for it tries to provide an account of the world by beginning with the conditions that govern subjectivity alone. Rather, the Romantics argue that the world must be understood in terms of a monistic Absolute, akin to Spinoza's substance, in which all dualisms are overcome. It is with this step that Absolute Idealism comes on the scene, and sets the stage for the development of Hegel's system in the early 1800s. This essay, which continues the story of 'Who's Who from Kant to Hegel I', examines the ways in which early Romanticism reacted to the Fichtean project, looks at a variety of anti-foundationalist idealisms that the Romantics – in particular Hölderlin, Novalis, Schlegel, and Schleiermacher – developed, and traces the role that Friedrich Schelling plays in offering the first systematic account of Absolute Idealism. (shrink)

continent. 2.1 (2012): 29–35. Translated by Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei from Jeroen Mettes. "Politieke Poëzie: Enige aantekeningen, Poëtica bij N30 (versie 2006)." In Weerstandbeleid: Nieuwe kritiek . Amsterdam: De wereldbibliotheek, 2011. Published with permission of Uitgeverij Wereldbibliotheek, Amsterdam. L’égalité veut d’autres lois . —Eugène Pottier The modern poem does not have form but consistency (that is sensed), no content but a problem (that is developed). Consistency + problem = composition. The problem of modern poetry is capitalism. Capitalism—which has no (...) image: the unrepresentable Idea of “everything.” The problem is that a poem cannot be justified. There is no excuse for it. Political poetry— pure poetry—has to be problematic, though not in a mannerist way. Yes, its problem is first its own problem—poetry’s existence in the same world as the newspaper—but therefore also always everybody’s problem (the problem of any world at all). The cult of the sublime points at a suspect desire for transcendence, nostalgia for paradise lost (the womb?). Melancholia of the post-. But a problem neither sorrows nor mourns, it is alive, and the fact that it is alive is the problem—the problem for death (rigidity, the status quo). Our symbols and ideologies do not hide any god: symbolic = state; imaginary = human; real = money. Problem: the possibility of communal speech (poetry) in the absence of a “we.” Or: what is a “we” that is not a collective subject (or in any case is not a volonté générale )? What is a universal history that is not a History? This work was started in the shade of the anti-globalization protests at the end of November 1999. I considered N30 to be the closure of the nineties, of my adolescence, and of the a seemingly total extinction of social desire. From the beginning I was skeptical about the alterglobalization movement as the avant-garde of a new politics, but something was happening . Maybe this event did not show that, as the slogan would have it, “another world” is possible, but for me it indicated that such possibility was at least still possible. That naked possibility is carrying forward. And if the fundamental tone of this work sounds more desperate than utopian, this is not caused by the catastrophic sequence that since 1999 has plunged us ever deeper into the right-wing nightmare—a nightmare that this work also gives an account for—but because my hope as yet remains empty. Composition . Composition is no design, but the production of an autonomous block of affects (i.e. a POEM), rhythmically subtracted from the language of a community. A poem does something. Is something. New Sentence . Choosing the non sequitur as compositional unit has the advantage that an abstract composition is subjected to the stress of concrete, social references. Where there is a sentence, there is always a world. (This does not hold necessarily for words on their own.) And where sentences collide, something akin to a textual civil war takes place. It is not about “undermining” whatever, or de-scribing the raging global civil war, but about writing social (or even: ontological) antagonism -- including all its catastrophic and utopian possibilities. Minor resistance. Why would poetry be the no protest zone par excellence? It is nothing but protest, not simply qua “content,” but in its most fundamental essence: rhythm. Rhythm is resistance against language, time, and space, and the basis of (what we will continue to call) autonomy. Rhythm starts with the anti-rhythmic caesura as Hölderlin remarked about Sophocles, a disruption of the quotidian drone. The destruction of everything that is dead inside of us. The noise of the avant-garde has never been the representation of the noise of (post)modernity (from the television or shopping mall), but the sober noise of the systematic exchange of an unbearable worldview. The poet does not describe, but looks for a way out: There is a Grain of Sand in Lambeth that Satan cannot find Nor can his Watch Fiends find it, tis translucent & has many Angles But he who finds it will find Oothoons palace, for within Opening into Beulah every angle is a lovely heaven William Blake was not mad. And there has always been only one poetry: the poetry of paradise. The principle is that there is something in art (the essentially creative element) that is disgusted by that which, unlike art, does not aim for the supreme. Wonder is not supreme, tranquility is not supreme, beauty is not supreme. Even amusement is not supreme! The supreme is supremely open, “das Einfache,/ Das Schwer zu machen ist” 1 : paradise. That is abstract. Literally. For me it is not about a concrete imagination, an idyll or utopia. There is no doubt a need for that, but it is not so much the supposed lack of imagination or ideals (human rights are ideals), but a fundamental lack of desire (human rights are no desires) that we suffer from, and from which we do not need to remove Nietzsche’s label of “nihilism.” “We.” George Oppen: “ Of Being Numerous asks the question whether or not we can deal with humanity as something which actually exists.” What is less actual than humanity? Nowadays it appears as a lifeless ideology of cynical power politics. Or as what makes one think. It is a shame to be human. The event is the caesura that defines rhythm. Writing toward the event is not the description of the event, but marking an abstract and intense space in which the event may unfold and keep itself. It is a task. “Remember that thou blesseth the day on which I seized thee, because such is thy obligation.” The event is a contraction (or a series of contractions) with its own rhythm and unique qualities. It is more than an explosion or demonstration. But at the same time less. The endless repetition of images and stories in the media points to a fear for the indeterminate and indeterminable void of the event. In the end there is nothing to see. We do not live in disaster’s shade or miracle’s light, but rather in the rhythm, which is contracted time, having little to do with omnipresent representations. For this book I did not intend a rhythm of evental representations (a narrative rhythm), but a rhythm which would be an event itself , because it draws the border between artwork and history. My desire for a direct engagement with the “extra-textual reality” has nothing to do with the representation of “rumor in the streets.” (What has less street cred than representation?) Naturally, a poem is no historical event and does not change anything. But a poem is a part of history that wants to be repeated forever, constructed in such a way that it is worthy of repetition. It is a part of desire (composition) made consistent (durable). The “historical event” flares up and burns down, and has to burn down to be effective. The leftovers are images and stories (representations), History—no event. The artwork—that is the ambition— remains event (though monumental and inefficient/inoperable). (No wonder that a historical singularity, a revolution, reminds us of a work of art; the resurrection yearns for a judgment, an affirmation; everything depends on it.) Hence the title does not summarize the book, let alone contract its “content” into a quasi-transcendental signifier. The title is juxtaposed to the book, like everything else inside the book, and in that relation it precisely forms a part of it. The ideal work is an open whole, lacking nothing but to which everything may be added. I have been interested in this “everything,” the world, or as I said above: capitalism. “Everything” is not the space for “wonder”—a code word, a shibboleth for petty bourgeois imagination (I recognize myself in the strangest things, a speaking dog, a canal, a pond standing straight—oh my god). No. The world is a social world, not YOUR world, poet. Power is number one. I will call “Dutch,” or “shitty,” whatever denies this power. That hurts, but this pain is an expression of the desire in the world to write another world, or as Blanchot says, “the other of all worlds” 2 : the world. Not as what “is there,” but rather as that which urges for an escape from what “is.” This is a testament of how radical reality has become, for me—or rather, a writing body—in a having-been-written. I am not interested in the problem of “meaning” as misunderstood by literary scholarsi: “order” in “chaos,” “symbolization.” Bullshit. What is there, hop, hope, now: the meaning of the taste in my mouth. Bullshit. I am not interested in the frustration of interpretation; I am writing for readers who do not want to interpret. I do not know how many “professional readers” will hear the music of a paragraph like: Sun. Sushi. Volvo. I hope more than I would think. There is a suggestion (or rather, an actual production) of speed and infinitive owing to the absence of plosives, i.e. articulations such as /k/, /t/, or /p/. Can you hear the slick suaveness? Driving car dark, vocal chiaroscuro of the word “sushi.” The unstressed /i/ stands in the middle of dark vowels and thus acquires its own special out of focus , like a momentary flash or brilliance—an obscure light. It is not about recognizing a story, but about avoiding any story whatsoever: the car disappears in the glow, cars and raw fish have nothing in common except their articulation in a language that brings them together, blurring them. A world appears in its disappearance. For a moment, light is a metaphor for language, though it cannot be reduced to tenor. It is not necessary to be a linguist or philosopher to hear this—a “difficult” poem all too often becomes an allegory of its own impenetrable being-language. The only demand: leave your hermeneutical fetish at home. This was no interpretation. Most shit has been stolen etcetera. That is no longer interesting. You cannot shoot the body with information and let your lawyers reclaim the bullets. So every sentence has been stolen. Also the ones “out” “of” “my” “head.” Why would I be allowed to steal from myself and not from others? Man takes what he needs to move forward. Whatever he encounters, finds in front of him, “occurs” to him. The writer as text editor, or singing pirate. Nothing new here. Important difference with for example Sybren Polet’s 4 montage technique: anti-thematicism. Most of the time ferocious citation from whatever I was reading, listening to, ended up in, and so on. I wrote chapter 12 on my laptop while watching CNN. On the air instead of en plein air . I often employed search engines to generate material. Chapter 20 offers the purest example of this. Often I stop recognizing a particular citation after some time. It is not uncommon for a stolen sentence to conform itself to the paragraph in which it finds itself. Sometimes I nearly arbitrarily replace words. Arbitrariness as a guarantee for absolute democracy. It is a poetics of the non sequitur : a conclusion that does not follow from the premises, the strange element in the discourse. A discourse of strangers. No logical, narrative, thematic unity. There is unity in speed/flight. It has to be read linearly, but not necessarily (not preferably) from beginning to end. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, but this line precedes every point. The middle, the acceleration, comes first. A point occurs where two lines cross. It has been written from up close, at the level of the tension between sentences. Nothing to be seen from a distance: no form except the exchange of form, no geometrical or mythical meaning. You have to get in, “groping toward a continuous present, a using everything a beginning again and again” (Stein). 5 In Dutch, experimental poetry has been mainly dense: a small rectangular form filled with a maximum amount of poetic possibility. But at the moment the poem starts to relax, the anecdotical content seems to increase. This is what is called “epic”: long, narrative. I believe that an epic is more than that, in fact something completely different. An epic is “a poem including history,” 6 a long poem tied up with the life of community, that as a whole does not need to be narrative. The American poets of the twentieth century (Pound, Williams, Zukofsky, Oppen, Olson, Silliman) have put the epic back on the map by interpreting the poem itself as a map, and writing it as navigation. They have invented the experimental epic, a genre that has generated little original following in “our” poetry. N30 is the middle part—“always start in the middle”—of a trilogy, the contours of which remain as of yet unclear, although each episode investigates one of the three “ecstasies of time”—past, present, future—concerning society X. N30 concerns itself with the PRESENT: not with the description of actual facts but of the rhythm and the intense depth in which facts appear to us. Where are we? We are camping in the desert. Sometimes we are looking at the stars. As opposed to maximum density and minimal tension (a characteristic of most (post-)experimental lyricism), I have sought a minimal density and maximum tension in this book, considered as a long non-narrative prose poem. On the one hand, the minimal density is obtained by the inherent formlessness of prose, on the other hand by the conscious refusal of any active (formal, non-rhythmic) synthesis: the poem tells nothing, shows nothing, has no theme. I did not seek maximum tension either by loading the quotidian with epiphanic radioactivity (“wonder,” confirmation from above), or by means of the intensity of the linguistic structure. I want an abstract tension, but social in its abstraction, in other words, not neutralized by and subjected to Form. Instead of form (transcendent): composition (immanent). The concept is series. Ideal: every unit is necessary for the efficacy of the others and the whole, their relation is purely linear, i.e. non-hierarchic, non-syllogistic, non-discursive, non-narrative. Sentence related to sentence like paragraph to paragraph and chapter to chapter; the whole means nothing and represents nothing. Inside the sentence: syntax (Chomsky’s tree, a type of parallel circuit), outside: parataxis (coordination, an asyntactic line through language and world). I consider duration—the energy of duration (rhythm)—to be the fundament of a poem, the temporal inclination to delimit a “space.” Being as consistency, its consistency. A spatial part of time is not merely a metaphor for an inevitable trajectory, an inescapable time, something like “our time.” Not merely—because rhythm comes from language and is not projected onto it; the poem derives from the world like a scent and a color and a life from a flower. A series, a sequence: nothing potential, but truly infinite—the movement of an infinitude. The infinite series = everything minus totality. That means that there is no container—no Form, no Self, no Image, no Structure, not even a Fragment—just “the prose of the world.” No representation, but also no staging of the impossibility of representation (the postmodern sublime). These are no fragments, no image of a fragmented world or personality, no cautious incantations around the Void. It does not exist. It is a movement. Buying bread, a flock of birds, a bomb falling—they do not depict or represent anything, not literally, not metaphorically. There is an Idea, which is however nothing more than a rhythm, in the same way that capitalism is nothing more than a pure function. Parataxis: the white space between two sentences stresses, which is nevertheless always there, also between words, even between letters: the out of focus of idle talk, the gutter, the irreducible Mallarméan mist which renders even the seemingly most transparent text legible. The white space suggests a neutral medium for free signification, a substance of language. A non sequitur is an element from a foreign discourse, which stresses the white space as space, and problematizes freedom for supra-sentential signification. I start by withdrawing material, leaving the initiative to the sentences. In general a word presupposes less often a discourse than a sentence. What discourse is presupposed by “dog”? We could think of several, but why would we? It is more probable that, when faced with the naked word, we think of its naked (dictionary) meaning, of its denotative signified. By means of two simple interventions we may also write the word as sentence: Dog. In no way this suggests the discourse from which this sentence originates, but in any case we’re presupposing one. This is shown by questions like: “Whose dog? Who’s a dog? What kind of dog?” Etc. (Sentences are question marks.) A sentence implies/is a microcosm—a subject, a verb, an object, and so on. Even an incomplete or ungrammatical sentence does so. My main fascination while writing this book is the worldly and social aspect of language, an aspect that often becomes invisible, or rather, transparent in narrativity—the stretching of sentences into stories. Narrativity organizes a new discourse and a new world, and places a sometimes all too dispersing relation of transparence in between. The conventional novel is the brothel of being. I do not intend to prohibit brothels, and I have certainly not intended to write an anti-novel (THIS IS A POEM), but I do consider narrativity (in general, in poetry, in the news, in daily life) to be ontologically secondary with regard to an immediate being in the world through sentences, also if the latter have been withdrawn from a narrative or otherwise externally structured discourse (which in that case would therefore be chronologically primary ). Naturally, two or more sentences are always in danger of telling stories or arguing, just like the world is always in danger of becoming an objective representation, facing us, strangers. That is why need to wage war—against representation and against the interface, against interaction. AGAINST THE “READER.” To the extent that a sentence is worldly, writing is a condensed global war, and in so far as there is ultimately only one world and one open continuum of languages, it is a global civil war. Nice subject for an epic. The elaboration of a singular problem—prose as the outside of poetry, the form of the novel as purely prosodic composition scheme—“expresses” the universal problem: capitalism as Idea of the world vs. poetry as language of an (im)possible community. The paragraphs are blocks of rhythmically contracted social material. By choosing the sentence as the basic compositional component, an abstract whole may contain social sounds, without telling a story or showing an image. Composition is subrepresentative —a rhythmic, passive synthesis, or rather: a synthesis of syntheses. I never write large blocks of prose in one sitting, because there is no obvious organizational vector —plot, theme, conscience—outside the inherent qualities of the material itself. Usually I write down one sentence, sometimes two, but rarely more than three. Those sentences are usually placed in the text which I am editing at the time. In fact, there is no original composition, new chapters split off from chapters which became too long during the editing process. (Revision mainly consists of adding and inserting, displacing and dividing; only during the last phase, when the text has gained enough consistency, there may be subtraction to tighten the composition; each chapter requires a season of daily revision). This constant revision, accompanied by a continuous influx of collective background noise (to speak with Van Bastelaere), 7 makes every chapter a block condensed (“historical” and “personal”) time. The block itself is a-personal and a-historic; it is ontologically autonomous. If there is such a thing as a spirit of the times, I do not try to offer an image of it, but rather to cancel something of it by erecting a monument of its own excrement within its own boundaries. Tuning and dis-tuning , “in de taal der neerslachtigen een eigen geluid doen klinken,” 8 in other words, desiring in an Elysian way. In this sense I have intended to be able to write a political poetry. The ultimate political poem is the epic, “the tale of the tribe.” I consider N30 to be a prolegomenon to a future epic (of which it in the end will form a part a structural moment, as introduction-in-the-middle), an extended pile on top of an epic as narrative, a question of the tribe and question of its history. I was burdened by too much satire, too much bullshit. But: satire willy-nilly = the only justifiable satire. Against the abstract universalism of the market (“globalism”): concrete disgust, a positive way of saying “No.” Moreover, disgust is a specifically total attitude, which ultimately concerns the world as a whole. I hate this or that, but I am disgusted by EVERYTHING (when I am disgusted), and so it appears that satire is in fact related to the epic, in so far as it concerns society, the cosmos, history. Maybe it is no coincidence that the Dutch literary canon knows no great poet of disgust; what could be more fearful to us than society, the cosmos, and history? The T-tendency (T from Tollens 9 ) clearly points into the direction of the small, friendly, ironic, melancholic, acquiescent, wondrous, and so on. The anti-political, anti-cosmic, anti-historical. (Why am I so philosophical? To scare away the Dutchies.) And most of all: the “poetical” (the pseudo-mysticism from the backyard). Yes, the N in N30 also stands for the Netherlands (just like 30 indicates the number of chapters). I was not in Seattle, I do not live in Iraq. But is not the whole world bleeding to death on Dutch paving stones? Let’s hope that we mowed away something with this total satire, also “in myself.” The arrogant stupidity that definitely thinks to know the essence of freedom (the free development of esthetic needs inside the void), that cannot take anything serious, only believes in the disciplined bestiality of the individual (“norms and values”) and the mere functioning of a social factory which finds no justification whatsoever outside its functioning (“get to work”)… Who knows. A certain aimed destruction leaves grooves and craters, mapping out a next adventure. Pound’s periplum : sailing while mapping the coasts. Immanent orientation. The terrain changes with the map, history changes with the poem. Maps never merely organize the chaos, transcendent schemes imposed on a formless Ding-an-sich . They organize from within, surfing. But they are most of all routes back into the chaos or forward to paradise (final identity of chaos and paradise; Schlegel: “ Nur diejenige Verworrenheit ist ein Chaos aus der eine Welt entspringen kann ”10). A poem is not only a piece of history, it is also a flight from history. Maps give chaos to the form of reality , open escape routes, break through representations, make us shivery and dazed. Paradise is immanent to a fleeting desire. History is the history of labor—this is Adam’s curse—and the poet works too: For to articulate sweet sounds together Is to work harder than all these, and yet Be thought an idler by the noisy set Of bankers, school masters, and clergymen The martyrs call the world 11 But: the poet works in paradise. The paradox of the artwork, the work that is no work, the piece of history that cannot be reduced to History—this is explained by The Space of Literature , a virtual space, an autonomous rhythm, not outside, but in the midst of the noise, a piece of paradise in hell, a postcard from the vale of tears addressed to paradise, to X. Political poetry means: a poetry that dares to think about itself, about its language and about its world and about the problematic relation between both, which is this relation as problem. A poetry that thinks at all, articulates its problem. It has nothing to do with journalism or morality or debate, let alone the law or the state. It has nothing to do with “criticism” if this means the replacement of incorrect representations by other, more correct representations. It has something to do with ethics in the sense of learning to live. It has something to do with the community and the language of the community (whichever that may be) and the role of the poet regarding the community. It concerns justice without judgement or measure. In the end the just word is just a word , to paraphrase Godard: it is from a future that is unimaginable. It Is no rational engagement, but an aversion against everything that obstructs life, and love for everything what is worthy of having been loved. The world is engaged with me, not the other way round. First Exodus, then Sinai. A desire does not start with an agenda. To answer the question whether I am really so naive as to want to change the world: “We only want the world.” Justice is the world appealing to us to liberate it from all possible chains, from each organization and inequality, to be it, smooth, equal, under a clear sky—a desert and a people in a desert. That moment between Egypt and the Law. It is not a revolution, but the sky above the revolution. Poetry = the science of escape. There is no art that we already know. The weakness of modernistic epic poetry seems to me to be the unwillingness to completely abandon narrative as a structural principle, in favor of a composition “around” or from an event. The China Cantos and Adams Cantos are the low point, and the Pisan Cantos the high point of Pound’s poetry. Two types of research: archival representation of the past vs. ontology of the present (which virtually presupposes the entire history). Presupposing an event means that it is impossible for the poet to stage his own absence, but in no way makes the work personal. An event is the unknown, the new invading into the business as usual, so also the personal. The question heading this research is not: “Who am I?” but “What is happening?” The book is as little illegible as Mondrian’s work is invisible. Form is of interest only to the extent that it empowers liberation. Ron Silliman So no formalism, but what it means to live in this world and to have a future in it. I want something that holds together that’s not smooth. Bruce Andrews The past above, the future below and the present pouring down: the roar, the roar of the present, a speech— William Carlos Williams If my confreres wanted to write a work with all history in its maw, I wished, from the beginning to start all over again, attempting to know nothing but a will to create, and matter at hand. Ronald Johnson NOTES 1) “The easy thing/ that is difficult to make.” Bertold Brecht, Lob des Kommunismus . (All footnotes are the translator’s) 2) Maurice Blanchot, The Space of Literature , trans. Ann Smock. Lincoln/London: University of Nebraska Press (1989), 75. 3) Mettes uses the word “Neerlandicus,” which refers to scholars of Dutch language and literature. 4) Dutch poet. 5) Gertrude Stein. “Composition as Explanation.” A Stein Reader . Ed. Ulla E. Dydo. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press (1993), 495-503. 6) Ezra Pound. 7) Flemish poet. 8) “Resounding an original sound in the language of the despondent.” A. Roland Holst, De afspraak . 9) Dutch poet. 10) “Only such a confusion is a chaos which can give rise to a world.” 11) W.B. Yeats, “Adam’s Curse.&rdquo. (shrink)