One of the core problems with engineering ethics education is perceptual. Although ethics is meant to be a central component of today’s engineering curriculum, it is often perceived as a marginal requirement that must be fulfilled. In addition, there is a mismatch between faculty and student perceptions of ethics. While faculty aim to communicate the nuances and complexity of engineering ethics, students perceive ethics as laws, rules, and codes that must be memorized. This paper provides some historical context to (...) better understand these perceptual differences, and suggests that curriculum constraints are important contributing factors. Drawing on the growing scholarship of student engagement approaches to pedagogy, the paper explores how students can be empowered to effect change in the broader engineering curriculum through engineering ethics. The paper describes a student engagement approach to pedagogy that includes students as active participants in curriculum design—a role that enables them to critically reflect about why ethics is a requirement. Including students in the process of curriculum design leads students to reframe ethics as an integrative tool with the capacity to bring together different engineering departments and build bridges to non-engineering fields. This paper argues that students can and should play an active and important role in relocating ethics from the periphery to the core of the engineering curriculum. (shrink)

Introduction There is a paramount need for moral development for pharmacists and pharmacy students to practice the patient-centered profession. We aimed to explore the current situational judgment utilizing ethical reasoning among undergraduate pharmacy students. Methods A set of ten ethical dilemmas, representing potential real-life situations that the students come across in the university and may face in the future as a pharmacist were developed by a team of students, academic staff, and stakeholders. These ethical dilemmas were validated, checked for accuracy, (...) and piloted. An online questionnaire was created consisting of these ten scenarios as open-ended questions and administered to fourth year and fifth year PharmD students in a public university located at the city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, asking them how they would react in that situation. Responses of the participants were analyzed using thematic analysis independently by four researchers and inter-rater agreement were achieved through consensus. Results Out of 205, 186 students completed the questionnaire with a response rate of 90.7%. Analysis and resulted in the generation of 32 codes, which were then categorized into seven overarching themes: student engagement, social and professional responsibility, academic integrity, legal obligation, moral obligation, signposting, and moral engagement and patient safety. Conclusions Undergraduate pharmacy students experience complex state of mind in connection with ethical reasoning. The participants’ situational judgment were driven by cultural norm, authority, and responsibility. Student engagement is also affected by the state of mind and feelings of mutual trust, perceived cultural influence and peer pressure. The students were prone to seek help from university administrators or teachers when faced with situations in which they were helpless. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Mind of Charles Hartshorne: A Critical Examination by Donald Wayne Viney and George W. ShieldsLeon NiemoczynskiThe Mind of Charles Hartshorne: A Critical Examination. Donald Wayne Viney and George W. Shields. Anoka, MN: Process Century Press, 2020. 584 pp. $40.00 cloth.Over the past decade process philosophy has undergone a significant renaissance most notably due to the towering presence of the thought of Alfred North Whitehead in that tradition. (...) Charles Hartshorne by manner of contrast has not had such a towering presence. Part of the reason this is the case is due to a paucity of introductory literature on the thought of Charles Hartshorne—literature that might contribute to a “starter kit” so to speak in mastering Hartshorne’s massive oeuvre. The Mind of Charles Hartshorne: A Critical Examination by Donald Wayne Viney and George W. Shields, both former students of Hartshorne and experts in process philosophy themselves, have authored a welcome contribution to an introductory literature that will most certainly elevate awareness of Hartshorne’s importance to its rightful place alongside that of Whitehead. The book is successful in its aims of “giving a reasonably comprehensive account of Hartshorne’s philosophy with an eye of presenting his best arguments...” (the “correcting what we see as misunderstandings of his views appearing in the critical literature” part may have been best left out) and “updating Hartshorne scholarship” (viii). There are ten chapters in total, appendix essays, the aforementioned bibliography, endnotes, and name and subject indexes.The Preface situates the mind of Charles Hartshorne as spanning the twentieth century and engaging metaphysics even when it was unfashionable to do so. Hartshorne thought about a wide-ranging and diverse range of subjects in both philosophy and science, aesthetics, metaphysics, applied philosophy, and theology. He never questioned modern science or evolution and believed that while metaphysics and empirical science have different methods each ensures its own way to objectivity. One learns that Hartshorne’s process metaphysics is also called “neo-classical” philosophy or speculative philosophy. His thought “gave full weight to the dynamic, relational, processive temporal and creative, affective dimensions of the universe” (vi). Hartshorne was known as much for his “panentheism,” or view that God transcends nature but also may be found immanently within it, as he was for his critique of traditional or scholastic classical theology—especially in his logic of theism where he recreates a modal version of the ontological argument. [End Page 94]Chapter 1, “The Career and Personality of Charles Hartshorne,” discusses just that. What seemed most important to me was the discussion of Hartshorne’s formative background of reading novels and poetry by Emerson, Melville, or Camus as a way of intensely living, his studying under William Ernest Hocking, and his Sheldon Traveling Fellowship where he studied for a time with Husserl and read and reviewed Heidegger. Probably the most important biographical details are that Hartshorne was given the assignment of editing the Peirce papers along with Paul Weiss as a Research Fellow while at Harvard University and he also met and graded for Whitehead, who along with C.S. Peirce, would become the twin pillars of all his thinking as a “Peircean and Whiteheadian” (11). From Peirce, we learn that Hartshorne took “possibility is best conceived of as a continuum with no least member” and from Whitehead, “actuality is discrete and discontinuous (atomistic), composed of momentary flashes of experiences” (11). For Hartshorne process and relativity are metaphysically basic.Chapter 2 begins with Hartshorne’s idea that, “Nature comes to us as constituted by feelings, not as constituted by lifeless, insentient matter” (28). Reality has an affective tone in which there is a layered complexity of feeling and social relation. In other words, contra Locke or Hume, feeling is objectively part of an objective affective continuum and is not nominalistically “painted on bare sense impressions” (46). Such might be described as a doctrine of “panexperientialism”— “the view that the basic constituents of reality are flashes of experience” (46). Experience and feeling stretch in their continuity to meet the bounds of nature. Chapter two continues with a wonderful discussion of Hartshorne’s aesthetics: “beauty is the mean between extremes” (48).Chapter 3 provides a... (shrink)

This book offers an innovative introduction to the psychological basis of mathematics and the nature of mathematical thinking and learning, using an approach that empowers students by fostering their own construction of mathematical structures. Through accessible and engaging writing, award-winning mathematician and educator Anderson Norton reframes mathematics as something that exists first in the minds of students, rather than something that exists first in a textbook. By exploring the psychological basis for mathematics at every level - including geometry, algebra, calculus, (...) complex analysis and more - Norton unlocks students' personal power to construct mathematical objects based on their own mental activity, and illustrates the power of mathematics in organizing the world as we know it. Including reflections and activities designed to inspire awareness of the mental actions and processes coordinated in practicing mathematics, the book is geared towards current and future secondary and elementary mathematics teachers who will empower the next generation of mathematicians and STEM majors. Those interested in the history and philosophy that underpins mathematics will also benefit from this book, as well as those informed and curious minds attentive to the human experience more generally. Anderson Norton is Professor in the Department of Mathematics at Virginia Tech, USA, where he has been teaching mathematics courses for future teachers for 15 years. He is the editor of Constructing Number, and the co-author of Developing Fractions Knowledge and Numeracy for All Learners. (shrink)

Engaging undergraduate students and instigating debate within philosophy seminars is one of the greatest challenges faced by instructors on a daily basis. _How to Get Philosophy Students Talking: An Instructor’s Toolkit _is an innovative and original resource designed for use by academics looking to help students of all abilities get the most out of their time spent in group discussions. Each chapter features thought experiments, discussion questions and further readings on topics within the following core areas of philosophy: Metaphysics Epistemology (...) Philosophy of Mind Philosophy of Language Philosophy of Religion Philosophy of Science Political Philosophy Normative Ethics Applied Ethics Metaethics Aesthetics Group discussions and debates are a key part of undergraduate study and one of the best ways for students to learn and understand often complex philosophical theories and concepts. This book is an essential toolkit for instructors looking to get the most out of their philosophy students. (shrink)

This cross-sectional study investigated the relationships between teacher mindfulness, work engagement, and classroom emotions composed of positive and negative emotions. A sample of 498 Chinese primary, secondary, and high school teachers completed an anonymous online questionnaire. Descriptive analysis, bivariate correlation, and a series of regression equations were conducted to analyze the data. The results indicate that teacher mindfulness, work engagement, and classroom emotions are all at the intermediate level, and significantly correlated. The effect of teacher mindfulness on classroom (...) emotions is partially mediated by work engagement. In addition, negative emotions partially mediate the effect of teacher mindfulness on work engagement, while positive emotions fully mediate it. These results highlight the importance of fostering teacher mindfulness through mindfulness-based intervention, developing teacher emotion regulation competence in teacher education, and cultivating supportive classroom and school culture for teachers to experience more positive emotions from students and administrators. (shrink)

In spite of the acknowledged importance of professional ethics, technical students often show little enthusiasm for studying the subject. This paper considers how such engagement might be improved. Four guiding principles for promoting engagement are identified: aligning teaching content with student interests; taking a pragmatic rather than a philosophical approach to issue resolution; addressing the full complexity of real-world case studies; and covering content in a way that students find entertaining. The use of these principles is then (...) discussed with respect to the specific experience of developing and presenting a master’s module in Ethical and Legal Issues in Cyber Security at Queens University Belfast. One significant aspect of the resulting design is that it encourages students to see ethical issues in systemic terms rather than from an individual perspective, with issues emerging from a conflict between different groups with different vested interests. Case studies are used to examine how personal and business priorities create conflicts that can lead to negative press, fines and punitive legal action. The module explores the reasons why organisations may be unaware of the risks associated with their actions and how an inappropriate response to an ethical issue can significantly aggravate a situation. The module has been delivered in three successive years since 2014 and been well received on each occasion. The paper describes the design of the module and the experience of delivering it, concluding with a discussion of the effectiveness of the approach. (shrink)

This paper advocates for a shift from insular paternalism to developmental paternalism in education, contending that students' engagement with erroneous ideas is crucial for building the ability to resist harmful notions and support democracy. The proposed inoculative approach exposes students to problematic ideas, guiding them through the process of overcoming these beliefs using the pedagogy of relation. The author employs behavioral economics to explore the shortcomings of insular paternalism and the early Christian notion of metanoia to explain the importance (...) of changing one's mind. This developmentally-informed approach fosters rational thinking and curbs extremist ideologies. The paper asserts that prioritizing an inoculative approach over an insulatory one equips students to navigate the complexities of the modern world and uphold democratic values. (shrink)

Only when students feel engaged both socially and academically can schools and teachers lay the groundwork to motivate achievement. This volume, the fifth in the _Harvard Education Letter _Spotlight series, brings together fifteen seminal articles that examine research and practice on these complex and interrelated issues. Foreword by Sam M. Intrator, associate professor of education and of the Program in Urban Studies at Smith College and codirector of Smith’s Urban Education Initiative. Contributors include: Michael Bitz, James Paul Gee, Pedro A. (...) Noguera, Laura Pappano, George Sugai, and Richard Weissbourd. (shrink)

In addition to considering sociocultural, political, economic, and ethical factors, effectively engaging socioscientific issues requires that students understand and apply scientific explanations and the nature of science. Promoting such understandings can be achieved through immersing students in authentic real-world contexts where the SSI impacts occur and teaching those students about how scientists comprehend, research, and debate those SSI. This triangulated mixed-methods investigation explored how 60 secondary students’ trophic cascade explanations changed through their experiencing place-based SSI instruction focused on the Yellowstone (...) wolf reintroduction, including scientists’ work and debates regarding that issue. Furthermore, this investigation determined the association between the students’ post place-based SSI instruction trophic cascade explanations and NOS views. Findings from this investigation demonstrate that through the place-based SSI instruction students’ trophic cascade explanations became significantly more accurate and complex and included more ecological causal mechanisms. Also, significant and moderate to moderately large correlations were found between the accuracy and contextualization of students’ post place-based SSI instruction NOS views and the complexity of their trophic cascade explanations. Empirical substantiation of the association between the complexity of students’ scientific explanations and their NOS views responds to an understudied area in the science education research. It also encourages the consideration of several implications, drawn from this investigation’s findings and others’ prior work, which include the need for NOS to be forefront alongside and in connection with science content in curricular standards and through instruction focused on relevant and authentic place-based SSI. (shrink)

This paper explores the relationship between critical thinking and formative assessment. In this paper Popham’s conception of formative assessment as “a planned process in which assessment-elicited evidence of students’ status is used by teachers to adjust their ongoing instructional procedures or by students to adjust their current learning tactics” is highlighted as well as a framework from Stiggins and associates . Despite vast research that indicates bothpositively impact student achievement, they are “errors of omission” and vastly underutilized in teacher (...) preparation . The national high school graduation rate and lack of college readiness of those who do graduate compel teacher education programs to prepare pre-service teachers who master these constructs . Formative assessment strategies are offered for classroom use and recommendations are made for university faculty who can model these strategies to improve teacher candidate quality. (shrink)

Considering the significant contribution of teachers’ professional triumph in the prosperity of students, the current study aims to investigate the existence of any relationship among three factors influencing teachers’ success: immunity, mindfulness, and engagement. Furthermore, we attempt to investigate whether English as a foreign language teachers’ immunity and mindfulness can predict their work engagement. To this end, a Likert-scale questionnaire including items on teacher immunity, mindfulness, and work engagement was distributed to 582 EFL teachers in China through (...) the WeChat application by employing a convenient sampling. To analyze the collected data, the Spearman Rho correlation index and linear multiple regression analysis are employed. The findings are that there does exist an indication of a direct relationship among EFL teachers’ immunity, mindfulness, and work engagement. Also, it is found that immunity and mindfulness can predict EFL teachers’ work engagement. The current study’s findings support the necessity of training language teachers to cope with the EFL context adversities. (shrink)

Although “transition” is an established area of educational research, there has been little empirically exploration of how shifts in the ways that knowledge is packaged and valued impact on students’ reading and writing as they transition into higher education. This article draws on a longitudinal ethnographic study that traced the experiences, practices and understandings of 11 students from their last year of A-levels through to their second year of undergraduate study. Analysis shows that the forms of knowledge privileged and the (...) ways that knowledge is packaged vary significantly between the two educational contexts, impacting on students’ engagement with texts as they transition into university. This article further illustrates that as a result of shifts in what counts as knowledge between these levels, students face challenges adapting to undergraduate literacies, which disrupts the simplistic notion of transition evoked in the dominant positioning of “the transition to uni... (shrink)

Research on self-determination theory and clinical models such as acceptance and commitment therapy has shown that behaving in line with our values is key to maintaining healthy well-being. Combining work on values and experimental studies on moral hypocrisy and well-being, we experimentally tested how behaving incongruently with values affects well-being. We hypothesized that discrepancies between how one thinks one should have behaved and how one reported one did behave would be more detrimental to well-being when the behaviors were value-expressive and (...) motivationally coherent compared to a control condition; greater perceived gaps between how participants feel they should have acted and how they report they did act would be associated with more negative well-being outcomes; the relationship between value manipulation and well-being would be mediated by perceived behavioral gap; and that personal values would interact with value manipulation to produce differential effects on well-being. One-hundred and fifty-eight first-year psychology students participated in an experiment designed to highlight discrepancies between how participants have behaved in accordance with a certain value and how they think they should have behaved, before reporting their well-being. As hypothesized, greater discrepancies between reported past behavior and how participants thought they should have behaved was associated with negative affect and decreased reports of positive well-being. We found no evidence for differential effects of manipulated value-expressive behaviors on well-being, or for our hypotheses that personal values and manipulated value-expressive behaviors interact. Nevertheless, value content mattered in terms of inducing perceived behavioral gaps. Our study suggests that perceived discrepancies between any value and reported past behavior can have a negative impact on some aspects of well-being. We discuss how the application of our methodology can be used in further studies to disentangle the value-behavior nexus. (shrink)

Dermot Moran provides a lucid, engaging, and critical introduction to Edmund Husserl's philosophy, with specific emphasis on his development of phenomenology. This book is a comprehensive guide to Husserl's thought from its origins in nineteenth-century concerns with the nature of scientific knowledge and with psychologism, through his breakthrough discovery of phenomenology and his elucidation of the phenomenological method, to the late analyses of culture and the life-world. Husserl's complex ideas are presented in a clear and expert manner. Individual chapters explore (...) Husserl's key texts including _Philosophy of Arithmetic_, _Logical Investigations_, _Ideas_ I, _Cartesian Meditations_ and _Crisis of the European Sciences_. In addition, Moran offers penetrating criticisms and evaluations of Husserl's achievement, including the contribution of his phenomenology to current philosophical debates concerning consciousness and the mind. _Edmund Husserl_ is an invaluable guide to understanding the thought of one of the seminal thinkers of the twentieth century. It will be helpful to students of contemporary philosophy, and to those interested in scientific, literary and cultural studies on the European continent. (shrink)

Fred Dallmayr explores the benefits of mindfulness in respect to philosophy and theory, practical conduct, language use, art works, historical understanding, and cosmopolitanism. Students of continental, social, and political philosophy will benefit from Dallmayr’s engagement with, among others, Heidegger, Panikkar, Merleau-Ponty, and Derrida.

It can be challenging to introduce the philosophy of social science (PoS) to students in the social sciences. Noting the lack of literature providing guidance to the prospective PoS teacher, this paper outlines several pieces of advice on how to engage social science undergraduates in the subject. This advice centres on showing the relevance of the PoS in academia and beyond, reducing complexity and presenting only a few contending PoS perspectives. It is also proposed to use textbooks with caution or (...) avoiding them altogether, illustrating how PoS assumptions are embedded in contemporary social research and showing the connection between the PoS on one hand and research questions, methods, and theory on the other. Finally, the importance of showing students how they can make use of the PoS in their own work and teaching the subject in a ‘hands on’ manner is emphasized. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to both consider what is meant by ‘responsible business’ and to explore pedagogical approaches which have been shown to lead toeffective student engagement with this important area of modern business thinking and practice. The goal of experiential learning is to encourage students to reflect upon the complexities of responsible business education in authentic business contexts. The range of pedagogies which enable this sort of reflection is thought to be quite wide, and can (...) include internships, practical projects, case-studies, group-work, and observing and participating in artistic performances or cultural events. (shrink)

The text serves as an education program handbook for understanding the complexities of student engagement and providing access, equity, and justice for learners, with an emphasis on students with diverse backgrounds. The book examines current research and best practices on engagement for these learners and explores educational issues through social, cultural, and racial lenses.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Rembrandt and Collections of His Art in America: An NEH Curriculum ProjectJoseph M. Piro (bio)IntroductionI have asked myself whether the short time given us would be better used in an attempt to understand the whole of the universe or to assimilate what is within our reach.—Paul CézanneThis issue of the Journal of Aesthetic Education features an arts education curriculum project that was designed to use the oeuvre of Rembrandt (...) van Rijn—seventeenth-century Dutch painter, etcher, and draftsman extraordinaire—as a teaching resource. A partnership of scholars, university professors, museum educators, and classroom teachers designed the project, which uses Rembrandt as the prism through which to diversify teaching of the core content areas of social studies and visual art. Members of this team attempted to expand the boundaries of themes traditionally found in art and other humanities disciplines by linking these with the social sciences, thereby forming what might be called “humanistic social studies.” The final product is a Web site to which teachers and those interested in using this type of instructional approach in their classroom teaching will have access. Funding for this project derived from a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Curriculum Materials Development grant designed to promote the teaching of the humanities and support projects that can serve as national models.1In the eyes of many, Rembrandt is viewed primarily as a “European” artist. Although it is true that many of his major works are found in museums across Europe, he is generously represented in the holdings of collections across America. Yet for many teachers in the United States he remains an enigmatic figure; knowledge about his art is limited, and the U.S. museum collections of his work remain untapped for classroom application. To broaden the appeal and teaching potential of his work, the project team [End Page 1] mined this collection of “American” Rembrandts. Specifically, the project, targeted at secondary art and social studies teachers (grades 6 through 12), is committed to building and increasing the capacities of teachers to network knowledge of Rembrandt’s art with their classroom practice. Further, with its grounding in aesthetic education theory within a humanities framework, the project endeavors to promote instructional innovation and encourage teachers to break new ground in high-impact classroom pedagogy. The timing of the project and its ongoing development was not accidental. They converged with events held in 2006 to commemorate the four hundredth anniversary of Rembrandt’s birth. These events ranged from worldwide museum exhibitions to publications of books containing new insights on Rembrandt, all of this aimed at celebrating an artist whose achievements many consider to be a zenith of world culture.Why Rembrandt: The Rationale for the ProjectWhy is Rembrandt the artist at the center of this project? There are any number of good reasons, but the project’s rationale centers around three in particular. First, to borrow a term from Peter Kivy, Rembrandt is the ultimate “aesthetic symbol,”2 an indisputably blue-chip figure who produced some of the greatest masterworks of world art, many of which students find both intellectually engaging and psychologically insightful. Traditionally, teachers have striven to enrich the aesthetic lives of their students with exemplars of the human mind, and the genius of Rembrandt provides a potent opportunity to do so.3 By studying an artist of such stature teachers can develop students’ cultural intelligence and visual literacy and present opportunities to observe and decode substantive, challenging masterworks of art. In this context, Rudolf Arnheim describes a painting by Rembrandt as containing a network of “visual arrows” that communicate multiple experiences about the human condition, including love, tenderness, and desire, among others. Arnheim speaks of the additive nature of the experience, how the viewer—almost like a mathematician—needs to learn how to add up the clues and arrive at a solution. He does not intend, of course, for the viewer to have an impersonal, “clinical” experience. Rather, he writes, “art... is one of the most powerful instruments available to us for the fulfillment of life. To withhold this benefit from human beings is to deprive them indeed.”4Second, there is a cognitive complexity embedded in... (shrink)

Mind-body dualism conceptualizes mind and body as distinct, but there are different ways that dualism may be instantiated. In this study, we examined how Hierarchical Dualism (the belief that mind and body are distinct, and the mind is superior) and Mutual-Influence Dualism (the belief that mind and body are separate but interrelate) related to health behaviors and mental health in three student samples: exclusively queer, exclusively straight, and a mixed university subject pool (N = 535). Participants in each sample (...) endorsed Mutual-Influence Dualism at a higher rate than Hierarchical Dualism. Mutual-Influence dualism was consistently associated with greater engagement in health-promoting behaviors and greater well-being, whereas Hierarchical Dualism differed by sample. These results suggest that dualist beliefs do not uniformly shape the lives of those who hold them: rather, the relation between dualist beliefs and health differs as a function of the type of dualism and the identities we hold. (shrink)

_Mind's Landscape_ is an engaging introduction to the philosophical study of mind and an elegantly persuasive account of how best to understand the nature of mental phenomena. It serves as both a text and as a contribution to the philosophy of mind. Its engaging narrative style will appeal to students, instructors, and general readers alike.

Mind, it has recently been argued1, is a thoroughly temporal phenomenon: so temporal, indeed, as to defy description and analysis using the traditional computational tools of cognitive scientific understanding. The proper explanatory tools, so the suggestion goes, are instead the geometric constructs and differential equations of Dynamical Systems Theory. I consider various aspects of the putative temporal challenge to computational understanding, and show that the root problem turns on the presence of a certain kind of causal web: a web that (...) involves multiple components (both inner and outer) linked by chains of continuous and reciprocal causal influence. There is, however, no compelling route from such facts about causal and temporal complexity to the radical anti- computationalist conclusion. This is because, interactive complexities notwithstanding, the computational approach provides a kind of explanatory understanding that cannot (I suggest) be recreated using the alternative resources of pure Dynamical Systems Theory. In particular, it provides a means of mapping information flow onto causal structure -- a mapping that is crucial to understanding the distinctive kinds of flexibility and control characteristic of truly mindful engagements with the world. Where we confront especially complex interactive causal webs, however, it does indeed become harder to isolate the syntactic vehicles required by the computational approach. Dynamical Systems Theory, I conclude, may play a vital role in recovering such vehicles from the burgeoning mass of real-time interactive complexity. (shrink)

The focus of my article is a unique place, the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts, which connects Yiddish culture with the American one, the experience of the Holocaust with the descendants of the survivors, and a modern idea of Jewishness with the context of American postmodernity. Created in the 1980s, in the mind of a young and enthusiastic student Aaron Lansky, the Yiddish Book Center throughout the years has become a unique place on the American cultural map. Traversing (...) the continents and crossing borders, Lansky and his co-workers for over thirty years have been saving Yiddish language books from extinction. The Center, however, has long stopped to be merely a storage house for the collection, but instead has grown into a vibrant hub of Yiddishkeit in the United States. Its employees do not only collect, distribute, digitalize and post online the forgotten volumes, but also engage in diverse activities, scholarly and cultural, that promote the survival of the tradition connected with Yiddish culture. They educate, offering internships and fellowships to students interested in learning Yiddish from across the world, translate, publish, and exhibit Yiddish language materials, in this way finding new users for the language whose speakers were virtually annihilated by the Holocaust. To honour their legacy, a separate project is aimed at conducting video interviews that record life testimonies of the speakers of Yiddish. Aaron Lansky’s 2004 memoir, Outwitting History, provides an interesting insight into the complexities of his arduous life mission. Today, the Center lives its own unique life, serving the world of academia and Yiddishkeit enthusiasts alike. (shrink)

The thesis of this article is that engagement and suffering are essential aspects of responsible caregiving. The sense of medical responsibility engendered by engaged caregiving is referred to herein as clinical phronesis, i.e. practical wisdom in health care, or, simply, practical health care wisdom. The idea of clinical phronesis calls to mind a relational or communicative sense of medical responsibility which can best be understood as a kind of virtue ethics, yet one that is informed by the exigencies of (...) moral discourse and dialogue, as well as by the technical rigors of formal reasoning. The ideal of clinical phronesis is not (necessarily) contrary to the more common understandings of medical responsibility as either beneficence or patient autonomy — except, of course, when these notions are taken in their disengaged form (reflecting the malaise of modern medicine). Clinical phronesis, which gives rise to a deeper, broader, and richer, yet also to a more complex, sense than these other notions connote, holds the promise both of expanding, correcting, and perhaps completing what it currently means to be a fully responsible health care provider. In engaged caregiving, providers appropriately suffer with the patient, that is, they suffer the exigencies of the patient's affliction (though not his or her actual loss) by consenting to its inescapability. In disengaged caregiving — that ruse Katz has described as the silent world of doctor and patient — provides may deny or refuse any given connection with the patient, especially the inevitability of the patient's affliction and suffering (and, by parody of reasoning, the inevitability of their own. When, however, responsibility is construed qualitatively as an evaluative feature of medical rationality, rather than quantitatively as a form of calculative reasoning only, responsibility can be viewed more broadly as not only a matter of science and will, but of language and communication as well — in particular, as the task of responsibly narrating and interpreting the patient's story of illness. In summary, the question is not whether phronesis can save the life of medical ethics — only responsible humans can do that! Instead, the question should be whether phronesis, as an ethical requirement of health care delivery, can prevent the death of medical ethics. (shrink)

The teaching of ethics in science within the disciplines provides an avenue to deepen students’ scientific understanding and to develop their critical thinking skills. This study showcases a module which connects ethics to science within a large introductory geoscience course. The module components, a tutorial plus homework assignment and an exam question, require students to decide on ethical issues using a 5-step approach that mirrors the scientific decision-making process. The assignment is graded using a developed rubric. An analysis of exam (...) question responses reveals that students correctly identify stakeholders and mention contributions by geoscientists, but have difficulties recognizing their own assumptions. Furthermore, many acknowledge the complexity of the ethical issue at hand. The module provides an example of how disciplinary instructors can include ethics in their teaching and assess students’ ethical decision-making process. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Reintroducing George Herbert Mead by Daniel R. HuebnerAndrea ParraviciniDaniel R. Huebner Reintroducing George Herbert Mead Routledge, 2022, 116 pp.Reintroducing George Herbert Mead is the second book of a brand new series recently inaugurated by Routledge and dedicated to major sociology theorists who contributed to the discipline with significant works. The book reflects the intent of the series to offer concise and accessible texts that appeal to scholars and (...) students interested in the most relevant themes in thought of a particular figure, the context in which it emerged, as well as its reception and importance to contemporary studies. George Mead is, however, such a rich and complex figure that the text inevitably overflows the banks of studies dedicated to sociology and the social sciences and offers a wider glimpse into the boundless interdisciplinary territory of philosophy and natural sciences.Daniel R. Huebner, professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina (USA), has contributed in the past years with other influential books on Mead, such as Becoming Mead (Huebner, 2014), and co-edited with Hans Joas both the definitive edition of Mind, Self and Society (Mead, 2015) and the multi-authored volume The Timeliness of George Herbert Mead (Joas & Huebner, 2016).Huebner's latest book cleverly condenses into little more than a hundred pages the most important aspects of Mead's life and work, and places them in close connection with the world in which he lived and with the people he influenced. At the same time, it highlights the legacy that this thinker left to research and studies of contemporary thought in social sciences and philosophy.In contrast to his more famous colleague and friend John Dewey, a very prolific writer who had no difficulties to develop his ideas through a number of important books and essays, Mead never managed, due to various reasons, to articulate his groundbreaking ideas in the more systematic form of books or treatises. As Dewey (1931: 310–311) witnessed in his obituary of Mead, although Mead could be judged as "the most original mind in philosophy in the America of the last generation", he "experienced great difficulty in finding adequate verbal expression for his philosophical ideas". It was his students, colleagues, and friends (Charles Morris above all) who, aware of the outstanding force of his philosophic mind, collected papers, manuscripts, notes, and transcripts from his classroom teaching, and published posthumously [End Page 249] his most famous books. Thanks to those publications, and especially to Mind, Self, and Society, Mead is now considered one of the founding fathers of modern sociology, despite the fact that he neither taught in that discipline, nor wrote that book for which he is especially known, as Huebner (p. 3) pointed out. Indeed, Mead's ideas have had a major influence not only on sociology, social psychology, and the behavioral and social sciences more generally, but his transdisciplinary philosophy crossed in many other fields as well, such as physical science, biology, history, and the religious literature of the world (Dewey, 1931: 312). Despite his encyclopedic mind and culture, his ideas were always in search of practical connections with the problems of concrete life. As a pragmatist thinker, Mead used his theories as practical tools for better understanding how to face the urgent issues of his time and society.As regards its structure, the book is divided into four main chapters, further articulated into various subsections. The text is enriched by several useful figures (three per chapter) which serve as information boxes illustrating interesting aspects related to Mead. The first section introduces the life and influence of the North American philosopher, in the wake of recent scholarship, which has partially changed what we know about him. The chapter focuses particularly on his social reform efforts, but it also highlights his engagement with colonization and war by providing a critical reinterpretation of the texts published after his death, and the rediscovery of important aspects of his work that had been lost. The way the author closely connects Mead's philosophy to different aspects of his life is particularly interesting. Noteworthy aspects related to Mead's life concern also the importance of the Hull House Social Settlement... (shrink)

Slips of the tongue, unwitting favoritism and stereotyped assumptions are just some examples of microaggression. Nearly all of us commit microaggressions at some point, even if we don’t intend to. Yet over time a pattern of microaggression can cause considerable harm by reminding members of marginalized groups of their precarious position. The Ethics of Microaggression is a much needed and clearly written exploration of this pervasive yet complex problem. What is microaggression and how do we know when it is occurring? (...) Can we be held responsible for microaggressions and if so, how? How has social media affected the problem? What role can philosophy play in understanding microaggression? Regina Rini explores these highly topical and controversial questions in an engaging and fair-minded way, arguing that an event is a microaggression precisely because it causes a marginalized person to experience an ambiguous encounter with oppression. She illustrates her argument with compelling examples from media, politics and psychology and explains the significance of essential concepts, such as media representation, reparative renaming, and safe spaces. The Ethics of Microaggression explains what microaggression is and offers strategies for combating it. Assuming no prior knowledge of the topic or philosophy, it demystifies a controversial and extremely important topic in clear language. It is ideal for anyone coming to the topic for the first time and for students in philosophy, gender studies, race theory, disability theory and social and political philosophy. (shrink)

Focusing on the domain of self-compassion, this study explored the promotion mechanism of online learning behavioral engagement of international students in China under COVID-19. Positive emotion and self-improvement motivation were selected as mediators. Participants were 606 international students from 8 countries who were studying online in their own countries due to the international travel restriction of COVID-19. Results showed positive emotion and self-improvement motivation completely mediated self-compassionate mindfulness and OLBE of international students. Positive emotion and self-improvement partially mediated SCM (...) and OLBE of international students respectively. Students with higher SCM engage with online learning more in that they possess more positive emotion and self-improvement motivation. This study suggested that SCM may facilitate OLBE via positive emotion and effective self-improvement motivation. (shrink)

Thinking on Screen: Film as Philosophy is an accessible and thought-provoking examination of the way films raise and explore complex philosophical ideas. Written in a clear and engaging style, Thomas Wartenberg examines films' ability to discuss, and even criticize ideas that have intrigued and puzzled philosophers over the centuries such as the nature of personhood, the basis of morality, and epistemological skepticism. Beginning with a demonstration of how specific forms of philosophical discourse are presented cinematically, Wartenberg moves on to offer (...) a systematic account of the ways in which specific films undertake the task of philosophy. Focusing on the films The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Modern Times, The Matrix, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Third Man, The Flicker, and Empire, Wartenberg shows how these films express meaningful and pertinent philosophical ideas. This book is essential reading for students of philosophy with an interest in film, aesthetics, and film theory. It will also be of interest to film enthusiasts intrigued by the philosophical implications of film. (shrink)

The Phenomenology of Spirit, first published in 1807, is G. W. F. Hegel's remarkable philosophical text that examines the dynamics of human experience from its simplest beginnings in consciousness through its development into ever more complex and self-conscious forms. The work explores the inner discovery of reason and its progressive expansion into spirit, a world of intercommunicating and interacting minds reconceiving and re-creating themselves and their reality. The Phenomenology of Spirit is a notoriously challenging and arduous text that students and (...) scholars have been studying ever since its publication. In this long-awaited translation, Peter Fuss and John Dobbins provide a succinct, highly informative, and readily comprehensible introduction to several key concepts in Hegel's thinking. This edition includes an extensive conceptual index, which offers easy reference to specific discussions in the text and elucidates the more subtle nuances of Hegel's concepts and word usage. This modern American English translation employs natural idioms that accurately convey what Hegel means. Throughout the book, the translators adhered to the maxim: if you want to understand Hegel, read him in the English. This book is intended for intellectuals with a vested interest in modern philosophy and history, as well as students of all levels, seeking to access or further engage with this seminal text. (shrink)

In an increasingly digital world, the role of digital media in shaping the linguistic and metacognitive abilities of management students has become a focal point for academic inquiry. This study aims to explore the influence of digital media on the development of domain-specific English skills among management students, with a particular focus on metacognitive and linguistic competencies. Employing a mixed-methods approach, the research examines how exposure to and engagement with digital content tailored to the management domain impacts students' ability (...) to comprehend, analyze, and apply complex linguistic constructs in professional contexts. Quantitative data were collected through standardized language proficiency tests and metacognitive awareness inventories, while qualitative insights were gathered through interviews and focus group discussions. The findings suggest that digital media, when strategically integrated into the learning process, significantly enhances both metacognitive and linguistic competencies, thereby better preparing students for the demands of the management field. The study concludes with recommendations for incorporating digital media more effectively into management education curricula to foster advanced English language skills and critical thinking abilities. (shrink)

PurposeTo explore the mindfulness practice, its long-term effects, facilitators and barriers, in clinical clerkship students 2 years after participation in an 8-week mindfulness-based stress reduction training.MethodA qualitative study was performed by semi-structured in-depth interviews with 16 clinical clerkship students selected by purposive sampling. Students had participated in a MBSR training 2 years before and were asked about their current mindfulness practice, and the long-term effects of the MBSR training. Thematic analysis was conducted using the constant comparison method. Data saturation was (...) reached after 16 interviews.ResultsMost interviewees were still engaged in regular, predominantly informal, mindfulness practice, although some discontinued mindfulness practice and reported an “unchanged lifestyle.” Three main themes came forward; “focused attention and open awareness” during daily activities as core elements of long-term mindfulness practice; “changes in behavior and coping” that resulted from taking a pause, reflecting, recognizing automatic behavioral patterns and making space for a conscious response; “integration in personal and professional life” by enhanced enjoyment of daily activities, improved work-life-balance and making different career choices. Barriers and facilitators in starting and maintaining mindfulness practice were understanding and intention as “pre-conditions”; practical, personal, and professional factors of students in maintaining practice.ConclusionTwo years after participation in a MBSR training, many interviewees were still engaged in mindfulness practice contributing to both personal and professional changes. In light of the high clerkship demands, MBSR training could be a valuable addition to medical curricula, supporting medical students in developing necessary competencies to become well-balanced professionals. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 25.2 (2001) 251-277 [Access article in PDF] Hans Christian Andersen's Fish Out of Water Nancy Easterlin I Now that Darwinian literary criticism is on the horizon, the natural human tendency to codify manifests itself in calls to summarize succinctly what such an approach entails. Though clarity is always to be praised, bioevolutionary critics need to guard against the reductiveness that has beleaguered attempts at a scientifically (...) grounded literary criticism since the early twentieth century; most especially, we should think twice about limiting the interpretation of complex and varied works to selected sociobiological themes divorced from other biocultural considerations. David Sloan Wilson makes much the same point to students of evolution when he quotes Celia Heyes in a recent review of Evolutionary Psychology, David Buss's new textbook: "When I first encountered the term 'evolutionary psychology,' I thought it referred to the study of how mind and behavior evolved. But I was mistaken. In current usage, 'evolutionary psychology' refers exclusively to research on human mentality and behavior, motivated by a very specific, nativist-adaptationist interpretation of how evolution operates." 1If, as D. S. Wilson suggests, evolutionary psychology thus narrowly defined threatens to produce a limited understanding of human mind and behavior and, in the process, fragment the discipline of psychology further, how much less potentially productive is such an approach for those of us whose central objects of study, cultural artifacts, are as the products of behavior even further removed from the study of mind? Leda Cosmides and John Tooby are most explicit about the falsity of assuming that psychological adaptations determine behavior. This being so, it seems impossible that such adaptations could determine the [End Page 251] meaning of artworks, which are themselves the products of complex human behaviors. As I hope this discussion of Hans Christian Andersen's "Little Mermaid" will demonstrate, an approach to aesthetics strictly following the lead of evolutionary psychology as currently defined, while supplying valuable general insights about the motives for artistic behaviors and the cognitive processes engaged in them, cannot by itself inform us about the meaning of individual artworks. This is a crucial issue, since interpretation is the fundamental pursuit of scholars in fields like mine, literary studies.Putting the question of interpretive frutifulness aside for the moment, it can be said unequivocally that criticism that fails to be sensitive to mutation and change is not properly Darwinian. Evolutionary psychology and sociobiology themselves maintain that our psychic architecture is comprised of domain-specific competences; the result, as E. O. Wilson points out, is that the human mind is not designed to understand reality but is instead an instrument for survival and reproduction. 2 "Natural selection," says Michael Ruse, "works in a gerry-building fashion, making do with what it has at hand." 3 Though our various evolved competences cannot be radically dissonant if the organism is to survive, neither are they logically integrated, neatly interlocking "modules." Under some environmental conditions, specific adaptations or epigenetic rules are not likely to produce a competitive advantage while other very different adaptations certainly will, and hence the flexibility of the organism ensures its survival. If, for instance, I place my coffee mug down on my desk and at that exact moment two cars collide on the street outside, familiarity with my environment militates against invocation of the causal rule, even though such a rule is incontrovertibly part of our adapted psychology. 4 Knowing, then, that we share an evolved psychic architecture whose patient excavation, so to speak, will result in a progressively better defined concept of human nature, and knowing too that the behavior of human beings as writers as well as other kinds of agents varies under divergent environmental conditions, Darwinian criticism should be sensitive to the complex relationship between individual adaptations, the total array of adaptations, subjective cognitive processes, and environmental circumstances that give literary works enduring significance. In contemplating literary meaning, as with aesthetics, we should be mindful that epigenesis is not simply the instantiation of epigenetic rules. 5 Ideally, literary interpretation should be informed by the evolution of mind, behavior, and... (shrink)

Something remarkable is happening in the cognitive sciences. After a quarter of a century of cognitive models that were inspired by the metaphor of the digital computer, the newest cognitive models are inspired by the properties of the brain itself. Variously referred to as connectionist, parallel distributed processing, or neutral network models, they explore the idea that complex intellectual operations can be carried out by large networks of simple, neuron-like units. The units themselves are identical, very low-level and 'stupid'. Intelligent (...) performance is derived from the pattern of connection strengths between units, and the fundamental cognitive activity is pattern recognition and completion. Connectionism and the Mind provides an introduction to this newly emerging approach to understanding the mind. The first few chapters focus on network architecture, offering accessible treatment of the equations that describe learning and the propagation of activation. Furthermore, the reader is walked step-by-step through the activities of networks engaged in pattern recognition, learning, and cognitive tasks such as memory retrieval and prototype formation. The remainder of the book addresses the implications of connectionism for theories of the mind, both philosophical and psychological. Foe example: What Role is played by pattern recognition and completion as basic as cognitive functions? Connectionist models have particular strength in learning and pattern recognition; should they be limited to those functions, or can they provide an overall account of cognitive functioning? In particular, can connectionist models provide an adequate account of the ability to employ linguistic and other symbol systems, or must an adequate system incorporate symbol processing as a basic cognitive capacity? Finally, Connectionism and the Mind examines the relation of connectionist models to philosophical accounts of propositional attitudes, and to a variety of other inquiries in cognitive psychology, linguistics, developmental psychology, artificial intelligence and neuroscience. (shrink)

"Children live in a realm of direct experience, engaged with their senses and absorbed in events as they occur. But as adults, we've come to depend on our acquired skills of language, logic, and familiar thinking strategies to get things done and get through our days. For decades, innovative neuroscience educator Dee Joy Coulter has been treasure-hunting for fresh insights into learning that we can actually use-to transform the way we perceive, think, feel, and learn. Original Mind guides us into (...) her expansive vision for unfolding our natural brilliance. Applying the findings of scientists, artists, and cultures across the globe-and illuminated with stories and hands-on practices from her own work-readers will explore:. How to see, listen, feel, and taste again with childlike wonder. The oral tradition-reclaiming the cognitive power of storytelling and metaphor. Problem-solving and learning at the deepest levels. Empty mind -the art of rejuvenation as taught by the Buddha, composers and artists, and children across the globe. Boredom, Complexity, Ambiguity, Permeability, and Novelty-five tolerances essential to fulfillment. Surfing the edges of inner chaos-the theta-gamma states of inspired genius, and many other topics Readers both new and well-versed in brain training, meditation, and stress reduction will find here a wealth of inspiration to amplify the richness of their perceptions, intuition, creativity, emotional balance-and the untapped wonder hidden within each moment of our lives."--Publisher's description. (shrink)

_An Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge_ guides the reader through the key issues and debates in contemporary epistemology. Lucid, comprehensive and accessible, it is an ideal textbook for students who are new to the subject and for university undergraduates. The book is divided into five parts. Part I discusses the concept of knowledge and distinguishes between different types of knowledge. Part II surveys the sources of knowledge, considering both _a priori_ and _a posteriori_ knowledge. Parts III and IV provide (...) an in-depth discussion of justification and scepticism. The final part of the book examines our alleged knowledge of the past, other minds, morality and God. O'Brien uses engaging examples throughout the book, taking many from literature and the cinema. He explains complex issues, such as those concerning the private language argument, non-conceptual content, and the new riddle of induction, in a clear and accessible way. This textbook is an invaluable guide to contemporary epistemology. (shrink)

The extraordinary complexity of knowledge in today's world creates a paradox. On the one hand, its sheer volume and intricacy demand disciplinary specialization, even sub-specialization; innovative research or scholarship increasingly requires immersion in the details of one's disciplinary dialogue. On the other hand, that very immersion can limit innovation. Disciplinary specialization inhibits faculty from broadening their intellectual horizons - considering questions of importance outside their discipline, learning other methods for answering these questions and pondering the possible significance of other disciplines' (...) findings for their own work. This article seeks to understand more fully the factors that enhance and impede cross-disciplinary conversations and the possible longer-term effects of those conversations. Based on 46 interviews with a sample of seminar participants, it examines the experiences of faculty members who ventured (voluntarily) into multidisciplinary waters and its implications for the organization of disciplines and universities. (shrink)

About this book Hilary Whitehall Putnam was one of the leading philosophers of the second half of the 20th century. As student of Rudolph Carnap's and Hans Reichenbach's, he went on to become not only a major figure in North American analytic philosophy, who made significant contributions to the philosophy of mind, language, mathematics, and physics but also to the disciplines of logic, number theory, and computer science. He passed away on March 13, 2016. The present volume is a (...) memorial to his extraordinary intellectual contributions, honoring his contributions as a philosopher, a thinker, and a public intellectual. It features essays by an international team of leading philosophers, covering all aspects of Hilary Putnam's philosophy from his work in ethics and the history of philosophy to his contributions to the philosophy of science, logic, and mathematics. Each essay is an original contribution. -/- Author information James Conant, Univ. of Chicago/Univ. of Leipzig, USA/Germany; Sanjit Chakraborty, IISER Kolkata/VIT-AP University, India. (shrink)

"Iago's 'I am not what I am' epitomises how Shakespeare's work is rich in philosophy, from issues of deception and moral deviance to those concerning the complex nature of the self, the notions of being and identity, and the possibility or impossibility of self-knowledge and knowledge of others. The Routledge Companion to Shakespeare and Philosophy examines the following important topics: - What roles can be played in an approach to Shakespeare by drawing on philosophical frameworks and the work of philosophers? (...) - What can philosophical theories of meaning and communication show about the dynamics of Shakespearean interactions, and vice versa? - How are notions such as political and social obligation, justice, equality, love, agency, and the ethics of interpersonal relationships demonstrated in Shakespeare's works? - What do the plays and poems invite us to say about the nature of knowledge, belief, doubt, deception and epistemic responsibility? - How can the ways in which Shakespeare's characters behave illuminate existential issues concerning meaning, absurdity, death and nothingness? - What might Shakespeare's characters and their actions show about the nature of the self, the mind, and the identity of individuals? - How can Shakespeare's works inform philosophical approaches to notions such as beauty, humour, horror and tragedy? - How do Shakespeare's works illuminate philosophical questions about the nature of fiction, the attitudes and expectations involved in engagement with theatre, and the role of acting and actors in creating representations? The Routledge Companion to Shakespeare and Philosophy is essential reading for students and researchers in aesthetics, philosophy of literature and philosophy of theatre"--. (shrink)

This original and innovative book is an exploration of one of the key mysteries of the mind, the question of consciousness. Conducted through a one month course of both practical and entertaining ‘thought experiments’, these stimulating mind-games are used as a vehicle for investigating the complexities of the way the mind works. By turns, fun, eye-opening and intriguing approach to thinking about thinking, which contains inventive and engaging ‘thought experiments’ for the general reader Includes specially drawn illustrations by the French (...) avant-garde artist, Judit Reunites the social science disciplines of psychology, sociology and political theory with the traditional concerns of philosophy. (shrink)

_Asking Good Questions_ moves beyond a traditional discussion of ethical theory, focusing on how educators can use these important frameworks to facilitate critical thinking about real-life ethical dilemmas. In this way, authors Nancy Stanlick and Michael Strawser offer students a theoretical tool kit for creatively addressing issues that influence their own environments. This text begins with a discussion of key ethical theorists and then guides the reader through a series of original case studies and follow-up activities that facilitate critical thinking, (...) emphasize asking thought provoking questions, and teach the student to address the complexity of ethical dilemmas while incorporating the viewpoints of their peers. Additionally, Stanlick and Strawser include an extensive preface, a mind-mapping technique for analyzing and formulating arguments, and a six step process for approaching complex real-life moral issues. Each chapter incorporates suggested assignments, discussion questions, and references for further reading, and a guide for instructors offering a sample course schedule and suggestions on how to use this book effectively is also available. This text is designed to help educators engage students in a meaningful discussion of how historical theories apply to their own lives, providing rich and unique resources to learn about these critical issues. (shrink)

continent. 1.2 (2011): 78-91. This article consists of three parts. First, I will review the major themes of Quentin Meillassoux’s After Finitude . Since some of my readers will have read this book and others not, I will try to strike a balance between clear summary and fresh critique. Second, I discuss an unpublished book by Meillassoux unfamiliar to all readers of this article, except those scant few that may have gone digging in the microfilm archives of the École normale (...) supérieure. The book in question is Meillassoux’s revised doctoral dissertation L’Inexistence divine (or The Divine Inexistence ), with its seemingly bizarre vision of a God who does not yet exist but might exist in the future. Without literally accepting this view, I will claim that it is philosophically interesting in ways that even a hardened sceptic might be able to appreciate. Third and finally, I will speculate on the possible future of Meillassoux’s speculative materialism itself. And here I mean its future development not by Meillassoux, but by those readers who might be inspired by his book. Plato could never have predicted the emergence of Aristotle’s philosophy, despite the obvious debt of the latter to the former. Nor could Descartes have predicted Spinoza and Leibniz, nor Kant the German Idealists, and neither could Husserl in 1901 have foreseen the later emergence of Heidegger. How are the works of interesting philosophers transformed by later thinkers of comparable importance? While it may seem that there are countless ways to do this, I think there are only two basic ways in which this happens: you can radicalize your predecessors, or you can reverse them. I will close this article with a few words about these two methods, and try to imagine how Meillassoux might be radicalized or reversed by some future admirer. My view is that the more important thinkers are, the easier they are to radicalize or reverse. This helps explain why the great philosophers of the West have so often appeared in clusters, succeeding one another at relatively brief intervals during periods of especial ferment. 1. After Finitude After Finitude is unusually short for such an influential book of philosophy: running to just 178 pages in the original French, and an even more compact 128 pages in the English version, despite the introduction of roughly eight pages of new material for the English edition. Rather than summarizing Meillassoux’s book in the order he intended, I will focus on six points that strike me as the pillars of his debut book. Along the way, I will offer a few criticisms as well. The first pillar of the book is Meillassoux’s own term “correlationism.”1 Although he introduces this term as the name for an enemy, it is striking that Meillassoux remains impressed by correlationism much more than his fellow speculative realists are. This continued appreciation for his great enemy influences the shape of his own ontology. Is there a world outside our thinking of it, or does the world consist entirely in being thought? Traditionally, this dispute between realism and idealism has been dismissed in continental philosophy as a “pseudo-problem,” in a strategy pioneered by Husserl and extended by Heidegger. We cannot be realists, since following Kant we have no direct access to things-in-themselves. But neither are we idealists, since the human being is always already outside itself, aiming at objects in intentional experience, deeply engaged with practical implements, or stationed in some particular world-disclosing mood. The centuries-old dispute between realism and idealism is dissolved by saying that we cannot think either real or ideal in isolation from the other. There is neither human without world nor world without human, but only a primordial correlation or rapport between the two. This is what “correlationism” means: philosophy trapped in a permanent meditation on the human-world correlate, trying to find the best model of the correlate: is it language, intentionality, embodiment, or some other form of correlation between human and world? Among other problems, this generates some friction between philosophy and the literal meaning of science. When cosmologists say that the universe originated 13.5 billion years ago, they do not mean “13.5 billion years ago for us ,” but literally 13.5 billion years ago, well before conscious life existed, and thus at a time when there was no such thing as a correlate. Meillassoux also coins the term “ancestrality” (10) for the reality that predated the correlate, and later expands this term to “dia-chronicity,” (112) to refer to events occurring after the extinction of human beings no less than to those occurring before we existed. Up to this point, Meillassoux’s focus on ancestral entities existing prior to consciousness might seem like a straightforward realist who wants to unmask correlationism as just another form of idealism. Yet Meillassoux also admires the correlationist maneuver, which can obviously be traced back to Kant. Unlike a thinker such as Whitehead, Meillassoux feels no nostalgia for the pre-critical realism that came before Kant: “we cannot but be heirs of Kantianism,” he says (29). What impresses Meillassoux about correlationism is something both simple and familiar. If we attempt to think a tree outside thought, this is itself a thought . Any form of realism which thinks it can simply and directly address the world the way it is fails to escape the correlational circle, since the attempt to think something outside of thought is itself nothing other than a thought, and thereby collapses back into the very human-world correlate that it pretends to escape. For Meillassoux this step, suggested by Kant but first refined by the ensuing figures of German Idealism, marks decisive forward progress in the history of philosophy that must not be abolished. Any attempt to break free from the correlate must first acknowledge its mighty intellectual power. Realist though he may seem, Meillassoux’s works are filled with praise of such figures as Fichte and Hegel, not of so-called “naïve realists.” It is also the case that for Meillassoux, not all correlationisms are the same. The second pillar of his book is a distinction between various positions that I have termed “Meillassoux’s Spectrum,” though of course he is never so immodest as to name it after himself. He distinguishes between at least six different possible positions, and perhaps we could add even subtler variations if we wished. But in its simplest form, Meillassoux’s Spectrum allows for just four basic outlooks on the question of realism vs. anti-realism. Three of these are easy to understand, since we have already been discussing them. At one extreme is so-called “naïve realism,” which holds that a world exists outside the mind, and that we can know this world. Meillassoux rejects this naïve realism as having been overthrown by Kant’s critical philosophy. At the other extreme is subjective idealism, in which nothing exists outside the mind. For to think a dog outside thought immediately turns it into a thought, and therefore there cannot be anything outside; the very notion is meaningless. In between these two is what we have called correlationism. And here comes a crucial moment for Meillassoux, since he distinguishes between the two forms of “weak” and “strong” correlationism, and chooses the strong form as the launching pad for his own philosophy. Weak correlationism is easy to explain, since we all know it from the philosophy of Kant. The things-in-themselves can be thought but not known. They certainly must exist, since there cannot be appearances without something that appears. And we can think about them, which idealism holds to be impossible. They are simply unknowable due to the finitude of human thought. Strong correlationism is the new position introduced by Meillassoux (though he sees it at work in numerous twentieth century thinkers), midway between weak correlationism and subjective idealism. The major difference between the three positions is as follows. Weak correlationism says: “The things-in-themselves exist, but we cannot know them.” The subjective idealist says: “This is a contradiction in terms, since when we think the things-in-themselves, we already turn them into thoughts.” But the strong correlationist says: “Just because ‘things-in-themselves’ is a meaningless notion does not mean that they cannot exist. No one has ever traveled to the world-in-itself and come back to make a report on it. Thus, the fact that we cannot think things-in-themselves without contradiction does not prove that they do not exist anyway. There may be things-in-themselves, we simply are not capable of thinking them without contradiction form within the correlational circle.” This step is crucial for Meillassoux, since strong correlationism is the position he attempts to radicalize into his own new standpoint: speculative materialism. As I see it, this step of the argument fails. Strong correlationism cannot avoid collapsing into subjective idealism, since the statements of the strong correlationist are rendered meaningless from within. All three of the other positions in the Spectrum make perfectly good sense even for those who disagree with them. The naïve realist says that things-in-themselves exist and we can know them; the meaning of this statement is clear. The weak correlationist can say that things-in-themselves exist but lie forever beyond our grasp; this too makes perfect sense, even though the German Idealists try to show a contradiction at work here. We can also understand the claim of the subjective idealist that to think anything outside thought turns it into a thought, and that for this reason we cannot think the unthought. The strong correlationist, alone among the four, speaks nonsense . This person says “I cannot think the unthought without turning it into a thought, and yet the unthought might exist anyway.” But notice that the final phrase “the unthought might exist anyway” is fruitless for this purpose. For we have already heard that to think any unthought turns it into a thought. But now the strong correlationist wants to do two incompatible things simultaneously with this unthought. On the one hand, he neutralizes the unthought by showing that it instantly changes into just another thought. But on the other hand, he wants to appeal to the unthought as a haunting residue that might exist outside thought, thereby undercutting the absolute status of the human-world correlate found in idealism. But this is impossible. If you accept the argument that thinking the unthought turns it into a thought, you cannot also add “but maybe there is something outside that prevents this conversion from being absolutely true,” because this “something outside” is immediately converted into nothing but a thought for us. In short, Meillassoux here seems to be offering a kind of Zen koan: his “strong correlationism” is reminiscent of the gateless gate, or the sound of one hand clapping, or the command to punch Hegel in the jaw when meeting him on the road. We cannot at the same time both destroy the realist challenge of the things-in-themselves in order to undercut realism and reintroduce that very realist sense in order to undercut idealism. In a world where everything is instantly converted into thought, we cannot claim that there might be something extra-mental anyway, because this “might be something” is itself converted into a thought by the same rules that condemned dogs, trees, and houses to the idealist prison. This brings us to the third pillar of Meillassoux’s argument, which is the key to all the rest: the necessity of contingency. His strategy is to transform our supposed ignorance of things-in-themselves into an absolute knowledge that they exist without reason, and that the laws of nature can change at any time for no reason at all. In this way the cautious agnosticism of Kantian philosophies is avoided, but so is the collapse of reality into thought as found in German Idealism. Meillassoux does try to prove the existence of things-in-themselves existing outside thought; he simply holds that they must be proven after passing through the rigors of the correlationist challenge, not just arbitrarily decreed to exist in the manner of naïve realism. As he puts it, “Everything could actually collapse: from trees to stars, from stars to laws, from physical laws to logical laws; and this not by virtue of some superior law whereby everything is destined to perish, but by virtue of the absence of any superior law capable of preserving anything, no matter what, from perishing” (53). If idealism thinks that the human-world correlate is absolute, for Meillassoux it is the facticity of the correlate that is absolute. He tries to show this with a nice brief dialogue between five separate characters (55-59) which is covered in detail in my forthcoming book,2 but which I will simplify here for reasons of time. In this simplified version, we first imagine a dogmatic realist arguing with a dogmatic idealist. The realist says that we can know the truth about the things-in-themselves; the idealist counters that we can only the truth about thought, since all statements about reality must be turned into statements concerning our thoughts about reality. Here the correlationist enters and proclaims that both of these positions are equally dogmatic. For although we have access to nothing but thoughts, we cannot be sure that these thoughts are all that exist; there could be a reality outside thought, there is simply no way to know for sure. And this latter position is the one that Meillassoux attempts to transform from an agnostic, skeptical point into an ontological claim about the contingency of everything. Consider it this way. How does the correlationist defeat the idealist? The idealist holds that the existence of anything outside thought is impossible. The correlationist, by contrast, holds that something might exist outside the human-world correlate. But this “something might” has to be an absolute possibility. It cannot mean that “something outside thought might exist for thought ,” because that is what the idealist already says. No, the correlationist must mean that something might exist outside thought quite independently of thought. In other words, the correlationist says that idealism might be wrong, and this means it is absolutely true that idealism might be wrong. Thus, correlationism is no longer just a skeptical position. It holds that all the possibilities of the world are absolute possibilities. We have absolute knowledge that any of the possibilities about the existence or non-existence of things-in-themselves might be true, and this means that correlationism flips into Meillassoux’s own position: speculative materialism. As Meillassoux sees it, there are only two options here. Option A is to absolutize the human-world correlate, which is what the idealist does: there absolutely cannot be anything outside thought. Option B, by contrast, is to absolutize the facticity of the correlate: its character of simply being given to us, without any inherent necessity. The correlationist cannot have it both ways by saying: “there absolutely might be something outside thought, yet maybe this is absolutely impossible.” In other words, once we escape dogmatism we can only be idealists or speculative materialists, not correlationists. The human-world correlate is merely a fact, not an absolute necessity. But this facticity itself cannot be merely factical: it must be absolute. Here Meillassoux coins the French neologism factualité , which has been suitably translated into the English neologism “factiality.” (7, 122-3) Factialty means that for everything that exists, it is absolutely possible that it might be otherwise, not just that we cannot know whether or not it might be otherwise. Just as Kant transformed philosophy into a meditation on the categories governing human finitude, Meillassoux wishes to turn philosophy into a meditation on the necessary conditions of factiality, which he calls “figures”—a new technical term for him. (80) One such figure is that the law of non-contradiction must be true, and for an unusual reason. Since everything is proven to be contingent, nothing that exists can be contradictory, for whatever is contradictory has no opposite into which it might be transformed, and thus contingency would be impossible.3 Another such figure is that there must be something rather than nothing: for since contingency exists, something must exist in order to be contingent. It is a daring high-wire act, one that sacrifices realism to the correlational circle in order to rebuild it from out of its own ashes. Some might conclude that the lack of reason in things is a byproduct of the ignorance of finite humans, Meillassoux is making precisely the opposite point. For in fact, the doctrine of finitude usually leads directly to belief in a hidden reason. The fact that it lies beyond human comprehension merely increases our belief in this arbitrarily chosen concealed ground. By defending anew the concept of absolute knowledge Meillassoux evacuates the world of everything hidden. The reason for things having no reason is not that the reason is hidden, but that no reason exists. Thus, even while insisting on the necessity of non-contradiction, he rejects the other Leibnizian principle: sufficient reason. Everything simply is what it is, in purely immanent form, without deeply hidden causes. Or as Meillassoux puts it: “There is nothing beneath or beyond the manifest gratuitousness of the given—nothing but the limitless and lawless power of its destruction, emergence, or persistence” (63).The world is a “hyper-chaos”(64). But this is not the same thing as flux. For the chaos of the world is such that stability might occur just as easily as constant, turbulent change. Let’s now digress a bit, and return to the question of ancestrality, which Meillassoux transforms later in the book into “dia-chronicity.” Correlationism holds that all talk of a world outside the correlate is immediately recuperated by the correlate. The phrase “13.5 billion years ago” becomes “13.5 billion years ago for us ,” and the phrase “the universe following the extinction of humans” becomes “the universe following the extinction of humans for humans .” But notice that whether we talk about the world before or after humans, in both cases it is time that is used to challenge the correlate. Meillassoux has no interest in challenges that might be posed by space. For example, what about a vase in a lonely country house that topples to the floor and smashes when no one is there to watch it? Isn’t this also a challenge to correlationism, no less than the Big Bang or the heat death of the universe long after humans have vanished? In an eight-page supplement to the English translation of After Finitude ,4 possibly in response to my own 2007 review of the French original,5 Meillassoux bluntly denies that space is of any relevance to the question. Spatial distance is a merely harmless challenge to the human-world correlate. After all, even though no one is there in the lonely country house to witness the shattering of the vase, we can say that had there been an observer , that observer would have witnessed the toppling and destruction of the vase. For this event still occurs in a world in which the human-world correlate already exists, whereas the diachronicity of events both before and after the existence of humans makes it impossible to say that had there been an observer they would have witnessed the Big Bang occurring in such and such a fashion. However, it seems to me that Meillassoux merely asserts that the temporal simultaneity of our existence with that of the vase in the lonely country house is enough to render it harmless. It is true that the house does not exist prior to the correlate, but nonetheless it exists outside the correlate, and that is enough to make the same challenge. It is difficult to see why the “had there been an observer” maneuver succeeds in the case of a vase in the countryside in April 2011 but fails in the case of the Big Bang. This is not just a matter of nitpicking Meillassoux’s argumentative style: the fact that he bases his argument on time has at least two important consequences for his position. For in the first place, even though Meillassoux insists that the laws of nature are absolutely contingent, this turns out to be true only in a temporal sense. That is to say, it is a paradoxical feature of Meillassoux’s philosophy that he does allow for the existence of laws of nature, and simply believes that they can change at any moment without reason. Within any given moment, laws of nature do exist. He never suggests that different parts of the universe can have different laws at the same time, nor does he have any interest in the laws of part/whole composition that take place within any given instant. Could it be the case that rather than being made of gold atoms, a small chunk of gold could be made of silver atoms, cotton, horses, or that this same small piece of gold could be made of gigantic vaults filled with even more gold? These are not topics that draw Meillassoux’s attention, since he is focused solely on how the laws of nature might change or endure from one moment to the next . Another implication for Meillassoux’s system is that his concept of things-in-themselves turns out to be to be inadequate. For when he proves that things-in-themselves can exist without humans, this turns out to be true only in a temporal sense as well. Namely, things-in-themselves existed ten billion years ago, and they will continue to exist after all humans have succeeded in exterminating themselves. However, being able to exist before our births and after our deaths is just one small part of what it means to be a thing-in-itself. The more important part is that even if a thing is sitting on a table right now, in front of me, even if I stroke it lovingly or press my face up against it directly, I am still dealing only with a phenomenal version of the thing; the thing-in-itself continues to withdraw from all access. Yet no such thing is acknowledged by Meillassoux. For him finitude is a disaster, and absolute knowledge is in fact possible. Meillassoux’s thing-in-itself exists in independence only of the human lifespan , not of human knowledge. The fifth pillar of Meillassoux’s argument is his use of Cantor’s transfinite mathematics to show that even if the laws of nature are contingent, they need not be unstable, and thus we cannot use the apparent stability of nature to disprove his metaphysics of absolute contingency. What Cantor showed is that there are different sizes of infinity, and that all these infinities cannot be totalized in a single infinite number of infinities. Meillassoux sees this as crucial, since it allows him to discredit any “probabilistic” argument against his theory. The probabilistic argument (as defended quite clearly by Jean-René Vernes)6 would say this: given that the laws of nature seem so stable, it it is extremely improbable that there is no hidden reason for their remaining so stable. As Meillassoux sees it, probability is of value only when we can index an accessible total of cases. These can even be infinite: for example, there are an infinite number of points where a rope can break when stretched tight, but this does not stop us from calculating probabilities for various sections of the rope to break. By contrast, there is no way to sum up the number of possible laws of nature. For here there is no way to totalize; we cannot stand outside of nature and calculate the possible number of laws so as to determine the probabilities that any one of them might change. Therefore, although we can speak of probability when dealing with intraworldly events such as elections, horse races, and coin-flips, we cannot use the words “probable” or “improbable” when describing alterations at the level of nature as a whole. Rather than commenting on the validity of this argument and its use of Cantor, let me simply note that it once again creates a dualistic ontology. We already saw that Meillassoux treats time differently from space. In analogous fashion, he now treats the level of world differently from that of intraworldly events. The emergence of worlds is purely contingent and virtual and governed by no probability at all, while events within the world necessarily follow laws (even if these laws can change at any moment without reason), and thus their probabilities can be calculated. It is a strategy deeply reminiscent of Badiou’s (2005) own dualism between the normal “state of the situation” and the rare and intermittent “event.” The sixth and final pillar of Meillassoux’s book can be dealt with briefly, since we have already touched on it elsewhere. It comes at the very beginning of the book, when Meillassoux says that we must revive the distinction between primary and secondary qualities, and that the primary qualities are the ones that can be mathematized. He admits that he has not yet published a proof of this idea, though in fact it is already known as one of his primary doctrines. And here we encounter the familiar problem with Meillassoux’s inadequate conception of things-in-themselves. “Primary qualities” refers to those qualities that a thing has independently of its relations with us or anything else. But if the primary qualities can be mathematized, this means that they are not entirely independent of us, since our knowledge can get right to the bottom of them. The mathematized qualities of things are independent of us only in Meillassoux’s sense that they will still have those qualities even when all humans are dead. But to repeat, autonomy from the human lifespan is not the same as autonomy from human access. Here once more Meillassoux is concerned only with independence from the human-world correlate across time, not in any given instant. 2. L’Inexistence divine In 1997, the same year in which he turned thirty years old, Meillassoux earned his doctorate at the École normale supériuere with a brazen dissertation entitled L’Inexistence divine ( The Divine Inexistence ). The work was substantially revised in 2003. But even then, with typical fastidiousness, Meillassoux decided that the work was not yet ready for press. It has now been scrapped in favor of some future, multi-volume work bearing the same title. While writing my book on Meillassoux for Edinburgh University Press, I was permitted to translate excerpts from this unpublished work for use as an appendix in my own book; in total, the appendix contains approximately twenty percent of Meillassoux’s 2003 manuscript, the first time any of it will be published in any language. Nonetheless, a portion of the argument was already tested in the article “Spectral Dilemma,” published in English in the journal Collapse (2008: 261-75). There the philosophical motives for the virtual God are already made clear. What troubles us most are early deaths, brutal deaths, deaths of especial injustice– the sorts of deaths in which the brutal twentieth century was so abundant. And here, neither the atheist nor the believer can help us. The atheist can offer nothing but a sad and cynical resignation when reflecting on the victims of these terrible crimes. The believer does little better, being unable to explain how God could have allowed such things to happen, due to the famous intractability of the problem of evil. The solution offered to this dilemma by Meillassoux is bold, and all the more so given that he emerges from such a deeply Leftist, materialist, and unreligious background. His solution is that God does not yet exist, and therefore is not blameworthy for these catastrophes. Given that everything is contingent in Meillassoux’s philosophy, this God and divine justice might never exist, but they can at least exist as an object of hope. Let’s begin by jumping to the end of L’Inexistence divine , where the alternatives are laid out so nicely. There are four basic attitudes that humans can have towards God, Meillassoux says. First, we can believe in God because he exists. This is the classical theist attitude, rejected for the simple reason that it would be amoral and blasphemous to believe in a God who allows children to be eaten by dogs, to use Dostoevsky’s example. Second, we can disbelieve in God because he does not exist: the classical atheist attitude. But this leads to sadness, cynicism, and a sneering contempt for the greatness of human capacity. The third option, rather more complex, is to disbelieve in God because he does exist: in other words, to exist in rebellion against God as the one who must be blamed for the evils of the earth. The examples here might range from Lucifer himself, to the more human figure of Captain Ahab in Melville’s Moby-Dick , to Werner Herzog’s even more recent catchphrase, “Every man for himself, and God against all.” That leaves only the fourth option: believing in God because he does not exist. Meillassoux closes his book by saying that the fourth option has now been tried (namely, in the course of his own book), and that now that all four have been specified, we must choose. The first reaction to this theory of the inexistent God will be laughter. Few readers will ever be literally convinced by it, and probably none will immediately be convinced by it. But if we ask ourselves why we laugh, the answer is because it sounds so improbable that an inexistent God might suddenly emerge and resurrect the dead. It obviously sounds more like a gullible theology than a rigorous piece of philosophical work. Yet two things need to be kept in mind. First, Meillassoux’s theories are hardly more unlikely than those of great philosophers of the past such as Plato, Plotinus, Avicenna, Malebranche, Spinoza, Leibniz, Nietzsche, or Whitehead. We read the great philosophers not because their systems are plausible in commonsense terms that can be measured by the laws of probability. Instead, we read them precisely because they shatter the existing framework of common sense and open up new window on the universe. Second, and even more importantly, Meillassoux has already rejected probability as a valid measuring stick in philosophy. Or rather, he accepts probability in the intra-worldly realm (where it is linked with potentiality), and rejects it at the level of the world itself (where potentiality is replaced with what he calls virtuality). The virtual God can appear at any moment for no reason at all, just as any other new configuration of laws of nature can appear: in a manner that the laws of probability cannot calculate. Responding to those who might ridicule the idea of a sudden emergence of God and a resurrection of the dead, Meillassoux cites Pascal, who asserts that the resurrection of the dead would be far less incredible than the fact that we were born in the first place. This shifts philosophy onto new ground. Rather than concerning ourselves with what is likely to happen in the world as we know it, we focus instead on the most important things that could happen. For this reason, the expected objection that a virtual God is no more likely to appear than a virtual unicorn or a virtual flying spaghetti monster misses the point. Unicorns and spaghetti monsters could also appear, just like any other non-contradictory thing. But these would just be novel bizarre entities among others, not the heralds of completely new worlds. For Meillassoux, the emergence of matter, life, and thought have been the three truly amazing advents of the world so far, each of them dependent on the advent(s) preceding them. As he sees it, there can be no greater intraworldly entity than the human beings who already exist, since nothing in the world is better than the absolute knowledge of which humans alone are capable. This means that the next great advent must be something that perfects human beings rather than superseding them. And this can only be the world of justice, in which the dead are resurrected and their horrible deaths partially cancelled (Meillassoux never considers the possibility of a God who would literally erase the pre-divine past so that it never happened at all). The only immortality worth having is an immortality of this life, not an existence in some ill-defined afterworld. Human existence, he holds, must always be governed by a “symbol” that gives us the “immanent and comprehensible inscription of values in a world.” And just as cosmic history made the three great contingent leaps of matter, life, and thought, with a leap to justice as the only one still to come, a similar structure occurs within human culture and its symbols, which consist so far of the cosmological, naturalistic, and historical symbols, with a “factial” symbol still to come. We can review each of these symbols briefly. The cosmological symbol refers to the ancient dualism between the terrestrial and celestial spheres. Here below everything is conflict, corruption, and decay; but in the heavens nothing is perishable, all movement is circular, and everything is arranged in mutual harmony. This symbol is ended by modern physics when Galileo discovers such blemishes as sunspots and craters on the moon, and when Newton integrates both celestial and terrestrial movement into a single gravitational law. Next comes the naturalistic or romantic symbol, in which perfection comes not from the sky but from nature itself. The world is filled with pretty flowers (Meillassoux claims that the ancients never discussed the beauty of flowers until Plotinus in the third century) and with living creatures naturally moved by pity, at least until society corrupts them. This symbol collapses in the face of reality as we know it, since pity is no more common than war, corruption, and violence. This brings us to the historical symbol, which only now is passing away. Bad things may happen, but history has an inner logic of its own, such that everything works out in the end. The ultimate form of the historical symbol is the economic symbol, whether in a Marxist or neo-liberal form. Just as the Marxist holds that the inner economic logic of the capitalists will inexorably lead them to self-destruction, the neo-liberal assumes that the sum total of individual selfish actions will lead, in the long run, to the greatest possible good. We worship the economy and let it guide history for us, just as the ancients worshipped celestial bodies and held them to be free from blemish. The final remaining symbol is the factial symbol, which Meillassoux hopes will now emerge. Factiality, we recall, is his term for the absolute contingency of everything that exists. Once we have grasped this absolute contingency, we are free to expect the dramatic advent of the coming fourth World: the world of justice, inaugurated by a virtual God and even mediated by a messianic human figure. There is the added feature, however, that this messiah must abandon all claims to special status once the messianic realm of justice is achieved. The messianic figure will then be no more special than any person on the street, since a reign of human equality will have arisen. Although this focus on human being might seem like a return to standard humanism, Meillassoux holds that human pre-eminence has never truly been maintained. Previously, humans have been treated as special only because they contemplate the Good, because they resemble their omnipotent creator, or because they happen to be the temporary victors in a cruel Darwinian death-match between millions of living species. For Meillassoux, by contrast, humans have value because they know the eternal. But it is not the eternal that is important, since this merely represents the blind, anonymous contingency of each thing. What is important is not knowledge of the eternal , but knowledge of the eternal. We should not admire Prometheus for stealing fire from the gods; Prometheus is simply as bad as all the gods, no matter how much he increased our power. Feuerbach and Marx were wrong to say that God is a projection of the human essence, since for Meillassoux the usual concept of God represents the degradation of the human essence. If the traditional God was allowed to inflict plagues and tsunamis on the human race, the Promethean human of the twentieth century simply assumes the right to inflict death camps and atomic fireballs instead. In this respect, we have simply begun to imitate the degradation of humanity that was formerly invested in an omnipotent and arbitrary God. In response to charges that absolute contingency might lead to political quietism, Meillassoux counters that the World of justice would mean nothing unless we had already hoped for it beforehand. A World of justice that came along at random would merely be an improved third World of thought: indeed, a perfect one. But it would have satisfied no craving, and would therefore have no redemptive power. For this reason, we must actively hope for the fourth World of justice for such a fourth World ever to arise. Not only justice, but beauty is dependent on such hope: for Meillassoux, who is here somewhat dependent on Kant, beauty means an accord between our human symbolization and the actual world, which could never be present in a World of the blessed any more than justice could. And just as a messianic figure is needed to incarnate our hope and then abandon power once the World of justice is realized, it is the figure of the child whose fragile contingency shows us a dignity and a demand for justice beyond all power. 3. Meillassoux Radicalized or Reversed Given the promising reception of Meillassoux’s first book, it would not be groundless to engage in early speculation about what it might take to earn him a place in the history of philosophy. Maybe this will never happen—who knows?—but quite possibly it will: his lucid argumentative methods and sheer philosophical imagination at least make him a good candidate to be read well into the future, especially following further elaboration in print of his mature system. Philosophy is often practiced as thought it were nothing more than the amassing of “knockdown arguments.” But this is no more insightful than saying that good architecture is the amassing of steal beams. It is true that poorly constructed building cannot stand for long, but sound construction is merely the first, indispensable step in building. In fact, I am inclined to say that what really makes a philosopher important is not being right, but being wrong . I mean this in a very specific sense. I once heard the interesting remark about twentieth century culture that “you have to remember that the sixties really happened in the seventies.” That is to say, it was in the 1970’s rather than the more honored 1960’s that civil rights, free love, long hair, and the rock and roll drug culture really took root. With respect to the history of philosophy, we might just as easily say: “you have to remember that Plato really happened in Aristotle,” that “Kant really happened in Hegel” or “Hume really happened in Kant,” or that “Husserl’s phenomenology first achieved its truth in Heidegger.” One becomes an important philosopher not by being right, but by attracting rebellious admirers who tell you that you are wrong , even as their own careers silently orbit around your own. To recruit faithful disciples may be comforting and flattering, but the greatest thinkers have generally had to experience refutation at the hands of their most talented heirs. For this reason, I would propose that we size up the magnitude of living thinkers not by deciding how many times they are right and wrong, but by asking instead: who would take the trouble to refute this author? For this reason I do not ask: “Is Meillassoux right?”, since I do not believe in the virtual God myself, nor am I convinced by any important aspect of Meillassoux’s philosophy. Instead, I ask if there are interesting ways to overturn him. Only by being overturned, by no longer remaining a contemporary, does one become a classic. Let’s begin with a simple model of refutation, which can be refined further at a later date once the basic point is established. One kind of refutation simply consists in saying: “This author is a complete idiot.” The refuter now walks away in celebration, and no link between the present and the future is built; all is reduced to rubble. But this sort of mediocre triumphalism is generally practiced by those who achieve little of their own, and is not especially interesting. Much more interesting is the sort of refutation that does not take its target to be a complete idiot. I would like to suggest that there are just two basic ways in which this can be done: radicalization and reversal . It has not escaped my notice that this is a fairly good match for the Deleuzian distinction between irony and humor. Whereas irony critiques and adopts the opposite principle of what it attacks, humor accepts what it confronts but pushes it into highly exaggerated form. The ironist is like the worker who sows chaos by rebeling and contradicting the boss, while the humorist is like the worker who follows orders to an absurdly literal degree, with equally chaotic results. Let’s start with a few examples. In Aristotle’s treatment of Plato, and Heidegger’s of Husserl, we find reversal. Plato’s eidei are transformed by Aristotle into mere secondary substances, and the individual worldly things despised by Plato become what is primary. For Husserl what is primary is whatever is present to consciousness, while for Heidegger this is precisely what is secondary, since the primary stuff of the world withdraws from any form of presence at all. As for radicalization, it is most easily found in the transformation of Kant by German Idealism: “Kant was right to wall off the things-in-themselves from human access, and simply should have realized that the thought of the Ding an sich is also a thought, and thereby the noumena are just special cases of the phenomena,” with much following from this discovery. It would also be easy to read Spinoza as a radicalizer of Descartes, and Berkeley and Hume as radicalized versions of Locke. Perhaps the distinction is now sufficiently clear. Admiring refutations are not those that say “Professor X is an idiot,” which is merely the flip side of the eager disciple’s fruitless “Professor X got everything right.” Instead, it will be some variant of one of the following two options: “Professor X is important, but got it backwards,” or “Professor X is important, but didn’t push things far enough.” In the history of philosophy these two latter cases have often been painful in purely human terms: Aristotle expresses sadness at refuting Plato, Kant is openly annoyed at Fichte, and Husserl feels betrayed and used by Heidegger. Rude handling from later figures almost seems to be the sine qua non of being a great philosopher. Now, it has already been claimed that Meillassoux is an emerging philosopher of the first importance, and by no less a figure than Alain Badiou: “It would be no exaggeration to say that Quentin Meillassoux has opened up a new path in the history of philosophy…” (Preface, vii). But rather than taking Badiou’s word for it, or rejecting his word, we might experiment by asking how Meillassoux could be radicalized or reversed. Are there interesting ways of doing this that might launch whole new schools of philosophy, unexpected or even condemned by Meillassoux himself? While no one can see the future, the present is poor when it is not riddled with virtual futures. The relation between philosophers and their predecessors and successors is always somewhat complicated, of course. But generally there is one central divergence at stake, which might be taken as the key to all the others. On this basis we could say that new thinkers primarily radicalize or primarily reverse the main ideas of their chief philosophical forerunner. There may be specific historical conditions and perhaps even personality traits connected with these two types, but this question can be left aside for now. More important for us is that radicalizers will generally be followed by reversers, and vice versa. Consider the textbook example of a reversal in the history of philosophy: Kant’s Copernican Revolution, which inverts the so-called dogmatic tradition that addresses the world itself, and makes the world revolve instead around the conditions by which it is known. While it is not completely impossible that Kant’s successors might have re-reversed this principle back into a new and stronger dogmatic realism, conditions were premature for such a move. Anyone doing this too early would likely have been an angry anti-Kantian reactionary rather than an original thinker in command of a genuinely new realist principle. The far more likely outcome is the one that actually happened: Kant’s reversal of his predecessors was viewed as incomplete, or as retaining lamentable bits of the traditional view, which despite his admirable breakthrough he was unable to shake off. This was the view of German Idealism, anyway. In similar fashion, Spinoza could also be viewed as a radicalizer of Descartes, who is equally accused of preserving various Scholastic dogmas in an otherwise radical project of philosophical reversal. The point is this: reversals in the history of thought tend to be followed soon thereafter by radicalizations of those reversals. The same may hold true in reverse: radicalizations might generally be followed by reversals, given that it is not always possible to be more radical than the radicals have already been. Consider the case of Husserl, who radicalizes Brentano’s early vagueness about what lies beyond immanent objectivity, and Twardowski’s assertion that there must be an external object lying outside the intentional content, by collapsing everything into the intentional sphere: there is no difference between the Berlin in my consciousness and the actual Berlin that is home to millions of people. It is difficult to see how one could be even more radical than Husserl’s idealist turn here. And thus the road is paved to Heidegger’s reversal of classical phenomenology, in which the key point is what lies deeper than any presence to consciousness: the Sein whose power and obscurity cannot be made exhaustively present, but only sends itself in historical epochs. In similar fashion we might also read Leibniz as a reverser of Spinoza’s radicalization, retrieving a strong sense of individual substance and a certain validity of what the Scholastics had said. Returning to Meillassoux, we might ask which kind of philosopher he is: a radicalizer or a reverser? At present, Meillassoux looks to me like a radicalizer (though for now his future remains shrouded in mist). He takes the correlationist tradition, which allows us to speak only of the relation between human and world, and tries to raise it into an even more extreme claim about the absolute contingency of everything. But whereas German Idealism did this by trying to collapse the distinction between thought and world entirely into the “thought” side, Meillassoux does it by trying to shift the non-absolute contingency of the thought-world correlate from epistemology to ontology. It is no longer a question of the inability of human knowledge to know what lies outside the correlate, but the inability of reality itself to be rooted in any definite laws. Furthermore, if we look at the various features of Meillassoux’s philosophy identified earlier tonight, all but one are already so radical that there is no obvious way to push them further. The one exception would be his claim that the world as a whole can change for no reason at any moment, coupled with the inconsistent claim that within a given world there are laws of nature that everything must follow. If gravitational attraction between all masses is a current law in our world, then for Meillassoux there can be no exceptions to this law for as long as it remains in force. A toppled vase will fall to the floor every time for sure,unless there is a cosmic change by which the laws of nature as a whole have altered. (This is reminiscent of the late medieval distinction between the absolute and ordained power of God, according to which God has the power to set or change the laws of nature, but not to contravene those laws locally once they are set.) On this point, to radicalize Meillassoux would simply be to say: there are no laws of nature even in the local sense. Everything that happens, even in the world here and now, is purely contingent and not governed by even a trace of law. And while this would be a more consistent development of Meillassoux’s thoughts on contingency, it is difficult to see how it could lead to a new philosophy. Instead, the admiring successors of Meillassoux are more likely to reverse one of his already sufficiently radical points. At least four candidates come to mind: *First, we have seen that Meillassoux thinks correlationism is challenged by a time before or after consciousness, but not by a space lying outside it. Perhaps this could be reversed into saying that spatial exteriority is the really crucial point. The arguments on this point are perhaps the least convincing in After Finitude (and do not even occur in the original French edition), and therefore it might be a candidate for the “blind spot” of which no philosopher is ever free. *Second, Meillassoux uses Cantor to claim that the contingency of laws of nature would not entail that they are unstable. A successor of Meillassoux might claim that it does make them unstable, and celebrate this fact. This person would then have to explain why common sense seems to encounter a relatively stable world despite its truly rampant instability. Whereas Meillassoux’s problem is to show how stability might exist despite contingency, this successor’s problem would be slightly different: to show why actual, full-blown instability might have the appearance of stability. *Third, Meillassoux claims that the primary qualities of things are those that can be mathematized. He might be reversed by a successor who says the opposite: the mathematizable qualities are the secondary ones, and the primary ones are those that elude symbolic formulation. While this is a perfectly valid possible objection to Meillassoux, it is one that is made in advance by some of his predecessors and is still made by some of his peers, making it less interesting for futurology than some of his other points. *Fourth and finally, whereas Meillassoux claims that God does not exist but might exist in the future, a successor might argue even more bizarrely that God has always existed but might vanish in the future. Let’s arbitrarily select the first of these possibilities, and imagine briefly where it might lead, if pursued in the future by admiring detractors. Meillassoux comes from the circle of Badiou, and some of Badiou’s most ardent admirers are found in Latin America. So, let’s imagine that towards mid-century some ingenious reversers of Meillassoux emerge in that portion of the Spanish-speaking world. Just for fun, let’s call them Castro and Chávez. And in order to avoid any confusion with the present-day politicians of those names, we will stipulate that Meillassoux’s great successors are both women. The philosopher Castro (we will suppose she comes from Peru) reverses Meillassoux’s argument that the ancestral or diachronic are what most threaten the human-world correlate. Instead, she claims that the diachronic does not threaten the correlate at all, and that we must instead look at space as what ruins the correlate and demands a strange new realism. What would such a philosophy look like? In order to determine this, we might ask what price Meillassoux pays for doing it the opposite way. As I see it, he pays in two separate ways. One is that laws of nature for him are contingent over time . The laws of nature apply to the universe as a whole at any given moment, and would be changed globally if they are ever changed at all. The second price he pays is that Meillassoux has no mereology , or theory of parts and wholes. Everything for him is on the level of the given, or immanent in experience, with the sole proviso that the laws governing this immanence might change without notice at any given moment. In reversing Meillassoux, Castro makes the following claims in the preface to her stunning debut book of 2045, The Cosmos and its Neighborhoods , rapidly translated from Spanish into all the languages of the world: Despite his brilliant analysis of the contingency of laws of nature over time, Meillassoux gets two important assumptions wrong. First, he allows for only one set of contingent laws to govern nature as a whole. Second, he allows laws to govern only the world that is immanent in experience, and thereby fails to explore the contingency among part-whole relations. In this book I will argue, first, that the laws of nature vary in any given instant between one region of the universe and the next; and second, that the world is made up of layers of parts and wholes that are also contingent with respect to one another. Those are the words of Castro. This may sound like a hopeless free-for-all of chaos, yet the book somehow succeeds in drawing some compelling deductions about how laws must vary from one place or level in the world to the next. Trapped in the limited horizon of 2011, and not yet inspired by the heavily balkanized political and technological situation of 2050 that somehow lends additional credence to Castro’s vision, we can only vaguely grasp what such a philosophy might look like. After this reversal of Meillassoux by Castro, the usual pattern leads us to expect a radicalization by Chávez, a young Argentine student of Castro. How could the already strange theories of Castro be radicalized? Perhaps as follows, in a disturbing new book entitled The Implosion of the Neighborhoods , which argues as follows: Castro was right to shift the Meillassouxian framework of contingency from time to space. However, in this respect she retained a surprisingly traditional opposition between the two. In this book I will show that time and space collapse into one another. This may sound too much like the discredited four-dimensional block universe of twentieth century physics and philosophy. However, the four-dimensional universe is a model biased in favor of space, merely adding an extra dimension to the commonsense spatial continuum while stipulating that the serial passage of time is an illusion. In this book I will argue instead for a one-dimensional space-time modeled after our experience of time, in which there is no simultaneous co-existence at all between different parts of the universe, or ‘neighborhoods’ as my esteemed teacher Castro has called them. Instead, the various portions of the universe link to one another by succession rather than by coexistence. Buenos Aires, New York, and Amsterdam do not exist simultaneously in the same landscape, but one after the other in the mind of some observer, and this observer can only be an observer much larger than any human. Against Meillassoux’s notion of a virtual God that does not exist now but might exist in the future, I will argue for an actual God that surveys the universe in sequence, thereby generating the illusion of spatial diversity and even the illusion of individual minds located within that diversity. Once this divine observer dies, the universe as a whole must perish. Again, these ideas are so bizarre that we of 2011 can barely comprehend them, just as Aristotle would have had a difficult time grasping the theories of Descartes. We could then perhaps imagine a further reversal of this theory, emanating from the intellectually resurgent Philippines of the twenty-second century. The Filipino School might argue that the universe is already dead, given the collapse of its spatial richness into the serial observations of a flimsy and mortal God. The virtual universe does not yet exist, but might exist in fully spatial form in the future, and this would require the death of God and the resulting liberation of God’s succession of images as independent, spatially situated realities. With a bit of sharpening, we might be able to make all of these imaginary thinkers more intuitively clear. Along with the history of philosophy, there might arise a new discipline generating imaginary futures for philosophy. The richness of Meillassoux’s system comes not from the fact that he is plausibly right about so many things, but because his philosophy offers such a treasury of bold statements ripe for being radicalized or reversed. He is a rich target for many still-unborn intellectual heirs, and this is what gives him the chance to be an important figure. NOTES 1. Quentin Meillassoux, After Finitude . Trans. R Brassier. (London: Continuum, 2008.) Page 5. The word “correlationism” does not appear in his doctoral thesis. As Meillassoux informed me in an email of February 8, 2011, he first coined this term in 2003 or 2004, while editing for publication a lecture he had given at the École normale supérieure on a day devoted to the theme of “Philosophy and Mathematics,” an event including Alain Badiou as one of the participants. 2. Graham Harman, Quentin Meillassoux: Philosophy in the Making . (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming 2011). 3. In an email of December 6, 2010, Meillassoux clarifies that in After Finitude he only deduces the impossibility of a “universal contradiction,” not of a determinate contradiction. In the same email he suggests that he can also prove the latter, though the proof is somewhat lengthier than the one found in After Finitude . 4. After Finitude (18-26), in the passage falling between the two sets of triple asterisks. These pages were sent by Meillassoux to translator Ray Brassier (in French) during the translation process, and do not appear in the original French version of the book. 5. Graham Harman, “Quentin Meillassoux: A New French Philosopher.” Philosophy Today 51.1 (2007): Pages 104-117. The passage where I raise the question of space can be found in the first column of page 107. 6. Vernes is first cited on p. 95 of After Finitude . See Jean-René Vernes, Critique de la raison aléatoire, ou Descartes contra Kant . (Paris: Aubier, 1982).  . (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Interpersonal and Emotional Beginnings of Understanding: A Review of Peter Hobson’sThe Cradle of Thought: Exploring the Origins of ThinkingShaun Gallagher (bio)Hobson's book (2002) is extremely accessible, interestingly interdisciplinary, and knowledgeable in all the right ways. He pulls together work in psychiatry, experimental psychology, and psychoanalysis in a framework that is relevant to issues in the philosophy of mind. We are told much of this in the preface, and (...) it is true. I think it is an excellent book for students and for theorists who have an interest in, but who are not working in the specific areas of, cognitive development. I recommend it highly for those audiences. For those who are already working in these areas, and for those who are already familiar with Hobson's work, there are no surprises. As someone who has learned a good deal from Hobson and who is in substantial agreement with many of his conclusions, I read the first six chapters of the book looking for something new and exciting, but did not find it. The reader will nonetheless find clear and careful discussions of contributions from evolutionary theory, developmental psychology, and psychopathology to our understanding of the mind.Hobson does tackle the difficult question of why we should include psychoanalysis as part of the investigation. He views psychoanalysis as a kind of experimental procedure. Like the experimentalist, the psychoanalyst "sets up an unusual situation that allows him to observe things that would otherwise remain hidden" (p. 19). What the psychoanalyst looks for in these arrangements are patterns of relationship that shape all of the patient's behavior and thought, relations with others and with herself. The analyst has to engage in something like a second-person phenomenology, examining not only the subjective [End Page 253] patterns of the patient, but also the effects (specifically the emotional effects) those patterns have on the analyst himself. The outcome of analysis, for purposes of the research project that Hobson is engaged in, is twofold. First, the psychoanalytic procedure reaches certain dimensions of thought and social relationships that seem unavailable to experimental approaches. "We find that the mind works in ways that are more complex than common sense or even experimental psychology would suggest. In particular, there are ways of thinking and relating to people that appear to be more primitive and less rational than we might suppose" (pp. 21-2). Second, psychoanalysis shows that what happens within an individual's mind is essentially related to what happens in her social relationships. The latter point, as Hobson notes, is a central theme of his book.This is all well and good, the experimental psychologist might say, but it seems overly subjective. After all, if the data include the emotional effects that a patient might have on the investigator, how precisely can we make that scientifically objective? I think that the right answer to that question is embodied in Hobson's approach, and perhaps in who Hobson is. Hobson is himself an experimental psychologist, as well as a practicing psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. He balances the claims that he bases on psychoanalysis with results from studies (including many of his own studies) in experimental psychology and psychiatry. To put it precisely, the task is not to turn the subjective or intersubjective data from psychoanalysis into objective data, but to explore subjectivity (which is certainly part of what we want to explain) by means of a method that gets at things from a different perspective, but that is also consistent with and balanced by the more objective results of experimental science. My own doubts about psychoanalysis are somewhat mitigated by the balance that Hobson maintains throughout this book.Chapters 2 through 6 summarize a large number of studies that ultimately make the case for the importance of intersubjectivity in the development of mental abilities. Chapter 2 explores the necessary prerequisites for the emergence of thought in infancy. Evidence found in experiments on and observations of the interaction between infants and caregivers, early imitation, and emotional relatedness supports the picture of a mix of innate and acquired aspects that move the child toward thought. Significant emphasis is devoted to the role of perception and... (shrink)

What drives us to make decisions? Future-Minded explores the psychological processes of agency and control. If you've ever wondered why we think of coincidences as matters of fate rather than the result of the laws of probability, this book provides the answer. From memory and reasoning to our experiences of causality and consciousness, it unpicks the mechanisms we use on a daily basis to help us predict, plan for and attempt to control the future. Future-Minded - Features a wealth of (...) real world examples to help you engage with this fast-developing area. - Provides clear analysis of psychological experiments and their findings to explain the evidence behind the theory. Thought-provoking and highly topical, Future-Minded is fascinating reading for psychology students studying cognition or consciousness, and for anyone interested in understanding how we try to determine the future. (shrink)

Andrew Abbott's Department and Discipline calls to mind an exchange I once had with an economist—prompted by my characterization of a recent work of urban sociology as part of the “Chicago‐school tradition”—who reminded me that in his profession “Chicago school” was associated with Milton Friedman, free market ideology, and a world made up of rational, self‐interest‐maximizing actors. What I had in mind could hardly be further from that: the highly contextual, neighborhood‐based mode of analysis that became a hallmark of the (...) University of Chicago Department of Sociology from the late 1910s through the 1930s and that explained such phenomena as juvenile delinquency, race relations, poverty, and urban ennui as the products of complex, historically rooted social processes, ecologies, and group interactions.The essays that make up Department and Discipline ask that we rethink “conventional” notions of “Chicago‐school” sociology as a body of work produced by a particular group of faculty and students in a bygone era. Instead, in an engaging, unapologetically polemical, and ultimately prescriptive blend of historical analysis and disciplinary critique, Abbott conceptualizes the Chicago school as a tradition that was invented and reinvented over time, and within the ever‐changing relationship between the department and the broader discipline over the first half of the twentieth century. With this as his central theme, Abbott contemplates the—highly contested—meaning of the Chicago school in historiography and departmental history; the historical transformation of the Chicago‐based American Journal of Sociology from early, shaping influence to a mere organ of an increasingly narrow, professionalized discipline; and the capacity of the discipline to transcend what Abbott believes to be its contemporary state of professional and intellectual exhaustion.Even within sociology, “Chicago school” has had varying connotations over the years. Some associate it with Robert Park and his cyclical, assimilationist vision of race relations; others with the organic, ecological view of urban growth and mobility patterns captured in such still‐ubiquitous concepts as ethnic “succession”; still others with symbolic interactionism, the social psychological study of how people engage with, give meaning to, and ultimately act within the object world around them. More recently there has been talk of a “second Chicago school,” a post–World War II generation of qualitative and interactionist scholars who kept those traditions alive even as the discipline was headed in more quantitative, grand theoretical directions. Complicating matters still further, members of the initial, now‐legendary founding generation did not think of themselves as engaged in a single intellectual project or “school” of thought. Indeed, Abbott tells us that it was not until the 1970s, decades after Chicago lost its dominance in the discipline, that “the loose tangle of maxims and practices that had sustained the department in its glory years” was actually presented as “the Chicago school” .So does it make sense to talk about a or the Chicago school of sociology? Abbott argues that it does, albeit not as something that exists in the ideas, the body of research, or the considerable institutional apparatus that characterized the department during its interwar “glory years.” Rather, it existed in the interactions among a methodologically diverse, often deeply conflicted department faculty, out of which emerged an eclectic tradition of inquiry dedicated to understanding social processes in the context of time and place. Ironically, it took a moment of crisis—a year‐long self‐study in 1951–1952 prompted by administrative pressure and foundation efforts to define sociology as a bona fide science—to bring this vision of the Chicago‐school tradition into full view. By then, the tradition was on the way out: its practitioners retiring or moving elsewhere; its sensibilities displaced by a type of analysis C. Wright Mills would scornfully refer to as abstracted empiricism, dedicated to the construction and manipulation of variables outside of time and place.Though not a book for the uninitiated—Abbott's detailed rendering of behind‐the‐scenes personalities and squabbles requires some knowledge of the department and its landmark works—Department and Discipline makes an important contribution to social science history as well as to the literature on the Chicago school. Informed by extensive archival research, the book is animated by a powerful argument that is likely to resonate with historians, if not with the AJS editors who declined to publish the essay they had commissioned from Abbott for the journal's centenary: that sociology must reconnect with and reinvigorate the tradition of contextual analysis. While intriguing, Abbott's argument that the Chicago “school” exists in departmental processes and faculty relationships is less fully realized—occasional references to the Chicago‐school tradition in its 1920–1930s “heyday” sound awfully like the conventional view. It also makes for a book that gives short shrift to the actual ideas and body of research associated with Chicago sociology—and to their extraordinarily enduring influence among social practitioners and analysts alike. Still, when Abbott does turn to the work, the discussion is, like the rest of the book, original, thought provoking, and rewarding to read. (shrink)

This book employs contemporary philosophy, scientific research, and clinical reports to argue that pain, though real, is not an appropriate object of scientific generalisations or an appropriate target for medical intervention. Each pain experience is instead complex and idiosyncratic in a way which undermines scientific utility. In addition to contributing novel arguments and developing a novel position on the nature of pain, the book provides an interdisciplinary overview of dominant models of pain. The author lays the needed groundwork for improved (...) models and targeted treatments at a time when pain science, pain medicine, and philosophy are explicitly searching for both and failing to find them. The Complex Reality of Pain will be of interest to a broad range of researchers and students, including those working in philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, cognitive science, neuroscience, medicine, health, cognitive and behavioural psychology, and pain science. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Finding Safe Harbor:Buddhist Sexual Ethics in AmericaStephanie KazaWhen the Buddha left home in search of spiritual understanding, he left behind his wife and presumably the pleasures of sex. After his enlightenment, he encouraged others to do the same: renounce the world of the senses to seek liberation from suffering. The monks and nuns that followed the Buddha's teachings formed a kind of sexless society, a society that did not (...) reproduce itself biologically.1 By abstaining from sexual relations, Buddhist monastics intended to reduce attachment and model an alternative to lay life. Buddhist society would continue via transmission of the teachings, a spiritual form of continuity not dependent on sex.But of course, the Buddha was teaching ordinary people with ordinary appetites for sexual contact. And these appetites could really get in the way of spiritual progress; thus we find no shortage of Buddhist commentary on sexuality and its ramifications. And despite 2,500 years of wisdom on this subject, Buddhist teachers and students are still blundering into sexual contacts that undermine their own progress and often the progress of others. Clearly this is not a human fallibility that can be corrected by setting up some simple rules. In fact, sexuality is one of the most deeply hard-wired neurological drives of the human organism, not easily uprooted even for lofty spiritual ideals.From a Buddhist perspective, working with sexuality is working with attachment. How can we understand that attachment in its biological origins? In A Natural History of Sex, Adrian Forsyth describes in vivid detail the ecology and evolution of mating behavior in the animal kingdom.2 In sixteen chapters that cover every biological strategy you can imagine—from incest to role reversal, infanticide to sex change—the author shows how costly sex can be to individual organisms. Though sex is not the only means of reproduction, it certainly involves the most complex behaviors, anatomical variations, social choices, and in a few cases, the risk of death. What can possibly merit such a great investment in momentary pleasure (if indeed it is pleasurable for some animals)? The evolutionary answer is, genetically variable offspring. Variation is the key to surviving calamity as a species. If all animals of a species were genetically identical, they would be terribly vulnerable to single events that exploited their weaknesses. But with variation, there is always a chance that some will make it [End Page 23] through and go on to survive the new conditions (post-earthquake, fire, icestorm, plague, etc.).Seen from the long view of evolution, sexuality is the key to survival of the species. So it is not surprising that sexual conditioning affects the entire human brain, a fact well known to human adolescents. To see how much conditioning must be addressed by Buddhist practice, we can look briefly at the neural map of the human brain. The part of the cortex that responds to touch is wrapped around the cerebrum, with specific areas registering touch in the different parts of the body. The area taken up by the genitals is about as large as the rest of the chest, abdomen, and back put together. It is equivalent to the area used for the hands or the lips, two parts of the body where touch is crucial for finding and managing food. Rita Carter, in Mapping the Mind, points out that "connections from the sex-sniffing, sex-seeking and sex-reactive areas of the limbic systems radiate to almost every corner of every cortical lobe, feeding the urge to our conscious minds."3 Sexual activity involves not only touch and high-level visual recognition but also emotion, thought, and, in the frontal lobes, morality—some of our most sophisticated and abstract thought processes.It is clear that sexuality presents no small challenge to religious practice. How has Buddhism attempted to work with this deep biological conditioning? The central guidelines for Buddhist ethics can be found in the five foundational precepts. Practicing the precepts is seen as a way to reduce suffering and to deepen one's capacity for achieving enlightenment. The first two precepts deal with not killing and not stealing, the third precept deals with not engaging in... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:I Didn’t Like It, but I Recommend It: An Undergraduate Reflects on Contemplation in the ClassroomLauren RodgersWhile taking Introduction to World Religions as a first-year college student, I became acutely aware that my preconceived notions about religions were often wrong, and I had been oblivious to the diversity and complexity of the traditions I began to study. During subsequent semesters, I studied Judaism, Islam, and Hinduism, and during (...) the spring semester of my junior year I was happy to add Buddhism to my schedule. In that class, I not only examined manifold Buddhist teachings and histories, but engaged in a form of Buddhist practice, too. Four days a week, my fellow students and I arranged our zafus in a straight line, bowed, and adjusted our postures to commence fifteen to twenty minutes of zazen. By the end of the semester, I concluded that although I am very ambivalent about this meditation practice, I nonetheless believe that contemplative practices can be valuable tools in the academic setting.Because we were partaking in a religious practice in an academic setting, there were possibilities for ethical conflicts. My professor raised these and we discussed them several times during the first half of the semester, before we collectively agreed to give zazen a try. The only Buddhist in the room was my professor, so I agree that it was essential for her to stress that zazen was optional, and that if anyone felt uncomfortable in any way, it was okay to opt out. My professor reiterated this several times. I am not a follower of any religious tradition, so I did not have any conflicting feelings. Several of my classmates were Christian, but, like me, most were excited to give it a try. I think there was no sense of conflict because Buddhism involves a lot of practices geared toward developing insight on the basis of experience, and zazen does not require belief in a higher power. Buddhism does acknowledge the existence of gods, but they are irrelevant to the spiritual path. Also, my professor is an ordained Zen priest, and therefore very familiar with zazen. I did not have any doubts that we were taught an authentic practice by someone qualified to teach it.Just as there was no pressure to participate, I did not feel that I was forced to like zazen or hold back any feelings of opposition; I was free to express how I felt and why. At first I did not like it because it hurt my back, and instead of sitting there in pain [End Page 119] every day, I let my professor know and she helped me make some adjustments to my posture. But I disliked meditation for other reasons, as well. I rarely, if ever, was able to stop my mind from being like a monkey on a jungle gym. As we sat, we repeatedly counted to ten and fixed our gaze on a spot in front of us. I was told that it is natural for my mind to bounce around and wander off while counting, but I did not expect it would happen before I got to four. Adding to my frustration was the fact that 70 percent of the time, my thoughts were focused on all of the work that I needed to get done before the end of the day. Even though I only sat for fifteen minutes, I got antsy and staying still was not helpful. It makes me wonder, though, whether or how my feelings would change if I did zazen in the summer when my stress levels are way down. Or what if I meditated for more than fifteen minutes? How long would it take before my mind settled down? Would it get worse?Although my restlessness was not the most pleasant experience, I did have days where I found meditation helpful personally. In addition to zazen, we also tried walking meditation, and on nice days we meditated outside near a waterfall on campus. The sound of the water was really soothing, and I noticed that my mind wandered much less. Sometimes it was a relaxing break during the day, and even if I... (shrink)