In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Toward a Non-Cartesian Psychotherapeutic Framework: Radical Pragmatism as an AlternativeLouis S. Berger (bio)AbstractPostmodern criticism has identified important impoverishments that necessarily follow from the use of Cartesian frameworks. This criticism is reviewed and its implications for psychotherapy are explored in a psychoanalytic context. The ubiquitous presence of Cartesianism (equivalently, representationism) in psychoanalytic frameworks—even in some that are considered postmodern—is demonstrated and criticized. The postmodern convergence on praxis as a (...) desirable alternative to Cartesianism is reported, and its relevance for psychoanalysis is considered. The severe conceptual difficulties entailed in formulating such an alternative are discussed, as are those difficulties that would be encountered were psychoanalysis to attempt the shift from explanatory mental science to praxis. The principal psychoanalytic problematics explored are: the paradoxical relationships between theory and therapeutic technique; the therapeutic action; and validation of clinical practices. Initial, nontraditional suggestions for addressing these problems are offered.Keywordspsychoanalysis, therapeutic action, representation, state space, praxis, hermeneutics, Descartes, Heidegger, Wittgenstein“But the inability to bring one’s subject under conceptual control, fixing it propositionally, is not the end of thinking; on the contrary, it were better to say that the breakdown of concepts and the failure of words is an opening that takes us out of the realm where representation and calculation are all that matter to thinking.... [T]his is what happens in the Socratic dialogue where the negativity in which one ends up at a loss for words is at the same time that which sets thinking free.”Bruns 1989, 9“To evolve theory as though our methods and processes of study were essentially the same, or could be the same, as those of other sciences, or could be disregarded when it comes to theory, implies a view of reality that is no longer tenable, least of all in that ambiguous area which we call psychic reality. Nevertheless, all of us are still more or less captives of an erroneous understanding of objectivity and objective reality....”Loewald 1970, 45 [End Page 169]CartesianismCartesianism still underlies and dominates much of today’s thought. It is the label for a network of interrelated ideas and themes:the ontological duality of mind and body; the subjective individualism implicit in the ultimate appeal to direct personal verification; the method of universal doubt which was supposed to lead us to indubitable truths; the doctrine that language and signs are an external disguise for thought; the doctrine that vagueness is unreal and that the philosophic endeavor is one of knowing clearly and distinctly a completely determinate reality; and most fundamentally, the doctrine that we can break out of the miasma of our language or system of signs and have direct intuitive knowledge of objects. (Bernstein 1971, 5–6)[The Cartesian assumptions] constitute a picture of science and the world somewhat as follows: there is an external world which can in principle be exhaustively described in scientific language. The scientist, as both observer and language-user, can capture the external facts of the world in propositions that are true if they correspond to the facts and false if they do not. Science is ideally a linguistic system in which true propositions are in one-to-one relation to facts, including facts that are not directly observed because they involve hidden entities or properties, or past events or far distant events. These hidden events are described in theories, and theories can be inferred from observation, that is, the hidden explanatory mechanism of the world can be discovered from what is open to observation. Man as scientist is regarded as standing apart from the world and able to experiment and theorize about it objectively and dispassionately.(Hesse 1980, vii)Hesse goes on to say that “almost every assumption underlying this account has been subjected to damaging criticism,” a view echoed by others: “Most contemporary philosophers have been in revolt against the Cartesian framework” (Bernstein 1971, 5); “A rejection of the Cartesian view is a central theme for both of the giants of twentieth-century philosophy, Heidegger and Wittgenstein” (Sass 1992, 444n 77); and “The notion of alternative conceptual frameworks has been a commonplace of our culture since Hegel” (Rorty 1982, 3).These criticisms arise... (shrink)

In this provocative contribution to both psychoanalytic theory and the philosophy of science, Louis Berger grapples with the nature of "consequential" theorizing, i.e., theorizing that is relevant to what transpires in clinical practice. By examining analysis as a genre of "state process formalism" - the standard format of scientific theories - Berger demonstrates why contemporary theorizing inevitably fails to explain crucial aspects of practice. His critique, in this respect, pertains both to the formal structure of psychoanalytic explanation and (...) the technical language through which this structure gains expression. The pragmatic recommendations that issue from this critique are illustrated with respect to a number of perennial problem areas besetting analysis and cognate disciplines. In a discussion that encompases theories of affect, issues in family therapy, the nature of first-language acquisition, and the philisophical topics of free will and determinism, Berger shows that certain systems of representation _can_ describe the psychological realm adequately, and that such systems necessarily follow modern physics in rejecting naive assumptions about the separability of theory and practice. His proposals culminate in a "nonhierarchical" conception of psychoanalytic theory that assigns a separate status to the clinically pragmatic level of theorizing. In both his critique of contemporary analysis and his reconstructive proposals, Berger fuses into a highly readable argument a fascinating range of insights culled from epistemology, linguistics, physics, logic, computer science, history, and aesthetics. More impressively still, he demonstrates how an investigation of psychoanalytic theory can serve as a vehicle for examining pervasive epistemological issues in both philosophy and the social sciences. (shrink)

ObjectiveProcessing Speed, the ability to perceive and react fast to stimuli in the environment, has been shown to be impaired in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. However, it is unclear whether PS can be improved following targeted treatments for ADHD. Here we examined potential changes in PS following application of transcranial electric stimulation combined with cognitive training in children with ADHD. Specifically, we examined changes in PS in the presence of different conditions of mental fatigue.MethodsWe used a randomized double-blind (...) active-controlled crossover study of 19 unmedicated children with ADHD. Participants received either anodal transcranial direct current stimulation over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex or transcranial random noise stimulation, while completing CT, and the administration order was counterbalanced. PS was assessed before and after treatment using the MOXO-CPT, which measures PS in the presence of various conditions of mental fatigue and cognitive load.ResultstRNS combined with CT yielded larger improvements in PS compared to tDCS combined with CT, mainly under condition of increased mental fatigue. Further improvements in PS were also seen in a 1-week follow up testing.ConclusionThis study provides initial support for the efficacy of tRNS combined with CT in improving PS in the presence of mental fatigue in pediatric ADHD. (shrink)

Drawing on and integrating unorthodox thought from a broad range of disciplines including clinical psychology, linguistics, philosophy, natural science and psychoanalysis, this book offers a provocative, original analysis of the global threats to our survival, and proposes a remedy.

The present study investigates the importance of emotional disclosure and vulnerability in the production of hegemonic masculinities. Of particular interest is the role that silence and invisibility play in how men talk about recent stressful life events. One-on-one interviews with men who experienced a stressful life event in the past year illustrate how men often talk about these events in simultaneously visible and invisible ways. We use the term “cloudy visibility” to describe this engagement, identified both in terms of what (...) men articulate in relation to their past stressful experiences and how they articulate these experiences within the present moment of the interview. The conversational consequences of these linguistic devices are analyzed to illustrate how men obscure their inner emotional lives, thus reproducing hegemonic masculine ideals of staying strong and stoic in the face of adversity, while they also seek to make aspects of their inner lives seen and heard to an interviewer. (shrink)

An estimated 700,000 people in the United States have "long COVID," that is, symptoms of COVID-19 persisting beyond three weeks. COVID-19 and its long-term sequelae are strongly influenced by social determinants such as poverty and by structural inequalities such as racism and discrimination. Primary care providers are in a unique position to provide and coordinate care for vulnerable patients with long COVID. Policy measures should include strengthening primary care, optimizing data quality, and addressing the multiple nested domains of inequity.

Patient centred diagnosis is best practised through shared decision making; an iterative dialogue between doctor and patient, whichrespects a patient’s needs, values, preferences, and circumstances. -/- Shared decision making for diagnostic situations differs fundamentally from that for treatment decisions. This has important implications when considering its practical application. -/- The nature of dialogue should be tailored to the specific diagnostic decision; scenarios with higher stakes or uncertainty usually require more detailed conversations.

The prevailing conception of language is often called "the received view." Though ubiquitous, Louis S. Berger demonstrates its flaws and the difficulties it raises for other disciplines, such as philosophy and physics. In Language and the Ineffable, Berger develops an unconventional model of human development: ontogenesis. A radical and generative feature of the model is the premise that the neonate's world is holistic, boundary-less, unimaginable, and impossible to describe; in other words, ineffable. This study unsettles the foundations of (...) sacrosanct beliefs about language and a host of other disciplines in the process. (shrink)

These essays engage Jin Y. Park’s recent translation of the work of Kim Iryŏp, a Buddhist nun and public intellectual in early twentieth-century Korea. Park’s translation of Iryŏp’s Reflections of a Zen Buddhist Nun was the subject of two book panels at recent conferences: the first a plenary session at the annual meeting of the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy and the second at the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association on a group program session sponsored by the (...) International Society for Buddhist Philosophy. This exchange also includes a response from Park. (shrink)

John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism continues to serve as a rich source of moral and theoretical insight. This collection of articles by top scholars offers fresh interpretations of Mill's ideas about happiness, moral obligation, justice, and rights. Applying contemporary philosophical insights, the articles challenge the conventional readings of Mill, and, in the process, contribute to a deeper understanding of utilitarian theory as well as the complexity of moral life.

For Kant, experiences of beauty, including experiences of beautiful art, are based on the feeling of disinterested pleasure. At first glance, garden-variety emotions don’t seem to play a constitutive role for beauty in art. In this paper I argue that they can. Drawing on Kant’s notion of aesthetic ideas, I will show that garden-variety emotions can function as a driving force for the free use of the imagination: they can enhance the beholder’s activity of freely associating and thus contribute crucially (...) to the free play of the faculties. In doing so, I will develop a more emotion-oriented view of art than is commonly attributed to Kant. I will also argue that there is a lesson to be learned for contemporary aesthetics: emotions not only help us to understand some works of art and to direct our attention, but they also make us engage imaginatively with artworks and make our experiences of art more vivid. (shrink)

Many existence propositions in constructive analysis are implied by the lesser limited principle of omniscience LLPO; sometimes one can even show equivalence. It was discovered recently that some existence propositions are equivalent to Bouwer's fan theorem FAN if one additionally assumes that there exists at most one object with the desired property. We are providing a list of conditions being equivalent to FAN, such as a unique version of weak König's lemma. This illuminates the relation between FAN and LLPO. Furthermore, (...) we give a short and elementary proof of the fact that FAN is equivalent to each positive valued function with compact domain having positive infimum. (shrink)

We deal with Lagrangians which are not the standard scalar ones. We present a short review of tensor Lagrangians, which generate massless free fields and the Dirac field, as well as vector and pseudovector Lagrangians for the electric and magnetic fields of Maxwell’s equations with sources. We introduce and analyse Lagrangians which are equivalent to the Hamilton-Jacobi equation and recast them to relativistic equations.

David Rosenthal explains conscious mentality in terms of two independent, though complementary, theories—the higher-order thought (“HOT”) theory of consciousness and quality-space theory (“QST”) about mental qualities. It is natural to understand this combination of views as constituting a kind of representationalism about experience—that is, a version of the view that an experience’s conscious character is identical with certain of its representational properties. At times, however, Rosenthal seems to resist this characterization of his view. We explore here whether and to what (...) extent it makes sense to construe Rosenthal’s views as representationalist. Our goal is not merely terminological—discerning how best to use the expression ‘representationalism’. Rather, we argue that understanding Rosenthal’s account as a kind of representationalism permits us not only to make sense of broader debates within the philosophy of mind, but also to extend and clarify aspects of the view itself. (shrink)

One debate that occupied Pratyabhijñā philosophers and their Buddhist interlocutors was the question of the reality of _sambandha_, or relation. A central treatise on the topic is Utpaladeva’s (∼10th c.) _Sambandhasiddhi_ [SS] (‘_Proof of Relation_’), a response to Dharmakīrti’s (∼7th c.) _Sambandhaparīkṣā_ [SP] (‘_Analysis of Relation_’). As the contrasting titles suggest, Dharmakīrti held that relations are merely conceptual constructions (_kalpanā_), inferred _post hoc_ from discrete perceptual cognitions (_pratyakṣa_)—and thus ultimately _unreal_. Utpaladeva, on the other hand, attempted to ‘prove’ (_siddhi_) the (...) truth (_satya_) of relation as a genuine ‘division-non-division,’ or ‘unity-in-diversity’ (_bhedābheda_). In this article, I reconstruct Utpala’s ‘proof’ as a pragmatic argument to the effect that Dharmakīrti, in virtue of his nominalist metaphysics, mistakenly treats the general form of relation as an inferential _concept_, rather than the mode of ‘intentional’ _action_ (_śakti_) manifest in reflexive judgment (_vimarśa_). In doing so, Utpala suggests that Dharmakīrti inadvertently renders the relational conditions for the recognition of determinate intentional content unintelligible. (shrink)

This paper proposes a reading of Kelsen’s basic norm based on Kant’s regulative ideas. I begin by exposing Kant’s conception of the principles of reason. Then I criticize an interpretation of the basic norm along the same lines made by Stanley Paulson. Thirdly I analyze two theses from Hermann Cohen that influenced Kelsen greatly and reinforce my stance on the basic norm. Lastly, I explain how the Kelsenian tenet that the basic norm is the transcendental grounding of the normativity of (...) law can be comprehended based on the role the ideas of reason play in the systematization of knowledge. (shrink)

A riddle or a joke? I regret having made light of both myself and the reader. However, the concept of complexity has been explored with such intensity and pedantry, has been analyzed from so many points of view – the mathematical, linguistic, physical, chemical, political, psychological, sociological, physiological, algorithmic, logical, religious, and metaphysical – that nothing, not even the title of this piece, can escape it. Indeed the situation has reached the point where we grow misty-eyed over the very thought (...) of the discrete charms of yesterday's simplicity. Sometimes we dream that complexity itself, after having given us so much, muses – now that its task is fulfilled – of flying up miraculously into the sky, like the Virgin Mother (the Assumption); or ourselves wish to experience – for those spirits who prefer to keep their feet on the ground(!) – the “dissolution” with which entropy begins. Isn't it true that certain words, marked by the spirit of their age, are themselves in fact carried away by the spirit of the age? (shrink)

According to Rosenthal's higher-order thought (HOT) theory of consciousness, one is in a conscious mental state if and only if one is aware of oneself as being in that state via a suitable HOT. Several critics have argued that the possibility of so-called targetless HOTs—that is, HOTs that represent one as being in a state that does not exist—undermines the theory. Recently, Wilberg (2010) has argued that HOT theory can offer a straightforward account of such cases: since consciousness is a (...) property of mental state tokens, and since there are no states to exhibit consciousness, one is not in conscious states in virtue of targetless HOTs. In this paper, I argue that Wilberg's account is problematic and that Rosenthal's version of HOT theory, according to which a suitable HOT is both necessary and sufficient for consciousness, is to be preferred to Wilberg's account. I then argue that Rosenthal's account can comfortably accommodate targetless HOTs because consciousness is best understood as a property of individuals, not a property of states. (shrink)

Dini's theorem says that compactness of the domain, a metric space, ensures the uniform convergence of every simply convergent monotone sequence of real-valued continuous functions whose limit is continuous. By showing that Dini's theorem is equivalent to Brouwer's fan theorem for detachable bars, we provide Dini's theorem with a classification in the recently established constructive reverse mathematics propagated by Ishihara. As a complement, Dini's theorem is proved to be equivalent to the analogue of the fan theorem, weak König's lemma, in (...) the original classical setting of reverse mathematics started by Friedman and Simpson. (shrink)

Berger, U., Total sets and objects in domain theory, Annals of Pure and Applied Logic 60 91-117. Total sets and objects generalizing total functions are introduced into the theory of effective domains of Scott and Ersov. Using these notions Kreisel's Density Theorem and the Theorem of Kreisel-Lacombe-Shoenfield are generalized. As an immediate consequence we obtain the well-known continuity of computable functions on the constructive reals as well as a domain-theoretic characterization of the Heriditarily Effective Operations.

Despite unprecedented medical advancements and the near eradi­cation of many serious diseases, there are growing epidemics of preventable illness brought about in part by the overemphasis on individual autonomy and the neglect of obligations to others. Insofar as these diseases develop because of individual choice, this permissiveness hampers the moral analysis of growing epidemics like childhood obesity. While society has contributed to its rapid progression, childhood obesity finds its origins in lifestyle choices implemented at home. Consequently, parents have an unparalleled (...) duty to prevent and correct obesity and unhealthy lifestyles in their children. Failure to do so undoubtedly violates a parent’s duty and suggests medical neglect. However, our current understanding of medical neglect is too narrow to be applicable to chronic, preventable illnesses. Relevant principles of tort law may broaden our understanding of neglect to better reflect the nature of parental and societal liability in preventable illnesses. (shrink)

The twofold conception of taste -- The beautiful and the agreeable -- Sensations and interests -- Some varieties of normativity.

Les sciences sociales chinoises sont largement ignorées du monde occidental dans un moment où les savoirs scientifiques circulent le long de nouveaux axes épistémologiques en contexte globalisé. La pensée occidentale s’ouvre à la pensée chinoise, de nouveaux horizons apparaissent dans un contexte de globalisation culturelle où il est impossible d’ignorer la Chine continentale. Les sciences sociales en Chine ont été reconstruites depuis 1979 en rendant compte de vraies spécificités liées à une...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Comparative Philosophy and Method: Contemporary Practices and Future Possibilities ed. by Steven Burik, Robert Smid and Ralph WeberDouglas L. Berger (bio)Comparative Philosophy and Method: Contemporary Practices and Future Possibilities. Edited by Steven Burik, Robert Smid and Ralph Weber. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023. Pp. vi + 272. Paperback $40.28, isbn 978-1-350-29704-3.The editors Steven Burik, Robert Smid and Ralph Weber, who have all made important revisions (...) to the theory of comparative philosophical method, have pulled together the contributions of ten other influential scholars in the field and their own work into this much-needed collection of essays. There has been much written about the methodology of comparative philosophy in the last hundred years. More recent reflections in this field have been strongly fueled by post-colonial evaluations as well as a proliferation of methodological approaches. Nonetheless, some consensus on what methods the field should adopt and to what ends still needs overt discussion. The editors argue in an Introduction and Epilogue to the volume that, now faced with the "obstacles" of often conflicting principles and aims of different methodological approaches which leads to their frequent mutual rejection, there is need for a wide acceptance of pluralism in the methodology of comparative philosophy (pp. 4–5). This methodological pluralism, for the editors, should be understood in two senses. Firstly, there should be a broad-based "methodological commitment to pluralism," which amounts to an acceptance that there is an existing plurality of philosophical traditions in the world which have very different foundational insights and worldviews (p. 254). Secondly, the fact that the plurality of philosophical traditions actually exhibits quite different approaches ought, despite any individual comparativist's preferred method, compel us to accept that this diversity is best dealt with by a plurality of research approaches (pp. 254–55). That is to say that, while the editors both acknowledge and endorse the particular specializations of any and all scholars engaged in intercultural philosophy, they urge each scholar to accept that both a descriptive and prescriptive pluralism of philosophical methodologies are necessary for the continued flourishing of the field. In order to demonstrate this descriptive and prescriptive pluralism, the editors organize the volume into what they call five "constellations" of discussion (p. 8).In the first "constellation" labeled "Necessary Conditions," Robert Neville, Jaap [End Page 1] van Brakel and Lin Ma offer general and detailed frameworks for what sorts of assumptions are needed for any comparative philosophical research to proceed fruitfully. Neville, while happily admitting that we need to be vigilant about biases and other limitations when crossing into other traditions, insists that philosophers need to at once be searching for the truth in any given comparison of ideas, while simultaneously always reflectively constructing the right categories on the basis of which the comparison may be justified and sound (pp. 22–27). Van Brakel and Ma present in their co-authored essay an elaborate blueprint for comparative research. This blueprint, while also conceding that there can never be "any one right interpretation" of any individual text, much less whole traditions, posit a basic "family resemblance principle" which highlights "mutually recognizable human practices" as the basic condition enabling comparative reflection in the first place (pp. 34–39).In the second "constellation," entitled "Generalization and Essentialization," Roger Ames and François Jullien insist in various ways that, while the essentialism that bedeviled previous eras of philosophy in general and comparative philosophy in particular should be rejected, generalizations are still fundamentally necessary to crystalize the most important ways in which traditions are distinct from one another. Ames, defending himself against recent allegations of essentialism in his approach, insists that the field needs to be supported by both a "self-reflective hermeneutical sensitivity" which acknowledges the positionality of the inquirer as well as a commitment to "search within the soil" of, in his case, the Chinese philosophical tradition for its own models of meaning (p. 58). To the latter end, Ames defends accurate generalizations which can help us understand "the language, the customs and the life-forms of a living tradition" since these, contrary to suspicions, aid us in preventing essentialization in comparative work (p. 63). Jullien... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reading As Poets Read: Following Mark StrandCharles BergerFor close to a decade now, in the third or fourth phase of his career, Mark Strand has been giving us poem after poem marked by his familiar voice—luminous, deceptively casual, witty, allusive—as he builds up a body of work that thinks and sings ever more deeply about the poet’s unavoidable life of allegory. This growing summa of poetic knowledge and readerly (...) pleasure demands, as the best lyric poetry always does, that readers give themselves over to the rigorous joys of figurative reading, figurative argument. You stare and stare at the poem until something flashes—linkages, interpretive genealogies, a conjunction of words that opens up arguments. Wittgenstein asked: “How can that which we understand in a flash, be put to a use?” Literary criticism, I think, provides an answer.Reading a poet like Strand shouldn’t send you running to the library for secondary source material; instead, you let your memory for poetry run. This assumes that you indeed possess a memory for poetry. Nowadays—enter the polemics—poems are not considered to be sufficient contexts for critical discourse. They need to be supplemented, bolstered, by “wider” cultural texts. The remarkable poetry being written around us counts for very little in the precincts of academic debate, even though so much of this poetry speaks directly to issues of great polemical importance. And it should go without saying that the deep pleasures of tracking poetic language, wherever you will let it take you, wherever you will take it, goes untasted. The poems Mark Strand has recently been writing show him, I think, at the height of his [End Page 177] power, as he thinks through the question of his place in poetry, the place of poetry in his life and ours, and the strange institution of poetry: so gripping in its hold on those who practice it as readers and writers, so hard to locate among the public monuments. The cultural critics don’t seem to understand how one is chosen by poetry, and how the kind of poetry you choose to read, to write, to teach, to remember, constitutes a deep part of your public and private being.At the same time, we should never espouse a defense of reading that limits us to the “poem-in-itself,” as if poems were not already layered, as if it were so easy to distinguish between imagination and interpretation. Poems have memories, as Rosanna Warren demonstrated so powerfully in her discussion of the formal genealogy of Auden’s Freud elegy. A poet like Mark Strand displays a ghostlier kind of memory that signals to us a little less overtly, but no less hauntingly. This is never more apparent than in the three new poems of his that I will now discuss: “Our Masterpiece is the Private Life,” “The Next Time,” and, briefly, “Great Dog Poem No. 2.” Since these poems have yet to be published in a volume, I need to quote them in their entirety.Our Masterpiece is the Private LifeIIs there something down by the water keeping itself from us, Some shy event, some secret of the light that falls upon the deep, Some source of sorrow that does not wish to be discovered yet? Our happiness says we should not care, that desire Could cast its rainbow over the coarse porcelain of the world’s skin And with its measures fill the air. Why look for more? Why not in the brightness of this weather allow ourselves to be Astonished by the music and the privilege of our passing?IIAnd now, my love, while the advocates of awfulness and sorrow [End Page 178] Push their dripping barge up and down the beach, let’s eat Our brill, and sip this beautiful white Beaune. True, the light is artificial, and we are not well-dressed. So what. We like it here. We like the bullocks in the field next door, We like the sound of wind passing over grass. The way you speak, In that low voice, our late night disclosures... why live For anything else? Our masterpiece is the private life.IIIStanding on... (shrink)

In the history of philosophy as well as in most recent discussions, empathy is held to be a key concept that enables a basic understanding of the other while at the same time acting as the foundation of our moral emotionality. In this paper I want to show why empathy is the wrong candidate for both of these tasks. If we understand empathy as projection, i.e. a process of imaginary self-transposition, we are bound to presuppose a fully established interpersonal sphere. (...) If we consider empathy as synonymous with compassion it is highly questionable if we ever reach the other person in his or her otherness. Max Scheler and other early phenomenologists offer very fruitful approaches to both problems without resorting to empathy. I will present some of their thoughts and focus especially on Scheler’s claim about the connection between the experience of the real other and the intentionality of compassion. (shrink)

ABSTRACT On the surface, Diana Mutz's Hearing the Other Side is a work about empirical realities. But it is also an exercise in normative theory. Mutz's chief empirical findings are that people who are exposed to political disagreement tend to become less politically active and that, conversely, political activists tend not to hear views that challenge their own. These findings raise the question of whether participatory and deliberative ideals are compatible with each other, and, in addition, whether they are either (...) realistic or desirable. (shrink)

Berger and Whistler provide a ground-breaking account of Schelling's first controversy with his critic A.C.A. Eschenmayer in 1801, which focused on the philosophy of nature. They argue that key Schellingian concepts, such as identity, potency and abstraction, were first forged in his early debate with Eschenmayer.

A pivotal focus of exegesis of Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārïkā (MMK) for the past half century has been the attempt to decipher the text's philosophy of language, and determine how this best aids us in characterizing Madhyamaka thought as a whole. In this vein, MMK 24:18 has been judged of particular weight insofar as it purportedly insists that the concepts pratītyasamutpāda (conditioned co-arising) and śūnyatā (emptiness), both indispensable to Buddhist praxis, are themselves only "nominal" or "conventional," that is, they are merely labels (...) that do not referentially signify anything that can be taken to be an ontologically ultimate reality. In various guises, as a result of this explication, Nāgārjuna's thought has been seen to embrace an overarching linguistic nominalism or conventionalism in which words, whether they are used for the purposes of theory or practice, though they serve as commonly accepted currency in the transactions of worldly business (vyavahāra), are in the end only ideas (prajñapti) or metaphysical fabrications (prapanca). This interpretation is largely due to tenaciously inaccurate translations and expositions of MMK 24:18 and their dependence on Candrakīrti's peculiar analysis of this verse in his Prasannapadā. This essay will attempt to correct both the diction of the major translations of MMK 24:18 and the fictions of nominalism and conventionalism that the consequent interpretations of this stanza have perpetuated. The argument that will be developed in the course of this essay is that Candrakīrti's reading of this verse proffers a strong form of linguistic nominalism that Nāgārjuna himself does not embrace. It will be shown, based on everything else found in the MMK, that Nāgārjuna, rather than advocating the mere nominal or conventional status of terms such as pratītyasamutpāda and sunyata, demands they be accepted as both pedagogically useful and even referentially accurate descriptions of the world as it is. (shrink)