‘Public moods’ are often referred to in laymen’s accounts of public reactions to social events, yet the concept has rarely been invoked by social scientists. Taking public moods seriously as an analytical concept, this article relies on recent work on the moods of individuals as a means of exploring the moods of the public. To be in a certain mood is to attune oneself to the situation in which one finds oneself. Our mood is the report we give on the (...) state of our attunement. A public mood can either be understood as the mood of a certain age, the mood of an audience which jointly attends to a public performance, or the bonding which takes places between bodies which are in close physical proximity to each other. It is in the public mood that emotions, thoughts and plans for action arise. (shrink)

The development of post-national democracy in Europe depends on the emergence of an overarching communicative space that functions as a public sphere. But can there be a public sphere when there is no collective identity? Despite the fact that the European Union (EU) is neither a state nor a nation its development as a new kind of polity is closely connected to the formation of a common communicative space. In this article it is argued that European cooperation and problem solving (...) create public spaces but has not (as of yet) produced a single, general European public sphere. Rather what one finds are transnational, segmented publics evolving around policy networks constituted by the common interest in certain policy fields. They are found wanting with regard to political justification intrinsic to the democratic principle that requires a general non-exclusive public sphere. The EU also harbours many legally institutionalized discourses - strong publics - that are specialized on collective will-formation close to the centre of the political system and which have been promoters of democratic reforms. (shrink)

All accounts of causality that presuppose the propagation or transfer or some physical stuff to be an essential part of the causal relation rely for the force of their causal claims on a principle of conservation for that stuff. General Relativity does not permit the rigorous formulation of appropriate conservation principles. Consequently, in so far as General Relativity is considered and fundamental physical theory, such accounts of causality cannot be considered fundamental. The continued use of such accounts of causality ought (...) not be proscribed, but justification is due from those who would use them. (shrink)

The author makes the case for sortition from a Marxist perspective, explaining how sortition could become part of an anticapitalist political strategy.

The concept of ecosystem services is a way of visualizing the instrumental value that nature has for human beings. Most ecosystem services can be performed by more than one species. This fact is sometimes used as an argument against the preservation of species. However, even though substitutability does detract from the instrumental value of a species, it also adds option value to it. The option value cannot make a substitutable species as instrumentally valuable as a non-substitutable species, but in many (...) cases, it can add enough value to make the species more valuable than the projects that threaten its existence. (shrink)

In the literature on scientific explanation, there is a classical distinction between explanations of facts and explanations of laws. This paper is about explanations of laws, more specifically mechanistic explanations of laws. We investigate whether providing unificatory information in mechanistic explanations of laws has a surplus value. Unificatory information is information about how the mechanism that explains the law which is our target relates to other mechanisms. We argue that providing unificatory information can lead to explanations with more explanatory power (...) and that it may lead to more strongly supported explanations. (shrink)

Juan Comesaña and Carolina Sartorio have recently proposed a diagnosis of what goes wrong in apparently illegitimate cases of ‘bootstrapping’ one’s way toexcessively easy knowledge. They argue that in such cases the bootstrapper bases at least one of her beliefs on evidence that does not evidentially support the proposition believed. I explicate the principle that underlies Comesaña and Sartorio’s diagnosis of such cases and show that their account of what goes wrong in such cases is mistaken.

I argue that William Craig’s defence of the moral argument is internally inconsistent. In the course of defending the moral argument, Craig criticizes non-theistic moral realism on the grounds that it posits the existence of certain logically necessary connections but fails to provide an adequate account of why such connections hold. Another component of Craig’s defence of the moral argument is an endorsement of a particular version of the divine command theory. Craig’s version of DCT posits certain logically necessary connections (...) but Craig fails to provide an adequate account of why these connections hold. Thus, Craig’s critique of non-theistic moral realism is at odds with his DCT. Since the critique and DCT are both essential elements of his defence of the moral argument, that defence is internally inconsistent. (shrink)

While many papers may claim that virtual environments have much to gain from architectural and urban planning theory, few seem to specify in any verifiable or falsifiable way, how notions of place and interaction are best combined and developed for specific needs. The following is an attempt to summarize a theory of place for virtual environments and explain both the shortcomings and the advantages of this theory.

The notion of epistemic standards has gained prominence in the literature on the semantics of knowledge ascriptions. Defenders of Epistemic Contextualism claim that in certain scenarios the truth value of a knowledge-ascribing sentence of the form “S knows p (at t)”—where S is an epistemic subject and p is a proposition S is said to know at time t—can change even if S, p and t are assigned constant values. This sort of variability, contextualists claim, is due to the epistemic (...) standards governing the context in which the knowledge ascription is uttered. While a specific knowledge ascription may be true when uttered in a context with “low” epistemic standards, it may be false when uttered in a context with “high” epistemic standards. The reason for this, as far as contextualists are concerned, is the context sensitivity of the verb “knows”. In standard semantics an expression is said to be context sensitive if and only if it expresses different contents (or intensions) relative to different contexts of utterance. Thus, as epistemic standards influence the content of “knows”, they play a crucial role in contextualist semantics. In this paper, I examine different conceptions of epistemic standards and argue that all but one lead to counterintuitive consequences. The conception which avoids these consequences, however, has the downside of seriously restricting the talk of “high” or “low” standards that is so frequent in discussions on the semantics of knowledge ascriptions. (shrink)

An isolated sentence—aphoristic, not fragmentary—tends to reverberate like an oracular utterance having the self-sufficiency of a communication to which nothing need be added.That is barbarian language you hear.There is no document of culture which not at the same time a document of barbarism.Zōon logon ekhon echoes. It rings, three unpunctuated words filling the air and resounding across the landscape. It reverberates, a fragment heard over and over, almost to the point where it seems to go without saying—almost. It reflects, an (...) idea in which a question of beginning, perhaps the beginning, returns from the rock face as that which "has governed an enormous tradition", an origin story, a common... (shrink)

Bertrand Russell in "My Philosophical Development" claimed he converted to neutral monism in 1919, in the essay "On Propositions." I question whether Russell was really a complete neutral monist in the style of Mach and James and conclude that he was not. Russell's lingering commitment to image propositions and a linguistic theory of meaning and truth and falsity separate him from the more naturalistic causal theory of knowledge and error one finds in James and Mach.

I identify a commonly held position in environmental philosophy, “the received view,” and argue that its proponents beg the question when challenged to demonstrate the relevance of environmental aesthetics for environmental justice. I call this “the inference problem,” and I go on to argue that an alternative to the received view, Arnold Berleant’s participatory engagement model, is better equipped to meet the challenge it poses. By adopting an alternative metaphysics, the engagement model supplies a solution to the inference problem and (...) thereby provides a more useful theoretical framework for application to pressing concernsin environmental justice, such as the plight of the historical Ironbound District of Newark, New Jersey. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Disaster Anarchy: Mutual Aid and Radical Action by Rhiannon FirthJohn-Erik HanssonRhiannon Firth. Disaster Anarchy: Mutual Aid and Radical Action. London: Pluto Press, 2022. Paperback, 243 pp. ISBN 9780745340463The COVID-19 pandemic and the unfolding climate crisis, with the multiplication of unprecedented weather events, have shown how urgent it is to reflect on our responses to disaster. Following up on themes she first broached in Coronavirus, Class, and Mutual (...) Aid in the United Kingdom, Rhiannon Firth throws a fresh, anarchist, and utopian light on disaster relief in Disaster Anarchy.1 In this work, Firth seeks to “consider how [anarchist] social movements’ impressive efforts in mutual aid might contribute to a radical and revolutionary reconceptualisation of disasters and the processes of relief and recovery efforts” (19). To do so, she begins by surveying the dominant approaches to disaster relief (chapters 2 and 3) before offering a comprehensive anarchist theoretical critique of these perspectives (chapter 4). Firth then fleshes out her anarchist theory of disaster and community response through two empirical case studies of grassroots relief efforts. In chapter 5 she looks into the Occupy Sandy movement, a New York area community-based response to the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy’s passage in October 2012 in the United States. The final chapter is then dedicated to the COVID-19 Mutual Aid Groups that emerged in the United Kingdom during the pandemic.In building her argument, Firth mobilizes anarchist (and more broadly radical) theory and interviews with participants in both movements. She engages with how activists motivated and understood their participation in mutual aid groups, perceived disaster and relief organizing, sought to solve practical and political problems, and reflected on their experiences. The empirical sections of Disaster Anarchy are thus reminiscent of investigations into the anarchist connections and orientations of contemporary social movements, such as Occupy Wall Street.2 However, Firth’s is a work [End Page 606] of political theory. Her interviews were not conducted simply to describe and analyze the anarchist components of disaster relief social movements. Echoing Uri Gordon, she proposes to take the “worldviews of activists seriously as sources of theoretical knowledge,” leading us to rethink both anarchism and the politics of disaster as a whole (16).3 There lies a key part of the originality of Firth’s contribution to both anarchist theory and to the study of disaster relief. The utopian core of Disaster Anarchy also shines through this movement-based theoretical elaboration of an anarchist challenge to the dominant theories and practices of disaster relief. By examining mutual aid groups in critical dialogue with anarchist theory, Firth raises the possibility of more egalitarian and democratic “utopian alternatives to the status quo,” though, as she reminds us, they always run the risk of being co-opted (20).To set the scene for the desirability of anarchist approaches to disaster relief, Disaster Anarchy opens with Firth’s dissatisfaction with what she identifies as the two main sets of approaches to disaster studies. The first represents “the dominant neoliberal paradigm of disaster politics” and falls under the umbrella of “Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR)” (21). Firth contends that, despite some internal variety, all DRR approaches share the three same basic assumptions. First, DRR considers disasters to be “ruptures in the normal functioning of society.” They become a “management problem” that must be dealt with using the tools of political governance to restore order and ensure “systemic stability” (39–40). This can be done both directly through state institutions, and through civil society-based nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that cooperate with state institutions. DRR then evaluates responses using the categories of “efficiency and cost-effectiveness,” leaving aside “the affects and human impacts of disasters” (40). Second, DRR tends to flatten out differences between disasters, and in the ways in which individuals and groups respond to them. Disaster becomes abstract, and authorities can design sets of responses taken to be effective regardless of local contexts and demands. DRR approaches are therefore particularly congenial to the growth of large governmental “specialised agencies like DHS [Department of Homeland Security] and FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency]” that produce knowledge and practices linked to the vertical “management of disaster” (41). Finally... (shrink)

Leafing a book quickly creates metamorphoses of its images and illustrations. Cinema as a medium is based on such visual discontinuity. Both Paolo Gioli, the Italian filmmaker, and Stan Brakhage in America, made very interesting flicker films with and about insects and butterflies : Farfallìo and Mothlight. Is the buttefly miming the filmic device? To what extent has a film to disguise its mechanism? What is the relation between animation and the animal? I intend to scrutinize the link between flicker (...) film and animality in regard of camouflage and mimicry. (shrink)

People tell stories. In stories, the narrator and the receiver can perceive meanings. These meanings can be analyzed again through larger interpretative framings. In this article, different ethical uses of the golem story are analyzed by making use of some of Jörn Rüsen’s ideas concerning historical thinking and narration and with a focus on the uses of the golem myth in studies and discussions on new and emerging science and technology.

In “Ducking Friendly Fire: Davison on the Grounding Objection”, William Lane Craig responds to a statement of The Grounding Objection articulated by Scott Davison in “Craig on the Grounding Objection to Middle Knowledge”. According to Davison, unless we have an explanation of true counterfactuals that makes reference to actual human persons in specific situations we lack an adequate explanation of how counterfactuals of creaturely freedom could possibly be true. Drawing from and elaborating on Edward Wierenga’s response to The Grounding Objection (...) in “Providence, Middle Knowledge, and the Grounding Objection”, I formulate and motivate a view that satisfies the plausible requirement that the grounds for God’s knowledge of true counterfactuals of creaturely freedom are actually existent things while eschewing Davison’s implausibly strong requirement that the things in question must be specific human persons in specific situations. I conclude that, contrary to Davison, facts about uninstantiated human person essences can do at least some of the relevant explanatory work. (shrink)

Arlie Russell Hochschild is Professor Emerita of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. Her books include: The Managed Heart (1983), The Second Shift (1989), The Time Bind (1997) and The Commercialization of Intimate Life (2003). In her work, Hochschild explores the many ways we manage our emotions in personal life and perform emotional labor in the workplace. Her most recent work explores the growing political divide in America, and the need for each side to climb an ‘empathy wall’ to (...) begin dialogue with those on the other side. She reports on five years of field-work among Tea Party enthusiasts in Louisiana in her latest book, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right (2016). In this interview, she reflects on the phenomenon of critique within the framework of emotional labor, which leads to discussions on neoliberalism and the ideal worker in contemporary working life. (shrink)

Reingold, Reichle, Glaholt, and Sheridan reported a gaze-contingent eye-movement experiment in which survival-curve analyses were used to examine the effects of word frequency, the availability of parafoveal preview, and initial fixation location on the time course of lexical processing. The key results of these analyses suggest that lexical processing begins very rapidly and is supported by substantial parafoveal processing. Because it is not immediately obvious that these results are congruent with the theoretical assumption that words are processed and identified in (...) a strictly serial manner, we attempted to simulate the experiment using the E-Z Reader model of eye-movement control. These simulations were largely consistent with the empirical results, suggesting that parafoveal processing does play an important functional role by allowing lexical processing to occur rapidly enough to mediate direct control over when the eyes move during reading. (shrink)

The author analyzes the inner structure of the philosophy of the Tractatus rather than its relation to the views of other philosophers.

How could the paradigm shift towards enactive embodied cognitive science have implications for society and politics? Translating insights form enactive embodied cognitive science into ways of dealing with real-life issues is an important challenge. This paper focuses of the urgent societal issue of social cohesion, which is crucial in our increasingly segregated and polarized Western societies. We use Rietveld’s philosophical Skilled Intentionality Framework and work by the multidisciplinary studio RAAAF to extend Lambros Malafouris’ Material Engagement Theory to the social domain. (...) How could a landscape of social affordances generate change in the behavioral patterns of people from different socio-cultural backgrounds? RAAAF is currently imagining and planning an ambitious intervention in the public domain that could really change existing socio-cultural practices and aims to contribute to social cohesion. An animation film it made introduces a landscape of social affordances. We will present and discuss this Trusted Strangers animation film, which is a thinking model for new public domain all over the world. Tha animation film visualizes how a well-designed landscape of social affordances could invite all sorts of interactions between people from different socio-cultural backgrounds. (shrink)

The E-Z Reader model (Reichle et al. 1998; 1999) provides a theoretical framework for understanding how word identification, visual processing, attention, and oculomotor control jointly determine when and where the eyes move during reading. In this article, we first review what is known about eye movements during reading. Then we provide an updated version of the model (E-Z Reader 7) and describe how it accounts for basic findings about eye movement control in reading. We then review several alternative models of (...) eye movement control in reading, discussing both their core assumptions and their theoretical scope. On the basis of this discussion, we conclude that E-Z Reader provides the most comprehensive account of eye movement control during reading. Finally, we provide a brief overview of what is known about the neural systems that support the various components of reading, and suggest how the cognitive constructs of our model might map onto this neural architecture. Key Words: attention; eye-movement control; E-Z Reader; fixations; lexical access; models; reading; regressions; saccades. (shrink)