A history of the pre-Socratic philosophers, with selected writings and texts.

Two kinds of theoretical framework for syntax are encountered in current linguistics. One emerged from the mathematization of proof theory, and is referred to here as generative-enumerative syntax (GES). A less explored alternative stems from the semantic side of logic, and is here called model-theoretic syntax (MTS). I sketch the outlines of each, and give a capsule summary of some mathematical results pertaining to the latter. I then briefly survey some diverse types of evidence suggesting that in some ways MTS (...) seems better suited to theorizing about the relevant linguistic phenomena. (shrink)

This paper explores the relationship between attitudes to corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the cultural dimensions of business activity identified by Hofstede & Hofstede using a sample of nearly 90,000 stakeholders drawn from 28 countries. We develop five general propositions relating attitudes to CSR to aspects of culture. We show that the propensity of consumers to punish firms for bad behaviour varies in ways that appear to relate closely to the cultural characteristics identified by Hofstede. Furthermore, this variation appears to (...) be understandable in terms of the standard interpretation of the Hofstede dimensions, suggesting that cultural variation in the attitudes of consumers may play an important role in helping us to understand variations in CSR across countries. This in turn has implications for how managers of multinational companies should implement CSR strategies in different cultural contexts. (shrink)

Are historians storytellers? Is it possible to tell true stories about the past? These are just a couple of the questions raised in this comprehensive collection of texts about philosophy, theory, and methodology of writing history. Drawing together seminal texts from philosophers and historians, this volume presents the great debate over the narrative character of history from the 1960s onwards. The History and Narrative Reader combines theory with practice to offer a unique overview of this debate and illuminates the practical (...) implications of these philosophical debates for the writing of history. The editor's introduction offers a succinct survey of the subject to support the readings, which explore the role of narrative in everything from historical understanding and human action to linguistics and the practice of history. Including the work of F. R. Ankersmit, David Carr, Hayden White, W. H. Dray, and Frederick Olafson; a detailed bibliography; and a glossary of key concepts, this collection will prove an invaluable resource for students of historical theory and methodology. (shrink)

Past research has suggested that those spontaneous movements of the human hand made during talk convey significant semantic information over and above the speech, at least when the unit of speech analyzed is the individual clause. However, no previous research has tested whether this information is represented linguistically elsewhere in the narrative . The first study, reported here, uses an experimental procedure to identify which specific imagistic gestures add semantic information to the speech. The second study analyzes whether the specific (...) gestures still do this when respondents hear the whole narrative. It was found that two thirds of the semantic information, thought to be carried by the gestures, is, in fact, represented in the linguistic discourse, or is inferable from it. However, one third of the additional semantic information contained in the gestures is not represented linguistically in the narrative nor is it inferable from it. In other words, a proportion of the imagistic gestures that accompany speech are absolutely critical to semantic communication. (shrink)

In his seminars on the death penalty, Derrida consistently describes Kant's arguments in favor of capital punishment as “rigorous” and explicitly relates that rigor to the mechanisms of execution and the subsequent rigor mortis of the corpse. ‘Rigor’ has also often been a contested term in descriptions of deconstruction: different commentators have either deplored or celebrated the presence or the absence of rigor in Derrida's work. Derrida himself uses the term a good deal throughout his career, usually in a positive (...) sense, although he also at least once, in passing, suggests the need to question the rigor of the concept of rigor itself. In this paper, I will outline the place of Kant in the Death Penalty Seminars and suggest that it is the very rigor attributed to Kant that makes him (rather than some other writers—whether supporters or opponents of the death penalty—whose arguments seem less rigorous to Derrida) an exemplary object for deconstructive attention, not for the first time in Derrida's work. Broadening the focus beyond the texts Derrida explicitly analyzes, I suggest that this kind of attention can also be fruitfully brought to bear on some more general arguments in Kant about right and justice. In conclusion, I suggest some implications of this situation for the still difficult issue of the more general relation between deconstruction and critique in the Kantian sense. (shrink)

: Descartes provides an original and puzzling argument for the traditional theological doctrine that the world is continuously created by God. His key premise is that the parts of the duration of anything are "completely independent" of one another. I argue that Descartes derives this temporal independence thesis simply from the principle that causes are necessarily simultaneous with their effects. I argue further that it follows from Descartes's version of the continuous creation doctrine that God is the instantaneous and total (...) cause of everything that happens, and that this is just what his physics demands. But although God is the total cause of everything, he is not the only cause, since Descartes considers it obvious that finite minds have the power to move bodies. In the face of this apparent paradox, several recent commentators have suggested that Descartes accepted the late scholastic view that God and finite causes somehow collaborate or concur in the production of numerically identical effects. But close examination reveals that the case for Cartesian concurrentism is weak. Fortunately, there is a simpler and more fruitful solution to the problem of reconciling divine and human action. I argue that that in Descartes's world certain motions, such as voluntary movements of our bodies, are causally overdetermined This account allows Descartes to avoid occasionalism without embracing an elaborate metaphysics of secondary causality. Finally, I argue that the overdeterminist interpretation sheds new light on two longstanding problems of Cartesian metaphysics. First, it resolves a serious difficulty with a standard reading of Descartes's conception of human freedom. Second, it offers a novel approach to the old problem of reconciling genuine human action with the principle of the conservation of total quantity of motion. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica - Journal of the International Association for Semiotic Studies / Revue de l'Association Internationale de Sémiotique Jahrgang: 2013 Heft: 197 Seiten: 171-201.

At an important moment in his reading of Heidegger in Geschlecht III, Derrida wields a pair of semi-technical terms from his own earlier work, and uses them to identify a classical, indeed Aristotelian, vein in Heidegger’s reading of Trakl. This gesture is complex, both in that, in spite of appearances, the Mehrdeutigkeit Heidegger identifies in Trakl is not essentially to do with the term Geschlecht, and in that Derrida’s presentation of Aristotle’s views about polysemia is perhaps over-simplified, or at least (...) leaves open the possibility of a more generous reading. Derrida’s notion of dissemination is shown not to entail a mere exacerbation of polysemia, but a quasi-semantic re-marking of the “syntax” that allows for any semantic effects at all. It is suggested that the fact that this marking can be described by Derrida as “monotonous” might open onto a slightly different reading both of Aristotle’s understanding of pollachos legomenon and pros hen, and Heidegger’s understanding of the Einklang of Trakl’s poetry. (shrink)

Gers (Biol Philos, 2011) provides a positive and constructive view of the project to generalise Darwinian principles in Geoffrey Hodgson and Thorbjørn Knudsen’s Darwin’s Conjecture. We note considerable overlap with his work and ours, and also with important recent work of Godfrey-Smith ( 2009 ), which Gers cites extensively. But we also note that there are differences in research objectives between Gers and Godfrey-Smith, on the one hand, and ourselves, on the other. Gers and Godfrey-Smith focus on the elucidation (...) of the most general principles possible. Our aim is to derive principles that are sufficiently abstract to span the natural and human social worlds, and then add additional principles to help understand the Darwinian evolution of human society. Furthermore, Gers and Godfrey-Smith critique a replicator concept that is different from ours. Once these points are made apparent, the criticisms are essentially disabled, and we end up in a position with different but complementary and overlapping research projects. (shrink)

This collection of Geoffrey Hill's criticism spans the length of his career as a pre-eminent poet-critic. Three previously published books of criticism are reprinted, sometimes with substantial revisions, and two new works added.

In a critical scene deeply troubled by questions of justice and responsibility, and beset by political and moral scandals, no issue in recent years has been more urgent or more unsettled than the question of ethics. Geoffrey Galt Harpham, whose previous book, The Ascetic Imperative in Culture and Criticism, was one of the first to announce the critical renewal of ethics, attempts in this new book to explain why ethical questions resist settlement. He urges a new account of ethics (...) not as a stable set of principles, values, or prescriptions, but as a variable factor of "imperativity" immanent in language, analysis, narrative, and creation. (shrink)

Subtle-body practices are found particularly in Indian, Indo-Tibetan and East Asian societies, but have become increasingly familiar in Western societies, especially through the various healing and yogic techniques and exercises associated with them. This book explores subtle-body practices from a variety of perspectives, and includes both studies of these practices in Asian and Western contexts. The book discusses how subtle-body practices assume a quasi-material level of human existence that is intermediate between conventional concepts of body and mind. Often, this level (...) is conceived of in terms of an invisible structure of channels, associated with the human body, through which flows of quasi-material substance take place. Contributors look at how subtle-body concepts form the basic explanatory structure for a wide range of practices. These include forms of healing, modes of exercise and martial arts as well as religious practices aimed at the refinement and transformation of the human mindbody complex. By highlighting how subtle-body practices of many kinds have been introduced into Western societies in recent years, the book explores the possibilities for new models of understanding which these concepts open up. It is a useful contribution to studies on Asian Religion and Philosophy. (shrink)

It is argued that Kant’s claimed reconciliation of politics and ethics in the Appendix to ‘Perpetual Peace’ founders on an irreducible element of secrecy that no amount of ‘publicity’ could ever dissipate. This shows up figuratively in images of veiling, and more especially in the paradoxical ‘very transparent veil’ associated with British politics in a footnote to ‘The Contest of Faculties’. This figure suggests that the structure of the ‘public’ itself involves a kind of transcendental secrecy that cannot be ‘publicly’ (...) overcome, and that public space therefore cannot become fully visible to itself. This structural problem, it is claimed, prevents Kant from securing his proposed distinctions between the ‘moral politician’ and the ‘political moralist’, and between ‘political prudence’ or expediency and ‘political wisdom’. A similar problem reappears in the supplementary ‘Secret Article’ that Kant includes in the second edition of ‘Perpetual Peace’, which specifies, ‘secretly’, that heads of state should take secret counsel from the open and public discussions of philosophers. In giving away this secret, even as he declares it to be a secret, Kant essentially repeats the gesture of revealing the violent origin of the state, shown in the ‘ Rechtslehre’ to be illegal, and in so doing condemns the philosopher at best to a kind of exile with respect to political time and space, a marginal place that is here aligned with the place of ‘ ius aequivocum’ addressed in the Appendix to the Introduction to the ‘ Rechtslehre’, where appeals to equity on the one hand and the right of necessity on the other are described as being inaudible in the system of public right. It is suggested that these marginal and equivocal places all show up an internal frontier in the transcendental account of public space, and that this frontier zone, the very place of politics, sets a limit to the prospects of Enlightenment itself. In conclusion, it is proposed that thinking through these problems would require less a turn toward ethics than a rereading of the concept of nature, on the basis of its Heraclitean penchant for hiding or veiling itself. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2017 Heft: 218 Seiten: 21-64.

Modern weaponry is often too complex for unaided human operation, and is largely or totally controlled by computers. But modern software, particularly artificial intelligence software, exhibits such complexity and inscrutability that there are grave dangers associated with its use in non-benign applications. Recent efforts to make computer systems more accessible to military personnel through natural language processing systems, as proposed in the Strategic Computing Initiative of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, increases rather than decreases the dangers of unpredictable behavior. (...) Defense systems constitute, in fact, a paradigm case of the wrong kind of application for this technology. This cannot be expected to change, since the unpredictability stems from inherent properties of computer systems and of natural languages. (shrink)

Geoffrey Lloyd engages in a wide-ranging exploration of what we can learn from the study of ancient civilisations that is relevant to fundamental problems, both intellectual and moral, that we still face today. How far is it possible to arrive at an understanding of alien systems of belief? Is it possible to talk meaningfully of 'science' and of its various constituent disciplines, 'astronomy', 'geography', 'anatomy', and so on, in the ancient world? Are logic and its laws universal? Is there (...) one ontology - a single world - to which all attempts at understanding must be considered to be directed? When we encounter apparently very different views of reality, how far can that be put down to a difference in conceptions of what needs explaining, or of what counts as an explanation, or to different preferred modes of reasoning or styles of inquiry? Do the notions of truth and belief represent reliable cross-cultural universals? In another area, what can ancient history teach us about today's social and political problems? Are the discourses of human nature and of human rights universally applicable? What political institutions do we need to help secure equity and justice within nation states and between them? Lloyd sets out to answer all these questions, and to convince us that the science and culture of ancient Greece and China provide precious resources to advance modern debates. (shrink)

At several moments Glas proposes what it is hard not to see as methodological comments on its own procedure. These comments are usually quite difficult, and often involve dense figurative characterizations of the way the work proceeds, always folding any apparent metalinguistic position back on to the object text. After detailed discussion of several of these moments, a second section examines Derrida's deconstruction of Hegel's account of metaphor, and suggests it entails a non-teleological thinking of life. In all these cases, (...) it is suggested that Derrida is consistently showing up an instability of the ‘meta-’ in general, even in apparently meta-physical texts. (shrink)

Art versus nature, the literary work and the author, the literary work and the reader, structure and style, and the purpose of literature are the main subjects treated in a study of eight leading writers of modern Japan.

Deliberative democracy is a noble project: an attempt to make citizens philosophize. Critics of deliberative democracy usually claim either that the proposed deliberation threatens an existing moral consensus or, instead, that deliberation is impossible amid power imbalances that oppress the weak. But another problem is that combining democracy and deliberation is inherently an attempt to engage publicly in a private activity—where sensitivity to each interlocutor may require a special form of address. Can this be done? Yes, in some contexts. The (...) tradition of esoteric writing has demonstrated that it is possible to layer one's discourse in such a way that all citizens can partake at a level that suits them. But writing for a public is not really deliberation among equals; it is leadership by the writer of the readers. Genuine dialogue among equals that takes account of their differences is, in contrast, inherently a private affair. (shrink)

This book looks at the work and influence of Leo Strauss in a variety of ways that will be of interest to readers of political philosophy. It will be of particular interest to Catholics and scholars of other religious traditions. Strauss had a great deal of interaction with his contemporary Catholic scholars, and many of his students or their students teach or have taught at Catholic colleges and universities in America. Leo Strauss and His Catholic Readers brings together work by (...) scholars from two continents, some of whom knew Strauss, one of whom was his student at the University of Chicago. The first section of essays considers Catholic responses to Strauss’s project of recovering Classical natural right as against modern individual rights. Some of the authors suggest that his approach can be a fruitful corrective to an uncritical reception of modern ideas. Nevertheless, most point out that the Catholic cannot accept all of Strauss’s project. The second section deals with areas of overlap between Strauss and Catholics. Some of the chapters explore encounters with his contemporary scholars while others turn to more current concerns. The final section approaches the theological-political question itself, a question central to both Strauss’s work and that of the Catholic intellectual tradition. This section of the book considers the relationship of Strauss’s work to Christianity and Christian commitments at a broader level. Because Christianity does not have an explicit political doctrine, Christians have found themselves as rulers, subjects, and citizens in a variety of political regimes. Leo Strauss’s return to Platonic political philosophy can provide a useful lens through which his Catholic readers can assess what it means for there to be a best regime. (shrink)

In the struggle over traditional trinitarian doctrine, criticism from feminist, deistic, and religionist quarters can stimulate the churches in their revival of this soteriologically vital pattern of the Christian faith.

Both Confucianism and the Bhagavad Gītā emphasize the moral authority of social roles. But how deep does the likeness between these ethical philosophies run? In this essay I focus upon two significant points of comparison between the role-based ethics of Confucianism and the Gītā: (1) the interrelation between formalized social roles and family feeling, and (2) the religious dimension of moral action. How is it that Confucians ground their social roles in family feeling, while the Gītā emphasizes rupture between role (...) and sentiment? Furthermore, are we to understand Confucianism as presenting a social philosophy that eschews religious concerns, whereas the Gītā denies the moral significance of family feeling in lieu of obtaining soteriological freedom? Examining the aesthetic and religious dimensions of the ethics of Confucianism and the Gītā clarifies a key distinction that both views implicitly make, albeit for divergent reasons: the difference between living one’s roles and playing one’s roles. (shrink)

In responding to an essay by Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer about photographs taken in the streets of Chernivitsi in the 1940s, and thus in the midst of the Holocaust, this paper seeks to link their concerns to a broader consideration of photography as a modern phenomenon. In the process, the paper provides a brief history of street photography, a genre virtually ignored in standard histories of the photographic medium. The author suggests that Hirsch and Spitzer’s paper bravely reminds us (...) that our fascination with photographs is based not on truth, but on a combination of desire and faith . Their account of street photography in Czernowitz thereby amounts to an interpretation of photographs as dynamic modes of apprehension rather than as static objects from the past that veridically represent it. It is precisely this aspect of photographs that makes them such unusually complicated, ambiguous, and incongruous historical objects. (shrink)

The automorphism group G 2 of the octonions changes when octonion X, Y -product variants are used. I present here a general solution for how to go from G 2 to its X, Y -product variant.