Geoffrey Legrand Après avoir présenté l’écologie intégrale à partir de la théorie des strates de la philosophe belge Charlotte Luyckx, notre contribution repose de manière plus théologique la question du salut grâce à trois prédications de Paul Tillich. Nous verrons alors que la sotériologie tillichienne se caractérise par trois signes de la création nouvelle : la réconciliation, la réunion avec le fondement de notre être et la résurrection. Enfin, en tirant des conséquences pratiques de cet apport théologique, nous (...) comprendrons la pertinence de s’engager dans les kairoi de notre temps, notamment celui de l’écologie intégrale. (shrink)

Category theory and topos theory have been seen as providing a structuralist framework for mathematics autonomous vis-a-vis set theory. It is argued here that these theories require a background logic of relations and substantive assumptions addressing mathematical existence of categories themselves. We propose a synthesis of Bell's many-topoi view and modal-structuralism. Surprisingly, a combination of mereology and plural quantification suffices to describe hypothetical large domains, recovering the Grothendieck method of universes. Both topos theory and set theory can be carried out (...) relative to such domains; puzzles about ‘large categories’ and ‘proper classes’ are handled in a uniform way, by relativization, sustaining insights of Zermelo. (shrink)

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)

Artificial Intelligence in the form of different machine learning models is applied to Big Data as a way to turn data into valuable knowledge. The rhetoric is that ensuing predictions work well—with a high degree of autonomy and automation. We argue that we need to analyze the process of applying machine learning in depth and highlight at what point human knowledge production takes place in seemingly autonomous work. This article reintroduces classification theory as an important framework for understanding such seemingly (...) invisible knowledge production in the machine learning development and design processes. We suggest a framework for studying such classification closely tied to different steps in the work process and exemplify the framework on two experiments with machine learning applied to Facebook data from one of our labs. By doing so we demonstrate ways in which classification and potential discrimination take place in even seemingly unsupervised and autonomous models. Moving away from concepts of non-supervision and autonomy enable us to understand the underlying classificatory dispositifs in the work process and that this form of analysis constitutes a first step towards governance of artificial intelligence. (shrink)

Surveying the historical development and the present condition of utilitarian ethics, Geoffrey Scarre examines the major philosophers from Lao Tzu in the fifth century BC to Richard Hare in the twentieth. Utilitarianism traces the 'doctrine of utility' from the moralists of the ancient world, through the Enlightenment and Victorian utilitarianism up to the lively debate of the present day. Utilitarianism today faces challenges on several fronts: it cannot warrant the drawing of adequate protective boundaries around the essential interests of (...) individuals, and it does not allow them the space to pursue the personal concerns which give meaning to their lives. Geoffrey Scarre considers these and other charges, and concludes that whilst utilitarianism may not be a faultless moral doctrine, its positions are relevant, and significant today. Written with undergraduates in mind, this is an ideal course book for those studying and those teaching moral philosophy. (shrink)

One of the most significant contemporary thinkers in continental philosophy, Jacques Derrida’s work continues to attract heated commentary among philosophers, literary critics, social and cultural theorists, architects and artists. This major new work by world renowned Derrida scholar and translator, Geoffrey Bennington, presents incisive new readings of both Derrida and interpretations of his work. Part one sets out Derrida’s work as a whole and examines its relevance to, and ‘interruption’ of, the traditional domains of ethics, politics and literature. The (...) second part of the book presents compelling insights into some important motifs in Derrida’s work, such as death, friendship, psychoanalysis, time and endings. The final section introduces trenchant appraisals of other influential accounts of Derrida’s work. This influential and original contribution to the literature on Derrida is marked by a commitment to clarity and accuracy, but also by a refusal to simplify Derrida’s often difficult thought. (shrink)

Possibilities haunt history. The force of our explanations of events turns on the alternative possibilities these explanations suggest. It is these possible worlds which give us our understanding; and in human affairs we decide them by practical rather than theoretical judgement. In his widely acclaimed account of the role of counterfactuals in explanation, Geoffrey Hawthorn deploys extended examples from history and modern times to defend his argument. His conclusions cast doubt on existing assumptions about the nature and place of (...) theory, and indeed of the possibility of knowledge itself, in the human sciences. (shrink)

Several leading topics outstanding after John Earman's Bayes or Bust? are investigated further, with emphasis on the relevance of Bayesian explication in epistemology of science, despite certain limitations. (1) Dutch Book arguments are reformulated so that their independence from utility and preference in epistemic contexts is evident. (2) The Bayesian analysis of the Quine-Duhem problem is pursued; the phenomenon of a "protective belt" of auxiliary statements around reasonably successful theories is explicated. (3) The Bayesian approach to understanding the superiority of (...) variety of evidence is pursued; a recent challenge (by Wayne) is converted into a positive result on behalf of the Bayesian analysis, potentially with far-reaching consequences. (4) The condition for applying the merger-of-opinion results and the thesis of underdetermination of theories are compared, revealing significant limitations in applicability of the former. (5) Implications concerning "diachronic Dutch Book" arguments and "non-Bayesian shifts" are drawn, highlighting the incompleteness, but not incorrectness, of Bayesian analysis. (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)

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)

The article focuses on stories and storytelling practices as explanatory resources in standardization processes. It draws upon an ethnographic study of the development of a technical standard for data sharing in an ecological research community, where participants struggle to articulate the difficulties encountered in implementing the standard. Building from C. Wright Mills’ classic distinction between private troubles and public issues, the authors follow the development of a story as it comes to assist in transforming individual troubles in standard implementation into (...) an institutional issue for the ecological scientific community. The authors present the “hands-on” social science collaboration in this study as an example of a mechanism for supporting institutionalization of issues. Finally, the authors argue that narratives can serve as effective organizing principles within institutional settings, thereby providing an approach to understand the practical, substantive difficulties that occur in work with data in the sciences. (shrink)

In what sense can bodily manifestations in psychopathology be conceived of as modes of speaking? In which ways can a patient be listened to and responded to? In this paper, we consider these questions in the framework both of phenomenology and psychoanalysis. On the one hand, a phenomenological approach helps considering the body as expressive, but, we argue, more refinement is needed, and in particular, expression ought to be differentiated from communication, in the aim of better capturing the phenomenon of (...) body language. On the other hand, a psychoanalytic approach helps considering the clinical strength of an encounter where the only vehicle is the speech one addresses another, but, we argue, this should not... (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)

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.

We are grateful to René Rosfort for his comment on our target paper Clinical Response to Bodily Symptoms in Psychopathology. Rosfort’s remarks lead us here to specify an important point which our initial proposal may have left too implicit. Within the realm of clinical practice in psychopathology, we argue that bodily manifestations can be offered an expressive space and that they can be listened to in the clinical encounter as being part of the patient’s speech whereby she, by way of (...) her bodily symptoms, addresses a demand to be attended to as a subject of communication. We detail the circumstances under which bodily manifestations may or may not be addressed to a person who is expected to respond, especially in a... (shrink)

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)

Abstract: Many astrologers attribute a successful birth-chart reading to what they call intuition or psychic ability,where the birth chart acts like a crystal ball. As in shamanism,they relate consciousness to a transcendent reality that,if true, might require are-assessment of present biological theories of consciousness.In Western countries roughly 1 person in 10,000 is practising or seriously studying astrology, so their total number is substantial. Many tests of astrologers have been made since the 1950s but only recently has a coherent review been (...) possible. A large-scale test of persons born less than five minutes apart found no hint of the similarities predicted by astrology. Meta-analysis of more than forty controlled studies suggests that astrologers are unable to perform significantly better than chance even on the more basic tasks such as predicting extraversion. More specifically,astrologers who claim to use psychic ability perform no better than those who do not. The possibility that astrology might be relevant to consciousness and psi is not denied, but such influences, if they exist in astrology,would seem to be very weak or very rare. -/- . (shrink)

This paper explores the status of the von Neumann-Luders state transition rule (the "projection postulate") within "real-logic" quantum logic. The entire discussion proceeds from a reading of the Luders rule according to which, although idealized in applying only to "minimally disturbing" measurements, it nevertheless makes empirical claims and is not a purely mathematical theorem. An argument (due to Friedman and Putnam) is examined to the effect that QL has an explanatory advantage over Copenhagen and other interpretations which relativize truth-value assignments (...) to experimental arrangements. Two versions of QL, the lattice-theoretic (LT) and partial-Boolean-algebra (PBA), are considered. It turns out that the projection postulate is intimately connected with the choice of conditional connective for QL. The effect of the projection postulate is obtained with the Sasaki conditional. However, this choice is found to require extra assumptions, on both the LT and PBA versions, which are either just as ad hoc as the projection postulate itself or indefensible from within the real-logic QL framework. (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)

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)

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)

Participatory sense-making is already an established concept within enactivism. It is used to define the participatory nature of cognitive relations, designating that humans and other organisms make sense of their surrounding environments not just on their own. They build cooperative networks, working together, to create ways of making sense of the world. However, so far little attention has been paid to how enactive concepts, such as participatory sense-making, may apply to the field of bioethics, understood here as health care ethics. (...) In this paper, I examine health care practices cases of participatory sense-making. The paper aims to show that relations between patients and health care providers (HCPs) can be understood as participatory sense-making relations. To make my case, I discuss the so-called phenomenological interview, as proposed technique in health care. I argue that this interview technique has essential features that can be viewed also as features of participatory sense-making. More specifically, the phenomenological interview is an open-minded, a critical, and pro-active dialogue between patient and health care provider that is meant for the patient to raise self-awareness of their body and medical condition, as well as of the social conditions that may affect that experience and condition. I will argue that phenomenological interviews are exemplary cases of patient-health care provider relations in which both parties actively work together to make sense of what the patient is going through and to find adequate medical responses to that experience. I will conclude by proposing normative guidance based on my analysis of health care practice as participatory sense-making. I argue that viewing patient-HCP relations as participatory sense-making may be helpful for both patients and health care providers in that it shows that health care practice is not just a technical exercise or routine task, but essentially relational and patient-oriented. (shrink)

This paper examines learning as a capability, taking as its starting point the work of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. The paper is concerned to highlight the relation between learning and truth, and it does so by examining the idea of a genealogy of truth and also Donald Davidson’s coherence theory. Thus the notion of truth is understood to be not only built into the capability of learning but also translated across into other capabilities.

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)

Probably there is no position in Goodman’s corpus that has generated greater perplexity and criticism than Goodman’s “nominalism”. As is abundantly clear from Goodman’s writings, it is not “abstract entities” generally that he questions—indeed, he takes sensory qualia as “basic” in his Carnap-inspired constructional system in Structure—but rather just those abstracta that are so crystal clear in their identity conditions, so fundamental to our thought, so prevalent and seemingly unavoidable in our discourse and theorizing that they have come to form (...) the generally accepted framework for the most time-honored, exact, sophisticated, refined, central, and secure branch of human knowledge yet devised, mathematics itself! Of all the abstracta to question, why sets? Of course, Goodman gave his “reasons”, the unintelligibility of “generating” an infinitude of “constructed objects” automatically from any given object or objects. But critics have been quick to point out that set theory is intended not as a theory of what can be “generated” or “constructed” from given objects in any literal sense but rather as a theory of a certain realm of objects independently existing in their own right. “Construction” is a metaphor. (shrink)

If death is the end of us as subjects, it may seem that the dead can be neither benefited nor injured. Yet there is a fairly robust intuition that posthumous events can sometimes be good or bad for a deceased person by impacting projects that mattered to her while she was alive. In this chapter, I defend and expand the view, originally proposed by Pitcher and Feinberg, that certain kinds of events occurring after her death can affect retrospectively the well-being (...) of the antemortem person. Such events are ones that affect the objective, rather than the subjective, components of a person’s well-being, and they do so by fulfilling or frustrating the living subject’s desires and ambitions. The chapter concludes with some reflections on the significance of Cambridge changes that can happen to the dead, and on the relation between harm and wrong in their case. (shrink)