This essay considers biotrophic cyst and root‐knot nematodes in relation to their biology, host–parasite interactions and molecular genetics. These nematodes have to face the biological consequences of the physical constraints imposed by the soil environment in which they live while their hosts inhabit both above and below ground environments. The two groups of nematodes appear to have adopted radically different solutions to these problems with the result that one group is a host specialist and reproduces sexually while the other has (...) an enormous host range and reproduces by mitotic parthenogenesis. We consider what is known about the modes of parasitism used by these nematodes and how it relates to their host range, including the surprising finding that parasitism genes in both nematode groups have been recruited from bacteria. The nuclear and mitochondrial genomes of these two nematode groups are very different and we consider how these findings relate to the biology of the organisms. BioEssays 30:249–259, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

This paper identifies three claims that feature prominently in recent discussions concerning the experience of silence: that experiences of silence are the most “negative” of perceptions, that we do not hear silences because those silences cause our experiences of silence, and that to hear silence is to hear a temporal region devoid of sound. The principal proponents of this approach are Phillips and Soteriou, and here I present a series of objections to common elements of their attempts to place (...) these three claims within an account of experience of silence. The final section of the paper returns to the first of the three claims and argues that, in fact, there is no good reason to accept it as initially formulated. However, when properly formulated, the claim ceases to offer support for Phillips’s and Soteriou’s approach to experience of silence. (shrink)

This study reconsiders Denis O'Brien's controversial thesis that it was Plotinus' position that the 'partial' soul generates matter. O'Brien relies principally on two core texts, 3.4 .1 and 3.9 .3, where he finds convincing evidence for his thesis. In the present study I take two approaches. First, I demonstrate that if we accept O'Brien's thesis, then we are compelled to accept as well that Plotinus is guilty of self-contradiction in his doctrine of soul's descent. Secondly, I offer a different interpretation (...) of what Plotinus has in mind as the source of matter's generation in 3.4.1 and 3.9.3. In several passages Plotinus states that the product of the partial soul's creative activity is the "trace" of soul that, in turn, combines with matter to form the 'qualified body.' I argue that it is this trace-soul, not matter, that Plotinus is referring to in these texts. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that holes are not objects, but should instead be construed as properties or relations. The argument proceeds by first establishing a claim about angles: that angles are not objects, but properties or relations. It is then argued that holes and angles belong to the same category, on the grounds that they share distinctive existence and identity conditions. This provides an argument in favour of categorizing holes as one categorizes angles. I then argue that a commitment (...) to the existence of properties to be identified with holes provides sufficient resources to account for true claims about holes. (shrink)

In this paper I consider the merits and motivations for eliminativist error theories of absence causation, such as those offered by Beebee, Varzi, and Mumford. According to such views, there is no causation by absence. Here I argue that, despite of- fering an alternative picture of the practice of citing absences as causes, these views are inadequately motivated. I consider and reject a range of arguments for error-theoretic approaches, including appeals to ontological economy, physicalism and the causal clo- sure of (...) the physical, as well as Mumford’s recent appeal to soft Parmenideanism. I also argue that the arguments in the literature which aim to show that causation by absence is conceptually problematic are less forceful than they might initially appear. The result is that there is no compelling reason yet why we should reject absence causation. (shrink)

At his death in 1945, the influential German philosopher Ernst Cassirer left manuscripts for the fourth and final volume of his magnum opus, _The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms_. John Michael Krois and Donald Phillip Verene have edited these writings and translated them into English for the first time, bringing to completion Cassirer's major treatment of the concept of symbolic form. Ernst Cassirer believed that all the forms of representation that human beings use—language, myth, art, religion, history, science—are symbolic, and (...) the concept of symbolic forms was the basis of his thinking on these subjects. In this volume, which contains one text written in 1928 and another in about 1940, Cassirer presents the metaphysics that is implicit in his epistemology and phenomenology of culture. The earlier text grounds the philosopher's conception of symbolic forms on a notion of human nature that makes a general distinction between Geist and life. In the later text, he discusses Basis Phenomena, an original concept not mentioned in any of his previous works, and he compares his own viewpoint with those of other modern philosophers, notably Bergson and Heidegger. (shrink)

Research on the capacity to understand others' minds has tended to focus on representations ofbeliefs,which are widely taken to be among the most central and basic theory of mind representations. Representations ofknowledge, by contrast, have received comparatively little attention and have often been understood as depending on prior representations of belief. After all, how could one represent someone as knowing something if one does not even represent them as believing it? Drawing on a wide range of methods across cognitive science, (...) we ask whether belief or knowledge is the more basic kind of representation. The evidence indicates that nonhuman primates attribute knowledge but not belief, that knowledge representations arise earlier in human development than belief representations, that the capacity to represent knowledge may remain intact in patient populations even when belief representation is disrupted, that knowledge (but not belief) attributions are likely automatic, and that explicit knowledge attributions are made more quickly than equivalent belief attributions. Critically, the theory of mind representations uncovered by these various methods exhibits a set of signature features clearly indicative of knowledge: they are not modality-specific, they are factive, they are not just true belief, and they allow for representations of egocentric ignorance. We argue that these signature features elucidate the primary function of knowledge representation: facilitating learning from others about the external world. This suggests a new way of understanding theory of mind – one that is focused on understanding others' minds in relation to the actual world, rather than independent from it. (shrink)

The developing neuromuscular junction has provided an important paradigm for studying synapse formation. An outstanding feature of neuromuscular differentiation is the aggregation of acetylcholine receptors (AChRs) at high density in the postsynaptic membrane. While AChR aggregation is generally believed to be induced by the nerve, the mechanisms underlying aggregation remain to be clarified. A 43‐kD protein (43k) normally associated with the cytoplasmic aspect of AChR clusters has long been suspected of immobilizing AChRs by linking them to the cytoskeleton. In recent (...) studies, the AChR clustering activity of 43k has, at last, been demonstrated by expressing recombinant AChR and 43k in non‐muscle cells. Mutagenesis of 43k has revealed distinct domains within the primary structure which may be responsible for plasma membrane targeting and AChR binding. Other lines of study have provided clues as to how nerve‐derived (extracellular) AChR‐cluster inducing factors such as agrin might activate 43k‐driven postsynaptic membrane specialization. (shrink)

In this paper I consider the relationship between the spatial properties of visual perceptual experience and the sense-datum inference. I argue that the sense datum inference should be accepted if spatial properties are not merely intentionally present in such experiences. This result serves to underline the seriousness of the difficulties that are presented to direct realism by a particular class of illusory spatial experiences based on the geometry of visual perceptual experience. In light of these considerations I argue that it (...) is a constraint on direct realism that the underlying spatial character of visual perceptual experiences must be the same as that of the physical world. (shrink)

The essays in this book, by a variety of leading Augustine scholars, examine not only Augustine's multifaceted philosophy and its relation to his epoch-making theology, but also his practice as a philosopher, as well as his relation to other philosophers both before and after him. Thus the collection shows that Augustine's philosophy remains an influence and a provocation in a wide variety of settings today.

Nothing survives deconstruction unless we accept that survival in some sense attaches to the ghostly or etiolated figures (the marks and traces) of things, by which deconstruction proceeds. If the ghostly figure survives then it may be because it is undeconstructible. Yet the spectral figure would no doubt remain insignificant if it was not for the force it brings to bear on more central and familiar categories of philosophical and literary discourse. These categories, like style, friendship, justice and hospitality, tend (...) to occupy those spectral spaces that mark the structural difference between philosophy (conceptual, abstract, universal) and literature (figurative, concrete, singular). Yet nothing defines such spaces so well as the trace and its paradoxical structure. And nothing describes the structure of the trace so well as that of the signature. This paper identifies the movement of the trace as occupying and to a great extent defining the difference between philosophy and literature. The example, in this case, is the appearance of asphodels in Homer's Odyssey, according to which the fields where ghosts live are thick with the so-called grave-flower. But the asphodel on closer examination breaks down into mere traces of itself in a series of insoluble philological problems. The larger implications have to do with death, the signature of the writer, the relation between philosophy and literature and their respective modes of survival. There is no philosophy (no truth, no good, no chance) without its attachment to the etiolated figure, the trace of itself. The paper proposes readings of Blanchot, Derrida, Hegel and Plato, in addition to a focus on the main philological problem in Homer and its implications for a tradition of literary allusion, as a way of establishing the consistency of the paradoxical structure of the signature. (shrink)

Recent arguments asserting a topological turn in culture also identify a range of topologically informed interventions in social and cultural theory. Talk of a topological turn evokes both the enduring interest that the field of mathematics presents and the business of analysis in the cultural sphere. This article questions the novelty of this ‘becoming topological of culture’ and digs into a deeper historicity in order to identify the trends that may be said to support the development of topology in the (...) current situation. It also examines the relationship between mathematics considered ontologically (philosophy of mathematics) and mathematics considered epistemologically (as a methodological practice of knowledge), in order to better grasp the significance of the practical abstractions that mathematics as technics (or cultural topology) manifests. Discussions of Cantor, Russell, Poincaré, Lévi-Strauss, Lacan and others address the background of contemporary mathematical topology. The article goes on to examine Alain Badiou’s principle that mathematics is ontology and concludes with a discussion of the mathematics of Martin Heidegger. (shrink)

This article considers the Undercover Surrealism exhibition curated at London’s Hayward Gallery (from May to July 2006) and reflects on the practices of documentation, archiving and exhibition when the topic of the exhibition, as in this case, is a journal that in its most radical intention was set up to critique the practices of exhibition and documentation. The short and controversial life of Georges Bataille’s Documents unfolds as an often deliberately confusing juxtaposition of images and articles. The exhibition aims to (...) represent both the sometimes incompatible interests of the journal’s collaborators and the public dispute between Bataille and Breton over the aims of Surrealism. The article explores the intentions, risks, and possible effects of the exhibition in the context of Bataille’s own philosophy and his own peculiar part in the publication of Documents, which in its time was a contemporary review of diverse cultural phenomena interspersed with subversive dictionary entries. The article thus raises the question of what happens to the subversive intentions of a project like Documents in the scholarly historicist environment of public exhibition space. (shrink)

A primary goal of clinical practice is to respect patient autonomy. To promote this goal for patients who have lost the ability to make their own decisions, commentators recommend that surrogates make their treatment decisions based on the substituted judgment standard. This standard is commonly interpreted as directing surrogates to make the decision the patient would have made in the circumstances, if the patient were competent. However, recent commentators have argued that this approach—attempting to make the decision the patient would (...) have made if competent—is theoretically problematic, practically infeasible, and ignores the interests of the patient9s family and loved ones. These commentators conclude that the substituted judgment standard should be revised significantly, or abandoned altogether. While this response would avoid the cited problems, it also would require substantial changes to clinical practice and would raise significant problems of its own. The present paper thus considers the possibility that the criticisms do not point to problems with the substituted judgment standard itself; instead, they point to problems with the way it is most commonly interpreted. This analysis suggests that the substituted judgment standard need not be dramatically revised or abandoned. Instead, it should be interpreted in a way that effectively promotes respect for the autonomy of incompetent patients. The ‘endorsed life’ interpretation described here helps clinicians and surrogates to achieve this important goal. To clarify this approach, we explain how it differs from three other recently proposed alternatives to the standard interpretation of the substituted judgment standard. (shrink)

Estimates of the burden of disease assess the mortality and morbidity that affect a population by producing summary measures of health such as quality-adjusted life years and disability-adjusted life years. These measures typically do not include stillbirths among the negative health outcomes they count. Priority-setting decisions that rely on these measures are therefore likely to place little value on preventing the more than three million stillbirths that occur annually worldwide. In contrast, neonatal deaths, which occur in comparable numbers, have a (...) substantial impact on burden of disease estimates and are commonly seen as a pressing health concern. In this article we argue in favor of incorporating unintended fetal deaths that occur late in pregnancy into estimates of the burden of disease. Our argument is based on the similarity between late-term fetuses and newborn infants and the assumption that protecting newborns is important. We respond to four objections to counting stillbirths: that fetuses are not yet part of the population and so their deaths should not be included in measures of population health; that valuing the prevention of stillbirths will undermine women's reproductive rights; that including stillbirths implies that miscarriages should also be included; and that birth itself is in fact ethically significant. We conclude that our proposal is ethically preferable to current practice and, if adopted, is likely to lead to improved decisions about health spending. (shrink)

The thesis most central to my dissertation is the claim that thinking is a spatio-temporal process, that "knowing" is an event which, like all others, happens or occurs. It is not an original thesis. It is an implication of materialism, and just as old. However, until the last century there was no way of explaining the development of mental phenomena. Even today, the mind is usually considered different in kind from the rest of nature, as removed from the causal order (...) of things. Such a conception is implied by metaphysical realists, and openly articulated by theists. It is the motivation for the philosophical projects of epistemology and metaphysics, continuing into the scientific age as a rationalist hope of checking the results of empiricism through non-empirical means. ;A generation ago, Richard Rorty claimed that this conception of the mind as a "mirror of nature" was misguided, that modeling mental activity on the transparent process of sight had outlived its usefulness and led to problems both theoretical and practical. Eliminating the visual metaphors on which traditional conceptions of the mind had depended would mean abandoning philosophical aspirations to the Truth . Unwilling to accept the notion that the mind is a physical phenomenon, Rorty's work was largely disparaged as relativistic, since it made objectivity a matter of intersubjective agreement. ;Such a democratic approach was what the Sophists had advocated, what Plato sought to refute, and what the tradition of philosophy was designed to replace. However, as Rorty's predecessor John Dewey pointed out, a "spectator theory of knowledge" requires a subject which is detached from the world he observes, a subject beyond the constraints of space and time. It is therefore necessary to choose between the truth of philosophy and the consequences of pragmatism: the view that the mind, like everything else in nature, is a product of space and time. ;The present dissertation is a defense of Rorty's position. It claims that the bulk of that position is not original with him, but is indicative of pragmatism generally, and that in turn the tenets of pragmatism are consequences of Darwinism. That is, the pragmatist claims Rorty makes are nothing other than what Dewey called "the influence of Darwin on philosophy". As a result, any effective refutation of Rorty's position will require either a refutation of Darwinism or an explanation as to why the constraints of space and time do not apply to the human ability to think. (shrink)

How far does a researcher’s responsibility extend when an incidental finding is identified? Balancing pertinent ethical principles such as beneficence, respect for persons, and duty to rescue is not always straightforward, particularly in neuroimaging research where empirical data that might help guide decision making are lacking. We conducted a systematic survey of perceptions and preferences of 396 investigators, research participants, and Institutional Review Board members at our institution. Using the partial entrustment model as described by Richardson, we argue that our (...) data supports universal reading by a neuroradiologist of all research MRI scans for incidental findings and providing full disclosure to all participants. (shrink)

Remarkable in the range that it covers, The Possibilities of Sense testifies to an equally remarkable philosopher. In essays on ethics and thephilosophy of religion, on literature and education, the contributors displaynot only the breadth of D.Z. Phillips's work but also its power. This powercomes largely from Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose significance as a moral and religious philosopher rivals his reputation as a philosopher of language.

Neoplatonic Exegeses of Plato's Cosmogony JOHN F. PHILLIPS AMONG THE MANY CONTROVERSIES to which the long history of interpretation of Plato's Timaeus has given rise, that concerning the eternity of the cosmos is one of the most enduring and complex, and the source of almost continuous debate from the time of Xenocrates to the present. The importance to all Platonists of a doctrinally consistent answer to the question of whether or not the universe had a beginning in time (...) is made amply clear in the statement attributed to Iamblichus by Proclus that proper understand- ing of the creation of the world is crucial for the entire theory of Nature. Iamblichus here refers obliquely to the orthodox Platonist position that the universe is not a temporal being subject to decay and destruction. The princi- pal problem for all of them, of course, was that, taken literally, Plato's account of the creation in the Timaeus, particularly the passage 27C-a8C, appears to be an unequivocal affirmation of a temporal beginning to the cosmos. Espe- cially troublesome was Plato's use of the verb y~yovev in Timaeus 28b 7, which seems to be an explicit claim for an &QX1] in time. That this passage did indeed refer to a temporal beginning was a point that was made repeatedly and forcefully by the chief opponents of the Platonists on this issue, the Peripa- tetics, who, following Aristotle, read the Timaeus creation account literally.' To.. (shrink)

0. Philippe Huneman and Charles T. Wolfe: Introduction 1. Tobias Cheung, “What is an ‘organism’? On the occurrence of a new term and its conceptual transformations 1680-1850” 2. Charles T. Wolfe, “Do organisms have an ontological status?” 3. John Symons, “The individuality of artifacts and organisms” 4. Thomas Pradeu, “What is an organism? An immunological answer” 5. Matteo Mossio & Alvaro Moreno, “Organisational closure in biological organisms” 6. Laura Nuño de la Rosa, “Becoming organisms. The organisation of development and (...) the development of organisation” 7. Denis Walsh, “Two Neo-Darwinisms” 8. Philippe Huneman, “Assessing the prospects for a return of organisms in evolutionary biology” 9. Johannes Martens, “Organisms in evolution” 10. Susan Oyama, “Biologists behaving badly: Vitalism and the language of language” . (shrink)

Argumentation schemes bring artificial intelligence into day to day conversation. Interpreting the force of an utterance, be it an assertion, command, or question, remains a task for achieving this goal. But it is not an easy task. An interpretation of force depends on a speaker’s use of words for a hearer at the moment of utterance. Ascribing force relies on grammatical mood, though not in a straightforward or regular way. We face a dilemma: on one hand, deciding force requires an (...) understanding of the speaker’s words; on the other hand, word meaning may shift given the force in which the words are spoken. A precise theory of how mood and force relate helps us handle this dilemma, which, if met, expands the use of argumentation schemes in language processing. Yet, as our analysis shows, force is an inconstant variable, one that contributes to a scheme’s defeasibility. We propose using critical questions to help us decide the force of utterances. (shrink)

For more than 30 years and until his death in 2004 Jacques Derrida remained one of the most influential contemporary philosophers. It may be difficult to evaluate what forms his heritage will take in the future but _Derrida Now_ provides some provocative suggestions. Derrida’s often-controversial early reception was based on readings of his complex works, published in journals and collected in books. More recently attention has tended to focus on his later work, which grew out of the seminars that he (...) presented each year in France and the US. The full texts of these seminars are now the subject of a major publication project, to be produced over the next ten years. _Derrida Now_ presents contemporary articles based on or around the study of Derrida. It provides a critical introduction to Derrida’s complex and controversial thought, offers careful analysis of some of his most important concepts, and includes essays that address the major strands of his thought. Derrida’s influence reached not only into philosophy but also into other fields concerned with literature, politics, visual art, law, ecology, psychoanalysis, gender and sexuality and this book will appeal to readers in all these disciplines. Contributors include Peggy Kamuf, Geoff Bennington, Sarah Wood, Roy Sellars, Graham Allen, and Irving Goh. (shrink)

In this interview Samuel Weber proposes a rethinking of the relation of secrecy to transparency and outlines some of the forms it takes, while considering certain of its implications for current social, political and epistemological contexts. He begins by questioning the opposition itself, suggesting that we will have to learn to be more at home with the secret and that the demand for transparency must be radically rethought and complicated. He argues that the demand for absolute transparency can only promote (...) and obscure the process by which the ‘secret’ is placed in the service of private appropriation. As the emotional experience of the relation between transparency and secrecy reflects the historically specific traditions that constitute the sense of self, then it is that sense that should be ‘opened up to its irreducible heterogeneity’. (shrink)

Breaking new ground in Sarraute studies, John Phillips reads the novels and plays of Nathalie Sarraute in a hitherto largely neglected critical perspective. Through a detailed analysis of textual metaphors, he demonstrates that Sarraute's writing is informed and inspired by an intensely personal set of desires. Unlike previous criticism, which has stressed the formal aspects of the writing to the exclusion of the psychological, this study exploits contemporary psychoanalytic and feminist theory to expose an unconscious feminine dimension which (...) the author herself has never recognized. (shrink)

This introductory article explains the theme of this book, which is about political theory. It evaluates the impact of literature that proved especially influential in framing debate through the last decades of the twentieth century and opening years of the twenty-first and examines the historical work on political thought. It describes the combination of concerns that runs through the work of John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin, and the liberal egalitarian tradition and identifies areas of debate that have proved particularly fruitful (...) over the last thirty years. It analyses political theory from a global perspective and discusses body politic. (shrink)

American pragmatist John Dewey's economic thought has remained relatively unknown by both philosophers and economists. This article addresses this lack of interest and replies to criticism of pragmatism as the philosophy of ‘corporate liberalism’ by tracing one source of Dewey's economic thought to British New Liberal John Atkinson Hobson. General similarities are discussed first, followed by a presentation of Dewey's use of Hobson's theory of underconsumption during the Great Depression. It concludes by presenting Dewey's understanding of a liberalism (...) that had truly become corporate. (shrink)

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Your God is Too Small is a groundbreaking work of faith, which challenges the constraints of traditional religion. In his discussion of God, author J.B. Phillips encourages Christians to redefine their understanding of a creator without labels or earthly constraints and instead search for a meaningful concept of God. Phillips explains that the trouble facing many of us today is that we have not found a God big enough for our modern needs. In a world where our experience (...) of life has grown in myriad directions and our mental horizons have been expanded to the point of bewilderment by world events and scientific discoveries, our ideas of God have remained largely static. This inspirational work tackles tough topics and inspires readers to reevaluate and connect more deeply with a God that is relevant to current experience and big enough to command respect and admiration. (shrink)

This article examines Plato’s claim that the founders of the ideal city ought to establish a law compelling the philosophers to rule. This claim is perplexing as it seems to suggest that in the ideal city justice is not in the best interests of its possessor, for by obeying the law and ruling the philosopher will in turn be made very unhappy. Following a critical appraisal and ultimate rejection of a number of different attempts to make sense of this tension, (...) this article advances a ‘communitarian’ interpretation. According to this interpretation, the existence of a law compelling the philosopher to rule is ultimately in her best interest because her ruling will lead to a well-educated and intellectually virtuous community. The existence of this virtuous community will, in turn, allow the philosopher better to achieve her principal goal—the attainment and preservation of truth. (shrink)

This dissertation sets out Dewey's theory of society, as outlined in the lecture notes for his courses on social and political philosophy between 1923 and 1928. I argue that Dewey had tripartite theory of economic processes, political/legal structures and social-moral functions that focuses on the relationship between material/technological forces and the institutions established to direct them. ;The first section presents and then refutes the charge that pragmatic social thought reduces thought to sheer efficiency and is therefore unable to resist ideology. (...) The primary dispute was between the turn toward objectivist methodology in American social science, frequently attributed to Dewey's influence, and those who saw this turn as a decline into crude, instrumental reason. Unlike the objectivists, instrumentalism incorporated ideas of intersubjectivity, value, and reflexivity. He did not believe that democracy could be best served by a managerial elite who sharply divides facts from values and means from ends. ;The second section comprises the positive presentation of Dewey's social theory. Chapter three discusses economic processes. I set out the organic model that guides his early and late economic theory and how Dewey draws from J. A. Hobson's theory of underconsumption to organize a coherent set of specific economic proposals during the Great Depression. Chapter four presents Dewey's theory of political structures, laws, institutions and habits that shape the direction of material life. But these structures may come in time to restrain further economic and technological growth. The final chapter takes up the breakdown of traditional structures, the reconstruction of which Dewey believed to be the fundamental problem of modernity. There is a need for new customs and institutions that continue traditional ideals of liberalism while being grounded in modern material conditions. The need, Dewey believed, was for a social theory that would understand the interplay of forces and institutions and direct them toward a democratic culture. ;I end with an epilogue on uses of Dewey's thought within contemporary social theory. The cheerful pursuit of instrumental reason by the neo-pragmatists Richard Rorty, Stanley Fish and Richard Posner is contrasted with recent work in the communitarianism/liberalism debate. (shrink)

American Christian Zionism has recently become the subject of much publishing and discussion, most of which focuses on the idea that millenarian convictions are motivating Christian Zionists to attempt to hasten the apocalypse. This approach is neither entirely fair nor particularly beneficial for the purposes of challenging this influential movement, as it trades more in the easy dismissal of caricatures than in substantive theological engagement. This essay explores a narrow facet of such engagement through dialogue between the eschatologies of (...) class='Hi'>John Howard Yoder and contemporary American Christian Zionism. An exposition of the connections between the cross, ecclesiology, social action, and apocalyptic in Yoder's eschatology will bring into relief particularly problematic aspects of traditional dispensationalist Christology and ecclesiology which leave continuing legacies in the system of convictions which sustains contemporary Christian Zionist activism. (shrink)

In this discussion note, I examine scattered comments about evil from John Dewey’s works. After a brief consideration of what critics like Reinhold Niebuhr have said about the weaknesses of Dewey’s theodicy, I will offer my own critique. In short, I argue that Dewey subverts his own theory of inquiry when he comes to the problem of the origin and genesis of evil.

This article, which introduces the special section on The Urban Problematic, takes as its starting point the ways in which categories associated with the ‘urban’ have broken down, such that the once singular and coherent concept ‘city’ has disintegrated in certain ways: the notion has been demythologized, so that representations of the city must now be regarded as partial and invested; and cities themselves have become opaque and unpredictable both to urban scholars and to governments, planners and various kinds of (...) welfare organizations. The indications of crisis, captured for instance by concerns about the slums, favelas and shanty towns of the world’s megacities, also indicate that much of what counts in modern urban life is in some way connected with the marginal, the unofficial, and the supplemental. The article takes a supplemental view of the current state of urban dwelling. This involves at the same time a longer, more patient, historical view in its attempt to understand the current state of the city as part of a shift in the play of heterogeneous forces. With reference to the articles contained in The Urban Problematic, this introductory article finally draws attention to some of the urgent and critical issues of contemporary urbanism. (shrink)

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Classical education includes an apprenticeship in the art of rhetoric. It also gives a central place to the study of major works of literature, philosophy, and theology. There is often, however, an assumed disconnection between the art of rhetoric and the study of great texts. This disconnection undermines students’ ability to hear the voices of these texts as conversation partners in ongoing debates. This article illustrates how historically-based rhetorical-poetic reading enables us to hear the voices in a given text and (...) to consider how they work together. The argument first outlines some modern assumptions about the relation between poetry and rhetoric. The second part explains what rhetorical-poetic reading involves when approaching John Milton’s epic, Paradise Lost. The final section focuses on the second book of Milton’s poem, establishing how layered persuasive purposes constitute the fabric of the work and what the poem reveals through its curious dramatization of demonic deliberation. (shrink)

Preface Phillip R. Sloan, Gerald McKenny, Kathleen Eggleson pp. xiii-xviii In November of 2009, the University of Notre Dame hosted the conference “Darwin in the Twenty-First Century: Nature, Humanity, and God.‘ Sponsored primarily by the John J. Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values at Notre Dame, and the Science, Theology, and the Ontological Quest project within the Vatican Pontifical... 1. Introduction: Restructuring an Interdisciplinary Dialogue Phillip R. Sloan pp. 1-32 Almost exactly fifty years before the Notre Dame conference, (...) the world’s largest centenary commemoration of Darwin’s legacy was held at nearby University of Chicago. This event, organized by a committee spearheaded by University of Chicago anthropologist Sol Tax, drew nearly 2,500 registrants. In attendance were the primary leaders... Part 1. Nature 2. Evolution through Developmental Change: How Alterations in Development Cause Evolutionary Changes in Anatomy Scott F. Gilbert pp. 35-60 For the past half-century, the mechanisms of evolution have been explained by the fusion of genetics and evolutionary biology called “the Modern Synthesis.‘ The tenets of the Modern Synthesis have been generally formulated as such: 1. There is genetic variation within the population. 2. There is competition... 3. The Evolution of Evolutionary Mechanisms: A New Perspective Stuart A. Newman pp. 61-89 The Modern Evolutionary Synthesis, based on Charles Darwin’s concept of natural selection in conjunction with a genetic theory of inheritance in a population-based framework, has been, for more than six decades, the dominant scientific perspective for explaining the diversity of living organisms. In recent years, however, with the growth... 4. The Evolvability of Organic Forms: Possible, Likely, and Unlikely Change from the Perspective of Evolutionary Developmental Biology Alessandro Minelli pp. 90-115 Confronted with the extraordinary diversity of animal form, we can ask questions about function and adaptation. How does this animal move? How does it feed? How does it defend itself from its enemies? But we can also ask questions about development, reproduction, and heredity. What mechanisms produce these forms? How are these... 5. Accident, Adaptation, and Teleology in Aristotle and Darwinism David J. Depew pp. 116-143 Charles Darwin framed the Origin of Species to meet criteria for inductive science set out by John Herschel in his Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy. Accordingly, he was distraught when he learned that Herschel, to whom he had sent a copy of his newly published book, was not... 6. The Game of Life Implies Both Teleonomy and Teleology Gennaro Auletta, Ivan Colagè, Paolo D’Ambrosio pp. 144-164 The present contribution is mainly aimed at suggesting the importance of teleonomy and teleology as explanatory mechanisms in biology in the light of recent achievements in the field, and at showing that they play an actual and relevant role in the realm of life. The issue of finality in biology still provokes lively debates in the... Part 2. Humanity 7. Humanity’s Origins Bernard Wood pp. 167-181 One of Charles Darwin’s many achievements is that he began the process of converting the Tree of Life from a religious metaphor into a biological reality. All types of living organisms, be they animals, plants, fungi, bacteria, or viruses, are at the end of twigs that reach the surface of the Tree of Life, and all the types of organisms... 8. Darwin’s Evolutionary Ethics: The Empirical and Normative Justifications Robert J. Richards pp. 182-200 In the increasingly secular atmosphere of the nineteenth century, intellectuals grew wary of the idea that nature had any moral authority. In an earlier age, one might have looked upon the dispositions of nature as divinely sanctioned, and thus one could call upon natural law to ground moral judgment. Certain behaviors, for instance, might have... 9. Crossing the Milvian Bridge: When Do Evolutionary Explanations of Belief Debunk Belief? Paul E. Griffiths, John S. Wilkins pp. 201-231 Two traditional targets for evolutionary skepticism are religion and morality. Evolutionary skeptical arguments against religious belief are continuous with earlier genetic arguments against religion, such as that implicit in David Hume’s Natural History of Religion. Evolutionary arguments are also... 10. Questioning the Zoological Gaze: Darwinian Epistemology and Anthropology Phillip R. Sloan pp. 232-266 This quotation from Darwin’s Descent of Man illuminates an under-explored issue in Darwin’s work---not the issue of evolutionary ethics itself, but the epistemology of experience assumed in his work, and the consequences of his application of this “zoological gaze‘ to human beings. I will term this epistemological stance in this chapter “natural historical... Part 3. God 11. Evolution and Catholic Faith John O’Callaghan pp. 269-298 To begin to examine the relation of orthodox Catholic Christian faith to evolutionary theory and the question of human origins, consider words of the fourth pope, St. Clement: Let us fix our gaze on the Father and Creator of the whole world, and let us hold on to his peace and blessings, his splendid and surpassing... 12. After Darwin, Aquinas: A Universe Created and Evolving William E. Carroll pp. 299-337 At the 2000 Jubilee Session for scientists, held at the Vatican in May of that year, Archbishop Józef Życiński offered an eloquent assessment of contemporary discourse on the relationship between the natural sciences and theology. He ended his address with the comment that what is needed today is a new Thomas Aquinas. I remember... 13. Evolutionary Theism and the Emergent Universe Józef Życiński pp. 338-354 The 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species has been celebrated in the context of an animated debate concerning both scientific and philosophical issues implied by the theory of evolution.1 One finds a deep diversity of attitudes, both methodological and semantic, in the current debates on evolutionary... 14. Beyond Separation or Synthesis: Christ and Evolution as Theodrama Celia Deane-Drummond pp. 355-380 The fervor with which popular discourse on science and religion has continued to bubble up in the anniversary year celebrating Darwin’s achievements shows that the publically perceived conflict between science and religion will not go away. Academic discussion on such matters is therefore not just peripheral to cultural concerns but takes... Part 4. Past and Future Prospects 15. Imagining a World without Darwin Peter J. Bowler pp. 383-403 What would have happened if Charles Darwin had not lived to write On the Origin of Species? Perhaps his bad health caused the early death he feared, or maybe he fell overboard while on the voyage of the Beagle. Would the world have still experienced the Darwinian Revolution under another name, or would the history of science, and... 16. What Future for Darwinism? Jean Gayon pp. 404-423 What future for Darwinism? I will propose some criteria for exploring this question in the domains of both evolutionary biology and the human sciences. Do not expect me to tell you where we will stand thirty years from now. It will be enough to identify a few general tendencies. For the sake of brevity, I will not devote a preamble to explain... Contributors pp. 424-430. (shrink)

The main project of this dissertation is to analyze various temporal conceptions of modality for discrete n-dimensional spacetime. The first chapter contains an introduction to the problem and known results. Chapter 2 consists of a study of logics which are analogues of the so-called 'logic of today and tomorrow' and 'logic of tomorrow' investigated by Segerberg and others. We consider the analogues of these successor logics for 2-dimensional integral spacetime. We provide axiomatizations in monomodal and multimodal languages and prove completeness (...) theorems. We also establish that the irreflexive successor logic in the "standard" modal language is not finitely axiomatizable. ;Chapter 3 investigates the axiomatization problem for 2-dimensional integral spacetime frames with Robb's irreflexive 'after' relation. We provide an axiomatization in a multimodal language and prove that this axiomatization is complete. We use this result to prove the system in the "standard" modal language is decidable. ;In Chapter 4 we take up the problem of what the correct Diodorean modal logic is for 2-dimensional integral spacetime. We show that the corresponding Diodorean modal logic is not S4.2, nor indeed any known modal system. We then present several candidate axioms and prove their independence in the context of S4.2. We also study some of the sublogics of the Diodorean modal logic for 2-dimensional discrete spacetime . ;The final chapter contains some general results. First we prove that for every n ≥ 2 the n-dimensional frame determines a unique Diodorean modal logic. We also consider temporal logics in the language with F and P for two kinds of irreflexive spacetime frames. We prove that for every n ≥ 2 the n-dimensional frame with Robb's 'after' relation determines a unique temporal logic. We also prove a generalized completeness theorem for n-dimensional irreflexive successor logics. Finally, in an appendix, we provide a list of selected open problems and indicate directions for future research in this area. (shrink)

Kleinian psychoanalysis has recently experienced a renaissance in academic and clinical circles. _Reading Melanie Klein_ responds to the upsurge of interest in her work by bringing together the most innovative and challenging essays on Kleinian thought from the last two decades. The book features material which appears here for the first time in English, and several newly written chapters. _Reading Melaine Klein_ recontextualizes Klein to the more well-known works of Freud and Lacan and disproves the long-held claim that her psychoanalysis (...) is both too normative and too conservative for critical consideration. The essays address Klein's distinctive readings of the unconscious and phantasy, her tenacious commitment to the death drive, her fecund notions of anxiety, projection and projective identification and, most famously, her challenge to Freud's Oedipus complex and theories of sexual difference. The authors demonstrate that not only is it possible to rethink the epistemological basis of Kleinian theory, rendering it as vital as those of Freud and Lacan, but also that her psychoanalysis can engage in powerful and productive dialogue with diverse disciplines such as politics, ethics and literary theory. This timely collection is an invaluable addition to the scholarship on Melaine Kein and catalyst for further debate not only within the psychoanalytic community but also across social, critical and cultural studies. (shrink)

The 1962 publication of J. H. Waszink's edition of Calcidius' commentary on Plato's "Timaeus" focussed attention on the question of Calcidius' source for a group of chapters where he presents an interpretation of Plato's account of the creation of soul. I discuss three attempts to answer this question: that of Waszink himself, who argues that the source is Porphyry who was here influenced by the Neopythagorean/Platonist Numenius, that of J. M. Van Winden, who claims Numenius as the direct source, and (...) that of Werner Deuse, who offers reasons for excluding Numenius as either directly or indirectly responsible. I show the weakness of Deuse's critique, but then argue that neither Waszink nor Van Winden has given sufficient consideration to the possibility that Plotinus, either alone or through Porphyry as intermediary, is behind Calcidius' interpretation, where the doctrines of the unity of the soul and of a higher soul that does not descend, both characteristic of Plotinus' psychology, are prominent. However, there is an important but uniformly overlooked feature of this exegesis that rules out both Plotinus and Porphyry as possible sources. This leaves Numenius as the only serious candidate. If, then, the origin of the doctrines of the unity of the soul and of the undescended higher soul can be traced to the work of Numenius, there is the strong possibility that in his formulation of these same doctrines Plotinus was indebted to Numenius. (shrink)

An artistic discussion on the critical potential of African American expressive culture In a major reassessment of African American culture, Phillip Brian Harper intervenes in the ongoing debate about the “proper” depiction of black people. He advocates for African American aesthetic abstractionism—a representational mode whereby an artwork, rather than striving for realist verisimilitude, vigorously asserts its essentially artificial character. Maintaining that realist representation reaffirms the very social facts that it might have been understood to challenge, Harper contends that abstractionism shows (...) up the actual constructedness of those facts, thereby subjecting them to critical scrutiny and making them amenable to transformation. Arguing against the need for “positive” representations, Abstractionist Aesthetics displaces realism as the primary mode of African American representational aesthetics, re-centers literature as a principal site of African American cultural politics, and elevates experimental prose within the domain of African American literature. Drawing on examples across a variety of artistic production, including the visual work of Fred Wilson and Kara Walker, the music of Billie Holiday and Cecil Taylor, and the prose and verse writings of Ntozake Shange, Alice Walker, and John Keene, this book poses urgent questions about how racial blackness is made to assume certain social meanings. In the process, African American aesthetics are upended, rendering abstractionism as the most powerful modality for Black representation. (shrink)

It is easy to overlook the fact that the kind of personalist criticism Brower, Wimsatt, and other New Critics were reacting against was a method of interpretation bequeathed by the nineteenth century which most of us would now regard as naïve, simplistic, and sometimes absurd. With the exception of a few poems such as Browning's dramatic monologues, which provided the speaker with an explicit identity as unmistakable as that of a character in a play—"I am poor brother Lippo, by your (...) leave! / You need not clap your torches to my face"—lyric and didactic poems of the first person were invariably treated as personal statements. The voice, emotions, attitudes, and state of mind of the speaker were those of the poet, and even the most symbolic details were often read as literal aspects of the poet's self or environment. Many critical studies and anthologies remain today on library shelves testifying to the persistence of these critical habits of the late 1940s and 1950s. On the assumption that Rochester's love poems describe his actual sexual experiences, Vivian de Sola Pinto was able to write a much longer biography of the poet than would have been possible if personalist criticism had not been in vogue.1 David Nichol Smith could assert that Dryden's Religio Laici "was wholly spontaneous"—the familiar Romantic criterion - and show the poet arguing out "his problems for the peace of his own mind."2 If it became unfashionable to speak in that manner of these and numerous other poems, it was because the New Critics, along with the Chicago critics, had shown convincingly that a lyric poem can be dramatic, the imitation of a fictitious speaker responding to an imagined situation, and that a didactic poem can deal with public issues instead of private agonies. · 1. See Vivian de Sola Pinto, Rochester: Portrait of a Restoration Poet .· 2. David Nichol Smith, John Dryden , p. 61. Phillip Harth is Merritt Y. Hughes Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and is the author of Swift and Anglican Rationalism and Contexts of Dryden's Thought. (shrink)

This book, the first of its kind, surveys the career of the renowned Australian-German theatre and opera director Barrie Kosky. Its nine chapters provide multidisciplinary analyses of Barrie Kosky’s working practices and stage productions, from the beginning of his career in Melbourne to his current roles as Head of the Komische Oper Berlin and as a guest director in international demand. Specialists in theatre studies, opera studies, musical theatre studies, aesthetics, and arts administration offer in-depth accounts of Kosky’s unusually wide-ranging (...) engagements with the performing arts – as a director of spoken theatre, operas, musicals, operettas, as an adaptor, a performer, a writer, and an arts manager. Further, this book includes contributions from theatre practitioners with first-hand experience of collaborating with Kosky in the 1990s, who draw on interviews with members of Gilgul, Australia’s first Jewish theatre company, to document this formative period in Kosky’s career. The book investigates the ways in which Kosky has created transnational theatres, through introducing European themes and theatre techniques to his Australian work or through bringing fresh voices to the national dialogue in Germany’s theatre landscape. An appendix contains a timeline and guide to Kosky’s productions to date. (shrink)

In some practical uncertain situations decision makers are presented with described events that are out of sequence when having to make a causal attribution. A theoretical perspective concerning the causal coherence of the explanation is developed to predict the effect of this on causal attribution. Three experiments investigated the effect on causal judgement when the described order of events did not correspond to their causal order. Participants had to judge the relative probability of two possible causes of an outcome in (...) scenarios in which presentation order varied. All three experiments found that there was a preference to judge that the cause associated with events described in causal order was more responsible for the outcome when events associated with one cause were interleaved in their presentation order with those from a second cause. This occurred when there was a strong causal relationship between events. The results were consistent with the causal coherence explanation. (shrink)

Taking the publication in English of several works by Alain Badiou and Jacques Rancière as its point of departure, this review article attempts to outline what may be at stake in reading these two authors together. Looking especially at the works on politics and on aesthetics, the article also draws on other major texts by these authors as a way of clarifying their basic philosophical principles. Under the rubrics of ‘the axiom of equality’ and ‘the empty set’, these two thinkers (...) establish links with their tradition in ways that are mobilized towards invention or transfiguration in spheres of both politics and art. (shrink)

What has been learned about logic by means of "uninterpreted" logistic systems can be supplemented by comparing the latter with systems which are more uninterpreted, as well as with others which are less uninterpreted than the well-known logistic systems. By somewhat extending the meaning of 'uninterpreted', I hope to establish certain claims about the nature of logistic systems and also to cast some light on the nature of "logic itself." My procedure involves looking at three major "degrees" of interpretation: first, (...) systems uninterpreted both semantically and syntactically, second, systems uninterpreted semantically but not syntactically, and third, systems uninterpreted neither semantically nor syntactically. We shall be forced to limit ourselves to the truth-functional part of logic in this brief study. What are usually called uninterpreted systems can be seen on a continuum of "degrees" of interpretation, from ordinary reasoning at one extreme to a "thoroughly uninterpreted system" at the other. "Logic itself" apparently lies nearer to the interpreted, deformalized end of the spectrum than to the uninterpreted, formalized end. Logic is not identical with any particular logistic system, but is that which the particular logistic systems aim to formalize or model or capture. I propose that it is that minimum set of logical, rather than syntactical, primitive terms, definitions, and rules which is needed to generate logically, rather than syntactically, the principles of ordinary reasoning as it is used by logicians in their metalinguistic discussions and informal proofs of metatheorems. This minimum set is somewhat larger than the primitive bases of most logistic systems; its truth-functional part is presented in the "Deformalized Logic" at degree twelve. (shrink)

This article considers the Undercover Surrealism exhibition curated at London’s Hayward Gallery (from May to July 2006) and reflects on the practices of documentation, archiving and exhibition when the topic of the exhibition, as in this case, is a journal that in its most radical intention was set up to critique the practices of exhibition and documentation. The short and controversial life of Georges Bataille’s Documents unfolds as an often deliberately confusing juxtaposition of images and articles. The exhibition aims to (...) represent both the sometimes incompatible interests of the journal’s collaborators and the public dispute between Bataille and Breton over the aims of Surrealism. The article explores the intentions, risks, and possible effects of the exhibition in the context of Bataille’s own philosophy and his own peculiar part in the publication of Documents, which in its time was a contemporary review of diverse cultural phenomena interspersed with subversive dictionary entries. The article thus raises the question of what happens to the subversive intentions of a project like Documents in the scholarly historicist environment of public exhibition space. (shrink)

Violence is spoken of in several senses but its most basic definition, as a force exerted by one thing on another, harbors serious problems, especially when it comes to a consideration of its source or cause. We begin this article by identifying some of the aporias of violence with reference to philosophical and religious discourses and then we go on to analyze how violence problematizes concepts of law and justice in world historical contexts. We examine several traditions including Indo-European mythology, (...) as well as Hindu, Taoist, and ancient Greek philosophy, before addressing the concept of violence in modern thought, as a revision of Christianity. We conclude with some discussion of epistemological violence and its critics. (shrink)