This book examines the logical foundations of visual information: information presented in the form of diagrams, graphs, charts, tables, and maps. The importance of visual information is clear from its frequent presence in everyday reasoning and communication, and also in compution. Chapters of the book develop the logics of familiar systems of diagrams such as Venn diagrams and Euler circles. Other chapters develop the logic of higraphs, Pierce diagrams, and a system having both diagrams and sentences among its well-formed representations. (...) Syntax, semantics, rules of inference and soundness and completeness results are provided for each of the systems. In addition to developing the logic of diagrams, key questions about the status of visual information Hammer discusses, such as the relationship between the language and visually-presented information. (shrink)

John Hartley opens his short history of cultural studies by evoking a sense of the contested nature of the field in the contemporary moment and the intense debates about its objects, scope, methods, and goals: “Even within intellectual communities and academic institutions, there is little agreement about what counts as cultural studies, either as a critical practice or an institutional apparatus. On the contrary, the field is riven by fundamental disagreements about what cultural studies is for, in whose interests it (...) is done, what theories, methods and objects of study are proper to it, and where to set its limits” (1). (shrink)

Stanley Cavell is a leading figure in American philosophy and one of the most exhilarating and wide-ranging intellectuals of our time. In this book Espen Hammer offers a lucid and thorough account of the development of Cavell's work, from his early writings on ordinary language philosophy and skepticism to his most recent contributions to film studies, literary theory, romanticism, ethics, and politics. The book traces the many lines of skepticism occurring in Cavell's work and shows how they amount to (...) a rich and subtle picture of human subjectivity. Hammer explores Cavell's passionate engagement with Austin and Wittgenstein's visions of language, and his uncovering of conceptions of the ordinary in Emerson and Thoreau. Central sections of the book are devoted to the tragic and the comic as these modes of existence come into play in Shakespeare and Hollywood cinematic drama. In elaborating Cavell's responses to thinkers such as Heidegger, Levinas, and Derrida, the author situates Cavell's writing within the wider context of contemporary continental philosophy. Hammer clearly reveals the existential dimensions of Cavell's thought. He argues that his variant of ordinary language philosophy is a vital stimulus to self-transformation in cognitive, aesthetic, ethical, and political domains, contributing significantly to a rethinking of issues such as responsibility and autonomy, and the relationship between philosophy and literature. A critical introduction to the thought of an inordinately complex writer, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars in philosophy, literary theory, cultural theory, comparative literature, and media and cultural studies. (shrink)

The chapter is divided into three separate parts. In the first part I critically discuss Adorno's interpretation of Heidegger's concern with the question of Being. Central to this interpretation is Adorno's view that Being, for Heidegger, resonates with onto‐theological or metaphysical accounts of the highest and most general being – that of Plato's ideas, or Aristotle's substance. In various steps, looking at several key claims of Heidegger, I argue that this approach is misguided. Heidegger draws a clear and philosophically justified (...) distinction between his conception of Being and the Platonic vision of essence. The second part identifies a strand of Adorno's critique that does not depend on the onto‐theological reading. This is the critique of fetishization and reification – Adorno's view that Heidegger falsely seeks to imbue his thinking and diagnosis of modernity with a veneer of the timeless and transcendental. Adorno, I suggest, justifiably introduces his dialectical procedure as a means to correct this tendency: Concepts, he claims, should be viewed and analyzed in terms of the non‐identity between themselves and the states of affairs to which they purport to refer. In clear contrast to the Heideggerian call for some kind of essential or necessary reference – words that magically yet “necessarily” pick out their object, and that thereby aspire to overcome the fateful split between word and object (or subject and object) – Adorno insists on difference, differentiation, and absence, a historically indexed self‐reflection. In the final part I propose a reading of Heidegger that takes heed of Adorno's warnings against fetishization and reification. While far from trying to efface the decisive differences between the two thinkers, I highlight moments in Heidegger that lend themselves to a dialectical interpretation. I argue that these are moments of remembrance – moments in which human practice anticipate a more reconciled relation between subject and object. (shrink)

This is an End Note to 'Deconstructing the Physical World: The Substructure of Language' (DPWSL) that validates key concepts introduced in DPWSL by demostrating how they can be used to build a model able to describe, explain and predict the Stroop effect, the reverse Stroop effect and other Stroop-related effects, which are an array of empirically reproducible effects widely studied in cognitive psychology.

This paper describes a way of creating and maintaining a `dynamic encyclopedia', i.e., an encyclopedia whose entries can be improved and updated on a continual basis without requiring the production of an entire new edition. Such an encyclopedia is therefore responsive to new developments and new research. We discuss our implementation of a dynamic encyclopedia and the problems that we had to solve along the way. We also discuss ways of automating the administration of the encyclopedia.

A formal system is studied having both sentences and diagrams as well-formed representations. Proofs in the system allow inference back and forth between sentences and diagrams, as well as between diagrams and diagrams, and between sentences and sentences. This sort of heterogeneous system is of interest because external representations other than linguistic ones occur commonly in actual reasoning in conjunction with language. Syntax, semantics, and rules of inference for the system are given and it is shown to be sound and (...) complete. (shrink)

Theodor Adorno was one of the foremost radical thinkers of the Twentieth century. Critic of the Enlightenment, liberalism and modernity, he was the architect behind the famous Frankfurt School of Critical Theory and his work ranged over philosophy, social and cultural theory, art and music. In this lucid book, Espen Hammer critically considers and defends Adorno's most important contribution: his political thought and it contemporary relevance. Espen Hammer examines the background to Adorno's thought in the work of Kierkegaard, (...) Marx, Weber and Walter Benjamin and assesses Adorno's critique of Enlightenment and modernity in his famous work, Dialectic of Enlightenment. He then considers Adorno's critique of Kant and Hegel and considers Adorno's celebrated theory of negative dialectics. He defends Adorno's against Jurgen Habermas's criticism that Adorno's thought is irrational and subject-centred before considering how Adorno's theory of alterity is evident in the work of Derrida and Levinas. Adorno and the Political is an invigorating exploration of a key political thinker and is also a useful introduction to his thought as a whole. It will be of interest to those in philosophy, sociology and politics. (shrink)

This is Appendix B to the note, Deconstructing the Physical World (DPW). This appendix extends DPW to provide a set of new conceptual tools able inter alia to deliver a systematic, well-structured and highly novel set of insights into: core aspects of how language learning and use might work; what precisely is going on in inverted qualia thought experiments and in relation to the knowledge argument; and how incorporating differentiated forms of qualia into some fundamental ideas about language learning and (...) use can help more clearly define what we mean when we refer to such things as ‘concepts’ and ‘imagination’. (shrink)

Some metaphysics are provided showing that what is commonly called ‘the physical world’ can be deconstructed into three ‘levels’: a single, unified ‘noumenal world’ on which everything supervenes; a ‘phenomenal world’ that we each privately experience through direct perception of phenomena; and a ‘collective world’ that people in any given ‘language using group’ experience through learning, using and adapting that group’s language. This deconstruction is shown to enable a clear account of qualia and of how people can hold some things (...) to be physically real even when it is clear no one can ever directly experience those things as phenomena. It is further shown to enable a single, internally consistent, largely empirically supported conceptual framework – a ‘metacosmology’ – able to encompass not only the physical world as people conceive of it for everyday purposes, and as scientists conceive of it for scientific purposes, but also people’s first person phenomenal experience of a physical world and, prospectively, the mechanisms by which such first person, conscious experiences can be generated. (shrink)

This is Appendix A to the note: Deconstructing the Physical World (DPW). It shows how the conceptual framework developed in DPW relates to Russellian Monism (RM) and that it can accrue RM’s benefits while defeating the combination problem that challenges many RMs.

Theodor W. Adorno's aesthetics has dominated discussions about art and aesthetic modernism since World War II, and continues to inform contemporary theorizing. Situating Adorno's aesthetic theory in the context of post-Kantian European philosophy, Espen Hammer explores Adorno's critical view of art as engaged in reconsidering fundamental features of our relation to nature and reality. His book is structured around what Adorno regarded as the contemporary aesthetician's overarching task: to achieve a vision of the fate of art in the modern (...) world, while demonstrating its unique cognitive potential. Hammer offers a lively examination of Adorno's work through the central problem of what full human self-actualization would require, and also discusses the wider philosophical significance of aesthetic modernism. This book will be a valuable resource for scholars and students of social philosophy, art, and aesthetics. (shrink)

The classical secularization thesis that emerged during the European Enlightenment held that all expressions of belief would gradually weaken and fade away under the pressure of scientific and technological rationality. Yet religious belief has persisted and thrived under the conditions of modernity. In After the Death of God, philosopher Espen Hammer reconstructs and analyzes a discourse of secularization that accounts for this incongruity. Starting from Immanuel Kant, Hammer explores how philosophers have responded to the death of God, focusing (...) on the idealist and anti-idealist aftermath of Kant's thinking in Hegel, Feuerbach, Marx, and Nietzsche. For these philosophers, the Enlightenment critique of rational metaphysics was either articulated, affirmed, or simply taken for granted. However, the absence of God, or at least the impossibility of knowing whether a divine power exists, was not simply a mere fact. Rather than searching for reasons to reject religion, Hammer finds, these thinkers have called for a diagnostic and interpretive account of religion's ultimate significance and role within the context of modernity. Unlike today's New Atheists, who see religion as fundamentally anti-modern, the thinkers in this book all see religion as being either transformed into, or replaced by, a renewed ethical life. For them, the claim that "God is dead" implies the beginning of a secular age in which humans attain dignity and moral authority as a self-actualizing, self-creating being. (shrink)

This paper examines Charles Peirce's graphical notation for first-order logic with identity. The notation forms a part of his system of "existential graphs," which Peirce considered to be his best work in logic. In this paper a Tarskian semantics is provided for the graphical system.

A logical system is studied whose well-formed representations consist of diagrams rather than formulas. The system, due to Shin [2, 3], is shown to be complete by an argument concerning maximally consistent sets of diagrams. The argument is complicated by the lack of a straight forward counterpart of atomic formulas for diagrams, and by the lack of a counterpart of negation for most diagrams.

By comparing Adorno's conception of evil with those of Kant and Levinas, it is argued that the commitment to a notion of materialist transcendence, which Adorno introduces as a philosophical response to Auschwitz, is compatible with an equally strong commitment to philosophical modernity and autonomy. Whereas Kant's moral theology, on the one hand, proceeds in a too immanent fashion, and Levinas's heterology, on the other, in seeking to explode ontology, denies the conditions of thought's rational responsiveness, Adorno succeeds in combining (...) the quest for radical otherness with an idealist interpretation of modernity. Key Words: Adorno • Auschwitz • evil • Kant • Levinas • metaphysics • modernity • moral theology • transcendence. (shrink)

I propose a method of assessing the degree of enlightenment of a society based on its discourses. My hypothesis is that the more objectivity prevails in a society’s spheres of discourse, the more enlightened it is; the more subjectivity dominates, the more unenlightened. This relationship can be made evident through the reconstruction of Kant’s Theory of Prejudice by taking into account the handwritten notes and fragments and the lectures on logic. First, I will discuss some key aspects of Kant’s concept (...) of prejudice. Secondly, I will address the epistemological function of the public sphere in order to show what conditions it must satisfy to fulfil its function. Thirdly, I will argue that not only Selbstdenken but also participatory reason, and therefore the public sphere itself, are both fundamental elements of enlightenment in that they function as counter-maxims against prejudice. (shrink)

Während "Logik der Forschung" als Wissenschaftstheorie sich längst etabliert hat, steht eine ebenso notwendige "Ethik der Forschung" als Wissenschaftsmoral noch aus. Dazu liefert die kritische Auseinandersetzung mit Francis Bacon wichtige Bausteine: Allgemeines Menschheitswohl als letztes Ziel aller Forschung; Betonung des unabhängigen Selbstdenkens; Forschertugenden wie Wahrhaftigkeit, Hoffnung, Demut, Menschenliebe; Anerkennung von sittlichen Grenzen des Wissens. Hingegen ist zugunsten einer engagierten Eigenverantwortlichkeit der Wissenschaftler vor Bacons Unterwürfigkeit gegenüber der Staatsgewalt zu warnen.

This paper is a logical study of valid uses of symmetry in deductive reasoning, of what underlying principles make some appeals to symmetry legitimate but others illegitimate. The issue is first motivated informally. A framework is then given covering a fairly broad range of symmetry arguments, and the formulation of symmetry provided is shown to be a valid principle of reasoning, as is a slightly stronger principle of reasoning, one that is shown to be in some sense as strong as (...) possible. The relationship between symmetry and isomorphism is discussed, and finally the framework is extended to a more general model-theoretic setting. (shrink)

Building on the advances made by feminist reconsiderations of methods, methodology and epistemology, this paper calls for an alliance between feminist social science and the emerging field of queer theory. By challenging traditional scientific approaches to research on sexual minority groups, a distinctly 'queer' approach is advocated that adopts a reflexive position on subjectivity and sexuality. While essentialist approaches privilege gay/lesbian, man/woman, and object/subject, this approach advances a framework of critical sexualities that moves social science into an arena of inclusivity (...) and multiple identities, rather than reductionistic categorical thought. The implications are clear: a rethinking of identity categories that transcend stagnant dualisms. (shrink)

The pseudosciences often bear a striking resemblance to the sciences. Using a mimicry account as a framework, this paper investigates how the appearance of social media posts influences people’s perception of the content of such posts as scientific. We present the results of two empiri- cal studies. The first, preparatory study identifies typical characteristics of “scientificness” in social media posts to inform feature manipulations for the main study. The main study then examines what happens if the features are systematically manipulated. (...) The findings support the hypothesis that pseudoscientific digital content benefits from using features of scientificness. We discuss implications for understanding the appeal and persistence of pseudoscience. (shrink)

Analyzing Eros and Civilization, in this article I argue that Marcuse is incapable of offering an account of the empirical dynamics that may lead to the social change he envisions, and that his appeal to the benefits of automatism is blind to its negative effects. I then claim that Marcuse's vision of the good life as centered on libidinal self-realization, if actualized, would threaten the freedom of individuals and potentially undermine their sense of self-integrity. Comparing Marcuse's position with that of (...) Adorno, I argue that the former fails to take temporality and transience properly into account. Unlike Adorno, Marcuse has no genuine appreciation of the need for mourning. Instead, Marcuse's concept of primary narcissism, which is meant to represent the gist of his utopian vision, leads him to recommend an essentially melancholic position. I finally argue that political action requires a stronger ego-formation than what Marcuse's conception allows for. (shrink)

Espen Hammer’s response to Peter Gordon’s Adorno and Existence.

The February 2004 release of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ is a major cultural event. Receiving a tremendous amount of advance publicity due to claims of its anti-Semitism and adulatory responses by conservative Christians who were the first to see it, the film achieved more buzz before its release than any recent film in our memory.1 Gibson himself helped orchestrate the publicity with selective showings of The Passion and strategic appearances on TV shows where he came off as (...) something of a Hollywood eccentric, albeit one who was only too happy to admit to his past sins and to claim that he had achieved “salvation” through his adherence to Christianity. His film, he insisted, would be testament to the truth of Christ and how Christ died so that sinners like Gibson could be saved and enjoy eternal life. (shrink)

The originality of Foucault’s work lies in part in how he reverses the question of power, asking not how power is held and imposed, but how it is produced. In both his discussion of sovereignty and governmentality, though, Foucault skips over the res publica; a form of political organization that fits neither Foucault’s characterization of sovereignty nor the care of the self. I extend Foucault’s discussion to identify a ratio of government around the discipline of ownership by which the res (...) publica was made intelligible, its relations understood, and its logic organized. I end by suggesting some implications for neo-Roman interpretations of liberty as non-domination. (shrink)

The evolution of Euler diagrams is examined from Euler's original system through the modifications made by Venn and Peirce. It is shown that these modifications were motivated by an attempt to increase the expressivity of the diagrams, but that a side effect of these modifications was a loss of the visual clarity of Euler's original system. Euler's original system is reconstructed from a modern, logical point of view. Formal semantics and rules of inference are provided for this reconstruction of Euler's (...) system, and basic logical properties are proved. (shrink)

To date, no satisfactory account of the connection between natural-scientific and historical explanation has been given, and philosophers seem to have largely given up on the problem. This paper is an attempt to resolve this old issue and to sort out and clarify some areas of historical explanation by developing and applying a method that will be called “pragmatic explication” involving the construction of definitions that are justified on pragmatic grounds. Explanations in general can be divided into “dynamic” and “static” (...) explanations, which are those that essentially require relations across time and those that do not, respectively. The problem of assimilating historical explanations concerns dynamic explanation, so a general analysis of dynamic explanation that captures both the structure of natural-scientific and historical explanation is offered. This is done in three stages: In the first stage, pragmatic explication is introduced and compared to other philosophical methods of explication. In the second stage pragmatic explication is used to tie together a series of definitions that are introduced in order to establish an account of explanation. This involves an investigation of the conditions that play the role in historiography that laws and statistical regularities play in the natural sciences. The essay argues that in the natural sciences, as well as in history, the model of explanation presented represents the aims and overarching structure of actual causal explanations offered in those disciplines. In the third stage the system arrived at in the preceding stage is filled in with conditions available to and relevant for historical inquiry. Further, the nature and treatment of causes in history and everyday life are explored and related to the system being proposed. This in turn makes room for a view connecting aspects of historical explanation and what we generally take to be causal relations. (shrink)

Kafka's novel The Trial, written from 1914 to 1915 and published in 1925, is a multi-faceted, notoriously difficult manifestation of European literary modernism, and one of the most emblematic books of the 20th Century. It tells the story of Josef K., a man accused of a crime he has no recollection of committing and whose nature is never revealed to him. The novel is often interpreted theologically as an expression of radical nihilism and a world abandoned by God. It is (...) also read as a parable of the cold, inhumane rationality of modern bureaucratization. Like many other novels of this turbulent period, it offers a tragic quest-narrative in which the hero searches for truth and clarity, only to fall into greater and greater confusion. This collection of nine new essays and an editor's introduction brings together Kafka experts, intellectual historians, literary scholars, and philosophers in order to explore the novel's philosophical and theological significance. Authors pursue the novel's central concerns of justice, law, resistance, ethics, alienation, and subjectivity. Few novels display human uncertainty and skepticism in the face of rapid modernization, or the metaphysical as it intersects with the most mundane aspects of everyday life, more insistently than The Trial. Ultimately, the essays in this collection focus on how Kafka's text is in fact philosophical in the ways in which it achieves its literary aims. Rather than considering ideas as externally related to the text, the text is considered philosophical at the very level of literary form and technique. (shrink)

Building on the advances made by feminist reconsiderations of methods, methodology and epistemology, this paper calls for an alliance between feminist social science and the emerging field of queer theory. By challenging traditional scientific approaches to research on sexual minority groups, a distinctly ‘queer’ approach is advocated that adopts a reflexive position on subjectivity and sexuality. While essentialist approaches privilege gay/lesbian, man/woman, and object/subject, this approach advances a framework of critical sexualities that moves social science into an arena of inclusivity (...) and multiple identities, rather than reductionistic categorical thought. The implications are clear: a rethinking of identity categories that transcend stagnant dualisms. (shrink)

This article interrogates a psychoanalytically inflected strain of anti-social queer theory that in privileging refusal and negation, views as paradigmatic of ‘queerness’ the destructive, annihilative aspects in (queer) sex. In this view, sexuality is a product of the unconscious, thus irreducible to gender, such that gender is irrelevant to (and indeed hinders) understandings of desire. Informed by feminism, which views gender as crucial to any theory on sexuality, I expose that which ‘sexual negation’ masks through this very disavowal – that (...) of gender and the body itself. I argue that subtending the figural representation of queer/ness is a deep-seated, albeit disguised, masculinism that, through negation, works to re-centre and re-virilise (gay) men’s sexual economies. I take up Butler’s lesbian phallus to de-idealise and thus challenge this privileging of the penis operating within this strain of queer – as only phallic sexual economies can, it seems, deliver the very annihilation we (all) seek. (shrink)

A new title in Routledge’s Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers series, this is a two-volume collection of the very best recent scholarship on Theodor W. Adorno . It is an essential successor to an earlier four-volume collection, Theodor Adorno , edited by Simon Jarvis and published by Routledge in 2006. Recent decades have seen a remarkable growth of scholarly studies devoted to Theodor W. Adorno’s philosophy and social theory. Every year, conferences and publications all over the world testify to a (...) lively interest. Indeed, since his death in 1969, Adorno has been read and discussed not only by philosophers but by researchers in all areas of the theoretical humanities, and his impact has been considerable both inside and outside the academy. This new Routledge collection brings together the very best of recent research on Adorno. The editor has particularly focused on works that take account of contemporary developments in philosophy and social theory, demonstrating how Adorno’s view may engage with contemporary theoretical concerns. With a full index, together with a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editor, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context, Theodor W. Adorno II is an indispensable work of reference. It is destined to be valued by scholars, students, and researchers as a vital research resource. (shrink)