Background: Screen time among adults represents a continuing and growing problem in relation to health behaviors and health outcomes. However, no instrument currently exists in the literature that quantifies the use of modern screen-based devices. The primary purpose of this study was to develop and assess the reliability of a new screen time questionnaire, an instrument designed to quantify use of multiple popular screen-based devices among the US population. -/- Methods: An 18-item screen-time questionnaire was created to quantify use of (...) commonly used screen devices (e.g. television, smartphone, tablet) across different time points during the week (e.g. weekday, weeknight, weekend). Test-retest reliability was assessed through intra-class correlation coefficients (ICCs) and standard error of measurement (SEM). The questionnaire was delivered online using Qualtrics and administered through Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). -/- Results: Eighty MTurk workers completed full study participation and were included in the final analyses. All items in the screen time questionnaire showed fair to excellent relative reliability (ICCs = 0.50–0.90; all < 0.000), except for the item inquiring about the use of smartphone during an average weekend day (ICC = 0.16, p = 0.069). The SEM values were large for all screen types across the different periods under study. -/- Conclusions: Results from this study suggest this self-administered questionnaire may be used to successfully classify individuals into different categories of screen time use (e.g. high vs. low); however, it is likely that objective measures are needed to increase precision of screen time assessment. (shrink)

Background The purpose of this study was to examine whether extended use of a variety of screen-based devices, in addition to television, was associated with poor dietary habits and other health-related characteristics and behaviors among US adults. The recent phenomenon of binge-watching was also explored. -/- Methods A survey to assess screen time across multiple devices, dietary habits, sleep duration and quality, perceived stress, self-rated health, physical activity, and body mass index, was administered to a sample of US adults using (...) the Qualtrics platform and distributed via Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). Participants were adults 18 years of age and older, English speakers, current US residents, and owners of a television and at least one other device with a screen. Three different screen time categories (heavy, moderate, and light) were created for total screen time, and separately for screen time by type of screen, based on distribution tertiles. Kruskal-Wallis tests were conducted to examine differences in dietary habits and health-related characteristics between screen time categories. -/- Results Aggregate screen time across all devices totaled 17.5 h per day for heavy users. Heavy users reported the least healthful dietary patterns and the poorest health-related characteristics – including self-rated health – compared to moderate and light users. Moreover, unique dietary habits emerged when examining dietary patterns by type of screen separately, such that heavy users of TV and smartphone displayed the least healthful dietary patterns compared to heavy users of TV-connected devices, laptop, and tablet. Binge-watching was also significantly associated with less healthy dietary patterns, including frequency of fast-food consumption as well as eating family meals in front of a television, and perceived stress. -/- Conclusions The present study found that poorer dietary choices, as well as other negative health-related impacts, occurred more often as the viewing time of a variety of different screen-based devices increased in a sample of US adults. Future research is needed to better understand what factors among different screen-based devices might affect health behaviors and in turn health-related outcomes. Research is also required to better understand how binge-watching behavior contributes impacts health-related behaviors and characteristics. (shrink)

In Context and Content Robert Stalnaker develops a philosophical picture of the nature of speech and thought and the relations between them. Two themes in particular run through these collected essays: the role that the context in which speech takes place plays in accounting for the way language is used to express thought, and the role of the external environment in determining the contents of our thoughts. Stalnaker argues against the widespread assumption of the priority of linguistic over mental (...) representation, which he suggests has had a distorting influence on our understanding. The first part of the book develops a framework for representing contexts and the way they interact with the interpretation of what is said in them. This framework is used to help to explain a range of linguistic phenomena concerning presupposition and assertion, conditional statements, the attribution of beliefs, and the use of names, descriptions, and pronouns to refer. Stalnaker then draws out the conception of thought and its content that is implicit in this framework. He defends externalism about thought--the assumption that our thoughts have the contents they have in virtue of the way we are situated in the world--and explores the role of linguistic action and linguistic structure in determining the contents of our thoughts. Context and Content offers philosophers and cognitive scientists a summation of Stalnaker's important and influential work in this area. His new introduction to the volume gives an overview of this work and offers a convenient way in for those who are new to it. The Oxford Cognitive Science series is a new forum for the best contemporary work in this flourishing field, where various disciplines--cognitive psychology, philosophy, linguistics, cognitive neuroscience, and computational theory--join forces in the investigation of thought, awareness, understanding, and associated workings of the mind. Each book constitutes an original contribution to its subject, but will be accessible beyond the ranks of specialists, so as to reach a broad interdisciplinary readership. The series will be carefully shaped and steered with the aim of representing the most important developments in the field and bringing together its constituent disciplines. (shrink)

Life, on a day to day basis, is a sequence of emotional states: hope, disappointment, irritation, anger, affection, envy, pride, embarrassment, joy, sadness and many more. We know intuitively that these states express deep things about our character and our view of the world. But what are emotions and why are they so important to us? In one of the most extensive investigations of the emotions ever published, Robert Roberts develops a novel conception of what emotions are and then (...) applies it to a large range of types of emotion and related phenomena. In so doing he lays the foundations for a deeper understanding of our evaluative judgments, our actions, our personal relationships and our fundamental well-being. Aimed principally at philosophers and psychologists, this book will certainly be accessible to readers in other disciplines such as religion and anthropology. (shrink)

Where does the mind begin and end? Most philosophers and cognitive scientists take the view that the mind is bounded by the skull or skin of the individual. Robert Wilson, in this provocative and challenging 2004 book, provides the foundations for the view that the mind extends beyond the boundary of the individual. The approach adopted offers a unique blend of traditional philosophical analysis, cognitive science, and the history of psychology and the human sciences. The companion volume, Genes and (...) the Agents of Life, explores the theme in the biological sciences. Written with verve and clarity, this ambitious book will appeal to a broad swathe of professionals and students in philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, and the history of the behavioural and human sciences. You can download the table of contents here. (shrink)

Compiling twenty articles on the nature of life and on the objective of the natural sciences, this remarkable book complements Robert Rosen's groundbreaking Life Itself--a work that influenced a wide range of philosophers, biologists, linguists, and social scientists. In Essays on Life Itself, Rosen takes to task the central objective of the natural sciences, calling into question the attempt to create objectivity in a subjective world and forcing us to reconsider where science can lead us in the years to (...) come. (shrink)

But do animals know that other creatures have minds? And how would we know if they do? In "Mindreading Animals," Robert Lurz offers a fresh approach to the hotly debated question of mental-state attribution in nonhuman animals.

Human beings, like other organisms, are the products of evolution. Like other organisms, we exhibit traits that are the product of natural selection. Our psychological capacities are evolved traits as much as are our gait and posture. This much few would dispute. Evolutionary psychology goes further than this, claiming that our psychological traits -- including a wide variety of traits, from mate preference and jealousy to language and reason -- can be understood as specific adaptations to ancestral Pleistocene conditions. In (...) Evolutionary Psychology as Maladapted Psychology, Robert Richardson takes a critical look at evolutionary psychology by subjecting its ambitious and controversial claims to the same sorts of methodological and evidential constraints that are broadly accepted within evolutionary biology. The claims of evolutionary psychology may pass muster as psychology; but what are their evolutionary credentials? Richardson considers three ways adaptive hypotheses can be evaluated, using examples from the biological literature to illustrate what sorts of evidence and methodology would be necessary to establish specific evolutionary and adaptive explanations of human psychological traits. He shows that existing explanations within evolutionary psychology fall woefully short of accepted biological standards. The theories offered by evolutionary psychologists may identify traits that are, or were, beneficial to humans. But gauged by biological standards, there is inadequate evidence: evolutionary psychologists are largely silent on the evolutionary evidence relevant to assessing their claims, including such matters as variation in ancestral populations, heritability, and the advantage offered to our ancestors. As evolutionary claims they are unsubstantiated. Evolutionary psychology, Richardson concludes, may offer a program of research, but it lacks the kind of evidence that is generally expected within evolutionary biology. It is speculation rather than sound science -- and we should treat its claims with skepticism. (shrink)

In this significant contribution to Hegel scholarship, Robert Williams develops the most comprehensive account to date of Hegel's concept of recognition. Fichte introduced the concept of recognition as a presupposition of both Rousseau's social contract and Kant's ethics. Williams shows that Hegel appropriated the concept of recognition as the general pattern of his concept of ethical life, breaking with natural law theory yet incorporating the Aristotelian view that rights and virtues are possible only within a certain kind of community. (...) He explores Hegel's intersubjective concept of spirit as the product of affirmative mutual recognition and his conception of recognition as the right to have rights. Examining Hegel's Jena manuscripts, his _Philosophy of Right_, the _Phenomenology of Spirit_, and other works, Williams shows how the concept of recognition shapes and illumines Hegel's understandings of crime and punishment, morality, the family, the state, sovereignty, international relations, and war. A concluding chapter on the reception and reworking of the concept of recognition by contemporary thinkers including Derrida, Levinas, and Deleuze demonstrates Hegel's continuing centrality to the philosophical concerns of our age. (shrink)

Tocqueville pessimistically predicted that liberty and equality would be incompatible ideas. Robert Dahl, author of the classic _A Preface to Democratic Theory,_ explores this alleged conflict, particularly in modern American society where differences in ownership and control of corporate enterprises create inequalities in resources among Americans that in turn generate inequality among them as citizens. Arguing that Americans have misconceived the relation between democracy, private property, and the economic order, the author contends that we can achieve a society of (...) real democracy and political equality without sacrificing liberty by extending democratic principles into the economic order. Although enterprise control by workers violates many conventional political and ideological assumptions of corporate capitalism as well as of state socialism. Dahl presents an empirically informed and philosophically acute defense of "workplace democracy." He argues, in the light of experiences here and abroad, that an economic system of worker-owned and worker-controlled enterprises could provide a much better foundation for democracy, political equality, and liberty than does our present system of corporate capitalism. (shrink)

By definition zombies would be physically and behaviourally just like us, but not conscious. This currently very influential idea is a threat to all forms of physicalism, and has led some philosophers to give up physicalism and become dualists. It has also beguiled many physicalists, who feel forced to defend increasingly convoluted explanations of why the conceivability of zombies is compatible with their impossibility. Robert Kirk argues that the zombie idea depends on an incoherent view of the nature of (...) phenomenal consciousness. His book has two main aims. One is to demolish the zombie idea once and for all. There are plenty of objections to it in the literature, but they lack intuitive appeal. He offers a striking new argument which reveals fundamental confusions in the implied conception of consciousness. The book's other main contribution is to develop a fresh and original approach to the true nature of phenomenal consciousness. Kirk argues that a necessary condition is a 'basic package' of capacities. An important component of his argument is that the necessary cognitive capacities are not as sophisticated as is often assumed. By focusing on humbler creatures than ourselves he avoids some of the distracting complications of our sophisticated forms of cognition. The basic package does not seem to be sufficient for phenomenal consciousness. What is also needed is 'direct activity' - a special feature of the way the events which constitute incoming perceptual information affect the system. This is an integrated process, to be conceived of holistically, and contrasts sharply with what is often called the 'availability' or 'poisedness' of perceptual information. This original, penetrating, and readable book will be of interest to all who have a serious concern with the nature of consciousness: not only professional philosophers and students, but psychologists and neuroscientists. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Neuroethics, the study of the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying ethical decision-making, is a growing field of study. In this review, we identify and discuss four themes emerging from neuroethics research. First, ethical decision-making appears to be distinct from other types of decision-making processes. Second, ethical decision-making entails more than just conscious reasoning. Third, emotion plays a critical role in ethical decision-making, at least under certain circumstances. Lastly, normative approaches to morality have distinct, underlying neural mechanisms. On the basis of (...) these themes, we draw implications for research in business ethics and the practice of ethics training. (shrink)

What is the relationship between literary criticism and ethics? Does criticism have an ethical task? How can criticism be ethical after literary theory? Ethical Criticism seeks to answer these questions by examining the historical development of the ethics of criticism and the vigorous contemporary backlash against what is known as 'theory'. The book appraises current arguments about the ethics of criticism and, finding them wanting, turns to the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. Described as 'the greatest moral philosopher of the twentieth (...) century', Levinas' thought has had a profound influence on a number of significant contemporary thinkers. By paying close attention to his major writings, Robert Eaglestone argues cogently and persuasively for a new understanding of the ethical task of criticism and theory. (shrink)

Natural selection is commonly interpreted as the fundamental mechanism of evolution. Questions about how selection theory can claim to be the all-sufficient explanation of evolution often go unanswered by today's neo-Darwinists, perhaps for fear that any criticism of the evolutionary paradigm will encourage creationists and proponents of intelligent design.In Biological Emergences, Robert Reid argues that natural selection is not the cause of evolution. He writes that the causes of variations, which he refers to as natural experiments, are independent of (...) natural selection; indeed, he suggests, natural selection may get in the way of evolution. Reid proposes an alternative theory to explain how emergent novelties are generated and under what conditions they can overcome the resistance of natural selection. He suggests that what causes innovative variation causes evolution, and that these phenomena are environmental as well as organismal.After an extended critique of selectionism, Reid constructs an emergence theory of evolution, first examining the evidence in three causal arenas of emergent evolution: symbiosis/association, evolutionary physiology/behavior, and developmental evolution. Based on this evidence of causation, he proposes some working hypotheses, examining mechanisms and processes common to all three arenas, and arrives at a theoretical framework that accounts for generative mechanisms and emergent qualities. Without selectionism, Reid argues, evolutionary innovation can more easily be integrated into a general thesis. Finally, Reid proposes a biological synthesis of rapid emergent evolutionary phases and the prolonged, dynamically stable, non-evolutionary phases imposed by natural selection. (shrink)

This volume presents a selection of Robert Stern's work on the theme of Kantian ethics. It begins by focusing on the relation between Kant's account of obligation and his view of autonomy, arguing that this leaves room for Kant to be a realist about value. Stern then considers where this places Kant in relation to the question of moral scepticism, and in relation to the principle of 'ought implies can', and examines this principle in its own right. The papers (...) then move beyond Kant himself to his wider influence and to critics of his work, and the volume concludes with a consideration of a broadly Kantian critique of divine command ethics offered by Stephen Darwall. General themes considered in this volume include value, perfectionism, agency, autonomy, moral motivation, moral scepticism, and obligation, as well as the historical place of Kant's ethics and its influence on thinkers up to the present day. (shrink)

In “Conditions and Analyses of Knowledge”, Robert Shope focuses on the conditions that must be satisfied for a person to have knowledge, specifically knowledge that something is so. Traditionally, knowledge has been analyzed in terms of justified true belief. Shope addresses philosophers’ disagreements concerning the truth and belief conditions. After introducing the justification condition, he presents challenges that have provoked several attempts to replace or to supplement the justification condition for knowledge. Shope presents and assesses several of these, including (...) early causal theories, the nonaccidentality requirement, reliable process and conditional analyses, the reliable‐indicator analysis, the conclusive reasons analysis, defeasibility analyses, analyses in terms of cognitive or intellectual virtues, and proper functionalism as well as his own account of knowledge. (shrink)

William Whewell is considered one of the most important nineteenth-century British philosophers of science and a contributor to modern philosophical thought, particularly regarding the problem of induction and the logic of discovery. In this volume, Robert E. Butts offers selections from Whewell's most important writings, and analysis of counter-claims to his philosophy.

This volume contains the political writings of Sir Robert Filmer (1588-1653), an acute defender of absolute monarchy and perhaps the most important patriarchal political theorist of the seventeenth century. The recent explosion of interest in women's history and the history of the family has greatly enhanced the audience for Filmer's work, and in this new edition Johann Sommerville provides accurate and accessible texts of his principal writings, accompanied by all the standard series features, including a concise introduction, chronology, guide (...) to further reading and notes on Filmer's own text. (shrink)

In Mind and Body Robert Kirk offers an introduction to the complex tangle of questions and puzzles roughly labelled the mind-body problem.

In the decades since his death, Adorno's thinking has lost none of its capacity to unsettle the settled, and has proved hugely influential in social and cultural thought. To most people, the entertainment provided by television, radio, film, newspapers, astrology charts and CD players seem harmless enough. For Adorno, however, the culture industry that produces them is ultimately toxic in its effect on the social process. Here, Robert Witkin unpacks Adorno's notoriously difficult critique of popular culture in an engaging (...) and accessible style, looking first at the development of the overarching theories of authority, commodification and negative dialectics within which Adorno's work needs to be seen. This book is an essential guide for understanding one of the key thinkers of our time. (shrink)

The major themes of postmodernist writing are demystified in this introductory text. Robert Hollinger reviews key postmodern discussions on critical topics such as values, identity, and the self and society. He compares postmodern thinking with that of the enlightenment project, modernism, modernity, Marxism and Critical Theory. This, together with his treatment of Foucault, Lyotard, Baudrillard, Derrida, Deleuze, Guattari and other leading postmodern theorists, provides an excellent introduction to modern social theory.

In this pathbreaking book one of America’s most distinguished philosophers brilliantly explores the status and authority of law and the nature of political allegiance through close readings of three classic Hollywood Westerns: Howard Hawks’ _Red River_ and John Ford’s _The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance_ and _The Searchers._ Robert Pippin treats these films as sophisticated mythic accounts of a key moment in American history: its “second founding,” or the western expansion. His central question concerns how these films explore classical (...) problems in political psychology, especially how the virtues of a commercial republic gained some hold on individuals at a time when the heroic and martial virtues were so important. Westerns, Pippin shows, raise central questions about the difference between private violence and revenge and the state’s claim to a legitimate monopoly on violence, and they show how these claims come to be experienced and accepted or rejected. Pippin’s account of the best Hollywood Westerns brings this genre into the center of the tradition of political thought, and his readings raise questions about political psychology and the political passions that have been neglected in contemporary political thought in favor of a limited concern with the question of legitimacy. (shrink)

Questions of Miracle will be a valuable reference book and teaching tool for scholars and students of theology, religious studies, and philosophy. Contents The Logic of Probabilities in Hume's Argument against Miracles - Fred Wilson David Hume and the Miraculous - Robert Larmer Miracles and the Laws of Nature - Robert Larmer Against Miracles - John Collier Against "Against Miracles" - Robert Larmer Miracles and Conservation Laws - Neil MacGill Miracles and Conservation Laws: A Reply to Professor (...) MacGill - Robert Larmer Miracles and Criteria - Robert Larmer Miracles and Natural Explanations - David Basinger Miracles and Natural Explanations: A Rejoinder - Robert Larmer Miracles as Evidence for Theism: A Surrejoinder - David Basinger Miracles, Evidence, and Theism: A Further Apologia - Robert Larmer Authenticating Biblical Reports of Miracles - Phillip Wiebe Miracles and Testimony: A Reply to Wiebe - Robert Larmer Miracles as Evidence against the Existence of God - Christine Overall Miracles and the Existence of God: A Reply - Robert Larmer. (shrink)

From uttering a prayer before boarding a plane, to exploring past lives through hypnosis, has superstition become pervasive in contemporary culture? Robert Park, the best-selling author of Voodoo Science, argues that it has. In Superstition, Park asks why people persist in superstitious convictions long after science has shown them to be ill-founded. He takes on supernatural beliefs from religion and the afterlife to New Age spiritualism and faith-based medical claims. He examines recent controversies and concludes that science is the (...) only way we have of understanding the world. Park sides with the forces of reason in a world of continuing and, he fears, increasing superstition. Chapter by chapter, he explains how people too easily mistake pseudoscience for science. He discusses parapsychology, homeopathy, and acupuncture; he questions the existence of souls, the foundations of intelligent design, and the power of prayer; he asks for evidence of reincarnation and astral projections; and he challenges the idea of heaven. Throughout, he demonstrates how people's blind faith, and their confidence in suspect phenomena and remedies, are manipulated for political ends. Park shows that science prevails when people stop fooling themselves. Compelling and precise, Superstition takes no hostages in its quest to provoke. In shedding light on some very sensitive--and Park would say scientifically dubious--issues, the book is sure to spark discussion and controversy. (shrink)

Realizing that a world remade by techno-science and global capital stands in great need of practical wisdom as an antidote to various forms of modern hubris, scholars across the human sciences have taken a renewed interest in exploring how the classical virtue of prudence can be reformulated as a guide for postmodern practice. This volume brings together scholars in classics, political philosophy, and rhetoric to analyze prudence as a distinctive and vital form of political intelligence. Through case studies from each (...) of the major periods in the history of prudence, the authors identify neglected resources for political judgment in today's conditions of pluralism and interdependency. Three assumptions inform these essays: the many dimensions of prudence cannot be adequately represented in the lexicon of any single discipline; the Aristotelian focus on prudence as rational calculation needs to be balanced by the Ciceronian emphasis on prudence as discursive performance embedded in familiar social practices; and understanding prudence requires attention to how it operates through the communicative media and public discourses that constitute the political community. Contributors, besides the editor, are Stephen H. Browne, Robert W. Cape Jr., Maurice Charland, Peter J. Diamond, Eugene Garver, James Jasinski, John S. Nelson, and Christine L. Oravec. (shrink)

Progress in addiction science is hampered by disagreements and ambiguity around its core construct: addiction. Addiction Ontology (AddictO) offers a path to a solution of the kind that has addressed similar problems in other areas of science: a set of clearly and uniquely defined entities to which terms such as ‘addiction’, addictive disorder’ and ‘substance dependence ’can be applied for ease of reference while recognizing that it is the construct definitions and their unique IDs that are central, not the terms.

In _Reforming Liberalism_, Robert Devigne challenges prevailing interpretations of the political and moral thought of John Stuart Mill and the theoretical underpinnings of modern liberal philosophy. He explains how Mill drew from ancient and romantic thought as well as past religious practices to reconcile conflicts and antinomies that were hobbling traditional liberalism. The book shows that Mill, regarded as a seminal writer in the liberal tradition, critiques liberalism’s weaknesses with a forcefulness usually associated with its well-known critics. Devigne explores (...) Mill’s writings to demonstrate how his thought has been misconstrued--as well as oversimplified--to the detriment of our understanding of liberalism itself. (shrink)

Peter van Inwagen famously offers a version of the luck objection to libertarianism called the ‘Rollback Argument.’ It involves a thought experiment in which God repeatedly rolls time backward to provide an agent with many opportunities to act in the same circumstance. Because the agent has the kind of freedom that affords her alternative possibilities at the moment of choice, she performs different actions in some of these opportunities. The upshot is that whichever action she performs in the actual-sequence is (...) intuitively a matter of mere chance. I explore a new response to the Rollback Argument. If there are true counterfactuals of libertarian freedom, then the agent performs the same action each time she is placed in the same circumstance, because that is what she would freely do in that circumstance. This response appears to negate the chancy intuition. Ultimately, however, I argue that this new response is unsuccessful, because there is a variant of the Rollback Argument that presents the same basic challenge to the libertarian on the assumption that there are true counterfactuals of libertarian freedom. Thus, true counterfactuals of libertarian freedom do not provide the libertarian with a solution to the Rollback Argument. (shrink)

This paper provides an overview, prepared by Robert Castel himself, of his last book, La montée des incertitudes. It describes how a new regime of capitalism has weakened and sometimes destroyed forms of social organization that had been established at the end of industrial capitalism. It discloses three main ongoing transformations: Labour market deregulations – in the sense of questioning both the right to work and the employment statute, and advances in insecurity; The reconfiguration of protective measures – in (...) the sense of the restriction of rights and a rapid rise in social insecurity; The paths of disaffiliation – or how it is that some categories of individuals find themselves destabilized and threatened with social invalidation in this new conjuncture. (shrink)

Elsewhere I have defended utilitarianism as a philosophy peculiarly well suited to the conduct of public affairs, on grounds of the peculiar tasks and instruments confronting public officials. Here I add another plank to that defence of ‘utilitarianism as a public philosophy’, focusing on the peculiar role responsibilities of people serving in public capacities. Such ‘public service utilitarianism’ is incumbent not only upon public officials but also upon individuals in their capacities as citizens and voters. I close with reflections on (...) how best to evoke appreciation of these utilitarian role responsibilities from officials and electors alike. (shrink)

I start by arguing that Mackie’s claim that there are no objective values is a nonsensical one. I do this by ‘assembling reminders’ of the correct use of the term ‘values’ and by examining the grammar of moral propositions à la Wittgenstein. I also examine Hare’s thought experiment which is used to demonstrate “that no real issue can be built around the objectivity or otherwise of moral values” before briefly looking at Mackie’s ‘argument from queerness’. In the final section I (...) propose that Robert Arrington’s ‘conceptual relativism’, inspired by Wittgenstein, helps to make our use of moral language more perspicuous and avoids the problems faced by Mackie. (shrink)

In Clinical Ethics, Robert Timko argues that the moral dilemmas of clinical medical practice can best be resolved within a framework of prima facie duties, and that the most stringent duty is that of nonmaleficence. Timko shows that respect for individual autonomy and the principle of beneficence are inadequate for the moral practice of medicine since simple adherence to either principle may be insufficient for the provision of "due care.".

Theologian, ethicist, and political analyst, Reinhold Niebuhr was a towering figure of twentieth-century religious thought. Now newly repackaged, this important book gathers the best of Niebuhr’s essays together in a single volume. Selected, edited, and introduced by Robert McAfee Brown—a student and friend of Niebuhr’s and himself a distinguished theologian—the works included here testify to the brilliant polemics, incisive analysis, and deep faith that characterized the whole of Niebuhr’s life. “This fine anthology makes available to a new generation the (...) thought of one of the most penetrating and rewarding of twentieth-century minds. Reinhold Niebuhr remains the great illuminator of the dark conundrums of human nature, history and public policy.”—Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. “Sparkling gems... brought from the shadows of history into contemporary light. Beautifully selected and edited,_ _they show that Niebuhr’s fiery polemics and gracious assurances still speak with power to us today.”—Roger L. Shinn “An extremely useful volume.”—David Brion Davis, _New York Review of Books _“This collection, which brings together Niebuhr’s most penetrating and enduring essays on theology and politics, should demonstrate for a new generation that his best thought transcends the immediate historical setting in which he wrote.... [Brown’s] introduction succinctly presents the central features of Niebuhr’s life and thought.”—_Library Journal_. (shrink)

The many problems we face in today's world -- among them war, environmental destruction, religious and racial intolerance, and inappropriate technologies -- demand that we carefully re-evaluate such issues as our relation to the environment, the nature of progress, ultimate purposes, and human values. These are all issues, Robert Carter explains, that are intimately linked to our perception of life's meaning. While many books discuss life's meaning either analytically or prescriptively, Carter addresses values and ways of meaningful living from (...) a broader perspective, using Japanese philosophy to augment his investigation. He examines Martin Heidegger's distinction between "dwelling" and existing in the world, Lawrence Kohlberg's "stage seven" of human moral development, and the works of Viktor Frankl, Carol Gilligan, and Nel Noddings. He applies hermeneutic and deconstructionist theory to the question of meaning, and explores the feminist contribution to ethics and its relation to the interconnectedness of things celebrated in Zen and Shinto thought. Bridging various dichotomies such as East/West, reason/emotion, male/female, and caring/justice, Carter shows that ethics, environmental concern, caring, and joy in living are dependent on the growth and transformation of the self. Only by becoming aware of the interrelatedness of things, Carter reveals, can we become as supple and as strong as the bamboo tree, long the symbol of longevity and constancy. (shrink)

The impetus for this volume developed from the 1982 University of Western Ontario Learnability Workshop, which was organized by the editors and sponsored by that University's Department of Philosophy and the Centre for Cognitive Science. The volume e~plores the import of learnability theory for contemporary linguistic theory, focusing on foundational learning-theoretic issues associated with the parametrized Government-Binding framework. Written by prominent re searchers in the field, all but two of the eight contributions are pre viously unpublished. The editor's introduction provides (...) an overview that interrelates the separate papers and elucidates the foundational issues addressed by the volume. Osherson, Stob, and Weinstein's "Learning Theory and Natural Language" first appeared in Cognition ; Matthews's "The Plausi bility of Rationalism" was published in the Journal of Philosophy. The editors would like to thank the publishers for permission to reprint these papers. Mr. Marin Marinov assisted with the preparation of the indices for the volume. VB ROBERT 1. MATTHEWS INTRODUCTION: LEARNABILITY AND LINGUISTIC THEORY 1. INTRODUCTION Formal learning theory, as the name suggests, studies the learnability of different classes of formal objects under different formal models of learning. The specification of such a model, which specifies a learning environment, a learn ing strategy, and a criterion for successful learning, determines a class of formal objects, namely, the class that can be acquired to the level of the specified success criterion by a learner implementing the specified strategy in the specified enviroment. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 10.1 (2000) 75-80 [Access article in PDF] Bioethics Inside the Beltway: A New Basis for Allocating Livers for Transplant Robert M. Veatch The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) and the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), the private organization with the government contract to manage the national organ transplant program, are in the midst of a protracted dispute over how livers (...) for transplant should be allocated. UNOS, which is based in Richmond, Virginia, has for many years set the national policy for allocating cadaver organs. UNOS had a policy that, in effect, gave healthy local recipients priority over much sicker, more urgent cases beyond the local level. In April of 1998, Donna Shalala, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, issued a regulation requiring that organs must be allocated according to uniform medical criteria and that organ sharing must take place over broad enough areas to ensure that organs can reach the patients who need them most. In effect, she sought to overturn the strict local priority in favor of a more uniform national list based on medical need or at least an approach that extended allocation beyond the strict locals-first approach.UNOS has put up great resistance, expressing a strong preference for retaining local priority even though doing so means some desperately sick people at more distant centers almost certainly will die for lack of organs. What sounds at first like a rather esoteric dispute over government regulation turns out to raise some fascinating issues involving questions of ethics and moral epistemology. The Background For several years, UNOS followed a policy of dividing all potential liver transplant recipients into four categories based on how urgently the person needed a transplant. Status 1 patients were the sickest, essentially those in intensive care. Status 2 patients were the next most ill-in the hospital, but not the ICU. Status 3 patients were ill enough to be at home, while Status 4 patients were still up and about. UNOS coordinates 62 local organ procurement organizations (OPOs), each serving a metropolitan area. These are grouped into 11 regions.The long-term allocation rule gave first priority to local Status 1 patients. If no Status 1 patient was available locally, rather than sending the organ to another OPO, it would be assigned to a Status 2 patient in the same OPO where the [End Page 75] organ was procured, then to a local Status 3 patient, and then to one at Status 4. Only if no patients could use the organ locally would it be "exported" to another OPO. It would then be offered to another OPO in the same region, starting once again with patients at the most urgent status. Only if no patients in the region could use the organ would it be offered outside the region. The effect of this policy was that in some cases quite well-off local patients could get priority over more distant patients who only had hours or days to live if they did not get transplanted. (It was because of this policy that Mickey Mantle-who was Status 2-got an organ so quickly. There were no other suitable Status 1 or 2 patients in the Dallas area. He did not have to compete with any of the thousands of liver transplant patients on the waiting lists beyond his local area.)The realization that critically ill patients beyond the local area were dying while healthy local patients got organs even though they still could wait for perhaps months or years led DHHS to issue its mandate. The goal was to get more organs to people who were in desperate need.The response at UNOS has been hostile. UNOS is made up primarily of representatives from the OPOs, which, in turn are often dominated by transplant surgeons. They did not like the idea that locally-procured organs were being shipped to other communities when they had their own patients who needed them.Spokespersons for this position offered two primary arguments. First, they believed that people would be more... (shrink)

Focusing on Crispin Wright, I try in Chapter One to show that semantic antirealism cannot stably be combined with either communitarianism or constructivism about meaning. I also argue that the rational tenability of communitarianism is threatened by a powerful argument of Wright's own devising in "What Could Anti-Realism About Ordinary Psychology Possibly Be?" In Chapters Two and Three, I defend the individualist idea that the meaning of an expression in an agent's idiolect is correlative with her understanding of its use. (...) I try to show that individualism, so conceived, is fully compatible with natural-kind externalism and that none of the familiar and widely accepted arguments for social externalism are cogent. I also argue that there is no incompatibility between externalism and self-knowledge in matters of meaning. In Chapters Four and Five, I criticize a transcendental argument developed by Donald Davidson and recently defended by Robert Brandom that a creature cannot properly be credited with language or thought unless it is in communication with at least one other creature. Neither philosopher, I argue, provides a cogent case for the argument's crucial premise that the concept of objectivity is unavailable to a creature outside of a social, linguistic setting. The thesis that meaning is normative has widespread currency in the philosophy of language and does much to motivate the social, deontological approach to meaning taken in Making it Explicit. However, I argue in Chapter Six that central arguments for the thesis rest on confusions about the relation between the concepts of meaning, truth, use and intention. In Chapter Seven, I conclude, by connecting Davidson and Brandom's social account of the concept of objectivity with a certain "non-individualist" theory of perception. Following John McDowell, I argue that the theory renders the empirical contentfulness language and thought unintelligible. (shrink)

With this issue we initiate the policy of expanding the scope of Tulane Studies in Philosophy to include, in addition to the work of members of the department, contributions from philosophers who have earned advanced degrees from Tulane and who are now teaching in other colleges and universities. The Editor THE LOGIC OF OUR LANGUAGE ROBERT L. ARRINGTON Wittgenstein wrote in the Tractatus that "logic is not a body of doctrine, but a mirror-image of the world. " 1 In (...) line with his suggestion that a proposition is a 'picture', Wittgenstein argued that propositions 'show' the logical structure of the real. He was insistent, however, that "the apparent logical form of a proposition need not be its real one. " 2 As a result of this we can misunderstand the structure of fact. Philosophical problems arise just when "the logic of our language is mis understood. " 3 It is common knowledge that much of this view of logic was rejected by Wittgenstein himself in the Philosophical Investi gations. There we are told that language has no ideal or sublime 4 logic which mirrors the structure of the extra-linguistic world. Consequently, inferences from the structure of language to the structure of that extra-linguistic world are invalid. Reality can be 'cut up' in any of a number of ways by language. Wittgenstein adopted a view of philosophy which would render that discipline a non-explanatory, non-critical study of the multiple ways in which language can be used. (shrink)

International Rules brings together exemplary works from the most prominent approaches to international rules of International Law and International Relations disciplines. Included are chapters on Natural Law, Legal Positivism, Classical Realism, the New Haven School, Institutionalism, Structural Realism, the New Stream, and Feminist Voices. Each of the eight chapters begins with a brief overview, offers a representative work or works, and concludes with a selected bibliography. From Hugo Grotius to David Kennedy, from George Kennan to Robert Keohane, the featured (...) authors provide valuable insights into their common subject: international rules. Despite divergent methods and objectives, they address fundamentally the same questions: What is the nature of such rules? What is their purpose? How do they originate? What role, if any, do they play in politics? Framing the selections assembled are two original chapter-length essays. The first chapter of this volume assesses the prospects for interdisciplinary collaboration; the final one suggests a direction for future research. (shrink)

This book explores four types of nothingness as found in nature: holes in nature, totalizing nothingness in horror, naturing nothingness, and encompassing nothingness. Robert S. Corrington argues that though nothingness takes many forms, they are all guises of the same vast Nothingness.

Just what you need to get up and running with Sony's new flagship dSLRs The Sony a77, with its 24.3 megapixel sensor, full HD video capability, and translucent mirror system, is poised to be Sony's flagship dSLR camera. With many of the same features but at a lower price point, the a65 is the economy version. This guide will cover all the important steps for getting the most from either model. It shows how to set up the camera to get (...) great shots immediately, explains all the controls and shooting modes, shows how to review images and make basic edits, and offers valuable advice on taking super photos using manual settings. Sony's new a65 and a77 dSLRs feature a huge megapixel sensor, HD video, generous ISO range, and the translucent mirror system unique to Sony This easy-to-follow guide helps you make the most of your investment with complete coverage of all the basic and advanced settings and shooting modes Covers shooting in auto mode, shooting HD video, and taking manual control over exposure, focus, and lighting Explains how to play back images and perform basic edits as well as how to manipulate flash, focus, and color to create top-quality photos With Sony a65/a77 For Dummies, bestselling photography author Robert Correll gives new Sony dSLR users confidence and helps them get everything they paid for in these exciting new Sony camera models. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Original Dwelling Place: Zen EssaysRobert E. GossOriginal Dwelling Place: Zen Essays. By Robert Aitken. Upland, California: Counterpoint, 1996. 241 pp.Robert Aitken narrates his over forty-year journey into Zen, elucidating not only his spiritual journey but also reflecting the Americanization of Zen Buddhism. He was introduced to Zen Buddhism during World War II as an internee in a camp for enemy civilians in Kobe, Japan. Original Dwelling Place (...) is Aitken’s ninth book to explore a series of topics that accent his personal journey into Zen. He has gathered a series of essays about the texts and lineage teachers with whom he studied over the years. In the opening section, entitled “Ancestors,” he pays homage to the masters [End Page 212] who influenced his own Zen practice. He writes, “All of my guides have passed away, but they are alive in my mind and body” (p. 5). The book reflects his continuing bond with those deceased teachers who exercised a vital presence and environmental influence within his life. He shares some stories, personal insights, and legacies of some of his guides, such as Nyogen Senzaki, Soen Roshi, Blyth Sensei, and D. T. Suzuki. I found his essay on the legacy of Dwight Goddard filling in many personal details of a pioneer Western Buddhist who significantly contributed to the Americanization of Buddhism. In many ways, Aitken’s own spiritual development and Original Dwelling Place recapitulate the Americanization of Zen Buddhism, providing some important insights into that process of Buddhist acculturation.Yet Aitken does not limit his guides to twentieth-century ones. He brings alive the classical discourses and relates them to contemporary life. Throughout his essays, I was struck by how alive and dynamic Aitken’s Mahayana contemplative vision and practice are. There is a spirit of “contemplative action” that collapses the duality of meditative practice and living that discovers the truth dynamically within a matrix of open living. As a Christian practitioner of Ignatian spirituality, I found many parallels to the Jesuit ideal of being “contemplative in action.” Aitken’s essays elucidate an ongoing dynamic dialectic that fluctuates between meditative reflection and the world of experience—reminding me at times of the contemplative Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, and at other times of the Jesuit poet-activist, Daniel Berrigan.The reader garners an aesthetic sense that classical Zen texts have been an integral part of his journey and have provided him with a platform to reflect on topics such as marriage, death, the use of money, sexuality, and Zen practice. Some of his essays have a meditative quality, drawing the reader into an web of intertextuality and experience where Zen teachers and Western poets engage in a contemplative path of pleasure expressed in awareness of the everyday dewdrop world. There were moments that I envisioned reading a particular essay on retreat, for they had a meditative quality that reminded me of some the writings of Thomas Merton. Like Merton, Robert Aitken does not merely probe meditative experience but attempts to interrogate the everyday experiences of Western Buddhists from meditative awareness. Most Japanese Buddhists, he notes, are married within Shinto ceremonies, and Western Buddhists have resurrected old Buddhist marriage ceremonies seldom used by Japanese practitioners. Western Buddhist marriage ceremonies, Aitken notes, are a relatively new tradition that often blends ceremonies from The Book of Common Prayer with Buddhist rituals. He ends his short essay on marriage with final reflections on how marriage and family form a little sangha.In “Death: A Zen Buddhist Perspective,” Aitken breaks new ground by noting how Buddhists face the fact of death and find solace in impermanence. He quotes the Japanese haiku poet, Isa Kobayashi (1763–1827), grieving at the loss of his baby daughter:The dewdrop world is the dewdrop world, and yet—and yet(p. 124). [End Page 213]Isa looks desperately for something to give him hope but only finds comfort in his grief. Aitken points out that within grief is emancipation and that bereavement can be a good teacher. He develops some reflections on a highly underdeveloped topic within Buddhism: grieving and the transformation of grief into solace.Aitken writes on political revolution and the matters of ethics. He addresses... (shrink)

During the latter half of the thirteenth century there arose around Tuscany a strange and unprecedented poetry, erudite, abstract, and arrogantly intellectual. It sang beyond courtly conventions about the wonders of the rational universe whose complex secrets the new speculative sciences were eagerly systematizing. Appropriating the language of natural philosophy, Aristotelian psychology, and even theology, love poetry developed a new theoretical understanding of its enterprise which allowed it to redefine love as spiritualized search for knowledge. This intellectualization of erotic desire (...) culminates in the Florentine sitlnovisti, a handful of learned poets who turned love poetry into an eclectic philosophical affair. Guido Cavalcanti’s famous canzone “Donna me prega” was universally considered to be not only the technically most perfect canzone ever written but also a rigorous philosophical treatise. As much as in our own day, exegeses of the poem were forced into the arcana of Scholastic Aristotelianism in order to make sense of its abstract, psychologistic definition of love’s essence. While Cavalcanti lyricized an Averroistic logic of the unified intellect, his younger friend Dante was preparing to put all of medieval philosophy, theology, and science into terza rima. It was in this terza rima that medieval Paris found perhaps its most felicitous expression, for the Divine Comedy represents, among other things, a creative transfiguration of the critical discourses Paris was diffusing throughout Europe.What recalls that situation today is the way Paris again marks the center of critical thought, while in Italiy a new generation of poets has emerged that translates the lessons of contemporary philosophy into poetry. In this essay I plan to discuss some of the most radical or, by analogy, “stilnovistic” of these lyricists. For purposes of convenience I will refer to them as the “favorite malice” poets. The phrase comes from the title of an anthology of select contemporary Italian poetry, recently published in a bilingual English edition: The Favorite Malice: Ontology and Reference in Contemporary Italian Poetry.2 The title alludes to a passage of Friedrich Nietzsche: “It is my favorite malice and art that my silence has learned not to betray itself through silence.” These words from Thus Spoke Zarathrustra serves as the anthology’s epigraphs and signal the peculiar poetics that brings the poets together in one volume. They are not brought together as a “school” but as a loose convergence of individual practices. The most illustrious name among the group is that of Andrea Zanzotto , who belongs to an older generation but whom the other poets call their “youngest traveling companion.” The “older” companions include Nanni Cagnone, Luigi Ballerini, Raffaele Perrotta, and Angelo Lumelli. Robert P. Harrison is assistant professor of Italian at Stanford University. He has published a book of poems, The Murano Workshop , and articles on Dante, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and liberal philology. The Body of Beatrice is the title of his work in progress. (shrink)

La rencontre de deux façons de croire transgressives, le moment pour Robert Hossein de partager les fruits de sa quête : " Il y a un âge, confie-t-il, où l'on a tout à redistribuer. " Croire, c'est moderne, rock'n roll, et quelquefois salvateur. Au fil de ce récit en forme de confidences croisées, Robert Hossein et Delphine de Malherbe nous invitent à renouer avec le spirituel dans cette société cynique, violente. Ils abordent avec émotion les grands thèmes qui (...) relient l'humain, l'art, la science et la foi. Selon eux, l'athéisme forme quelquefois les croyants les plus fervents, les mystiques les plus exigeants. Un livre bouleversant, mais sans optimisme béat, sur deux renaissances. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:51. HOW NOT TO REFUTE HUME'S THEORY OF CAUSALITY: A REPLY TO GRAY Mr. Robert Gray's alleged refutation of Hume's theory of causality does not strike me as being in reality conclusive. The essential element in his alleged refutation, if I have understood it correctly, is that when two billiard balls strike one another and stop - a paradigm of cause and effect - the striking and the (...) stopping constitute one event as opposed to two. They occupy, as a result, one and the same time, a state of affairs inconsistent with the Humean view that the cause immediately precedes the effect. But, surely, they would, if they are the same event, occupy by parity of reasoning one and the same position. For Hume's theory of space and time, as Gray describes it, implies that there is a one-to-one mapping between positions and times. If, therefore, their being the same event implies that they occupy one and the same time, it would also imply that they occupy one and the same position. And if they occupy the same position, they are not spatially contiguous, a state of affairs inconsistent with the Humean view that the cause is spatially contiguous to the effect. A Humean solution in both cases seems clear. It is to allow that the striking and stopping of the billiard balls are the same event and to seek its cause in their moving towards one another, i.e. to seek it in billiard ball A's being at A, and billiard ball B's being at B,, where both A, and B, are spatially contiguous with and immediately precede the striking and stopping of the respective billiard balls B and A. Gray resists this solution, but only because he is implicitly committed to the anti-Humean view that one and the same event can occupy two different positions at one and the same time. As a result, where A designates the 52. position where billiard ball A strikes billiard ball B and stops it and B designates the position where billiard ball B strikes billiard ball A and stops it - this being simply a re-descriptiön in Gray's view of what happens in the single event of two billiard balls striking one another and stopping - he holds that A is different from B. If A is different from B, then by relocating the cause of billiard ball A's stopping at B, we have sacrificed the spatial contiguity of cause and effect. For B will intervene between position B,, that of the cause, and A, that of the effect. And the same will hold with obvious adjustments when we relocate the cause of billiard ball B's stopping at A,. Fortunately, however, Hume need only reply that A is one and the same as B. Indeed, if he is to be consistent with his theory of space and time, this must be his reply. This reply, moreover, is necessary to Hume's explanation of how the reciprocal striking of billiard ball A and billiard ball B can exist in the first place. Such a phenomenon requires a point of contact, a point common to a part of both billiard balls. This point of contact, it should be clear, is provided by the point designated by both A and B. Robert A. Imlay University of Toronto "A Refutation of Hume's Theory of Causality," Hume Studies, Vol. II (1976), pp. 76-85.... (shrink)

_Philosophical Conversations_ is a light, informal, and contemporary introduction to the study of philosophy. Using a dialogue format, Robert M. Martin delves into the traditional questions of philosophy in a manner that readers will find engaging. These substantive yet entertaining conversations emphasize that philosophical questions are contested and open-ended. The characters in each dialogue advocate different answers to questions on religion, ethics, personal identity, and other topics equitably and without naming any clear winners. Philosophic positions are presented with maximum (...) clarity and persuasiveness, so that readers can appreciate all sides of an issue and make their own choices. An excellent tool for newcomers to philosophy, _Philosophical Conversations_ provides the necessary background for further study while vividly portraying the back-and-forth argument that is essential to the philosophical method. (shrink)

Oscar Kenshur’s “Demystifying the Demystifiers: Metaphysical Snares of Ideological Criticism” should go a long way toward convincing most readers that the cure for “ideological” criticism is worse than the disease. His attempt to uncouple ideology and epistemology in Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan and Michael Ryan’s Marxism and Deconstruction belongs to an increasingly popular subgenre of metacriticism, the “more-historical-than-thou” offensive against Marxists and new historicists for their alleged essentialist procedures.1 There is no question that Kenshur raises significant issues about the nature of (...) ideological analysis that should be debated. However, he has neither interrogated the basis of his own assumptions about seventeenth-century views of language theory and epistemology nor convincingly demonstrated, to my mind, that Ryan is somehow wrong in his reading of Hobbes. The weakness of Kenshur’s argument is that he seems intent on erecting the windmills at which he wants to tile—most damagingly for his argument a simplistic notion of ideology that he assumes both Hobbes and Ryan share. By accepting a deterministic notion of ideology, Kenshur offers a “corrective” to overzealous claims for the significance of ideological criticism that has the effect not of “sav[ing history] from its friends” but of returning it to the status of “background” or “context” that it had been for a previous generation of New Critics. The terms in which he casts his argument—epistemology and/or ideology—redefine “ideological criticism” in a polemical manner designed, it seems, to discourage anyone from wanting to practice it. His ultimate purpose is not simply to save “history” from the Ryans of the world but to inoculate his versions of literature and philosophy against the ideological virus. To respond fully to the various issues that Kenshur raises would require detailed analyses of seventeenth-century literary and political culture and of the institutionalization of twentieth-century criticism; simply to discuss the differences between Hobbes and Ryan on epistemology or ideology would require a full-length study of the various discourses in which and against which their works are situated. Given the limitations of a critical response, I shall confine my remarks to two suspect areas of Kenshur’s argument: his characterization of seventeenth-century notions of the relationships among language, epistemology, and ideology and his assumptions about the nature of claims currently made for ideological analysis. 1. See, for example, Edward Pechter, “The New Historicism and Its Discontents: Politicizing Renaissance Drama,” PMLA 102 : 292-303. Robert Markley teaches in the English department of the University of Washington and is editor of The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation. He is the author of Two-Edg’d Weapons: Style and Ideology in the Comedies of Etherege, Wycherley, and Congreve and coauthor, with Kenneth J. Koespel, of Newton and the Failure of Messianic Science: A Postmodern Inquiry into the Discourses of Natural Philosophy. (shrink)

La Construction du bonheur est, à la fois, un livre et un film... Les deux objets sont, ici, matériellement présents. Mais les deux peuvent être pris séparément. Dans l'un comme dans l'autre y apparaît Robert Misrahi sous des éclairages et des angles changeants. A l'écrit, Robert Misrahi, s'il commence par revenir sur son oeuvre livresque, consacré au bonheur et au philosophe eudémonique Spinoza, c'est afin de planter le décor. Très vite il en arrive à l'image. Car c'est là (...) le sujet. Doublement. Voilà qui est nouveau. Il y consacre quatre chapitres : La fascination de l'image ; La mise en chantier ; Les premiers tournages ; La création. Ce court texte est des plus réjouissants. Il témoigne du courage d'un homme, philosophe de son état, qui n'hésite pas à se prêter à une expérience phénoménologique d'un genre particulier où champ et hors-champ, d'écriture et d'images, se mêlent. Robert Misrahi, même s'il bouge beaucoup, n'est pas un philosophe de l'action : la grande action de sa vie a été d'enseigner, ce qui n'est pas rien, mine de rien. L'oeoeuvre d'un philosophe, c'est avant tout de la pensée, et cette pensée produit d'abord des livres. Un philosophe, c'est un livre au milieu de la route, au milieu des gens. Répétons-le : le philosophe est quelqu'un qui pense. D'où : filmer la pensée est-ce que cela peut faire un film? Un vrai film s'entend. Avec de vraies images, avec de la vraie musique, avec de vrais lieux, avec du concret donc et de vraies abstractions aussi. Nous avons tenté, avec ce film, une narration filmique. L'image devenant le miroir des mots et les mots devenant générateurs d'images. C'est une expérience particulière à laquelle, à 86 ans, Robert Misrahi a bien voulu se prêter. Nicolas Martin a été très soucieux de parvenir à un "point d'équilibre" dans ce mariage à trois : la pensée, la parole et l'image... Car le difficile est bien de représenter le bonheur. Le malheur, la douleur, la souffrance c'est facile : c'est une sorte de pot commun où tout le monde peut se reconnaître. La mort est toujours la même, partout dans le monde. Mais le bonheur? Le bonheur est individuel. Le bonheur de l'un ne ressemble pas au bonheur de l'autre. Quelles images pour le bonheur? Mais il s'agit, dans ce film, avant tout, d'accompagner les propos d'un philosophe sur la construction du bonheur. (shrink)

The most powerful assumption in French semiotic thought since Saussure has been the notion that a sign consists not of a name and the object it refers to, but of a sound-image and a concept, a signifier and a signified. Saussure, as amplified by Roland Barthes and others, has taught us to recognize an unbridgeable gap between words and things, signs and referents. The whole notion of "sign and referent" has been rejected by the French structuralists and their followers as (...) too materialistic and simple minded. Signs do not refer to things, they signify concepts, and concepts are aspects of thought, not aspects of reality. This elegant and persuasive formulation has certainly provided a useful critique of naive realism, vulgar materialism, and various other-isms which can be qualified with crippling adjectives. But it hasn't exactly caused the world to turn into a concept. Even semioticians eat and perform their other bodily functions just as if the world existed solidly around them. The fact that the word "Boulangerie" has no referent does not prevent them from receiving their daily bread under that sign. As Borges put it: "The world, alas, is real; I, alas, am Borges." Obviously, the whole question of the relationship between words and things cannot be debated without any assistance from nonverbal experience seems to me highly unlikely. In my view, if language really were a closed system, it would be subject, like any other closed system, to increase in entropy. In fact, it is new input into language from nonverbal experience that keeps language from decaying. Robert Scholes, professor of English and director of the program in semiotic studies at Brown University, is co-author of The Nature of Narrative and author of Structuralism in Literature. A Guggenheim fellow for 1977-78, he is currently working on "A Semiotics of Fiction." He has also contributed "Language, Narrative, and Anti-Narrative" to Critical Inquiry. (shrink)