Behavioral ecologists often assume that natural selection will produce organisms that make optimal decisions. In the context of information processing, this means that the behavior of animals will be consistent with models from fields such as signal detection theory and Bayesian decision theory. We discuss work that applies such models to animal behavior and use the case of Bayesian updating to make the distinction between a description of behavior at the level of optimal decisions and a mechanistic account of how (...) decisions are made. The idea of ecological rationality is that natural selection shapes an animal's decision mechanisms to suit its environment. As a result, decision-making mechanisms may not perform well outside the context in which they evolved. Although the assumption of ecological rationality is plausible, we argue that the exact nature of the relationship between ecology and cognitive mechanism may not be obvious. (shrink)

Church history is dead, long live historical theology! This restatement of the monarchical law of le mort saisit le vif is at once a statement of irreparable discontinuity and assumed continuity. The old monarch is no more, yet a new and different monarch ascends to fill the same vacant throne. This is the paradox of church history becoming historical theology. Reviewing the work of W.A Dreyer and J. Pillay on the re-imagining of church history as historical theology, this article explores (...) the tension between the demise of church history as a subject in South Africa and the emerging understanding and application of historical theology, arguing that more can be made of trans-disciplinary dialogues. (shrink)

This book offers both theoretical overviews and practical approaches for educators, academics, education students and parents who are interested in transforming schools. It encourages reinvigorating approaches to learning and teaching that can easily be integrated into both public and private K-12 school classrooms, with many ideas also applicable to higher education. It supports an educational system based on the beliefs that heart and spirit are intertwined with mind and intellect, and that inner peace, wisdom, compassion, and conscience can be developed (...) together with academic content and skills. (shrink)

Over the last three years Hume’s use of the term “a priori” has suddenly become very topical. Three discussions, by Stephen Buckle, myself, and Houston Smit, all focusing on Hume’s argument concerning induction in Section IV of the Enquiry, have independently picked up on this question, which seems previously to have gone almost unnoticed.1 That there is an issue here can be seen by examining what Hume says when considering the foundation of our inferences concerning matter of fact; why, (...) for example, we expect a billiard ball to move in a particular way when struck by another: “I shall venture to affirm, as a general proposition, which admits of no exception, that the knowledge of [cause and effect] is not, in any instance, attained by reasonings a priori; but arises entirely from experience … Let an object be presented to a man of ever so strong natural reason and abilities; if that object be entirely new to him, he will not be able, by the most accurate examination of its sensible qualities, to discover any of its causes or effects. … No object ever discovers, by the qualities which appear to the senses, either the causes, which produced it, or the effects, which will arise from it; nor can our reason, unassisted by experience, ever draw any inference concerning real existence and matter of fact.” (E 27, 4.6) In this passage Hume is clearly allowing an object’s “qualities which appear to the senses” as being available to Reason “unassisted by experience”. So what he counts as “experience” seems essentially to involve some memory of prior experience, rather than merely current experience. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: So far in this book, we have examined algorithmic decision systems from three autonomy-based perspectives: in terms of what we owe autonomous agents (chapters 3 and 4), in terms of the conditions required for people to act autonomously (chapters 5 and 6), and in terms of the responsibilities of agents (chapter 7). -/- In this chapter we turn to the ways in which autonomy underwrites democratic governance. Political authority, which is to say the ability of a government to exercise (...) power, may be justifiable or not. Whether it is justified and how it can come to be justified is a question of political legitimacy. Political legitimacy is another way in which autonomy and responsibility are linked. This relationship is the basis of the current chapter, and it is important in understanding the moral salience of algorithmic systems. We will draw the connection as follows. We begin, in section 8.1, by describing two uses of technology: crime predicting technology used to drive policing practices and social media technology used to influence elections (including by Cambridge Analytica and by the Internet Research Agency). In section 8.2 we consider several views of legitimacy and argue for a hybrid version of normative legitimacy based on one recently offered by Fabienne Peter. In section 8.3 we will explain that the connection between political legitimacy and autonomy is that legitimacy is grounded in legitimating processes, which are in turn based on autonomy. Algorithmic systems—among them PredPol and the Cambridge Analytica-Facebook-Internet Research Agency amalgam—can hinder that legitimation process and conflict with democratic legitimacy, as we argue in section 8.4. We will conclude by returning to several cases that serve as through-lines to the book: Loomis, Wagner, and Houston Schools. -/- The link below is to an open-access copy of the chapter. (shrink)

Existential claims are widely held to be grounded in their true instances. However, this principle is shown to be problematic by arguments due to Kit Fine. Stephan Krämer has given an especially simple form of such an argument using propositional quantifiers. This note shows that even if a schematic principle of existential grounds for propositional quantifiers has to be restricted, this does not immediately apply to a corresponding non-schematic principle in higher-order logic.

Urgent environmental problems call for vigorous research and theory on how humans develop a relationship with nature. For eight years, Peter Kahn studied children, young adults, and parents in diverse geographical locations, ranging from an economically impoverished black community in Houston to a remote village in the Brazilian Amazon. In these studies Kahn sought answers to the following questions: How do people value nature, and how do they reason morally about environmental degradation? Do children have a deep connection (...) to the natural world that gets severed by modern society? Or do such connections emerge, if at all, later in life, with increased cognitive and moral maturity? Are there universal features in the human relationship with nature? Kahn's empirical and theoretical findings draw on current work in psychology, biology, environmental behavior, education, policy, and moral development. (shrink)

How do we change the normative landscape by making requests? It will be argued that by making requests we create reasons for action if and only if certain conditions are met. We are able to create reasons if and only if doing so is valuable for the requester, and if they respect the requestee. Respectful requests have a normative force – it will be argued – because it is of instrumental value to us that we all have the normative power (...) of creating reasons by making requests. The normative power has the potential for creating and shaping valuable interactions and relationships for the requester and the requestee. This potential could not be realized if we did not have the normative power of making requests. It will also be shown why this account of the normative force of requests should be preferred to the two alternative accounts of the reason-giving force of requests that have been put forward by James H.P. Lewis and David Enoch. (shrink)

This paper contains a discussion of how the concept of compositionality is to be extended from context invariant to context dependent meaning, and of how the compositionality of natural language might conflict with context dependence. Several new distinctions are needed, including a distinction between a weaker (e-) and a stronger (ec-) concept of compositionality for context dependent meaning. The relations between the various notions are investigated. A claim by Jerry Fodor that there is a general conflict between context dependence and (...) compositionality is considered. There is in fact a possible conflict betwee ec-compositionality and context dependence, but not of the kind Fodor suggests. It turns on the presence of so-called unarticulated constituents, in John Perry’s sense. Because of this phenomenon, on some semantic accounts there might be a variation in the meaning of a complex expression between contexts without any corresponding variation in any of the syntactic parts of that complex. The conflict can be resolved in several ways. One way is to make the unarticulated context dependence explicit only in the meta-language, which makes it into an unarticulated constituent account. A recent argument by Jason Stanley against such accounts is discussed. According to Stanley, certain readings of English sentences involving binding of contextual variables, are unavailable in these theories. After considering a reply to Stanley by François Recanati, I present an outline of a fully compositional theory, of the unarticulated constituent variety, which does deliver these readings. Concluding remarks on, inter alia, the semantics/pragmatics distinction. (shrink)

Theories of explanation are characterized as being either pragmatic or non-pragmatic, without a clear sense of what this is supposed to mean. The present paper offers a definition of a "pragmatic explanation-sentence", and in terms of this, of a "pragmatic theory of explanation". It is argued that van Fraassen's theory of explanation, despite claims to the contrary, is not genuinely pragmatic. By contrast, the author's own "illocutionary" theory is pragmatic. Attention is devoted particularly to sentences of the form "E is (...) a good explanation of q", which, it is urged, are pragmatic in a strong sense. In defense of this claim, and of the advantages of a pragmatic account generally, appeal is made to Rutherford's 1911 subatomic explanation of the results of his scattering experiments. Implications of a pragmatic theory are drawn for the debate between realists and anti-realists and absolutists and relativists. (shrink)

Kinship terminologies are basic cognitive semantic systems that all human societies use for organizing kin relations. Diversity in kinship systems and their categories is substantial, but constrained. Rácz, Passmore, and Jordan explore hypotheses about such constraints from learning theories and social pressures, testing the impact of a community‐size driven learning bottleneck against the social coordination demands of different kinds of marriage and resource systems.

La traducción que al inglés hace el ilustre profesor norteamericano Harold Raley (cuya filosofía sigue a Ortega y a Marías) resulta excelente. El profesor Harold Cecil RALEY nació el año 1934 en el Estado de Alabama (USA), en cuya Universidad se doctoró en Lenguas y Literaturas Románicas, y quiso especializarse en la obra de José Ortega y Gasset. Casado y padre de varios hijos, ha sido catedrático de Lengua y Literatura españolas de la Universidad del Estado de Oklahoma desde 1964; (...) también catedrático y decano de Bellas Artes y Humanidades en la Houston Baptist University (nombrado por ella Distinguished Professor). Entre otros libros, es autor de los siguientes: "Ortega y Gasset, filósofo de la unidad europea" (Prólogo de Julián Marías. Revista de Occidente. Madrid, 1977; edición inglesa: "José Ortega y Gasset, the Philosopher of European Unity". The University of Alabama Press. USA, 1971); "La visión responsable. La filosofía de Julián Marías" (Prólogo de José Luis Pinillos. Espasa-Calpe. Madrid, 1977; edición inglesa: "Responsible Vision: The Philosophy of Julián Marías". The American Hispanist. Clear Creek, Indiana. USA, 1980); "Julián Marías. Una filosofía desde dentro" (Alianza Editorial. Madrid, 1997; edición inglesa: "A Watch over Mortality: the Philosophical Story of Julián Marías". The State University of New York Press. USA, 1997); "El espíritu de España" (Prólogo de Julián Marías. Alianza Editorial. Madrid, 2003; edición inglesa: "The Spirit of Spain". Halcyon Press. Houston. USA, 2002); "The Light of Eden. A Christian Worldview" (John M. Hardy Publishing. Houston. USA, 2008); "Language Oddities. Quirks and Curiosities of English and Other Languages" (Kingsle. Houston. USA, 2011); "Louisiana Rogue. The Life and Times of Pierre Prospère-Tourmoulin translated by Peter Tourmoulin" (Lamar University Press. Beaumont. USA, 2013); "The Unknown God: Mysteries of Deity, Time, Space, and Creation" (Charleston, SC, USA, 2011. También es autor de más de un centenar de estudios y artículos sobre temas filosóficos y literarios. Además ha traducido al inglés algunos de los libros de Julián Marías. (shrink)

This essay reconstructs the place of Marx's thought within Adorno's writings from his 1931 inaugural lecture to his famous 1962 seminar on Marx. It focuses on three areas: the critique and transformation of philosophy; the sociology of the commodification of art; and the social ontology of the objectivity of illusions, derived from the critique of political economy. Adorno, it argues, ended his academic life significantly more of a Marxist than he had entered it, leaving a legacy that was distinctive both (...) for its dialectical appropriation of Marx's critique – and suspended supersession – of philosophy and for its philosophical interpretation of Marx's critique of political economy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 497 Both theologians and philosophers need to see a completely integrated treatment of both rational and faith aspects of Aquinas's theology of creation. To this end, more work on theology as science also would be helpful. Emery's treatment of the end and subject of a science is not quite neoplatonic enough. His presentation of the subject of theology forces God, its subject in the Summa theologiae, on (...) earlier texts of Albert (49) and Aquinas (302). In I Sent. Aquinas says the subject is ens divinum, "being as related to the divine," which is much wider than God, who is the end but not subject oftheology. His model is Avicenna's ens commune as the subject of a metaphysics with God as its end. More work also must be done on the articles of faith, part of the subject of theology for Albert; but theology's proper principles for Aquinas. How primordial the articles are, and the interplay of reason and faith in knowing them, are still unresolved issues. In sum, one hopes this fine book by Fr. Emery will be the first of many helping give Thomism the new look it deserves. Centerfor Tlwmistic Studies Houston, TX R. E. HOUSER Relation als Vergleich: Die Relationstheorie des Johannes Buridan im Kontext seines Denkens und der Scholastik. By ROLF SCHONBERGER. Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters, Band 43. Leiden/New York/Koln: E. J. Brill, 1994. Pp. 489. $108.75 (cloth). This book is a revised version of the author's 1990 Habilitationsschrift at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat in Munich. It aims to articulate the theory of relations developed by the noted Parisian philosopher, John Buridan (ca. 1295-1358), "in connection with the extensive scholastic discussion of this problem," and, in particular, to show how the same arguments were advanced or refuted by different philosophers from "fundamentally different starting points" (ix, 59). This stems from the author's working hypothesis that the medieval debate on the nature of relations proceeded dialectically, and that Buridan's contribution to it can be better understood by taking its argumentative context into consideration. The scope of the book is wide-ranging, to say the least. Readers expecting a book about Buridan's theory of relations will find the title somewhat misleading, however, since background material and a survey of the "scholastic context" of Buridan's theory fill up the first 372 pages, with the author's presentation and discussion of the theory itself limited to the final 498 BOOK REVIEWS 75. Furthermore, the author seems to regard the relevance of the former discussion to the latter as self-evident. This is fine where the connections are fairly uncontroversial, as in the case of William of Ockham, but where they are less so, as in the cases 0f Giles of Rome, Henry of Ghent, Meister Eckhart, Durand of St. Pour~ain, and Peter John Olivi, one is left in the dark about why separate chapters are devoted to each. Giles and Olivi are not even mentioned in the chapters on Buridan. Henry and Durand make one appearance each, both in the course of the trivial observation that unlike in their theories, "consideration of the doctrine of the Trinity plays no role in Buridan's theory of relations" (399). Eckhart is mentioned a few times, but in terms so speculative as to be useless for the general reader. For example, the author finds Jan Pinborg's characterization of Buridan as a someone who "took the arbitrariness of language seriously" to be "of course... too microscopic " (393). The reason is that Pinborg allegedly failed to see the radicalization of conventionality in the fourteenth century in terms of an "epochal shift" from "the symbolic and quasi-naturalistic conception of language in the early Middle Ages," a conception that, the author parenthetically notes, "is perhaps still to be found (or further strengthened) in Bonaventure or Meister Eckhart" (ibid.). But even bracketing the question of how this description fits the latter authors, the Buridan story is more complex than this. Buridan does emphasize that spoken and written expressions signify conventionally, but he never abandons the Aristotelian/Boethian tripartite conception of language, according to which concepts are said to... (shrink)

Corporate social irresponsibility (CSI) and other questionable business incidents that appear to harm stakeholders frequently afflict firms yet draw disparate investor reactions. We address this disparity by investigating the association between firm legal orientation and investor reactions to CSI. We hypothesize the proportion of board members and top management team (TMT) executives with law degrees affects investor perceptions of firm foresight, and in turn, their judgment of blame and consequent punishment. Based on abnormal returns to 629 announcements of CSI and (...) 308 publicly traded S&P 500 firms, we find that both too small and too large a proportion of board of directors and TMT members with law degrees lead investors to mete out harsher punishment. This inverted u‐shaped link is further affected by firm size, firm risk, and industry competition. Our investigation sheds light on the link between executive education and financial performance in the context of CSI and investor perceptions of foresight. (shrink)

This paper argues that as a name for a speech act, epistemologists typically use ‘testimony’ in a specialist sense that is more or less synonymous with ‘assertion’, but as a name for a distinctive speech act type in ordinary English, ‘testimony’ names a unique confirmative speech act type. Hence, like any good English word, ‘testimony’ has more than one sense. The paper then addresses the use of ‘testimony’ in epistemology to denote a distinctive kind of evidence: testimonial evidence. Standing views (...) of a hearer’s testimonial evidence see it as partly supervening on a speaker’s assertion that P. The paper argues for a broader account that sees a hearer’s testimonial evidence as partly supervening instead on the hearer’s representation as of a speaker meaning that P. This broader account is the comprehension view of testimonial evidence. The upshot is that not all so-called “testimony-based beliefs” are caused by a speaker’s testimony. (shrink)

I explore a strand of reception history that follows Rudolf Carnap’s shift from a purely syntactical analysis of constructed languages to his conception of pure semantics. My exploration focuses on Gustav Bergmann’s and Everett Hall’s interpretation of pure semantics, their understanding of what constitutes a ’formal’ investigation of language, and their arguments concerning the relationship between expressions and their extra-linguistic referents. I argue that Bergmann and Hall strongly misread Carnap’s semantic project and, subsequently, their misunderstanding is passed down through colleagues (...) and students. (shrink)

Methodological questions concerning Chomsky’s generative approach to linguistics have been debated without consensus. The status of linguistics as psychology, the psychological reality of grammars, the character of tacit knowledge and the role of intuitions as data remain heatedly disputed today. I argue that the recalcitrance of these disputes is symptomatic of deep misunderstandings. I focus attention on Michael Devitt’s recent extended critique of Chomskyan linguistics and I suggest that his complaints are based on a failure to appreciate the special status (...) of Chomsky’s computational formalisms found elsewhere in cognitive science. Devitt ascribes an intentional conception of representations that Chomsky repudiates and that is independently implausible. I argue that Devitt’s proposed “linguistic reality ” as the proper subject matter of linguistics neglects the problems of tokens as opposed to types and he misses the force of Chomsky’s arguments against Behaviourism and nominalism. I suggest that Devitt’s case against intuitions as data misunderstands their standard role throughout perceptual psychology. Finally, of more general interest, I argue that Devitt’s position exemplifies compelling errors concerning mental representation seen throughout cognitive science and philosophy of mind. (shrink)

In this essay, I claim that certain passages in Book IV of Benedict de Spinoza’s Ethics suggest a novel version of what is known as metaethical constructivism. The constructivist interpretation emerges in the course of attempting to resolve a tension between Spinoza’s apparent ethical egoism and some remarks he makes about the efficacy of collaborating with the right partners when attempting to promote our individual self-interest . Though Spinoza maintains that individuals necessarily aim to promote their self-interest, I argue that (...) Spinoza has an atypical conception of self that allows the interests of other people to be partially constitutive of one's own self-interest. In this way, Spinoza can account for the rationality of concern for the interests of others . This interpretation attributes to Spinoza a form of constructivism that differs in important ways from contemporary Humean and Kantian constructivisms and which can in principle be detached from Spinoza’s particular metaphysical commitments in order to yield a third general category of constructivist view . Though my treatment is necessarily brief, it is my hope that it can serve both to motivate a constructivist reading of Spinoza and, perhaps even more crucially, to suggest a Spinozistic variety of constructivism as a live theoretical option in metaethics. (shrink)

The primary aim of this important study is to produce a reliable account of Peter Martyr’s life before he left Italy in 1542. Earlier biographers had been content to follow the Swiss Calvinist Josiah Simler, who knew Peter Martyr in later years, delivered his funeral oration and published it in 1563. Dr McNair has tried ‘to delve beneath Simler to contemporary records’. He has discovered, for example, that Peter Martyr was born in 1499 not, as is usually (...) said, in 1500. He has been concerned to find out when Peter Martyr left his order and his Church, suggesting that there is little reason to believe that his apostasy began in his years at the University of Padua, 1518-26; it was in Naples, between 1537 and 1540, when he came to know Juan de Valdés, that Peter Martyr’s conversion took place. ‘He arrived a reformer after the order of Ximénez, he left a reformer after the order of Zwingli’, writes Dr McNair, meaning by this the Zwingli of the years immediately before 1523, when he wished to go further than Erasmus but not so far as Luther. (shrink)

Suppose that time is infinitely long towards the future, and that each feasible action produces a finite amount of utility at each time. Then, under appropriate conditions, each action produces an infinite amount of utility. Does this mean that utilitarianism lacks the resources to discriminate among such actions? Since each action produces the same infinite amount of utility, it seems that utilitarianism must judge all actions permissible, judge all actions impermissible, or remain completely silent. If the future is infinite, that (...) is, the prospects for utilitarianism look bleak. (shrink)

Early modern experimental philosophers were opposed to speculation, and yet many endorsed speculative theories. This chapter gives a partial explanation of why this is so, using Robert Boyle’s acceptance and promotion of the corpuscular philosophy as a case study. It argues that, in addition to furnishing experimental evidence for the corpuscular hypothesis in his Forms and Qualities, Boyle attempted to establish its epistemic superiority over other speculative theories on the grounds that it is founded upon superior principles. In his ‘Excellency (...) and Grounds of the Mechanical Hypothesis’, Boyle claims that the principles of the corpuscular philosophy are more intelligible, more parsimonious, ontologically primary, simpler and more comprehensive than those of its rivals. On grounds of comparative plausibility then, according to Boyle, the corpuscular philosophy is eminently preferable to its rivals. The final section of the chapter traces the legacy of Boyle’s appraisal of the epistemic status of the corpuscular philosophy in the writings of many of his compatriots from the mid-1660s to the Cyclopedia of Ephraim Chambers of 1728. (shrink)

Bridging from Husserl to Iamblichus, this book contributes phenomenological readings of Plotinus, Aristotle, Parmenides, and Heraclitus, in which prevalent misconceptions about the very identity of time in the phenomena of motion are corrected, and time's role in Greek philosophy recovered.

On being told that "translation is an impossible thing," Anatole France replied: "precisely, my friend; the recognition of that truth is a necessary preliminary to success in art." The task of Transplantings is to add flesh and bones to that familiar quip. Indeed, Daniel Weissbort notes that Viereck's study represented a sixty-five year long project. Now, it is finally being brought to print in its full form, with the completion of the final manuscript shortly before Viereck's death. If translation is (...) a special genre in its own right, the translation of poetry, especially from major foreign languages, is a special subset of that genre. What emerges in the imperfect act of translation is an aesthetic dimension that Viereck considers unique in its own right. Transplantings provides new insight into Viereck as a poet of substance, but more than that as a public intellectual. He is critical in probing the work of the major figures such as Stefan George and Georg Heym. To round out this monumental new look at German poetical history, Viereck reviews Goethe, Novalis, and Rilke among others. For Viereck, the difference between the poetical and the political is critical. The quality of poetry is not measured by politics, nor can the worth of political action be defined by commitment to the poetical. The experience of German thought, as well as French and Italian efforts, reveals a divide that can be narrowed but hardly bridged by rhetoric. Transplantings does not simplify the task of the reader. Rather it shows without doubt that the passion of great poetry is part of a national tradition. Efforts at translation indicate how such poetry becomes part of an international culture. This is a major work by one of the great thinkers of the twentieth century. It merits reading, and then, re-reading. "Peter Viereck was that rare scholar who captured the European experience with America, while fully realizing the American encounter with Europe. He did so with consciousness of and compassion for both sectors of Western Civilization" --Irving Louis Horowitz, Society Peter Viereck was a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, critic, and historian. He held the Kenan Chair in History at Mount Holyoke College. He was known as one of America's conservatism's early leaders and was the recipient of Guggenheim Fellowships both in history and poetry. (shrink)

A vexing modern conundrum is to be solved. The use of oil, gas, and coal is extremely short-lived as a historical phenomenon: a mere blink of an eye at a little more than 1% of total urban history of 10,000 years to-date. Yet current urban civilization is almost entirely based on it. And the fossil-fuel economy poses not only a massive security risk, it also lies at the root of the vast majority of urban sustainability problems. Fresh water depletion, air (...) pollution, widespread human fatalities can be directly traced to the excessive use of these dirty energy sources. Climate change, predominantly triggered by fossil-fuel combustion, only deepens the very questions the impending petroleum peak raises about the survivability of the global urban system. The fossil disease is a complex global pandemic. To many, conquering this pandemic is an extraordinary challenge of technology: of reengineering the manner in which urban civilization is powered, advancing a future envisioned in numerous studies since the 1970s. Yet foremost, this is a cultural, psychological, and political challenge. The global economy is systematically identified with its underlying fossil supply frameworks—it is a fossil economy. It is marked by an incendiary illusion: the celebration of abundance promised as achievable by all, driving virtually all aspects of contemporary culture. Yet it is also marred with enormous pockets of deprivation, and deep cracks of disbelief, criticism, and dissent. Reinforcing this challenge is the psychoeconomical transaction cost of change, the sheer inertia of an infernal development system, however short-lived it inevitably is. Despite all lip service paid to ‘energy savings’ and ‘environmentally sustainable development’ in urban policy documents and brochures across the globe, dominant political and financial interests demand that as much fossil fuel as possible is used, and as quickly as possible, to secure the highest possible profits for the most powerful, and in the shortest period of time. Hence many national governments and international bodies find it so difficult to place fossil-fuel replacement on the global agenda. It is easier to avoid this topic and talk about buffering, mitigating what are little else than subsidiary, flow-on effects and collateral outcomes of an unsolved energy conundrum: air, water and soil pollution, public health problems, deforestation or fresh water depletion. Rarely, if ever, is petroleum abuse clearly noted as a root cause. A historical revolution is in progress: the move from fossil fuels, nuclear power, and other forms of unsustainable energy use generation to a renewable and sustainable power base for urban communities, cities, towns, and villages. Many examples of positive initiatives encourage, and are testimony to the ability of cities and towns to perform as communities, and evolve into settings of greater independence from fossil and nuclear power sources. They carry the promise of greater energy autonomy based on renewable energy, of recapturing regional productivity, advancing local resources, and enabling new industries and employment opportunities. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 94, Issue 3, pp 381 - 390 Reference can fail in a way that intentionality cannot. Though the stream of phenomenal experience typically does not fail to target objects outside, it may do. How does the mind go about targeting objects beyond itself? The speculative conjecture of this paper is that it does so by a type of process which can be called _pointing_, and that the acts or act-aspects of pointing can be called _pointers_. The notion (...) of a pointer has several suggestive roots. One is the familiar physical gesture of pointing. Another is the existence of directional signs such as on roads. The third is the software data types making direct reference to memory locations in computers, also called ‘pointers’. A final source is demonstrative pronouns and other deictic expressions in language, of which Peter Geach wrote, “a demonstrative pronoun … works like a pointer, not like a label”. I suggest that there is in the mental cognitive repertoire a structurally and semantically analogous type of act which pierces the passivity of perception, directs us outside the machine, and prepares the way for drawing others’ minds to the same thing. (shrink)

Dieses Buch gibt anhand von 22 Autoren und 22 ihnen zugeordneten Begriffen einen Überblick über das heute vorhandene Grundlagenwissen zur sprachlichen Interaktionsanalyse. Die Auswahl der Autoren umfaßt neben Linguisten (z.B. Bühler, Benveniste) auch Klassiker der Soziologie (z.B. Weber, Sacks), der Kulturtheorie (z.B. Volosinov) und der Sprachphilosophie (z.B. Wittgenstein, Austin); dazu kommen wichtige Autoren aus jüngerer Zeit (z.B. Bourdieu, Luckmann, Hymes, Geertz). Trotz dieser interdisziplinären Orientierung bleibt der Bezug auf sprachwissenschaftliche Fragestellungen erhalten. Das Spektrum der Grundbegriffe umfaßt Konzepte wie "Handeln", "Sprechakt", (...) "Kultur", "Intertextualität", "Subjektivität", "Performanz" und "Gattung". (shrink)