In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Why Theory?Oscar Martín (bio) and Simone Pinet (bio)Theory is, of course, a medieval word, brought from Greek into Latin from a common root (theastai) that also gives us theater, linked through shared meanings related to speculation, contemplation, and so forth. It is used in the Bible, and its English modern use, according to the Oxford english dictionary, probably comes from a medieval Latin translation of Aristotle. The dictionary does (...) not direct us to any specific translation, but prompts us to compare with Italian and, of course, French usage. In French, however, the word théorie was not used until quite late. In fact, it appeared for the first time in French in a 1584 translation of Antonio de Guevara, the famous Spanish court preacher and man of letters whose oeuvre was translated, imitated, and plagiarized in France, Italy, Germany, and England during the sixteenth century. In Spanish, the word theoria had begun its vernacular life a few years before in the writings of Fernando de Herrera.Theoria is already documented by Antonio de Nebrija’s Vocabulario español-latino of 1495, listed between “speculation” and “species” and designating the contemplative and the art of speculation, from theory to the perception of its quality. It is appropriate that Spanish would give theory to the West, sharing with it a point of view or, better, a series of perspectives or miradores, as María Rosa Menocal would call them, from which to look back into or beyond cultural and literary practices [“Visions of al-Andalus”]. For Medieval Iberia was, as this collection of essays purports to be, not a space or a history but a shifting and fluid gaze on the conflicting world surrounding the different literary and cultural works dealt with in this issue.Reluctant at best, and most of the time resentful of theoretical approaches to the study of literature and culture, medievalism found in Hispanism a surprising and most loyal ally. If in most Spanish departments critical theory pushed its way into the study of later periods, to the point that today even the mourning itself (or celebration) of the agony of theory is done from a theoretical standpoint, Hispanomedievalism remained suspicious longer, and sharpened its words on statistics and “scientific” claims to authority. Its close relationship to historical research, however, also made this philology vulnerable to the practices of interpretation. And it is as a will to interpretation that theory has managed to place itself within and outside the criticism of medieval Iberian literature and culture in insightful and renewing ways—including collective projects similar to the present one. Marina Brownlee’s contribution to this volume in this sense offers a most telling guiding thread of this continued approach to the discipline, which she helped revitalize through her participation in the project the new Medievalism. More recently, Josiah Blackmore and Gregory Hutcheson, also contributing to the present volume, sparked a lively debate, as showcased in a forum published by La corónica, with their project Queer iberia: sexualities, cultures, and crossing from the Middle ages to the renaissance. But a host of monographs and single-authored books in recent years have come to inhabit and enliven medieval studies as Hispanism has grown into the most important area of foreign language studies. [End Page 3]Theories find themselves in the articles for this special issue by way of a development from within. There is no application, no rigid use of conceptual frameworks to revisit texts, but an interior process of thought on and through the texts and cultural practices analyzed that produces theoretical insights. While a variety of methodologies and theoretical positionings can be identified, both explicitly and not, from speech-act theory to deconstruction, from Žižek to Badiou, postcolonialism to politics, these seem to emerge from within, as if the obvious result of the need to think questions posed from slightly different standpoints than they have been up until now. All of the articles reflect on very well-known texts and periods, pondering about a discipline, its methodologies, even the nature of its object of study. These articles do not dismiss previous work, but they do bring it under a new light.At a... (shrink)

Analytic philosophy was born from philosophic reflection on logic and mathematics. It has been at its strongest in these and related domains of reflection, domains that are friendly to definition and analytic clarity. From time to time, analytic philosophers, some very distinguished, have produced fine work on literature and the arts. But these areas remain underexplored in the analytic tradition. This volume is focused upon language that does not fit within the usual analytic paradigms. It's highlights include two (...) pieces of original poetry on philosophic subjects (by philosophers who are also published poets), and philosophic reflection on poetry, literature more generally, metaphor, and related subjects. (shrink)

Vivant jusqu’à la mortCompte-rendu de A. Cavazzini, A. Gualandi (édité par), Logiche del vivente.Evoluzione, sviluppo, cognizione nell’epistemologia francese contemporanea,“Discipline filosofiche” XIX, I, Quodlibet, Macerata 2009Le nouveau recueil d’essais consacrés à une épistémologie pour la discipline philosophique, sous la direction de A. Cavazzini et A. Gualandi, se structure autourd’une idée forte de Bergson, celle d’ « attention à la vie ». Cette idée est utilisée comme instrument herméneutique pour désigner un aspect de la culture philosophique française du XIXè siècle et de (...) l’époque contemporaine en particulier, qui voit dans l’épistémologie de la biologie un lieu de rencontre entre des perspectives hétérogènes, ainsi qu’un moyen de vérifier l’état actuel des sciences de la vie et d’étudier la possibilité d’une philosophie de la biologie prenant en compte et mettant profit les impulsions des avancées scientifiques. Le recueil cherche à rendre compte de la nouveauté du paradigme biologique contemporain, qui vise un degré extrême de synthèse entre les savoirs et les disciplines liées au « champ biologique ». Logiche del vivente parvient donc à rendre compte de la nouvelle approche synthétique du biologique, ouvrant à ce syncrétisme de positions qui contribue à sa définition contemporaine : évolution, développement et cognition, réunis dans une même perspective, sont les instruments d’une réécriture du vocabulaire et des catégories de la réflexion biologique, indépendamment de l’alternative paralysante entre le « mauvais » vitalisme et le mécanisme.Vivant jusqu’à la mortReview of A. Cavazzini, A. Gualandi (edited by), Logiche del vivente.Evoluzione, sviluppo, cognizione nell’epistemologia francese contemporanea,“Discipline filosofiche” XIX, I, Quodlibet, Macerata 2009Edited by A. Cavazzini and A. Gualandi, this new collection of essays devoted to an epistemology for the philosophical discipline is structured around one of Bergson’s powerful ideas, that of “attention to life.” This idea is used as a hermeneutic structure in order to outline an aspect of the French philosophical culture of the 19th century and of the contemporary epoch in particular. What one sees is that the epistemology of biology is a place of encounter between heterogeneous perspective. As well, it is a means to verify the current state of the life sciences and to study the possibility of a philosophy of biology which would take account of the novelty of the contemporary biological paradigm, a paradigm that aims at an extreme degree of synthesis between the sciences and the disciplines connected to the “biological field.” Logiche del vivente therefore manages to take account of the new synthetic approach of biology, opening itself up to a syncretism of positions which contributes to its contemporary definition: evolution, development and cognition, united in one perspective, are instruments of are-writing of the vocabulary and the categories of biological reflection, independently of the paralyzing alternative be “bad” vitalism and mechanism. (shrink)

Abstract:This paper offers a short account of Prospect-Refuge theory, Jay Appleton's pioneering contribution to landscape aesthetics published as The Experience of Landscape in 1975. I discuss the theory's influence on a variety of writers, and introduce the photographic exhibition that Professor Appleton and I produced in the year before his death, featuring views of Britain that articulate his key principles. The paper ends with the suggestion that current phenomenological approaches in the Humanities give a new relevance to Appleton's work, (...) which always stressed the significance of the imagination interpreting and recreating the world. (shrink)

In this article de Beauvoir defends a conception of literature as a kind of unveiling of something that exists outside itself, a mode of action which reveals certain truths about the world. What we call “literature” is eminently capable of grasping the world—a world which de Beauvoir, following Jean-Paul Sartre, conceives of as a “detotalized totality”; one that is real and independent of us, which exists for all, but is only graspable through our own projects and our perspectives. (...) Yet far from keeping us stranded within our unique subjectivities, literature restores to subjective experience its generality; it allows other to “taste” the world as it exists for others. We can communicate through literature because in it our world, our languages, and our projects overlap. Ultimately, for de Beauvoir, literature is what allows us to see the world as others see it—all the while remaining, irreducibly, ourselves. (shrink)

Simone Weil is one of the most profound thinkers of the twentieth century. Her writings encompass an extraordinary breadth of subjects, including philosophy, religion, sociology, and politics. A political activist and resistance fighter, her accomplishments are even more astonishing in light of her death in 1943 at the age of thirty-four. Whilst Weil was concerned with deep philosophical questions - the nature of human thought and human faculties, the limits of language, and thought's contact with reality through mediation, science (...) and beauty - the full significance of her work has frequently been obscured by her categorization as a purely religious writer or Christian mystic. Simone Weil: Basic Writings is an expertly edited anthology of her most important writings, presenting Weil's philosophy as it relates to politics, the nature of work, human nature in its duality, necessity, beauty and goodness. D. K. Levy and Marina Barabas have translated all the extracts anew, including translations of important notes and references missing from existing English language editions of Weil's work. Following an extensive introduction by D. K. Levy which places Weil's life and thought in context, each section opens with a short introduction situating the chosen passages within Weil's oeuvre. Simone Weil: Basic Writings is an outstanding starting point for anyone seeking an introduction to Weil's philosophy, and also essential reading for students and scholars of Weil's thought in related disciplines. (shrink)

In this interview, Margaret A. Simons describes her path to philosophy and existentialism, her struggles in the male-dominated field in the 1960s and 1970s, and her political activism in the civil rights and women’s liberation movements. She also discusses her encounters with Simone de Beauvoir and Beauvoir’s refusal to own her philosophical originality, suggesting that Beauvoir may have adopted a more conventional narrative of a female intellectual to circumvent the public’s resistance to her radical ideas in the 1950s.

First published in 1982. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Michael Dummett offered a semantic characterisation of a variety of realism-antirealism debates. This approach has fallen out of fashion. This has been to the detriment of metaphysics. This paper offers an accurate characterisation of Dummett’s view, often lacking in the literature, and then defends it against a range of attacks (from Devitt, Miller and Williamson). This understanding of realism debates is resilient, and if we take it seriously the philosophical terrain looks importantly different. In particular, the philosophy of (...) class='Hi'>language has a foundational role with respect to metaphysics. (shrink)

Tankersley has provided an interesting collection of data about various groups of antisocial individuals. Is this a paper about the moral reasoning of psychopaths, or is it an attempt to address a philosophical question—whether moral behavior is primarily driven by emotions (moral sentimentalism) or by reasons (moral rationalism)—empirically? I think it attempts a little of both, although I concentrate on the latter. -/- The trouble with much of the literature on psychopathy is the terminological confusion, and Tankersley has not (...) escaped this. Several disciplines, with their own languages, have an interest in antisocial individuals and use similar sounding words in different ways. It is easy to get confused. Doctors make diagnoses. Antisocial (or dissocial) personality disorder is a medical diagnosis, and has a clear, operationalized definition. By virtue of being a disorder, it must result in some impairment in the functioning of the individual. Psychopathy is a psychological construct, not a diagnosis, and attempts to measure (in a reliable and valid way, using the Psychopathy Checklist) aspects of a person's mind particularly relevant to antisocial behavior. Psychopathy and antisocial personality disorder are different approaches to the same natural phenomenon, but they are not coterminous. There are many individuals with antisocial personality disorder who are not psychopaths. There are some individuals who are psychopaths who do not have any medical diagnosis (e.g., the so-called white collar psychopath). Psychopathy is not a subset of antisocial personality disorder (pace Tankersley 2011, and Herpertz and Habermeyer 2004). (shrink)

There are several linguistic phenomena that, when examined closely, give evidence that people speak through characters, much like authors of literary works do, in everyday discourse. However, most approaches in linguistics and in the philosophy of language leave little theoretical room for the appearance of characters in discourse. In particular, there is no linguistic criterion found to date, which can mark precisely what stretch of discourse within an utterance belongs to a character, and to which character. And yet, without (...) at least tentatively marking the division of labor between the different characters in an utterance, it is absolutely impossible to arrive at an acceptable interpretation of it. As an alternative, I propose to take character use seriously, as an essential feature of discourse in general, a feature speakers and listeners actively seek out in utterances. I offer a simple typology of actions in discourse that draws on this understanding, and demonstrate its usefulness for the analysis of a conversation transcript. (shrink)

Newly published lectures by Foucault on madness, literature, and structuralism. Perceiving an enigmatic relationship between madness, language, and literature, French philosopher Michel Foucault developed ideas during the 1960s that are less explicit in his later, more well-known writings. Collected here, these previously unpublished texts reveal a Foucault who undertakes an analysis of language and experience detached from their historical constraints. Three issues predominate: the experience of madness across societies; madness and language in Artaud, Roussel, (...) and Baroque theater; and structuralist literary criticism. Not only do these texts pursue concepts unique to this period such as the “extra-linguistic,” but they also reveal a far more complex relationship between structuralism and Foucault than has typically been acknowledged. (shrink)

For philosophers familiar with the traditional interpretation of Simone de Beauvoir as a literary writer and philosophical follower of Jean-Paul Sartre, Beauvoir’s 1926-27 student diary is a revelation. Inviting an exploration of Beauvoir’s early philosophy foreclosed by the traditional interpretation, the student diary reveals Beauvoir’s early dedication to becoming a philosopher and her early formulation of philosophical problems and positions usually attributed to Sartre’s influence, such as the central problem of “the opposition of self and other,” years before she first (...) met Sartre in 1929.… Reading the student diary within a larger historical context, we discover that it reflects Beauvoir’s experience as one of the first generation of French women to gain full access to the academic world of philosophy, an experience that problematizes her identity as a woman. The diary shows Beauvoir struggling to accommodate herself to the male world of philosophy while striving to make philosophy her own. For Beauvoir this means following Henri Bergson in rejecting a philosophy that engages only the abstract intelligence. Defining her own unique literary philosophical methodology, Beauvoir vows to create a philosophy that is able, like literature, to encompass emotion as well as reason. This creative process begins in her diary where Beauvoir describes the concrete realities of her own lived experience. Searching for a sense of self in the “nothingness of everything human,” Beauvoir grapples with the existential problem of despair and the temptations of bad faith. Celebrating her newly found freedom and academic achievements, Beauvoir still struggles with the masochistic asceticism of her Catholic upbringing and longs for love, fearing a solitary future bereft of the comforts of woman’s traditional role. Beauvoir’s student diary thus allows us to trace the development of her early philosophy within the context of her life, while providing as well an intimate view of an academic world in transformation…. When the diary opens, with an entry dated August 6, 1926 Beauvoir is grappling with a central problem of her early life and philosophy, the conflicting moral obligations to self and others. Recounting a pilgrimage to Lourdes with an aunt, Beauvoir recalls feeling “ashamed” when faced with the physical suffering of the invalids: “[O]nly a life which was a complete gift of oneself, a total self-abnegation seemed possible to me.” But then, anticipating her critique of self-abnegation in The Second Sex, Beauvoir rejects it, describing the “absolute gift” as “moral suicide.” She vows, instead, to achieve an “equilibrium” between the duty to self and the duty to others. In the August 12, 1926 diary entry, Beauvoir frames the problem in metaphysical terms, referring to one part of herself “made to be given away,” and another “made to be kept and cultivated.” Later, in the November 5, 1926 entry, Beauvoir returns to the problem, writing that she split her “existence into two parts”: one part “for myself” and the other part “for others,” that is “the bonds that unite me with all beings.” Beauvoir’s 1926 description of existence “for myself” and “for others” lays the ground for her later philosophical work on the problem of the Other, as in her 1943 metaphysical novel, She Came to Stay, where the main female protagonist struggles to reclaim an existence for herself instead of existing solely for others, and in The Second Sex (1949) where Beauvoir argues that women are forced to assume themselves not as they exist for themselves but solely as they exist for men, thus as the absolute Other. During the course of the 1926 diary, Beauvoir’s efforts to reconcile these two “parts” of her existence are complicated by various influences, including her reading of Henri Bergson, the leading French philosopher of the early twentieth century. Beauvoir quotes at length in her 1926 diary from Bergson’s Essay on the immediate data of consciousness, which she describes, on August 16, as “a great intellectual rapture.” This diary entry may surprise those who remember the reference to Bergson in Beauvoir’s Memoirs: “I would not have been at all pleased if someone had prophesized that I would become a kind of Bergson; I didn’t want to speak with that abstract voice which, whenever I heard it, failed to move me” (MJFR 288). In this case as in so many others, Beauvoir’s diaries present a very different picture. In the August 16 diary entry, Beauvoir is critical of Bergson’s “impersonal” philosophical voice. But she lauds his methodological “appeal to intuition," which brings philosophy in contact with the « palpable reality » of life, as more characteristic of literature than philosophy. Beauvoir quotes Bergson’s celebration of the « bold novelist » able to tear aside « the cleverly woven web of our conventional self, » and reveal the « fundamental absurdity » of impressions underneath. « Nobody has better than he … defined the art of the modern novelist » Beauvoir writes, suggesting Bergson’s influence on Beauvoir’s developing literary philosophical method. Beauvoir writes, in the August 16 entry, that she is “thrilled” by Bergson’s “analysis of the two aspects of the self,” the authentic inner self and the external social self. For Bergson, unlike Beauvoir who is concerned with serving others as well as the self, our responsibility is wholly to the self and its freedom, which we discover only by breaking through the superficial “crust” of the social self. If his ethic of individual freedom complicated Beauvoir’s search for an ethical “equilibrium,” Bergson’s methodological turn to intuition and rejection of philosophy’s sole reliance on reason might have appealed to a young women trying to enter the male world of philosophy and make it her own…. (shrink)

Mikhail Bakhtin, and the writers associated with him, are of great importance to the traditions of literary theory and criticism. In particular, his concept of locating utterances in a "dialogical" situation has contributed immensely to theories of linguistics, language, and literature, and philosophy. In Bakhtin Thought , Simon Dentith provides a lucid and approachable introduction to the work of Bahktin and his circle, taking the reader helpfully through the many areas of their thought. Dentith indicates the points (...) of contention, difficulty, and importance. The book not only draws together together the often disparately collected writing of Bakhtin, but also that of Voloshinov and Medvedev, language theorists of commensurable importance as well. (shrink)

«Weizsäcker et les autres »Merleau-Ponty lecteur du GestaltkreisConçu comme un élément de l’essai « Percezione, corpo e movimento. L’estetica antropologia dell’espressione nell’inedito Le monde sensible et le monde de l’expression di Maurice Merleau-Ponty » (publié dans le n° 12 de Chiasmi international), le texte « Weizsäcker et les autres » examine la plus importante – et la moins reconnue – des dettes théoriques merleau-pontiennes. Cette source « occultée » recouvre le rôle important dans l’encadrement des questions de l’expression et du (...) mouvement dans la philosophie merleau-pontienne. En approfondissant les consonances théoriques entre certains chapitres centraux de la Phénoménologie de la perception, Le monde sensible et le monde de l’expression et Der Gestaltkreis de Viktor von Weizsäcker, nous avancerons l’hypothèse d’une connaissance approfondie de la part de Merleau-Ponty du texte cardinal de l’anthropologie médicale des années quarante.“Weizsäcker et les autres”Merleau-Ponty reads the GestaltkreisConceived as a part of the essay “Percezione, corpo e movimento. L’estetica antropologia dell’espressione nell’inedito Le monde sensible et le monde de l’expression di Maurice Merleau-Ponty” (published in Chiasmi International, no. 12), the text of “Weizsäcker and the Others” examines the most important – least recognized – of Merleau-Ponty’s theoretical debts. This “concealed” source covers Weizsäcker’s important role in the framing of questions of expression and movement in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy. By treating in depth the theoretical resonances between certain central chapters of The Phenomenology of Perception, Le monde sensible et le monde de l’expression (The Sensible World and the World of Expression), and Viktor von Weizsäcker’s Der Gestaltkreis, we will advance the hypothesis that Merleau-Ponty had a profound knowledge of the cardinal text of medical anthropology of the 1940s. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:What Is Deviated Transcendency? Woolf's The Waves as a Textbook CaseSimon De Keukelaere (bio)The Waves, more than any of Virginia Woolf's other novels, conveys the complexities of human experience.—Kate FlintHumankind—according to mimetic theory—is not (as Marx thought) homo economicus but rather homo religiosus. Mensonge Romantique et Vérité Romanesque, Girard's first essay (1961), evocatively opens with a saying by Max Scheler: "L'homme possède ou un Dieu ou une idole" (Man (...) has either a God or an idol). If we may believe Girard, the Enlightenment profoundly misunderstood human beings because it naively assumed that doing away with "ancient superstitions" would fully liberate them: "denial of God does not eliminate transcendency but diverts it from the au-delà to the endeçà " (Girard 1965, 59).What has all this to do with Virginia Woolf's secular art? René Girard's "transcendance déviée," the diverted or deviated transcendency––which we may also want to term idolatry––is beautifully and transparently depicted in one of Woolf's most enigmatic and experimental novels. In The Waves, the portrayal of human desire as mimetic, imitated, is so crystal clear that––once noticed—it can hardly be overlooked any longer. Perhaps even more interesting for mimetic theory is the fact that Woolf (just as Proust did before her) brings into play the language of the sacred when rendering the mimetic nature of human longing. Neither of these two aspects of The Waves (the obsessively mimetic nature of desire and the use of the religious metaphor) have been fully unraveled by Woolf's critics.The purpose of this article is to make obvious the value of Virginia Woolf's (poetic) language for mimetic scholars and to show how deviated transcendency can be made visible and (above all) intelligible through great secular literature. The study of literature is vital to the humanities, not for some frivolous, outdated reasons, but because great literature can, sometimes [End Page 195] more effectively than many erudite studies, convey the complexities of human experience.It would no doubt be unjustifiable to foist Girard's mimetic thesis on Woolf's novel without clear support from the text, but I believe The Waves provides such backing. The outline of the present article is as follows. I first argue that the characters in Woolf's novel really are interdividuals rather than individuals, since mimetic desire plays an important role in them. I subsequently focus on a typically metaphysical illusion that goes along with mimetic desire, that is, the apparent self-sufficiency or divine autonomy of the Other. Then I show how the religious metaphor is consistently linked with the first-mentioned issue and that a form of distorted mysticism is to be recognized throughout the novel. Finally I examine how in The Waves deviated transcendency is depicted as a road toward Death in exactly the same way as Girard does in his Mensonge Romantique et Vérité Romanesque (1961).The Interdividual and Her Mimetic DesireMimetic theory is deeply involved with the problem of selfhood, the paradoxical nature of subjectivity. According to René Girard we are not individuals but interdividuals. The ambiguous nature of the Self is a recurrent theme in Woolf's novels too, and especially in The Waves, it seems. As Lisa Marie Lucenti remarks: "Many critics seem to agree that subjectivity, for Woolf, is no simple matter, but they disagree on the significance, expression and forms of its intricacies. The most productive theories for reading Woolf are those which allow for a large measure of variation and ambiguity both between and within individual subjects" (1998, 34). The problematic nature of the Self challenges the critic, since the very concept of character is turned into a conundrum, rather than a useful instrument with which to analyze the novel. To speak of separated characters, of individuals (in-divisus) with regard to The Waves is particularly difficult. So, for example, at the end of the novel Bernard (one of the six "voices" or "characters" whose lives are recounted) states: "I am many people; I do not altogether know who I am—Jinny, Susan, Neville, Rhoda or Louis; or how to distinguish my life from theirs... (shrink)

This study is the first to examine the prosodic structure of everyday sung language and its relevance for language acquisition. Using extensive authentic recordings in German, Russian and French, the author demonstrates how language and music interact with each other and how singing promotes small children s acquisition of language. The book provides far-reaching insights into the interfaces of language and music, and is thus of interdisciplinary relevance. In addition, it offers entry-points into (...) class='Hi'>language acquisition research, speech therapy and language typology. Editorial board Dr. habil.Kai Alter Prof. Dr. Thomas Pechmann Prof. em. Dr. Anita Steube ". (shrink)

Creative accounting, which generally involves the preparation of financial statements with the intention of misleading readers of those statements, is prima facie a form oflying, as defined by Bok.1 This paper starts by defining and illustrating creative accounting. It examines and rejects the arguments for considering creative accounting, in spite of its deceptive intent, as not being a form of lying. It then examines the ethical issues raised by creative accounting, in the light of the literature on the ethics (...) of lying. This literature includes the evaluation of various excuses and justifications for lying, and these are examined here in relation to creative accounting. It is concluded that even in circumstances in which creative accounting would arguably serve a worthy purpose, that purpose would be at least as well served by honest communication. (shrink)

One implication of Godel’s Proof is that, as Barry Barnes has observed, “For people to operate...rationally they need to have internalized some non-rational commitment to rationality”. In which case “The customary Enlightenment formula, according to which the process of demagification of the world leads necessarily from mythos to logos, seems . . .” Gadamer suggests, “. . . to be a modern prejudice”, or myth. Yet some myths are more useful than others, and therefore it may be on pragmatic grounds (...) that, following Nietzsche’s characterization of “. . . logic and the categories of reason as means to . . . useful falsification . . .” we may wish to resist the abandonment of reason that many take to be the corollary of its deconstruction. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 10.2 (2000) 175-188 [Access article in PDF] Scope Note 38 Bioethics Resources on the Web * Once described as an "enormous used book store with volumes stacked on shelves and tables and overflowing onto the floor" (Pool, Robert. 1994. Turning an Info-Glut into a Library. Science 266 (7 October): 20-22, p. 20), Internet resources now receive numerous levels of organization, from basic directory listings (...) to elaborate "links" (cross-references to other Internet documents) that flash and glow in the dark. In many ways, the Internet functions as a direct extension of the traditional library. Following linked references across various sites is an electronic version of browsing library stacks, and the serendipitous discoveries made while "surfing the Net" recall the wonders of physically going "book-to-book." Although many of the Internet's best aspects augment library strengths by eliminating physical distance from sources, Net resources pose unique problems for researchers. It is not always clear who is responsible for the content of Web documents, when the document was produced, or how often (if ever) it is updated. Internet resource tools, then, must enable researchers to identify appropriate resources and to evaluate what they find when they get there. Web Research as Taking "Snapshots" Given the Internet's visual nature and fluid content, the process of conducting research on the Web has been likened to taking an informal picture of information on a specific date at a particular time. This metaphor also conveys the "zoom-in" aspect of searching through Web pages by going from general to specific categories. In the first section of this Scope Note, National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature (NRCBL) staff present a snapshot of bioethics resources taken during the spring months of 2000. Entries are divided into the categories of directories, electronic journals, full-text documents, news/current awareness, and teaching resources. In the two subsequent sections, this series of categories is repeated for entries on a specific topic within bioethics-genetics-and again for general search and evaluation tools. Where a Web site may contain pages applicable [End Page 175] to more than one category, multiple entries are made for that site with appropriate information for each category.Much as telecommunication advances have strengthened the relationship of patients and providers as partners, the dynamic nature of the Internet acknowledges that the researcher functions as a librarian whenever accessing the Web. It is our hope that BIOETHICSLINE and the other NRCBL databases not only will enable researchers to search the Web more efficiently, but also will help them to evaluate what they find when they get there. Bioethicsline on the Web: An International Plan in Progress Once only available through libraries, the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), the funding agency for the ongoing development of the BIOETHICS LINE® database from the Kennedy Institute, has provided free Web access to that database of 63,000 citations since September 1998 through Internet Grateful Med. Plans are now underway to eliminate such specialty databases and incorporate all citations into PubMed (for journal articles) or LOCATORplus (for book-like materials and chapters in books). Both of these databases are likewise available at no cost on the Web. In the transition to PubMed and LOCATORplus some features of BIOETHICSLINE that presently are available may be lost. Researchers are encouraged to contact the National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature with search requests or for search strategy assistance with either the current or the future system (medethx@georgetown.edu).The inclusion of bioethics citations in PubMed and LOCATORplus will have several advantages. First, unique keywords from the Bioethics Thesaurus will be considered for inclusion in Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), the indexing vocabulary for PubMed and LOCATORplus, thereby enhancing retrieval of relevant clinical literature by offering more precise terminology covering ethical issues. Second, it will be easier to identify foreign-language materials, which are not currently included in the scope of BIOETHICSLINE. Third, the updating schedule will become more frequent. On the other hand, there may be some loss of searching precision because certain specialized features... (shrink)

Clinician scientists have gained institutional support in the era of translational research, as the key solution to closing the ‘translational gap’ between biomedical research and medical practice. However, clinician scientists remain an ‘endangered species’ in search of a secure niche, while new grants and training programs attempt to counteract their measurable decline in numbers over the past decades. Our study asks how an occupational space for clinician scientists is currently situated between the politics of translation, professional dynamics, and the specialization (...) of academic disciplines. We interviewed clinician scientists, their adjacent professions—clinicians and biomedical researchers—, and contrast their views with expectations from the discourse on clinician scientists in the biomedical and policy literature. We identify professionalizable work and tasks that relate to, first, being able to speak the two languages of both clinic and research, second, translating patients’ needs and clinical experience for further research, and third, counteracting the trends towards specialization by providing an inclusive point of view. We find that clinician scientists are overburdened with fulfilling a hybrid role of simultaneously being clinicians and scientists. Based on these findings, we suggest a path for the future professional development of clinician scientists towards the role of a translator. (shrink)

The undisputed master of stylistic criticism, Leo Spitzer combined phenomenal learning in historical and comparative linguistics with brilliant and original critical insight. He was born in Vienna in 1887. He studied Romance Philology at the Universities of Vienna and Paris and then taught at Vienna, Bonn, Marburg and Cologne. After escaping from Germany in 1933, he taught briefly at Istanbul and then at The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He died in 1960. He was the author of over 800 books, (...) articles, reviews and notes on the language and literatures of France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Romania, Germany, England and America from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century. This translation brings together for the first time in any language all of Spitzer's work on the literature of seventeenth-century France, including 'Racine's classical piano' and 'Saint-Simon's portrait of Louis XIV'. Each of the essays demonstrates in practical rather than theoretical terms the essential unity of literary and linguistic study. David Bellos's introduction sets Spitzer's method of textual and stylistic interpretation in its historical context and sketches out the career of this supremely knowledgeable reader for whom knowledge was less important than understanding. (shrink)

** Named a Best Book of 2007 by Ready Steady Book, an independent book review website, working in association with The Book Depository, which is devoted to reviewing the best books in literary fiction, poetry, history and philosophy. "An invaluable guide to new literary territory, Taylor is equally good in discussing writers whom the reader already knows." -- Raphael Rubenstein, Rain Taxi "The paths that John Taylor invites us to walk in this book are inviting ones: fifty-five luminous essays devoted (...) to the broad avenues and the seductive byways of contemporary writing in France. John Taylor is opinionated but his opinions are rigorously argued ones. He strikes a canny and productive balance among a variety of competing concerns: the will to instruct his readers, the desire to share with them some very real pleasures, the imperative to interpret critically, and so forth. What emerges here is the image of a rare reader, one who is always willing to engage literature on its own terms, and that of a literature that is mobile, ambitious, provocative and deeply invested in the process of becoming. -- Warren Motte, Review of Contemporary Fiction "In this great introduction to some 50 French writers and poets little known outside of France, Taylor (The Presence of Things Past; The World As It Is), winner of the Three Oaks Prize for Fiction, invites his readers on an interesting journey."--Library Journal "Here it is under one cover: a deeply informed, delightful, and provocative stroll' through the literature of postwar France. From the chroniques of Cingria to the mythologies of Barthes, John Taylor introduces us to the prose and poetry of dozens of French authors, many of them regrettably never translated into English. Taylor is a skillful and witty guide, able to locate a writer between the traditions of Catullus and Pavese or to identify a style borrowing equally from Hlderlin and Hemingway. Working across every genre from autobiography to poetry to fiction to travelogue to the essay, these French authors, well known and obscure, have plumbed the quintessential French problem' of subjectivity. Tired of the culture wars? The language-lyric debate? The post-game analysis of post-structuralism? I suggest you dive into any one of John Taylor's Paths' for a reminder of the astonishing breadth and depth and complexity of which literature is capable."--Erica Funkhouser, author, Pursuit "Here we have vast erudition revealed in graceful, arresting sentences, writing that provides confidence and pleasure. John Taylor's writing strongly evokes Henry James' writing about French literature in his own day. Like James, Taylor is both generous and astute, never relinquishing admiration for the intricate process of analysis, analysis that he does so penetratingly and eloquently. However brilliant Taylor's observations, behind them rests a deep esteem for the writer, for his or her work, and for the tradition from which it comes. This is critical writing that is satisfying at every single level."--Richard Goodman, author, French Dirt: The Story of a Garden in the South of France "As they stroll through forgotten quartiers of Paris, wander in memory through the fields of a Norman childhood, reflect on a poem's resemblance to the salt marshes of the Breton coast, mourn the death of a beloved young wife, or look for answers in questions to which the only answers are more questions--France's most celebrated and, in some cases, still uncelebrated contemporary writers are exquisitely captured by John Taylor in a prose both limpid and lapidary and through a host of finely wrought essays, each a small jewel of critical insight, poetic sensitivity, and meticulous interpretation. Like a message in a bottle cast up on the shore, this work offers the English-speaking reader an original and poetic way to understand, appreciate, and love French. (shrink)

The 'death of man', the 'end of history' and even philosophy are strong and troubling currents running through contemporary debates. Yet since Nietzsche's heralding of the 'death of god', philosophy has been unable to explain the question of finitude. Very Little...Almost Nothing goes to the heart of this problem through an exploration of Blanchot's theory of literature, Stanley Cavell's interpretations of romanticism and the importance of death in the work of Samuel Beckett. Simon Critchley links these themes to (...) the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas to present a powerful new picture of how we must approach the importance of death in philosophy. A compelling reading of the convergence of literature and philosophy, Very Little...Almost Nothing opens up new ways of understanding finitude, modernity and the nature of the imagination. (shrink)

Although the great French novelists of the last two centuries are widely read in America, there is a widespread notion that little of importance has happened in French literature since the heyday of Sartre, Camus, and the nouveau roman. Curious American readers seeking new, up-to-date information and analyses will find in Paths to Contemporary French Literature a stimulating and much-needed guide to the major currents of one of the worldas great literatures. This critical panorama of (...) contemporary French literature introduces English-language readers to over fifty important writers and poets. Emphasizing authors who are admired by their peers, John Taylor offers a compelling insideras view. (shrink)

Although the great French novelists of the last two centuries are widely read in America, there is a widespread notion that little of importance has happened in the French literature since the heyday of Sartre, Camus, and the nouveau roman. Some might argue that even well-read Americans are ignorant about what is happening in European literature generally. Certainly, there has never been so few translations of foreign books in the United States, or so little coverage of (...) foreign writers. Curious American readers need new, up-to-date information and analyses about what is happening elsewhere. Paths to Contemporary French Literature is a stimulating and much-needed guide to the major currents of one of the world's great literatures. This critical panorama of contemporary French literature introduces English-language readers to over fifty important writers and poets, many of whom are still little known outside of France. Emphasizing authors who are admired by their peers, John Taylor offers a compelling insider's view. Their pioneering essays included in this book offer incisive analyses of the ideas motivating current writing and delve into a writer's or poet's entire output. Although some names may be familiar, the reader obtains fresh reappraisals of their seminal work. Especially noteworthy, however, are Taylor's lively introductions to many other key writers who either have not yet crossed the English Channel, let alone the Atlantic. Combating the notion that French literature is overtly intellectual, inaccessible, or interested only in formal experimentation, Taylor shows that many French writers are instead acutely inquisitive about the outside world, shrewd observers of reality, even very funny. Although not conceived as a "reference book," the volume possess some qualities of a reference work: a good bibliography, reliable dates and biographical facts. (shrink)

The beneficial effects of physical exercise on physical health and cognitive functioning have been repeatedly shown. However, evidence of its effect on psychosocial functioning in healthy adults is still scarce or inconclusive. One limitation of many studies examining this link is their reliance on correlational approaches or specific subpopulations, such as clinical populations. The present study investigated the effects of a physical exercise intervention on key factors of psychosocial functioning, specifically well-being, stress, loneliness, and future time perspective. We used data (...) from healthy, previously sedentary older adults who participated in a 6-month at-home intervention, either engaging in aerobic exercise or as part of a control group who participated in foreign language-learning or reading of selected native-language literature. Before and after the intervention, comprehensive cardiovascular pulmonary testing and a psychosocial questionnaire were administered. The exercise group showed significantly increased fitness compared to the control group. Contrary to expectations, however, we did not find evidence for a beneficial effect of this fitness improvement on any of the four domains of psychosocial functioning we assessed. This may be due to pronounced stability of such psychological traits in older age, especially in older adults who show high levels of well-being initially. Alternatively, it may be that the well-documented beneficial effects of physical exercise on brain structure and function, as well as cognition differ markedly from beneficial effects on psychosocial functioning. While aerobic exercise may be the driving factor for the former, positive effects on the latter may only be invoked by other aspects of exercise, for example, experiences of mastery or a feeling of community. (shrink)

Résumé L’ autrice analyse l’ influence de Richard Wright sur la philosophie féministe de Simone de Beauvoir. Après avoir observé le virage théorique et philosophique que représente Le Deuxième Sexe dans la pensée de Beauvoir, elle en interroge les influences possibles. C’ est chez Richard Wright que l’ autrice trouve les racines de la pensée beauvoirienne de l’ oppression des femmes, de l’ engagement de l’ écrivaine et du féminisme radical selon lequel les femmes doivent se constituer en groupe à (...) part entière pour se libérer. (shrink)

The paper defends a view of structural realism similar to that of French and Ladyman, although it differs from theirs in an important respect: I do not take indistinguishabiity of particles in quantum mechanics to have the significance they think it has. It also differs from Cao's view of structural realism, criticized in my "Critical Notice: Cao's `The Conceptual Development of 20th Century Field Theories".

Within the community of inquiry literature, the absence of the notion of genuine doubt is notable in spite of its pragmatic roots in the philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce, for whom the notion was pivotal. We argue for the need to correct this oversight due to the educational significance of genuine doubt—a theoretical and experiential understanding of which can offer insight into the interrelated concepts of wonder, fallibilism, inquiry and prejudice. In order to detail these connections, we reinvigorate the (...) ideas of Peirce by borrowing the language and concepts of Albert Camus, at the same time demonstrating their unlikely congruence. In particular, we argue for the necessity of genuine doubt along with the need for the presence of a diversity of prejudices as a starting point for genuine inquiry. (shrink)

Advancements and deployments of AI-based systems, especially Deep Learning-driven generative language models, have accomplished impressive results over the past few years. Nevertheless, these remarkable achievements are intertwined with a related fear that such technologies might lead to a general relinquishing of our lives’s control to AIs. This concern, which also motivates the increasing interest in the eXplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) research field, is mostly caused by the opacity of the output of deep learning systems and the way that it (...) is generated, which is largely obscure to laypeople. A dialectical interaction with such systems may enhance the users’ understanding and build a more robust trust towards AI. Commonly employed as specific formalisms for modelling intra-agent communications, dialogue games prove to be useful tools to rely upon when dealing with user’s explanation needs. The literature already offers some dialectical protocols that expressly handle explanations and their delivery. This paper fully formalises the novel Explanation–Question–Response (EQR) dialogue and its properties, whose main purpose is to provide satisfactory information (i.e., justified according to argumentative semantics) whilst ensuring a simplified protocol, in comparison with other existing approaches, for humans and artificial agents. (shrink)

Senshu University has hosted many international conferences on medieval English literature - primarily on Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langland - as well as in the related fields of Old Germanic, medieval French and Renaissance Italian literature. These international collaborations inform and contribute to the present volume, which addresses the heritage bequeathed to medieval English language and literature by the classical world.<BR> This volume explores the development of medieval English literature in light of contact with (...) Germanic and Old Norse cultures, on the one hand, and Romance languages, on the other. The book includes a comparative study of <I>Beowulf in the Germanic context, discusses aspects of <I>Piers Plowman and its tradition, and offers philological approaches to Chaucer (especially his <I>Troilus and Criseyde). The articles assembled here collectively suggest how the torches of classical learning were carried from continental Europe to illuminate the pages of medieval English literature. (shrink)

In Ethics–Politics–Subjectivity, Simon Critchley takes up three questions at the centre of contemporary theoretical debate: What is ethical experience? What can be said of the subject who has this experience? What, if any, is the relation of ethical experience to politics? Through spirited confrontations with major thinkers, such as Lacan, Nancy, Rorty, and, in particular, Levinas and Derrida, Critchley finds answers in a nuanced “ethics of finitude” and defends the political possibilities of deconstruction. Democracy, economics, friendship, and technology are (...) all considered anew in Critchley’s bold excursions on the meaning and value of recent French philosophy. (shrink)

Contents: "Analysis of Claude Bernard's Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine," "Two Unpublished Chapters from She Came to Stay," "Pyrrhus and Cineas," "A Review of The Phenomenology of Perception by Maurice Merleau-Ponty," "Moral Idealism and Political Realism," "Existentialism and Popular Wisdom," "Jean-Paul Sartre," "An Eye for an Eye," "Literature and Metaphysics," "Introduction to an Ethics of Ambiguity," "An Existentialist Looks at Americans," and "What is Existentialism?".

There is a growing body of literature using the tools of syntactic models of word formation (e.g. Distributed Morphology) to provide analyses of language mixing phenomena, in particular word internal mixing. In fact, the very phenomenon of word internal mixing directly supports a syntactic approach to word formation, according to which words are structurally complex. On the basis of this view, the basic units of word formation involve roots that combine with functional elements in the syntax. The combination (...) of roots with functional elements creates words. This paper is in line with this work and investigates further the question of how word formation operates in cases of language mixing and what exactly is being mixed in mixing, i.e. words vs. roots. After reviewing literature on word internal mixing, I will discuss compound formation in language contact situations, the question being of how compounding in mixing can inform both theories of mixing and theories of word-hood. Compounding is important to answer the question of what exactly is being mixed in mixing, as language differ with respect to the units they employ for compound formation, i.e. words vs. roots and to the availability of linking elements to form compounds. Moreover, compounding is important to understand the role the two languages play in mixing, as languages differ with respect to head-ness (left or right) of their compounds. The data to be discussed will be a mixture of materials that have already been published in the literature and newly collected data and involve several mixing varieties, namely Greek-English, Greek-German, Greek-Turkish, Turkish-Norwegian, Turkish-Dutch and French-Dutch. (shrink)

This paper presents a thematic review of the anti-plagiarism instruction of content specialists as reported in a range of articles published in the decade of 2014–2023. A total of 28 articles were identified through systematic searching and a ChatGPT-assisted selection process based on a set of inclusion criteria. Specifically, we aimed to include those articles that contain sufficient details of the instructional procedure as well as an evidence-based report of the effectiveness of the pedagogical intervention. A coding scheme of two (...) dimensions (“Rationales for the pedagogical interventions” and “Characteristics of the pedagogical interventions”) provided a framework for our analysis of the focal literature. By focusing on content teachers’, as opposed to language teachers’, pedagogical practices in addressing the issue of plagiarism in varied geographical and institutional contexts, this review study provides insights for both content and language specialists to draw upon and will serve to raise awareness for the value of collaboration between content and language teachers in handling academic literacy issues such as plagiarism. (shrink)

Cambridge professor Simon Blackburn is best known to the general public as the author of several books of popular philosophy such as  ink, Being Good andTruth: a Guide for the Perplexed. Academic philosophers also know him as the author of one of the most important books of contemporary moral philosophy, Ruling Passions, and as a former editor of the leading journal Mind.

This paper examines the question of whether Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT possess minds, focusing specifically on whether they have a genuine folk psychology encompassing beliefs, desires, and intentions. We approach this question by investigating two key aspects: internal representations and dispositions to act. First, we survey various philosophical theories of representation, including informational, causal, structural, and teleosemantic accounts, arguing that LLMs satisfy key conditions proposed by each. We draw on recent interpretability research in machine learning to support (...) these claims. Second, we explore whether LLMs exhibit robust dispositions to perform actions, a necessary component of folk psychology. We consider two prominent philosophical traditions, interpretationism and representationalism, to assess LLM action dispositions. While we find evidence suggesting LLMs may satisfy some criteria for having a mind, particularly in game-theoretic environments, we conclude that the data remains inconclusive. Additionally, we reply to several skeptical challenges to LLM folk psychology, including issues of sensory grounding, the "stochastic parrots" argument, and concerns about memorization. Our paper has three main upshots. First, LLMs do have robust internal representations. Second, there is an open question to answer about whether LLMs have robust action dispositions. Third, existing skeptical challenges to LLM representation do not survive philosophical scrutiny. (shrink)

Perception, corps et mouvement. L’esthétique anthropologique del’expression dans l’inédit Le monde sensible et le monde de l’expression de Maurice Merleau-PontyL’article se consacre à une analyse ponctuelle du manuscrit inédit de Merleau-Ponty sur Le monde sensible et le monde de l’expression, aujourd’hui conservé à la Bibliothèque Nationale de France, et qui correspond au cours du philosophe au Collège de France durant l’année académique 1952-1953. L’analyse exclusive de l’inédit suit des perspectives bien précises : il s’agit de reconstruire, à partir d’une définition (...) merleau-pontienne originale de l’espace culturel comme espace anthropologique, ce qui pourrait ressembler à une nouvelle esthétique de l’expression d’origine anthropologique ; suivant le fil des analyses de La structure du comportement et de la Phénoménologie de la perception – non sans un remarquable sens critique vis-à-vis de ces textes des années quarante – cette analyse reconsidère la notion d’expression à la lumière de celle de mouvement. Les recherches merleau-pontiennes des années cinquante donc, – resquecontemporaines de La prose du monde et qui partagent avec celle-ci l’idée d’une origine saussurienne de la diacriticité des signes linguistiques – donnent naissance, selon nous, à une véritable esthétique du mouvement expressif, solidement fondée sur une philosophie de la biologie et sur une anthropologie philosophique. Au cours de l’article, de façon contextuelle et spontanée, on relie, de manière hypothétique, la pensée merleau-pontienne de ces années-là et celle de certains « auteurs fondamentaux » que Merleau-Ponty cite explicitement ou dont il reproduit la dynamique théorique : Helmuth Plessner, Aldolf Portmann, Jakob Von Uexküll, Friedrik J.J. Buytendijk, et en particulier – en raison de leur parenté philosophique évidente – Vicktor Von Weizsäcker, celui du Der Gestaltkreis et des écrits autobiographiques Anonyma.Perception, Body, and Movement. The Anthropological Aesthetics of Expression in Merleau-Ponty’s UnpublishedThe Sensible World and the World of ExpressionThe article is devoted to a point by point analysis of Merleau-Ponty’s unpublished manuscript on The Sensible World and the World of Expression, which is currently found in Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and which corresponds to the course he taught at the Collège de France in the academic year 1952-53. The analysis, exclusively of this unpublished course notes, follows some very precise directions. What is at issue is to reconstruct, on the basis of a definition, which is original with Merleau-Ponty, of cultural space as anthropological space; this definition could resemble a new aesthetic of expression which would have an anthropological origin. Then following the thread of analyses found in The Structure of Behavior and the Phenomenology of Perception – not without a noticeable critical stance in relation to these texts from the 1940s – my analysis considers the notion of expression in light of that movement. Merleau-Ponty investigations during the 1950s therefore – nearly contemporaneous with The Prose of the World and which share with it the idea of a Saussurean origin of the diacriticity of linguistic signs – give birth, in my view, to a genuine aesthetics of expressive movement, solidly grounded on a philosophy of biology and on a philosophical anthropology. Over the course of the article, in a way contextual and spontaneous, we reread, in a hypothetical way, Merleau-Ponty’s thought during this time period, and the thought of “fundamental writers” who Merleau-Ponty had cited explicitly or whose theoretical dynamism he had reproduced: Helmuth Plessner, Aldolf Portmann, Jakob Von Uexküll, Friedrik J.J. Buytendijk, and, in particular – because they are clearly related philosophically – Vicktor Von Weizsäcker, his Der Gestaltkreis and his autobiographical writings called Anonyma. (shrink)

Les statuts de métiers du XIIIe siècle, la grande Ordonnance de Jean le Bon (1350) et le statut des lingères (1485) jalonnent ce parcours de l'histoire des Parisiennes qui gagnent leur vie dans l'atelier et la boutique à l'époque médiévale. Le travail féminin est reconnu, il doit obéir aux mêmes règles que le travail masculin. Il s'exerce dans quelques métiers uniquement féminins, et dans des métiers où hommes et femmes travaillent ensemble. La recherche ne permet pas encore de dire si, (...) au cours de ces trois siècles, cet espace de liberté par le travail pour les femmes, s'est consolidé, agrandi ou s'il s'est restreint. (shrink)