One of the distinguishing features of mathematics is the exceptional level of consensus among mathematicians. However, an analysis of what mathematicians agree on, how they achieve this agreement, and the relevant historical conditions is lacking. This paper is a programmatic intervention providing a preliminary analysis and outlining a research program in this direction.First, I review the process of ‘negotiation’ that yields agreement about the validity of proofs. This process most often does generate consensus, however, it may give rise to another (...) kind of disagreement: whether the original and new proof are effectively the same, leading to potential disagreement about the validity of the original proof.Second, I historicize the phenomenon of consensus. I show that in earlier European mathematics and other mathematical cultures, consensus about the validity of arguments was substantially weaker or conceived differently than it is today. This means that contemporary consensus about the validity of mathematical proofs should be explained by historical changes in mathematical practice.Finally, I conjecture what brought about the contemporary form of mathematical consensus. Since a sharp rise in consensus occurs around the turn of the 20th century, it makes sense to explain this consensus by the concurrent formalization of mathematics. However, this explanation has a major flaw: it explains a really existing phenomenon (consensus) by something that hardly ever happens (writing proofs in formal languages). I will therefore explain the ways in which formalization does enter mathematical practice so as to account for contemporary forms of mathematical consensus. (shrink)

This paper studies Paul Cohen’s philosophy of mathematics and mathematical practice as expressed in his writing on set-theoretic consistency proofs using his method of forcing. Since Cohen did not consider himself a philosopher and was somewhat reluctant about philosophy, the analysis uses semiotic and literary textual methodologies rather than mainstream philosophical ones. Specifically, I follow some ideas of Lévi-Strauss’s structural semiotics and some literary narratological methodologies. I show how Cohen’s reflections and rhetoric attempt to bridge what he experiences as an (...) uncomfortable tension between reality and the formal by means of his notion of intuition. (shrink)

Self-regulation refers to the self's ability to control its own thoughts, emotions, and actions. Through self-regulation, we consciously control how much we eat, whether we give in to impulse, task performance, obsessive thoughts, and even the extent to which we allow ourselves recognition of our emotions. This work provides a synthesis and overview of recent and long-standing research findings of what is known of the successes and failures of self-regulation. People the world over suffer from the inability to control their (...) finances, their weight, their emotions, their craving for drugs, their sexual impulses, and more. The United States in particular is regarded by some observers as a society addicted to addiction. Therapy and support groups have proliferated not only for alcoholics and drug abusers but for all kinds of impulse control, from gambling to eating chocolate. Common to all of these disorders is a failure of self-regulation, otherwise known as "self-control." The consequences of these self-control problems go beyond individuals to affect family members and society at large. In Losing Control, the authors provide a single reference source with comprehensive information on general patterns of self-regulation failure across contexts, research findings on specific self-control disorders, and commentary on the clinical and social aspects of self-regulation failure. Self-control is discussed in relation to what the "self" is, and the cognitive, motivational, and emotional factors that impinge on one's ability to control one's "self." Discusses the importance of the concept of self-regulation to general issues of autonomy and identity Encompasses self-control of thoughts, feelings, and actions Contains a special section on the control of impulses and appetites First book to integrate recent research into a broad overview of the area. (shrink)

This paper reconstructs the function argument of Aristotle’s Eudemian Ethics 2.1. The argument seeks to define happiness through the method of division; shows that the highest good is better than all four of the goods of the soul, not only two, as commentators have thought; and unlike the Nicomachean argument, makes the highest good definitionally independent of the human function.

Competitive negotiators frequently use tactics which others view as "unethical", in that these tactics either violate standards of truth telling or violate the perceived rules of negotiation. This paper sought to determine how business students viewed a number of marginally ethical negotiating tactics, and to determine the underlying factor structure of these tactics. The factor analysis of these tactics revealed five clear factors which were highly similar across the two samples, and which parallel (to a moderate degree) categories of tactics (...) proposed by earlier theory. Data from one sample also permitted comparisons of the appropriateness of certain tactics across gender, nationality, ethnic origin and perception of one's negotiating style. (shrink)

First Published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Islamic building codes require mosques to face Mecca. The further Islam spreads, the more apt are believers to fall into a quandary. X faces Y only when the front of X is closer to Y than any other side of X. So the front of the mosque should be oriented along a shortest path to Mecca. Which way is that? Does the path to Mecca tunnel through the earth? Or does the path follow the surface of the earth?

Sooner or later, every paradox is accused of equivocation. Usually sooner. For equivocation is a simple, well understood fallacy. People first try to explain a mystery in terms of what is familiar. If postulating a simple ambiguity fails, more subtle ambiguities will be postulated. Those who persist with this diagnosis elaborate the charge of equivocation into an esoteric form.

This paper explores the semiotic status of algebraic variables. To do that we build on a structuralist and post-structuralist train of thought going from Mauss and L vi-Strauss to Baudrillard and Derrida. We import these authors' semiotic thinking from the register of indigenous concepts (such as mana), and apply it to the register of algebra via a concrete case study of generating functions. The purpose of this experiment is to provide a philosophical language that can explore the openness of mathematical (...) signs to reinterpretation, and bridge some barriers between philosophy of mathematics and critical approaches to knowledge. (shrink)

We introduce a hitherto overlooked phenomenon in the cognitive and psycholinguistic study of metaphors that we termed imposed metaphoricity. We propose that a metaphorical reading can be imposed on a given expression regardless of its semantic content. We suggest that there is a class of constructions that impose metaphorical interpretation. We present findings from three experiments and from corpus-based analyses that support our proposal. Experiments 1–2 compared interpretations of expressions that can have both a literal and a metaphorical meaning when (...) embedded in a standard metaphorical form and in a form that imposes metaphoricity. In Experiment 3 we examine reaction time to such forms in an attempt to identify interference of form with early metaphorical processing. Two corpus-based analyses characterize the use of these two metaphorical constructions in natural language. We discuss the independence of metaphoricity from semantics, as demonstrated by forms that impose metaphorical interpretations. (shrink)

Editor's Preface Roy Wood Sellars's contributions to philosophy have been epochal. The originator and persistent elaborator of critical realism, ...

SummaryThis article surveys recent scholarship on the early history of British geology. It finds that many of the developments called for a decade ago by Dr Eyles and Dr Rappaport have not yet been realized. However, there has been progress in the broader understanding of geological ideas in their historical context, and a start has been made on the social history of the science. Some suggestions are offered as to a field of problems for the future, and a selective bibliography (...) of secondary materials, thematically arranged, is appended. (shrink)

In this paper, Roy attempts to develop a semiprescriptive analysis for the natural sciences by examining more closely a skill that many feminist scientists have been reported to possess. Feminist scientists have often been lauded for their ability to “ask different questions.” Drawing from standpoint theory, strong objectivity, situated knowledges, agential realism, and the methodology of the oppressed, the author suggests that this skill can be articulated further into the feminist practice of research agenda choice. Roy illustrates the usefulness of (...) developing such a practice by addressing her own dilemma of conducting in vitro research in a reproductive biology lab. (shrink)

This article explores the hermeneutical force and flexibility of the 9/11 idiom, by identifying some ways in which it served as an interpretative framework for the attacks of 26 November 2008 in Mumbai. The idiom’s transposition to Mumbai represented, in part, a contest over American rhetorical capital. Re-territorialized as ‘India’s 9/11’, the idiom has re-signified a range of local interests, aspirations, and contests over urban space and identity in Mumbai. In this context, I examine two symmetrical developments within the civic (...) spaces of the city in the immediate aftermath. The first involves the emergence of an upwardly mobile middle class and elite as it took the form of collective survivor-spectator, appearing as a coherent, highly visible and effective public agent. The second involves an apparent suspension of competing narratives of urban terror, which in the past have been enacted through demotic violence in the form of the communal riot. The article suggests that these developments in Mumbai must be read through the city’s incorporation into an emergent narrative of ‘global’ or so-called ‘9/11-type’ terror. In the case of 26/11, the terrorist attacks were possibly understood as the exercise of ideological indifference to identity, as levelling the value and distinction of moral communities to the abject experience of sheer bodily life. (shrink)

At first blush, free will seems obvious. Every day, people have the experience of making decisions, of choosing what to do. Planning a meeting or date, steering a car, ordering from a menu, accepting or declining an offer, playing a game, making a deal, voting, shopping, and much more -- all these confront the person with multiple alternative possibilities. People make choices, fully aware that they could just as well choose differently.

Art and the Form of Life takes a classic theme—philosophy as the art of living—and gives it a contemporary twist. The book examines a series of watershed moments in artistic practice alongside philosophers’ most enduring questions about the way we live. Coupling Tino Sehgal with Wittgenstein, cave art with Foucault, Stanley Kubrick with Nietzsche, and the Bauhaus with Walter Benjamin, the book animates the idea that life is literally ours to make. It reflects on universal themes that connect the long (...) histories of art and philosophy, and it does so using a contemporary approach. Drawing on great philosophical works, it argues that life practiced as an art form affords an experience of meaning, in the sense that it is engaging, creative, and participatory. It thus effects a fundamental renewal of experience. (shrink)

There is an apparent tension between two familiar platitudes about the meaning of life: (i) that 'meaning' in this context means 'value', and (ii) that such meaning might be ineffable. I suggest a way of trying to bring these two claims together by focusing on an ideal of a meaningful life that fuses both the axiological and semantic senses of 'significant'. This in turn allows for the possibility that the full significance of a life might be ineffable not because its (...) axiological significance is ineffable, but because its semantic significance is ineffable in virtue of the signification relation itself being unsignifiable. I then explore to what degree this claim about signification can be adequately defended. (shrink)