In this book, Stephen Acreman follows the development and reception of a hitherto under-analyzed concept central to modern and postmodern political theory: the Kantian ein erweiterte Denkungsart, or enlarged mentality. -/- While the enlarged mentality plays a major role in a number of key texts underpinning contemporary democratic theory, including works by Arendt, Gadamer, Habermas, and Lyotard, this is the first in-depth study of the concept encompassing and bringing together its full range of expressions. A number of attempts (...) to place the enlarged mentality at the service of particular ideals–the politics of empathy, of consensus, of agonistic contest, or of moral righteousness–are challenged and redirected. In its exploration of the enlarged mentality, the book asks what it means to assume a properly political stance, and, in giving as the answer ‘facing reality together’, it uncovers a political theory attentive to the facts and events that concern us, and uniquely well suited to the ecological politics of our time. (shrink)

This article considers some political potentialities of the post-constructivist proposal for substituting truth with traceability. Traceability is a measure of truthfulness in which the rationality of a truth-claim is found in accounting for the work done to maintain links back to an internal referent through a chain of mediations. The substitution of traceability for truth is seen as necessary to move the entire political domain towards a greater responsiveness to the events of the natural-social world. In particular, it seeks to (...) disarm the strategy of ... (shrink)

This paper defends the cognitive value of literary fiction by showing how Paul Ricoeur’s account of narrative understanding emphasizes the productive and creative elements of fictional discourse and defends its referential capacity insofar as fiction reshapes reality according to some universal aspect. Central to this analysis is Ricoeur’s retrieval of Aristotelian mimesis and mythos and their convergence in the notion of emplotment. This paper also supplements and specifies further Ricoeur’s account by retrieving an Aristotelian concept disregarded by Riceour, namely, synesis. (...) Although Ricoeur connects narrative understanding to the intelligibility of praxis and in turn phronêsis, as opposed to theoretical knowledge, he overlooks Aristotle’s discussion of synesis. This paper then clarifies how the fictional truth of narrative understanding remains related to, and yet distinct from, both theoretical discourse and praxis. (shrink)

Food insecurity, and its extreme form, hunger, occur whenever the accessibility to an adequate supply of nutritional and safe foods becomes restricted or unpredictable. They are recurring problems in certain regions of the US, as well as in many parts of the world. According to nation-wide surveys conducted by the US Bureau of the Census, between 1996 and 1998 an estimated 9.7% of US households were classified as food insecure (6.2% being food insecure without evidence of hunger, and 3.5% being (...) food insecure with moderate to severe hunger). This means that approximately 10 million households each year did not always have access to enough food to meet basic needs. A potential tool in the fight against food insecurity and hunger is information technology (IT), since its use and range of application continue to grow at astonishing rates. The study presented here examined the question of how information technology, particularly the Internet, can be used to promote food security. The study used an action science research approach, and a case study strategy, with the food security system of Oktibbeha County, Mississippi selected as the case for study. The research design was a two-phase process. Phase one consisted of a needs assessment among food assistance organizations in Oktibbeha County, and included interviews of key food assistance personnel. Phase one also included a survey of IT subject matter experts to seek their opinions about the current state of Web-based information technology. Phase two involved an analysis of various IT implementation issues, as well as the development of a Web-based food security information system prototype tool. The needs assessment results indicated that (a) certain food security system and information needs existed among the food assistance organizations in Oktibbeha County, and (b) appropriate information technologies existed that could be applied to these needs. The food security needs related to better communication and coordination of information, such as program information, food site inventory information, client history information, food donation information, and nutrition education information. In regard to technology development, a variety of scenarios were examined. These included client-side approaches, server-side approaches, simple e-mail-based systems, Java-based systems, systems based on the Common Gateway Interface (CGI), and commercial database systems. In applying the needs assessment and survey results, the researcher developed a prototype Web site (including a series of online database tools) that could be used to promote food security in counties such as Oktibbeha County. The results of this research show that appropriate, Internet-based, IT holds promise for the reduction of certain social problems, such as food insecurity and hunger. (shrink)

¿Cómo entiende Jean-Luc Marion la relación entre conocer y amar, especialmente en el contexto histórico que él esboza a partir de la relación entre metafísica y la fenomenología de la donación? Este artículo sugiere que el fenómeno de aferrarse a sabiendas a una falsedad, especialmente como lo analiza San Agustín y lo desarrolla Marion, puede servir como camino para responder a dicha pregunta. La verdad ilumina de un modo que acusa a quien se aferra a una falsedad (veritas redarguens); en (...) el contexto histórico de la metafísica, quien queda así expuesto por la luz es el yo “demiúrgico”, cuyas pretensiones trascendentales divinas incluyen intenciones eróticas tan fuertes como las que se encuentran en el pensamiento pre- y post-metafísico. El análisis del fenómeno del apego al error sugiere que la estructura de la confessio agustiniana es intrínseca a cualquier compromiso filosófico con la verdad. (shrink)

This paper examines the phenomena of ‘postmemory’ as a mode of possession that responds to experiences of suffering. As such, the hyper-connectivity it is concerned with is not that of the digitalisation of contemporary life but is rather ‘vertical’ hyper-connectivity indicating the disturbance of past injustices that have neither been mourned nor remedied and so keep returning to haunt the present and the future.

Charisma is a concept with a peculiar history. It arose from theological obscurity through social science, from which it passed into popular culture. As a social science concept, its significance derives in large part from the fact that it captures a particular type of leadership. But it fits poorly with other concepts in social science, and is problematic as an explanatory concept. Even Weber himself was torn in his use of the concept between the individual type-concept and a broader use (...) of it to characterize the sacral character of culture and institutions. Which use is fundamental? Neither use seems to be able to be extended to account for the other, and in practice the term serves as a heterogenous residual category. Shils’ argument that the charisma of central institutions was fundamental was an attempt to make sense of the examples of institutional charisma that fell into this residual category, such as the jury, and assimilated charisma to the idea of the holy. But this conflicts with Weber’s idea of the originary or creative character of individual charisma, which by definition cannot derive from preexisting sacral qualities. Weber’s account of individual charisma focuses on success, and this suggests the idea that the power of the charismatic leader arises from the ability to confound and surpass expectations - to be extraordinary. This allows us to reconsider ‘originary’ charisma, and assimilate it both to rational choice and to Steiner’s account of taboo. A leader who produces a change in our risk perceptions by proving our previous perceptions wrong by the success of the leader’s actions is providing a novel rational choice for us: a new option together with new estimates of the risk in a course of action. Weber explained the situation of primitive or magical morality in terms of magical charisma producing taboos that were then rationalized, leading to permanent norms - which relies on the notion of charisma without explaining it. But Steiner goes further, by suggesting that taboo represents the intellectual organization of danger through the act of interdiction. The power to interdict is not based on some other power, but rather the power to organize danger through interdiction is originary. Is there originary charisma today? Or is the commonplace use of the term ‘charisma’ a transformation of the concept into something else? In popular culture, the term refers to role-models who break new ground, and if we consider the ‘dangers’ that they appear to their audiences to overcome, the phenomenon is not so different. Charisma seems to collapse into personal style, but in a world in which the old interdicts have lost their power, style itself becomes a matter of experimental success in the face of social danger. (shrink)

This paper falls into two parts. In the first part, I argue that consideration of general indicative conditionals, e.g., sentences like If a donkey brays it is beaten, provides a powerful argument that a pure material implication analysis of indicative if p, q is correct. In the second part I argue, opposing writers like Jackson, that a Gricean style theory of pragmatics can explain the manifest assertability conditions of if p, q in terms of its conventional content – assumed to (...) be merely (p⊃q) – and the conversational implicature contents which utterance of if p, q may gain in certain contexts. I also defend the pragmatic approach against a recent objection by Edgington that appeal to pragmatics cannot explain what we are inclined to say about the believability conditions, as opposed to the assertability conditions, of indicative if p, q. (shrink)

Skeptical theism is a popular - if not universally theistically endorsed - response to the evidential problem of evil. Skeptical theists question how we can be in a position to know God lacks God-justifying reason to allow the evils we observe. In this paper I examine a criticism of skeptical theism: that the skeptical theists skepticism re divine reasons entails that, similarly, we cannot know God lacks God-justifying reason to deceive us about the external world and the past. This in (...) turn seems to supply us with a defeater for all our beliefs regarding the external world and past? Critics argue that either the skeptical theist abandon their skeptical theism, thereby resurrecting the evidential argument from evil, or else they must embrace seemingly absurd skeptical consequences, including skepticism about the external world and past. I look at various skeptical theist responses to this critique and find them all wanting. (shrink)

This article traces the principles and practices that characterized the American democratic republic and American culture at its Founding and suggests possible inherent weaknesses in our Founding thought and outlook that may have paved the way for a later transformation and decay of the American political order.

I defend the idea that the fact that no system is entirely isolated can be used to explain the successful use of the microcanonical distribution in statistical mechanics. The argument turns on claims about what is needed for an adequate explanation of this fact: I argue in particular that various competing explanations do not meet reasonable conditions of adequacy, and that the most striking lacuna in Interventionism – its failure to explain the ‘arrow of time’ – is no real defect.

While humanists have pondered the subject of love to the point of obsessiveness, philosophers have steadfastly ignored it. One might wonder whether the discipline of philosophy even recognizes love. The word _philosophy _means “love of wisdom,” but the absence of love from philosophical discourse is curiously glaring. So where did the love go? In _The Erotic Phenomenon,_ Jean-Luc Marion asks this fundamental question of philosophy, while reviving inquiry into the concept of love itself. Marion begins his profound and personal book (...) with a critique of Descartes’ equation of the ego’s ability to doubt with the certainty that one exists—“I think, therefore I am”—arguing that this is worse than vain. We encounter being, he says, when we first experience love: I am loved, therefore I am; and this love is the reason I care whether I exist or not. This philosophical base allows Marion to probe several manifestations of love and its variations, including carnal excitement, self-hate, lying and perversion, fidelity, the generation of children, and the love of God. Throughout, Marion stresses that all erotic phenomena, including sentimentality, pornography, and even boasts about one’s sexual conquests, stem not from the ego as popularly understood but instead from love. A thoroughly enlightening and captivating philosophical investigation of a strangely neglected subject, _The Erotic Phenomenon _is certain to initiate feverish new dialogue about the philosophical meanings of that most desirable and mysterious of all concepts—love. (shrink)

Covering various fields in political science, this new book presents an historical and political-cultural analysis of Buddhism and Confucianism. Using Singapore and Burma as case studies, the book questions the basic assumptions of democratization theory, examining the political science of tyranny and exploring the rhetorical manipulation of religion for the purpose of political legitimacy. A welcome addition to the political science and Asian studies literature, McCarthy addresses many of the current issues that underlie the field of democratization in comparative politics (...) and discusses the issue of imposing Western cultural bias in studying non-Western regimes by analyzing rhetorical traits that are universally regular in politics. (shrink)

I argue that figurative speech, and irony in particular, presents a deep challenge to the orthodox view about sentence content. The standard view is that sentence contents are, at their core, propositional contents: truth-conditional contents. Moreover, the only component of a sentence’s content that embeds in compound sentences, like belief reports or conditionals, is the propositional content. I argue that a careful analysis of irony shows this view cannot be maintained. Irony is a purely pragmatic form of content that embeds (...) in compound sentences. The standard view cannot account for this fact. I sketch out a speech-act theoretic framework that can. But in accepting this alternative framework we are giving up on the whole idea of an autonomous semantics. (shrink)

The 2014 SSE Conference near San Francisco is now behind us, and I’d rate it as quite successful. Apart from the predictable good times shared with friends whom we see only at these get-togethers, several things in particular stood out for me. First, Gerald Pollack’s Dinsdale lecture on the fourth phase of water was unusually interesting, and in fact all the invited talks were both stimulating and entertainingly presented. (Kudos again to Adam Curry for putting together a really first-rate program, (...) and to Jerry Gin for doing such a wonderful job as local host.) Although I wasn’t monitoring the behavior of attendees generally or invited speakers in particular, I happened to sit near or next to Gerald Pollack for much of the meeting. And I have to say that I was also struck and impressed by his attentiveness and openness to the rest of the program. If he missed a presentation, I didn’t see it, and I believe he took careful notes of most (if not all) of the talks as well. I doubt this was a mere courtesy. I believe Pollack exemplifies the kind of inquisitiveness, open-mindedness, and intellectual courage I at least take to be a prerequisite for membership in the SSE, but which one sees all too infrequently in the Academy, or in the real world generally. Moreover, the conference was quite well-attended, and I was pleased (and somewhat surprised) that many of those present don’t yet qualify for membership in the AARP.1 The shortage of “young blood” has been a concern, not just for the SSE, but also for other similarly minded organizations to which I belong (e.g., the Parapsychological Association and the Society for Psychical Research)2. Indeed, the SSE Council routinely considers ways to encourage the recruitment and participation of new and young members. Brenda Dunne has certainly helped with this by organizing and hosting the New Members and Young Investigators meetings at the annual conferences, and my spies informed me that this year’s meeting was again a success (and not just because the pizza was very good). (shrink)

An obsession with constitutional reform characterized Canadian politics between 1987 and 1992. This reflected the failure of traditional mechanisms for bridging linguistic and regional differences in Canada, and the spirit of contentiousness and rightsconsciousness that has been encouraged since the passage of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982. These efforts to reform the constitution failed. In the 1992 referendum a majority of both French- and English-speaking Canadians, and majorities in 6 of the 10 provinces, rejected proposals supported by (...) the country's political and economic elites. Support for the reform proposals was greatest among the more affluent parts of Canadian society. Despite the fact that both French and English Canada rejected the proposed reforms, their reasons for doing so were quite different. In the wake of this failure, the terms of a reconciliation between the aspirations of French and English Canada are elusive as ever. (shrink)