This article is an email conversation between the artist Thomas Hirschhorn and the philosopher Jacques Rancière that took place from December 2009 to February 2010. The images of ‘The Bijlmer Spinoza-Festival’, an artwork by Thomas Hirschhorn that occurred in the outskirts of Amsterdam in 2009, portray the levels of engagement by the local participants and the interaction with invited speakers and performers. The interview with Jacques Rancière addresses the problem of classifying collaborative art projects within the conventional (...) categories of art and politics. It explores the vital function of artistic presence and the possibility of establishing a mode of aesthetic exchange that proceeds from the experience of equality. (shrink)

Hans Maes has collected a number of conversations he has had with major figures in philosophical aesthetics over the last ten years in Conversations on Art and Aesthetics. These include, in order of appearance, Jerrold Levin-son, Arthur Danto, Cynthia Freeland, Carolyn Korsmeyer, Jenefer Robinson, Roger Scruton, Gregory Currie, Paul Guyer, Noël Carroll, and Kendall Walton. This book will be of interest to anyone who wishes to see some important living figures in this essential subdiscipline of philosophy in action. As with (...) all efforts of this sort, however, certain choices had to be made. The book is explicitly limited to philosophers in the Anglo-American tradition, largely American (including eight past... (shrink)

The purpose of the following text is to give readers a general introduction to Gordon Pask’s conversation theory, which is considered here to be a cybernetic and epistemological account of concept-forming and concept-sharing through conversational discourse and practice. While Pask devoted three lengthy tomes to articulate the theory and its applications, I believe it is necessary to give readers who are interested in conversation theory a general introduction to what I believe are the key features of his work (...) in this area. I argue that conversation theory should be considered an inferential account of the theory of concepts rather than a representational account, by virtue of Pask’s argument that a concept must be a process that involves many other concepts. (shrink)

This paper enters the continuing fray over the semantic significance of Donnellan’s referential/attributive distinction. Some holdthat the distinction is at bottom a pragmatic one: i.e., that the difference between the referential use and the attributive use arises at the level of speaker’s meaning rather the level of sentence-or utterance-meaning. This view has recently been challenged byMarga Reimer andMichael Devitt, both of whom argue that the fact that descriptions are regularly, that is standardly, usedto refer defeats the pragmatic approach. The present (...) paper examines a variety of issues bearing on the regularity in question: whether the regularity would arise in a Russellian language, whether the regularity is similar to the standard use ofcomplex demonstratives, and whether the pragmatic approach founders on the problem of dead metaphors. I argue that the pragmatic approach can readily explain all of these facets ofthe referential use of descriptions. (shrink)

There are words the study of which maps out whole tracts of spiritual history. This is particularly true of the early Christian centuries. Single terms often fuse in a new unity material accumulated separately in the preceding Hebrew and Greek traditions. ‘Conversion’ is one such term—or epistrophe, to use the vulgate which the Jews took from the Greeks for the LXX, and the Christians took from both. Besides, it covers a phenomenon of some actuality, when belief is understood as more (...) than the result of abstract demonstration. C’est... un bouleversement total... le moment décisif d’une existence.... (shrink)

This three-part paper presents Gordon Pask’s conversation theory (CT) and interaction of actors theory (IA) and outlines ways to apply these cybernetic approaches to designing technologies and scenarios for both formal and informal learning. The first part of the paper covers concepts central to CT and IA, explaining the relationship between conceptual and mechanical operators, and machines mediating informal and formal learning. The second part of the paper applies visual representations of CT and IA to understanding the use of (...) Pask’s course assembly systems (CASTE and THOUGHTSTICKER), created between the late 1960s and the 1980s, and the ThoughtShuffler search interface, created in the 2010s. The third part proposes two pathways for design based on CT and IA: firstly, the potential for designers and observers to reformulate the qualities of tools and learning scenarios to augment human thinking and collective action; and secondly, the possibility to create tools with malleable interfaces that allow users to become intermediaries rather than consumers of knowledge. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to compile a selection of the various formalisms found in conversation theory to introduce readers to Pask's discursive algebra. In this way, the text demonstrates how concept sharing and concept formation by means of the interaction of two participants may be formalized. The approach taken in this study is to examine the formal notation system used by Pask and demonstrate how such formalisms may be used to represent concept sharing and concept formation through (...) conversation. The compilation of the discursive algebra using the framework provided by conversation theory could potentially be used as an auxiliary framework to study conversational interactions in multi-agent systems theory. (shrink)

A short interview with Thomas Scanlon about his contractualist moral theory. (Note: A revised and expanded version appears in Conversations on Ethics, OUP 2009).

Georg Simmel, as well as being a major philosopher, is one of the founding figures of sociology whose work is comparable in importance to that of Marx, Weber, and Durkheim. His writings on money, metropolises, and modernity have inspired generations of thinkers for over a century. In this book, leading expert Thomas Kemple clearly and accessibly introduces Simmel’s sociological and philosophical work, ranging from his masterpiece The Philosophy of Money to his famous essays ‘The Metropolis and Mental Life’ and (...) ‘Fashion’ and beyond. The author situates his writings within his social and intellectual circles and analyses them in light of current debates surrounding urban sociology and social networks, phenomenology and metaphysics, cultural criticism and the study of everyday life. He brings Simmel’s most famous works into conversation with others that have received less attention, such as his writings on nature, art, religion, and sexuality. Through diagrams, everyday examples, and expositions of the work of his predecessors and contemporaries, and successors, this highly readable book captures the innovative spirit of Simmel’s unique method of thinking about cultural objects and his original style of writing about social life. Commemorating the 100th anniversary of Simmel’s death, it will be the leading guide to Simmel’s thought for generations of students and scholars. (shrink)

I have three aims in this essay. I want to offer an example of an interdisciplinary historical inquiry combining literary criticism with the relatively new field of critical legal studies. I intend to use this historical inquiry to argue that the ambiguity of literary texts might better be understood in terms of an era’s social contradictions rather than in terms of the inherent qualities of literary language or rhetoric and, conversely, that a text’s ambiguity can help us expose the contradictions (...) masked by an era’s dominant ideology. I try to prove my assertion by applying my method to Herman Melville’s three most famous short works—“Benito Cereno,” “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” and Bill Budd, Sailor—works dealing with the law and lawyers and widely acknowledged as ambiguous.1 I will base my critical inquiry into these stories on Melville’s relationship with his father-in-law, Lemuel Shaw, who, while sitting as the chief justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts from 1830 to 1860, wrote some of the most important opinions in what Roscoe Pound has called “the formative era of American law.”2Before I get started, I should clarify what this study does not entail. By using Shaw and his legal decisions in conjunction with Melville’s fiction, I am not conducting a positivistic influence study. My method will not depend on the positivist assumption that Shaw’s legal opinions can be used to illuminate Melville’s texts only when his direct knowledge of Shaw’s opinions can be proved. Nor will I limit myself to a traditional psychoanalytic reading: my emphasis is on political and social issues, and too often these issues are deflected by translating them into psychological ones. At the same time, I recognize that critics concerned with political and social issues too often neglect questions raised by a writer’s individual situation. I compare Shaw to Melville not to reduce Melville’s politics to psychology but to prevent a political study from neglecting the political implications of psychology, to remind us—as the title of Fredric Jameson’s book The Political Unconscious reminds us—that psychological questions always have political implications. 1. See Herman Melville, “Benito Cereno,” “Bartleby,” and Billy Budd, Sailor, “Billy Budd, Sailor” and Other Stories, ed. Harold Beaver ; all further references to these works will be included in the text.2. See Roscoe Pound, The Formative Era of American Law . For discussions of Melville and Lemuel Shaw, see Charles Roberts Anderson, Melville in the South Seas, Columbia University Studies in English and Comparative Literature, no. 138 , pp. 432-33; Charles H. Foster, “Something in Emblems: A Reinterpretation of Moby-Dick,” New England Quarterly 34 : 3-35; Robert L. Gale, “Bartleby—Melville’s Father-in-Law,” Annali sezione Germanica, Istituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli 5 : 57-72; Keith Huntress, “ ‘Guinea” of White-Jacket and Chief Justice Shaw,” American Literature 43 : 639-41; Carolyn L. Karcher, Shadow over the Promised Land: Slavery, Race and Violence in Melville’s America , pp. 9-11 and 40; John Stark, “Melville, Lemuel Shaw, and ‘Bartleby,’ “ in Bartleby, the Inscrutable: A Collection of Comentary on Herman Melville’s Tale “Bartleby the Scrivener,” ed. M. Thomas Inge , all further references to this work, abbreviated JA, will be included in the text. Brook Thomas teaches English and American literature at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. He is the author of James Joyce’s “Ulysses”: A Book of Many Happy Returns and is at work on a study of the relations between law and literature in antebellum America. (shrink)

I argue that empirical studies into the phenomenon of religious conversion suffer from conceptual unclarity owing to an absence of philosophical contributions. I examine the relationship between definition and empirical result in the social sciences, and I show that a wide divergence in conceptual approach threatens to undermine the possibility of useful comparative study. I stake out a distinctive role for philosophical treatments of studies into religious conversion. I conclude with the suggestion that use of the terms ‘convert’ and ‘conversion’ (...) may not in fact be conducive to clarity in the present context, and that subsequent studies may improve their precision through replacing them. (shrink)

I propose the Shared Presupposition Norm of Joking (SPNJ) as a constitutive norm of joke-telling. This norm suggests that a person should only tell a joke if they believe their audience shares the presuppositions—both explicit beliefs and implicit inferential connections—upon which the joke turns. Without this shared understanding, the audience would lack the necessary comprehension to appreciate the joke. I defend this norm in an analogous way to Williamson’s defense of the Knowledge Norm of Assertion by demonstrating that it explains (...) a number of patterns of joking behavior. If SPNJ is indeed a constitutive norm of joking, it provides an epistemological foothold. Jokes function as conversational explicatures serving an epistemically diagnostic function, revealing implicit and perhaps disavowed inferential dispositions of the joking community. This norm does not teach us about the subject matter of the joke, but instead illuminates the language games of the joke teller and audience. (shrink)

What I want to propose in this paper is based upon my limited experience as a teacher-trainer. I am, therefore, aware of the tentative nature of the judgments I have arrived at and I hope to learn more about these matters in my conversation with you at the close of these remarks. Up to now, I have worked with two quite different groups of teachers, the classroom teacher and the teacher of the gifted and talented students. The first two (...) parts of my paper will be an account of my experiences with these groups of teachers. The final part will consider puzzles that I confront as I consider the possible consequences of my own activity as a teacher-trainer. (shrink)

h e Darwinian hypothesis has the merit of being eminently simple and comprehensible in principle, and its essential positions may be stated in a very few words: all species have been produced by the development of varieties from common stocks; by the conversion of these, first into permanent races and then into new species, by the process of natural selection , which process is essentially identical with that artificial selection by which man has originated the races of domestic animals—the struggle (...) for existence taking the place of man, and exerting, in the case of natural selection, that selective action which he performs in artificial selection. (shrink)

How_more open ways of thinking and operating are beginning to pervade even the largest and most complex institutions, from global corporations to government departments _ The future of business is loose-loose organizations, management styles, brands, thinking, and communications. For example,_Google breaks the traditional rules of branding by changing its logo everyday, Doritos handed over the premium advertising slot in the Superbowl to a couple of amateur filmmakers, and even Pope Benedict XVI has embraced the inclusive "Obama model" of communication with (...) YouTube broadcasts in 27 languages in an attempt to encourage debate. By building on cutting-edge case studies and conversations with the smartest business people from around the globe, this book challenges received wisdom and explains new ways of managing companies, building brands, engaging with customers, and marketing products and services._Shaking up the status quo and showing how prevailing business wisdom needs to change, this book will help_you change_their terms of business, before they are changed for you. (shrink)

Cephalos and Kant. A conversation on duties Socrates’s first conversational partner in Plato’s Politeia is Cephalos, the host of the dialogue. But the conversation between Cephalos and Socrates does not appear to be very fruitful. It merely seems to function as the setting of the stage. Nonetheless, what Cephalos has to say about life and old age, about justice and doing one’s duty is far from uninteresting. Indeed, if Cephalos had presented his views to Immanuel Kant, they would (...) have been well received. Kant would have agreed with Cephalos’s emphasis on duties: the duty to speak truthfully; the duty of returning what one has borrowed from another and the duty of gratitude for what one has been given. Kant’s fictional conversation with Cephalos even presents us with some unexpected vistas. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Celestial Web: Buddhism and Christianity – A Different Comparison (Das Himmlische Geflecht: Buddhismus Und Christentum: Ein Anderer Vergleich) by Perry Schmidt-LeukelThomas CattoiTHE CELESTIAL WEB: BUDDHISM AND CHRISTIANITY – A DIFFERENT COMPARISON (DAS HIMMLISCHE GEFLECHT: BUDDHISMUS UND CHRISTENTUM: EIN ANDERER VERGLEICH). By Perry Schmidt-Leukel. Gütersloher Verlagshaus: Munich, 2022. 416 pp. (German Edition) €26.In his 2004 study Gott ohne Grenzen—available in English as God Without Boundaries (2017)—Perry Schmidt-Leukel affirms (...) that if God is truly beyond our conceptual reach and knowledge about the divine is not limited to one small section of humanity, theology also has to be without boundaries; speculation about ultimate reality and the nature of transcendence should be informed by the insights that all of humanity was able to gather throughout its history, independently of confessional or cultural divisions. Echoing the premise of Jerry Martin's later project Theology without Walls, which would call for theology to become an all-encompassing trans-religious project, this earlier volume laid the foundation for a pluralist theology of religions, which saw value in the diversity of religious tradition. Schmidt-Leukel continued this intellectual trajectory in his 2006 monograph Understanding Buddhism (expanded and republished in German as Buddhismus Verstehen, 2017) where he outlines the role that Buddhism—as the context for existentially transformative experiences of transcendence—can play in such a theological perspective. Finally, in his 2019 Wahrheit in Vielfalt (Truth in Diversity)—a revised version of his Gifford lectures published in 2017—Schmidt-Leukel calls for the development of interreligious theology as a discipline that is practiced together by individuals of different traditions. This third volume, however, ends with a twist, as the author observes that no religious tradition is actually homogenous: All of them are characterized by a measure of internal pluralism, which are reflected in a variety of theological formulations, but also in a plurality of spiritual practices that the same individuals may undertake at different periods of their lives. The reality of this internal pluralism can become the basis for a new kind of interreligious conversation; if applied to Buddhism and Christianity, this approach would foreground "the parallel character of the differences" that can be found in the two traditions (10). In fact, one would have to ask why truth manifests in a plural manner even within a single religious tradition.This attempt at a "different" kind of comparison—as the subtitle of the volume suggests—is the task Perry Schmidt-Leukel takes on in Das himmlische Geflecht (The Celestial Web), a monograph published in German in May 2022. Hopefully an English translation will soon be available, allowing a broader public to benefit from the author's ongoing engagement of the question of religious pluralism and its implications for Buddhist-Christian dialogue.At the outset of the volume, Schmidt-Leukel reflects on the image of Indra's net, a celestial web whose knots carry marvelous and resplendent jewels—and what is even more striking is that every jewel reflects the whole web in its own way. This image—rooted in Vedic texts such as the Atharva Veda, but also explored in the highly influential Avataṃsaka sūtra—perfectly encapsulates the emptiness—the lack of an unchanging substantial ground—that constitutes the totality of the universe (14). According to the Avataṃsaka sūtra, whoever is able to see the whole world in a fragment does not destroy the distinguishing characteristics of its features, but actually [End Page 409] ensures that they should all shine in a visible manner. Indra's net is the guiding metaphor of this volume, which no longer views Buddhism and Christianity as homogenous realities, but as multi-layered and partly heterogeneous structures. The comparative exploration of this heterogeneity will uncover a fractal pattern where visible differences between the two traditions can then be seen again within each tradition. In this way, one can almost discern a mutual interpenetration of the two traditions, which can enrich and even correct each other (15).Following these introductory reflections, Schmidt-Leukel offers a review of the history of comparative religions and comparative theology, asking why and for what purpose scholars engage in this kind of speculative endeavor, while also... (shrink)

The sensorimotor approach to perception addresses various aspects of perceptual experience, but not the subjectivity of intentional action. Conversely, the problem that current accounts of the sense of agency deal with is primarily one of subjectivity. But the proposed models, based on internal signal comparisons, arguably fail to make the transition from subpersonal computations to personal experience. In this paper we suggest an alternative direction towards explaining the sense of agency by braiding three theoretical strands: a world-involving, dynamical interpretation of (...) the sensorimotor approach, an enactive description of sensorimotor agency as contrasted with organic agency in general, and a dynamical theory of equilibration within and between sensorimotor schemes. On this new account, the sense of oneself as the author of one’s own actions corresponds to what we experience during the ongoing adventure of establishing, losing, and re-establishing meaningful interactions with the world. The meaningful relation between agent and world is given by the precarious constitution of sensorimotor agency as a self-asserting network of schemes and dispositions. Acts are owned as they adaptively assert the constitution of the agent. Thus, awareness for different aspects of agency experience, such as the initiation of action, the effort exerted in controlling it, or the achievement of the desired effect, can be accounted for by processes involved in maintaining the sensorimotor organization that enables these interactions with the world. We discuss these processes in detail from a non-representational, dynamical perspective and show how they cohere with the personal experience of agency. (shrink)

Fuller and Arendt: A Happy Marriage? Comment on Rundle In her paper, Rundle seeks to develop a normative legal theory that is distinctively public. Building on her book, Forms Liberate, she seeks to bring Fuller’s legal theory into conversation with Arendt’s political theory. In this comment, I present some hesitations with regard to the fruitfulness of this conversation. It concludes with the suggestion to explore how Radbruch’s ‘idea of law’ could be fruitful for the overall jurisprudential project Rundle (...) seeks to develop in her work. (shrink)

Schizophrenia is a mental disorder that calls the mineness of one's own sensations, thoughts and actions into question and threatens the person with a loss of self. In order to understand this illness in its essence, an approach based on phenomenological psychopathology is therefore indispensable. Conversely, disorders of the self in schizophrenia should be of crucial interest for any philosophy of subjectivity in order to test its concepts of self-awareness, personhood and intersubjectivity by reference to empirical phenomena.Contemporary neurobiological concepts of (...) schizophrenia predominantly emphasize the importance of impaired integration of somatosensory inputs into stable central-nervous representations... (shrink)

Putting Karl Rahner and Michel Foucault in conversation shows the space of overlapping concern in their work for the relationshipbetween subjectivity and knowledge, while introducing new questions about power and history in this relationship. Both fomenta respect for mystery, through Rahnerian “transcendence” and Foucauldian “rescendence,” that while not the same, may yet beunderstood as convergent without a fully realized connection. In other words, the relation between Rahner and Foucault may beposed as “asymptotic.”.

From the time of our first communication, some thirty years ago, Fred Dallmayr and I have never ceased to disagree about key foundational issues in social and political theory. Our disagreements are not haphazard but consistent; they might be characterized roughly as stemming from the differences between his brand of hermeneutics and my brand of critical theory, or between his sources of inspiration in Hegel and Heidegger and my own in Kant and Habermas. But they are also “reasonable disagreements” that (...) allow for considerable “overlapping consensus” on both methodological and substantive issues. Thus we overlapped sufficiently on questions concerning the role of interpretive understanding in social inquiry to co-edit an anthology on that topic very early on.1 And I want to suggest here that we now overlap sufficiently on the idea of multicultural cosmopolitanism to make our ongoing conversation continually fruitful despite the persistent differences in our “comprehensive doctrines.” Those differences do entail, however, that we follow widely diverging paths before arriving in the same region of the political-theoretical world. And they likely also mean that we are relying on different maps of this region and of the roads leading beyond it as well. But I shall confine my remarks here to charting an alternative route to the sort of global and plural democracy that Dallmayr has set out in a series of recent works.2 It is a route that leads from Kant’s idea for a universal history from a cosmopolitan point of view, through Habermas’s conceptions of social evolution and a postnational constellation, to a sketch of multicultural cosmopolitanism that bears strong affinities to Dallmayr’s vision of “our world.” I Though the genre of universal history to which Kant gave exemplary expression was deeply implicated in colonial domination and exploitation, it cannot simply be discarded in favor of genealogical or other broadly deconstructive modes of historical.. (shrink)

Thomas Murray's graceful and humane book illuminates one of the most morally complex areas of everyday life: the relationship between parents and children. What do children mean to their parents, and how far do parental obligations go? What, from the beginning of life to its end, is the worth of a child? Ethicist Murray leaves the rarefied air of abstract moral philosophy in order to reflect on the moral perplexities of ordinary life and ordinary people. Observing that abstract moral (...) terms such as altruism and selfishness can be buried in the everyday doings of families, he maintains that ethical theory needs a richer description than it now has of the moral life of parents and children. How far should adults go in their quest for children? What options are available to women who do not want to bear a child now? Should couples be allowed to reject a child because of genetic disability or "wrong" gender? How can we weigh the competing claims of the genetic and the rearing parents to a particular child? _The Worth of a Child_ couples impressive learning with a conversational style. Only by getting down to cases, Murray insists, can we reach moral conclusions that are unsentimental, farsighted, and just. In an era of intense public and private acrimony about the place and meaning of "family values," his practical wisdom about extraordinary difficult moral issues offers compelling reading for both experienced and prospective parents, as well as for ethicists, social and behavioral scientists, and legal theorists. (shrink)

The commonly held view that Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion entails an irrationalist defense of religion known as 'fideism' loses plausibility when contrasted with recent scholarship on Wittgenstein's corpus, biography, and other sources. This book reevaluates the place of Wittgenstein in the philosophy of religion and charts a path forward for the subfield by advancing three themes. The first is that philosophers of religion should question received interpretations of philosophers, such as Wittgenstein, as well as the meanings of key terms used (...) in interpretations, such as 'fideism'. The second theme is that Wittgenstein's philosophy, across his corpus, pursues a particular end: a searching clarity or perspicuity. The third theme is that with the rise of various religious movements within societies and around the world in recent decades, philosophy of religion has important tasks in clarifying global conversations on living well amidst human diversities and contemplating philosophy as a vocation. (shrink)

Gilbertson et al should be commended for their insightful exploration of expanded terminal sedation (ETS)1; however, there are a number of concerns that I will address in this response. I will first better characterise the currently accepted and commonplace ‘standard’ TS (STS), and then argue that the advocated forms of ETS draw very close to—and at times clearly constitute a subtype of—euthanasia, as opposed to representing a similar but separate practice. I will then conclude with concerns regarding the inappropriate application (...) of ETS, particularly in the non-voluntary context. Gilbertson et al distinguish ‘gradual’ TS, which they state is the currently accepted form of TS, from ‘rapid’ TS, which is then argued to be a justifiable form of ETS. However, in my experience working in multiple large public teaching hospitals in New South Wales, Australia and consistent with local clinical practice guidelines,2 3 STS falls somewhere in the middle between ‘gradual’ and ‘rapid’ TS. STS explicitly aims to achieve permanent unconsciousness so as to eliminate the potential for (and therefore relieve) suffering; conversely, lighter or more intermittent forms of sedation, or administering sedatives with aims other than to achieve unconsciousness (eg, anxiolysis), do not constitute TS proper. STS uses doses proportionate to the extent of symptoms so as to avoid ‘overshooting’ and inadvertently administering excessive doses which actually hasten/cause death, in order to distinguish STS from euthanasia in this respect. This is achieved by gradually uptitrating doses when the patient appears distressed, and is therefore by definition …. (shrink)

This essay offers a diagnosis of what may be at stake in the current preoccupation with defining science‐based educational research. The diagnosis unfolds in several readings: The first is a charitable and considerate appraisal that draws attention to the fact that advocating experimental methods as important to a science of educational research is not an inherently evil thing to do. Subsequent readings are grimmer, suggesting more deleterious consequences of the science‐based research movement for the entire enterprise of educational practice and (...) research. The central thesis of the essay is that making arguments about method and science the focal point in the current quarrel may be largely beside the point. Instead, educational researchers should join the political and public conversation about the place of educational science in society and about how science is both implicated in and confronts the politics of what counts as knowledge. (shrink)

Subjects in experiments use real-life strategies that differ significantly from those assumed by experimenters. First, true randomness is rare in both natural and constructed environments. Second, communication follows conventions which depend on the game-theoretic aspects of situations. Third, in the common rhetorical stance of storytelling, people do not tell about the representative but about unusual, exceptional, and rare cases.

We decided to use our editors’ introduction to briefly address a difficult, somewhat deeper, and in some ways more classical problem: that of what genuine open mindedness really is and how it can contribute to the Mind Sciences. The material in the collection speaks for itself. Here, and in contrast to the vast collection that is Open MIND, we want to be concise. We want to point to the broader context of a particular way of thinking about the mind. And (...) we want to propose an account of what open mindedness could mean in the context of the contemporary, interdisciplinary Mind Sciences. This variant of open mindedness is characterized by epistemic humility, intellectual honesty, and a new culture of charity. It also has a pragmatic dimension: open mindedness of this kind is research generating and fosters an environment of sincere and constructive interdisciplinary collaboration. And it is profoundly inspired by the classical ideals of philosophy as a pursuit of genuine insight and rational inquiry, the importance of a critical and in a certain sense non-judgmental attitude, and the deep relationship between wisdom and skepticism as an epistemic practice. Finally, and again very classically, open mindedness has an ethical dimension as well: it implies sensitivity to normative issues, including issues of an anthropological, sociocultural, and political kind. By bringing these different strands of ideas together and creating a bigger (and admittedly still sketchy) picture of what “open mindedness” might mean in the interdisciplinary Mind Sciences, we hope to start a conversation about how an open-minded attitude and a charitable culture of collaboration can be cultivated in the future. This is very much intended as an invitation to further think about and develop this topic. We hope our readers will join us in this endeavor. DOI: 10.15502/9783958571044 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.15502/9783958571044 ISBN: 9783958571044. (shrink)

Russell Hardin produced a body of work of great breadth and richness on essential subjects of the social sciences and political and moral philosophy: collective action, trust, utilitarian ethics, groups and conflict, institutions, and knowledge. The volume of output, the engagement with cross-cutting fields of scholarship and myriad subjects, and his at-times conversational mode of analysis make a succinct encapsulation difficult. In this introduction, we give a brief account of three main areas of Hardin’s work: his distinctive take on the (...) moral and political philosophy of utilitarianism, his accounts of collective action and the nature of social life, and his account of the fundamental idea of trust and social capital. (shrink)

Bounds consequence provides an interpretation of a multiple-conclusion consequence relation in which the derivability of a sequent is understood as the claim that it is conversationally out-of-bounds to take a position in which each member of Γ is asserted while each member of Δ is denied. Two of the foremost champions of bounds consequence—Greg Restall and David Ripley—have independently indicated that the shape of the bounds in question is determined by conversational practice. In this paper, I suggest that the standard (...) treatments of bounds consequence have focused heavily on the matter of veridicality at the expense of ignoring other features by which conversational bounds are set, prime among them being the matter of content or subject-matter. Furthermore, I argue that the semantic behavior of propositions containing “monstrous” content—content whose introduction is inappropriate to a context independently of veridical considerations—leads to a weak Kleene account of bounds consequence. (shrink)

While participating in a symposium on Dave Ripley’s forthcoming book Uncut, I had proposed that employing a strict-tolerant interpretation of the weak Kleene matrices provided a content-theoretical conception of the bounds of conversational norms that enjoyed advantages over Ripley’s use of the strong Kleene matrices. During discussion, I used the case of sentences that are taken to be out-of-bounds for being secrets as an example of a case in which the setting of conversational bounds in practice diverged from the account (...) championed by Ripley. In this paper, I consider an objection that my treatment of quantifiers was mistaken insofar as the confidentiality of a sentence ϕ may not lift to the sentence ∃xϕ and draw from this objection that neither the strong nor the weak Kleene interpretation of quantifiers suffices, but that a novel interpretation may do so. (shrink)

In _My Father's House_, the political philosopher Thomas Dumm explores a series of stark and melancholy paintings by the American artist Will Barnet. Responding to the physical and mental decline of his sister Eva, who lived alone in the family home in Beverly, Massachusetts, Barnet began work in 1990 on what became a series of nine paintings depicting Eva and other family members, as they once were and as they figured in the artist's memory. Rendered in Barnet's signature quiet, (...) abstract style, the paintings, each featured in full color, present the ordinary and extraordinary aspects of a twentieth-century American family. Dumm first became acquainted with Barnet and his paintings in 2008. Given his scholarly focus on the lives of ordinary people, he was immediately attracted to the artist's work. When they met, Dumm and Barnet began a friendship and dialogue that lasted until the painter's death in 2012, at the age of 101. This book reflects the many discussions the two had concerning the series of paintings, Barnet's family, his early life in Beverly, and his eighty-year career as a prominent New York artist. Reading the almost gothic paintings in conversation with the writers and thinkers key to both his and Barnet's thinking—Emerson, Spinoza, Dickinson, Benjamin, Cavell, Nietzsche, Melville—Dumm's haunting meditations evoke broader reflections on family, mortality, the uncanny, and the loss that comes with remembrance. (shrink)

In contrast to his own "freestanding" liberalism, Rawls has characterized the liberalism of Kant's Rechtslehre as comprehensive, i.e., as dependent on Kant's teachings about good will and ethical autonomy or on his transcendental idealism. This characterization is not borne out by the text. Though Kant is indeed eager to show that his liberalism is entailed by his wider philosophical worldview, he is not committed to the converse, does not hold that his liberalism presupposes either his moral philosophy or his transcendental (...) idealism. Rather, Kant bases the establishment and maintenance of Recht solely on persons' fundamental a priori interest in external freedom. His liberalism is then, if anything, more freestanding than Rawls's, central elements of which-such as his postulate of certain moral powers with corresponding higher-order interests-are justified by appeal to fundamental ideas he finds to be prevalent in the public culture of his society. (shrink)

Thomas Eisele explores the premise that the Socratic method of inquiry need not teach only negative lessons. Instead, Eisele contends, the Socratic method is cyclical: we start negatively by recognizing our illusions, but end positively through a process of recollection performed in response to our disillusionment, which ultimately leads to renewal. Thus, a positive lesson about our resources as philosophical investigators, as students and teachers, becomes available to participants in Socrates' robust conversational inquiry. __Bitter Knowledge __includes Eisele's detailed readings (...) of Socrates' teaching techniques in three fundamental Platonic dialogues, _Protagoras, Meno_, and _Theaetetus_, as well as his engagement with contemporary authorities such as Gregory Vlastos, Martha Nussbaum, and Stanley Cavell. Written in a highly engaging and accessible style, this book will appeal to students and scholars in philosophy, classics, law, rhetoric, and education. "This book is original, fresh, and of very high quality, opening up these Platonic texts, central to Western culture, in new ways. In addition, it establishes a method that others can use and apply to the other dialogues. It would be a wonderful text to assign in courses in philosophy, basic humanities, education, and law." --_James Boyd White, University of Michigan_ "Through his thoughtful and incisive readings of Plato, Thomas Eisele puts Socrates in a new light. In Eisele's hands, Socrates offers us a method not simply for philosophy but for the challenges of life and mind. This superb book builds on the great readings of Plato, adding to the richness of our understanding of the enigmatic figure of Socrates. These are profound readings of Plato." --_Dennis Patterson, Rutgers University School of Law_ "Eisele's book is much more than an erudite, seductive, and imaginative exploration of three central Platonic dialogues. It is also a fine general treatment of philosophy, discussing the kind of finality or closure to which philosophical questions are susceptible and the appropriate stance of the inquirer. It considers the pedagogy of philosophy and law brilliantly." --_Thomas Morawetz, University of Connecticut School of Law_. (shrink)

Thomas V. Morris discusses life, death, religion, the nature of faith and more. This captivating book is ideal both for thoughtful unbelievers who consider Christianity unreasonable, and Christians wanting to know how to share their faith with sceptics. Writing in an engaging, conversational style, Morris takes an intriguing new look at the big questions that keep coming up -- questions about life, death, God, religion, the nature of faith, the formation of an adequate worldview, and the meaning of life. (...) Morris explores these kinds of questions in an earnest yet thoroughly entertaining and easily readable way, relating numerous personal anecdotes, incorporating intriguing material from the films of Woody Allen and the journals of Tolstoy, and using the writings of the seventeenth-century genius Blaise Pascal as a central guide. (shrink)

We present finitary formulations of two well known results concerning infinite series, namely Abel's theorem, which establishes that if a series converges to some limit then its Abel sum converges to the same limit, and Tauber's theorem, which presents a simple condition under which the converse holds. Our approach is inspired by proof theory, and in particular Gödel's functional interpretation, which we use to establish quantitative versions of both of these results.

Abstract‘We just do not have enough time’. A statement uttered too often in the field of education. Having taught in K-12 schools, universities, and accelerated K-12 and higher education classes, I am no stranger to the myriad of conversations on time that swirl in these spaces. All too frequently, I heard statements like: ‘there is not enough time in the schedule to do this work’, ‘time is our enemy’, ‘do the best you can with the limited time you have’, and (...) witnessed many discussions of entanglements with time, be they individual, institutional, or structural. This article explores issues of time within hybrid/third-space working groups embedded within a teacher residency in an urban Southeastern city of the United States. In exploring the question: what role does time play in hybrid teacher residency work? This article demonstrates how time operates as a structural constraint, as a nonhuman agent, and/or is mobilized to escape/evade the nuanced and complex work of doing/thinking anti-racist abolitionist residency work across practice and theory. (shrink)

In this conversation, which took place across several months in the year 2021, Elizabeth Grosz describes her position with respect to “new materialism” and “the material turn”: while she emphasizes the necessity of materialist thought in the current situation marked by a global pandemic, she also stresses the equal importance of what she calls “the incorporeal”: an excess in and of matter, materiality’s heterogeneous virtuality, differentiality and becoming-other. Grosz describes the incorporeal as mutually implicated with materiality in a way (...) that eschews both monism and dualism. The conversation roughly follows five topics: 1. How does one conceive of ontology without fixity? 2. How does matter “make sense”? 3. Can we think sexual differences beyond cisgender binarism and oppositional dualism? 4. What are the ethico-political implications of a materialist thought predicated on becoming and immanence? 5. Is psychoanalysis compatible with materialism, and is there a materiality of the unconscious? In the course of this exceptional interview, Grosz discusses the works of Jacques Derrida, Donna Haraway, Sigmund Freud, Luce Irigaray, Karen Barad, Friedrich Nietzsche, and of course Gilles Deleuze, among many others... (shrink)

In May 2021, Alan Bechaz, Racher Du, Will Cailes and Thomas Spiteri interviewed Sandra Leonie Field for UPJA’s Conversations from the Region. A series of discussions that invites philosophers from or based in Australasia to share their student and academic experiences. The segment looks into what inspires people to study philosophy, how they pursue their philosophical interests, and gives our audiences a better idea of philosophy as an undergraduate.

We develop a theoretical model, explore the relationship between temptation (both reflective and formative) and unethical intentions by treating monetary intelligence (MI) as a mediator, and examine the direct (temptation to unethical intentions) and indirect (temptation to MI to unethical intentions) paths simultaneously based on multiple-wave panel data collected from 340 part-time employees and university (business) students. The positive indirect path suggested that yielding to temptation (e.g., high cognitive impairment and lack of self-control) led to poor MI (low stewardship behavior, (...) but high cognitive meaning) that, in turn, led to high unethical intentions (theft, corruption, and deception). Our counterintuitive negative direct path revealed that those who controlled their temptation had high unethical intentions. Due to the multiple faces of temptation (the suppression effect), maliciously controlled temptation (low cognitive impairment and high self control) led to deviant intentions. Subsequent multi-group analysis across gender (a moderator) reformulated the mystery of temptation: a negative direct path for males, but a positive indirect path for females. For males, the negative direct path generated a dark impact on unethical intentions; for females, the positive indirect path did not, but offered great implications for consumer behavior. Both falling “and” not falling into temptation led to unethical intentions which varied across gender. Our counterintuitive, novel, and original theoretical, empirical, and practical contributions may spark curiosity and add new vocabulary to the conversation regarding temptation, money attitudes, consumer psychology, and business ethics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Gethsemani II:Catholic and Buddhist Monastics Focus on SufferingThomas Ryan, CSPApproximately twenty Benedictine, Trappist, and Camaldolese men and women monastics met 13-18 April 2003 with an equal number of Buddhist monastics at the Trappist Gethsemani monastery in Kentucky for five days of dialogue on the causes of suffering. The encounter, Gethsemani II, was a sequel to a similar 1996 meeting at the monastery made famous by the monk Thomas (...) Merton, a noted twentieth-century contemplative and peace activist who died in 1968. Merton's friendship with the Dalai Lama served as seminal inspiration for these two Buddhist-Christian dialogues. In a ritual at the opening of the Gethsemani II meeting, the participants, joined by a few advisors and observers to the dialogue, hung a wreath of flowers around the cross marking Merton's grave.Each day speakers from both sides initiated a conversation on a particular cause of suffering, such as greed and consumerism, personal and structural violence, sickness and aging. "I do not do well at conferences, and I came prepared to be bored," said John Daido Loori, abbot of the Zen Mountain monastery in Mt. Tremper, NY, on day three, "but the level of honesty and depth of sharing in these exchanges has ripped open my heart." It is not possible in this forum to synthesize the penetrating reflections and stories on suffering offered by the participants. What may be even more important is the window offered by this dialogue into the dynamics of interfaith encounter no matter where it takes place.By sharing times of prayer, talk, meals, and rituals appropriate to each tradition, the participants became friends. They came for one thing—to talk about suffering—and in the process found another: an experience of community. They began each conversation with the musical and meditative interlude of a recorder, but the openness and sensitivity of the conversation itself became the real music. They didn't solvea single problem, but they kindled a vital force—friendship—with which to confront problems together in the future. Each brought passion for their own tradition, the gospel on the one hand and the dharma on the other, and each ended by recognizing in the other a powerful resource for healing the world.Evident in this dialogue was the emergence of a Euro-American Buddhist voice, deeply respectful of the Asian tradition inherited, yet willing to think creatively about possible bridge points of understanding, of comparison, of ways of reformulating set [End Page 249] patterns of saying things so as to better get at possible common meanings. One example of this will suffice. Suffering is at the heart of the Buddha's teachings in the Four Noble Truths, the first teachings he gave after his experience of enlightenment. First, all existence is dukkha, unsatisfactory and filled with suffering. Second, dukkha arises from tanha, a craving or clinging, which means a constant effort to find something permanent and stable in a transient world. Third, dukkha can cease totally, and this is nirvana. Fourth, this can be reached by following the Eightfold Path described as "right" or samma: right understanding, right directed thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. In short, the first three wisdom sayings relate to the existence, the cause, and the cessation of suffering. The fourth offers a clearly laid out plan for liberation from suffering.The Christian approach could be typified in Pope John Paul II's 1984 Apostolic Letter "On the Meaning of Christian Suffering," which was distributed to all the participants. In reflecting on Jesus nailed to the cross, the pope observes that "in this weakness there is accomplished his lifting up, confirmed by the power of the resurrection. This means that the weaknesses of all human sufferings are capable of being infused with the same power of God manifested in Christ's cross. In such a concept, to suffer means to become particularly susceptible, particularly open, to the working of the salvific powers of God offered humanity in Christ. In him God has confirmed his desire to act especially through suffering... and wishes to make his power known precisely in this weakness and emptying of self" (p... (shrink)

In _Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel – A Propaedeutic_, Thomas Sören Hoffmann invites the philosophically interested reader to converse with, to work with, and to think with the “master philosopher of German Idealism,” the last great system builder of European philosophy.

The problem of scientific ethics or experimental morality creates for the scientific methodologist a profound dilemma. To the extent that he makes his investigations scientific he fails at the essence of morality. Conversely, if he attempts to found himself securely in morality, his efforts to become scientific lead to mere utilitarian “moralizing.” In the older language of Kant, the imperatives of morality are categorical; those of science, hypothetical. “Is” and “ought” are incommensurable categories, as they are for logical positivism which (...) simply accepts the dualism as irreducible and advises against what it views as the inevitable consequence of any attempted synthesis: confusion. (shrink)

In Aquinas, Ethics, and Philosophy of Religion, Thomas Hibbs recovers the notion of practice to develop a more descriptive account of human action and knowing, grounded in the venerable vocabulary of virtue and vice. Drawing on Aquinas, who believed that all good works originate from virtue, Hibbs postulates how epistemology, ethics, metaphysics, and theology combine into a set of contemporary philosophical practices that remain open to metaphysics. Hibbs brings Aquinas into conversation with analytic and Continental philosophy and suggests (...) how a more nuanced appreciation of his thought enriches contemporary debates. This book offers readers a new appreciation of Aquinas and articulates a metaphysics integrally related to ethical practice. (shrink)

The concepts, health and disease, have received considerable attention in philosophy of medicine. The first goal of this paper is to demonstrate that three prominent analyses of health and disease can be synthesized if one assumes that medicine is both theoretical and practical, and, therefore, value-laden. The second goal of this paper is to give an account of one route by which evaluative and factual claims come together in medical knowledge, during medical conversations between clinicians and patients. Accomplishing these two (...) goals together yields an epistemology of medicine that moves past debates about health and disease. On this view the conceptual foundations of medicine rest on subjective and objective claims about health states and their evaluations. By making subjective and objective claims, patients and clinicians negotiate whether patients’ health states are sufficiently dysfunctional to warrant medical intervention, leading to the formation of complementary illness narratives, which are anchored to different degrees in personal experience and medical theory. On this view, health and disease are supplanted as the conceptual foundations of medicine. Rather, medicine is better understood in terms of two basic aims: The first aim of medicine is to fully understand patients in scientific and personal terms; the second aim is to intervene upon patients’ states of illness in ways that are consistent with full understanding. (shrink)

It is a widely held belief that human beings are both body and soul, that our immaterial soul is distinct from our material body. But that traditional idea has been seriously questioned by much recent research in the brain sciences.In Neuroscience and the Soul fourteen distinguished scholars grapple with current debates about the existence and nature of the soul. Featuring a dialogical format, the book presents state-of-the-art work by leading philosophers and theologians -- some arguing for the existence of the (...) soul, others arguing against -- and then puts those scholars into conversation with critics of their views. Bringing philosophy, theology, and neuroscience together in this way brings to light new nuances and significantly advances the ongoing debate over body and soul. (shrink)

Panentheism and panpsychism do not entail one another. Nevertheless, the structural similarities are striking. While panentheism distinguishes without separating God and cosmos, panpsychism does the same with mind and matter. Both seem to mediate between dualism and monism. With the rise in popularity of panpsychism among analytic philosophers of mind, the time was ripe for a careful and critical interdisciplinary conversation. Panentheism and Panpsychism ably facilitates this meeting and mines the explanatory potential of combining two forms of unity metaphysics.The (...) book opens with an introductory chapter written by the editors. Their stated aim is "to examine the benefits which panpsychism and panentheism offer... (shrink)

HEGEL'S LARGELY UNTRANSLATED VORLESUNGEN ÜBER RECHTSPHILO-sophie assign religion a vital role in shaping basic intuitions about justice and society. This role in cultivating intuitions gives society reason to be highly attentive to the political attitudes instilled by religious traditions. At the same time, since these intuitions can be questioned and revised, religion need not be a conversation stopper. Hegel thus connects religion to politics in a way that accounts for religion's political significance without conceiving it as immune to challenge. (...) He brings religious claims into public discourse and contributes significantly to contemporary discussions of religion and democracy. (shrink)