Athletes sometimes describe “being in the zone,” as a time when their actions flow effortlessly and flawlessly without the guidance of thought. But is it true that athletes don't think when performing at their best? Numerous studies (such as Beilock et al. 2004, 2007 Ford et al 2005, Baumeister 1984, Masters 1992, Wulf & Prinz 2001, Beilock & DeCaro, 2007). However, I aim to argue that because even highly‐practiced skills can remain in part under an expert athlete's conscious control, (...) thinking does not hinder expert performance. (shrink)

This article offers to outline a direction for a decolonial political theory based on Aimé Césaire’s and Frantz Fanon’s thoughts. In doing so, I will first discuss some work of comparative political theory that could be associated with an attempt to decolonize political theory. Rather than a systematic critique of these works, this article aims to outline some of their limits from a decolonial perspective, such as their embedment in a continental ontology/logic, and their over-emphasis on methodology that can lead (...) to an instrumental account of politics. In contrast, I will argue for a decolonial existential political theory that grounds its investigation in what Frantz Fanon called ‘the zone of nonbeing’ and that takes politics as first philosophy. To make my point, I will discuss Aimé Césaire’s Letter to Maurice Thorez and Frantz Fanon’s Political Theory of the Damnés. (shrink)

Alderson critiques our recent book on the basis that it overlooks children’s own views about their medical treatment. In this response, we discuss the complexity of the paediatric clinical context and the value of diverse approaches to investigating paediatric ethics. Our book focuses on a specific problem: entrenched disagreements between doctors and parents about a child’s medical treatment in the context of a paediatric hospital. As clinical ethicists, our research question arose from clinicians’ concerns in practice: What should a clinician (...) do when he or she thinks that parents are choosing a treatment pathway that does not serve the child’s best interests? Alderson’s work, in contrast, focuses on the much broader issue of children’s role in decision-making about treatment and research. We argue that these different types of work are zooming in on different aspects of paediatric ethics, with its complex mix of agents, issues and relationships. Paediatric ethics overall needs a rich mix of approaches,... (shrink)

The lifting of lockdown is a typical case of the tragedy of the commons, and as such should be regulated by public authority, instead of being left to the ethics and responsibility of single individuals. I would therefore argue that we should think about an intermediate phase between the lockdown and the opening of shops (which in the Italian case is the transition from the red zone to the orange zone): diversified access to commercial activities, on an hourly (...) basis, for different population groups. This can be achieved either by creating different opening hours for different commercial activities and offices, or by opening them all at the same time but introducing free entrance hours based on age groups of clients. Both solutions would imply an extension of business and office hours, contrary to what has happened in most countries, where an attempt has been made to shorten the days and in some cases, such as in Italy, a curfew has even been introduced at a certain time of the day (in Italy, at 10 pm). (shrink)

BackgroundThe complexity of decision-making in the paediatric context is well recognised. In the majority of cases, parents and healthcare professionals work together to decide which treatments the paediatric patient should receive. On occasions, however, parental wishes conflict with what clinicians think is best for the paediatric patient. Where persistent disagreement between clinicians and parents exists, clinicians must ascertain if they have a moral, professional, and legal obligation to overrule the parents' decision and implement their preferred option.PurposeFew decision-making frameworks to assist (...) in addressing the ethical issues that arise in clinical decision-making relate specifically to the paediatric context. Diekema's Harm Threshold Framework and the Zone of Parental Discretion Framework assist in determining whether parental decisions should or should not be overridden. This paper examines the similarities and differences between these frameworks.MethodsThe frameworks are analysed i... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Pantheology of Pandemic: Sex, Race, Nature, and The VirusMary-Jane Rubenstein (bio)I. PunitheologyThe explanations started pouring in even before the virus attained “pandemic” status in March of 2020: we were being punished. According to a vocal subset of Evangelical pastors and ultra-Orthodox rabbis, the death-dealing virus was divine retribution for the sins of (who else?) LGBT-identified people and their allies, who aggressively violated what the pastors and rabbis called (...) “the order of nature.”1 Meanwhile, their left-leaning counterparts argued that the sin in question wasn’t so much sexual as ecological: in the words of one Roman Catholic commentator, the coronavirus was God’s punishment for “our unfettered domination attitude toward nature.”2At the same time, an equally vocal throng of secular environmentalists called the virus nature’s own punishment for our manifold violations against her—in particular, the extractivism, pollution, alleged overpopulation, deforestation, carbon emissions, and industrial slaughterhouses that allowed the zoonotic strain to break out among humans in the first place.3 Depending on whom [End Page 5] you ask, then, the disaster we’ve come to encapsulate as COVID-19 is either godly or natural retribution for our manifold sins against “nature.”Although these sacred and secular punitheologies are not equivalent, they bear striking similarities to one another thanks to the monotheistic heritage of the concept of “nature” itself. As we will see, whether it is invoked by pastors, politicians, activists, or scientists, “nature” in the Western-descended world is presented as singular, nonwhite, and feminine; morally normative; and prone to abuse. Nature is often capitalized, often maternalized, and reliably distinguished either from a disembodied male God, a universalized “humanity,” or both. Nature, in short, carries immense ideological freight. Specifically, it installs and polices the work of what Kelly Brown Douglas calls “theo-ideology”: a “sacred legitimation” for a social order that seeks to present itself as unquestionable.4 And “nature” does this unparalleled ideological work thanks to the freedom it keeps promising from ideology: “your” way of being might be constructed, distorted, historical, subjective, contingent, artificial, cultural, or indeed sinful, but “ours” is natural—which is to say universally, even transcendently, true.Whether it comes from the mouths of angry clerics or righteous ecologists, then, the call to get right with nature is a call to adhere to one or another self-concealing social arrangement—to a set of interests and values whose power derives from its seeming so “natural.” For this reason, many contemporary thinkers recommend abandoning the term altogether. Donna Haraway suggests we try the non-binary and carefully pluralized “naturecultures”; Bruno Latour proposes “critical zones,” and Timothy Morton pivots to ecological practice which, he insists, can only function if we let go of the romantic delusion of “nature.”5Regardless of nature’s conceptual integrity, it is important to attend to the term in order to account for its rhetorical force and ubiquity—for the polyphibious presence of “nature” within the left and right-wings of science, religion, and politics alike. In this article, I will decode some of the recent, theologically [End Page 6] retributive appeals to nature within early, informal, literary responses to the COVID-19 outbreak in the US. In the process, I hope to unearth some of the mythic norms of race and gender that this concept both entrenches and conceals in the American imagination. Finally, I will ask what happens when we start messing with these categories, beginning with the mirroring chasms between humans and nature, and nature and God. How might we start to think pantheologically about this unrelenting pandemic, and why would anybody want to?II. Sins against NatureAs Catherine Keller noticed as early as April 2020, American pundits across the political spectrum immediately attributed COVID-19 to the relentless justice of an angry God.6 It is perhaps America’s favorite theological maneuver: explaining natural and social disasters as the product of divine vengeance. From Jonathan Edwards’s spider to Fred Phelps’s funeral protests, American preachers and political commentators have got a long-standing knack for putting the fear of God into a suffering nation. (Even my home insurance policy washes its hands of... (shrink)

Theories of the present have converged on changes in spatialization or the spatial order of societies. This article discusses the focus on borders and boundaries in programmatic statements on reflexive modernity or remodernization (RM) by Latour and Beck. It is insufficient to say that boundary-marking and border-making become simply more fraught or obvious. There is an historicity and dynamic quality which are central to these analyses which are best understood in terms of the intangible aspects, or virtuality, of borders and (...) boundaries. A dynamic, four-part ontology is advanced to elucidate the functioning of borders as interfaces and liminal zones with their own internal semiotics and emergent meanings and effects. This is the basis of a critique of RM. Further, a more diverse set of methods than might be supposed is required to research boundary phenomena, which social sciences are ill-equipped to undertake. (shrink)

Between the zone of certainty beyond all doubt and the zone of incomprehensible uncertainty, the sources of which are nothing but chance, we need to use solid results from a vast interdisciplinarity. We wish to give here a sense of the factors in play and the state of the debate and advance in the territory of how interdisciplinarity may help to solve problems which are common in many areas of knowledge. Chaos and complexity certainly put limits on what (...) we can know. High complexity, asymmetry and/or non-linearity are universal types of imprecision. Can hazard have purpose and direction?The idea is that the more effort we put into project design to cover as many details and possible consequences as possible we can grasp in our in-depth analysis aiming to create the project (in art or science or society), the greater the chances that the random occurrence of the unpredictable event will settle on the project's purpose and direction and not on contrary to them. There is no vicious circle here. This kind of method can explain many good results already obtained in such circumstances. Simplicity, beauty, rationalistic optimism, are features of unshakeable scientific results We may call this feature of scientific theory or art _uniqueness. _Uniqueness is strongly correlated with _essentialization. _Science is working in that sense: to simplify a phenomenon to its essence in order to study it easily without losing anything important in the analysis. That is _essentialization. _Why and how complex systems move to the edge of chaos? And what do they do to stay there? They are in constant struggle to create or keep order in complexity. That is the pattern of self-organization, the specific feature of human nature. That is why our action is meant to build resilience to deal better with unpredictable events and prevent the emergence of a critical threshold. Uncertainty, indeterminacy, randomness, and contradictions appear, not as non-essential substances of debate to be eliminated by explanation, but as everlasting ingredients of our conception of reality. There are compelling reasons to believe that it is impossible to make accurate, nontrivial predictions concerning human behavior. Logic and reason are and remain priority, but unpredictability forces us to imagination and creative thinking. Indeed we are confronted with a new human landscape. The anomalies become the new normal. (shrink)

The concept of autarkeia present in the Aristotelian Politics is conceived as inseparable from the end of the city-State, insofar as it is not only constituted for mere living but for living well. This implies a moralization of the state order that allows us to think about the conformation of an economic dimension based on the concept of autarkeia. Taking as a methodological starting point the “dialogical tension zones” device, we will affirm that exists an Aristotelian economic thinking based (...) on three significant concepts of his political philosophy: “self-sufficiency”, “city-State”, “justice”. Finally, we will affirm that the concept of “natural slavery” aims to guarantee the constitution of an autonomous productive economic order that delegitimizes the federated states’ model of organization. (shrink)

We have become estranged from the cosmic movements, according to Bataille. We are confined by the error linked to the representation of ‘the stationary earth’. We have negated the immersive immanence of the whole and made nature into a fixed world of tools and things. How then do we recognise ourselves as part of the ‘rapture of the heavens’? Bataille urges us to consider life as a solar phenomenon, the free play of solar energy on the earth. This paper argues (...) how Bataille’s cosmic vision anticipates both planetary and ecological thinking. This entails a base materialism of difference based on a radical Nietzschean and Heraclitean theory of becoming and flux. This thought is developed along Bataillean concepts such as the movement of the whole, the labyrinthine, and compound beings, ipseity, as well as the concept of a communifying movement. This materialism paired with Vladimir Vernadsky’s biosphere lays the foundation for the laws of the general economy, which also constitutes an economy inclusive of a general ecology: a tragic vision of Gaia and Dionysos. Finally, poetry is considered, as a way we might reconnect with the universe and stimulate ecological imagination. (shrink)

The linguistic relativist thesis maintains that there is no neutral ground for different scientific traditions with different theoretic frameworks to communicate rationally, due to the fact that linguistic structure crucially decides the way people think about reality. For quite a long time, historical studies of scientific exchange between East and West have been guided by this thesis. The challenge to this thesis comes from recent studies by Peter Galison, who argues that scientists from different research traditions can communicate rationally in (...) a way similar to the trading exchanges between two countries, in which a local coordination can be reached even if there is a global disagreement about the corresponding word usage in two natural languages. In this paper, I try to show that the concept of trading zone communication provides an interesting and useful theoretical tool to examine how, in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, Chinese scientists communicated with and learned Western knowledge from Jesuit scientists by building local coordination among them. In the first section I introduce the basic ideas of Galison's trading zone theory. In the second section I study the metaphysical, ontological, and epistemological differences between Chinese science and Western science. If the linguistic relativist thesis is taken for granted, these differences are likely to lead many historical studies on Jesuit science in China to reach the relativist conclusion. The third section deals with some of the basic concepts of the trading zone theory to explain how local rational communication among Chinese and Jesuit scientists was built and developed. In the last section I argue that Galison's trading zone theory can help us understand how Chinese scientists learned new knowledge from the Jesuits, especially astronomical and mathematical knowledge, despite the global differences between these two research traditions. (shrink)

This book pursues the argument that an attention to emotions produces a more nuanced, and more adequate, feminist account of legal subjectivity. Although the relationship between law and feminism has resulted in a vast body of work, the issue of emotions has not been foregrounded in feminist legal scholarship. Indeed, many feminists have argued that reason and not emotion must provide the foundational basis for all laws and legal reforms; an argument that has led to a division of the legal (...) and the psychic or the emotional into separate and distinct zones. Challenging this separation, the book engages a range of recent criminal law cases and legislation in India in order to advocate a 'feminisation' of law. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, the book takes up a range of issues surrounding sexual violence in order to propose a shift from viewing law as reason to seeing law as the terrain of messy and contradictory emotional continuums; where legal subjects are viewed in their psychic dimensions, and where law itself is opened up to its own unconscious desires. Foregrounding emotions in this way, the book argues, can offer new insights into the operation of criminal law, and new orientations for feminist ways of responding to, and engaging with, it. This book will be of interest to scholars and students working in the areas of criminal law, legal feminism, and gender studies. (shrink)

Volume 11, Issue 1-2, January–December 2024.

This three-part article reinforces crosscurrents between cybernetician Gordon Pask’s work towards creating responsive machines applied to theater and education, and Vygotsky’s theory, to advance sociohistorical approaches into the internet age. We first outline Pask’s discovery of possibilities of a neoclassical cybernetic framework for human–human, human–machine, and machine–machine conversations. Second, we outline conversation theory as an elaboration of the reconstruction of mental models/concepts by observers through reliance on sociocultural psychological approaches, and apply concepts like the zone of proximal development and (...) perezhivanie to Paskian aesthetic technologies. Third, we interpret Pask’s teaching/learning devices as zones of proximal development, and outline how Paskian algorithms in digital devices like THOUGHTSTICKER have been generalized on today’s internet, supplemented by corporate interests. We conclude that Paskian theory may offer understandings of the roles of internet technologies in transforming human thinking, and suggest (re)designing tools incorporating algorithms that contextually advance conceptual understanding that deviates from current indexing approaches. (shrink)

The critical examination of current hypotheses is one of the key ways in which scientific fields develop and grow. Therefore, any critique, including Haidle and Schlaudt’s article, “Where Does Cumulative Culture Begin? A Plea for a Sociologically Informed Perspective,” represents a welcome addition to the literature. However, critiques must also be evaluated. In their article, Haidle and Schlaudt review some approaches to culture and cumulative culture in both human and nonhuman primates. H&S discuss the “zone of latent solutions” hypothesis (...) as applied to nonhuman primates and stone-toolmaking premodern hominins. Here, we will evaluate whether H&S’s critique addresses its target. (shrink)

Untersuchungsgegenstand ist ein systematischer Vergleich zwischen Marc Richirs Phänomenologie der Affectivität und Andrej Tarkowskijs Konzeption des Films als lebendiges Zeitbild, illustriert am Beispiel des Werks „Stalker“. Als tertium comparationis dient der Gedanke einer „archaischen“ oder „elementaren“ Affectivität. Eine solche philosophisch-ästhetische Reflexion eröffnet die Möglickkeit, den architektonischen Status klassische Ideen der Philosophie zu prüfen und umzugestalten. Beide Theoretiker behandeln den Gegensatz von Immanenz und Tranzendenz auf eine Weise, die metaphysische Grundstellung von Ich, Welt und Gott unterwandert und durch ein Denken der (...) Schwelle, der Transition oder Transposition ersetzen. Mithilfe Richirs lässt sich die Struktur der „Zone“ als hyperbolisches Phanomen lesen. Erst inmitten seiner Simulacren un Instabilitäten kommt die Humanität al Rätsel zur Erscheinung, d.h., als Selbstreflexivität eines sich bildenden Sinns. Diese Reflexivität phänomenalisiert sich, so die weitere These, diesseits der Unterscheidung von Denken und Fühlen. Der Aufsatz versucht einen Beitrag zur phänomenologischen Ästhetik zu liefern. Mittels Konstellationsanalyse werden in einer ersten Annäherung allgemein-architektonische Isomorphien und Kohärenzen beider Ansätze herausgestellt. (shrink)

Two thing are obvious from the subjective experience of emotional states: (1) emotions have a power of their own in directing and disrupting behavioural options, thinking processes, and bodily states, all the more so if one is immature; (2) our thoughts and appraisals of events can instigate or inhibit feelings to a substantial extent, all the more so as we age and get more experienced. These common introspective observations suggest that there are reciprocal influences between emotions and cognitive processes, (...) the strength of which change as a function of developmental stages. Alternatively, these observations, especially the latter, could suggest that emotions and cognitive processes are orthogonal reflections of the same brain systems. In the preceding article, Gray advocates the siren-song attractions of the latter view-a delusional view, at least for psychobiologists, I would argue. In this commentary (invited by the editor of this special issue of Cognition and Emotion), I will reaffirm the utility of emotiodcognition distinctions in behavioural brain research, and attempt to coax Gray back to a more traditional view from which he now seems to have departed. Although Gray covers many issues with which I agree, in typical hominid fashion I will bluntly proceed to focus more on those matters with which I disagree. I thank the editor for requesting me to share this alternative view. Literature citations are used sparingly, but much of the relevant material can be accessed from the cited reviews from our laboratory. (shrink)

This article takes the form of an interview, in which the dialogue is internal. It is based on the author's experiment with the idea of the world as a household, which involves restoring household activities as free and independent activities. The author recollects earlier feminism's tendency to despise activities such as cooking and cleaning, because of their patriarchal inclusion in the stereotype of female dependency. She considers the household to be a fundamental human concept, which underlies lives and relationships, and (...) is capable of providing viable alternatives to the independency/dependency structures of patriarchy, embodied in secondary models such as the market place. (shrink)

Philip Tetlock underestimates the import of his own Expert Political Judgment. It is much more than a critical scientific evaluation of the accuracy and consistency of political pundits. It also offers a blueprint for challenging expertise more generally-in the name of scientific advancement. “Thinking the unthinkable”-a strategy Tetlock employs when he gets experts to consider counterfactual scenarios that are far from their epistemic comfort zones-has had explosive consequences historically for both knowledge and morality by extending our sense of what (...) is possible. Thinking the unthinkable might also put into question contemporary assumptions about the legitimacy of science. (shrink)

This section reproduces the part of Bibler’s book Thinking as Creative Work that discusses the subject as a “microsocium” combining the rational intellect, reason, intelligence, and intuitio...

In a recent volume titled Demande (Expectation), containing texts written over a period of more than thirty years, but each devoted to different aspects of the relationship between philosophy and literature, Jean-Luc Nancy offers a suggestive account of their mutual genesis and ongoing dialogue in order to underline the way in which, beyond their apparent dialectical reciprocity, philosophy and literature are each inseparable from the unanswered and unanswerable questions they ask themselves and each other. Both, in other words, are said (...) to belong to the “in-between,” that fragile zone of undecidability that, according to Nancy’s reading of Kant, is a salient characteristic of all supposed self-identity. This article explores some of the implications of Nancy’s formulation as it affects the seemingly intractable question of myth’s interruption. It considers in particular some of the problematic features, deriving, it argues, from the inescapable fragility of thought itself, that may to be found in Nancy’s sometimes tense and contradictory engagement with the work of Maurice Blanchot, the subject of two important essays in Demande, which raises probing questions of Nancy’s own philosophical enterprise. (shrink)

In his most recent book, Ermanno Bencivenga offers a stylistically and conceptually exciting investigation of the nature of language, mind, and personhood and the many ways the three connect. Bencivenga, one of the most iconoclastic voices to emerge in contemporary American philosophy, contests the basic assumptions of analytic (and also, to an extent, postmodern) approaches to these topics. His exploration leads through fascinating discussions of education, courage, pain, time and history, selfhood, subjectivity and objectivity, reality, facts, the empirical, power and (...) transgression, silence, privacy and publicity, and play—all themes that are shown to be integral to our thinking about language. Relentessly bending the rules, Bencivenga frustrates our expectations of a "proper" theory of language. He invokes the transgressions of Nietzsche and Wittgenstein even as he appropriates the aphoristic style of Wittgenstein's Tractatus. Written in a philosophically playful and experimental mode, A Theory of Language and Mind draws the reader into a sense of continual surprise, therapeutic discomfort, and discovery. (shrink)

The article discusses the problems of constructing a scientific picture of the world in a technogenic civilization at the stage of its globalization. The interdependence of science, technology and society generates a number of issues of a socio-humanitarian and, in particular, ideological nature. Interdisciplinary forms of organization of sciences contribute to the development of borderline methodologies. These methodologies integrate the achievements and problems of specific disciplines into a certain overall picture. The ambitions of this worldview include space, planetary nature with (...) all geo – shells, as well as the biosphere, technosphere, sociosphere, anthroposphere. In the course of communicative interactions, scientists have developed methodological principles for constructing a picture of the world. These principles claim to be universal: integrity, consistency, coherence, structurality, evolution/involution, complexity, self-organization, human dimension. However, epistemic and communicative difficulties accompany the construction of a general scientific picture of the world. There are methodological, experimental, linguistic, cognitive barriers between disciplines. Also, the unevenness of their development is strong. Competition between disciplines and reductionist programs are often caused by social reasons – politicization, ideologization and commercialization of big science. Philosophy seeks to connect the idea of a scientific picture of the world with a change in self-consciousness and a person’s place in the world. The prospect of intellectual synthesis fluctuates between the transdisciplinary form of organization of collective scientific thinking and the ideological imperialism of individual philosophical and scientific programs. (shrink)

There are certain ideals that can never be realised yet play an important role in our thinking, our morality, and our politics: they include the final comprehensive Truth, the General Will, the absolute Good, and certain religious ideals. Our attempts to get closer to them profoundly influence what we do, and our concern for them informs our criticism of what we reject. In politics, in particular, too many idealists are under the illusion that these ideals can be realised and (...) if disillusioned about this they too easily turn to cynicism - which is equally mistaken. This book looks at the role of such ideals in our intellectual and moral lives and in our politics by taking Kant's concept of the Regulative Ideal, and in so doing develops the concept itself further. Other thinkers whose ideas are considered in relation to this range from Plato to Iris Murdoch. (shrink)

Phenomenon of transdisciplinarity was put into the fore of analysis rather recently. In the article an attempt is made to find out whether it is possible to attribute this phenomenon not only to a science of the 21st century, or we have here the case where some scientific realities come to the attention of researchers with certain delay and has its value for the culture in general? It is possible to judge even the emergence of a kind of cognitive revolution (...) affecting both science culture. We need to find out what is meant by a transdisciplinarity, and how it differs from the inter- or multiransdisciplinarity. In the study the method of historical reconstruction, combining elements of presentism and antiqurism, was implemented. This method allows us to interpret historical events in the context of a specific level of knowledge, and at the same time to evaluate them in terms of modern ideas related to transdisciplinarity, inter- and multidisciplinarity. System-structural method, focused on an integrated analysis of the dynamics of development of cognitive processes in culture was implied as well, and the method of comparative analysis, which is aimed at comparing different but conceptually similar processes in various areas of conceptual art practice. It is in the framework of paradigm adopted a tacit agreement among scientists about the validity and effectiveness of research methods and techniques of inquiry. Within the paradigm, which presupposes certain fundamental principles, goals, and certain values shared by the scientific community, the novel sprouts of radical ideas once emerge. The scientific revolution here means a radical revision of the admissibility of accepted and proven methods, goals and values that are common to the members of the scientific community. Typically, new theories and concepts proposed and already mastered new scientific community, which is gradually replacing its representatives on the key command altitudes. The kernel of scientific community in fact is a style of thinking that is emerged in the context of a particular discipline, and then experience expansion in the form of discursive practices at a wide space of science and culture due to the novel cognitive schemes open the way to synthesize various research domains into a certain integrity. There is no question of the scientific revolution in the sense of Kuhn, since any significant goals and values of the scientific communities are not affected. Nevertheless, in some sense cognitive revolution taking place, the revolution of transdisciplinary type. The adoption of a new style of scientific thinking often gives rise to new types of objects and directions of cognitive activity, a new type of explanation that require new types of research proposals and cultural activities. Thus, the main idea of this article is that along with the Kuhn type scientific revolutions, transdisciplinary type scientific revolutions are conceivable, and even transdisciplinary cognitive types. This revolutions manifests in a change in style of reasoning, and it results in the expansion of this style to wide space of science and culture through the cognitive schemes and techniques, which enables to synthesize research and art activity in some integrity. Adoption of a new way of reasoning and the transition to new discursive practices generates new types of research facilities, new mechanisms of explanation, new cultural blueprints and instruments. Cognitive activity, based on a new style of thinking, involves multidisciplinarity, formation of new scientific and cultural institutions, and, therefore, causes a noticeable social change. Based on an analysis of interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary processes in modern science and culture the authors claim that it is namely transdisciplinarity would determine the face of science and culture in the medium term, and will form the basis for the convergence of science, technology, art, and consciousness studies in general. (shrink)

Taking a medieval approach in content as well as in form—a compilation of lists—this volume creates a foundation for the study of the medieval mindset by establishing the terms and concepts that scholars would have had in a common at the time: an invaluable lingua franca. With a pedagogical appeal, this interdisciplinary book is a combination text, reference, and popular work that provides a fascinating intellectual history of the Middle Ages while complimenting the study of other works from that period.

In this paper, we argue that communalism is not uniquely African. It comes in different forms of social and psychological thinking which can be found in any culture and society whether capitalistic or socialistic where the notion of social belongingness through reasoned reflection transcends the desire for personal gratification. We claim that some values of communalism such as altruism, mutual cooperation, complementarity etc., can be useful in shaping a viable system of democracy for Africa, not because communalism is unique (...) to Africa, but because it is not. We contend that part of the challenges of democratic practice in Africa is the inclination to extreme form of individualism embedded in its capitalist roots. We show that the structure of democracy can evolve to adapt to changes mediated by communal values. Using the methods of hermeneutics and conversational thinking, we will argue that democratic practice in Africa can profit from communalism and should be restructured to admit relevant communal values. Keywords: African, Communalism, African Communalism, Democracy, Communalistic Democracy. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger is among the most important philosophers of the Twentieth Century. Within the continental tradition, almost every great figure has been deeply influenced by his work. For this reason, a full understanding of the course of modern philosophy is impossible without at least a basic grasp of Heidegger. Unfortunately, his work is notoriously difficult, both because of his innovative ideas and his difficult writing style. In this compelling book, Lee Braver cuts through the jargon to present Heidegger’s ideas in (...) clear English, using illuminating examples and explications of thorny passages. In so doing, he offers readers an accessible overview of Heidegger’s entire career. The first half of the book presents a guide through _Being and Time_, Heidegger’s early masterpiece, while the second half covers the key themes of his later writing, including technology, subjectivity, history, nihilism, agency, and the nature of thought itself. As Heidegger’s later work is deeply engaged with other philosophers, Braver explains the relevance of Plato, Descartes, Kant, and Nietzsche for Heidegger’s thought. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars trying to find their way through Heidegger’s difficult ideas. Anyone interested in Twentieth Century continental philosophy must come to terms with Heidegger, and this book is the ideal place to begin. (shrink)

Written as a series of lectures, The Ecological Life offers a humanistic perspective on environmental philosophy that challenges some of the dogmas of deep ecology and radical environmentalism while speaking for their best desires. The book argues that being human-centered leaves us open to ecological identifications, rather than the opposite. Bendik-Keymer draws on analytic and continental traditions of philosophy as well as literature and visual media. He argues for a sense of ecological justice consonant with human rights, and shows how (...) humanistic thinking is committed to deepening respect for life and our ecological orientation. In a clear, jargon-free and conversational tone, The Ecological Life presents a timely and important contribution to civic engagement in an ecological century. (shrink)

The most popular uniting theme in feminist peace literature grounds women's peace work in mothering. I argue if maternal arguments do not address the variety of relationships different races and classes of mothers have to institutional violence and/or the military, then the resulting peace politics can only draw incomplete conclusions about the relationships between maternal work/thinking and peace. To illustrate this I compare two models of mothering: Sara Ruddick's decription of "maternal practice" and Patricia Hill Collins's account of racial-ethnic (...) women's "motherwork.". (shrink)

Acts that are considered undesirable standardly violate our expectations. In contrast, acts that count as morally desirable can either meet our expectations or exceed them. The zone in which an act can be morally desirable yet not exceed our expectations is what we call the zone of moral indifference, and it has so far been neglected. In this paper, we show that people can use positive terms in a deflated manner to refer to actions in the zone (...) of moral indifference, whereas negative terms cannot be so interpreted. (shrink)

Interdisciplinary studies of science form a “living” organism, in which every part performs its function and is connected with other parts. Philosophy of science plays a role of the “think-tank” of that organism. It is a generator of the sense that connects the functions of its separate parts into a systematic unity. It can be called the consciousness of science. Metaphilosophy of science is related to philosophy of science in the same way as philosophy of science itself is related to (...) science. Within metaphilosophy of science the propensity of philosophy of science to self-reflection is implemented. Metaphilosophy of science makes relevant the issues that relate to the philosophical significance of the processes taking place in the so-called “trading zone” (in the sense of P. Galison). These trading zone is a place where scientists, science-of-science theorists and philosophers exchange their ideas. The interaction between philosophy and metaphilosophy of science takes place in the course of a competition among various philosophical interpretations of the results received within the studies of these “trading” processes. Institutional, methodological, historical and culturological studies get a philosophical interpretation and become the source of metaphilosophical ideas. Metaphorically, one may say, that metaphilosophy of science is the self-consciousness of philosophy of science. The very idea that metaphilosophy of science is a participant of the process occurring in the “trading zone” puts an end to a meaningless pile of “metalevels” that very often characterize philosophical discussions of science. (shrink)

John Locke is known within anthropology primarily for his empiricism, his views of natural laws, and his discussion of the state of nature and the social contract. Marilyn Strathern and Marshall Sahlins, however, have offered distinctive, novel, and broad reflections on the nature of anthropological knowledge that appeal explicitly to a lesser-known aspect of Locke’s work: his metaphysical views of relations. This paper examines their distinctive conclusions – Sahlins’ about cultural relativism, Strathern’s about relatives and kinship – both of which (...) concern the objectivity of anthropological knowledge. Although Locke’s own views of relations have been neglected by historians of philosophy in the past, recent and ongoing philosophical discussions of Locke on relations create a productive trading zone between philosophy and anthropology on the objectivity of anthropological knowledge that goes beyond engagement with the particular claims made by Sahlins and Strathern. (shrink)

Thinking through French Philosophy has two objectives. First, it seeks to demonstrate that the thought of Derrida, Foucault, and Deleuze draw inspiration from the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty. Lawlor shows that Merleau-Ponty, residing somewhere between structuralism and poststructuralism, managed to articulate key ideas that helped Derrida, Foucault, and Deleuze make the necessary breakthroughs that now come to mark their respective philosophies. Such ideas include Merleau-Ponty’s notion of the flesh as developed in The Visible and the Invisible, the chiasm, and expression (...) as a sense-giving event. The second objective of the book is to read the “great French philosophies of the Sixties” as a philosophy of “interrogation.” Lawlor argues that Derrida, Foucault, and Deleuze offer us a “point of diffraction” through which we can further elaborate our thinking on various aporias opened up by these thinkers. (shrink)

Quentin Meillassoux has recently launched a sweeping attack against ‘correlationism’. Correlationism is an umbrella term for any philosophical system that is based on ‘the idea [that] we only ever have access to the correlation between thinking and being, and never to either term considered apart from the other’. Thus construed, Meillassoux' critique is indeed a sweeping one: It comprises major parts of the philosophical tradition since Kant, both in its more continental and in its more analytical outlooks. In light (...) of this critique, the aim of this paper is twofold: On the one hand, I shall defend phenomenology against Meillassoux' main argument, the ‘argument from ancestrality’. On the other hand, I will argue that this argument, albeit unsuccessful in its original form, can be modified to pose a more serious threat. Although this modified version can also be circumvented, it forces phenomenologists to clarify their stance towards the natural sciences. (shrink)

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. Requires signed TDF. ;Kant's fundamental problematic is the articulation of a finite rationality. The central problematic of the finitude of reason is how to think of a manner of thinking which is appropriate to a finite being. The relevant aspect of the finitude of a finite being is its temporality: a finite being is a temporal historical being. A finite rationality will, therefore, be a manner of thinking appropriate to (...) this temporality--that is, it will be a temporal, mobile rationality. The mobility of this rationality must be conceived of as unending, otherwise it will ultimately be conceived of as static. This constant mobility is achieved in Kant's writing by relating thinking to ideals which can only be approached in infinite approximation. Against a non-finite conception of reason as oriented by the present, Kant's conception of a finite rationality is one oriented by the future. However, this constant mobility--infinite approximation to a postulated ideal future--raises the question of how such a rationality can be conceived of positively: is not such a rationality a rationality of infinite defeat, a rationality of despair? If it is, then Kant will have not thought finitude, since a truly finite rationality--that is, a truly appropriate rationality--cannot be one which creates a negative self-conception. Such negativity reveals an inappropriate criterion, i.e., the opposite of what the question of finitude demands. So the central question of the finitude of reason is how to conceive of a manner of thinking which is temporal , and does not result in a negative self-conception. However these two demands seem to be exclusive. We will argue that this dilemma is addressed in Kant's attempt to articulate the finitude of reason by giving hope a central role in his account. In hope constant mobility can be embraced without leading to a negative self concept. For Kant, a finite rationality is ultimately a hopeful rationality. (shrink)

In this paper, I try to show to what extent Wittgenstein’s thinking about the problem of the meaning of life was influenced by Tolstoy. I begin with the problem of what Tolstoy’s writings, especially philosophical, Wittgenstein knew. Then I proceed to three areas of impact: (1) treating the question of the meaning of life as the central problem for philosophy, (2) defining Ethics in terms of the meaning of life, and (3) the idea that the solution of the problem (...) of the meaning of life lies in a practical change, not in giving a theoretical answer, which in turn is broken down into three more specific ideas, namely that (3a) the question concerning the meaning of life is a pseudo-question, that (3b) this vanishing of the question is not yet the solution, and that (3c) the solution of the problem of life consists in taking a religious attitude towards the world. I try to show that in point 1 Wittgenstein accepted Tolstoy’s general idea, but gave it his own version, which in turn makes the definition of Ethics in terms of the meaning of life in point 2 understandable; whereas in point 3 Wittgenstein accepts Tolstoy’s ideas and tries to formulate them in his own way. (shrink)

Michael Davis, a leading figure in the study of professional ethics, offers here both a compelling exploration of engineering ethics and a philosophical analysis of engineering as a profession. After putting engineering in historical perspective, Davis turns to the Challenger space shuttle disaster to consider the complex relationship between engineering ideals and contemporary engineering practice. Here, Davis examines how social organization and technical requirements define how engineers should (and presumably do) think. Later chapters test his analysis of engineering judgement and (...) autonomy empirically, engaging a range of social science research including a study of how engineers and managers work together in ten different companies. (shrink)

© 2020, Edizioni ETS. All rights reserved. This lecture outlines elements central to the project of rethinking the concerns of political theology. The lecture seeks to integrate that thinking into the development of a philosophy of life; life defined by an already given relation to the law. Maintaining the law, which is the stance against nihilism, whilst complicating the way law is understood, involves a shift in how sovereignty would itself then be conceived.

The aim of this paper is to rebut two major criticisms of the No-Miracles Argument for Realism. The first comes from Musgrave. The second comes from Colin Howson. Interestingly enough, these criticisms are the mirror image of each other. Yet, they both point to the conclusion that NMA is fallacious. Musgrave’s misgiving against NMA is that if it is seen as an inference to the best explanation, it is deductively fallacious. Being a deductivist, he tries to correct it by turning (...) it into a valid deductive argument. Howson’s misgiving against NMA is that if it is seen as an inference to the best explanation, it is inductively fallacious. Being a subjective Bayesian, he tries to correct it by turning it into a sound subjective Bayesian argument. I will argue that both criticisms are unwarranted. (shrink)

Pál Makó was a prominent 18th century Hungarian mathematician and physicist. The paper shows the cultural-historical background of his work as well as the scientific-historical precedents of his life-work. The influence of the milieu of the University of Nagyszombat on his thinking is taken into account as well. Further, the paper sheds light on Makó´s interpretation of Leibniz and Ch. Wolff in his philosophical books and on his adaptation of advanced mathematics as the zenith of his career. Attention is (...) paid also to the methodology of his text-books and scientific and philosophical-historical lessons of his manuscripts. (shrink)