This paper distinguishes two versions of Ryle's notion of 'logical geography'. Logical geography: The network of relationships between current uses of a collection of concepts. (Probably what Ryle meant by the term.) Logical topography Features of the portion of reality, or types of portions of reality, related to a given set of concepts, where the reality may be capable of being divided up in different ways using different networks of relationships between concepts. -/- Studying/analysing logical (...) topography includes evaluating the alternative divisions in terms of the theories or applications that are supported by the different sets of concepts, or perhaps some other uses of the concepts. -/- On re-reading Appendices III and IV of my Oxford DPhil thesis "Knowing and Understanding Relations between meaning and truth, meaning and necessary truth, meaning and synthetic necessary truth",, online here, I found to my surprise that several of the topics discussed below had been discussed in those two Appendices, and that the distinction between logical topography and logical geography was made in Appendix IV, discussing conceptual analysis, even though I did not use these words. (shrink)

This is a contribution to construction of a research roadmap for future cognitive systems, including intelligent robots, in the context of the euCognition network, and UKCRC Grand Challenge 5: Architecture of Brain and Mind. -/- A meeting on the euCognition roadmap project was held at Munich Airport on 11th Jan 2007. This document was in part a response to discussions at that meeting. An explanation of why specifying requirements is a hard problem, and why it needs to be done, along (...) with some suggestions for making progress, can be found in this presentation: http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/cosy/papers/#pr0701 "What's a Research Roadmap For? Why do we need one? How can we produce one?" Working on that presentation made me realise that certain deceptively familiar words and phrases frequently used in this context (e.g. "robust". "flexible", "autonomous") appear not to need explanation because everyone understands them, whereas in fact they have obscure semantics that needs to be elucidated. Only then can we understand what the implications are for research targets. In particular, they need explanation and analysis if they are to be used to specify requirements and research goals, especially for publicly funded projects. -/- First draft analyses are presented here. In the long term I would like to expand and clarify those analyses, and to provide many different examples to illustrate the points made. This will probably have to be a collaborative research activity. (shrink)

The Weimar-Republic, and the modernist architecture and planning that was born there, is still a contested place, from whence liberals, reactionaries and Marxists can all trace their lineage. Sabine Hake’s Topographies of Class attempts to clarify this contestation, through an interdisciplinary study of the modernist geography of the interwar-capital, Berlin. The book offers many new insights into the Weimar-era city, countering a tendency on the Left to reject the twentieth-century city in favour of the romanticised ‘capitals of the nineteenth century’, (...) with their insurgent proletariat and their lushly ornamented boulevards. Topographies of Class is a reminder that, irrespective of the era’s rejection of ornament and romanticism, it was a site of class-struggle as intense as that of the Paris of the 1870s. However, Hake’s study is dominated by a conception of class as an ‘identity’, akin to the identity-politics of race or gender, leading to an argument centred on the suppression or expression of ‘class-difference’ rather than class-struggle. In the process, her reading of the city’s modernism becomes overly one-sided, as a period of tension between labour and capital is read, under the influence of Manfredo Tafuri and Italian post-Marxist architectural theory, as being governed almost solely by the logic of Fordist capital. (shrink)

The article employs music to describe the dynamics of Central European identity at the turn of the 20th century. Conceptually, the analysis is based on the notion of cultural resonance and the distinction between political territories, which isolate identity, and cultural landscapes which let it escape. This theoretical understanding is derived from the acoustic philosophy and musical practice of two Central European composers, Leoš Janáček and Béla Bartók. Exemplified here is artistic ‘extra-territorial’ identity, which is indeed how Theodor Adorno at (...) one point referred to the ‘peripheral’ sound coming from the region. This process of identity construction amplifies paradoxical middle spaces, which Jean Luc Nancy describes evocatively as a cultural mêlée. The vitality of cultural resonance is fuelled by this primary contact with mundane reality and the ‘navigational hesitation’ underpinning identity and its many trajectories. (shrink)

Attempts to illuminate the nature of “blame” have shaped recent philosophical discussion of free will and moral responsibility. In this paper I show how, in at least one context, this search for a theory of blame has led us astray. Specifically, I focus on the contemporary debate about the “standing” to blame and argue, first, that theorizing about blame-in-general in this context has assumed an impoverished moral psychology that fails to reflect the range of blaming emotions and that conflates these (...) emotions’ distinctive logics; and, second, that such theorizing has encouraged the propagation of misleading theories of blame’s “norms.” Rather than searching for the nature of blame, I employ and defend an alternative methodological approach that focuses on the psychology and ethics of specific reactive emotions. I then show how an agent’s own bad behavior can alter the appropriateness of these various attitudes in distinctive ways. Marking these distinctions leads to some surprising conclusions. For example, it allows us to move beyond the assumption that the wrongness of standingless blame is fundamentally a matter of hypocrisy. (shrink)

This paper argues that what scholars call ‘the free speech principle’ is not one principle but a slew of principles, and that these principles harbour several important differences that have remained largely unremarked upon, namely: (i) extending vs. limiting principles; (ii) comparative vs. non-comparative principles; and (iii) monistic vs. pluralistic principles. The paper also critically assesses certain generalisations that people might be tempted to make about these different principles, such as that one kind of free speech principle is harder to (...) defend than another. Finally, the paper teases out the practical as well as theoretical implications of these insights, including degrees of complexity, the logical relationship between free speech principles and free speech policy dilemmas, and the virtue of compromise over free speech principles. (shrink)

Ansgar Beckermann Once, a mind-body theory based upon the idea of supervenience seemed to be a promising alternative to the various kinds of reductionistic physicalism. In recent years, however, Jaegwon Kim has subjected his own brainchild to a very thorough criticism. With most of Kim’s arguments I agree wholeheartedly - not least because they converge with my own thoughts.² In order to explain the few points of divergence with Kim’s views, I shall have to prepare the ground a little. In (...) the course of this paper I will therefore do two things: At the start, I will try to sketch the logical topography of the „solution space“ of the problem Kim is concerned with. As a second step, I shall then comment on the concepts of identity, realization and reduction and attempt to show that Kim’s concept of realization is too narrow, because he is still very much in the grip of the traditional view with regard to what it means to show that a property _F _is identical with, or realized by, another property _G_. (shrink)

This book draws the limits of our thoughts and consciousness between the mind and mind-independent reality by using mathematical logic with the support of neurology. The author combines the Analytical and Continental traditions with each other's virtues. If Kant were alive today, he would have had to write such a book. Diagnosing the limits between immanence and transcendence of the consciousness depends on defining some transcendental a priori categories in between as some basic axioms of the mind. Although this is (...) a paradoxical attempt every philosopher falls into, the author non-paradoxically identifies these non-intentional cognitive categories by using mathematical category theory. This basic model of the mind allows us to follow the logical possibilities in between that the mind can set up in its relationship with mind-independence. In this way, the author defines the intentional categories of consciousness by using mathematical set theory and obtains a self-representational higher-order theory of consciousness (SHOT). Finally, he combines the intentional and non-intentional categories with an algebraic topography and obtains a model of the mind. The architectural structure of the mind is the problematic skeleton of philosophy with all its sub-branches as a human aura that can be traced throughout the six Cartesian meditations. The philosophical anthropology depicted eventually emerged as a purely naturalistic, shamanic prototype metaphysics radically different from the monotheistic Western tradition that began with Plato. The reasoning had started from mathematics, but unexpectedly arrived at an archaic metaphysics. This philosophical theory is called "Anthropogonia", after Hesiod's Theogonia. After Anthropogonia, logically, truth-seekers in these ancient, imperial religions must retreat from their historically constructed Platonic realist theology to their shamanic roots. The naturalist architecture of the mind requires such a naturalized doctrine and art. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Phaedra's Labyrinth as the Paradigm of Passion: Racine's Aesthetic Formulation of Mimetic Desire Jacques-Jude Lépine Haverford College The actual model of Racine's Phaedra is no more the one that he claims to follow in his preface than one ofthose which his critics have sought in vain to find in the works of his immediate predecessors.1 Indeed, the comparative reading ofRacine's last profane tragedy against his sources shows that Seneca (...) and Euripides only provided a very general framework, one might say a traditional theme, which Racine completely recasts on the level of the plot, structure, characters, poetic esthetics, and theatrical performance. On the other hand, the myth of Phaedra's involuntary passion for her stepson Hippolytus, the hunter who was supposed to be atavistically insensitive to erotic seduction, could very well have been reorganized on the basis of another mythological episode which precedes it, the killing of the Minotaur by Theseus in the Labyrinth. There are many explicit references to this episode throughout Racine's Phaedra. There are even more than a rich but strictly thematic critic has been able to detect (see Racine), underscoring the fundamental point of my essay that the intensely poetic character of the Labyrinth, and particularly its function as a fantastic spatial frame, is not simply of a decorative nature. In Racine's work, as in any other genuine literary masterpiece, there is a unity ofcontent and form. The many references to the Labyrinth are determinant for the very subject ofPhaedra, which is the representation of passion, the only subject of interest for Racine. In fact, I intend to demonstrate that Racine used the unique topography of the Labyrinth as a paradigm of the logic of the relationships between his ' These works are Garnier's "Hippolyte" (1573) and Quinault's "Bellérophon" (1671). 48Jacques-Jude Lépine characters because of its capacity for fully expressing the mimetic origin of passion, a decisive discovery the gradual stages towards which may be traced in all his previous works. The Monster Hunt as a Metaphor of the Dramatic Action In order to demonstrate this point, I will start from the textual data, even though it will be necessary to go beyond a simple inventory of the themes explicitly connected to the Labyrinth. The first of these themes is obviously the one of monstrosity. At some point in the play, all the main characters accuse themselves, or are accused, of being a monster (Barthes 115). The relationship between this moral monstrosity (expressed in ambiguous statements suggesting a physical sign) and the return of Theseus, whose numerous monster hunts Hippolytus recalls in the opening scene,2 is easy to see. As has been already noted, the theme of the monster hunt is present from beginning to end of the play, where the fight between Hippolytus and the sea monster occurs (see Jasenas). But the monsterpar excellence is the Minotaur, whose death at the hands of Theseus Phaedra recalls in a famous speech which serves to reveal her passion to Hippolytus through a series of substitutions in the original cast of characters: Oh, why were you too young top have embarked Within the ship that brought him [Theseus] to our shores? You would have been the monster's killer then, In spite of all the windings of his maze. To find your way in that uncertain dark, My sister would have armed you with the thread. But no! In this design I would have been Ahead of her, my sister! Me, not her, It would have been whom love at first inspired; And I it would have been, Prince, I, whose aid Had taught you all the Labyrinth's crooked ways. A single thread would not have been enough To satisfy your lover's fears for you. I would myself have wished to lead the way, And share the perils you were bound to face. Phaedra, into the Labyrinth, with you Would have descended, and with you returned, To safety, or with you have perished. (647-62) 2 See verses 73-90. References to Margaret Rawlings's translation of Phaedra will be given parenthetically in the text. The verse numbers refer to the French edition... (shrink)

The recent phenomenon of the export zone attracts scholarly attention primarily for its economic and political logics, yet it is as a cultural phenomenon that the Zone may ultimately signal its transformational role in the trajectory of state sovereignty and the global urban imagination. This article approaches the phenomenon of the Zone as a key location for understanding the social and cultural impact of globalization on urban space. It conceptually locates the trajectory of the export-oriented zone and its analogues to (...) understand how, in little over 40 years, the phenomenon of the Zone experienced a rapid and veritable institutionalization as part of the topography and imagination of globalization. The first part traces the contours of the Zone as a territorial strategy that re-scales national economic and political space and enables the networked models of distributed production so critical to the global economy. The second part critically supplements the standard account by re-thinking the Zone as an incipient urban form — the Ex-City — that incorporates classically modernist fantasies in the context of contemporary logics of sovereignty and accumulation. (shrink)

Writing, the exigency of writing: no longer the writing that has always (through a necessity in no way avoidable) been in the service of the speech or thought that is called idealist (that is to say, moralizing), but rather the writing that through its own slowly liberated force (the aleatory force of absence) seems to devote itself solely to itself as something that remains without identity, and little by little brings forth possibilities that are entirely other: an anonymous, distracted, deferred, (...) and dispersed way of being in relation, by which everything is brought into question – and first of all the idea of God, of the Self, of the Subject, then of Truth and the One, then finally the idea of the Book and the Work so that this writing (understood in its enigmatic rigor), far from having the Book as its goal rather signals its end: a writing that could be said to be outside discourse, outside language. – Maurice Blanchot ( The Infinite Conversation , xi) The Compendium * Beginning with the idea and practice of writing, and moving to the subject or self, then to truth and the One, and arriving at the Book and the Work, Blanchot’s words reflect the trajectory of the following work of writing. True to the embeddedness of the subject in the work of writing, the term “Compendium” has been a metonym for me over the past few years as I have thought about the concept of totality alongside its expression in figures such as the One, the Whole, or the All. In the following I aim to share some of the content of this metonym, and to enrich it by making some distinctions. 1 Here the term “Compendium” will refer to a concept of totality that is ontological (pertaining to being, and the copula) and also textual (pertaining to the symbolic, and the signifier-signified relationship). The Compendium is a figure for thinking the world as a Book, in the broadest sense—an approach to reality that is by no means new, but one that is due for renewal. 2 In partial answer to the question of the Compendium we will say that the word ‘Compendium’ stands in for expressions which seek to totalize, or concepts which seek to approach the concept of ‘everything,’ particularly when these expressions are bound up in the question of the Book (both the book as a physical object and the Book as a metaphysical figure: a way of thinking about the work in and of writing). The question of the Compendium is strongly associated with the physical and metaphysical form of the Book, like the mysterious and symbolic books which are opened in the Biblical book of Revelation, the book of life and the book of death, which together constitute an important couplet. 3 Parataxis & Hypotaxis There are two helpful distinctions that will bring us closer to an answer to the question “What is a Compendium?” The first distinction is between two figures in and for writing: parataxis and hypotaxis . Typically paired in contrast to one another as literary techniques, with parataxis indicating a side-by-side placement of textual elements and hypotaxis referring to subordinate arrangements of textual elements, the two figures can be understood as having a philosophical significance in addition to their practical function as devices for writers. For us these two terms will remain between philosophical theory and writing practice, and serve as a perspective for our writing and creation of texts. Here I take texts to refer to anything from the concrete written words in a book, to the ontological text of the world that we experience. Parataxis , as a figural way of thinking about the ontological structure of texts, refers to texts which are tightly woven and interdependent – texts within which each sentence bears the weight of the entire work. Parataxis often involves repetition, great density, and fragility. One of the best examples of this sort of text is Theodor Adorno’s posthumous magnum opus , Aesthetic Theory . In addition to the text itself, the translation history of the book may also help us to better understand parataxis and its relation to hypotaxis . The final published version of Aesthetic Theory , in German, was a text that Adorno intended to revise and rewrite, but this intention was never realized because of his untimely death. Where the German text of Aesthetic Theory certainly exemplifies the concept of parataxis , the first English edition took this densely woven text and carved Adorno’s lengthy paragraphs and lengthy sentences into manageable ‘bite-sized’ pieces of English text. The first translator took further liberty and inserted headings and new paragraph breaks where there were none in the original. Aesthetic Theory was eventually retranslated by Robert Hullot-Kentor and is now available in a form that is much more faithful to the original work. 4 The pertinent idea that this translation history points to is the distinction between parataxis and hypotaxis . Where parataxis describes texts which are repetitive, densely woven, and often fragile, hypotaxis describes texts which are hierarchical and in which the primary relation is linear – the latter of which is very similar to the first English translation of Aesthetic Theory . On the other hand, the original German text that Adorno wrote was very dense, often repetitive, and contained long sections of text unbroken by paragraphs or headings. This example of parataxis was then turned towards hypotaxis through the initial translation which took a text that was, in many ways, nonhierarchical and nonlinear, and artificially subjected it to a hierarchy that was not its own (and here I take the word of Fredric Jameson who comments on the two translations in a note at the beginning of his book Late Marxism ). 5 The point here is not about translation, but rather the distinction between parataxis and hypotaxis precisely as they are figures for discourse, written or otherwise. The concept of parataxis looks far more postmodern and rhizomic than the concept of hypotaxis which remains very modern and arborescent. This is a more figural way of talking about the distinction. However, if we wanted to take a more precise and analytical approach we could say that on the level of form parataxis involves a relationship between sentences and paragraphs in which each part bears an equally crushing responsibility to present the whole content of the text. As well, on the level of content, parataxis requires that each concept in a work take on the full conceptual weight of the total work. Continuing the analysis, we could say that parataxis describes texts in which there is no (or very little) linear or causal move from antecedent to consequent, whether in content or form. Instead, parataxis describes texts which weave together concepts via conjugations or associations. The concept of hypotaxis , on the other hand, requires that texts submit themselves to hierarchy, one example of which is logical argumentation. The contingency of the conclusion upon premises in hypotaxis is certainly distinct from the repetition, re-presentation, and conjugation of concepts in parataxis , and I think that this is evident in the difference between the writing styles prevalent in contemporary Analytic philosophy and Continental philosophy. It is not the case that the distinction between parataxis and hypotaxis absolutely corresponds with the writing styles of Continental and Analytic philosophy (respectively). There are thinkers who take exception to this pattern, such as Badiou’s more formal approach in the discourse of Continental philosophy to give one example. However, when Analytic philosophy takes its writing lessons from the sciences, and seeks to do philosophy via the clean linear move from antecedent to consequent, then I think that Analytic philosophy writes with hypotaxis in mind. On the other hand, when Continental (particularly German and French) philosophy takes its writing lessons from narrative or poetry then Continental philosophy writes with parataxis in mind. It is not fair to say that all those writing Continental philosophy are looking to narrative and poetry for stylistic direction, just as it is not the case that all those writing Analytic philosophy have mathematics and science as their writing format, however there are some striking ways in which the differing epistemologies of Continental and Analytic philosophy encourage writing with parataxis and hypotaxis in mind (respectively). For some, writing with parataxis or hypotaxis in mind is a conscious decision and a product of stylistic self-consciousness, and for others it is an unconscious discursive and epistemic requirement that must be met in order to be involved in a particular discourse. Before moving on to our second distinction, and then an examination of the question of the Book, it is important to point out that both totality and figurations like the One, the Whole, and the All, come out of very human desires to totalize or to actualize our being-towards-totality. The relationship between identity and totality then can be construed, with Heidegger in mind, as striving toward wholeness, completion, or fulfillment, each of which is a quality of compendia. 6 Compilation & Selection The first distinction between parataxis and hypotaxis pertains to both form and content, and to both the mechanics of writing and the ideas to which writing refers. The second distinction pertains to both as well. In the process of writing and in the process of perception as well, there is a tension between compilation and selection . To begin with, in the work of theory-writing there is compilation, and this is because writing theory requires a broad perspective and certain measure of totalization. On the other hand, writing theory requires that the writer select an idea or a combination of ideas to individuate out of a radical and infinite multiplicity of identities and combinations. The concern here is not primarily for the writing of a theory about a specific idea, like a secondary work or a reference text. But rather the concern is with the writing of grand theories: Marx and Marxism, Derrida and Deconstruction, Husserl and Phenomenology, Sartre and Existentialism, Saussure and Structuralism —each of which strives along a trajectory towards being all-encompassing, whether it intends to or not. Today, we could even say that Speculative Realism has embarked on this journey, and perhaps now we could say that the discourse of Speculative Realism has reached the inevitable point after which a grand theory leaves the hands of its writer or writers and becomes a possession of the collective consciousness of the academy, or (perhaps now) the mass consciousness of the blogosphere—and this is a true pharmakon , a poison and a cure, a blessing and a curse. 7 When we write theory, whether the scope is that of a grand theory or a particular theory, we write in the tension between compilation (making good on the desire to be all encompassing) and selection (being required to decide and discern and to judge what is included in the work and what is deleted or appended or abridged or given over to ellipses). Generally speaking, the work of theory-writing often comes out of a desire to totalize, that is, to develop a theory of everything that is able to apprehend new experiences and ideas while still remaining whole. I grant that this is not a universal desire, and that not everyone who sits down to write a work (or book) of theory does so because of their will-to-totality, but it remains that this drive to totalize does condition a great many writers of theory (especially those who seek to develop grand theories like those mentioned previously). At the beginning of his book of interviews, Between Existentialism and Marxism , Sartre is quoted as saying, after completing the first volume of his Critique of Dialectical Reason : “I no longer feel the need to make long digressions in my books, as if I were forever chasing after my own philosophy. It will now be deposited in little coffins, and I will feel completely emptied and at peace—as I felt after Being and Nothingness . A feeling of emptiness: a writer is fortunate if he can attain such a state. For when one has nothing to say, one can say everything .” 8 This is where our two initial distinctions come to bear on the being-towards-totality as it is expressed in the concrete practice of writing: the first being between parataxis and hypotaxis , and the second being between compilation and selection. Where this second distinction is concerned there is a certain paradox at play given that selection is inescapable, and compilation is unachievable. Selection is inescapable (with the figure of the Compendium in mind) because, even when the imperative to compile is followed to excruciating lengths, selection still has the last word. This is why the Compendium is a figure rather than some material thing that can actually be accomplished or actualized. No matter how far one goes along with the will-to-archive and the will-to-compile, it is only ever a question of minimizing selection and never eliminating it. This leads to the second point, which is that total compilation is unachievable. The closest thing to total compilation that we have before us is the ontological and textual fabric of the world. Even in the case of the world, compilation cannot be enacted in a total fashion because of the need to include both the sphere of the actual and the sphere of the possible or potential. This as another way in which compilation is always-already selection, and further evidence that total compilation is practically impossible. Discursive Figuration and Total Writing Rather than figuration referring to a figure of speech or an image, here the term points to a way in which to think about the work of writing, both the work put into writing, and the work that is the result of writing: the finished yet incomplete final piece. As figures or figurations, the Book and the Compendium are ways of thinking about the work of writing and the human desire for the wholeness, completion, and fulfillment that are made manifest in the completed form of the book (whether a published or printed or saved document put to rest by the author). These two figures bear more strongly upon works that seek to be all-encompassing, and works that strive towards expressions of totality such as the One, the Whole, or the All. Moving on to the topic of the subtitle, and on a more prescriptive note, I would say that there is more hope for theory-writing to be found in parataxis than hypotaxis . Part of the reason for this claim is the poststructuralist critique of hierarchies, and yet another part is the compelling line of thinking called “weak thought” (in theology by John D. Caputo, and in philosophy by Gianni Vattimo, among others). 9 The consequences of these two convictions are such that if one is to strongly assert the truth of a grand theory without leaving the realm of hierarchy-critique and weak thought, then one must write paradoxically with parataxis in mind, and in so doing write weakly and non-hierarchically. This does not mean avoiding a sort of topography or topology when writing theory, rather it means avoiding both subjugation and oppression in thought by pursuing a nonviolent sort of ontology. In order to do this, theory writing does not present itself as an exercise in logical analysis where one mechanically moves from a set of premises (via contingency) to the inevitable conclusion (via necessity). Instead, theory approaches the idea of a Compendium. Given that the figural Compendium places parataxis and compilation above hypotaxis and selection, then the question becomes: is placing one part of a binary term before another not just another way of selecting, or another expression of hypotaxis ? Counter to the urge to resign oneself to the reign of selection, with some qualification one can nonetheless write without deciding whether selection and hypotaxis should be subservient to compilation and parataxis (which is to say that writing-without-decision is somewhere between and beyond possibility and impossibility). This dilemma can be disarmed by stating that theory writing is not about primacy, and not about having-decided-beforehand, both stylistically and also where content is concerned. This is the paradox of writing: always striving along a trajectory ( telos ) towards totality via parataxis and compilation, but always being drawn back to finitude and making selections, and placing one idea before another with hypotaxis in mind. In light of this paradox, the question of the Compendium as a figure for discourse and a figural Book has resonance with Jacques Derrida’s essay on Edmund Jabès’ Book of Questions , found in his Writing and Difference . The Question of the Book “Little by little the book will finish me.” 10 Derrida quotes Jabès, and proceeds to outline the reflexive relationship between the author of the book and the book itself, each of which are subjected to the other through a sort of chiasmus, both ontological and textual (not that the two are entirely separable). The Book, for Derrida like Blanchot in the introductory quotation, “infinitely reflects itself” and “develops as a painful questioning of its own possibility”, and in light of this we can draw an association with the painful tension between the practical reality of selection and the ideal trajectory of compilation. 11 This tension in writing, between the will to total compilation and the necessity of abridgment, is an ontological tension between part and whole just as it is a textual tension between signifier and signified. The ontological tension in writing that Derrida expresses in his essay on Jabès is between everything and nothing – a contradiction which Derrida finds in Jabès’ Book of Questions and also in the divine, in God. When one writes between compilation and selection one writes towards totality, and here we can follow Derrida who states that the lapse in signification, presumably in the signifier-signified discrepancy, is a “ rupture with totality itself” and furthermore that this lapse cannot be rectified through deductive reason or even philosophical discourse. 12 This rupture with totality, found in the troubled relation between signifier and signified, can also tell us a lot about the Book and about writing. Given an understanding of writing as an ontological act that strives towards (but never accomplishes) totality, we can see the written book as the manifested and given body of that striving. Perhaps in other disciplines or even other schools of philosophy there is a cultural climate within which the article is prized above the book, but I am fairly confident, especially when referring to the grand theories of Continental thought, that there is a respect for the book as a uniquely meaningful object capable of apprehending totality. Derrida writes, Between the too warm flesh of the literal event and the cold skin of the concept runs meaning. This is how it enters into the book. Everything enters into, transpires in the book. This is why the book is never finite. It always remains suffering and vigilant. 13 Here the vitality of the literal event is compromised by the deadening weight of the concept, and the figure of the Book assists in this lapse of meaning. The Book is a totalizing object, much like the figure of the Compendium, and yet this totalization lacks its final object of completed totality both because the figural Book is necessarily incomplete, and because the physical book is always-already a product of selection. Instead of achieving its end of being a place where everything takes place, it suffers from the lapse of writing, the discrepancy between event and concept. Derrida continues his exposition on Jabès by bringing to light yet another reflexive relation, a reversal of the relationship between the Book and the world. Derrida writes that, for Jabès, “the book is not in the world, but the world is in the book.” 14 In addition to what was stated before, I take figuration to mean that the concepts employed, such as the Book or the Compendium, are not subject to the supposed rigor of analysis that is so prized by Enlightenment or Capitalist realisms. The figure of the Book and the figure of the Compendium cannot be held accountable to standards imported from scientific method, given an understanding that these standards require a concept to be replicable, consistent, falsifiable, measurable, and so on… This is an important point to make, especially in the present atmosphere within which theory must justify itself under conditions that are not its own. Instead of being held to these standards, figuration serves as a way in which to think about writing that leaves thought open to idealistic speculation, imperfect analogies, and most importantly the ever-present gain and loss that occur in the relationship between thought and being. By extension the figural way of addressing writing indulges in enough generalization to accommodate the excess/lack relationship between the ideal form of the Book or the Compendium, and the manifested and given body of a text (as it is practically completed and closed). Here we speak against the hostile atmosphere which would have theory submit itself to hierarchical rigor, rather than Blanchot’s “enigmatic rigor”, by being explicit about the discursive conditions and epistemic conditions under which theory operates. To write with parataxis in mind is, to a certain degree, to write with weakness as one’s methodology (with weak thought being in opposition to hypotaxis and hierarchy as much as weak thought can be in opposition to anything). Rather than asserting the strength of hierarchical theory, and rather than employing antagonistic argumentation with the goal of refutation different discursive and epistemic conditions for theory writing must be cultivated (and these are by no means new). First the critical and theoretical spirit reveals itself as being concerned with the task of complication—especially the complication and critique of binaries, dichotomies, dualities, polarities, paradoxes, parallaxes, hybridities, and especially antinomies. Second, theory positions itself as a sort of showing or revealing, rather than being ultimately focused on coming to full agreement or disagreement. This is where figuration can help theory-writing, both by placing emphasis on teleologies and trajectories (like parataxis and compilation), and by shifting focus away from pure primacy, power, or absolute origin. Figuration then, assists theory writing by placing the concern of theory outside of the concerns of the hard or soft sciences, and into the realm of thought or the idea. To speak of ‘the’ Compendium or ‘the’ Book, here, is to generalize not regarding the perfect form of the Compendium or Book, but to engage speculatively with an abstract idea which remains singular and yet complicated by multiplicity. The question of the Book that Derrida asks through Jabès is a question of everything and nothing, totality and nonbeing, and this question is a concern for writing and a concern for the figure of the Compendium so defined by the tension between compilation and selection, and parataxis and hypotaxis . On the note of nonbeing, we can look to the final page of Derrida’s first essay on Jabès in Writing and Difference and notice the introduction of his neologism, différance (with an ‘a’). Derrida writes: Life negates itself in literature only so that it may survive better. So that it may be better. It does not negate itself any more than it affirms itself: it differs from itself, defers itself, and writes itself as différance . Books are always books of life (the archetype would be the Book of Life kept by the God of the Jews) or of afterlife (the archetype would be the Books of the Dead kept by the Egyptians). 15 This introduction of différance into the equation of the Book, alongside ontological affirmation and negation, hearkens back to the discussion of the symbolic lapse earlier in his essay. Differing and deferring, the Book is always a Book of Life and a figure for the intersection of the vital (life) and the total in writing. In a way, the writer of the Book may be someone who lives life, and in another way the writer of the book-as-object may be someone who engages in the act of writing, both practically (by inscribing words on paper, or typing script on a computer) and ontologically or symbolically (by investing their existence and inexistence into a work worthy of the figural Book). In addition to the writer as writer, the writer also serves as an editor, and the editorial role alongside the idea of the Compendium shows the editor to be one who collects and compiles, while being restrained by eventual selection and decision. Beyond this the editor of works and texts, in both the Book and the world, is engaged in a process of inscribing notation—of annotating (on) the Compendium. Eternal commentary is a feature of the textual Compendium, just as open-ended totality describes the ontological Compendium. The writer as writer does not simply write texts, but rather engages in a profoundly ontological act of inscribing their existence into the world, and the writer as editor does not merely annotate or alter texts as they are, but rather comments upon the text of the world. In/Conclusion So as we create texts, and as we write and create theory, let us be and remain attentive to the figure of the Compendium and the figure of the Book. These two concurrent metonymies are essential for total writing (grand theories, etc.), and may be forgettable for those concerned with fragmentary or hierarchical writing (which are valid in their own right). From the ontological and symbolic text of the world and phenomenological experience, to concrete texts such as books or mixed media, the figure of the Compendium and the figure of the Book are important for the actualization of the human will to be all-encompassing. The figure of the Compendium teaches writers of theory that the repetition, density, and fragility of parataxis offers a strong sort of weakness which does not become yet another variety of oppressive and hegemonic thought. Rather than write with hypotaxis in mind, subjugating one thought to another via cause and effect or antecedent and consequent, I would hope that theory-writing could guiltlessly indulge in the dialectical and contradictory conjugation of ideas, and take this as a legitimate methodology. Rather than being ashamed of showing resonances or giving way to abridgment or ellipses, it is my own authorial (but not authoritative) conviction that one need not give up on totalizing and constructing grand theories because of the fact that complete totalization is impossible, and one need not give up on totalizing and constructing grand theories because of the worry of violence, for the Book and the Compendium lack their completed object and are ever incomplete trajectories. NOTES * UPDATED 7/19/13: we've updated the HTML version to reflect the (correct) PDF version. Our apologies to the author—eds. 1. I would like extend thanks to Dr. Peter Schwenger of the University of Western Ontario for his comments on this paper and his hospitality as it was presented as a Theory Session at the Centre for Theory and Criticism on October 26th 2012. I would also like to thank Andrew Weiss for conversation and critique. 2. I should clarify my use of the term ‘figure’ at the outset. Given the use of the term by Jean-Francois Lyotard in Discourse, Figure (and also Gilles Deleuze in Francis Bacon ), I should state clearly that my use of the term will not correspond to the term ‘figure’ understood as the representation of an object. Instead, my use of the term ‘figure’ and its variations (‘figural’, ‘figurative’, ‘figuration’) will refer to the illustrative or metaphorical use of the Compendium or the Book as models or ways of thinking about writing and discourse. 3. Cf. Revelations 20:12-15. 4. Theodor Adorno, Aesthetic Theory , Trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor (London & New York: Continuum Press, 1997). 5. Fredric Jameson, Late Marxism: Adorno, or the Persistence of the Dialectic (London & New York: Verso, 1990), ix-x. 6. I have written about this concept of being-towards-totality elsewhere in two pieces of writing: the first is called Notes on the Compendium (an unfinished draft) which addresses some very wide theoretical concerns, being structured as a sort of itinerary or archive, and the second is Dialectics Unbound (Punctum Books, 2013) which outlines a concept of totality without the violence of totalization. While these works are more concerned with ontological totality, here I would like to focus on the idea of the Compendium as a textual totality. 7. Cf. Louis Morelle, “Speculative Realism: After Finitude and Beyond, A vade mecum” in Speculations: Journal of Speculative Realism . Issue 3 (Brooklyn, New York: Punctum Books, 2012), 241-272. 8. Jean-Paul Sartre, Between Existentialism and Marxism . Trans. John Matthews (London & New York: Verso, 1974), 9. 9. Cf. John D. Caputo, The Weakness of God (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2006). 10. Jacques Derrida, “Edmond Jabès and the Question of the Book” in Writing and Difference . Trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 65. 11. Ibid, 65. 12. Ibid, 71. 13. Ibid, 75. 14. Ibid, 76. 15. Ibid, 78. (shrink)

Myth and the spatial organization of the City: The case of Tanagra. How does Myth participate in the shaping of the different kinds of space constituing a city, whether it be in the definition of its eschatiai or in the determination of the many internal relations that link together its centre, its chora and its limits? I propose here a case study focussed on Pausanias’ description of Tanagra in Boiotia, locating the descriptive content of the text within its wider generic (...) logic. Pausanias’ panhellenic, if not “oikoumenic”, understanding of Myth is active in producing specific memorial topographies. In the case of Tanagra, the text reconstructs the space of the city from a selection of schematized epichoric traditions, outlining the ways in which local myths embody the city’s cohesion on the grounds of the diverse categories of space implied in the narratives. The discrepancies between what the myths are telling and the effective ritual practices call into question the partaking of Myth and Rite in the structuring of civic space.Comment le mythe contribue-t-il à organiser les espaces différenciés d’une cité, le statut de ses eschatia, les rapports entre centres, chora et limites ? L’œuvre de Pausa­nias, entre témoignage et logique périégétique, propose une certaine pratique du mythe, panhellénique sinon « oikouménique », qui produit des topographies mémorielles spécifi­ques. Elle reconstruit l’espace d’une petite cité béotienne, Tanagra, à partir de traditions épicho­riques dont elle schématise les structures, laissant transparaître les manières dont le mythe articule la relation entre la cité, ses dieux et son territoire, dont il définit les qualités des espaces qu’il met en jeu, montagne, littoral, remparts… Entre ce que « disent » les mythes – l’aition d’une fête par exemple – et ce qu’opère la pratique rituelle, des écarts se font jour qui obligent à interroger la part respective du mythe et du rite dans la structuration de l’espace. Cette étude de cas vise à montrer la valeur opératoire de la notion de mythe au sein des processus par lesquels une cité grecque, communauté d’hommes et de dieux liés par des rites, s’approprie symboliquement l’espace sur lequel elle est établie. (shrink)

A macroscope is proposed and tested here for the discovery of the unique argumentative footprint that characterizes how a collective manages differences and pursues disagreement through argument in a polylogue. The macroscope addresses broader analytic problems posed by various conceptualizations of large-scale argument, such as fields, spheres, communities, and institutions. The design incorporates a two-tier methodology for detecting argument patterns of the arguments performed in arguing by an interactive collective that produces views, or topographies, of the ways that issues are (...) generated in the making and defending of standpoints. The design premises for the macroscope build on insights about argument patterns from pragma-dialectical theory by incorporating research and theory on disagreement management and the Argumentum Model of Topics. The design reconceptualizes prototypical and stereotypical argument patterns for characterizing large-scale argumentation. A prototype of the macroscope is tested on data drawn from six threads about oil-drilling and fracking from the subreddit Changemyview. The implementation suggests the efficacy of the macroscope’s design and potential for identifying what communities make controversial and how the disagreement space in a polylogue is managed through stereotypical argument patterns in terms of claims/premises, inferential relations, and presentational devices. (shrink)

continent. 1.2 (2011): 141-144. This January, while preparing a new course, Robert Seydel was struck and killed by an unexpected heart attack. He was a critically under-appreciated artist and one of the most beloved and admired professors at Hampshire College. At the time of his passing, Seydel was on the brink of a major artistic and career milestone. His Book of Ruth was being prepared for publication by Siglio Press. His publisher describes the book as: “an alchemical assemblage that composes (...) the life of his alter ego, Ruth Greisman— spinster, Sunday painter, and friend to Joseph Cornell and Marcel Duchamp. Through collages, drawings, and journal entries from Ruth’s imagined life, Seydel invokes her interior world in novelistic rhythms.” This convergence of his professional triumph with the tragedy of his death makes now a particularly appropriate time to think about Robert Seydel and his work. This feature contains a selection of excerpts from Book of Ruth (courtesy of Siglio Press) alongside a pair of texts remembering him and giving critical and biographical insights into his art and his person. These texts, from a former student and a colleague respectively, were originally prepared for Seydel's memorial at Hampshire College and have since been revised for publication in continent. For more information on Book of Ruth, please visit the book's page at the Siglio Press website. —Ben Segal draughty R. * Lauren van Haaften-Schick 2011 “The most apt way to order Smithson's library is with the conjunction 'and'; science and religion; modernism and mass culture; what is present and what is missing.” —Alexander Alberro, 248 Robert Seydel's classes on collage and collecting immersed his students in a curious world of cabinets, oddities, exhaustive archives and obscure histories, explored always with critical rigor and a sincere eye for wonder. His office was a compendium of the ancient, mythic, potential and unworldy, where seemingly unrelated references were endlessly pulled, piled and fused in an ecstatic dance of hyper-annotation. The small room and all its contents overflowed with notes tucked in every margin and corner. Books coated the walls like a switchboard, anxious and humming, waiting for infinite links to be activated. William Blake's books of Job and Urizen summoned Greek mythology and the animal as metaphor, leading to 19th century cryptozoology and the cave paintings at Lascaux, Gaston Bachelard's description of the bird in his garden and Robert Rauschenberg's Canyon . Tracking archetypes and following tangential threads, new revelations and ancient narratives were compiled and ordered to form a new text, a bibliography as assemblage, portrait and poem. Robert's library—one of his many collections—is a portrait, an “artifact, collage of time, a token and remnant” (Seydel, 2007) He is humming with it still. The imagination of this room—of Robert—breathes through the pages of Book of Ruth, as every decision and detail unfolds to a cosmos. Allegory, invention, personal and art histories are entangled and leveled, rendering lived, perceived and absorbed experiences indistinguishable. Anonymous scraps discovered on the street or studio floor, careful clippings and drawn figures are chosen and animated through serendipitous destruction and whimsical, delicate positioning. A precise vocabulary of characters and terms erupts and collapses as personas and passers-by wave and whisper, “Every figure reveals aspects of the total form, which is open and green” (Seydel, 2007). The initials R.S. repeat, a nod to Robert's true family tree and further complicating identification. Robt, Robert's sometimes alter-ego, appears in myriad forms as a trickster “half-wit,” mercurial and skittish, or soft and worn thin. Saul is a solemn tinkerer, parsing the world and sometimes blind. Ruth, the speaker of the book, records and translates all, her voice wavering between poetic verse and a cryptic half-speech as complex as it is sparse. The rhythm of frayed edges sets time - the weight of the world and the lightness of paper. Robert wrote of his process, “Material is essential; scuffings carry history, which wanders throughout” (Seydel, 2007). Collectors, assemblers, sway between careful movements of selection and placement as they pull from the found world, mediating calculated and unconscious association to form a lexicon of gestures, symbols and allusion, the “artifacts of a life... the refuse and rejecta of days” (Seydel, 2007). These assembled fragments shift and chatter, at home in their homelessness, actors performing in their own lives, populating an invented world of similar orphans. Such accumulated, severed parts carry the injury of their cutting and retain the evidence of their source, binding loss to creation in a symbiosis of trauma and repair. Mourning and remembrance are deeply embedded in the histories and acts of such practices. Grievance, acceptance, and the fragility of life are conveyed in the 18th century allegorical arrangements of fetal specimens by Frederik Ruysch. A certain melancholy reverence colors Joseph Cornell's intimately tactile assemblages rendering the universe tangible in miniature, or made in devotion to unrequited loves. Preserved in stasis, these ghosts and idols are kept in a purgatory where fact and fiction, past and present are irrelevant distinctions. Catalogued and contained, the subject of loss is transferred to an artifact. Every thread, scrap and letter may be glued, gathered and placed in a museum, a tomb, a box, a page, ripe and open for possession. Holding on to grief and reveling in disrepair, we opt to be haunted. Forever unbalanced and in flux, the sublime of collage is its resolve to irresolution. For Robert, “Art, as creation and as sign of primary Imagination, is not objects but a state, a kind of fluid” (Seydel, 2007) Reflecting on his work, life, and death, I am drawn to my library and the myriad titles acquired through his inspiration. There is Daniel Spoerri's An Anecdoted Topography of Chance , Susan Stewart's On Longing , various Borges, Barthes, Perec, and especially Life: A User's Manual , which concludes that the perfect puzzle will have no solution. I think of the drawers of miscellaneous swallowed objects at the Mutter Museum, Ray Johnson coding the every day in riddles, Wallace Berman twisting tongues, and Susan Hiller laying every detail to bear. Collectors and makers working in endless cycles of observation, ingestion and display. Every gesture informs and is defined by others, every space is shaped by that which surrounds and fills it, the knot has an inner logic, the gigantic is not so different from the miniature, there is a world in every detail, and “All art is collage” (Seydel, 2011) These thoughts have molded my life, my art, and all the minutia that keep the two so profoundly intertwined; There is no difference between life and what we do with our time. “I write my life. I make me up.” What a gift to share this secret way of knowing the world, and to leave this knowledge for us to do with what we please. “Art begins in admiration” (Seydel, 2011) Lauren van Haaften-Schick is a curator, writer and artist based in New York. Upcoming curatorial projects include "Cancelled" at the Center for Book Arts, and "The Spirit of the Signal" at Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery, New York. Recent activities include the workshops "Market, Alternative" and "Alternative Art Economies" at Trade School and Momenta Art, and the e-flux Time/Store, New York. She is the founding director of two arts spaces in Northampton, MA and Philadelphia, PA. She received a BA in Art History and Studio Art from Hampshire college in 2006. Sura Levine on Robert Seydel If early on in his time at Hampshire College I was officially his “mentor,” Robert Seydel quickly became one of my great teachers. Over the years we talked about everything, from art, music, collage, and poetry, to campus politics, this latter far too often. It was always a sublime pleasure, if all too rarely done, to enter his apartment to look at his work in progress, to peruse his bookshelves where, inevitably, there were always new treats to examine. And, while he was working on his Book of Ruth , I was given the opportunity over the course of many meals at the Korean and other restaurants, to talk with him about image and poem ordering. To see how he thought through each comma, each juxtaposition across the gutters of the Book, was to watch a brilliant curator at work. Each day, I walk past his wonderful collaged portrait of Ruth, purchased, after much haggling, as a birthday present, a couple of years ago. And each day, I think how lucky I am to have known Robert as he produced this magnum opus. One of my greatest pleasures in 24 years at the College was to teach “The Collector” with Robert. One of my greatest regrets is that the magic we created together in the classroom will not, and cannot, be duplicated. Its various incarnations, its utter intelligence and magic, were all so deeply Robert’s. His was a mind that put poetry, philosophy, history of science, and history together with art, and art together with music. His intellect and eye were unparalleled. He introduced us to so many artists. He shared his fascination with the cabinets of curiosity of Aldrovandi, of Seba, and Peter the Great’s collection of fetal anomalies, as well as the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles. Robert knew them all and so many more. He was a walking encyclopedia, his home a great archive. Arcane knowledge, perhaps, but oh so important for another of Robert’s heroes, the mid-20th century Belgian artist Marcel Broodthaers, whose name he invariably mispronounced as “Broadthayers.” In speaking his name, Robert would always look in my direction in a panic, and then he go on and maul it. I absolutely loved his various mispronunciations of French names and terms! “The Collector” was always filled with talented young artists, art historians, philosophers and writers who all came to understand the wondrous obsessions of the figure of the collector. Students in this course created dazzling projects each term. He always moved while looking and speaking. He read deeply, and commented on everyone’s work with wonderful generosity. Robert always found something to praise even in the least developed of projects. Robert inspired and mentored all of his students into making work that far exceeded their expectations—and ours. For those of you who were lucky enough to have been touched by or to have had an evaluation written by Robert, savor it, keep it, reread it, and share it. He loved working with you all; it is somehow fitting that he died while prepping yet another new course. Robert, it’s almost impossible to speak of you in the past tense, even though you left us a month ago. No doubt, if you knew about our gatherings and celebrations of you, you would be embarrassed that we are making a fuss over you; you always placed the focus on others rather than on yourself. This trait is exactly why so many people miss you now. We’re here to love you publicly as we all did privately for the eleven years you were among us. Robert, my very dear friend, you were an extraordinary artist—you were my brother of choice. My heart broke when yours did. I miss you profoundly. —Sura Levine, February 26, 2011 Sura Levine is a professor of art history at Hampshire College. Her field of specialty is 19th century Belgian and French art, particularly realism and impressionism. Having worked in museums for a number of years both prior to coming to the College, and, as guest curator and co-author of exhibition catalogues, she became particularly interested in the history of museum and trends in collecting. It was because of their shared interests that she and Robert Seydel developed their course, The Collector, which they co-taught for many years. (shrink)

The Question of Truth in Pedro da Fonseca: the Problem of the simplex apprehensio and the Foundation of Logical Identities. This article deals with the theory of truth in Pedro da Fonseca (1528-1599) as it is presented in his commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics (1577-1612). The first part of the paper is dedicated to Fonseca’s definition of intellective truth within the doctrinal topography of the Aristotelian tradition. The Author especially points out Fonseca’s attempt to justify the notion of a (...) “simple” truth of the “simple apprehension”, based on a specific use of Cajetan’s distinction between “signified act” and “exercised act” as well as on a (partially) nominalist account of the relationship between “simple” and “enunciative” concepts. The second part deals instead with Fonseca’s definition of transcendental truth, understood as the conformity between the intellect and the esse realis of the res, and as the conformity of the latter with exemplars in God’s mind. Here the Author also reconstructs Fonseca’s theory of divine ideas and his theory of logical identities. (shrink)

Any suggestion of altering the genetic makeup of human beings through gene therapy is quite likely to provoke a response involving some reference to a 'slippery slope'. In this article the author examines the topography of two different types of slippery slope argument, the logical slippery slope and the rhetorical slippery slope argument. The logical form of the argument suggests that if we permit somatic cell gene therapy then we are committed to accepting germ line gene therapy (...) in the future because there is no logically sustainable distinction between them. The rhetorical form posits that allowing somatic cell therapy now will be taking the first step on a slippery slope which will ultimately lead to the type of genocide perpetrated by the Nazis. The author tests the validity of these lines of argument against the facts of human gene therapy and concludes that because of their dependence on probabilities that cannot be empirically proven they should be largely disregarded in the much more important debate on moral line-drawing in gene therapy. (shrink)

The Indus Basin's advantageous climate and topography rendered it a prime site for the implementation of an irrigation system. This study looks at how the Indus Basin is affected by climate change. Changes in water flow, glacial/snow melt, and catchment areas in the Indus and its tributaries are revealed by trend analysis from hydro-logical stations. A network of canals constituted of trans-boundary rivers was built beside the Indus River System (IRS), soon after the implementation of the Indus Water (...) Treaty, about 70% of its water was allocated for irrigation purposes. An evident increase from 8.5 to 18.2 million hectares (MH) in the cropland area in Pakistan is monitored, whereas in India it increased widely from 2.02 to 8.5 MH that is about three times of the pre-vious figures due to expansion of the Indus irrigation network. Water tables have dropped and water logging has resulted from urbanization and groundwater extraction, while the use of pesticides and fertilizers has lowered the quality of the water.These problems are made worse by climate change, which presents serious obstacles to the region's water security, environmental sustainability, and economic growth.This article provides a comprehensive analysis of the modifications in the Indus Basin irrigation system and the impact of these changes on environmental resources. We can create practical plans to lessen the consequences of climate change and guarantee the Indus Basin has a safe and sustainable water supply in the future by comprehending how it affects the basin. (shrink)

This essay considers the ‘limit’ in Derrida's work from the early consideration of linearisation in ‘Ousia and Grammē’ to the conception of limit as aporia in Aporias. Developing Derrida's tripartite definition of the limit via a reading of Being and Time as closure, border and demarcation, the essay then considers the earlier presentation of limit in Heidegger as temporal primordiality. Developing the metaphysics of line as presentation of presence in terms of Aristotle's aporetics of time as line, the circle is (...) then considered as representing the closed field of presence and its definition via the negation of being's other. This leads to Derrida's early, foundational definition of the law of metaphysics as submission-subtraction, and his proposal of the trace as an alternate way of thinking spatially about being, nonbeing and difference. The second half of the essay then proposes a series of alternative ways of thinking geometrically to those of the traditional metaphysics of point-line-circle topography. Thus topology is proposed as an alternate means of thinking field enclosure, similarity and difference. The figures of the double torus and mathematical limit are proposed as a potential alternative geometry for Western thought. Finally the essay concludes on the apotropaic logic of the problem which echoes that of the trace and is developed in contradistinction to the aporia. Proposing the edge as an interim state between the metaphysics of the line and the deconstructive impossibilities of the aporia, it suggests that the limits of metaphysics are to be found not merely in the apotropaic law of submission-subtraction, but also across alternate geometries which facilitate the bringing together of the two central elements of the totality of Derrida's thinking the limit: différance and singularity. (shrink)

This article outlines the basic traits of a responsive phenomenology of Bernhard Waldenfels by focusing on the issue of the Alien. For the reason that we are commonly confronted with the Alien in everyday life, it is of crucial importance for us to understand and describe such experience without neglecting its special features. This is shown concerning the phenomenological issues of intentionality, by emphasizing the dimension of pathos. More precisely, pathos describes such a kind of affection which starts “somewhere” and (...) cannot be reduced to previous horizons. The Alienness is characterized as a hyperphenomenon which we experience in a paradoxical way only. In this respect, all our efforts to grasp the Alien transform into universalist pretensions that worsen the intercultural communication. To defend the modern politics from overwhelming eurocentrism, Waldenfels offers a method of a responsive epoche: the latter unveils the contingency of each order and the partiality of every universal claim. Moreover, this article covers the role of responsivity while interacting with the Alien, as well as the possible connections in the ethical perspective. In order to deepen the understanding of responsivity and its functioning, the author outlines the distinction between an answer as a merely typical reaction and a response as a part of creative discourse. All in all, the responsive phenomenology is believed to ground upon such concepts and principles which, if methodically developed, will enable more a sufficient and accurate international dialogue, as well as deepen the self-awareness. The main purposes of such phenomenology of the Alien are to demonstrate the “preceding” of the outer Demand and to introduce a special logic of responding that provides this dialogue with the peculiar dynamism. Article received 08.08.2019. (shrink)

I read Stefan Collini’s What are Universities For? last week with very mixed feelings. In the past, I’ve much admired his polemical essays on the REF, “impact”, the Browne Report, etc. in the London Review of Books and elsewhere: they speak to my heart. If you don’t know those essays, you can get some of their flavour from his latest article in the Guardian yesterday. But I found the book a disappointment. Perhaps the trouble is that Collini is too decent, (...) too high-minded, has too unrealistically exalted a view about what actually happens in universities which is too coloured by attitudes appropriate to the traditional humanities. And he is optimistic to the point of fantasy if he thinks that people are so susceptible to “the romance of ideas and the power of beauty” that they will want, or can be brought to want, lots and lots of universities in order to promote the ideas (as if they would suppose that the task of “conserving, understanding, extending and handing on to subsequent generations the intellectual, scientific, and artistic heritage of mankind” was clearly ill-served when there were only forty universities in England, as opposed to a hundred and whatever). (shrink)

The Editors express their gratitude and appreciation to the indi-viduals listed below who served as referees for Informal Logic for Volumes 31 (2011) and 32 (2012).

The Joint International Conference on Logic Programming, sponsored by the Association for Logic Programming, is a major forum for presentations of research, applications, and implementations in this important area of computer science. Logic programming is one of the most promising steps toward declarative programming and forms the theoretical basis of the programming language Prolog and its various extensions. Logic programming is also fundamental to work in artificial intelligence, where it has been used for nonmonotonic and commonsense reasoning, expert systems implementation, (...) deductive databases, and applications such as computer-aided manufacturing. Krzysztof R. Apt is project leader at the Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science in Amsterdam and part-time Professor in Computer Science at the University of Amsterdam. Topics covered: Theory Foundations. Programming Languages. Implementation. Programming Methodologies and Tools. Applications. Deductive Databases. Artificial Intelligence. Parallelism. (shrink)

This book constitutes the strictly refereed post-workshop proceedings of the 11th International Workshop on Computer Science Logic, CSL '97, held as the 1997 Annual Conference of the European Association on Computer Science Logic, EACSL, in Aarhus, Denmark, in August 1997. The volume presents 26 revised full papers selected after two rounds of refereeing from initially 92 submissions; also included are four invited papers. The book addresses all current aspects of computer science logics and its applications and thus presents the state (...) of the art in the area. (shrink)

The Logical Must is an examination of Wittgenstein's philosophy of logic, early and late, from an austere naturalistic perspective called "Second Philosophy.".

This work is for scholars, researchers and students in history and philosophy of science focusing on Logical Empiricism and analytic philosophy (of science). It provides historical and systematic research and deals with the influence and impact of the Vienna Circle/Logical Empiricism on today's philosophy of science. It also explores the intellectual context of this scientific philosophy and focuses on main figures and peripheral adherents.

A crucial problem of conflict management is that whatever happens in negotiations will be interpreted and framed by stakeholders based on their different belief-value systems and world views. This problem will be discussed in the first part of this article as the main cognitive problem of conflict management. The second part develops a general semiotic solution of this problem, based on Charles Peirce's concept of "diagrammatic reasoning." The basic idea is that by representing one 's thought in diagrams, the conditions (...) that determine interpretations can become visible, we can "experiment" with them, and we can change them eventually. The third part, finally, focuses on a concrete tool, called Logical Argument Mapping , that can be used in conflict management to perform such diagrammatic reasoning and to cope with the cognitive problems discussed in the first part. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the sovereignty over Jerusalem will be used as an example to show how LAM could work in practice. (shrink)

A common response to those who question the Law of Non-Contradiction is that it is impossible to debate such a fundamental law of logic. The reasons for this response vary, but what seems to underlie them is the thought that there is a minimal set of logical resources without which rational debate is impossible. This chapter argues that this response is misguided. First, it defends non-apriorism in logic: the view that logic is in the same epistemic boat as other (...) scientific theories. It then offers an account of logical theory change in terms of this epistemology. The LNC is discussed in terms of this account of logical theory change, and it is shown that rational debate over this law can, and does, proceed. Finally, arguments for and against the LNC are discussed, and how and where non-a priori considerations arise in these arguments are illustrated. (shrink)