In this chapter, we focus on animism and how it is studied in the cognitive science of religion and cultural anthropology. We argue that philosophers of religion still use (outdated) normative notions from early scientific studies of religion that go back at least a century and that have since been abandoned in other disciplines. Our argument is programmatic: we call for an expansion of philosophy of religion in order to include traditions that are currently underrepresented. The failure of philosophy of (...) religion to discuss and accommodate different perspectives means a large part of human religious beliefs, practices, and experiences remains outside its purview. As a point of focus, we examine animism in two cultures as a way to think about what sorts of questions and ideas an expansion of philosophy of religion into lesser-explored traditions could offer. (shrink)

Bioethical discourse on organ donation and transplantation medicine covers a wide range of topics, from informed consent procedures and scarcity issues up to transplant tourism and organ trade. Over the past decades, this discourse evolved into a stream of documents of bewildering proportions, encompassing thousands of books, papers, conferences, blogs, consensus meetings, policy reports, media debates and other outlets. Beneath the manifest level of discourse, however, a more latent dimension can be discerned, revolving around issues of embodiment, the moral status (...) of the human body and the concept of bodily integrity. This publication aims to bring these “deeper” questions to the fore. What is envisioned is a “depth” ethics (the moral equivalent of a depth psychology) focussing on the tensions, conflicts and ambiguities at work in bioethical deliberations on organ transplantation, fuelling the viewpoints articulated on the more manifest levels of discourse. Organ donation reopens the question of the status of the body as something which we have, but at the same time are, and as something which constitutes a whole, while at the same time being a set of replaceable elements or parts. (shrink)

De moderne filosofie lijdt aan muziekvergetelheid. Opvallend is echter dat filosofen, wanneer ze toch aandacht schenken aan muziek, hun aandacht bij voorkeur op één bepaald genre richten, namelijk de opera. Filosofen zoals Søren Kierkegaard en Friedrich Nietzsche lieten hun gedachten over Don Giovanni, Parsifal en Carmen gaan, terwijl omgekeerd de filosofie van Arthur Schopenhauer de opera heeft beïnvloed via Wagner. Diens werk lijkt zich op het snijpunt van het grensverkeer tussen moderne filosofie en moderne muziek te bevinden. Het was zijn (...) ambitie de menselijke existentie en de menselijke geschiedenis in één panoramisch oeuvre te vatten, vanaf het primordiale begin tot en met de dramatische finale die ophanden leek: een catastrofale apotheose die een geheel nieuwe toekomst mogelijk zou maken. Dat is althans de verhaallijn van zijn meesterwerk Der Ring des Nibelungen. Aan het slot van Götterdämmerung lijkt zich een algehele verwoesting te hebben voltrokken: ‘Everything is destroyed and there is an enigmatic kind of hovering over the scene of destruction’ (Badiou 2010, p. 106), een ambivalente stemming van hoop en destructie zette Wagner op muziek. Voor Wagner is dan ook een hoofdrol in deze studie weggelegd: voor zijn muziektheoretische geschriften (waarin hij over een ‘muziek van de toekomst’ filosofeerde), maar meer nog voor de muzikale totaalkunstwerken die hij daadwerkelijk componeerde. (shrink)

This volume aims to develop a philosophical diagnostic of the present, focussing on contemporary technoscience. psychoanalysis submits contemporary technoscientific discourse to a symptomatic reading, analysing it with evenly-poised attention and from an oblique perspective. Psychoanalysis is not primarily interested in protons, genes or galaxies, but rather in the ways in which they are disclosed and discussed, focussing on the symptomatic terms, the metaphors and paradoxes at work in technoscientific discourse. This monograph presents a psychoanalytical assessment of technoscience. The first four (...) chapters provide a short introduction into the psychoanalysis of technoscience, its basic concepts and methods, as developed Sigmund Freud, Carl Gustav Jung, Gaston Bachelard and Jacques Lacan. In subsequent chapters, this approach is fleshed out with the help of case histories (palaeoanthropology, classical conditioning and virology). Psychoanalysis reveals that, rather than by disinterested curiosity, technoscience is driven by desire, resistance and the will to control. Moreover, the focus is on primal scenes, such as Dubois’ quixotic quest for the missing link and Pavlov’s discovery of the conditioned reflex. In addition, psychoanalysis opts for triangulation: understanding technoscientific research by comparing it to “different scenes”: to genres of the imagination, notably novels, so that, in this volume, the discovery of a Homo erectus skull by Dubois is compared to missing link novels by Jules Verne and Jack London (dating from the same period), Pavlov’s discovery of the conditioned reflex is compared with B.F. Skinner’s novel Walden Two and virology as a research field is considered through the lens of viral fiction. (shrink)

A comparison between Muḥammad and Siddhārtha’s psychological states is made to identify how they had their mystical experiences and how their presuppositions and personalities shaped their interpretation of these experiences. Muḥammad’s mystical experience appeared to be based on an altered state of consciousness. Siddhārtha’s teachings include that one must not have blind faith and remain open to various truths. These teachings may reflect that he was high in openness to experience, which may have fortified him from becoming delusional. While mystical (...) experiences may have pathological overlaps, they could be categorized in a similar way to psychological states. Yet, mindful presuppositions and personality traits, especially from within openness to experience spectrum, are what make perceptions of these experiences diverse. (shrink)

I intend to: a) clarify the origins and de facto meanings of the term relativism; b) reconstruct the reasons for the birth of the thesis named “cultural relativism”; d) reconstruct ethical implications of the above thesis; c) revisit the recent discussion between universalists and particularists in the light of the idea of cultural relativism.. -/- 1.Prescriptive Moral Relativism: “everybody is justified in acting in the way imposed by criteria accepted by the group he belongs to”. Universalism: there are at least (...) some judgments which are valid inter-culturally Absolutism: there are at least some particular prescriptions which are valid without exception everywhere and always -/- 2. The traditional proof of prescriptive moral relativism: the argument from variability: Judgments, rules, and shared values are de facto variable in time and space. The traditional counter-proof: examples of variability do not prove what skeptics contend. -/- 3. Pre-history of the doctrine -Ancient sophists: either immoralist or contractualist -Modern moral scepticism (xvii c.): variability as an historical and ethnographic fact supports a sceptical conclusion more moderate than sheer immoralism. - Voltaire, Kant, Reid counter-attack pointing at a universally shared moral sense - Romantics and idealists stage an even more moderate reformulation: instead of universally shared moral sense they point at the Spirit of a People which is: a)alternative to abstract and universal philosophical systems as far as it is lived ‘culture’; b) indivisible unity with an inner harmony and a source of normative standards; c) dynamic, in so far as it is a manifestation of the Spirit through the becoming of National cultures. -/- 4. The birth of Cultural Relativism and its ethical implications 4.1. The 18th c. doctrine was the noble savage (a non-historical doctrine: state of nature vs. social state) 4.2 Edward Tylor (1832-1817) and ethnocentric historicism Savage moral standards are real enough, but they are far and weaker than ours. 4.3 Boas and Malinowski and an holistic reaction to ethnocentric historicism -/- Franz Boas (1858-1942): a) Development of civilizations is not ruled by technical progress nor does it follow a one-way path; instead there are parallel developments (for ex. Agriculture does not follow stock-raising); b) racial characters have no relevance in development of civilization; c) we are not yet in a position to compare externally identical kinds of behaviour till we have not yet understood beliefs and intentions laying at their roots (for ex.: “From an ethnological point of view murder cannot be considered as a single phenomenon”; d) we should distinguish among different practices which are only superficially similar (fro ex. practices traditionally classified under the label “tabù”); e) there is as a fact just one normative ethic, constant in its contents but varying in its extension; f) the implication is not that we cannot judge behavior by members of other groups; it is only a recommendation of caution. -/- Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942): a) against Tylor’s and Frazer’s “magpie” methodology, field-work is required, a culture as a whole should be observed from inside; individual elements are incomprehensible; b) a culture is an organic whole; c) its elements are accounted for by their function (economy), avoiding non-observables (empio-criticism). -/- Ruth Benedict and Melville Herskovitz identify Boas’s approach with “cultural relativism”. Benedict: what is normal and abnormal is to be judged on a culture’s own standards, not on our own (“Anthropology and the Abnormal”). Herskovits: “Boas adumbrates what we have come to call cultural relativism” (The Mind, p. 10); “Judgements are based on experience, and experience is interpreted by each individual in terms of his own enculturation” (Man and his Works). -/- 4. How analytic philosophy understood and misunderstood the discussion 4.1. At the beginning of the 20th c., the new view in ethics was non-cognitivism (emotivist and subjectivist). Eric Westermark combines this view with an old-style ethnographic approach in support of relativity of moralities. Moralities are codes, or systems of emotive ‘disinterested’ reactions selected by evolution on their usefulness in terms of survival value for the society that is the carrier of such systems or codes. The moral relativity thesis: there are cases of disagreement that cannot be settled even after agreement about facts. 4.2 Anti-realists Brandt, Mackie, Gilbert, Harman adopt Westermark’s approach in a more sophisticated version: a) moralities are codes with an overall function and may be appraised only as wholes; b) variability is an argument for moral subjectivism; c) apparent legitimacy of deriving shift from ought is legitimized only within one institution d) morality should not be described but instead made, and existing moralities may be improved. Is it ‘real’ relativism? It is clearly subjectivism (a metaethical thesis). The normative thesis is that there better and worse codes, and survival values is the normative standard. -/- 4.3 Particularists MacIntyre, Sandel, Taylor, Wiggins, McDowell ‘Wittgensteinian’ prospectivist arguments bent to support weak-relativist claims MacIntyre: there is ‘incommensurability’ between different theoretical systems in both science and ethics. No argument is possible through different systems Different traditions may coexist for a long time without being able to bring their conflicts to a rational solution. -/- 4.4 Kantian universalists Baier, Gewirth, Rawls, Apel, Habermas Shared claim: justice concerns the right and is universal in so far as it may be based on minimal assumptions Other virtues are relative to context in so far as they are related to comprehensive views of the good - O’Neill criticism: a) it is an assumption shared by both alignments; b) after an alleged crisis brought about by alleged loss of metaphysical certainties, theories of justice have dropped demanding assumptions and kept universalism, virtue theories have kept demanding assumptions and dropped universalism; c) the opposition of virtue and justice has arisen in an unjustified way. O’Neill’s positive proposal: ‘constructive’ procedures may be adopted both (i) concerning all the range of virtues and (ii) across cultures once we abandon idealization and confine ourselves to abstraction from real-world cases. -/- 4.5 A metaethical relativist and anti-relativist normative ethicists: Bernard Williams Williams: vulgar relativism may be assumed to claim that: a) 'just' means 'just in a given society'; b) 'just in a given society' is to be understood in functionalist sense; c) it is wrong for one society’s members to condemn another society’s values. It is inconsistent since in (c) uses ‘just’ in a non-relative way that has been excluded in (a). William’s positive proposal: i) keep a number of substantive or thick ethical concepts that will be different in space and time; ii) admit that public choices are to be legitimized through recourse to more abstract procedures and relying on more thin ethical concepts. -/- 5. Critical remarks 5.1 The only real relativism available is ‘vulgar’ relativism (Westermark?) 5.2. Descriptive universalism (or absolutism) has a long pedigree, from Cicero on, reaching Boas himself but it is useless as an answer to normative questions 5.3. Twentieth-century philosophical discussion seems to discuss an ad hoc doctrine reconstructed by assembling obsolete philosophical ideas but ignoring the real theory of cultural relativism as formulated by anthropologists. -/- 6. A distinction between ethoi and ethical theories as a way out of confusions a)There are systems of conventions de facto existing. These may be studies from outside as phenomena or facts. b)There is moral argument and this, when studies from outside, is a fact, but this does not influence in any degree the possible validity of claims advanced. c) the difference between the above claims and Mackie’s criticism to Searle’s argument of the promising game is that promises, arguments etc. are also phenomena, but they are also communicative phenomena with a logical and pragmatic structure. -/- 7.Conclusions: a) cultural relativism, as a name for Boas’s methodology is a valuable discovery, and in this sense we are all relativists; b) ethical relativism, as an alleged implication of cultural relativism, has been argued in a philosophically quite unsophisticated way by Benedict and Herskovits; philosophers apparently discussed ethical relativism in the basis of a rather faint impression of what cultural relativism had been. c) a full-fledged ethical relativism has hardly been defended by anybody among philosophers; virtually no modern philosopher really argued a prescriptive version of the thesis; d) we may accept the grain of truth in ethical relativism by including relativist critique to ethical absolutism into a universalist normative doctrine that be careful in separating open-textured formulations of universal claims from culturally conditioned particular prescriptions. -/- . 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This paper argues that a new genre of therapy has appeared in the arena of contemporary spiritual alternative healing, which expresses an outlook never-before-seen in the history of medicine: postmodern therapy. Postmodern therapeutic methods express a popularization of postmodernist philosophy in regards to language’s role in the therapeutic process, expressing a novel cosmology. These methods are illustrated in the paper, and then analyzed in comparison to two other groups of methods: traditional/occult magic, and modern medicine. Finally, PTMs are characterized as (...) neo-magic, bearing features similar to modernistic outlook on the one hand, and features similar to pre-modern magic outlook on the other hand. Thus, these new outlook demonstrate a double appropriation and rejection of perceptions viewed as contradictory – traditional magic and secular science. (shrink)

The concept of the mahant- ātman-, or “vast self”, found in some of the Early and Middle Upaniṣads, has, at least since the days of Hermann Oldenberg, been explored by a number of scholars, most notably by van Buitenen :103–114, 1964). These studies have usually emphasized the cosmic implications of this concept; the vast ātman- being the non-individualized spirit that brings forth and pervades the universe, then enters the bodies of all created beings as their animating principle. As such it (...) precedes the mahān, or mahat, of the Sāṃkhya philosophy. The present paper argues that the concept of a mahant- puruṣa- or “vast person”, appearing parallel to the vast ātman in these texts, is in fact older, being traceable to Middle Vedic texts; the emergence of the Upaniṣadic ātman doctrine has eventually led to its replacement by the mahān ātmā. Originally, it is argued, the adjective mahant- stressed the difference between this “vast” puruṣa, who is said to dwell in the sun, and the minute puruṣa within man, who is seen as the tiny “person” in one’s pupil, or resides in the heart, having the size of a thumb. In contradistinction to the ātman, the puruṣa is a thoroughly anthropomorphic soul-concept, a “person” within the person. The ultimate identity between this tiny soul-person and the puruṣa in the sun is a recurring, but little studied, motif in the micro-macrocosmic speculations of the Brāhmaṇa texts. This “vast”, solar puruṣa is sometimes identified with the Puruṣa or primeval man of Ṛgveda 10.90, from whose body the universe was formed, and much of the imagery surrounding the vast puruṣa of Middle and Late Vedic literature seems to derive from this hymn. (shrink)

Bioethical discourse on organ donation covers a wide range of topics, from informed consent procedures and scarcity issues up to ‘transplant tourism’ and ‘organ trade’. This paper presents a ‘depth ethics’ approach, notably focussing on the tensions, conflicts and ambiguities concerning the status of the human body. These will be addressed from a psychoanalytical angle. First, I will outline Lacan’s view on embodiment as such. Subsequently, I will argue that, for organ recipients, the donor organ becomes what Lacan refers to (...) as an object a, the ‘partial object’ of desire, the elusive thing we are deprived of, apparently beyond our grasp. Within the recipient’s body an empty space emerges, a kind of ‘vacuole’, once occupied by a faltering organ. This space can only be filled by a ‘gift’ from the other, by an object a. Once implanted, however, this implant becomes an ‘extimate’ object: something both ‘external’ and ‘intimate’, both ‘embedded’ and ‘foreign’, and which is bound to remain an object of concern for quite some time, if not for life. A Lacanian analysis allows us, first of all, to address the question what organ transplantation has in common with other bodily practices involving bodily parts procured from others, such as cannibalism. But it also reveals the basic difference between the two, as well as the distance between the ‘fragmented body’ of Frankenstein’s ‘monster’—as an aggregate of replaceable parts—and the multiple organ recipients of today. (shrink)

The ambition of “scientific creationism” is to prove that science actually confirms religion. This is especially true in the case of Muslim creationism, which adopts a reasoning of a syllogistic type: divine revelation is truth; good science confirms truth; divine revelation is henceforth scientifically proven. Harun Yahya is a prominent Muslim “creationist” whose website hosts many texts and documentary films, among which “Evidence of the true faith in historical sources”. This is a small audiovisual production which, starting from some archeological (...) files, seeks to demonstrate that Qur’an truth precedes science but is equally proven by it. In this paper, we examine the organization of the scientific and religious argumentative repertoires and, in particular, what in each of them is taken as evidence and gets access to an authoritative status. It leads us to show how much this type of Muslim creationism constitutes a kind of scientism. (shrink)

What makes beliefs thrive? In this paper, we model the dissemination of bona fide science versus pseudoscience, making use of Dan Sperber's epidemiological model of representations. Drawing on cognitive research on the roots of irrational beliefs and the institutional arrangement of science, we explain the dissemination of beliefs in terms of their salience to human cognition and their ability to adapt to specific cultural ecologies. By contrasting the cultural development of science and pseudoscience along a number of dimensions, we gain (...) a better understanding of their underlying epistemic differences. Pseudoscience can achieve widespread acceptance by tapping into evolved cognitive mechanisms, thus sacrificing intellectual integrity for intuitive appeal. Science, by contrast, defies those deeply held intuitions precisely because it is institutionally arranged to track objective patterns in the world, and the world does not care much about our intuitions. In light of these differences, we discuss the degree of openness or resilience to conceptual change (evidence and reason), and the divergent ways in which science and pseudoscience can achieve cultural “success”. (shrink)

Wittgenstein's remarks on religion suggest a provocative and nuanced account of what makes rituals meaningful — and why some living rituals might have little or no meaning despite their hold on congregants. Wittgenstein's view has been obscured, I argue, in part by the consistent misinterpretation of his controversial 'scapegoat remark', which has been taken to be a comment on the internal incoherence of the ancient Jewish scapegoat rite. In fact, Wittgenstein's point is that the scapegoat ritual is particularly easy to (...) misinterpret, and so reflection on it helps illustrate the sort of confusion that plagues much thinking about religion and ritual. (shrink)

Call the ethos understanding rightness in terms of spiritual purity and piety, and wrongness in terms of corruption and sacrilege, the “fetish ethic.” Jonathan Haidt and his colleagues suggest that this ethos is particularly salient to political conservatives and non-liberal cultures around the globe. In this essay, I point to numerous examples of moral fetishism in mainstream academic ethics. Once we see how deeply “infected” our ethical reasoning is by fetishistic intuitions, we can respond by 1) repudiating the fetishistic impulse, (...) by 2) “sublimating” our fetishism into liberal rationales, or by 3) accepting the fetishism on its own terms. Of these options, I argue that sublimating our fetishism is not advisable, and that embracing our ethical fetishism isn’t as obviously misguided as some suggest. (shrink)

Tarot use has become increasingly popular in contemporary society. However, unlike the position afforded divination in some cultures, it is not culturally consecrated as a legitimate way of knowing in the so‐called Modern West—in large part, due to the attempted disenchantment of the world by the colonial project of modernity. This paper posits that engagement with tarot divination can be a decolonizing methodology. I explore how divination's dependence on chance, the imagination, and engagement with spirits can heal the Cartesian mental (...) models that underly modernity's hold on our society. Academic writing on divination has, until recently, largely been authored by people who are not also practitioners of divination themselves. Writing as both a scholar and practitioner of tarot, I use the cards as a form of “imaginal research” to directly assist in the creation of this paper—allowing the tarot itself to speak (as much as me speak about it). (shrink)

Anthropology of Consciousness, Volume 32, Issue 2, Page 154-181, Autumn 2021.

El trabajo argumenta la necesidad de interpretar el valor del arte, por un lado, de manera concreta, como síntesis de múltiples determinaciones y tomando en consideración las condiciones de la época y lugar en las que la obra artística se inserta; y por otro lado, como producto complejo poseedor de múltiples dimensiones, diferentes pero interconectadas entre sí.

This thesis draws on Freud to understand the innate human need to create boundaries and argues that ambivalence is an inescapable dilemma in their creation. It argues that a re-reading of Freud’s major thesis in Totem and Taboo via an engagement with the Dionysos myth and cult scholarship allows for a new understanding of dominant forms of hegemonic psychic and social formations that attempt to keep in place a false opposition of polis and phusis, self and Other, resulting in the (...) perpetuation of oppressive structures and processes. The primary methodological claim of the thesis is that prior psychoanalytic engagements with cultus scholarship have suffered from being either insufficiently thorough or diffused in attempts to be comparative. A more holistic and detailed approach allows us to ground a psychoanalytic interpretation in the realities of said culture, allowing us to critique Freud’s misreading of Dionysos regarding the Primal Father and the psychic transmission of the Primal Crime. This thesis posits that Dionysos needs to acknowledged as a projection of the Primal Father fantasy linked to a basic ambivalence about the necessity of boundaries in psychosocial life. Using research from the classics and psychoanalysis alongside Queer and post-colonial theory, as well as extensive fieldwork and primary source analysis, this thesis provides a grounded materialist critique of psychoanalysis’ complicity in reproducing a false dichotomy between polis and phusis, a dichotomy that furthers the projection onto marginalised groups whose othering is linked to a fear and desire of a return to phusis and denial of its constant presence in the psyche and polis. This re-reading of Dionysos challenges the defensive structures, which are organised around ideas of subjectification that posit that phusis must be severed from polis/ego and projected onto Dionysos and all groups that threaten the precariousness of these boundaries. (shrink)

What happens when painting emancipates itself from all physical mediums, the piece of art disappears from the exposition site and it becomes immaterial, indiscernible within its surrounding space? What type of esthetic experience and embodied understanding of art is possible under these programmed and produced conditions, maybe dissimulated, and finally enunciated and affirmed next to and in place of that which presents itself with the title of art masterpiece? What type of description, definition and interpretation is necessary? What type of (...) phenomenology, pragmatic, rhetoric, and ontology is called upon? What type of percepts, of effects and affects, of appearance and apparatus, are put into play in this esthetic relation lacking an artistic object? When there is nothing to see and to touch, what living forms, what beliefs, what qualities are dealt with? Until this day, after more than 50 years, the “Exposition of Void” of Yves Klein doesn’t quit asking these and other questions on aesthetics and to the history of art. (shrink)

In both her fiction and her essays on writing and feminist theory, Monique Wittig takes up and redeploys traditional themes and genres as well as recent theories of language, literature, and writing in order to force change in and through the dominant categories of thought and language. She has announced her project as one which would "do away with the category of sex" by way of reconfiguring the grammatically and conceptually enforced compulsory heterosexual order. I examine the specific linguistic mechanisms (...) by which Wittig accomplishes this abolition of "sex" and the political/philosophical/linguistic consequences of her "lesbianization" of language. Through-out, I aim to suggest what the political importance of The Lesbian Body as a diversified and written corpus is. (shrink)

Remodel[l]ing Reality is an inquiry into Wittgenstein's notion of übersichtliche Darstellung and the phenomenon of installation in visual art. In a sense, both provide a perspicuous overview of a particular part of our complex world, but the nature of the overview differs. Although both generate knowledge, philosophy via the übersichtliche Darstellung gives us a view of how things stand for us, while the installation shows an unexpected, exiting point of view. The obvious we tend to forget and the ambiguity of (...) reality are related to each other in a dynamic way. It is in this reflexive dynamics that we constantly remodel our reality. Tools we use are our creative abilities and our powers of imagination. In our choices and solutions we show which aspects of reality we find important and how we communicate these values. The outcome of this investigation is a new perspective on the art of installation and a new insight in Wittgenstein's notion of übersichtliche Darstellung. Because of this combination, the book is itself an artwork: an InstallationPackage. The book is distributed by Ideabooks Amsterdam, Isbn 978 90 804240 3 6. Remodel[l]ing Reality is included in Special Collections, Allard Pierson Museum Amsterdam. (shrink)

We analyzed remarkable stories linked to the famous Anatoly Vlasov equations in plasma physics. Their creation, modification, and application are interesting from a scientific viewpoint. We also show the relations between those equations dealing with electromagnetism and analogous Jeans equations describing, in particular, gravitational instability in astrophysics. The second half of the essay is devoted to the controversies and political struggle in Soviet (before 1991) and Russian (after 1991) physical communities related to Vlasov’s personality, career, and posthumous recognition. The never-ending (...) destructive influence of Russian totalitarianism on science is demonstrated. (shrink)

This article analyzes current attitudes toward artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing and argues that they represent a modern‐day form of magical thinking. It proposes that AI and quantum computing are thus excellent examples of the ways that traditional distinctions between religion, science, and magic fail to account for the vibrancy and energy that surround modern technologies.

The issue discussed in this paper, although controversial, is cognitively nontrivial. Namely, we shall be interested in the matter of possibility to use certain semiotic conceptions in research conducted in the area of a certain group of specific sciences, that is humanities. The aim of this work is to show the possibility of adopting in humanities ready-made conceptions of symbol created on the grounds of the analytical philosophy of language and logical semiotics. Also, we wish to outline the actual state (...) of assimilating and using the mentioned philosophical conceptions by scientists who represent the sciences under consideration. (shrink)

Retracing the primary common aspects between anthropological and psychoanalytic thought, in this article, we will further discuss the main common points between the notions of the unconscious according to Carl Gustav Jung and Claude Lévi-Strauss, taking into account the thought of Erich Neumann. On the basis of very simple elementary logic considerations centered around the basic notion of the separation of opposites, our observations might be useful for speculations on the possible origins of rational thought and hence on the origins (...) of consciousness. (shrink)

This paper explores how gender can operate as a disguise for class in an examination of the self-sacrifice of the Maiden in Euripides' Children of Herakles. In Part I, I discuss the role of human sacrifice in terms of its radical potential to transform society and the role of class struggle in Athens. In Part II, I argue that the representation of women was intimately connected with the social and political life of the polis. In a discussion of iconography, the (...) theater industry and audience I argue that female characters became one of the means by which different groups promoted partisan interests based on class and social status. In Part III, I show how the Maiden solicits the competing interests of the theater audience. After discussing the centrality (as a heroine from an aristocratic family) and marginality (as a woman and associated with other marginal social groups) of the Maiden's character, I draw upon the funeral oration as a comparative model with which to understand the quite different role of self-sacrifice in tragedy. In addition to representing and mystifying the interests of elite, lower class and marginal groups, the play glorifies a subordinate character whose contradictory social status (both subordinate and elite) embodies the social position of other “marginal” members of Athenian society. The play stages a model for taking political action to transform the social system and for commemorating the tragic costs of such undertakings. (shrink)

In this article I will explore some mythological and ritual aspects related to a pair of trees, the aśvattha and the śamī. In India, since the time of the Vedic culture, these two trees have often been the protagonists of myths and rituals in which they are conceived of as a couple. In various contemporary religious contexts, one finds dendrolatric practices (vanaspatipūjā), which sometimes result in the celebration of actual tree marriages (vr̥kṣa vivāha), whereby trees grow by intertwining with each (...) other. The aśvattha and the śamī, though in today's context separately, are also subject to dendrogamic practices. In particular, the aśvattha is subject to a gender-shift whereby in some contexts, though traditionally regarded as the male tree, it acquires a female role within the couple. This phenomenon finds a parallel in various myths and rituals handed down in the Vedic texts. In fact, the araṇis, that is, the two sticks that were rubbed together during the ritual of lighting the fire, were made from the wood of the two trees. The analysis of the symbolic values linked to the coupling of the two araṇis and the many variants that this motif generated allows us to highlight, on a mythical level, the emergence of a sexuality that is not necessarily heteronormative. These versions, in fact, lead us to reflect on an arboreal nature that alludes to a sexuality that bypasses and transcends the gender binary and accounts for the fluidity found in certain contemporary arboreal ‘marriages. (shrink)

Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) texts should be interpreted against the background of the magico-mythical cosmology of their time, and the Bible is no exception. Earlier scholars were, however, hesitant to recognise this reality as a result of disagreement over how to define myths and because of the problematic idealistic framework that they followed. This framework viewed biblical religion as superior to other ANE religions and thus devoid of myths and the belief in magic. It is, however, argued that the Bible (...) contains both myths and a belief in magic and shares the overarching ANE cosmology. The incompatibility of the scientific cosmology and the magico-mythical cosmology of the ANE causes special problems for modern readers. To prevent modern readers from habitually falling back on their scientific cosmology, and thereby misinterpreting the Bible, it is suggested that a cosmological approach should form the basic framework for all biblical hermeneutics. (shrink)

Our knowledge of the evolution of human thought is limited not only by the nature of the evidence, but also by the values we bring to the authoritative scientific study of our ancestors. The tendency to see human thought as linear progress in rational capacities has been popular since the Enlightenment, and in the wake of Darwinism has been extended to other species as well. Human communication can be used to transmit useful information, but is rooted in symbolic processes that (...) are nonrational—that is, they involve choosing among functionally equivalent alternatives, any of which is as good an option as any other. The evolution of human thought cannot be realistically isolated from the evolution of human society or human communication, neither of which is rooted in obvious rationality. (shrink)

The Greek words `pharmakon' and `pharmakos' allude to the complex relations between political violence and the health or disorder of the body politic. This article explores analogies of war as disease and contagion, and contrasts these with metaphors of war as politically healthy and medicinal - as in Randolph Bourne's notion of war as `the health of the state'. It then applies these to the unfolding US `War on Terrorism' through the concept of `pharmacotic war', by way of examining the (...) disturbing political implications of both unfolding US military actions abroad and the scapegoating of internal `enemies' within the United States. The article then critiques various strategies for interrupting the momentum towards a catastrophic `clash of civilizations' between the US and the Islamic world, and proposes a strategy of broadly based, grassroots political mobilization for opposing this trend. (shrink)

Adorno sees experience as intrinsically interpretative. As interpretation requires normative constraints, in order to guide and channel this interpretative engagement, this opens the question of how experience acquires its motivating criteria. If experience is from the first criterially structured, how are these criteria acquired? Moreover, as these criteria are acquired in isolation from experience – as they are the precondition of that experience – are these criteria sensitive to the particularity of the experiences they produce? In order to address these (...) questions, and the problems they threaten to create for Adorno’s epistemology, I look at Adorno’s theory of impulse and cognition. I argue that Adorno grounds the criterial structure of experience and reason in self-preservation. This provides both a motivation and a determining constraint on the criterial structure of experience. It is also a determining influence which is epistemically flexible and compatible with Adorno’s project of tracing .. (shrink)

In this paper we extend Wittgenstein’s notion of family resemblance to translation, interpretation, and comparison across traditions. There is no need for universals. This holds for everyday concepts such as green and qing 青, philosophical concepts such as emotion and qing 情, as well as philosophical categories such as form of life and dao 道. These notions as well as all other concepts from whatever tradition are family resemblance concepts. We introduce the notion of quasi-universal, which connects family resemblance concepts (...) from a limited number of traditions. The possibility and necessity of extending family resemblance concepts across traditions dissolves the false antinomy of universalism versus relativism. (shrink)

This paper provides a brief review of media ecology. It is partly a micro-history of the tradition, and partly a philosophical clarification of how and why “systems-theory orientations,” literacy studies, and the rapid spread of new media were all essential to its germination, growth, and proliferation. Finally, the paper offers concluding remarks regarding social constructionist thought and how it relates to the media ecology tradition.

This paper addresses how interactions between UK palliative care nursing staff and the bodies of the deceased they care for function as a mechanism to help them make sense of death in line with their work as carers. Through an analysis of postmortem care rituals, I will argue that nurses play an integral role in the ‘making of the dead’, and look at how this functions in relation to their role as carers of bodies in line with associated states of (...) personal wellbeing. Further to this, there is an argument to be made for the recognition of the nurse’s place in biomedical models as managers of the transient body; as the constructors of the well, sick, living and dead body. (shrink)

The criteria for what is considered as science have been debated for a very long time. This article assumes the scientific nature of Theology as a given. This article discusses in three concentric circles the scientific nature of Theology and the type of contribution Theology can make. The first circle addresses the nature of science. This broader look at what is considered to be science sets the context for the ensuing discussion. Secondly, Theology as science is investigated. The criteria which (...) make Theology an indispensable part of the scientific project is identified as the ability to collaborate with other sciences based on a shared interest in reality and creation. Further, Theology as science has the ability to contextualise the products of scientific efforts to be relevant not only to the faith community but to society at large. Theology as science requires a critical self-reflection which does not only include a self-understanding but also a self-renewal. The third concentric circle focusses on the scientific nature of Theology as practised at the Faculty of Theology at the University of Pretoria. The Faculty of Theology endeavours to produce life-giving Theology. To prove itself to be scientific Theology needs to act credible by contributing to the wellness of society. (shrink)

At least a third of the women giving birth in the United States receive intravenous oxytocin for the induction and augmentation of labor. The problem of inactive or ineffective labor remains a major challenge for birth attendants, midwives, and physicians who practice obstetrics. Before the discovery of oxytocin, traditional approaches to augmentation ranged from magical and folk interventions to extensive bloodletting. Despite its wide use the effectiveness of oxytocin augmentation has not been well studied, and current research raises new questions (...) about its effect on the brain. (shrink)

Modern Western thought and culture have envisaged their task in terms of a metaphorics, a metaphysics and a technics of 'enlightenment'. However, the ethical and environmental implications of this determination to dispel all shadows have become increasingly pernicious as modernity both extends and alters the conceptualization and employment of (a now artificial) light as a tool of discovery and control. Drawing on the work of Foucault and Benjamin amongst others, this paper seeks to illustrate, through a critical ethopoietics, the 'speculative (...) aporia' of contemporary society from the perspective of radical ecology. The world does not just reflect our own instrumental interests: it has an elusive, shadowy existence of its own that can impinge upon our ethical perceptions. (shrink)

While most other works focus on conspiracy theories, this book examines conspiracy panics, or the anxiety over the phenomenon of conspiracy theories. Jack Z. Bratich argues that conspiracy theories are portals into the major social issues defining U.S. and global political culture. These issues include the rise of new technologies, the social function of journalism, U.S. race relations, citizenship and dissent, globalization, biowarfare and biomedicine, and the shifting positions within the Left. Using a Foucauldian governmentality analysis, Bratich maintains that conspiracy (...) panics contribute to a broader political rationality, a (neo)liberal strategy of governing at a distance through the use of reason. He also explores the growing popularity of 9/11 conspiracy research in terms of what he calls the "sphere of legitimate dissensus." Conspiracy Panics concludes that we are witnessing a new fusion of culture and rationality, one that is increasingly shared across the political spectrum. (shrink)

Sympathetic magic features strongly in virtually all religious traditions and in folk customs generally. Scholars agree that It is based on the association of ideas perceived as external, mind-independent causal realities, as connections mediating causal influence. Moreover, religious folk believe that this mediation involves forms of supernatural agency. From a psychological perspective, the key question revolves around the principles by which the cognitive system deems some of its content to reference the external world and other content to constitute internal mental (...) forms of activity like thoughts, feelings and attitudes. The paper proposes that the critical factor has to do with the balance between two distinctly different kinds of cognitive content: representations of things (mentation arising in the form of something other than itself), as distinct from registrations referencing the intrinsic phenomenal properties of the mental state itself. The balance between these two determines whether content is perceived as external worldly event or a form of internal mental content. (shrink)

Is it possible to trace the contours of a bioethical reflection on nutrition? The present study tries to do so, relying on the metaphorical and symbolic value that food often takes. Indeed, eating does not mean just getting sufficient nutrition, because through the offer and exchange of food, people recognize and welcome each other. In this sense we are all, in some way, cannibals, because in eating, we eat the other, even if the introjection of the other is only symbolic (...) and not literal, as in the case of actual cannibals. Eating habits are also very rooted in various cultures and sometimes resist migratory flows to a greater extent than language and religion do. Consequently, the disgust for, or the refusal of, other people’s food may be an indicator of a more general rejection of the diversity of other people. The conclusion reached by this study is that eating is taking care of the self and of the other and, therefore, as Jacques Derrida observes, it is necessary to “eat well” and also “eat the good.”. (shrink)

Wittgenstein’s remarks on Frazer’s The Golden Bough were first edited and published in 1967 by Rush Rhees as Wittgenstein’s Bemerkungen über Frazers ‘The Golden Bough’. However, there is another edition, called Ludwig Wittgenstein: Remarks on Frazer’s Anthropology, edited and translated by Kenneth Laine Ketner and James Leroy Eigsti. In this paper I outline at least part of the history of this edition. At the same time, I shall describe some of the characteristic features of the Ketner and Eigsti edition. This (...) presentation takes as its point of departure the correspondence contained in the box “Wittgenstein 143” at the von Wright and Wittgenstein Archives, consisting of twelve letters that passed between Ketner and Eigsti, G.E.M. Anscombe, Rhees, and G.H. von Wright in 1972 and 1973. The presentation will also indirectly throw light on a number of issues concerning the editorial principles applied in publishing Wittgenstein’s remarks. (shrink)