This essay—a contribution to the Common Knowledge symposium on contextualism—is concerned with the gradual rise (in Europe and then more generally in the West) of awareness of the existence of modes of thought or systems of belief that are different from those that are dominant in one's own culture. The awareness can be found in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (for example, in John Locke, Bernard de Fontenelle, and Giambattista Vico) but was developed further in the early to mid-twentieth century. (...) Its main consequence has been to encourage individuals to distance themselves from their own system—to criticize and change it. (shrink)

The third issue of the Journal for the Philosophy of Language, Mind and the Arts is centered on a series of questions related to the nature of images. What properties characterize them? Do they exist also in our minds? What relationship do they have with phenomena such as perception, memory, language and interpretation? The authors participating in this issue have been asked to answer these and other questions starting from and in dialogue with the two philosophical perspectives that have most (...) enriched the study of our object of research since the second half of the twentieth century: analytical philosophy and visual culture studies. The first four essays address problems related to ontology (Didi-Huberman, Prinz, Bantinaki, Manzotti). In their pages the question will be asked not only about the nature of images but also about what it means for an image to represent an object or an action realistically. The second part contains discussions related to the topics of perception, appreciation and creation of pictures (Ferretti; Gavaler, Goldberg; Pigoni, Coraci, Carlenzi). The third section goes through the problems related to the very concept of representing by images (Biggs; Weichert; Derby). The last section of the issue is devoted to two cases in which images are used not so much and not only to represent something, but also to convey ethical-political values (Fasnacht; Olesiejuk). (shrink)