Wittgenstein seeks to throw light on our concept of understanding by looking at how misunderstandings arise and what kinds of failure they involve. He discerns a peculiar sort of misunderstanding in the writings of the social anthropologist James Frazer. In Frazer’s hands, the anthropological project of enabling us to understand human behavior seems to yield the result that there are certain forms of human behavior that simply cannot be understood. The source of Frazer’s misunderstanding, according to Wittgenstein, is that he (...) places narrow requirements on what could count as meaningful, prior to and independently of his encounter with the subjects of his interpretation. Frazer, like some of the philosophers Wittgenstein addresses in his other works, succumbs to nonsense in his very attempt to draw the limits of sense. My aim in this chapter is to clarify the connections between Wittgenstein’s criticism of Frazer and his criticism of his fellow philosophers, in particular of Frege. The materials I draw on stem from various periods in Wittgenstein’s career, and they reveal, in my mind, an important continuity in Wittgenstein’s thought: addressing misunderstanding, in Wittgenstein’s view, is fundamentally an ethical problem, not a theoretical one. (shrink)

The meaning of matter is determined by our interpretations. Even food has its own frequencies, which can be aligned with the specific notes of a musical scale. When presented with a dish we might ask not only “how does it taste?” but also “how does it sound?.” Gastrofonia is defined not as the musical accompaniment to a cooking demonstration, but the actual sound of it: music is made by food. Built upon an experiment initiated by John Cage to try to (...) make music with objects, gastrofonia examines sound as a possible connection among the visual and material arts. Combining music with taste, musician Roy Paci identified a biosonic perception of food. This chapter aims to analyze the case of gastrofonia in light of the increased scientific and artistic interest in food characterizing our contemporary society, that is, an orthorexic society where food has become a specific form of language, a communicative vehicle through which we express our identity, interests, social-ethical choices, and new concepts of art. From a sociosemiotic perspective, the gastrofonic dish is an example of a textual polyphonic discourse combining different languages, related to the five senses in a performance that becomes a form of shared communication. (shrink)

This study employs ethnographic field data to trace a dialogue between the self-psychological concept of the self object and experiences regarding the concept of “interbeing” at a Vietnamese Buddhist monastery in the United States. The dialogue develops an understanding of human experiences with the nonhuman natural world which are tensive, liminal, and nondual. From the dialogue I find that the self object concept, when applied to this form of Buddhism, must be inclusive enough to embrace relationships with animals, stones, and (...) other natural forms. The dialogue further delineates a self-psychological methodology for examining religions in their interactions with natural forms. (shrink)

L’A. présente la pertinence anthropologique de la thèse d’indétermination de la traduction de Quine, en suggérant qu’elle joue contre le relativisme, mais aussi contre une certaine forme d’universalisme : c’est ce que montre une analyse de la notion de prélogicité, critiquée par Quine qui invente à cette occasion le « principe de charité ». L’examen des usages et de la portée d’un tel principe, et sa confrontation aux thèses de Lévy-Bruhl, permet, au-delà de Quine, de repenser l’invocation devenue trop courante (...) et indéterminée d’une anthropologie en philosophie. (shrink)

In this paper, I confront various conceptions of meaning and articulate them to anthropological styles of thought: W.V. Quine’s thesis of the indeterminacy of translation, Wittgenstein’s conception of meaning as use, Cavell’s philosophy of ordinary language, of ‘what we say’; Barbara Cassin’s Dictionary of Untranslatables where I approached English terms as inherently untranslatable; attention to details and to human vulnerability through the ‘textures of the ordinary’ Veena Das teaches us to observe. All these approaches to meaning as agency, vs. meaning (...) as a determined entity shared and expressed by different languages, lead to renew our concept of the global. (shrink)

The paper is focused on Genesis 1 – 3 where the primordial man [adàm] is created ‎and he was given the proper name Adam [adàm]. ‎ In Hebrew man and Adam are the same word, spelled the same way – [adàm]. ‎Different translations of Genesis 1-3 use for the first time the proper name Adam in ‎different places versions Gen 2:25; The German Luther ‎Bible Gen 3:8; Some English Protestant versions Gen 3:17; Bulgarian Protestant and many ‎English Protestant versions Gen (...) 3:20-21). The paper decodes the phenomenon by ‎studying the Hebrew original and several semiotic views on common and proper names ‎‎. Through these opinions the ‎important question “Who wrote the Bible?” is discussed. The analysis interfaces the new ‎linguistic relativity theory.‎ Four layers of symbolism are decoded: 1. The man became Adam; 2. The two men in ‎Gen 1:27 and in Gen 2:7 man [adàm] ‎is made by earth, ground [adamà]; 3. The two men in the New Testament ; 4. Edom, Adam and cultural discourses in both Testaments.‎. (shrink)

Lévi-Strauss's centennial is an opportunity to show his inextricable connections with the evolution of 20th-century thought and what these promise for 21st-century anthropology. He has mapped the philosophical parameters for a renewed ethnography which opens innovative approaches to history, agency, culture and society. The anthropological understanding of history, for instance, is enriched by methodical application of his mytho-logical analysis, in particular his claim that myths are `machines for the suppression of time'. Lévi-Strauss's thought has led to the development of new (...) and invigorated forms of structural analysis, exemplified by the way that his concept of canonical expression has provided the foundation for the sophisticated application of transformational analysis and formalization. (shrink)

Ever since Kant, the possibility of having objects of knowledge has been one of the most basic anthropological questions (“what can I know?”). For the logician, the linguist, or the semiologist who studies natural language, negation is one of these objects. However, as an operation and as a symbol, it has the paradoxical property of not being able to be objectivized in the discourse that treats it without being used in this construction. Of course, it is an entirely general problem (...) that it is not possible to have a “distant view” of symbolism without using a symbolism of some sort or another. Anthropology is essentially concerned with such objects. The descriptions of ethnologists are thus fertile ground for the epistemologist who believes, like Aristotle, that non-being is not and therefore that, even though in fact we speak only of things (otherwise, what good is speaking?) our discourse cannot be a copy of them. (shrink)

This edited volume provides a biosemiotic analysis of the ecological relationship between food and medicine. Drawing on the origins of semiotics in medicine, this collection proposes innovative ways of considering aliments and treatments. Considering the ever-evolving character of our understanding of meaning-making in biology, and considering the keen popular interest in issues relating to food and medicines - fueled by an increasing body of interdisciplinary knowledge - the contributions here provide diverse insights and arguments into the larger ecology of organisms’ (...) engagement with and transformation through taking in matter. Bodies interpret molecules, enzymes, and alkaloids they intentionally and unintentionally come in contact with according to their pre-existing receptors. But their receptors are also changed by the experience. Once the body has identified a particular substance, it responds by initiating semiotic sequences and negotiations that fulfill vital functions for the organism at macro-, meso-, and micro-scales. -/- Human abilities to distill and extract the living world into highly refined foods and medicines, however, have created substances far more potent than their counterparts in our historical evolution. Many of these substances also lack certain accompanying proteins, enzymes, and alkaloids that otherwise aid digestion or protect against side-effects in active extracted chemicals. Human biology has yet to catch up with human inventions such as supernormal foods and medicines that may flood receptors, overwhelming the body’s normal satiation mechanisms. This volume discusses how biosemioticians can come to terms with these networks of meaning, providing a valuable and provocative compendium for semioticians, medical researchers and practitioners, sociologists, cultural theorists, bioethicists and scholars investigating the interdisciplinary questions stemming from food and medicine. (shrink)

This article underlines the relevance of Mikel Dufrenne's early works (published between 1946 and 1953) for contemporary social sciences. Indeed, Dufrenne was interested in American cultural anthropology, and in Abram Kardiner's concept of “basic personality” in particular. Dufrenne tested Kardiner's concept against Kant's transcendental tradition and the phenomenological theory of Mitsein (the concept of being-with). More importantly, in this article, I demonstrate that Dufrenne's project raises the psychological question of the historicity of categories of experience.

(1998). Staging the self by performing the other: Global fantasies and the migration of the projective imagination 1. Cultural Values: Vol. 2, No. 2-3, pp. 288-304.

(1998). Staging the self by performing the other: Global fantasies and the migration of the projective imagination 1. Cultural Values: Vol. 2, No. 2-3, pp. 288-304.

Au rebours du point de vue standard qui a tendance à écarter l'histoire et l'intersubjectivité quand il s'agit de cognition mathématique, l'article montre que seule cette prise en compte permet d'éviter certaines apories classiques touchant le statut de l'objectivité mathématique, en particulier le psychologisme et le relativisme. En prenant appui sur le cadre conceptuel élaboré par Ernst Cassirer sous le nom de «forme symbolique», l'article montre que régime fictionnel et régime objectif du sens doivent être placés sur un continuum et (...) que seul le travail collectif des sujets sur leurs représentations permet de rendre compte du caractère fictionnel et du caractère scientifique des productions culturelles. (shrink)

The intellectualist position held by structuralists does not explain the extremes of emotional reaction to the disruption of social categories. An approach from neuroscience based on the functions of the limbic system in the creation of long‐term memory through the role of the hippocampus and REM sleep is proposed to account for the emotive loading of cognitive categories.

RESUMO Na flosofa de Rousseau expõe-se a paulatina construção de uma ideia ocidental de humanidade: a história de como o ser humano assim denominou-se ser, bem como a história do abuso dessa denominação. Trata-se, sobretudo, da crítica sobre a construção de um mito da dignidade exclusiva da natureza humana, tema que percorre as obras de diferentes flósofos, dos modernos aos contemporâneos, dos ocidentais aos não ocidentais. O presente artigo aborda, a partir de Rousseau e em diálogo com outros autores, o (...) “ciclo maldito” característico da modernidade, uma ideia que separa os humanos dos animais e segrega os humanos entre si. Começa-se por apartar o ser humano da natureza e constituí-lo como um ser à parte em um processo de monopolização progressiva do valor da existência: aparece em um primeiro momento o especismo, subsequentemente a desigualdade sociopolítica, o etnocentrismo e outras formas derivadas de exclusão. ABSTRACT In Rousseau’s philosophy, the gradual construction of a western idea of humanity is exposed: the history of how the human being naming himself being, as well as the history of the abuse of that denomination. It is, above all, a critique of the construction of the myth of the exclusive dignity of human nature, a theme that permeates the works of diferent philosophers, from the modern to contemporary ones, from western to non-western. This article discusses, based on Rousseau and in dialogue with other authors, the “cursed cycle” characteristic of modernity, an idea that separates humans from animals and segregates humans from each other. It starts with separating human being from nature and constituting him as a distinct part in a process of progressive monopolization of the value of existence: speciesism appears at frst, then sociopolitical inequality, ethnocentrism and other forms derived from exclusion. (shrink)