A passage in Plato’s Laws (719c) offers a fresh look at Plato’s theory of poetry and art. Only here does Plato call poetry both mimêsis “imitation, representation,” and the product of enthousiasmos “inspiration, possession.” The Republic and Sophist examine poetic imitation; the Ion and Phaedrus (with passages in Apology and Meno) develop a theory of artistic inspiration; but Plato does not confront the two descriptions together outside this paragraph. After all, mimêsis fuels an attack on poetry, while enthousiasmos is sometimes (...) used to attack it, sometimes to praise it. The explanation evidently lies in Plato’s understanding of drama, which in the Laws has grown more precise, from simply the presentation of characters to the presentation of multiple characters engaged in dramatic conflict. (shrink)

The ability to think in abstractions depends on the imagination. An important evolutionary change was the installation of a suite of six imaginative activities that emerge at first in childhood, which include empathy, symbolic play, and theory-of-mind. These abilities can be built upon in adulthood to enable the production of oral and written stories. As a technology, writing has three aspects: material, skill based, and societal. It is in fiction that expertise in writing is most strikingly attained; imagination is put (...) to use to create simulations of the social world that can usefully be offered to others. Fiction is best conceived as an externalization of consciousness, which not only enables us to understand others but also to transform ourselves so that we can reach beyond the immediate. (shrink)

The ability to think in abstractions depends on the imagination. An important evolutionary change was the installation of a suite of six imaginative activities that emerge at first in childhood, which include empathy, symbolic play, and theory-of-mind. These abilities can be built upon in adulthood to enable the production of oral and written stories. As a technology, writing has three aspects: material, skill based, and societal. It is in fiction that expertise in writing is most strikingly attained; imagination is put (...) to use to create simulations of the social world that can usefully be offered to others. Fiction is best conceived as an externalization of consciousness, which not only enables us to understand others but also to transform ourselves so that we can reach beyond the immediate. (shrink)

This article inquires whether and to which degree some fundamental traits of the World Wide Web may encourage us to revise traditional conceptions of what constitutes scientific information and knowledge. Turning to arguments for `open access' in scientific publishing and its derivatives (open content, open archives, etc.), contemporary tendencies in `social software' and knowledge sharing, the authors project a new look on knowledge, dissociated with linear notions of cumulation, progression, and hierarchy (e.g. of scientific argument), but related to circularity, heterarchy, (...) and evolution. Arguing from a medium theoretical perspective, they illustrate their ideas with developments in library science, current debates in epistemology and theories about information architecture, with a particular focus on `unsystematic' folksonomies. (shrink)

This bold and brilliant book asks the ultimate question of the life sciences: How did the human mind acquire its incomparable power? In seeking the answer, Merlin Donald traces the evolution of human culture and cognition from primitive apes to the era of artificial intelligence, and presents an original theory of how the human mind evolved from its presymbolic form. In the emergence of modern human culture, Donald proposes, there were three radical transitions. During the first, our bipedal but still (...) apelike ancestors acquired "mimetic" skill—the ability to represent knowledge through voluntary motor acts—which made Homo erectus successful for over a million years. The second transition—to "mythic" culture —coincided with the development of spoken language. Speech allowed the large-brained Homo sapiens to evolve a complex preliterate culture that survives in many parts of the world today. In the third transition, when humans constructed elaborate symbolic systems ranging from cuneiforms, hieroglyphics, and ideograms to alphabetic languages and mathematics, human biological memory became an inadequate vehicle for storing and processing our collective knowledge. The modern mind is thus a hybrid structure built from vestiges of earlier biological stages as well as new external symbolic memory devices that have radically altered its organization. According to Donald, we are symbol-using creatures, more complex than any that went before us, and we may have not yet witnessed the final modular arrangement of the human mind. (shrink)

What are the implications of taking seriously Chaïm Perelman's proposition that “definitions are rhetorical”? Efforts to find Real Definitions are dysfunctional to the extent they direct argumentation toward pseudo “is” claims and away from explicit “ought” claims about how words are to be used. Addressing definitional disputes explicitly as propositions ofought rather thanis could put on the agenda the pragmatic concerns of definitional choice that might otherwise remain tacit.

This paper investigates the origins of the Oral Theory as formulated by Milman Parry in Paris during the late 1920s by reexamining the scholarship on which it rests. Parry's Oral Theory compared the texts of oral performances in Yugoslavia with the Homeric texts in order to shed light on the presumed oral origins of the latter. His work integrated the work of the linguist and Indo-Europeanist Antoine Meillet, the linguist and scholar of oral poetics Matthias Murko, and the anthropologists Lucien (...) Lévy-Bruhl and Marcel Jousse. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Aristotle’s Phantasia in the Rhetoric:Lexis, Appearance, and the Epideictic Function of DiscourseNed O’GormanIntroductionThe well-known opening line of Aristotle's Rhetoric, where he defines rhetoric as a "counterpart" (antistrophos) to dialectic, has spurred many conversations on Aristotelian rhetoric and motivated the widespread interpretation of Aristotle's theory of civic discourse as heavily rationalistic. This study starts from a statement in the Rhetoric less discussed, yet still important, that suggests that a visual (...) aspect inheres in Aristotle's theory of rhetoric. Near the beginning of book 3, which deals with lexis (style, sometimes subsuming delivery1 ), Aristotle conjoins lexis and phantasia with the copula "is" (eimi): "The subject of expression [lexeôs], however, has some small necessary place in all teaching; for to speak in one way rather than another does make some difference in regard to clarity, though not a great difference; but all these things are forms of outward show [phantasia] and intended to affect the audience" (1404a).2 Whereas scholars exploring the relationship between rhetoric and dialectic have compared and contrasted the Rhetoric and the Topics, I explore rhetoric's relationship with phantasia by reading the Rhetoric alongside De Anima. De Anima is Aristotle's seminal account of the senses and their relationship to psychê (often translated "soul"). It addresses topics intimately connected to rhetoric: perception, cognition, deliberation, visualization, imagination, and the image. Phantasia is integral to each of these psychic processes and to Aristotle's understanding of the function of appearance in human experience. Hence, itis a lens suitable for exploring the relationship between Aristotle's conception of civic discourse and his notions of sight and appearances as they relate to perception, interpretation, deliberation, and judgment. I find in Aristotle's phantasia a tie between his art of rhetoric and his psychology and phenomenology (anachronistic though these terms are). Aristotle's psychological works, as Richard McKeon points out, are foundational to Aristotle's philosophy, and thus to his Rhetoric. [End Page 16] "Psychological inquiries occupy an extremely important position in the philosophy of Aristotle, for the conception of the psychê lays the foundation for the continuity of functions in nature" (1947, 142). De Anima, especially, articulates the psychological and phenomenological conceptions often tacitly at work in the Rhetoric.The importance of phantasia for the trajectory of ancient rhetorical and aesthetic theory is seen in the parallels between the visual arts, rhetoric, and poetics in Greek and Roman thought.3 As David Freedberg states (perhaps, slightly overstates), parallels between painting and poetry are "to be found everywhere in classical literature" (1989, 50). With respect to such visual-verbal parallels in Aristotle, D. Thomas Benediktson's reading of Aristotle's psychological, poetic, and rhetorical works concludes that phantasia ties together the visual and the literary. "[Aristotle's passages on phantasia] do help to see why Aristotle took for granted the similarity, almost the identity, of literature and the visual arts. Both types of art are imagistic; they present to the viewer either an image, as in visual art, or as in literature, a set of moving images that the soul then uses as raw data (phantasia) to enable thought to occur" (2000, 170). Phantasia developed a legacy in Hellenistic aesthetics, where it came to designate suprarealism in painting, moving art "beyond imitation" (Fowler 1989, 180–81). In later Greco-Roman works, phantasia was used to designate vivid imagery in written and oral discourse, imagery that could create sights and scenes in the minds of audience members. As Quintilian noted in his discussion of forensic rhetoric, in Latin phantasiai were termed visiones. Here, phantasiabecame a mode of displacing narrative in rhetorical discourse:There are certain experiences which the Greeks call phantasiai, and the Romans visions [visiones], whereby things absent are presented to our imagination with such extreme vividness that they seem actually to be before our very eyes.... From such impressions arises that enargeia which Cicero calls illumination [illustration] and actuality [evidential], which makes us seem not so much to narrate [dicere] as to exhibit [ostendere] the actual scene.(Institutio Oratoria 4.2.29, 32)Quintilian's invocations of phantasia and enargeia can be traced to Aristotle's discussion of rhetorical style in book... (shrink)

Suzanne de Castell; On Writing of Theory and Practice, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 23, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 39–49, https://doi.org/10.1111.

Autopoietic societies have produced three major images of civilization: the Greco-Roman, the Eurocentric Western, and the Settler Society type. The most important incarnation of the latter to date has been America. This article explores the deep-going differences between American and European ideas of civilization. It examines how the American kind of autopoietic civilization expresses itself in preternaturally distinctive conceptualizations of nature and freedom, life and death, order and chaos, city and ecumene. The article discusses the political and social implications of (...) this. (shrink)

Platon n’est pas sérieux lorsqu’il conduit Socrate à déduire que la poésie doit être essentiellement narrative avec juste un peu de dialogue. Non seulement cette argumentation est-elle intentionnellement fautive, mais Platon crée aussi un Socrate qui obscurcit à dessein une distinction fondamentale. Le Socrate de Platon fait ensuite semblant d’être confus par son propre obscurcissement. En nous obligeant à nous frayer un passage à travers les broussailles de son argumentation erronée, Platon nous donne l’occasion d’avoir une participation plus profonde aux (...) véritables problèmes sous-jacents et de découvrir son thème : une bonne personne est stoïquement indifférente à la fois au malheur et au bonheur. (shrink)

Marshall McLuhan’s Laws of Media, which describe the evolution of artifacts in terms of enhancement, obsolescence, retrieval, and reversal are extended to create Laws of Media Environments and Laws of Media Users. It is shown that the environment or ground in which the figures of the artifacts in the LOM operate and the users of those artifacts undergo, respectively, a similar evolution of enhancement, obsolescence, retrieval, and reversal paralleling McLuhan’s original LOM.

From earliest times, Homer was regarded as an authority in education, and in shaping social and political life. For Homer in Iliad and Odyssey describes the dominant values, moral virtues of the Greek culture via its heroes. In fact, this narration has opened the way for him to be regarded as the first teacher of the Greeks. His most famous students are Achilles and Telemachus. He talks about Achilles’ education in Iliad, Telemachus’ in Odyssey through his teachers. But the education (...) of these two heroes is both similar and different in some ways. From the moment Achilles was born, he knows the values of the class he belongs to, who he is. On the contrary, Telemachus as a child without a father does not know who he is. Yet, their education which is centered around not only words but also deeds, makes these two heroes know what to say and what to do. In the end, they gain the honor of becoming a Homeric hero. So the aim of this paper is to elaborate both different and similar educations of these heroes. (shrink)

This article examines the place of tragic poetry within the early history and development of ancient literary criticism. It concentrates on Euripides, both because his works contain many more literary-critical reflections than those of the other tragedians and because he has been thought to possess an unusually 'critical' outlook. Euripidean characters and choruses talk about such matters as poetic skill and inspiration, the social function of poetry, contexts for performance, literary and rhetorical culture, and novelty as an implied criterion for (...) judging literary excellence. It is argued that the implied view of literature which emerges from Euripidean tragedy is both coherent and conventional. As a critic, Euripides, far from being a radical or aggressively modern figure (as he is often portrayed), is in fact distinctly conservative, looking back in every respect to the earlier Greek poetic tradition. (shrink)

Este artículo es una discusión con el concepto platónico de diálogo entendido como comedia, Plato’s Cratylus: The Comedy of Language (Ewegen, 2014. No hay traducción al español) fue usado como el recurso central de este artículo, el cual provee la base para diferentes interpretaciones en América Latina como las que defiende la profesora Buarque (2011) en nuestra región y, de manera mucho más general Gregorio Lury et al. (2018) en Ibero America. Sumado a ello, a diferencia del trabajo mencionado, este (...) trabajo lleva a cabo una comparación con la obra de Platón usando una metodología de carácter hermenéutico basado en los escritos de Platón y sus múltiples referencias a la risa a través de su reflexión escrita; se toma como punto de referencia la consigna hermenéutica de tomar la clara interpretación como un todo. El presente trabajo tiende entonces, a diferencia de la propuesta de Ewegen, a establecer el esfuerzo platónico mucho más próximo a a la tragedia que a la comedia como género de interpretación. Aunque existan secciones referidas enteramente a asuntos graciosos en los cuales el humor se aprecia, esta no puede ser la clave para la interpretación platónica como lo sostiene el enfoque de Ewegen. La forma del diálogo platónico debe ser entendida en un proyecto educativo, es decir de transformación. (shrink)

In Historied Thought, Constructed World, Joseph Margolis identifies the philosophical themes that will dominate philosophical discussions in the twenty-first century, given the recognition of the historicity of philosophical thought in the twentieth century. In what follows I examine these themes, especially cognitive intransparency, and the arguments presented in favor of them, noting the extent to which they rest on a view of language that takes a written text, and not speech, as the paradigm of language. I suggest if one takes (...) speech as a mutual embodied action in a shared space as a model for language, the theme of cognitive intransparency—and the problems it brings in its wake—does not loom so large for those of us working in the history of philosophy. I conclude by showing that if we adopt this suggestion in relation to early Greek philosophy, that is, the period in the history of historied thought in which philosophy itself emerges as a linguistic and intellectual activity, we can better understand how and why philosophy emerged as it did—in the form of dialogues by Plato. (shrink)

The paper deals with the changes in the sense of synchronicity and simultaneity connected with the transformations in the structure of society. It examines and criticizes the modern concept of absolute chronology, understood as an objective temporal reference common to all observers. This notion is compared with the relative and flexible (but neither objective nor generalizable) forms of synchronization of different societies. The paper discusses finally the hypothesis that contemporary society is realizing a more complex and recursive form of temporality, (...) that questions the modern ideal of synchronicity. This temporality is connected with recent developments in telematics. (shrink)

Ancient commentators identify several passages in the Iliad as “epigrams.” This paper explores the consequences of taking the scholia literally and understanding these passages in terms of inscription. Two tristichs spoken by Helen in the teikhoskopia are singled out for special attention. These lines can be construed not only as epigrams in the general sense, but more specifically as captions appended to an image of the Achaeans encamped on the plain of Troy. Since Helen's lines to a certain extent correspond (...) to the function and style of catalogic poetry, reading them specifically as captions leads to a more nuanced understanding of both Homeric poetry and Homeric self-reference. By contrasting Helen's “epigrams” with those of Hektor, one can also discern a gender-based differentiation of poetic functions. (shrink)

Ancient commentators identify several passages in the Iliad as “epigrams.” This paper explores the consequences of taking the scholia literally and understanding these passages in terms of inscription. Two tristichs spoken by Helen in the teikhoskopia are singled out for special attention. These lines can be construed not only as epigrams in the general sense, but more specifically as captions appended to an image of the Achaeans encamped on the plain of Troy. Since Helen's lines to a certain extent correspond (...) to the function and style of catalogic poetry, reading them specifically as captions leads to a more nuanced understanding of both Homeric poetry and Homeric self-reference. By contrasting Helen's “epigrams” with those of Hektor, one can also discern a gender-based differentiation of poetic functions. (shrink)

This book proposes a theory of human cognitive evolution, drawing from paleontology, linguistics, anthropology, cognitive science, and especially neuropsychology. The properties of humankind's brain, culture, and cognition have coevolved in a tight iterative loop; the main event in human evolution has occurred at the cognitive level, however, mediating change at the anatomical and cultural levels. During the past two million years humans have passed through three major cognitive transitions, each of which has left the human mind with a new way (...) of representing reality and a new form of culture. Modern humans consequently have three systems of memory representation that were not available to our closest primate relatives: mimetic skill, language, and external symbols. These three systems are supported by new types of “hard” storage devices, two of which (mimetic and linguistic) are biological, one technological. Full symbolic literacy consists of a complex of skills for interacting with the external memory system. The independence of these three uniquely human ways of representing knowledge is suggested in the way the mind breaks down after brain injury and confirmed by various other lines of evidence. Each of the three systems is based on aninventivecapacity, and the products of those capacities – such as languages, symbols, gestures, social rituals, and images – continue to be invented and vetted in the social arena. Cognitive evolution is not yet complete: the externalization of memory has altered the actual memory architecture within which humans think. This is changing the role of biological memory and the way in which the human brain deploys its resources; it is also changing the form of modern culture. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungDer vorliegende Artikel widmet sich der Frage, wie Spiele und spielen zur Big-Data-basierten Wissensproduktion in der Hochenergiephysik beitragen. Als Beispiel dienen Detektorkollaborationen am Large Hadron Collider (LHC) der Europäischen Organisation für Kernforschung (CERN), in denen die Autorin seit 2014 kulturanthropologische Feldforschung unternommen hat. Der ludische Aspekt der Wissensproduktion wird hier in drei verschiedenen Dimensionen analysiert: der symbolischen, der ontologischen und der epistemischen. Erstere verweist auf das CERN als Ort, an dem ein kosmologisches Wahrscheinlichkeitsspiel mithilfe von Monte-Carlo-Simulationen durchgeführt wird. Die Zweite (...) wird durch kompetitive Infrastrukturen in der Arbeitspraxis verschiedener Kollaborationsgruppen sichtbar. Die dritte Dimension entfaltet sich durch ludische Plattformen, wie etwa Online Challenges und Citizen Science Games, die zur Entwicklung von machine learning algorithmen beitragen, deren Funktion notwendig ist, um die ungeheuren Mengen an Big Data verarbeiten zu können, die durch die Experimente gesammelt werden. Das CERN wird als Ort des Deep Play beschrieben, einem von Clifford Geertz entwickeltem Konzept, das dazu beiträgt, größere soziale und kulturelle Ordnungen durch die Analyse ludischer Kollektivphänomene zu begreifen. Der Artikel setzt sich darüber hinaus mit Peter Galisons Idee der Trading Zone auseinander und schlägt vor, diese in Zeiten von Big Data als Playground (Spielplatz) zu begreifen. Die Autorin hofft damit zu einer breiteren sozio-historiografischen Diskussion in den Science and Technology Studies (STS, Wissenschafts- und Technikforschung) und nicht zuletzt der Kulturanthropologie beizutragen, indem das Ludische in den Wissenschaften als zentrales Element für das Verständnis kollaborativer Wissensproduktion begriffen wird. (shrink)

The present article proposes a ‘heretic’ reading of Jan Patočka’s last work, Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History, usually considered as a profound philosophical reflection upon the nihili...

Heidegger understands technology as a mode of revealing, i.e., a way of discovering and comprehending reality, which is not merely the result of human invention and operation, but rather a destiny which surpasses and addresses the human being, insofar as its root lay deep in the very advent of philosophy, of the West and it position toward being as a whole. How can we still have interest in such ontological conception of technology as a destiny? What is its topical relevance (...) for the present? What is its contribution to think the transformative action of technology, i.e., the opportunity and threat it brings with it? (shrink)

This paper investigates the origins of the Oral Theory as formulated by Milman Parry in Paris during the late 1920s by reexamining the scholarship on which it rests. Parry's Oral Theory compared the texts of oral performances in Yugoslavia with the Homeric texts in order to shed light on the presumed oral origins of the latter. His work integrated the work of the linguist and Indo-Europeanist Antoine Meillet, the linguist and scholar of oral poetics Matthias Murko, and the anthropologists Lucien (...) Lévy-Bruhl and Marcel Jousse. (shrink)