In the paper at hand I introduce Goethe’s ontology and methodology for the study of life as an alternative to current theories. ‘Life,’ in its individual, social and/or pan-natural form, has been a recurring topic in the social sciences for the last two centuries and may currently experience a renaissance, if we are to believe Scott Lash. Goethe’s approach is of particular interest because he formulated it as one of the first critical responses to the nascent discipline of biology. It (...) can be characterised broadly as phenomenology with a strong dose of life philosophy. For this reason, and to draw its contours more clearly, I compare his approach to the respective thoughts in Husserl’s and Simmel’s work. The comparison focuses on the two central concepts phenomenon and life but also discusses broader epistemological and methodological issues, such as the relationship between observer and observed, the relationship between culture and nature, the nature of causality as well as preferred methods of study. (shrink)

The sensibilities suggested by the notion tianrenheyi have pervaded the Chinese philosophical narrative since, at the earliest, the Spring and Autumn Period, triggering ever novel and enriching interpretations. This paper, far from searching for some ostensible essence of the notion, engages tianrenheyi philosophically from a contemporary perspective. Investigating, inter alia, the kind of unity stipulated by the notion, its moral and spiritual entailments, as well as its relation to transcendence clears the way - now freed from some metaphysical barriers - (...) to a fresh outlook on the interplay of oneness and particularity in Chinese natural cosmology. The relation between oneness and particularity will thereby emerge as necessarily vague and as mutually co-implicative, and resist any assertion of a preference for the one over the other. (shrink)

One reason for the problematic status of the social sciences is that their claim to legitimacy has been undermined by two opposite models of inquiry: the nomothetic idea of science, with its emphasis on universal laws, and the idiographic conception of history as a record of particular events. It can be argued that both of them excluded the temporal dimension of socio-historical reality; more precisely, they were ill-equipped to analyze the unstable structures which emerge and undergo transformations over varying periods (...) of time. This previously excluded middle has been rediscovered by pioneering scientists on both sides of the divide; the paper compares Prigogine's critique of Newtonian natural science with Braudel's reorientation of history. The former line of argument privileges time, the latter duration, but they lead to similar conclusions. (shrink)

El concepto de razón dominante en la modernidad ha resultado insuficiente para dar una respuesta satisfactoria al sentido de la vida, y tampoco se ajusta al camino seguido por el progreso científico. En este artículo trato de mostrar cómo la identificación de la razón con su dimensión científico-positiva ha sido algo decretado a priori, y no sigue la dinámica natural de la razón. La investigación histórica y el testimonio de muchos científicos sobre su actividad, ponen de manifiesto que la ciencia (...) remite a quien la cultiva a algo más allá de lo empírico. La invitación de Benedicto XVI a dilatar los espacios de la razón, reabriéndolos a las grandes cuestiones de la verdad y del bien, puede encontrar en la misma actividad científica un lugar adecuado. (shrink)

This paper aims to provide a starting point for a non-representational approach to language. It will do so by undoing some of the reifying tendencies that are at the heart of the ontology of scientific psychology. Although non-representational theories are beginning to emerge, they remain committed to giving explanations in terms of ontological structures that are independent of human activity. If they maintain this commitment it is unlikely that they will displace representationalism in domains such as language. By following some (...) of Wittgenstein’s remarks on language, I explain the phenomenon of reification by carefully considering the formative, situational flow of language—thus without invoking representations. In this way, the paper sketches a direction of approach for a non-representational theory of language, undercutting the most important assumptions that justify an explanatory ontology devoid of human activity. (shrink)

In this paper we (1) define and describe the practice of narrative medicine, (2) reveal the need for narrative medicine by exposing the presuppositions that give rise to its discounting, including a reductive empiricism and a strict dichotomy between scientific fact and narrative value, (3) show evidence of the effects of education in narrative competence in the medical clinic, and (4) present Peircean realism as the proper conceptual model for our argument that the medical school curriculum committees should give space (...) to the employment of the scientific and literary knowledge in medical practice. On account of our argument, we contend that the medical community should tend to latitude and openness with regard to the tools we use to resolve medical problems. These tools include both biomedical and narrative knowledge. (shrink)

Presence research can tell us why we feel present in the real world and can experience presence while using virtual reality technology (and movies and games) but has strikingly less to say on why we feel present in the scenes described in a book. Just how is it that the wonderful tangible detail of the real world or the complexity of digital technology can be matched and even surpassed by a story in a paperback book? This paper identifies a range (...) of potential neurological solutions to this problem (and the “real world” and “dream” problems for good measure). We consider Jeannerod’s neural simulation of action, Grush’s emulation theory of representation and Rizzolatti’s work on mirror neurons as being candidate solutions to the “book problem”. We conclude by observing that these potential solutions further underline the “purpose” of presence is to act in the world whether it is real, virtual or solely in our imaginations. (shrink)

: Green consumerism is on the rise in America, but its environmental effects are contested. Does green marketing contribute to the greening of American consciousness, or does it encourage corporate greenwashing? This tenuous ethical position means that eco-marketers must carefully frame their environmental products in a way that appeals to consumers with environmental ethics and buyers who consider natural products as well as conventional items. Thus, eco-marketing constructs a complicated ethical identity for the green consumer. Environmentally aware individuals are already (...) guided by their personal ethics. In trying to attract new consumers, environmentally minded businesses attach an aesthetic quality to environmental goods. In an era where environmentalism is increasingly hip, what are the implications for an environmental ethics infused with a sense of aesthetics? This article analyzes the promotional materials of three companies that advertise their environmental consciousness: Burt's Bee's Inc., Tom's of Maine, Inc., and The Body Shop Inc. Responding to an increasing online shopping market, these companies make their promotional and marketing materials available online, and these web-based materials replicate their printed catalogs and indoor advertisements. As part of selling products to consumers based on a set of ideological values, these companies employ two specific discursive strategies to sell their products: they create enhanced notions of beauty by emphasizing the performance of their natural products, and thus infuse green consumerism with a unique environmental aesthetic. They also convey ideas of health through community values, which in turn enhances notions of personal health to include ecological well-being. This article explicates the ethical implications of a personal natural care discourse for eco-marketing strategies, and the significance of a green consumer aesthetic for environmental consciousness in general. (shrink)

This article argues that two important thinkers of the 20th century, Gregory Bateson and Eric Voegelin, developed a set of ideas that are of importance to the history of the human sciences. The article also argues that their ideas are, in essential ways, comparable and display similarities that have not yet been discussed within the larger history of the human sciences. The aim of the article is to show how the diagnostic terms provided by Bateson and Voegelin complement each other (...) toward an understanding of underlying tensions and social pathologies of contemporary civilization. (shrink)

I examine the abstraction/representation theory of computation put forward by Horsman et al., connecting it to the broader notion of modeling, and in particular, model-based explanation, as considered by Rosen. I argue that the ‘representational entities’ it depends on cannot themselves be computational, and that, in particular, their representational capacities cannot be realized by computational means, and must remain explanatorily opaque to them. I then propose that representation might be realized by subjective experience, through being the bearer of the structure (...) of abstract objects that are represented. (shrink)

This article addresses the issue of objectivism vs constructivism in two areas,biology and cognitive science, which areintermediate between the natural sciences suchas physics (where objectivism is dominant) andthe human and social sciences (whereconstructivism is widespread). The issues inbiology and in cognitive science are intimatelyrelated; in each of these twin areas, the objectivism vs constructivism issue isinterestingly and rather evenly balanced; as aresult, this issue engenders two contrastingparadigms, each of which has substantialspecific scientific content. The neo-Darwinianparadigm in biology is closely resonant (...) withthe classical cognitivist paradigm in cognitivescience, and both of them are intrinsicallyobjectivist. The organismic paradigm inbiology, based on the concept of autopoiesis,is consonant with the paradigm of enaction incognitive science; the latter paradigms are bothprofoundly constructivist.In cognitive science, the objectivism vsconstructivism issue is internal to thescientific field itself and reflexivity isinescapable. At this level, strong ontologicalobjectivism is self-contradictory and thereforeuntenable. Radical constructivism isself-coherent; but it also rehabilitatesa weak form of objectivism as a pragmaticallyviable alternative. In conclusion, there is aneven-handed reciprocity between objectivistand constructivist perspectives. Finally, thearticle examines the consequences of thisconclusion for fields other than cognitivescience: biology; physics and the naturalsciences; and the human and social sciences. (shrink)

This article argues that certain philosophically devised quality control parameters should guide approaches to interdisciplinary education. We sketch the kind of reflections we think are necessary in order to produce epistemologically responsible curricula. We suggest that the two overarching epistemic dimensions of levels of analysis and basic viewpoints go a long way towards clarifying the structure of interdisciplinary validity claims. Through a discussion of how best to teach basic ideas about numeracy in Mind, Brain, and Education, we discuss what it (...) means for an interdisciplinary curriculum to respect both the minds of students and the complexity of the subject matter. (shrink)

This article argues that certain philosophically devised quality control parameters should guide approaches to interdisciplinary education. We sketch the kind of reflections we think are necessary in order to produce epistemologically responsible curricula. We suggest that the two overarching epistemic dimensions of levels of analysis and basic viewpoints go a long way towards clarifying the structure of interdisciplinary validity claims. Through a discussion of how best to teach basic ideas about numeracy in Mind, Brain, and Education, we discuss what it (...) means for an interdisciplinary curriculum to respect both the minds of students and the complexity of the subject matter. (shrink)

Throughout much of his writing, Whitehead outlines a critique of what he termed the `bifurcation of nature'. This position divides the world into objective causal nature, on the one hand, with the perceptions of subjects on the other. On such a view, truth lies in a reality external to such subjects and it is the task of science to deliver clear and immediate access to this realm. Further, judgments about this external reality are the province of human subjects and it (...) is the task of philosophy to ascertain the validity or otherwise of these. This article outlines Whitehead's attempts to develop a conception of nature which avoids this premise; it also explains how he offers a way for contemporary theories to construct or engineer abstractions which go beyond notions of social construction or deconstruction. This article argues that not only does Whitehead offer a coherent alternative to such approaches but that the manner in which his major text is written reflects his commitment to the inherently constructed and constructing character of all existence. (shrink)

The postmodern enterprise, with its foundationlessness, fragmentariness, constructivism, and neopragmatism challenges interdisciplinarity. This paper discusses functional specialization and interdisciplinary method which provides a basis for interdisciplinary collaboration. In functional specialization, successive stages in the process of coming to know are distinguished. These stages correspond to Lonergan’s four levels of consciousness, namely experiencing the data, coming to understanding through addressing questions which arise from the data, and judgment about which hypothesis best fits the data. Authenticity, which involves genuine attentiveness, intelligence, reasonableness, (...) and responsibility, guides the appropriate attitude in interdisciplinary work. (shrink)

Besieged by ongoing economic crises, global health emergencies, geopolitical instabilities, ecological devastation, and growing political resentments, the intractable nature of the problems that configure the present has never loomed larger or more darkly. But what, indeed, is a problem? Problematising the modern image that treats problems as obstacles to be overcome by the progress of technoscientific knowledge and policy, this introductory article lays the groundwork for a generative conceptualisation of problems. Reweaving intercontinental connections between traditions of French philosophy and American (...) pragmatism, it proffers a conception of the problematic as a mode of existence that is irreducible to the subjective, the methodological, or the epistemological. Problems go all the way down and up, requiring nothing less than an art of metamorphosis capable of engendering processes of creation, invention, and transformation in whose hold bodies and practices, knowledges and lives, thoughts and worlds, are done and undone, made and remade. (shrink)

The aim of this contribution is to provide a rather general answer to Hume’s problem. To this end, induction is treated within a straightforward formal paradigm, i.e., several connected levels of abstraction. Within this setting, many concrete models are discussed. On the one hand, models from mathematics, statistics and information science demonstrate how induction might succeed. On the other hand, standard examples from philosophy highlight fundamental difficulties. Thus it transpires that the difference between unbounded and bounded inductive steps is crucial: (...) while unbounded leaps of faith are never justified, there may well be reasonable bounded inductive steps. In this endeavour, the twin concepts of information and probability prove to be indispensable, pinning down the crucial arguments, and, at times, reducing them to calculations. Essentially, a precise study of boundedness settles Goodman’s challenge. Hume’s more profound claim of seemingly inevitable circularity is answered by obviously non-circular hierarchical structures. (shrink)

Distributive justice assumes a morally critical judgment of nature, which typically contradicts providential conceptions. Hence, simple conceptions of divine Providence cannot support distributive justice. This essay analyzes and develops a complex strand of theorizing about Providence within Jewish philosophy that is compatible with distributive justice. According to this conception, the actions of divine Providence express different and mutually exclusive considerations of justice. Therefore, the moral value of outcomes is intransitive between the situations of different people. And while each providential action (...) is justified from an ethical perspective, the total outcome is distinct from God's ultimate desire. Human ethics responds to this disparity by redistribution. This conception of Providence also contributes to the additional issue of intergenerational justice through the concomitant idea of life missions. The classical rendering of missions creates problems, however, for distributive justice. I conclude by formulating a conception of life missions that is compatible with both distributive and intergenerational justice. (shrink)

Growing interest among historians and social scientists in the work of Karl Polanyi has yet to produce detailed historical studies of how Polanyi's work was received by his contemporaries. This article reconstructs the frustration of Polanyi's attempts to make a name for himself among English socialists between his arrival from Vienna in 1934 and his departure for New York in 1947. The most obvious explanation for Polanyi's failure to find a following was the socialist historians’ rejection of his unorthodox narrative (...) of the rise of capitalism and the Industrial Revolution in The Great Transformation. But this disappointment was anticipated in earlier exchanges revealing that Polanyi's social theory, specifically his conception of the self and its social relations, differed markedly from the views prevailing among socialists of R. H. Tawney and G. D. H. Cole's generation. As well as casting new light on the intellectual history of English socialism and variegating our understanding of the contexts in which conceptions of the human person were invoked in the interwar period, this article seeks to illuminate by example the importance of deep-seated, often tacit, commitments to particular conceptions of the self and its social relations in structuring mid-century intellectual life. (shrink)

Volume 31, Issue 4, December 2017, Page 429-432.

Der lebende Organismus stellt einen bestimmten, individuellen Teil des Universums dar, indem er seine Selbständigkeit abgetrennt von dem übrigen Universum erhält, durch den Teilungseffekt, welcher durch die Anordnung seiner Teile bestimmt wird. Es ist anerkannt, dass die Teilung nicht vollständig ist, jedoch eine beschränkte gegenseitige Beziehung zulässt. Es ist auch anerkannt, dass der Grad der Organisation in einer verwandten Reihe sich ändert von den tiefen Verwickelungen der einfachen Zelle zu den mannigfachen Abwandlungen wie sie beim Menschen auftreten. Die Auffassung von (...) effektiver Teilung ist ausserdem auch fest und substantiell auf der Tatsache begründet, die durch das Vorhandensein der Plasmamembran und Grenzflächen kolloidaler Aggregaten gegeben ist. Betont ist die dynamische Natur der charakteristischen Gleichgewichtszustände und es wird aufmerksam gemacht auf die kontinuierliche Bildung von effektiven Teilungen bei verschiedenen Gleichgewichtszuständen. Weitere Untersuchung der Bedeutung dieser Teilungen ergibt viele interessante Folgerungen. Schwierigkeiten finden sich, wenn man eine derartige Beschreibung auf geistige Phänomena ausdehnt. Zwar bestehen grundlegende Übereinstimmungen, aber es ist schwer sie genau zu definieren. Es ist klar, dass eine Synthese dieser Art notwendigerweise unvollständig ist, aber es schien wertvoll den Versuch zu machen, L'organisme vivant est présenté ici comme une partie définie et individualisée de l'univers maintenant son individualité propre au moyen de „l'effet de partition” déterminé par l'arrangement de ses parties. Il est entendu que la partition n'est pas complète mais permet encore des relations réciproques mais limitées. Il est reconnu aussi que le degré d'organisation varie dans le cours d'une série, des complexités profondes de la cellule aux innombrables modifications exhibées par l'organisme humain. Le concept de la partition effective est basé solidement sur l'évidence présentée par la membrane plasmatique et les limites de phases dans les aggrégations colloidales. De plus il est important de noter spécialement la nature dynamique des équilibres caractéristiques et l'on ne saurait manquer d'attirer l'attention sur la formation continue de partitions effectives aux différents niveaux d'équilibre. L'étude ultérieure de la signification de ces partitions présente un grand nombre d'implications intéressantes. Il est à noter que des difficultés sont rencontrées quand on essaie d'inclure en une description de ce genre les phénomènes mentaux et psychiques. Des stabilités fondamentales existent, mais elles sont difficiles à définir avec précision. Il est évident du reste au lecteur qu'une synthèse telle que celle-ci est nécessairement incomplète mais néanmoins intéressante à faire. (shrink)

Volume 31, Issue 4, December 2017, Page 427-429.

Este trabajo estudia el concepto de “lo sublime” en la cultura barroca, con el objetivo de demostrar que, aunque no fue teorizado sistemáticamente hasta el siglo XVIII, este cobró durante el siglo XVII una centralidad y, sobre todo, un significado filosófico semejantes a los que se impondrían posteriormente y que, según veremos, está estrechamente ligado con el concepto de “nihilismo”.

This paper considers a problem for dynamic presentism that has received little attention: its apparent inability to accommodate the duration of events (such as conscious experiences). After outlining the problem, I defend presentism from it. This defence proceeds in two stages. First, I argue the objection rests on a faulty assumption: that duration is temporal extension. The paper challenges that assumption on several different ways of conceiving of temporal extension. This is the negative case and forms the bulk of the (...) paper. Second, after diagnosing the error leading to the identification of duration with temporal extension, I outline a new presentist-friendly account of duration that avoids the problem. In particular, a non-reductive account of duration is offered that treats it as a primitive quality which bestows its possessor with a certain modal quality: that the possessor potentially does not change whilst there are changes in its environs. This is the positive case. Together the positive and negative cases provide presentism with an interesting and novel way of overcoming the problem of duration. (shrink)

Marx developed a sophisticated theory of labour under capitalism’s expanding reproduction but wrote little specifically on immaterial labour. This paper reflects on how to build from Marx’s writings a more comprehensive theory of immaterial labour. Integral to this theorisation is bringing in young Marx’s writings on alienation and human nature, and praxis read as the ‘point of knowledge is to change the world’. Integrating the young and mature work into a single perspective that highlights the actively causal dimension of human (...) creativity and knowledge for the making of history critically adds to and thereby transforms the naturalism and structural determinism of orthodox readings of Marx’s Marxism. We relate this theorisation specifically to the project of liberating academic labour from the shackles of its neoliberal containment by making ‘knowledge socialism’. (shrink)

One can extrapolate from the art of language instruction to discover methods applicable across the disciplines in higher education. The paradigm presented by language instruction is applicable throughout the arts and sciences. If cultivated—and there are institutional pressures working against it—such an art can impact the languages and codes of the individual disciplines so as to advance the research mission of scholars in those fields; it can also favor the interrelationships between the disciplines. How the student learns another language (L2) (...) is comparable to the process of learning a scientific discipline. (shrink)

Ulrich Meyer's book The Nature of Time uses tense logic to argue for a `modal' view of time, which replaces substantial times with `ersatz times' constructed using conceptually basic tense operators. He also argues against Bertrand Russell's relationist theory, in which times are classes of events, and against the idea that relativity compels the integration of time and space. I find fault with each of these negative arguments, as well as with Meyer's purported reconstruction of empty spacetime from tense operators (...) and substantial spatial points. I suggest that Meyer's positive project is best conceived as an elimination of time in the mode of Julian Barbour's The End of Time. (shrink)

This paper investigates the use of theories of mechanics to provide answers to questions in the metaphysics of spatial location and persistence. Investigating spatial location, I find that in classical physics bodies pertend the region of space at which they are exactly located, while a quantum system spans a region at which it is exactly located. Following this analysis, I present a ‘no-go’ result which shows that quantum mechanics restricts the available options for locational persistence theories in an interesting way: (...) it demonstrates that the spatiotemporal path of a persisting thing is discrete in time. This leads to unpalatable consequences for both perdurantists and endurantists. In particular, I argue that Butterfield's ‘anti-pointilliste’ perdurantism is ruled out, and show that endurantists relying on immanent causation run into trouble. I conclude by suggesting the revival of Whitehead's alternative mode of persistence called ‘reiteration.’. (shrink)

As machines have become increasingly smart and have entangled human thinking with artificial intelligences, it seems no longer possible to distinguish among levels of decision-making that occur in the newly formed space between critical reasoning, logical inference and sheer calculation. Since the 1980s, computational systems of information processing have evolved to include not only deductive methods of decision, whereby results are already implicated in their premises, but have crucially shifted towards an adaptive practice of learning from data, an inductive method (...) of retrieving information from the environment and establishing general premises. This shift in logical methods of decision-making does not simply concern technical apparatuses, but is a symptom of a transformation in logical thinking activated with and through machines. This article discusses the pioneering work of Katherine Hayles, whose study of the cybernetic and computational infrastructures of our culture particularly clarifies this epistemological transformation of thinking in relation to machines. (shrink)

How to uphold a politics of universalism, egalitarianism and abstraction without being tarnished by the accusation of fanaticism? In order to open the space in which the question can be asked, Alberto Toscano’s Fanaticism explores various instantiations of the trope of ‘fanaticism’ and other associated concepts. Challenging the reliance on simplification, decontextualisation and analogical thinking behind uses of those terms, the book shows how fanaticism as Other conversely engenders a mystified idea of the modern West as the negative of the (...) political and theoretical interdictions associated with them. (shrink)

Philosophy of biology is often said to have emerged in the last third of the twentieth century. Prior to this time, it has been alleged that the only authors who engaged philosophically with the life sciences were either logical empiricists who sought to impose the explanatory ideals of the physical sciences onto biology, or vitalists who invoked mystical agencies in an attempt to ward off the threat of physicochemical reduction. These schools paid little attention to actual biological science, and as (...) a result philosophy of biology languished in a state of futility for much of the twentieth century. The situation, we are told, only began to change in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when a new generation of researchers began to focus on problems internal to biology, leading to the consolidation of the discipline. In this paper we challenge this widely accepted narrative of the history of philosophy of biology. We do so by arguing that the most important tradition within early twentieth-century philosophy of biology was neither logical empiricism nor vitalism, but the organicist movement that flourished between the First and Second World Wars. We show that the organicist corpus is thematically and methodologically continuous with the contemporary literature in order to discredit the view that early work in the philosophy of biology was unproductive, and we emphasize the desirability of integrating the historical and contemporary conversations into a single, unified discourse. (shrink)

Spivak’s essay ‘Can the subaltern speak’, published in the widely influential collection ‘Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture’, is a seminal account of ‘epistemic violence’. It...