In this long-awaited compendium of new and newly revised essays, Alison Wylie explores how archaeologists know what they know. -/- Preprints available for download. Please see entry for specific article of interest.

I’m often asked why, as a philosopher of science, I study archaeology. Philosophy is so abstract and intellectual, and archaeology is such an earth-bound, data-driven enterprise, what could the connection possibly be? This puzzlement takes a number of different forms. In one memorable exchange in the late 1970s when I was visiting Oxford as a graduate student an elderly don, having inquired politely about my research interests, tartly observed that archaeology isn’t a science, so I couldn’t (...) possibly be writing a dissertation in philosophy of science on archaeology. At job interviews a few years later a standard opening gambit was to ask: “so what’s philosophical about the work you do on archaeology” or, more querulously, “what could possibly be of philosophical interest in archaeology”? And from archaeologists, weary of the “theory wars” that raged through 1980s and 1990s, the standard question was, “What’s the point?! Better to step away from the wrangling about philosophical ‘isms’ and get on with the empirical work that needs doing.”. (shrink)

In this wide-ranging interview with three members of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Sao Paolo (Brazil) Wylie explains how she came to work on philosophical issues raised in and by archaeology, describes the contextualist challenges to ‘received view’ models of confirmation and explanation in archaeology that inform her work on the status of evidence and contextual ideals of objectivity, and discusses the role of non-cognitive values in science. She also is pressed to explain what’s (...) feminist about feminist research and in that connection outlines her account of feminist standpoint theory and the relevance of feminist analysis to science. (shrink)

Standpoint theory is an explicitly political as well as social epistemology. Its central insight is that epistemic advantage may accrue to those who are oppressed by structures of domination and discounted as knowers. Feminist standpoint theorists hold that gender is one dimension of social differentiation that can make such a difference. In response to two longstanding objections I argue that epistemically consequential standpoints need not be conceptualized in essentialist terms, and that they do not confer automatic or comprehensive epistemic privilege (...) on those who occupy them. Standpoint theory is best construed as conceptual framework for investigating the ways in which socially situated experience and interests make a contingent difference to what we know (well), and to the resources we have for determining which knowledge claims we can trust. I illustrate the advantages of this account in terms of two examples drawn from archaeological sources. (shrink)

This edited volume aims to gather philosophers, archaeologists, and psychologists/cognitive scientists working at the intersection of paleoanthropology, cognitive archaeology, psychology, and philosophy of mind and cognition. It is a result of the Sciences of the Origin project supported by the University of Oxford project ‘New Horizons for Science and Religion in Central and Eastern Europe’ funded by the John Templeton Foundation.

Scholarly attempts to analyze the history of science sometime suffer from an imprecise use of terms. In order to understand accurately how science has developed and from where it draws its roots, researchers should be careful to recognize that epistemic regimes change over time and acceptable forms of knowledge production are contingent upon the hegemonic discourse informing the epistemic regime of any given period. In order to understand the importance of this point, I apply the techniques of historical epistemology to (...) an analysis of the place of the study of astrology in the medieval and early modern periods alongside a discussion of the “language games” of these period as well as the role of the “archeology of knowledge” in uncovering meaning in our study of the past. In sum, I argue that the term “science” should never be used when studying approaches to knowledge formation prior to the seventeenth century. (shrink)

This study examines the relationship between Japanese archaeology and natural science through a quantitative analysis of the two most authoritative archaeological journals and two other relevant journals in Japan. First, although previous studies have emphasized the impact of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Tokyo on the scientific aspects of Japanese archaeology, results of the present study suggest that its impact has been more limited than previously assumed. Second, while previous studies claimed that research funding by (...) the Japanese government from the latter half of the 1970s was an important factor in developing the scientific aspects of Japanese archaeology, the present study shows a result inconsistent with the claim. Finally, although I admit that the previous studies have properly captured some aspects of the relationship between Japanese archaeology and science, I conclude that we should look at the broader array of contributors to the relationship between Japanese archaeology and natural science. (shrink)

I show how archaeologists have two problems. The construction of scenarios accounting for the raw data of Archaeology, the material remains of the past, and the explanation of pre-history. Within Archaeology, there has been an ongoing debate about how to constrain speculation within both of these archaeological projects, and archaeologists have consistently looked to biological mechanisms for constraints. I demonstrate the problems of using biology, either as an analogy for cultural processes or through direct application of biological principles (...) to material remains. This is done through setting out the requirements of a Darwinian Archaeology, and then measuring various approaches against these requirements. This approach leads to the conclusion that archaeologist's explanations of the past must include within their formulations an account of human cognitive capacities within their explanatory framework. The limits of our understanding of the human past will be the limits of our understanding of Homo sapiens. (shrink)

I focus here on archaeologists who work with Indigenous descendant communities in North America and address two key questions raised by their practice about the advantages of situated inquiry. First, what exactly are the benefits of collaborative practice—what does it contribute, in this case to archaeology? And, second, what is the philosophical rationale for collaborative practice? Why is it that, counter-intuitively for many, collaborative practice has the capacity to improve archaeology in its own terms and to provoke critical (...) scrutiny of its goals and methodological norms? The broader import, I argue, is a rethinking of traditional views of objectivity that takes social, contextual values to be a resource for improving what we know, rather than inevitably a source of compromising error and distortion (as discussed in detail in Chapters 7 and 9). (shrink)

As a working hypothesis for philosophy of science, the unity of science thesis has been decisively challenged in all its standard formulations; it cannot be assumed that the sciences presuppose an orderly world, that they are united by the goal of systematically describing and explaining this order, or that they rely on distinctively scientific methodologies which, properly applied, produce domain-specific results that converge on a single coherent and comprehensive system of knowledge. I first delineate the scope of arguments against (...) global unity theses. However implausible old-style global unity theses may now seem, I argue that unifying strategies of a more local and contingent nature do play an important role in scientific inquiry. This is particularly clear in archaeology where, to establish evidential claims of any kind, practitioners must exploit a range of inter-field and inter-theory connections. At the same time, the robustness of these evidential claims depends on significant disunity between the sciences from which archaeologists draw background assumptions and auxiliary hypotheses. This juxtaposition of unity with disunity poses a challenge to standard positions in the debate about scientific unity. (shrink)

In their landmark 2010 paper, “The weirdest people in the world?”, Henrich, Heine, and Norenzayan outlined a serious methodological problem for the psychological and behavioural sciences. Most of the studies produced in the field use people from Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich and Democratic (WEIRD) societies, yet inferences are often drawn to the species as a whole. In drawing such inferences, researchers implicitly assume that either there is little variation across human populations, or that WEIRD populations are generally representative of the (...) species. Yet neither of these assumptions is justified. In many psychological and behavioural domains, cultural variation begets cognitive variation, and WEIRD samples are recurrently shown to be outliers. In the years since the article was published, attention has focused on the implications this has for research on extant human populations. Here we extend those implications to the study of ancient _H. sapiens_, their hominin forebears, and cousin lineages. We assess a range of characteristic arguments and key studies in the cognitive archaeology literature, identifying issues stemming from the problem of sample diversity. We then look at how worrying the problem is, and consider some conditions under which inferences to ancient populations via cognitive models might be provisionally justified. (shrink)

We present an account of the evolutionary development of the experiences of empathy that marked the beginning of morality and art. We argue that aesthetic and moral capacities provided an important foundation for later epistemic developments. The distinction between phenomenal consciousness and attention is discussed, and a role for phenomenology in cognitive archeology is justified-critical sources of evidence used in our analysis are based on the archeological record. We claim that what made our species unique was a form of meditative (...) and empathic thinking that made large-scale human cooperation possible through pre-linguistic, empathic communication. A critical aspect of this proposal is that the transformation that led to the dawn of our species was not initially driven by semantic or epistemic factors, although clearly, these factors increased the gap between us and other species dramatically later on. Our proposal suggests that recent philosophy of mind and psychology might have "epistemicized" phenomenal consciousness too much by construing it in terms of semantic content rather than by describing it in terms of empathic and meditative thinking. Instead of the prevailing approach, we favor the type of subjectivity that is fundamentally "other-involving" as essential, because on our account, a necessary condition for subjectivity is the empathic understanding of other individuals' psychology, not through inference or judgment, but through immediate conscious engagement. (shrink)

Given the diversity of explanatory practices that is typical of the sciences a healthy pluralism would seem to be desirable where theories of explanation are concerned. Nevertheless, I argue that explanations are only unifying in Kitcher's unificationist sense if they are backed by the kind of understanding of underlying mechanisms, dispositions, constitutions, and dependencies that is central to a causalist account of explanation. This case can be made through analysis of Kitcher's account of the conditions under which apparent improvements in (...) unifying power may be judged spurious. But to clarify what is at issue I consider an archaeological case in which debate about the merits of an ambitious explanatory account reproduces exactly the intuitions that divide Salmon and Kitcher. The case in question is the “demic-diffusion” account of contemporary linguistic diversity advanced by Renfrew in the late 1980s: the thesis that the diffusion of agricultural populations, itself attributed to demographic pressure, was responsible for the spread of the ancestral root languages (e.g., proto-Indo-Eurpoean) that account for the existence and distribution of linguistic macrofamilies. The credibility of this powerfully unifying argument pattern depends entirely on the plausibility of its claims about the conditions and mechanisms actually responsible for the explanandum, the spread of agriculture, and not on an elaboration of its unificationist virtues. (shrink)

This paper argues that the concept of the Earth plays a pivotal role in Merleau-Ponty’s thinking in two ways. First, the concept assumes a special importance in terms of Merleau-Ponty’s relation to Husserl via the fragment known as “The Earth Does Not Move.” Two, from this fragment, the Earth marks a key theme around which Merleau-Ponty’s late philosophy revolves. In particular, it is with the concept of the Earth that Merleau-Ponty will develop his archaeologically oriented phenomenology. To defend this (...) claim, the paper unfolds in three stages. First, I provide a preliminary reading of Husserl’s fragment, focusing in particular on the co-constitution of body and Earth. Two, I turn to Merleau-Ponty’s interpretations of this fragment, especially in the lectures on nature and then in the later lectures on Husserl. From these varying interpretations, the germs of Merleau-Ponty’s archaeological phenomenology are conceived. Accordingly, in the final part of the paper, I claim that Merleau-Ponty’s account of the Earth is Husserlian insofar as it reinforces the primordial “ground (sol) of experience” but at the same time marks a departure from Husserl insofar as the Earth registers a brute or wild layer that resists phenomenology. (shrink)

In this chapter we explore two important questions that we believe should be central to any discussion of the ethics and politics of cultural heritage: What are the harms associated with appropriation and commodification, specifically where the heritage of Indigenous peoples is concerned? And how can these harms best be avoided? Archaeological concerns animate this discussion; we are ultimately concerned with fostering postcolonial archaeological practices. But we situate these questions in a broader context, addressing them as they arise in connection (...) with the appropriation of Indigenous cultural heritage, both past and present. (shrink)

Undoubtedly, the topic of discontinuity has got to an extent where it has captured the attention of a good number of researchers. These researchers devote themselves to reflect on the philosophy of the French thinker. Focusing on discontinuity promises to open a new line of analysis that, perhaps, will allow the revaluation of its scope in relation to its philosophical contributions. For such a task, first, we will approach the notion of history in Foucauldian thought to study the development (...) this notion has with the discontinuity; followed by a study of the archaeological method to unravel whether it is possible to analyze discontinuity through an archaeological view. Would it be possible to look at the topic of discontinuity as a characteristic feature of this French philosopher's thinking? This document aims to answer this question. (shrink)

In this talk, I focus on, and give a brief overview of, four key dispositions or modes of being that can be extracted from African philosophy, particularly hermeneutic, ubuntu, and conversational philosophy. These key dispositions are (i) the indigenisation and appropriation of philosophical ideas and concepts emerging from non-African lifeworlds – a significant problem in the literature of African philosophy; (ii) the archival-archaeological inventory process of sifting, sieving, filtrating, and fertilising indigenous knowledges by “returning to the source”; (...) (iii) creative struggles that follow the encounter with the other in their radical otherness/alterity; and (iv) the arumarustic relationship (conversational dialectics) that emphasise reciprocity, and mutual constitutive acts of humanness (ubuntu). (shrink)

This self-contained one page paper produces one valid two-premise premise-conclusion argument that is a counterexample to the entire three traditional rules of distribution. These three rules were previously thought to be generally applicable criteria for invalidity of premise-conclusion arguments. No longer can a three-term argument be dismissed as invalid simply on the ground that its middle is undistributed, for example. The following question seems never to have been raised: how does having an undistributed middle show that an argument's conclusion does (...) not follow from its premises? This result does nothing to vitiate the theories of distribution developed over the period beginning in medieval times. What it does vitiate is many if not all attempts to use distribution in tests of invalidity outside of the standard two-premise categorical arguments—where they were verified on a case-by-case basis without further theoretical grounding. In addition it shows that there was no theoretical basis for many if not all claims of fundamental status of rules of distribution. These results are further support for approaching historical texts using mathematical archeology. (shrink)

In commenting on the state of affairs in contemporary archaeology, Wylie outlines an agenda for archaeology as an interdisciplinary science rooted in ethical practices of stewardship. In so doing she lays the foundations for an informed and philosophically relevant “meta-archaeology.”.

Scholars have thoroughly discussed the visual aspects of Foucault’s archaeological and genealogical methods, as well as his own emphasis on how sight functions and what contexts and conditions shape how we see and what we can see. Yet while some of the images and visual devices he uses are frequently discussed, like Las Meninas and the panopticon, his diagrams in The Order of Things have received little attention. Why does Foucault diagram historical ways of thinking? What are we supposed to (...) see and understand through these diagrams? To examine the role of the diagram in Foucault’s archaeological method, this paper provides a close reading of how the classical quadrilateral visualizes the structure, function, content, principles, and underlying assumptions of language and thought. In analyzing the diagram as a way for visualizing history, this paper demonstrates how Foucault enacts a new visual language that emphasizes the contingency of thought. (shrink)

Though this volume is a bit dated, there are few recent popular books dealing specifically with the psychology of murder and it’s a quick overview available for a few dollars, so still well worth the effort. It makes no attempt to be comprehensive and is somewhat superficial in places, with the reader expected to fill in the blanks from his many other books and the vast literature on violence. For an update see e.g., Buss, The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology 2nd (...) ed. V1 (2016) p 265, 266, 270–282, 388–389, 545–546, 547, 566 and Buss, Evolutionary Psychology 5th ed. (2015) p 26, 96–97,223, 293-4, 300, 309–312, 410 and Shackelford and Hansen, The Evolution of Violence (2014) He has been among the top evolutionary psychologists for several decades and covers a wide range of behavior in his works, but here he concentrates almost entirely on the psychological mechanisms that cause individual people to murder and their possible evolutionary function in the EEA (Environment of Evolutionary Adaptation—i.e., the plains of Africa during the last million years or so). -/- Buss starts by noting that as with other behaviors, ‘alternative’ explanations such as psychopathology, jealousy, social environment, group pressures, drugs and alcohol etc. do not really explain, since the question still remains as to why these produce homicidal impulses, i.e., they are the proximate causes and not the ultimate evolutionary (genetic) ones. As always, it inevitably boils down to inclusive fitness (kin selection), and so to the struggle for access to mates and resources, which is the ultimate explanation for all behavior in all organisms. Sociological data (and common sense) make it clear that younger poorer males are the most likely to kill. He presents his own and others homicide data from industrialized nations, and tribal cultures, conspecific killing in animals, archeology, FBI data and his own research into normal people's homicidal fantasies. Much archeological evidence continues to accumulate of murders, including that of whole groups, or of groups minus young females, in prehistoric times. -/- After surveying Buss’s comments, I present a very brief summary of intentional psychology (the logical structure of rationality), which is covered extensively in my many other articles and books. -/- Those with a lot of time who want a detailed history of homicidal violence from an evolutionary perspective may consult Steven Pinker’s ‘The Better Angels of Our Nature Why Violence Has Declined’(2012), and my review of it easily available on the net and in two of my recent ebooks. Briefly, Pinker notes that murder has decreased steadily and dramatically by a factor of about 30 since our days as foragers. So, even though guns now make it extremely easy for anyone to kill, homicide is much less common. Pinker thinks this is due to various social mechanisms that bring out our ‘better angels’, but I think it’s due mainly to the temporary abundance of resources from the merciless rape of our planet, coupled with increased police presence, with communication and surveillance and legal systems that make it far more likely to be punished. This becomes clear every time there is even a brief and local absence of the police. -/- Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems of thought viewpoint may consult my e-book ‘The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Wittgenstein and Searle 367p (2016). Those interested in more of my writings on psychology may see Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century--Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization 392p (2017). For all my writings in their most recent versions, please consult my e-book Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization - Articles and Reviews 2006-2017 3rd Ed. 686p (2017). -/- All of my papers and books have now been published in revised versions both in ebooks and in printed books. -/- Talking Monkeys: Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet - Articles and Reviews 2006-2017 (2017) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071HVC7YP. -/- The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle--Articles and Reviews 2006-2016 (2017) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071P1RP1B. -/- Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st century: Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization - Articles and Reviews 2006-2017 (2017) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0711R5LGX -/- . (shrink)

Göbeklitepe is regarded as one of the oldest temples of the humanity according to archaeologs. In this work, by going back twelve thousand years, we will attempt both to provide information about this structure and to make interpretations by highlighting the theological and philosophical associations of this structure. In our study, we will examine Göbeklitepe not from the perspective of archaeology and history of art but from that of philosophy of religion and religious symbolism. In our research, we (...) benefit from the data of archeology and historical geography. The basic aim of this search is archaeological data that is obtained in the region and to evaluate these datas based on the historical geography and the history of religions. When it is, we have interpreted according to language of religion and religious symbolism. As a result, contrary to popular belief, we saw important reasons Göbeklitepe area that is sacred structures, the people of the Stone Age is not primitive and faith is as old as humanity. We have reached the conclusion that must be rethought the development of human civilization on the Göebeklitepe Temples. Our main objective is to connect Göbeklitepe with philosophical and theological literature and to propose a method and subject as to how to accomplish this. Thus, our study is just an attempt at interpretation. (shrink)

A belief in a firm correspondence between objects, ideas, and their representation in language pervaded the works of Anne Robert Jacques Turgot

(1727–1781) in 1750. This conviction is particularly manifest in Turgot’s sharp critique of Berkeley’s philosophical system and his remarks on Maupertuis’s reconstruction of the origin of language. During the 1750s Turgot’s epistemological views underwent a change, apparent in two of his contributions to the Encyclopédie: the entries Existence and Étymologie (1756). These articles included a reassessment of Berkeleyan immaterialism, facing (...) an ultimate crisis of definition and representation. A similar development may be traced in contemporary works by Condillac and Diderot. Turgot’s Encyclopédie entries also envisaged a new science, an archeology of the human mind aided by the examination of linguistic development and change. This entailed the scientific verification of conjectures in any historical account of ideas, turning etymological

and psychological inquiries into what Turgot termed ‘experimental metaphysics’. (shrink)

The present research used archaeological data, i.e., the data obtained from kamekan jar burials in the Mikuni Hills of the northern Kyushu area in the Mid- dle Yayoi period, to test the parochial altruism model. This model argued that out-group hate and in-group favor coevolved via prehistoric intergroup conflicts. If this model is accurate, such an out-group hate and in-group favor could be re- flected in the archaeological remains, such as pottery making; the more frequent intergroup conflicts are and the (...) more each group is opposed, the more independent and coherent each group will be and more evident cultural identity could be estab- lished within each group. We employed an elliptic Fourier analysis for the shapes of kamekan jar burials. We examined whether frequent intergroup conflicts in the period influenced kamekan jar pottery between subareas of the Mikuni Hills. The results suggested that the shapes of kamekan jar burials after the KIIIa type are slightly different between subareas, which is partially consistent with the model. However, the results do not support the model directly. (shrink)

This book presents a new account of Thales based on the idea that Acheloios, a deity equated with water in the ancient Greek world and found in Miletos during Thales’ life, was the most important cultic deity influencing the thinker, profoundly shaping his philosophical worldview. In doing so, it also weighs in on the metaphysical and epistemological dichotomy that seemingly underlies all academia—the antithesis of the methodological postulate of Marxian dialectical materialism vis-à-vis the Platonic idea of fundamentally real transcendental forms. (...) Unbeknownst to many scholars, there are various Neo-Marxian thinkers that position the origin of coinage as the pivotal technological development giving rise to impersonal “metaphysical cosmology,” suggesting that the value of money was more-or-less projected back onto the cosmos in the form of “ideal substances.” While the arguments are incredibly sophisticated and persuasive, their conclusions (either stated or implied) are rather difficult to swallow: the self is merely an illusion, abstract ideas of an ultimate source of value, like God or the Good, are totally delusional (as is the soul, and presumably any notion of inherent human dignity), and essentially everything is reducible to mankind’s enslavement to commodities and the notion of our own objectified labor, which is the true source of all value according to Marx. Not only is this an alarming belief that many scholars (consciously or unconsciously) have adopted, since essentially any action could be “justified,” it is also demonstrably false, since it rests on a misunderstanding of Thales and misconception of philosophy as such. -/- My work rectifies that misunderstanding. In an important sense, it is an attempt at redefining philosophy as a “love of wisdom,” which I argue was accurate even in the Presocratic setting, and it uses the influence of Acheloios on Thales to do so. Throughout its pages I explore the etymology and historical uses of the word ὔδωρ, examine the archaeological context of 7th to 6th century Miletos, consider various aquatic myths Thales encountered, and highlight a hitherto overlooked tradition stemming from Thales and influencing such thinkers as Pythagoras, Empedokles, and Hippo, which culminates in a completely new reading of Plato’s Phaedrus, a dialogue in which Plato responds to the exact type of thinking employed by the Neo-Marxians. It is there that we find Socrates and Phaedrus surrounded by the iconography of Acheloios and the nymphs, all while they lie reclined like river gods (the sinews of Acheloios) on the banks of the Ilisos. And it is in that dialogue that Plato defines philosophy as a love of wisdom—the beholding of a multiplicity of hermeneutical frameworks—and alludes to the fact that it began with the sacrifice of Acheloios, the initial philosophical maneuver which he attributes to Thales. The book ends with a threefold rejoinder to the Neo-Marxian school, corresponding to the λόγος, μῦθος, and ἔργον of Acheloios. It turns out that, (1) the λόγος of Acheloios contained the ideal preconditions conducive to an abstraction to a more refined philosophical worldview in which divine water operated as the One among the Many; (2) the μῦθος of Acheloios actually encouraged the application of the notion of sacrifice to Acheloios himself (thus revealing his essence as divine water); and, (3), the ἔργον of Acheloios, in which he kneels in assent to sacrifice, is found on a coin that was probably designed by Thales. In the final analysis, I suggest that the tradition of Acheloios is reflective of a greater philosophical truth, and that by following Thales’ lead, we transcend the Marxian hermeneutic of doubt and reorient ourselves toward the οὐσια ὄντως οὖσα. (shrink)

How do archaeologists make effective use of physical traces and material culture as repositories of evidence? Material Evidence is a collection of 19 essays that take a resolutely case-based approach to this question, exploring key instances of exemplary practice, instructive failures, and innovative developments in the use of archaeological data as evidence. The goal is to bring to the surface the wisdom of practice, teasing out norms of archaeological reasoning from evidence. -/- Archaeologists make compelling use of an enormously diverse (...) range of material evidence, from garbage dumps to monuments, from finely crafted artifacts rich with cultural significance to the inadvertent transformation of landscapes over the long term. Each contributor to Material Evidence identifies a particular type of evidence with which they grapple and considers, with reference to concrete examples, how archaeologists construct evidential claims, critically assess them, and bring them to bear on pivotal questions about the cultural past. -/- Historians, cultural anthropologists, philosophers, and science studies scholars are increasingly interested in working with material "things" as objects of inquiry and as evidence – and they acknowledge on all sides just how challenging this is. One of the central messages of the book is that close analysis of archaeological best practice can yield constructive guidelines for practice that have much to offer practitioners within archaeology and well beyond. (shrink)

The meaning of Enlightenment for the young Hegel (1785-1800) is closely related to the historical and theoretical moment in which skepticism became a constitutive aspect of his dialectical conception of philosophy. In this light the paper shows that the problem of skepticism understood as self-reflection of epistemological and social critique is deeply linked in the young Hegel’s writings with the archeology of the very idea of the dialectics of enlightenment.

Book review of Colin Koopman's How We Became Our Data (2019).

In 1713 the scientific instrument-maker Jakob Leupold published designs for three machines were the first attempt to design machinery with internal moving parts that replaced human agency in creating original images. This paper first analyzes his text and engravings in order to explain how he proposed to do this, given contemporary materials and command of physical forces. Next, it characterizes the devices as a transition from concepts of incision to concepts of mirroring, taken as models of the history of mechanical (...) reproduction. And finally, Leupold’s replacement of the sighting grid with differential gears points to a set of problems appearing in contemporary philosophy represented in Rococo artistic production of this period as well. Taking the proposed devices in context, they help to theorize the complex notions of creative activity in Rococo visual culture. Taken as an episode in the history of communications, they instance the development of conceptions of personhood and of physical forces at stake in the invention of automated media. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to discuss some possible connections between philosophical proposals about the social organisation of science and developments towards a greater democratisation of science policy. I suggest that there are important similarities between one approach to objectivity in philosophy of science—Helen Longino’s account of objectivity as freedom from individual biases achieved through interaction of a variety of perspectives—and some ideas about the epistemic benefits of wider representation of various groups’ perspectives in science policy, as analysed (...) by Mark Brown. Given these similarities, I suggest that they allow one to approach developments in science policy as if one of their aims were epistemic improvement that can be recommended on the basis of the philosophical account; analyses of political developments inspired by these ideas about the benefits of inclusive dialogue can then be used for understanding the possibility to implement a philosophical proposal for improving the objectivity of science in practice. Outlining this suggestion, I also discuss the possibility of important differences between the developments in the two spheres and show how the concern about the possible divergence of politically motivated and epistemically motivated changes may be mitigated. In order to substantiate further the suggestion I make, I discuss one example of a development where politically motivated and epistemically motivated changes converge in practice—the development of professional ethics in American archaeology as analysed by Alison Wylie. I suggest that analysing such specific developments and getting involved with them can be one of the tasks for philosophy of science. In the concluding part of the paper I discuss how this approach to philosophy of science is related to a number of arguments about a more politically relevant philosophy of science. (shrink)

Thomas Elsaesser’s recent scholarship has examined the “mind-game film”, a phenomenon in Hollywood that is broadly characterised by multi-platform storytelling, paratextual narrative feedback loops, nonlinear storytelling, and unreliable character perspectives. While “mind-game” or “puzzle” films have become a contentious subject amongst post-cinema scholars concerned with Hollywood storytelling, what is to be said of contemporary European independent cinema? Elsaesser’s timely publication, European Cinema and Continental Philosophy, examines an amalgam of politically inclined European auteurs to resolve this query. Elsaesser concedes that (...) there exists a phenomenological confluence between the mind-game film and contemporary European cinema. For instance, both produce characters afflicted by productive pathologies, designating new socially useful forms of agency and identity. One only needs to consult the amnesiac protagonist M (Markku Peltola) in Aki Kaurismäki’s The Man Without a Past (Mies vailla menneisyyttä, 2002) or, as regards Lars von Trier’s cinema, Beth (Emily Watson) in Breaking the Waves (1996), Selma (Björk) in Dancer in the Dark (2000), “She” (Charlotte Gainsbourg) in Antichrist (2009) or Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg) in Nymphomaniac (2013) to evince this overlap. However, this book is more concerned with performative self-contradictions, whereby cinema-as-enunciator is put under erasure, thus aggravating the inherent discrepancies troubling Europe today. Elsaesser, indeed, evaluates a growing general disaffection with politics, the rise of populist nationalism and far-right fringe parties, as well as an increasing population of economic migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers. (shrink)

This analysis summarizes conclusions on an evolutionary model for the origin of moral and religious capacities in the genus Homo. The authors’ published model (2020, Routledge) is now extended to the emergence of nascent theological thinking, augmenting the previous line of theory based on genomics, cognitive science, neuroscience, paleoneurology, cognitive archaeology, ethnography, and modern social science. This analysis concludes that findings support the earliest theological thinking in Homo sapiens, but not in an earlier species, Homo erectus, and clarifies why (...) and when it likely began. Types of anatomy, behavior, neurology, and cognition are presented that support tendencies to frame a structure of religious principles and a set of supernatural figures that early humans would consider right, just, exemplary, and even sacred. Stages of emergent physical, behavioral, and cognitive features are presented in tables. While based on published research results in the sciences, the model is presented here with anticipation of future testing. (shrink)

This article reconsiders the early hominid ‘‘lithic niche’’ by examining the social implications of stone artifact making. I reject the idea that making tools for use is an adequate explanation of the elaborate artifact forms of the Lower Palaeolithic, or a sufficient cause for long-term trends in hominid technology. I then advance an alternative mechanism founded on the claim that competency in making stone artifacts requires extended learning, and that excellence in artifact making is attained only by highly skilled individuals (...) who have been taught and practiced for extensive periods. Consequently both competency and expertise in knapping comes at a high learning cost for both the individual learner and the social group to which they belong. Those high intrinsic costs of learning created contexts in which groups selected cost-reducing forms of social learning and teaching, and in which specialization could develop. Artifacts and their manufacturing processes probably acquired functions as social signals—as honest signals of valuable capacities. The magnification of these signals, through competition between knappers and through inspiring later craftspeople, may account for a substantial amount of the accumulated elaboration visible in the archaeological record. Consequently lithic artifacts operated as material symbols from an early time in hominid evolution. (shrink)

The ramifications of existence provide the setup for a theory on civilization as a whole. This story is composed under the premise of looking at Rabbinic Judaism and the Old/New Testaments as contextual clues for an overview of civilization and existence in general. This includes a mathematical model for prior to the existence of time i.e. QSOPR Theorem: Quantum Similarity Origin Point References, MDQBT: Multi-Dimensional Quantum Breakpoint Theorem, and QSICT: Quantum Simulated Informational Consciousness Theory. As well as tracing back ancient (...) lineages such as Coptic DNA and the e1b1b haplogroup, FGC8712, or tribal lineages such as Berbers, the Quarashi, and ancient Mesopotamian groups. Next, we will look at history and philosophy through religious texts which include mythology, Quranic text and hadiths, and any related archaeological evidence in relationship to the Shashu, Temple 0, or contextual geological clues. This will provide a premise for human nature, civilization, world religions, societal falls, and history through correlative patterns, universal truth, linguistics, ethics and morality. (shrink)

This essay offers a novel interpretation of Michel Foucault’s original and often misunderstood conception of philosophy as a critical activity. While it is well known that Foucault’s critique undertakes to disclose contingent limits of thought that appear necessary in the present, the nature of the obstacle whose overcoming critique is meant to facilitate remains poorly understood. I argue that this obstacle, “the present limits of the necessary,” resides on the unconscious level of thought Foucault identified as the object of (...) analysis for an archaeology of knowledge. Therefore, Foucault’s conception of a critique can be grasped only against the background of the distinctive conception of thought that informs his archaeological analyses of discursive practices. According to that view, thinking is always shaped by some historically specific system of unconscious norms that define the contingent set of conceptual possibilities subjects are able to recognize in the present. Drawing on Foucault’s largely neglected remarks on the obvious and the habitual, I argue that these unconscious norms of thought are enacted habitually in a discursive practice, which endows them with an appearance of obviousness. In this way, I explain how something contingent appears in the guise of necessity and begins to function as part of the present limits of the necessary. Finally, I argue that the task of a critique to expand the scope of conceptual possibility by disclosing these unconscious limits of thought is motivated by Foucault’s commitment to the ideal of autonomy understood as subject’s self-determination. (shrink)

This book is an anthology about transformation processes. It brings together contributions that were made during the 16th International Congress of the German Society for Semiotics 2021. Due to the Corona pandemic, it was finally not held in attendance at the TU Chemnitz, in Germany, but took place online. 11 sections with different focuses from archaeology, architecture, design, digital humanities, on the body, from the field of literature & youth and subcultures, media, fashion, environment, and carto/atlas semiotics and sign (...) philosophy had each published their own call for papers. -/- The focus of the IMAGE & Cultural study sections' call, published with the volume, was to understand images as agents - according to art and cultural studies scholar Aby M. Warburg - and to recognize and understand not only their potential for cognition, but also their potential for action. As an active part of culture, they not only convey it, but at the same time stimulate action. In this respect, images can be understood not only as documents and testimonies of collective history, but also as active carriers and repositories of affectively effective elements of communication. As agents of cultural transformation processes, images take on a status of their own within the human capacity for expression and action. The essays in this volume bear eloquent witness to this. (shrink)

Over the last thirty years, once staunchly historical cinema scholars such as Thomas Elsaesser, Jane Gaines, Siegfried Zielinski, and André Gaudreault have abandoned history for historiography and film studies for media archaeology. With increasing attention on the “database” as a symbolic metaphor for postmodernity and the decentered, networked tenants of the global present, cinema is taking on the characteristics of new media, existing in intertextual space. Thus, the term “post-cinema” has been co-opted as a viable intermediary that accounts for (...) new media conditions, as cinema is no longer emblematic of our cultural climate. As Giorgio Agamben wrote in 1992, “[t]he end of the cinema truly sounds the death knell of the ultimate metaphysical adventure of Dasein. In the twilight of post-cinema…human quasi-existence, now stripped of any metaphysical hypostasis and deprived of any theological model, will have to seek its proper generic consistency elsewhere." Accordingly, we are no longer “moviegoing animals” who seek images of ourselves among a collective in the dark but, rather, users interfacing within a network of moving images. (shrink)

The generalized Darwinian research programme accepts physicalism, but holds that all life is purposive in character. It seeks to understand how and why all purposiveness has evolved in the universe – especially purposiveness associated with what we value most in human life, such as sentience, consciousness, person-to-person understanding, science, art, free¬dom, love. As evolution proceeds, the mechanisms of evolution themselves evolve to take into account the increasingly important role that purposive action can play - especially when quasi-Lamarckian evolution by cultural (...) means comes into existence. This programme of research brings together, into a coherent field of inquiry, aspects of such diverse fields of research as orthodox Darwinian theory (given its purposive interpretation), the study of animal behaviour, palaeontology, archaeology, history, anthropology, psycho-neurology, artificial intelligence, psychology, sociology, philosophy, linguistics, semantics, history and philosophy of science, and history and philosophy of inquiry more generally (the history and philosophy of ideas and culture). The great advantage of the generalized Darwinian research programme is that it provides a framework for understanding the deeds, achievements and experiences of people in a way that is compatible with the kind of knowledge and understanding achieved in the physical sciences, without being reducible to such knowledge and understanding. It promises to enable us to understand ourselves as a part of the biological domain without our humanity, our distinctive human value, being in any way denied: persons are not reduced to animals, and nor are animals misconceived to be persons. It holds out the hope that we can come to understand the human world as an integral part of the natural world without the meaning and value of the human world being thereby conceptually annihilated. The programme specifies in general terms what we must seek to do in order to develop a coherent understanding of nature and of ourselves which does justice to the character of both. (shrink)

Philosophy of Education in South Africa during the latter half of the 20th century was characterised by three ideological strands. The first was known as ‘Fundamental Pedagogics’, the second ‘Liberalism’, and the third ‘Liberation Socialism’ (i.e., Marxism/Freire). When apartheid formally ended in 1994 these strands lost their impetus and faded from educational debates, arguably because of the disappearance of apartheid itself, as the locus relative to which these ideological strands positioned themselves. This paper characterises these three positions and some (...) of their major proponents and ideas, and then present an overview of where philosophy of education in South Africa is now, nearly 30 years after apartheid. I suggest that since 1994 the strong, competing philosophical and ideological commitments that informed philosophy of education during apartheid have significantly dissipated, and have not been meaningfully replaced. Instead, education policy and curriculum are now arguably underpinned by neo-liberal concerns, and the results have been, and continue to be, an unmitigated disaster for schooling in South Africa. Part of the reason for this is because philosophy of education is much diminished, and no longer directly meaningfully contributes to, and informs, educational discourse, policy, teacher training and curriculum in South African schooling. (shrink)

In this thesis, I argue that a good historical science will have the following characteristics: Firstly, it will seek to construct causal histories of the past. Secondly, the construction of these causal histories will utilise well-tested regularities of science. Additionally, well-tested regularities will secure the link between observations of physical traces and the causal events of interest. However, the historical sciences cannot use these regularities in a straightforward manner. The regularities must accommodate the idiosyncrasies of the past, and the degradation (...) of evidence over time. Through an examination of how the historical sciences work in practice, I show how they can confirm these unique causal histories, and the limits to their confirmatory strategies. (shrink)

This special issue on affordances bases on the thesis, that all natural and artificial things inhere affordances that appeal to our cognitive system, and thus invite us to look at them, perceive them, think about them, interpret them, and use them. The concept roots in the studies of the American psychologist James J. Gibson from the 1960s. According to him, "things" offer a certain range of possible activities depending on their form, time patterns, and material qualities, thus becoming part of (...) human-thing-interactions. However, affordances can also be culturally trained. This aspect has been intensively discussed subsequently within different disciplines (e.g., Social Sciences, Design Studies). But only recently has the concept received attention in the field of Visual Culture Studies particularly through archaeological scholarship. (shrink)

In “Psychopower and Ordinary Madness” my ambition, as it relates to Bernard Stiegler’s recent literature, was twofold: 1) critiquing Stiegler’s work on exosomatization and artefactual posthumanism—or, more specifically, nonhumanism—to problematize approaches to media archaeology that rely upon technical exteriorization; 2) challenging how Stiegler engages with Giuseppe Longo and Francis Bailly’s conception of negative entropy. These efforts were directed by a prevalent techno-cultural qualifier: the rise of Synthetic Intelligence (including neural nets, deep learning, predictive processing and Bayesian models of cognition). (...) This paper continues this project but first directs a critical analytic lens at the Derridean practice of the ontologization of grammatization from which Stiegler emerges while also distinguishing how metalanguages operate in relation to object-oriented environmental interaction by way of inferentialism. Stalking continental (Kapp, Simondon, Leroi-Gourhan, etc.) and analytic traditions (e.g., Carnap, Chalmers, Clark, Sutton, Novaes, etc.), we move from artefacts to AI and Predictive Processing so as to link theories related to technicity with philosophy of mind. Simultaneously drawing forth Robert Brandom’s conceptualization of the roles that commitments play in retrospectively reconstructing the social experiences that lead to our endorsement(s) of norms, we compliment this account with Reza Negarestani’s deprivatized account of intelligence while analyzing the equipollent role between language and media (both digital and analog). (shrink)

An outline of "philosophy of life" as a philosophical discipline is discussed. In today’s academic philosophy, we have “philosophy of biology,” which deals with creatures’ biological phenomena, “philosophy of death,” which concentrates on the concept of human death, and “philosophy of meaning of life,” which investigates difficult problems concerning the meaning of life and living. However, we do not have “philosophy of life,” which deals with philosophical problems concerning human life and the life of (...) non-human creatures. Hence, I proposed to establish “philosophy of life” as an academic discipline. We define philosophy of life as an academic research field that encompasses the following activities: 1) Cross-cultural, comparative, or historical research on philosophies of life, death, and nature. 2) Philosophical and ethical analysis of contemporary issues concerning human and non-human life in the age of modern technology. 3) philosophical analysis of the concepts surrounding life, death, and nature. (shrink)

The essays collected in this volume are written by scholars from a wide range of disciplines (anthropology, archaeology, art history, philosophy and psychology). The papers ostensibly address how to evaluate rock art, but can also be read in the context of offering support for the affirmative in the debate regarding whether aesthetics is a cross-cultural discipline. Two alternative conceptions of the aesthetic provide the underlying antithesis and thesis respectively to all papers. The antithesis holds that the aesthetic pertains (...) to a conception of art that is an historical artefact of eighteenth century Europe. Most of the writers refer to this idea of art in terms of the object of a disinterested gaze (a second-hand reading of Kant), or as ‘art-for-art’s-sake’. The thesis of all papers, be it explicit or implicit, is that the aesthetic is a certain human predisposition or capacity to imbue physical properties with meaning and value; to link the sensuous with the semantic; to find meaning in form (Lamarque pp.27-8, Morphy pp.54, 59.). Some authors extend this beyond the artefact to the perception of nature (see the papers of Heyd, Ogawa, Stone). (shrink)

Paleolinguistics (or linguistic paleontology) is a scientific discipline that combines the methodology of historical linguistics with archaeological insights. Specifically, paleolinguists aim to reconstruct the linguistic expression of a particular archeological culture. In this paper I deal with the methodology of paleolinguistics since this has recently come under the scrutiny of philosophersfor instance, Mallory (2020) has argued that tools of the philosophy of language can be employed for charting the space of legitimate use of paleolinguistics, most notably the position of (...) semantic internalism. Specifically, in his view, linguistic reconstructions of the Proto-Indo-European lexicon express Sinn or sense, whereas the proto-lexicon is best understood as a model of conceptual capabilities of a particular historical community. I want to show that one can consider semantic externalism as a more fruitful alternative. In other words, I propose to see the proto lexicon as a model that shows a feedback loop between speakers’ conceptual capabilities and scaffolding of these capabilities through speakers’ interaction with the environment. I show that the process of scaffolding can be mediated by cognitive fossils which, in turn, forges a tighter methodological link between paleolinguistics, archaeology, and the study of human cognition. (shrink)

Philosophy of Mind is usualy seen as the theoretical field in which theories about the functioning of the mind are elaborated, to be afterwards empirically tested through Artificial Intelligence. But this empirical approach does not fit the human mind which is not simply a machine. It is therefore possible to see Philosophy of Mind as a necessary creation to empty AI of its philosophical charge.

This article is intended as a contribution to the current debates about the relationship between politics and the philosophy of science in the Vienna Circle. I reconsider this issue by shifting the focus from philosophy of science as theory to philosophy of science as practice. From this perspective I take as a starting point the Vienna Circle’s scientific world-conception and emphasize its practical nature: I reinterpret its tenets as a set of recommendations that express the particular epistemological (...) attitude in which both the Vienna Circle’s (doing) philosophy of science and its political engagement were rooted. -/- Regarding politics, and referring to new primary sources, I reconstruct how the scientific world-conception placed the Vienna Circle within a neoliberal-socialist political network that pursued concrete political aims. In light of my reconstruction I shall argue that neither the Vienna Circle’s alleged ethical noncognitivism nor its alleged adhesion to the Weberian ideal of a value-free science rules out the possibility of ascribing to the Vienna Circle a politically engaged philosophy of science: the case of the Vienna Circle shows how philosophy of science, as a public activity, can itself become a form of political engagement, even without necessarily entailing a theory of objective values. (shrink)

Philosophers have long tried to understand scientific change in terms of a dynamics of revision within ‘theoretical frameworks,’ ‘disciplinary matrices,’ ‘scientific paradigms’ or ‘conceptual schemes.’ No-one, however, has made clear precisely how one might model such a conceptual scheme, nor what form change dynamics within such a structure could be expected to take. In this paper we take some first steps in applying network theory to the issue, modeling conceptual schemes as simple networks and the dynamics of change as cascades (...) on those networks. The results allow a new understanding of two traditional approaches—Popper and Kuhn—as well as introducing the intriguing prospect of viewing scientific change using the metaphor of selforganizing criticality. (shrink)

The Philosophy of Ideology - Reading Althusser and Machiavelli Politically - Irfan Ajvazi.