A common objection to probabilistic theories of causation is that there are prima facie causes that lower the probability of their effects. Among the many replies to this objection, little attention has been given to Mellor's (1995) indirect strategy to deny that probability-lowering factors are bona fide causes. According to Mellor, such factors do not satisfy the evidential, explanatory, and instrumental connotations of causation. The paper argues that the evidential connotation only entails an epistemically relativized form of causal attribution, (...) not causation itself, and that there are clear cases of explanation and instrumental reasoning that must appeal to negatively relevant factors. In the end, it suggests a more liberal interpretation of causation that restores its connotations. Una objeción común a las teorías probabilísticas de la causalidad es que aparentemente existen causas que disminuyen la probabilidad de sus efectos. Entre las muchas respuestas a esta objeción, se le ha dado poca atención a la estrategia indirecta de D. H. Mellor (1995) para negar que un factor que disminuya la probabilidad de un efecto sea una causa legítima. Según Mellor, tales factores no satisfacen las connotaciones evidenciales, explicativas e instrumentales de la causalidad. El artículo argumenta que la connotación evidencial sólo implica una forma epistémicamente relativizada de atribución causal y no la causalidad misma, y que hay casos claros de explicación y razonamiento instrumental que deben apelar a factores negativamente relevantes. Se sugiere una interpretación más liberal de la causalidad que reinstaura sus connotaciones. (shrink)

Problem Statement. In modern conditions the reconstruction of self-developing socio-technological- ecological systems, which include man as its element, is actualized. The result of such a construction will be the management of the value of technogenic risk in its biological, social and civilizational forms. And the obvious consequence will be the transition of the development of biopolitical problems to a new, no longer international, but global-evolutionary level. The theory and practice of such a reconstruction can be designated by the category of (...) “Transbiolitics,” which implies the political institutionalization of “ecological re整ection. The article is a logical continuation of our previous publication devoted to the analysis of the transformation of the political process into the main factor of global evolution and the biopolitical transformation of the geopolitical landscape. The purpose of this paper is to create a general sketch of the con散guration of the main trends of the coevolutionary interaction of biological, sociocultural and techno-rationalist modules of the stable evolutionary strategy of the technogenic civilization in the space of bio- and geopolitical connotations of international relations. Based on a combination of methods of conceptual, discursive and political-anthropological analysis (in the context of transbiolitical paradigm) the content of the category “Transbiolitical Chronotope” is revealed: a geopolitically di䍕erentiated set of socio-cultural vectors of modern civilization evolution. In other words, the trans-biopolitical chronotope determines the direction of inclusive technological transformation of both cultural and ecological niche and the biosocial nature of man. The general conclusion/prognosis can be reduced to two theses. Firstly, transbiolitics, formed in a di䍕erentiated cultural-civilizational context, is currently being integrated into the general political process, partially replacing and partially intertwining with geopolitical doctrines in the sphere of international relations. Secondly, the growing con整ict of technological civilization with the cultural and ecological niche constructed by it through the turbulence of the geopolitical sphere of social life can bring the level of technological and civilizational risk to the existential boundary. (shrink)

al-Fārābi was well aware that ecumenism can easily convert to tyranny if a certain city–state attempts to impose its laws outside its territory. State legislation depends on specific cultural and historical factors which deprives it from being universal because culture and history could not unite different nations in an ecumenical state. Legislation has to be built on universal premises, e.g. on philosophy, so as to serve the needs of a global state. Philosophy is the bond which unites humans and communities, (...) while religion and legislation are disruptive factors. Despite the fact that in our days there are different philosophies, philosophy encourages dialogue, not hatred. As a result, al-Fārābi was right when he founded his ecumenical state on philosophy. Consequently, philosophers ought to persuade the citizens through rational arguments, dialectic, symbols and religion so as to accept the existence of an ecumenical state. The goal of this state is the supreme good, understood as the theoretical living. Al-Fārābi’s ecumenism is a means for the perfection of human beings and societies and not simply for the augmentation of wealth, as it is seen today. Al-Fārābi dreams of an anthropocentric ecumenical state. I support that this should be the form of modern ecumenism. While modern scholars have strong objections to the governing of philosophers, we should agree that philosophy is the appropriate universal language. The persistence on power and other divisive factors, such as religion or tradition, is doomed to fail. (shrink)

According to the results of 162 respondents survey, the affective and cognitive components of feelings of guilt in the space of Ukrainians’ collective consciousness were described. This space is complex, but poorly structured, capable of appearing and spreading little understood defensive assessments and attitudes. -/- The content of relevant processes recorded the following trends: undifferentiated feelings of guilt, general self-accusations, accusations of Ukrainians themselves for historical failures, shame for Ukrainians’ violence, readiness to recognize or not to recognize Ukrainians’ guilties, accusations (...) of Ukrainian powers of different periods, denunciation of Soviet power, Ukrainians’ feelings to be innocent victims of Russia, the avoidance of political guilt. -/- In defining of the perpetrators of Ukrainian historical miseries the agents of Russian-Soviet influences and the Ukrainian authorities of various times unconditionally dominate. Psychologically more problematic is the sphere of recognition / non-recognition by Ukrainians of their own faults. One can speak of the presence of a basic affective background – the experience of undifferentiated feelings of guilt. -/- The Ukrainians’ consciousness is characterized by two main emotional-value positions: denialdefensive (we are not guilty of anyone) and avoiding-defensive (we are only guilty of ourselves). The opposite self-accusatory position (we are guilty of others and should ask them for forgiveness) has a relatively small share. -/- The denial-defensive position essentially correlates with the narcissistic Ukrainian identity. The avoiding-defensive position reflects the conciliatory Ukrainian identity. Recognizing the historical blames of Ukrainians and a need to apologize concerns the representatives of humanistic Ukrainian identity. It means understanding the real state of affairs without illusory idealization, the ability to profoundly experience one’s involvement in the Ukrainian world, and the willingness to assume moral responsibility for the sins of the past. (shrink)

The theory of proper names proposed by J.S. Mill in A system of logic (1843), and discussed in S. Kripke’s Naming and necessity (1980), is shown to be predated by A. Rosmini’s Nuovo saggio sull’origine delle idee (1830) and T. Reid’s Essays on the intellectual powers of man (1785). For philological reasons, Rosmini probably did not obtain his view of proper names from Reid. For philosophical reasons, it is unlikely that he got it from Hobbes, Locke, Smith, or Stewart. Although (...) not explicitly indicated by Rosmini himself, he may have been influenced by St. Thomas, who in Summa theologica discusses suppositum and natura in relation to the equivocal functions of the terms ”God” and ”sun” as common and proper names. As previously observed, forerunners of the idea can be found in Antiquity, in Plato’s Theaetetus and Aristotle’s Metaphysics. From a historical point of view, the fully developed ”Millian” opinion that connotation is not a fundamental aspect of proper names, and that their referents are not fixed by description, could more accurately be termed the Reid-Rosmini-Mill theory. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the theory of divine ideas of Walter Burley. The medieval common theory of divine ideas, developed by Augustine, was intended to provide an answer to the question of the order and intelligibility of the world. The world is rationally organized since God created it according to the models existing eternally in his mind. Augustine's theory, however, left open problems such as reconciling the principle of God's unity with the plurality of ideas, the way in which ideas (...) can or cannot be said to be eternal, their ontological status. Medieval authors discussed such questions until at least the late 14th century. By resorting to the semantic tool of connotation, Burley explains both in what way ‘idea' can signify the divine essence as much as the creatures, and in what sense we can say that God has thought them from eternity, without slipping into a necessitarian view that undermines the principle of divine freedom. Moreover, by envisaging the objective mode of being as the only mode of being of ideas, he explains in what way they truly differ from one another on the basis of their different conceptual contents. (shrink)

Spirituality connotes praxis informed by religious or faith convictions. This can transform the individual and society at large. Christian spirituality is centered on how a person’s relationship with the God of Jesus Christ informs and directs one’s approach to existence and engagement with the world. The ecosystem concerns humanity and relationship with it is invariably influenced by faith or religious informed praxis. The reality of climate change is convincing many people that humankind’s common homeland needs to be treated with care (...) and respect if created beings are to have a congenial habitat now and in the future. This article avers that Christian spirituality can contribute to eco-friendly behavior through re-formation of the behavior of people and emboldening their goodwill as regards the responsibility of all towards the care of the earth. Finally, this research proffers a three-fold model of eco-spirituality - scriptural, selfcontrol, and sacramental approaches to the earth – as a contribution towards stemming the tide of ecological assaults on creation. Textual analysis is the method used in this research. (shrink)

The pejorative connotation often associated with the ordinary language meaning of “conspiracy theory” does not only stem from a conspiracy theory’s being about a conspiracy, but also from a conspiracy theory’s being regarded as a particular kind of theory. I propose to understand conspiracy theory-induced polarization in terms of disagreement about the correct epistemic evaluation of ‘theory’ in ‘conspiracy theory’. By framing the positions typical in conspiracy theory-induced polarization in this way, I aim to show that pejorative conceptions of (...) ‘conspiracy theory’ are problematic for research open to the possibility of finding depolarization strategies. That is, because they preclude constructive engagement with the epistemic norms governing (the rationales foundational of) belief in conspiracy theories. (shrink)

Terms loaded with informational connotations are often employed to refer to genes and their dynamics. Indeed, genes are usually perceived by biologists as basically ‘the carriers of hereditary information.’ Nevertheless, a number of researchers consider such talk as inadequate and ‘just metaphorical,’ thus expressing a skepticism about the use of the term ‘information’ and its derivatives in biology as a natural science. First, because the meaning of that term in biology is not as precise as it is, for instance, in (...) the mathematical theory of communication. Second, because it seems to refer to a purported semantic property of genes without theoretically clarifying if any genuinely intrinsic semantics is involved. Biosemiotics, a field that attempts to analyze biological systems as semiotic systems, makes it possible to advance in the understanding of the concept of information in biology. From the perspective of Peircean biosemiotics, we develop here an account of genes as signs, including a detailed analysis of two fundamental processes in the genetic information system (transcription and protein synthesis) that have not been made so far in this field of research. Furthermore, we propose here an account of information based on Peircean semiotics and apply it to our analysis of transcription and protein synthesis. (shrink)

What is consciousness and why is it so philosophically and scientifically puzzling? For many years philosophers approached this question assuming a standard physicalist framework on which consciousness can be explained by contemporary physics, biology, neuroscience, and cognitive science. This book is a debate between two philosophers who are united in their rejection of this kind of "standard" physicalism - but who differ sharply in what lesson to draw from this. Amy Kind defends dualism 2.0, a thoroughly modern version of dualism (...) (the theory that there are two fundamentally different kinds of things in the world: those that are physical and those that are mental) decoupled from any religious or non-scientific connotations. Daniel Stoljar defends non-standard physicalism, a kind of physicalism different from both the standard version and dualism 2.0. The book presents a cutting-edge assessment of the philosophy of consciousness and provides a glimpse at what the future study of this area might bring. (shrink)

Cyberspeak, the language of cybernetics, or its metalanguage to be more precise, consists of words that are both explaining and describing human/animal and machine forms of control and communication, while in newspeak, words were value-laden, which means they had strong positive or negative connotations connected to their use. For example, a 'spy' could only be a foreign agent, while a Russian one was a 'patriot'. First, it will be shown how there are still remnants of cyberspeak in modern science, pinpointing (...) its cybernetic background and shaping our thoughts without us realizing they had any cybernetic origin whatsoever. Second, it will be investigated how newspeak, as its counterpart, can be analyzed from the theory of speech acts. Third, the current war in Ukraine allowed us a brief analysis of newspeak present in Russian public communication today (Putin's speeches), which will again be connected to their performative aspect. (shrink)

Menas is a term that has attracted a great deal of attention on the political scene in Spain at present. Although the term had a neutral usage originally, being an acronym for unaccompanied foreign minors, it has recently evolved into a term with clear negative connotations. This article explores what kind of term menas is today. Specifically, we will examine whether menas is a slur or an ESTI, an ethnic/social term used as an insult. First, we point out the most (...) defining characteristics of both types of terms. Then, using analyses on linguistic corpora, we show that menas exhibits the most defining characteristics of ESTIs. We end by discussing the possible evolution of the term, pointing out that, although the term presents the features related to ESTIs, there are two possible scenarios. On the one hand, the term may retain its neutral uses and thus remain an ESTI. On the other hand, the neutral uses may disappear, and thus the term may become a slur. (shrink)

PREFACE WORD -/- Hilmi Ziya Ülken was born in Istanbul during the last period of the Ottoman Empire, was educated during this period and worked in many areas of the intellectual life of the newly established Republic. Although he was interested in many fields of social sciences, he gained fame in philosophy, sociology, history of thought and literature. Again, he undertook important tasks in revealing and introducing medieval Islamic thinkers and post-Tanzimat Turkish thought, and due to his deep knowledge of (...) Eastern and Western philosophies, he made comparative studies in these fields and tried to reveal the similarities and differences in both cultures. Many graduate studies, book chapters and articles have been written about such an important thinker whose works are also recognized abroad. Among the thinkers of the Republican Era, Ülken is one of the most studied names. In this study, Ülken's biography, his intellectual adventure, his understanding of philosophy and his ideas about the life of thought are discussed panoramically, and the bibliographic information obtained about his articles and other works that have not yet been fully revealed has been added to the study. Another important document added to this study is Ülken's biography written in his own handwriting. Our hope is that with the completion of the information missing in this study, a complete portrait of Ülken will be revealed. When Ülken's works are taken into consideration, it is understood that he wrote works in many fields of social sciences. The fact that he did not concentrate on a certain field but worked in many fields has been a frequently criticized aspect of him. In this sense, we think that the phrase "A Thinker of Mütebahhir", which we wrote as a subtitle to the title of our study, defines him very well. Many names have used the adjective mütebahhir, which means ocean and depth in Ottoman Turkish, about Ülken. While Necati Öner used it in a positive sense, names such as Cemil Meriç (1916-1987) and İsmail Tunalı (1923-2015) used it in a sense that includes negative connotations, such as saying words in every field, his knowledge is unlimited but formless and non-systematic, and Salâh Birsel (1919-1999) wrote on every subject. On the other hand, scholars such as Kurtuluş Kayalı and Ali Utku, who have recently conducted competent studies on Ülken, have emphasized that Ülken - contrary to popular belief - thought and worked within a system and was very sensitive about his system of thought. When Ülken's works are examined in general, it is seen that many of them were formed by turning lecture notes into books, and this situation caused many problems. This situation led to problems such as the disorganization of his works, the lack of a certain systematization, the lack of the necessary methodological sensitivity in footnotes and citations, and the use of some terms in their original language instead of their Turkish equivalents. When we look at the life stories of important thinkers in the history of thought, we observe that they were not only influenced by the social, political, economic, etc. conditions of the period in which they lived, but also that they influenced these conditions in the period in which they lived. The best example of this situation among the thinkers of the early years of the Republic is Ülken. When his works are examined in chronological order, it is noticeable that his ideas constantly changed, that he had to defend the ideas he criticized from time to time, and that he was in a constant search. He explained his works in many fields by saying that he wrote works that would be a source for his own works and that he served as a bridge to the past. The fact that he was a doyen in many fields of social sciences despite having a Mülkiye education can be explained by his self-education. Ülken, who set an example for academics and thinkers with his hard work, diligence, and lifestyle of constantly reading, researching and writing, carried out very important works in his 73 years of life. As Öner, a student of his who knew him closely, says: "In his daily life, Ülken was either reading, writing or philosophizing." Again, Tunalı says about his diligence that "when he was finishing a book, he would have written another book!" It can be said that one of Ülken's efforts was to establish a tradition of sociology and philosophy in Turkey by recognizing the disconnect in our world of thought. Ülken expressed this to his student Necati Öner by saying, "We are a quarter in philosophy, you will be half, and then we will be complete!" While the influence of philosophers and sociologists who came to our country with the educational reforms was quite limited, Ülken succeeded in establishing a tradition in Istanbul Sociology and Ankara Theology. For this reason, important sociologists and philosophers of our country, such as Baykan Sezer (1938-2002) and Kurtuluş Kayalı (born 1949), admitted that "we are students of the Ülken tradition" even though they were not his direct students. Ülken provided an important opening in the social sciences with his methodology that analyzed the problems he dealt with in depth, tried to deal with all aspects of the issues and made synthesis attempts between different ideas. In addition, with the newly established Republic, he made great efforts to collect and translate sources in many fields, especially philosophy, and to carry out activities on a philosophical basis. The fact that his works continued to attract attention in every period after him and were reprinted and read again and again reveals the centrality of his role in the intellectual life of the Republican period. In this study, in which the life, philosophy and thoughts of Hilmi Ziya Ülken, whose valuable contributions to Turkish-Islamic thought are undeniable, have been tried to be presented in general terms, the articles and book chapters I have written about Ülken in various journals and book chapters and whose titles I have given in the bibliography and bibliography section have also been utilized. I hope that this monographic study will make a small contribution to the studies on Ülken, who deserves to be remembered with mercy and gratitude. -/- . (shrink)

This essay aims to appreciate the evolution of the problems regarding the ontological understanding of the photographic image and its derivative, the film, in the face of the sophistication of the apparatus of its production. The creative freedom in making images through optical machines is inversely proportional to their credibility as documents. Since its appearance in the human landscape, as a cultural object, the technology of recording images with lights has brought with it a complex of aporias about what would (...) the nature of the image produced by cameras be: a document or an artistic object, intentionally produced and with created meaning? Consequently: are they denotative or, necessarily, connotative? The development of automatic image capture in the 1980s represented the first update of the question. To what extent, and for how long, will it be possible to trust photography and film as documents through which man aims to access reality? The question now seems to be settled, definitively, in the face of the invention of artificial photography made by algorithms. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to defend a version of the brain process theory, or identity thesis, which differs in one important respect from the theory put forward by J.J.C. Smart. I shall argue that although the sensations which a person experiences are, as a matter of contingent fact, brain processes, nonetheless there are facts about sensations which cannot be described or understood in terms of any physical theory. These 'mental' facts cannot be described by physics for the simple (...) reason that physical descriptions are designed specifically to avoid mentioning such facts. Thus in giving a physical explanation of a sensation we necessarily describe and render intelligible that sensation only as a physical process, and not also as a sensation. If we are to describe and render intelligible a person's sensations, or inner experiences, as sensations, and not as physical processes occurring in that person's brain, then we must employ a kind of description that connot be derived from any set of physical statements. (shrink)

It is nowadays a dominant opinion in a number of disciplines (anthropology, genetics, psychology, philosophy of science) that the taxonomy of human races does not make much biological sense. My aim is to challenge the arguments that are usually thought to invalidate the biological concept of race. I will try to show that the way “race” was defined by biologists several decades ago (by Dobzhansky and others) is in no way discredited by conceptual criticisms that are now fashionable and widely (...) regarded as cogent. These criticisms often arbitrarily burden the biological category of race with some implausible connotations, which then opens the path for a quick eliminative move. However, when properly understood, the biological notion of race proves remarkably resistant to these deconstructive attempts. Moreover, by analyzing statements of some leading contemporary scholars who support social constructivism about race, I hope to demonstrate that their eliminativist views are actually in conflict with what the best contemporary science tells us about human genetic variation. (shrink)

What differentiates scientific research from non-scientific inquiry? Philosophers addressing this question have typically been inspired by the exalted social place and intellectual achievements of science. They have hence tended to point to some epistemic virtue or methodological feature of science that sets it apart. Our discussion on the other hand is motivated by the case of commercial research, which we argue is distinct from (and often epistemically inferior to) academic research. We consider a deflationary view in which science refers to (...) whatever is regarded as epistemically successful, but find that this does not leave room for the important notion of scientific error and fails to capture distinctive social elements of science. This leads us to the view that a demarcation criterion should be a widely upheld social norm without immediate epistemic connotations. Our tentative answer is the communist norm, which calls on scientists to share their work widely for public scrutiny and evaluation. (shrink)

African cultural values connote core principles and ideals that maintains good, right, fair and just in African societies. This culture is developed over a long period of time, preserved and promoted by all members of a given group or society. Corruption as a phenomenon on the other hand has been variously described as a societal vice. Though research shows that some levels of corruption exist in almost every human society, it is over accommodated in some societies or nations and as (...) such it has notoriously continued to destroy such societies/nations. This is particular to a number of African nations, with Nigeria being among (if not) the worse corrupt nation(s) in the continent. It is not difficult to understand that the value placed on corruption in Nigeria is synonymous to the way cultural values are cherished by people in some nations of the world. In view of this, there is a serious and immediate need to educate the Nigerian public about the consequences of developing a culture of corruption in the country. It seems that some Nigerians take corruption to be a normal way of life, thereby, equating the vice to acceptable cultural values. Today, many Nigerians are not interested in developing and/or preserving amiable cultural values for the nation. Rather, more attention is focus on the promotion of corrupt practices that enables the destruction of even the good cultural values of the nation that were left behind by our forefathers. Therefore, this paper seeks to unmask the importance of developing and preserving good African cultural values that will guarantee unity, patriotism, social cohesion and sustainable development in Nigeria. (shrink)

New technologies are the source of uncertainties about the applicability of moral and morally connotated concepts. These uncertainties sometimes call for conceptual engineering, but it is not often recognized when this is the case. We take this to be a missed opportunity, as a recognition that different researchers are working on the same kind of project can help solve methodological questions that one is likely to encounter. In this paper, we present three case studies where philosophers of technology implicitly engage (...) in conceptual engineering (without naming it as such). We subsequently reflect on the case studies to find out how these illustrate conceptual engineering as an appropriate method to deal with pressing concerns in the philosophy of technology. We have two main goals. We first want to contribute to the literature on conceptual engineering by presenting concrete examples of conceptual engineering in the philosophy of technology. This is especially relevant, because the technologies that are designed based on the conceptual work done by philosophers of technology potentially have crucial moral and social implications. Secondly, we want to make explicit what choices are made when doing this conceptual work. Making explicit that some of the implicit assumptions are, in fact, debated in the literature allows for reflection on these questions. Ultimately, our hope is that conscious reflection leads to an improvement of the conceptual work done. (shrink)

In this article I critically discuss English-speaking philosophical literature addressing the question of what it essentially means to speak of 'life’s meaning'. Instead of considering what might in fact confer meaning on life, I make two claims about the more abstract, meta-ethical question of how to understand what by definition is involved in making that sort enquiry. One of my claims is that over the past five years there has been a noticeable trend among philosophers to try to change our (...) understanding of what talk of 'life’s meaning' connotes. For example, whereas most philosophers for a long while had held that such talk is about a kind of value possible in the life of human beings, recently some have argued that certain non-human parts of nature can exhibit meaningfulness, which, furthermore, is not necessarily something valuable. The second claim I advance is that there is strong reason to reject this trend, and instead for philosophers to retain the long-standing approach. (shrink)

Derogatory terms (racist, sexist, ethnic, and homophobic epithets) are bully words with ontological force: they serve to establish and maintain a corrupt social system fuelled by distinctions designed to justify relations of dominance and subordination. No wonder they have occasioned public outcry and legal response. The inferential role analysis developed here helps move us away from thinking of the harms as being located in connotation (representing mere speaker bias) or denotation (holding that the terms fail to refer due to (...) inaccurate descriptive content). The issue is not bad attitudes or referential misfires. An inferential role semantic analysis of derogatory terms shows exactly what is at stake between those who argue that the terms should be eliminated (Absolutists) and those who claim they can be successfully rehabilitated (Reclaimers). The Reclaimer maintains, and the Absolutist denies, that certain contexts can detach the derogatory force from deeply derogatory terms. The article looks at these claims with respect to ‘nigger’ and ‘dyke,’ setting out the inferential role of each term and examining detachability potential. Explaining detachability in terms of linguistic commitments, this article also addresses the issue of whether such terms count as political discourse, and examines the implications of that issue. (shrink)

Since one of the connotations of maturity is development, the meaning of emotional maturity that we come to is to control and cultivate our ability to emote. Since this conception of emotional maturity is subsumed under a conception of the self, by describing the mechanism of the self as a process of development, we can also account for emotional maturity. The implications of this way of looking at emotional maturity, by looking at one’s self, reveal important problems about what the (...) mind is and how the mind functions in order for us to cope with and thrive in life. (shrink)

In the ancient Greek world, the concept of 'miasma,' which becomes permanent and has the potential to grow over time due to evil acts such as murder committed in the city, is a concept frequently referred to in many classical tragedies. To the extent that miasma has a bad connotation due to its nature and is a situation that occurs due to evil actions, it can be considered together with the philosophical problem of evil. In this study, we aim (...) to examine the concept of miasma by focusing on the characters in La Jauría, one of the most prominent films of recent South American cinema, rather than a purely conceptual analysis of the concept. Filmed in the jungles of Colombia and directed by Colombian director Andrés Ramírez Pulido, the 2022 film La Jauría is a psychological drama that focuses on the lives of young people involved in crime. The tragic story of Eliu, the protagonist of the film, which takes place mainly in a prison specially designed to rehabilitate inmates, seems to us to be a very suitable focal point for examining the concepts of miasma, catharsis, and ecstasy, which are frequently referred to in ancient Greek tragedy. To do so, we will first address the various contexts in which miasma has been used historically, considering the flow of events in the movie La Jauría. Then, we will look at the relationship of the concept of miasma with the problem of evil. Finally, we will discuss the possibilities of the concept of purification, which is seen as a kind of antidote to miasma. (shrink)

It is generally accepted that Mill’s classification of names as nonconnotative terms is incompatible with Frege’s thesis that names have senses. However, Milldescribed the senses of nonconnotative terms—without being aware that he was doing so. These are the senses for names that were sought in vain by Frege. When Mill’s and Frege’s doctrines are understood as complementary, they constitute a fully satisfactory theory of names.

The word ‘naturalism’ has a bewildering array of uses in philosophy. Roughly speaking, it connotes pro-scientific attitudes and approaches. This article introduces the subject of naturalism by sketching a history of pro-scientific attitudes and approaches in philosophy, from their origins in the early modern period through to the present day. It then distinguishes a number of distinct families of naturalism: metaphysical, logico-linguistic, epistemological, and methodological. The resulting taxonomy encompasses a plurality of loosely related views rather than a number of variations (...) on a single clear and unified theme. (shrink)

The concept of innovation has entered a turbulent age. On the one hand, it is uncritically understood as ‘technological innovation’ and ‘commercialized innovation.’ On the other hand, ongoing research under the heading responsible research and innovation suggests that current global issues require innovation to go beyond its usual intent of generating commercial value. However, little thought goes into what innovation means conceptually. Although there is a focus on enabling outcomes of innovation processes to become more responsible and desirable, the technological (...) and commercial nature of these processes is rarely questioned. For these reasons, this paper poses the following research question: what concept of innovation is implicitly taken up by the RRI discourse and what implications does this concept have for the societal purpose of RRI? As a first step, we analyze the extent to which the concept of innovation in the RRI literature is uncritically presupposed to be technological. Subsequently, we examine the diverse meanings innovation has had over time and argue that while innovation originally had a political connotation it is only recently restricted to the meaning of technological innovation. We go on to show that even though the concept of technological innovation can contribute to the societal purpose of RRI, this requires certain conditions that are difficult to guarantee. Consequentially, we argue that future research should explore alternative understandings of innovation that better enable the overall feasibility of the emerging frameworks of RRI. (shrink)

The “shrinking” of the globe in the last few centuries has made explicit that the world is a tense unity of many: the many worlds are forced to contend with one another. Nishida Kitarō, the founder of the Kyoto school, once stated that to be is to be implaced. We exist by partaking in “the socio-historical world.” More recently, Jean-luc Nancy has conceived of the world in terms of sense. What is striking in both is that the world emerges out (...) of a nothing, created ex nihilo—the phrase stripped of its theistic connotations. While for Nishida the world is ultimately implaced in the “place of absolute nothing,” Nancy speaks of the nothing that is the basis of the world’s self-creation. I will explore a possible convergence between these and any light it may shed upon our contemporary situation of globalization and its implications for praxis. I look to a sense of the nothing as a chōratic spatiality, an opening that provides space for co-being and serves as the source of creativity. In face of globalization, the project for meaning through mondialisation (in Nancy) and within a multi-cultural world (in Nishida) would imply the appropriation of such an originary spatiality. (shrink)

The sublime is an aspect of experience that has attracted a great deal of scholarship, not only for scholarly reasons but because it connotes aspects of experience not exhausted by what Descartes once called clear distinct perception. That is, the sublime is an experience of the world which involves us in orientating ourselves within it, and this orientation, our human orientation, elevates us in comparison to the non-human world according to traditional accounts of the sublime. The sublime tells us something (...) about our relation to the world rather than anything about the world per se. Nonetheless there is an objective sense of the sublime in that the narratives involved are culturally endorsed rather than invented by an individual. This means that objects can be judged worthy or not of evoking experiences of the sublime. In other words, it is not an idiosyncratic matter. Immanuel Kant’s formulation of this involved explaining how such an experience is possible in terms of his system of the mind. Jane Forsey notes that Kant takes the features of the sublime as given and extrapolates from them certain features of the mind as if any concept of the sublime must implicate the mental architecture of his account (2007). Further to this she argues that in fact the concept of the sublime does implicate a particular system of the mind but neither Kant nor anyone else can successfully formulate it because the concept itself frames certain contradictions. According to Forsey, two consequences follow. First she argues that Kant’s system of the mind does not support the features of the sublime; and secondly that no system could as the very concept is incoherent. If Forsey can show that Kant was mistaken in presenting his account as coherent given his commitments, this would be of interest in its own right. However, her stronger claim is that we cannot separate any concept of the sublime out from Kant’s theoretical underpinnings. That the way the features of the mind are meant to operate in experiences of the sublime are contradictory simply points to the fatal flaws in the whole concept. Her conclusion is that there is no coherent account of the sublime available to us. I will argue that Forsey bases her reasoning on the assumption that a foundational empiricist or direct perception holds; and she interprets Kant’s notions of imagination, understanding and reason as though they are grounded in just such an account of perception. This is revealed in her interpretation of Kant’s phrase “beyond cognition”. Once this foundationalism is replaced with an account of perception more aligned with current research on perception, both philosophical and empirical, then an account of the sublime is available. Further to this however, I argue that what constitutes the narrative of the sublime is historically contingent. Before setting out my arguments, I consider Forsey’s argument in more detail. (shrink)

In a 1967 article, A. C. Graham made the claim that 情 qing should never be translated as "emotions" in rendering early Chinese texts into English. Over time, sophisticated translators and interpreters have taken this advice to heart, and qing has come to be interpreted as "the facts" or "what is genuine in one." In these English terms all sense of interrelationality is gone, leaving us with a wooden, objective stasis. But we also know, again partly through the work of (...) Graham, that interrelationality was of fundamental importance in the early Chinese cosmology and that qing, by later carrying the meaning of "emotions," expressed that interrelationality. I take as my project in this article the recovery of an emotional adumbration in the qing of early Chinese texts, notably the Mencius, from which Graham begins his discussion. With an eye to explicating qing in the Mencius, and with a sensitivity to an implied notion of interrelationality in early texts, I survey early literature from the Shu Jing to late commentaries on the Yi Jing. I find that usages of qing and contexts in which qing is used inevitably illuminate it as key term in the evocation of interrelationality, shading it with emotional overtones. Emotions, of course, are inherently interrelational, and even more so in a Chinese world in which the internal and the external are in constant communication by way of a cosmic interchange of arousal and response among all things. That qing, as a term which later comes to explicitly mean "emotions," should have a centuries old convention of emotional connotation prior to its explicit definition should come as no surprise. The corroboration of this supposition entails a complex investigation and analysis, however, and it is a preliminary step in this investigation and analysis that I undertake here. (shrink)

Recently, I argued that subjects inside of artificial wombs—termed ‘gestatelings’ by Romanis—share the same legal and moral status as newborns (neonates). Gestatelings, on my view, are persons in both a legal and moral sense. Kingma challenges these claims. Specifically, Kingma argues that my previous argument is invalid, as it equivocates on the term ‘newborn’. Kingma concludes that questions about the legal and moral status of gestatelings remain ‘unanswered’. I am grateful to Kingma for raising potential concerns with the view I (...) have presented. In this essay, however, I argue that (most) of Kingma’s objections are unpersuasive. First, my original argument does not equivocate on terms like ‘newborn’ or ‘neonate’. The terms denote human beings that have been born recently; that is what matters to the argument. Charges of equivocation, I suspect, rest on a confusion between the denotation and connotations of ‘newborn’ (or ‘neonate’). Next, I show that, contra Kingma, it is clear that—under current law in the USA and UK—gestatelings would count as legal persons. Moral personhood is more difficult. On that subject, Kingma’s criticisms have merit. In response, however, I show that my original claim—that gestatelings should count as moral persons—remains true on several (common) philosophical accounts of personhood. Regarding those accounts that imply gestatelings are not moral persons, I argue that advocates face a troubling dilemma. I conclude that regardless of which view of moral personhood one adopts, questions about the moral status of gestatelings are not ‘unanswered’. (shrink)

Theorists who advocate worldly (metaphysical or ontological) indeterminacy—the idea that the world itself is indeterminate in one or more respects—should address how we understand the signifying nature and function of language in light of worldly indeterminacy. I first attend to Sengzhao and Jizang, two leading thinkers in Chinese Sanlun Buddhism, to reconstruct a Chinese Madhyamaka notion of ontic indeterminacy. Then, I draw on the thinkers’ views to propose a provisional (non-definitive) understanding of the nature and use of language. Under this (...) understanding, an expression signifying a thing is provisional in that the expression connotes no determinate feature of the thing. (shrink)

Most research on image schema examined the meaning configuration of words connotation. However, previous studies of adjectives are meaningful in cognitive linguistics because they provide insight into how those adjectives are involved with psychological movement. In this sense, from the perspective of cognitive linguistics, one’s conceptualization and cognition are closely associated with their bodily experience and surroundings; adjectives are no exception. The varieties of transformations of image schemas lay the foundation for the conception and perception. Accordingly, this study is (...) an investigation into the perception of adjectives and psychological activities associated with image schema. Data in this study come from adjectives in the novel The Great Gatsby, which were tagged and calculated with the help of software Python and the NLTK package. The results demonstrate that a significant amount of adjectives were used in the novel. Moreover, Nick’s psychological activities changed significantly from the SOURCE to the DESTINATION schematic stage, which is uncovered by his expression of adjectives. Finally, the results further suggest that transformations of image schema as BALANCE, CONTAINER, and PATH work together to motivate one’s linguistic expression of adjectives. The present findings have several implications for research on lexicons and literacy interpretation from cognitive linguistics. (shrink)

In a 1967 article, A. C. Graham made the claim that 情 qing should never be translated as "emotions" in rendering early Chinese texts into English. Over time, sophisticated translators and interpreters have taken this advice to heart, and qing has come to be interpreted as "the facts" or "what is genuine in one." In these English terms all sense of interrelationality is gone, leaving us with a wooden, objective stasis. But we also know, again partly through the work of (...) Graham, that interrelationality was of fundamental importance in the early Chinese cosmology and that qing, by later carrying the meaning of "emotions," expressed that interrelationality. I take as my project in this article the recovery of an emotional adumbration in the qing of early Chinese texts, notably the Mencius, from which Graham begins his discussion. With an eye to explicating qing in the Mencius, and with a sensitivity to an implied notion of interrelationality in early texts, I survey early literature from the Shu Jing to late commentaries on the Yi Jing. I find that usages of qing and contexts in which qing is used inevitably illuminate it as key term in the evocation of interrelationality, shading it with emotional overtones. Emotions, of course, are inherently interrelational, and even more so in a Chinese world in which the internal and the external are in constant communication by way of a cosmic interchange of arousal and response among all things. That qing, as a term which later comes to explicitly mean "emotions," should have a centuries old convention of emotional connotation prior to its explicit definition should come as no surprise. The corroboration of this supposition entails a complex investigation and analysis, however, and it is a preliminary step in this investigation and analysis that I undertake here. (shrink)

In the Republic, Plato argues that the soul has three distinct parts or elements, each an independent source of motivation: reason, spirit, and appetite. In this paper, I argue against a prevalent interpretation of the motivations of the spirited part and offer a new account. Numerous commentators argue that the spirited part motivates the individual to live up to the ideal of being fine and honorable, but they stress that the agent's conception of what is fine and honorable is determined (...) by social norms. I argue that while it is correct to hold that spirit aims to be fine and honorable, it is not the case that the agent’s conception of what it is to be fine and honorable is determined by social norms. Instead, there is a fact of the matter about what it is to be fine and honorable, and it is this fact that shapes the individual’s conception of the fine and honorable. I argue that being fine and honorable involves living up to your rational views about how you should behave, despite appetitive temptations to the contrary. I claim that this condition of the soul is the basis of a variety of interrelated admirable traits, some with moral and others with aesthetic connotations. (shrink)

This paper argues that Frege's notoriously long commitment to Kant's thesis that Euclidean geometry is synthetic _a priori_ is best explained by realizing that Frege uses ‘intuition’ in two senses. Frege sometimes adopts the usage presented in Hermann Helmholtz's sign theory of perception. However, when using ‘intuition’ to denote the source of geometric knowledge, he is appealing to Hermann Cohen's use of Kantian terminology. We will see that Cohen reinterpreted Kantian notions, stripping them of any psychological connotation. Cohen's defense (...) of his modified Kantian thesis on the unique status of the Euclidean axioms presents Frege's own views in a much more favorable light. (shrink)

Such a bewildering and contradictory welter of behaviors and traits are connoted by “honor” and its best equivalents in other languages that analyses of the concept have daunted philosophers, anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, historians, and literary scholars for millennia. Is it an external good given — and revoked just as easily — by others? Or does “honor” name an inner good that’s absolutely in our control: our integrity, our very commitment to right conduct? Is honor a central moral virtue — (...) as when we might say that “all was lost, save our honor”? Or is it a good quality that’s not-quite “moral,” or indeed even an antiquated virtue hostile to true morality? Is the honorable man a heroic figure who protects the weak, or one who can be expected to bully the weak, as in the case of “honor killings”? Is honor aristocratic and inegalitarian, and thus a virtue that enables and ennobles what’s essentially oppression? Or is honor a signal virtue of fair-dealing, fair-fighting, and fair competition, as evidenced in sportsmanship? (shrink)

Donald Trump’s speeches and messages are characterized by terms that are commonly referred to as “thick” or “emotive,” meaning that they are characterized by a tendency to be used to generate emotive reactions. This paper investigates how emotive meaning is related to emotions, and how it is generated or manipulated. Emotive meaning is analyzed as an evaluative conclusion that results from inferences triggered by the use of a term, which can be represented and assessed using argumentation schemes. The evaluative inferences (...) are regarded as part of the connotation of emotive words, which can be modified and stabilized by means of recontextualizations. The manipulative risks underlying the misuse and the redefinition of emotive words are accounted for in terms of presuppositions and implicit modifications of the interlocutors’ commitments. (shrink)

Kant’s enigmatic term, “Gesinnung”, baffles many readers of Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason. Detailed analysis of Kant’s theory of Gesinnung, covering all 169 occurrences of cognate words in Religion, clarifies its role in his theories of both general moral decision-making and specifically religious conversion. Whereas the convention of translating “Gesinnung” as “disposition” reinforces a tendency to interpret key Kantian theories metaphysically, and Pluhar’s translation as “attitude” has psychological connotations, this study demonstrates that Kantian Gesinnung is volitional, referring to (...) a person’s principle-based choice to live a certain way. Interpreted as principled “conviction”, Kantian Gesinnung is a religiously-manifested, moral form of Überzeugung (“convincing”). (shrink)

Metaphors are considered as instruments crucial for persuasion. However, while their emotive, communicative and persuasive effects are the focus of different studies and discussions, the core of their persuasive function, namely their argumentative dimension, is almost neglected. This paper addresses the problem of explaining how metaphors can communicate arguments, and how it is possible to reconstruct and justify them. To this purpose, a distinction is drawn between the arguments that are communicated metaphorically and reconstructed “top down,” namely based on relevance (...) considerations, and the ones that are triggered implicitly by the use of a metaphorical expression. In both cases, metaphorical arguments are reconstructed through different patterns of argument, called argumentation schemes (Walton, Reed & Macagno 2008). However, while the purpose of a metaphorical sequence of discourse (called metaphorical move) can guide and justify the reconstruction of the argument that can sufficiently support the intended conclusion in a persuasive move, a more complex analysis is needed for analyzing the inferences that a metaphorical move can trigger. These inferences are claimed to represent part of the connotation of the metaphorical expression and can be captured through its most frequent collocations, determinable using some tools of the corpus linguistics. (shrink)

[To readers: Please consider visiting the journal's website to read this work.] In spite of referring to the human tendency to "breath together" or share the same spirit, the word "conspire" has developed a negative connotation in contemporary society, specifically as it pertains to theorizing about conspiracies as a result of the human proclivity to recognize patterns recognition and coalesce common themes amongst those with shared perceptions into something resembling a unified narrative. This proclivity has only become more pronounced (...) with the dawn of the Internet age, and as a result, the tendency to assume the actuality of certain conspiracies and insulate ourselves from viable, competing ideas has led to a series of microenvironments not dissimilar from those that allow for the proliferation of cancerous cells in the human body. In this article, I draw out the analogy between cancer and conspiracy theorizing in order to present readers with a clearer picture of the deleterious effects of the contemporary phenomena such as unbridled political polarization and the effect of sociopolitical news coverage presented by low-correlation outlets, otherwise known as "echo chambers.". (shrink)

It may come as a surprise to readers familiar with the life and work of the Arts Master that he discusses the Eucharist at all. As he likes to remind us, theological topics are generally out of his wheelhouse. Even so, in his Questions on the “Metaphysics” of Aristotle (QM) 4.6, Buridan takes the sacrament of the Eucharist as a key data point in his discussion of Aristotle’s Categories. In the Eucharist, the accidents of the bread and wine—their color, texture, (...) and so on—remain intact, but the underlying substance is transubstantiated into the body and blood of Christ. Accordingly, God can preserve accidents independent of their underlying substance. Therefore, for our part we can use accidental terms, like whiteness, without connoting any substances, like communion bread. Moreover, it follows that, contrary to Aristotle, substance and the accidental categories are not the most general genera. Instead, being (ens) is, as Buridan concludes. Here, I trace Buridan’s thought on the metaphysical and semantic matters of substance in light of the Eucharist. The Eucharist is for him not only a theological truth, but a metaphysical and semantic datum as well. I conclude by asking why Buridan did not take any and all questions about the Eucharist to be out of his ken. What does this tell us about his attitude toward theology? This paper also includes, as an appendix, the first ever English translation of the question under discussion (QM 4.6): “Does the term being (ens) signify substances and accidents by one single concept or notion?”. (shrink)

In this chapter I provide resources for assessing the charge that post-secondary students are self-censoring. The argument is advanced in three broad steps. First, I argue that both a duality at the heart of the concept of self-censorship and the term’s negative lay connotation should incline us to limit the charge of self-censorship to a specific subset of its typical extension. I argue that in general we ought to use the neutral term “refrainment from speech,” reserving the more normatively (...) charged “self-censorship” for cases of bad refrainment. In the second step of the argument, I seek to narrow down what counts as bad refrainment by mapping broad categories of possible reasons for and consequences of refrainment from speech. I argue that in general refrainment from speech is only bad if it is for bad (or what I will later term vicious) reasons or has pernicious consequences. When considering pernicious consequences, I argue that we should be concerned in particular about systems that perpetuate the coercive silencing of marginalized voices. I draw on Kristie Dotson’s work to describe two means by which marginalized voices are systemically silenced: testimonial quieting and testimonial smothering. After considering these types of silencing, I circle back to the post-secondary context to assess whether there is cause for concern if, as some reports suggests, US college students are refraining from speech within the educational context. (shrink)

The idea of natural law has a long history. It has had different meanings for different people and continues to occupy intellectual engagements as to the connotations of the expression ‘natural law’ in diverse and different contexts. This requires delving deep into the hoarypast and analyzing the gradual development of the idea of natural law through the ages. Understanding natural law necessitates exploring its relation with positive law, its application, and, notably, the import of the word ‘natural’ in the expression (...) ‘natural law’. Be that as it may, there is no denying the fact that there is an element of exclusivity in natural law that has kept it alive and going across generations. Even some of the jurists who adhered to the principles and tenets of legal positivism have shown an inclination towards the principles of natural law, especially as regards the relation between law and morality. It has survived the tests of time. The present paper seeks to explicate the various dimensions of natural law and explore its growth application. (shrink)

A theory of learning for the future advocates the teaching of a preparedness to respond in a creative way to difference and otherness. This includes an ability to act imaginatively in situations of uncertainties. John Dewey’s pragmatism holds the key to such a learning theory his view of the continuous meetings of individuals and environments as experimental and playful. That pragmatism has not yet been acknowledged as a relevant learning theory for the future may be due to the immediate (...) class='Hi'>connotation and the many interpretations associated with the term ‘experience’, which is at the heart of Dewey’s educational thinking. Dewey defi ned experience in a way that is not well understood within educational research, and in a way that is easily confused with the term ‘experiential learning’. The latter refers to the importance of participants’ ‘experiences’ derived from bodily actions and stored in memory as more or less tacit knowledge. (shrink)

Whilst the distinction between French and Anglo-American feminism was always rather dubious two specific linguistic differences between French and English have nevertheless determined two streams of feminist thought, and complicated the relation between them. Since the 1960s, English-language feminisms, in so far as they are distinctive, have centrally either presupposed or explicitly theorized the category of gender, for which there is no linguistic equivalent in French. At the same time, much (although not all) that came to be categorized as ʻFrenchʼ (...) feminism has been articulated around the category of le féminin, for which there is no ready equivalent in English, although there is an obvious translational choice: ʻthe feminineʼ. Various Anglo-American feminisms have made consideration of what have been seen as feminine attributes and values central to their critical and reconstructive projects, but it is not this (adjectival) sense which is at issue here in the translation of le féminin, a noun. For despite the fact that the French and English words connote differently (in particular, le féminin also covers most of what is meant by the English ʻfemaleʼ), ʻthe feminineʼ, as a direct translation of the different and specific uses of le féminin in various French discourses, has become a common category in English-language feminist discourse, specifically English-language feminist philosophy of a ʻcontinentalʼ disposition, where it is often presumed to be both the proper object of such a philosophy and the proper goal of feminism. But is it? Or what exactly is at stake in making it so? Is ʻthe feminineʼ a necessary or useful category for feminism today? (shrink)

This paper investigates the emotive (or expressive) meaning of words commonly referred to as “loaded” or “emotive,” which include slurs, derogative or pejorative words, and ethical terms. We claim that emotive meaning can be reinterpreted from a pragmatic and argumentative perspective, which can account for distinct aspects of ethical terms, including the possibility of being modified and its cancellability. Emotive meaning is explained as a defeasible and automatic or automatized evaluative and intended inference commonly associated with the use of specific (...) terms, which can be represented and assessed considering its logical structure and its defeasibility conditions. This automatic inference is conceived as part of the connotation of an ethical term, and is not necessarily stable. By means of quasi-definitions, it is possible to modify the emotive meaning while maintaining the descriptive one, automaticizing the inferences drawn from an ethical word. Through examples drawn from the recent US presidential campaign, we show how re-contextualization and emotive contexts can affect emotive meaning. (shrink)

An essay on the philosophy of human nature in Islam, this article examines the views of contemporary Western thinkers to creatively rethink the concept of fiṭra, not only from a theological perspective but also a scientific perspective. Drawing upon Islamic scholarship and previous research on the subject that explore the wide spectrum of connotations couched in the Arabic term fiṭra in comparison with Western perspectives, this study offers a fresh look at, and approach to, the concept of human disposition or (...) primordial nature, giving special attention to the biological, epistemological, and ethical dimensions, while most studies of fiṭra focus mainly on the theological and spiritual sides. It is hoped that this conceptual analysis will serve as a stepping stone towards a more nuanced understanding of fiṭra not only as (i) a natural tendency to act or think in a particular way, but also as (ii) the religious instinct, (iii) the power of the mind to think and understand in a logical way, and (iv) the inner voice or conscience of what is right and wrong in one’s conduct or motives that drives the individual towards right action. (shrink)

This paper discusses possible forms of loss or weakness of the ability to interact with others and the ways in which this arises. In particular, in the context of socio-affective knowledge and related failures, it focuses on certain deficits that primarily involve the body. The article aims to show that the “destiny” of our inner drives and our lives—the specific solutions to which they are forced in their vicissitudes—is less “blind” than it appears, leaving (albeit minimal) margins of escape, also (...) because it has a relational connotation. Starting from Bernhard Waldenfels’s recent work on the relationship between phenomenology and psychoanalysis, in which this question is addressed from a phenomenological-responsive point of view, this article reflects on the problem by establishing a comparison between Waldenfels’s philosophy and Max Scheler’s phenomenology of values. Beyond the differences that their approaches to the problem of relational deficits present, Waldenfels and Scheler can be put in fruitful dialogue with each other, starting from their common interest in Freudian psychoanalysis. Within this framework, it is possible to evaluate, adopting Scheler’s point of view, both a methodological aspect and a psychological presupposition of Freud’s ontogenesis of sympathy and love: associationism. From this perspective, Freud reveals himself in part as an heir to British empiricism. I will argue that, with and beyond Freud, the human being is not reducible to a mere sum of blind sensations or blind drives and that for both at least certain forms of inability to interact with others are derivative—deformations of normal responsivity and aberrations of normal pulsional-(relational) life—rather than originary phenomena. (shrink)

In this article, Deleuze & Guattari (D+G)’s conception of democracy will be approached with regard to art’s envisagement of “becoming-democratic” as a mode of thinking through percepts and affects. For D+G, democracy is, by no means, a desirable political goal or the name of a type of governance appropriate for the world. On the contrary, as long as it is a representation mechanism, democracy has negative connotations since it promotes the dominance of majority. For this reason, the only way of (...) affirming democracy is to cleanse and subtract the governmental layers which fix it as a system of social measurement, and re-associate it with “multiplicity” & “becoming”. In this respect, democracy can only be affirmed if it is paired with the notions of becoming-democratic, becoming-revolutionary and becoming-minor. Nevertheless, it is not the case that mainstream political philosophy or professional politics are the only methods for formulating opinions on democracy. “Politics of art” would provide means of thinking upon becoming democratic since art—being a mode of thinking by itself—may place many issues about which one could talk only theoretically (or which would hardly become a part of daily life) on a living plane, even though that plane would solely exist in the world of the work of art. In brief, on the condition that it is not an apparatus of representation, art may turn into a medium of thinking upon becoming-democratic, in addition to all the other becomings that it is related to. (shrink)

This study aims to grasp the two distinct artworks one is from the literary field: Penal Colony, written by F. Kafka and the other one is from painting: The Large Glass, designed by M. Duchamp. This text tries to unravel the similarities betwe- en these artworks in terms of two main significations around “The Officer” from Penal Colony and “The Bachelors” from The Large Glass. Because of their vital role on the re-production of status-quo, this text asserts that there is (...) a similarity between them in the name of being part of the dispositions of body and desire. First of all, the text focuses on Penal Colony, especially on “The Officer” in or- der to observe his obsession towards the order that ruled by former and the late officer of colony. Deleuze & Guattari conceptualize it as “abstract-machines” and it refers to a contingent state of being which is produced as an obligatory entity. Besides, The Officers’ application via a “labeling machine” on inmates creates a framewok of a dispositif in Foucauldian terminology. Secondly, it is emphasized that The Bachelors from the Large Glass for his context, due to its reference for the concept of desire and a metaphorical connotation for desire as “cocoa”. The Large Glass is also turn around the dispositif in a different way: love. It is stated that criticizing the love to nowhere which belongs to The Bachelors and it can be found that there is an abstract-machine again in back of this practice and it converts The Bachelors’ energeia to make an apparatus possible and operative. (shrink)