7,937 research outputs found
Teaching Peirce to Undergraduates
Fourteen philosophers share their experience teaching Peirce to undergraduates in a
variety of settings and a variety of courses. The latter include introductory philosophy
courses as well as upper-level courses in American philosophy, philosophy of religion,
logic, philosophy of science, medieval philosophy, semiotics, metaphysics, etc., and even an upper-level course devoted entirely to Peirce. The project originates in a session devoted to teaching Peirce held at the 2007 annual meeting of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy. The session, organized by James Campbell and Richard Hart, was co-sponsored by the American Association of Philosophy Teachers
Behaviour-based Knowledge Systems: An Epigenetic Path from Behaviour to Knowledge
In this paper we expose the theoretical background underlying our current research.
This consists in the development of behaviour-based knowledge systems, for closing
the gaps between behaviour-based and knowledge-based systems, and also
between the understandings of the phenomena they model. We expose the
requirements and stages for developing behaviour-based knowledge systems and
discuss their limits. We believe that these are necessary conditions for the
development of higher order cognitive capacities, in artificial and natural cognitive
systems
Engelsâ Intentions in Dialectics of Nature
Reading different or controversial intentions into Marx
and Engelsâ works has been somewhat a common but rather
unquestioned practice in the history of Marxist scholarship. Engelsâ
Dialectics of Nature, a torso for some and a great book for others, is a
case in point. A bold line seems to shape the entire Engels debate and
separate two opposite views in this regard: Engels the contaminator of
Marxâs materialism vs. Engels the self-started genius of dialectical
materialism. What Engels, unlike Marx, has not enjoyed so far is a
critical reflection upon the relationship between different layers of this
text: authorial, textual, editorial and interpretational. Informed by a
historical hermeneutic, inquiry into the elements that structure the
debate on âDialectics of Nature,â and into the different political and
philosophical functions attached to it, makes it possible to relocate the
meaning of âdialecticsâ in a more precise context. Engelsâ dialectics is
less complete than we usually think it is, but he achieved more than
most scholars would like to admit
Mind Matters
The great divide of modern thought is whether mind is real or naught. The conceit that either mind is reducible to matter or that mind is utterly ethereal is rooted in a mind-versus-matter dichotomy that can be characterized as the modern error, a fatally ïŹawed fallacy rooted in the philosophy and culture of nominalism. A Peircean semiotic outlook, applied to an understanding of social life, provides a new and full-bodied understanding of semiosis as the bridge between mind and matter, and human biology and culture. I begin by ïŹrst delineating the false divide and showing Charles Sanders Peirceâs alternative to it, then explore the implications of a semiotic approach to mind as trans-action, then consider the self-transcending nature of the human body-mind. Finally I outline my ecological, biosemiotic account of mind, which reveals that, indeed, mind matters, and in ways that unexpect-edly resemble the forms of animism that characterized the hunting-gathering foragers through whom we anatomically modern humans emerged
Reasoning in a Multicultural Society
Multicultural society as a way of being-with-others needs a certain form of public reasoning. Unfortunately, the current yet dominant form of public reasoning is infiltrated by biases from occidental culture. This mode of reasoning does nothing but uproot participants from their cultural identity for the sake of universal consensus. Multicultural society, however, consists of identities which are embedded in the individuals' cultural tradition. This sociological fact demands a richer form of rationality that does not deny the multiplicity of cultural values and embedded identities. We need a form of public reasoning which emphasizes cultural understanding rather than abstract consensus. We might call it a multicultural, contextualized and other-regarding form of public reason
Carchedi's Dialectics: A Critique
Several years ago Guglielmo Carchedi (2008; 2012) published in S&S two
interesting pieces on Marxâs dialectics and mathematics. His basic aim was to
discover whether Marxâs Mathematical Manuscripts provide a new insight into
Marxâs dialectics. The reading he suggested was addressed to Marx alone, i.e.,
without Hegel and Engels. This, he argued, is the only way to grasp Marxâs
dialectics if one wants to understand Marx in his own terms. Since Marx never
explicated his notion of dialectics, we ought to derive it from Marxâs own work.
To this end, Carchedi first defined âdialectics as a method of social researchâ
(Carchedi, 2008, 416), and then listed three principles of dialectics: 1) âall
phenomena are always both realized and potentialâ; 2) âthey are always both
determinant and determinedâ; 3) they are âalways subject to movement and
changeâ (ibid.). Later he added a fourth principle: 4) âsocial phenomenaâs
movement (change) is tendentialâ (Carchedi, 2012, 547). He emphasized
that these principles are limited to society and not to be confused with nature,
because society, unlike nature, necessarily involves âhuman volition and
consciousnessâ (ibid.). For this reason, âEngelsâ dialectics of nature cannot be
applied to societyâ (ibid.), a claim he also asserted in his book Behind the Crisis
(2011, 37â8)
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Child As Metaphor: Colonialism, Psy-Governance, and Epistemicide
This paper mobilizes transdisciplinary inquiry to explore and deconstruct the often-used comparison of racialized/colonized people, intellectually disabled people and mad people as being like children. To be childlike is a metaphor that is used to denigrate, to classify as irrational and incompetent, to dismiss as not being knowledge holders, to justify governance and action on othersâ behalf, to deem as being animistic, as undeveloped, underdeveloped or wrongly developed, and, hence, to subjugate. We explore the political work done by the metaphorical appeal to childhood, and particularly the centrality of the metaphor of childhood to legitimizing colonialism and white supremacy. The article attends to the ways in which this metaphor contributes to the shaping of the material and discursive realities of racialized and colonized others, as well as those who have been psychiatrized and deemed âintellectually disabledâ. Further, we explore specific metaphors of child-colony, and child-mad-âcripâ. We then detail the developmental logic underlying the historical and continued use of the metaphorics of childhood, and explore how this makes possible an infantilization of colonized peoples and the global South more widely. The material and discursive impact of this metaphor on childrenâs lives, and particularly children who are racialized, colonized, and/or deemed mad or âcripâ, is then considered. We argue that complex adult-child relations, sane-mad relations and Western-majority world relations within global psychiatry, are situated firmly within pejorative notions of what it means to be childlike, and reproduce multi-systemic forms of oppression that, ostensibly in their âbest interestsâ, govern children and all those deemed childlike
What's the matter with realism?
International relations, as an academic discipline, is not known for its strength in the area of theory. It has no immediate equivalent to the rich contrasts of perspective generated in sociology by the legacy of Max Weber, Marx and Durkheimâa lack so felt that Martin Wight once wrote a paper called âWhy is there no International Theory?â His own answer was, in part, that there is nothing further to theorize after the discovery of the repetitive mechanisms of the balance of power. This was a sad conclusion for such an acute and creative mind to reach. But it does illustrate a central feature of IR theory. For the balance of power, it can be argued, is the limit of any Realist theory of international relations. And Wight's conclusion was perhaps more an index of the dominance of a Realist orthodoxy than a relection of the inherent properties of âthe internationalâ
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