23,337 research outputs found
London eyes: William Dean Howells and the shift to instant photography
Toward the end of the nineteenth century, one of William Dean Howells's many avid readers, finally meeting him in the flesh, expressed surprise that the famed writer was not dead. Although he had not actually departed from the world, it was true that by this time the venerable "Dean"was at a low ebb. While younger authors were taking the novel in directions about which he was, at the least, ambivalent, Howells was aware that his own best work was behind him. Yet, throughout his career, he maintained a desire to test different literary approaches. In England in 1904, Howells tested a conceit that would allow him to keep pace with the literary movements of the day. This consisted of an extended photographic metaphor: an association of himself with the Kodak camera. He used this figuration to move beyond the philosophical foundations of his previous work. Criticism has largely overlooked this endeavor, which Howells buried away in the somewhat obscure travelogue London Films (1905). This essay shows how London Films used its photographic metaphor to question positivistic observational assumptions, the way in which this was a response to William James's Essays in Radical Empiricism (1912), and, finally, why Howells ultimately went back on his attempt to create a Kodak school in fiction
Whatâs wrong with the minimal conception of innateness in cognitive science?
One of the classic debates in cognitive science is between nativism and empiricism about the development of psychological capacities. In principle, the debate is empirical. However, in practice nativist hypotheses have also been challenged for relying on an ill-defined, or even unscientific, notion of innateness as that which is ânot learnedâ. Here this minimal conception of innateness is defended on four fronts. First, it is argued that the minimal conception is crucial to understanding the nativism-empiricism debate, when properly construed; Second, various objections to the minimal conceptionâthat it risks overgeneralization, lacks an account of learning, frustrates genuine explanations of psychological development, and fails to unify different notions of innateness across the sciencesâare rebutted. Third, it is argued that the minimal conception avoids the shortcomings of primitivism, the prominent view that innate capacities are those that are not acquired via a psychological process in development. And fourth, the minimal conception undermines some attempts to identify innateness with a natural kind. So in short, we have little reason to reject, and good reason to accept, the minimal conception of innateness in cognitive science
A Traditional English (Not British) Country Gentleman of the Radical Leftâ: Understanding the Making and Unmaking of Edward Thompson's English Idiom
This essay discusses E. P. Thompson's relationship with an English sense of tradition, exploring in particular his shifting characterisation of an English idiom in the three closely linked, polemical rejoinders he offered to the ideas advanced by major Marxist intellectual figures in the 1960s and 1970s. It draws particular attention to themes that have either been overlooked or relegated to the margins by previous commentaryâspecifically, his rhetorical style and sense of audience. And it charts a notable, yet largely unnoticed, shift in his thinking in this periodâfrom an appeal to an English sense of tradition to an assertion of the merit of historical forms of understanding.This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Contemporary British History on 6th October 2014, available online: http://wwww.tandfonline.com/10.1080/13619462.2014.962915
The Enlightenment, Popper and Einstein
A basic idea of the 18th century French Enlightenment was to learn from scientific progress how to achieve social progress towards an enlightened world. Unfortunately, the philosophes developed this profoundly important idea in a seriously defective form, and it is this defective form that came to be built into the institutional structure of academia in the early 20th century with the creation of departments of social science. We still suffer from it today. This article discusses four versions of the Enlightenment programme, each correcting mistakes of its predecessor, the upshot being that we need to bring about a revolution in the aims and methods of academic inquiry if the basic Enlightenment idea is to be properly implemented
Causal Depth: Aspects of a Scientific Realist Approach to Causal Explanation contra Humean Empiricism
The purpose of this note is to clarify how the idea of "causal depth" can play a role in finding the more "approximately true" explanation through causal comparisons. It is not an exhaustive treatment but rather focuses on a few aspects that may be the most critical in evaluating the explanatory strengths of a theory in the social sciences. It presents a general argument which is anti-Humean on the critical side and scientific realist on the positive side. It also elucidates how explanations in political economy and other social sciences can be judged by the scientific realist criterion of causal depth by an extensive example from research in the political economy of development. In this case, an "intentional" and methodologically individualist neoclassical explanation is contrasted with a "structural" dual-dual approach as rival theories purporting to explain the same set of phenomena.Social Explanation, Causal Depth, Scientific Realism, Political Economy, Neoclassical Economics, Structuralism, Social Science Theories, Economic Models
Review of Quixoteâs Ghost: The Right, the Liberati, and the Future of Social Policy
Book review of David Stoesz, Quixote\u27s Ghost: The Right, the Liberati, and the Future of Social Policy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. $ 35.00 hardcover
What's wrong with science?
Here is an idea that might help save the world. It is that science, properly understood, provides us with the methodological key to the salvation of humanity. First, we need to acknowledge the actual problematic aims of science, which make problematic assumptions about metaphysics, values and use. Then we need to represent these aims in the form of a hierarchy of aims, which become increasingly unproblematic as one goes up the hierarchy, thus creating a framework of relatively unproblematic aims and methods within which much more problematic aims and methods may be improved as scientific knowledge improves. Then, we need to generalize this hierarchical, aims-and-methods-improving methodology so that it becomes fruitfully applicable to any worthwhile endeavour with problematic aims. Finally, we need to apply this methodology to the immensely problematic task of making progress towards as good a world as feasible
Tristram Shandy and the Limits of Copyright Law; Or, is a Blank Page an Idea?
Australian copyright law does not give copyright protection to ideas. However, depending on the analysis used, certain types of creative outputs can be treated as ideas, rather than the protectable expressions that are given the status of a copyright work. Denial of the status of work will affect the economic right of the creator, and they will also be denied moral rights. This paper explores copyright law's adoption of a Lockean conception of ideas through the 18th century literary property debates, but shows that in the 18th century, the concept of ideas had not hardened into the forms used now. Instead, the law accepted and acknowledged that 'books' or 'compositions' (in their conceptual sense as well as their physical sense) and compositions were literary property. Through the agency of Lawrence Sterne's digressive comic masterpiece, Tristram Shandy, a nine-volume novel published at the height of the 18th century literary property debates, the notion of Lockean ideas, textual sparcity and the concept of the creative process is juxtaposed against the oppositional categories of idea and expression now used in copyright law. It is suggested that the adoption of a concept like 'book' or 'composition' to frame textually or visually sparse creative outputs, could provide a legal recognition for creative outputs now refused copyright protection
Realism and Antirealism
Our best social scientific theories try to tell us something about the social world. But is talk of a âsocial worldâ a metaphor that we ought not take too seriously? In particular, do the denizens of the social worldâcultural values like the Protestant work ethic, firms like ExxonMobil, norms like standards of dress and behavior, institutions like the legal system, teams like FC Barcelona, conventions like marriagesâexist? The question is not merely academic. Social scientists use these different social entities to explain social phenomena such as the rise of capitalism, the decline in oil prices, or the effect of unions on the sports labor market. But how could these explanations possibly work if social entities donât exist
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