How Many Thoughts Can Fit in the Form of a Proposition?

I argue here that Frege’s eventual view on the relation between sentences and the thoughts they express is that, ideally, a sentence expresses exactly one thought, and a thought is expressed by exactly one (canonical) sentence. This may clash with some mainstream views of Frege, for it has the consequence of de-emphasizing the philosophical significance of the question of how it is possible for someone to regard one sentence as true yet regard another sentence that expresses the same thought as false. This account of Frege was developed by taking a long-range look at his writings over the course of his life

The Goddess: Myths of the Great Mother

The Goddess is all around us: Her face is reflected in the burgeoning new growth of every ensuing spring; her power is evident in the miracle of conception and childbirth and in the newborn’s cry as it searches for the nurturing breast; we glimpse her in the alluring beauty of youth, in the incredible power of sexual attraction, in the affection of family gatherings, and in the gentle caring of loved ones as they leave the mortal world. The Goddess is with us in the everyday miracles of life, growth, and death which always have surrounded us and always will, and this ubiquity speaks to the enduring presence and changing masks of the universal power people have always recognized in their lives. Such power is the Goddess, at least in part, and through its workings we may occasionally catch a glimpse of the divine.https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/books/1094/thumbnail.jp

Performing Shakespeare in Contemporary Japan: The Yamanote Jijosha’s The Tempest

In considering the Yamanote Jijosha’s The Tempest, this paper explores the significance of performing Shakespeare in contemporary Japan. The company’s The Tempest reveals to contemporary Japanese audiences the ambiguity of Shakespeare’s text by experimenting with the postdramatic and a new acting style. While critically pursuing the meaning and possibility of theatre and performing arts today, this version of The Tempest powerfully presents a critical view of the blindness and dumbness of contemporary Japan, as well as the world represented in the play

Shape-shifting representation

Shape-shifting representation is common in practice but largely shunned in theoretical and empirical analysis. This article resurrects, defines, and explores shape-shifting and closely linked concepts and practices such as shape-retaining. It generates new concepts of representative positioning and patterning in order to aid our understanding, and makes the case for placing this critical phenomenon front and center in the analysis of political representation. It examines crucial empirical and normative implications for our understanding of representation, including the argument that shape-shifting representation is not intrinsically undesirable. Developing the theory of shape-shifting representation can prompt a new level of analytical purchase on the challenge of explaining and evaluating representation's vitality and complexity

The Function of Self-Consciousness in John Barth\u27s Chimera

Much recent American fiction has become increasingly self-conscious, displaying an awareness of itself as fiction, as artifice that diminishes the role of a central human consciousness or self in the fiction. The fictional process is in the foreground of much contemporary fiction where the narrative human presence once was. Yet, both fictional process and human presence serve similar structural functions within the text, which suggests that the creation of a fiction resembles the creation of a human self, real or imaginary. The provisional reality of self-conscious fiction is like the provisional reality of the post-modern self, prone to self-questioning, constituted by process rather than substance, multiple, changeable, perhaps even illusory. John Barth\u27s novel Chimera is a supremely self-conscious fiction. Barth\u27s use of the three central narrators in the three sections of the novel— the Dunyazadiad , the Perseid , and the Bellerophoniad — foregrounds the relationship between diffusion of identity and artistic self-consciousness within the novel. Although an individual, by definition, should not be susceptible to division or separation into parts without losing its identity, the narrators in Chimera, like the novel\u27s sections, are all divisible, incomplete, or inter-changeable. Definitions of identity often include elements such as continuity, functional unity, consciousness, récognitive memory, personality, or awareness. Yet, there is still a question about the relation of a self so constituted to se//-conscious fiction

Shape Shifter

Our perception of the world is not fixed; it is shaped by experience. Through practices like meditation, Buddhist rituals, and even altered states of consciousness, the mind has the capacity to shift how we see, feel, and exist in the present. Mindfulness, for me, has been both a refuge from suffering and a means of survival—an awareness cultivated through personal experiences. Yet, in daily life, we often detach from the present, rushing past what is right in front of us. If design has the power to shape perception, can it also serve as a tool to guide presence? My thesis explores how design can create conditions for mindfulness by drawing from spiritual practices and sensory engagement. Through mundane objects, immersive virtual spaces, and experiential installations, I investigate how multisensory design can offer glimpses of heightened awareness, drawing people into the present moment. This research also incorporates interviews with individuals who engage in mindfulness practices, exploring their lived experiences. Blending traditional contemplative practices with contemporary design methods, this thesis is both an inquiry and a personal journey—an exploration of how design can serve as a refuge, fostering moments of stillness and connection in an ever-rushing world

Shape-Shifter

Tarish Pipkins’s early experiences with the “shape-shifting beast” of racism as he grew up near Pittsburgh, and later his growing awareness of African American history, have influenced his poetry, visual art, and puppetry: a “weapon of mass destruction to fight the beast.” His work with puppets and special-needs children led him to create larger puppet productions such as Just Another Lynching and 5P1N0K10: The Android Who Wants to be Real b boy, which allow him to “[fight] back using puppets as my swords.”https://opencommons.uconn.edu/ballinst_catalogues/1009/thumbnail.jp

“A Kaleidoscope of Color or the Agony of Race? Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father”

Excerpt from Developing Transnational American Studies, edited by Nadja Gernalzick and Heike C. Spickerman