Félix Guattari mentioned an ‘ecology of the virtual’. This notion is developed in this article along two dimensions. The first dimension, which is conceptual, relates the mental or subjective ecology of The Three Ecologies to the ‘functors’ of Schizoanalytic Cartographies. The other dimension takes into consideration today’s context in Brazil, especially Amerindian struggles. I focus on how Guattari’s thinking of the virtual, in dialogue with other contemporary authors, opens the way to heterogenetic processes, with their own ecopolitical consequences.

Resumo: Ao cruzar as trajetórias de Bento Prado Jr. e Gilles Deleuze, no tocante a Bergson, revelam-se coincidências inesperadas, entre as quais a dívida comum para com Sartre.: Unexpected coincidences are revealed when considering Bento Prado Jr. and Gilles Deleuze’s readings of Bergson, especially if one considers their common debt to Sartre.

Como nos autistas com quem trabalhou por muitos anos, para Fernand Deligny a imagem se contrapõe à linguagem pois recusa aquilo que esta carrega: sentido, mensagem, finalidade, palavras de ordem. Na sua teorização sobre o estatuto da imagem, Deligny dá a essa recusa uma dimensão ética e política.

When Guattari defines the unconscious in terms of production rather than representation, when he speaks of enunciative agencement and when, in his latest writings, he approaches it from the point of view of « chaosmosis », he radicalizes the relation between the unconscious and its outside, and he provides a new conception based on proliferation, molecularisation and infinitisation.

Que veulent les manifestants d’Occupy Rio? Quelle est cette nouvelle atmosphère de la rue? Les pauvres affirment qu’ils ne sont pas jetables et qu’ils campent là. Il s’ensuit une transformation de la sensibilité sociale, selon des modèles de vie minoritaires et multiples qui s’entrechoquent. Il s’agit d’un nouvel éros au cœur de la ville, de la venue à la politique de toute une génération, qui exprime de nouvelles formes de vie et dont il faut fortifier les ouvertures.

Investiga-se o conceito de força, tal como aparece em Nietzsche e na psicanálise. Objetiva-se esclarecer e potencializar seu uso clínico. A pesquisa se justifica porque se trata de conceber o processo clínico como explicitação da força pulsional, uma vez que a tipologia das forças proposta por Nietzsche e a precisão analítica, de caráter ético e clínico, convergem inteiramente. Uma ética nietzschiana da força ativa (o amor fati) torna-se providencial para se pensar a retomada do conceito de força na psicanálise. Objeções (...) levantadas à noção de força serão oportunas para, inversamente, justificar seu uso: equivalente à noção de real, a de força não se beneficia do deslocamento que a primeira sofre e opera. Que o real possa ser tratado pela negatividade, mas não a força, problematiza o uso das duas noções: a força jamais definir-se-á pelo impossível ou pelo vazio, e sim por atos de resistência ou sublimações. Conclui-se que ao nível dessa potência avaliadora, seletiva, não condicionada pela atualidade, perfilam-se os temas nietzschianos do intempestivo e da transvaloração dos valores. O tempo por vir das forças ativas depende de seu exercício. Esses temas essenciais à filosofia nietzschiana implicam, portanto, a consideração da força e de suas vicissitudes. O mesmo vale para a psicanálise e a noção irrevogável de pulsão. É verdade que, inversamente, a força se esclarece pela transvaloração dos valores que o intempestivo deflagra. A pulsão também só é conhecida mediante seu exercício, ou seja, enquanto ela mesma opera sua decifração pragmática. Ela requer, para tanto, uma perspectiva ética e clínica aliada às suas avaliações imanentes, extramorais. É a razão para que a análise se ocupe do sonho e de sua memória ativa, interpeladora, desde um tempo por vir. (shrink)

In a contemporary landscape of communicative and connective excess, a very novel contemporary exhaustion exacerbated by our relation to the postdigital terrain is ever present. The Brazilian philosopher and schizoanalyst Peter Pál Pelbart pushes the vital question of our nihililstic age to the limits: how can one learn to be left alone, live alone, and perhaps, by way of a Deleuzian "absolute solitude," conjure a vitality for living again and, indeed, finding something truly "worthy of saying"? Through various poetic meanderings, (...) meditations, and building on the works of Blanchot, Musil, Guattari, and Delingy, among others, Pelbart reestablishes the possibility of fighting off the exhaustion of our current state of affairs. For Pelbart, we must chart the cartography of exhaustion as if it were a sort of molecular symptomology. (shrink)

In 1972, the young philosopher Peter Singer published "Famine, Affluence and Morality," which rapidly became one of the most widely discussed essays in applied ethics. Through this article, Singer presents his view that we have the same moral obligations to those far away as we do to those close to us. He argued that choosing not to send life-saving money to starving people on the other side of the earth is the moral equivalent of neglecting to save drowning children because (...) we prefer not to muddy our shoes. If we can help, we must--and any excuse is hypocrisy. Singer's extreme stand on our moral obligations to others became a powerful call to arms and continues to challenge people's attitudes towards extreme poverty. Today, it remains a central touchstone for those who argue we should all help others more than we do. As Bill and Melinda Gates observe in their foreword, in the age of today's global philanthropy, Singer's essay is as relevant now as it ever was. This attractively packaged, concise edition collects the original article, two of Singer's more recent popular writings on our obligations to others around the world, and a new introduction by Singer that discusses his current thinking. (shrink)

A historical investigation of the exclusion of Africa and Asia from modern histories of philosophy.

This reissue of his collection of early essays, Logico-Linguistic Papers, is published with a brand new introduction by Professor Strawson but, apart from minor ...

What is religion? How did it originate? How does it operate? How can it be explained? Introducing Religion: Readings from the Classic Theorists presents the key writings of eleven theorists that explain the phenomenon of religion - its origin, historical growth, and world-wide variations - without relying on the authority of the Bible or the articles of dogma. With the hope of uncovering core principles, these influential theorists sought to understand and to discover what makes peoplefrom a variety of cultures (...) believe and behave as they do when it comes to religion. An ideal companion to Eight Theories of Religion, Second Edition, also by Daniel L. Pals, which shares its organization, Introducing Religion begins with a look at the ideas of Edward Burnett Tylor and James Frazer - two Victorian pioneers in anthropology and the comparative study of religion. It continues with the "reductionist" approaches of Sigmund Freud, Emile Durkheim, and Karl Marx, still very much alive in current debates. Countering these approaches are the writings of philosopher-psychologist William James, theologian Rudolf Otto, sociologist Max Weber, and comparativist Mircea Eliade. Finally, the book ends with the newer methods and ideas arising from the African field studies of ethnographer E. E. Evans-Pritchard and the interpretive anthropology of Clifford Geertz. (shrink)

The presence of Indians fundamentally altered the political, social and economic landscape of sugar producing nations. In most cases, race, which was used as an important signifier of difference by the colonising power, left these states with a colonial legacy of division and derision which they continue to endure and navigate in such diverse locations as the Caribbean, the West Indies, Fiji, Mauritius and parts of Africa. In the quest for recognition, equality and political status that allows the girmitiyas to (...) celebrate their past, embrace their present and imagine a future where they are enmeshed in the fabric of a new Fiji entail understanding why the declaration of girmit day on May 15th is such a powerful symbolic gesture on the part of the new coalition government. (shrink)

The concept of race is traced to the quest for the origins of language and the manner in which that led to the idea that a separate language indicated a separate racial origin. The Orientalist desire to know and dominate the other and to regard him or her as sub-human necessitated the invention of race. The notion of race is further traced through the slave trade and its contemporary usage in ‘race studies’.

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the development of a theory of economic freedom. In this endeavor, we build our framework on the Hayekian notion of freedom because it explicitly embodies the obvious link between freedom and the state: freedom is an absence of state coercion except for that which enforces abstract, general rules known beforehand. We derive two propositions from this Hayekian thesis and elaborate on them, leading to a categorization of government actions from the viewpoint (...) of economic freedom in which the criterion against which coercive governmental actions must be evaluated is the rule of law, meaning a government’s reliance on general, abstract rules. As an implication, our framework allows us to argue for the imperative differentiation between “efficiency” and “economic freedom” as two separate criteria against which government actions can and must be evaluated. We also show that our framework may help explain the process through which economic freedom enhances growth. (shrink)

ObjectiveTo examine subjective and objective socioeconomic status as predictors, cognitive abilities as confounders, and personal control perceptions as mediators of health behaviours.DesignA cross-sectional study including 197 participants aged 30–50 years, recruited from the crowd-working platform, Prolific.Main Outcome MeasureThe Good Health Practices Scale, a 16-item inventory of health behaviours.ResultsSSES was the most important predictor of health behaviours. Among the OSES indicators, education, but not income, predicted health behaviours. Intelligence and memory were negatively correlated with health-promoting behaviours, and the effect of memory (...) was upheld in the multivariate model. Personal control perceptions did not act as mediators.ConclusionSSES predicted health behaviours beyond OSES. The effect of socioeconomic indicators was not confounded by cognitive abilities. Surprisingly, cognitive abilities were negatively associated with health-promoting behaviours. Future research should emphasise SSES as a predictor of health behaviours. Delineating the psychological mechanisms linking SSES with health behaviours would be a valuable contribution toward improved understanding of socioeconomic disparities in health behaviours. (shrink)

The article explores digital literacy practices in children’s everyday lives at Norwegian preschools and some of the ways in which young children appropriate basic digital literacy skills through guided participation in situated activities. Building on an ethnomethodological perspective, the analyses are based on 70 hours of video recordings documenting the activities in which 45 children, aged 5-6, and eight preschool teachers participated. Through the detailed analysis of two categorization activities – identifying geometrical shapes and identifying feelings/thoughts –the use of digital (...) tools in the social organization of the activities are examined. The article finds that children’s digital literacy activities encompass visual, verbal, audio and embodied competencies that are made relevant, and thus accessible for learning, in interaction between the children and between the adults and children in the form of norms and guidelines for what constitutes correct categorizations (geometrical shapes and green and red feelings) in the situated activities, and that are appropriated and actualized by the children in interaction with their peers. The findings also show how the categorization practices in preschools deal with symbols and labels in ways that create and sustain socially organized ways of knowing, seeing and acting upon the world. Digital media are embedded in routines, procedures and socialites that are part of these categorization practices; they are part of how children are instructed to experience, interpret, understand and act in the world. Moreover, the different technologies created different conditions for the children’s participation. It was found that peer interaction was part of the digital literacy activities that involved such mobile technologies as smartphones and tablets, while when using non-mobile technologies, e.g. smartboards, the activities were structured more as ‘classic’ classroom activities, primarily guided by the teacher and the didactic material presented through the smartboard. (shrink)

This study of the "radicalization" of psychiatry analyzes the writings of Laing, Foucault, Szasz, and Goffman, constructs a model for understanding mental illness, and emphasizes collective responsibility for the care of the mentally ill.

For thirty years, Peter Singer's Practical Ethics has been the classic introduction to applied ethics. For this third edition, the author has revised and updated all the chapters and added a new chapter addressing climate change, one of the most important ethical challenges of our generation. Some of the questions discussed in this book concern our daily lives. Is it ethical to buy luxuries when others do not have enough to eat? Should we buy meat from intensively reared animals? Am (...) I doing something wrong if my carbon footprint is above the global average? Other questions confront us as concerned citizens: equality and discrimination on the grounds of race or sex; abortion, the use of embryos for research and euthanasia; political violence and terrorism; and the preservation of our planet's environment. This book's lucid style and provocative arguments make it an ideal text for university courses and for anyone willing to think about how she or he ought to live. (shrink)

The nature of the product to be discovered guides the reasoning to discover it. Biologists and medical researchers often search for mechanisms. The "new mechanistic philosophy of science" provides resources about the nature of biological mechanisms that aid the discovery of mechanisms. Here, we apply these resources to the discovery of mechanisms in medicine. A new diagrammatic representation of a disease mechanism chain indicates both what is known and, most significantly, what is not known at a given time, thereby guiding (...) the researcher and collaborators in discovery. Mechanisms of genetic diseases provide the examples. (shrink)

The relationship of part to whole is one of the most fundamental there is; this is the first and only full-length study of this concept. This book shows that mereology, the formal theory of part and whole, is essential to ontology. Peter Simons surveys and criticizes previous theories, especially the standard extensional view, and proposes a more adequate account which encompasses both temporal and modal considerations in detail. 'Parts could easily be the standard book on mereology for the next twenty (...) or thirty years.' Timothy Williamson, Grazer Philosophische Studien. (shrink)

One of the finest private collections of Indian, Himalayan and Southeast Asian art in America is owned by James and Marilynn Alsdorf. This catalogue provides an opportunity for individuals other than scholars and specialists to view the works of art.

A complete system of classical Aristotelian logic intended for honors high school and college.

Acknowledgments 1. Culture Is Essential 2. Culture Exists 3. Culture Evolves 4. Culture Is an Adaptation 5. Culture Is Maladaptive 6. Culture and Genes Coevolve 7. Nothing about Culture Makes Sense except in the Light of Evolution.

Confirmation bias is one of the most widely discussed epistemically problematic cognitions, challenging reliable belief formation and the correction of inaccurate views. Given its problematic nature, it remains unclear why the bias evolved and is still with us today. To offer an explanation, several philosophers and scientists have argued that the bias is in fact adaptive. I critically discuss three recent proposals of this kind before developing a novel alternative, what I call the ‘reality-matching account’. According to the account, confirmation (...) bias evolved because it helps us influence people and social structures so that they come to match our beliefs about them. This can result in significant developmental and epistemic benefits for us and other people, ensuring that over time we don’t become epistemically disconnected from social reality but can navigate it more easily. While that might not be the only evolved function of confirmation bias, it is an important one that has so far been neglected in the theorizing on the bias. (shrink)

This chapter provides an introduction to higher-order metaphysics as well as to the contributions to this volume. We discuss five topics, corresponding to the five parts of this volume, and summarize the contributions to each part. First, we motivate the usefulness of higher-order quantification in metaphysics using a number of examples, and discuss the question of how such quantifiers should be interpreted. We provide a brief introduction to the most common forms of higher-order logics used in metaphysics, and indicate a (...) number of questions which can be raised in such systems using logical vocabulary alone. Using a further example, we return to applications of higher-order logics in metaphysics. We also mention key developments in the history of higher-order logic as it pertains to metaphysics. Finally, we mention certain arguments which have been raised against the use of higher-order logic, and some ways of responding to them. (shrink)

This paper examines the overwhelming desire of transnational adoptees to establish a connection with their origins in order to both come to terms with the past and develop an understanding of their identity. It considers the ethical ramifications of the commodification of human bodies. It is suggested that the idea of displacement is most helpful in approaching questions of transnational adoption. In this way, we can look at transnational adoption as a 'beginning' - one that disappears into the present moment, (...) becoming the constitutive reality underlying Derrida's concern with displacement - rather than its origin. For, what does the quest for a return to the point of origin entail? Transnational adoptees, when they embark on the journey of reclaiming their past, of coming to terms with their sense of loss, realise that there is no simple comfort in returning - that they are inevitably caught in the two worlds in which they co-exist. It is through this recognition of the traces that are contained in them, through this displacement, that they are able to negotiate identity. (shrink)

This paper outlines a bicontextual account of fictional reports. A fictional report is a report on something that happens in a fiction, and a bicontextual account is an account that relativizes truth to two contexts. The proposal is motivated by two considerations. First, it explains the intuitive truth conditions of fictional reports without postulating hidden fiction operators. Second, it handles the problem of indexicals in fictional reports better than the standard accounts.

Ohne Rücksicht auf disziplinäre Schranken bringt dieses Buch verschiedene nicht-reduktionistische Lerntheorien miteinander ins Gespräch. In einem offenen Diskurs, der die Konzepte zueinander in Beziehung setzt, werden die unterschiedlichen Perspektiven kritisch abgewogen und hinsichtlich ihrer Stärken und Schwächen diskutiert.

Delo se loteva vprašanja aktualnosti pojma subjekta v filozofiji in politiki skozi analizo tistih avtorjev, ki so ga domnevno najbolj radikalno pokopali: pokaže, da vznik radikalno novega in problematika subjekta zavzema osrednje mesto v Deleuzovi filozofiji, kakor tudi v Lyotardovi pozni misli posvečeni praznini, v Foucaultovi obravnavi biopolitike in biooblasti, v delu Negrija in Hardta o Imperiju, ter nazadnje v Badioujevi predelavi temeljnih filozofskih kategorij biti, resnice in subjekta, na osnovi katerih je dandanes znova možna renesansa filozofije. Ta ima po (...) Badiouju štiri razsežnosti, ki se v delu Vznik subjekta nenehno prepletajo: »V osnovi želja filozofije implicira razsežnost upora: ni filozofije brez nezadovoljstva mišljenja v njegovem soočenju s svetom, kakršen je. Pa vendar želja filozofije vključuje tudi logiko: to je, prepričanje v moč argumenta in uma.«. (shrink)

This book examines the philosophical foundations of the realist view of the progress of science as cumulative. It is a view that has recently been faced with a number of powerful attacks in which successive scientific theories are seen, not as extending their scope and honing their explanations, but as incommensurable. There is, it is held, in principle no way of establishing that they are about the same things. From the voluminous literature on the topic, Dr Smith has selected relevantly (...) and incisively and his exposition of the contending arguments is vigourous and clear, without undue technicality. As an explication and defence of realism it will interest all those concerned with this basic question in the philosophy of science and the philosophy of language. (shrink)

U mnogim etnickim konfliktima i gradjanskim ratovima u XX veku kulturne razlike izmedju sukobljenih strana su bile veoma male. Krvavi sukobi Srba, Hrvata i Bosnjaka tokom raspada Jugoslavije su jedan takav slucaj. Ovaj uvid je neke istrazivace vodio zakljucku da nedostatak objektivnih kulturnih markera izmedju grupa moze pogodovati izbijanju nasilja: kada se clanovi dve grupe tesko razlikuju, pribegava se nasilju da bi se stvorile identitetske granice medju njima. Jedna posebna verzija ove teorije poznata je pod imenom "narcizam malih razlika". Taj (...) izraz potice od Sigmunda Frojda koji ga je primenjivao kako u individualnoj psihologiji, tako i u svojoj filozofiji kulture. Ovaj koncept su u velikoj meri ignorisali psihoterapeuti-prakticari, ali su ga tokom poslednjih decenija otkrili novinari i drustveni naucnici i vise primenjivali u objasnjenju kolektivnog nego individualnog nasilja. U ovom radu ispitani su neke od studija i knjiga u kojima se koristi koncept "narcizma malih razlika" da bi se ocenila snaga i slabosti te teorije.. (shrink)

Why do human beings believe in divinities? Why do some seek eternal life, while others seek escape from recurring lives? Why do the beliefs and behaviors we typically call "religious" so deeply affect the human personality and so subtly weave their way through human society? Revised and updated in this second edition, Eight Theories of Religion considers how these fundamental questions have engaged the most important thinkers of the modern era. Accessible, systematic, and succinct, the text examines the classic interpretations (...) of religion advanced by theorists who have left a major imprint on the intellectual culture of the twentieth century. The second edition features a new chapter on Max Weber, a revised introduction, and a revised, expanded conclusion that traces the paths of further inquiry and interpretation traveled by theorists in the most recent decades.Eight Theories of Religion, Second Edition, begins with Edward Burnett Tylor and James Frazer--two Victorian pioneers in anthropology and the comparative study of religion. It then considers the great "reductionist" approaches of Sigmund Freud, Emile Durkheim, and Karl Marx, all of whom have exercised wide influence up to the present day. The discussion goes on to examine the leading challenges to reductionism as articulated by sociologist Max Weber and Romanian-American comparativist Mircea Eliade. Finally, it explores the newer methods and ideas arising from the African field studies of ethnographer E. E. Evans-Pritchard and the interpretive anthropology of Clifford Geertz. Each chapter offers biographical background, theoretical exposition, conceptual analysis, and critical assessment. This common format allows for close comparison and careful evaluation throughout. Ideal for use as a supplementary text in introductory religion courses or as the central text in sociology of religion and courses centered on the explanation and interpretation of religion, Eight Theories of Religion, Second Edition, offers an illuminating treatment of this controversial and fascinating subject. (shrink)