bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Extended Knowledge
Authors: Adams Fred
Published: June 2018

The author has maintained that among the things that cognition requires are: non-derived content, scientifically tractable and non-motley processes (Adams and Aizawa 2001; 2008a; 2008b), and the capacity to figure in agent-centered reasons that explain purposive behavior (Adams and Garrison 2003). So what will be discussed here is what someone who accepted these considerations about the mark of the cognitive would require for extended knowledge. Of course, cognition could extend without knowledge. Just as contemporary skeptics might be right (not that the present author thinks they are) and we might lack non-extended knowledge, even if cognition extends into the environment that alone wouldn’t mean that knowledge extends. Yet, if cognition were to extend, what else would be required for extended cognition to yield extended knowledge? Attention will also be given to Gricean thought and processes, procedural thought, mirroring, and we-intentions.
Extended Minds and Prime Mental Conditions
Authors: Drayson Zoe
Published: June 2018

The purpose of this chapter is to explore hitherto unconsidered parallels between two forms of externalism. In epistemology, Williamson argues for the indispensability of externalist propositional attitudes to make his case for knowledge as a mental state; in philosophy of mind, Clark and Chalmers argue for the indispensability of externally realized mental states to make their case for extended cognition. In this chapter, it is proposed that both arguments are attempts to reject the methodological principle of psychological internalism (PI), and that both arguments rely on the same appeal to the explanatory generality of their theories in the process. If one is persuaded of the existence of externalist propositional attitudes by Williamson’s argument then, ceteris paribus, one should also be persuaded of the existence of externally realized mental states by Clark and Chalmers’ argument—and vice versa.
New Humans?
Authors: Carter J. Adam , Clark Andy , Palermos S. Orestis
Published: June 2018

This chapter focuses on extended cognition, a concept that invites the possibility of extended knowledge—i.e., knowledge that results from the close coupling of agents’ biological and technological equipment. It examines what is minimally required for such forms of technologically extended (and distributed) agents to be sufficiently justified and it asks whether existing and future technologies can allow for such forms of epistemic extension. Critical examination of the relevant literature at the intersection of philosophy of mind and epistemology suggests a positive response. Given this possibility, the chapter finally explores some of the ensuing transformations in the ethical obligations and rights of the resulting socio-technical systems and “new humans.”
Eight Other Questions about Explanation
Authors: Potochnik Angela
Published: June 2018

Philosophical accounts of scientific explanation tend to focus on developing a conception of the kind of dependence that is explanatory, e.g., nomic, causal-mechanical, difference-making, etc. Disagreements about other features of explanation are often presented as secondary issues linked to specific accounts of explanatory dependence. As a result, many features of explanatory practices about which philosophers disagree have not received sufficient attention. This chapter articulates several of those features—eight, to be exact—and discusses some of the ideas that have been raised about each. The purpose of this chapter is not to defend any one conception of any of these features, but to distinguish among the relatively distinct features of explanation about which philosophers disagree and, for each, to clarify what is at stake. Most of these disagreements have little to do with the nature of explanatory dependence and, in particular, whether or not explanation is causal in nature.
The Mathematical Route to Causal Understanding
Authors: Strevens Michael
Published: June 2018

In some scientific explanations, mathematical facts seem to be the primary bearers of enlightenment. Is this a case, in science, of “explanation beyond causation”? Might these explanations be causal only in part, or only in an auxiliary way, or not at all? To answer this question, this chapter examines some well-known examples of explanations that seem to operate largely or wholly through mathematical proof. It is concluded that the mathematical and the causal components of these explanations are complementary rather than rivalrous: the function of the mathematics is to help the explanations’ consumers better grasp relevant aspects of the causal structure that does the explaining, and above all, to better grasp how the structure causally makes a difference to the phenomena to be explained. The explanations are revealed, then, to be causal through and through.
The Non-Causal Character of Renormalization Group Explanations
Authors: Morrison Margaret
Published: June 2018

After reviewing some of the recent literature on non-causal and mathematical explanation, this chapter develops an argument as to why renormalization group (RG) methods should be seen as providing non-causal, yet physical, information about certain kinds of systems/phenomena. The argument centres on the structural character of RG explanations and the relationship between RG and probability theory. These features are crucial for the claim that the non-causal status of RG explanations involves something different from simply ignoring or “averaging over” microphysical details—the kind of explanations common to statistical mechanics. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the role of RG in treating dynamical systems and how that role exemplifies the structural aspects of RG explanations which in turn exemplifies the non-causal features.
Two Flavours of Mathematical Explanation
Authors: Colyvan Mark , Cusbert John , McQueen Kelvin
Published: June 2018

A proof of a mathematical theorem tells us that the theorem is true (or should be accepted), but some proofs go further and tell us why the theorem is true (or should be accepted). That is, some, but not all, proofs are explanatory. Call this intra-mathematical explanation and it is to be contrasted with extra-mathematical explanation, where mathematics explains things external to mathematics. This chapter focuses on the intra-mathematical case. The authors consider a couple of examples of explanatory proofs from contemporary mathematics. They determine whether these proofs share some common feature that may account for their explanatoriness. The authors conclude with two plausible, but competing, accounts of mathematical explanation and suggest that there might be more than one kind of explanation at work in mathematics.
Epistemic Teleology
Authors: Wedgwood Ralph
Published: June 2018

Wedgwood focuses his discussion around two evaluative concepts: correctness and rationality. Wedgwood proposes that these two concepts are related in the following way: one belief state is more rational than another if and only if the first has less expected inaccuracy than the former. He argues, however, that this view should not be understood as a form of consequentialism since it is not the total consequences of a belief state that determine its rationality. The view is rather a version of epistemic teleology. Wedgwood deploys this view to illuminate the difference between synchronic and diachronic evaluation of belief states as well as to disarm objections that have been leveled against epistemic consequentialism.
Epistemic Value and the Jamesian Goals
Authors: Horowitz Sophie
Published: June 2018

William James famously tells us that there are two main goals for rational believers: believing truth and avoiding error. Horowitz argues that epistemic consequentialism—in particular its embodiment in epistemic utility theory—seems to be well positioned to explain how epistemic agents might permissibly weight these goals differently. After all, practical versions of consequentialism render it permissible for agents with different goals to act differently in the same situation. Nevertheless, Horowitz argues that epistemic consequentialism doesn’t allow for this kind of permissivism and goes on to argue that this reveals a deep disanalogy between decision theory and the formally similar epistemic utility theory. This raises the question whether epistemic utility theory is a genuinely consequentialist theory at all.
Volunteering in hospice and palliative care in Austria
Authors: Pelttari Leena , Pissarek Anna H.
Published: June 2018

The development of hospice and palliative care in Austria started with dedicated volunteers in the 1980s and is strongly linked to the development of training for professionals. In 2015, volunteers in hospice and pailliative care (HPC) in Austria numbered 3,630 (87 per cent female) spending 257.510 hours in direct patient care taking care of 12.832 patients, 147.578 hours with activities like training, supervision and fundraising; activities as broard members. HPC volunteers are organized in teams, specially trained (national curriculum with 160 hours and 40 hours practice), and as hospice teams form part of the graded hospice and palliative care system in Austria. They care for patients and their families in all settings: the patients’ homes, nursing homes, hospital wards, and palliative care units, as well as inpatient hospices and day hospices. Factors of success are: effective management and training, standards and guidelines, adequate funding, and appreciation and good cooperation between volunteers and paid staff.
Volunteering in hospice and palliative care in The Netherlands
Authors: Goossensen Anne , Somsen Jos
Published: June 2018

This chapter describes the history and organization of palliative care volunteering in The Netherlands, volunteer roles in different settings, legislative and political influences on palliative care volunteering. Today 200 member organizations are part of the umbrella organization VPTZ Nederland. Together, these member organizations run 87 almost-like-home-houses where medical staff are not employed by the hospice, but visit and care for the patient and family when needed, just as in the home situation, in 18 high-care hospices (with medical staff) and nine palliative care units (units in nursing homes that also have significant involvement of volunteers) and 135 volunteer home care teams. In 2015 10,893 volunteers were working in these organizations. In addition special attention is given to the concept of ‘being there’, which is seen as key to the identity, value and quality of hospice and palliative care volunteering.
Volunteering in hospice and palliative care in Germany
Authors: Hesse Michaela , Radbruch Lukas
Published: June 2018

German hospice care developed as a civil society movement in which volunteers were essential from the beginning. Palliative care was, however, led by a few pioneer physicians and started independently from hospices. This separate development is still visible with a clear distinction between palliative care units and inpatient hospices. Over the last two decades these two areas of care have moved more into the regular health care service. As a result volunteer services are increasingly subject to regulations. This also means that there is an increasing amount of competition and economic pressure. Developing trust and high transparency in the local and regional palliative care networks, and open and bilateral collaboration of specialist services with general practitioners (GPs) and other health care providers on the basic palliative care level are prerequisites of integrated palliative care. Ongoing development leads to changes in the patient groups that receive palliative care.
In our own words …
Authors: Scott Ros
Published: June 2018

This chapter explores the experience of volunteers in hospice and palliative care their own words. Frequently we hear about the work of volunteers from paid staff, from research, but not always from the volunteers themselves in their own words. In this chapter we have tried to explore what happens in the unique place that volunteers have within hospice and palliative care services; somewhere between staff, patients, and families. The stories in this chapter have all come directly from volunteers from Italy, Australia, Romania, India, United States of America (USA), and the United Kingdom (UK) in their own words. Translation, where required, has tried to remain true to the original story and all volunteers have agreed the translation to ensure that it has not changed the essence of the story. Volunteers have described their roles, what volunteering means to them, and the impact that it has on their lives.
Introduction
Authors: Cleaver Laura
Published: June 2018

The priests write all the history these days and they’ll do me justice. Henry, they’ll say, was a master bastard.1

1 J. Goldman, The Lion in Winter (New York, 2004), p. 8.

Imagining a family gathering at Christmas in 1183, in his 1966 play ...
Charting History
Authors: Cleaver Laura
Published: June 2018

The final chapter examines histories constructed around diagrams, focusing on genealogies. These works could show the relationships between contempor-aries and their descendants, and allowed for the construction of generational time, rather than histories ordered by year. The makers of these visually appealing diagrams often struggled to reconcile different histories. Particular individuals within genealogies were sometimes selected for emphasis, serving as orientation points for the viewer. Some histories identified Woden as the ancestor of the seven Anglo-Saxon kings of the heptarchy. Others placed emphasis on Alfred as the king who had united England under one rule. Some diagrams associated genealogy within larger conceptions of time, from creation to the Last Judgement. The idea that human lives existed in a world ordered by God raised the possibility that man might be able to predict the future, and the chapter concludes with some of the rare surviving imagery associated with prophecy.
Conclusion
Authors: Cleaver Laura
Published: June 2018

Modern scholars are fond of likening the task of attempting to reconstruct the medieval past to trying to do a jigsaw puzzle with very few pieces. This study has focused on the more colourful pieces of medieval history. Some of the pieces fit together neatly, through the processes of copying that were central to both the development of text and medieval book production. New histories were composed with reference to and often from existing ones, and comparison of surviving volumes sometimes permits us to track the circulation of a work over time. Other pieces of the puzzle are less obviously connected, but can nevertheless be situated within a larger picture of book production and circulation in the Middle Ages. The manuscripts considered here are united both in the themes of their contents and in the complex processes involved in their manufacture, from the production of parchment to the composition of text, and from the planning of pages to the execution of their contents. Although medieval histories could be the work of individuals, who acquired parchment, composed and wrote text, and added any decoration, history books were usually created through the collaboration of authors, scribes, and artists. The decisions made about the investment of resources of time, skills, and materials in these manuscripts seem also to be linked to real or potential patrons, and thus manuscripts were planned with consideration of the experience of the intended owner. The surviving volumes vary significantly in size (both of the folios and the amount of content), and in their appearance. Some manuscripts were made for a local readership, within a monastic community. Others were probably created for historians whose primary interest was in the text, but the most extensively decorated volumes, whether narrative histories, chronicles, or cartularies, can often be linked to a desire to impress powerful patrons. At the same time, new texts were less likely to be copied in manuscripts that required a significant investment of resources, though higher-quality copies might be made once their value was recognized....
Jewish Theology Unbound
Authors: Diamond James A.
Published: June 2018

This book challenges the widespread caricature of Judaism as a religion of law as opposed to theology. Broad swaths of rabbinic literature involve not just law but what could be best described as philosophical theology as well. Judaism has never been a dogmatic religion, insisting on a monolithic theology rooted in a uniform metaphysics that would exclude all others. The book engages in close readings of the Bible, classical rabbinic texts, Jewish philosophers, and mystics from the ancient, to the medieval, to the modern period, which communicate a profound Jewish philosophical theology on human nature, God, and the relationship between the two. It begins with an examination of questioning in the Hebrew Bible, demonstrating that what the Bible encourages is independent philosophical inquiry into how to situate oneself in the world ethically, spiritually, and teleologically. It then explores such themes as the nature of God through the various names by which God is known in the Jewish intellectual tradition, love of others and of God, death, martyrdom, freedom, angels, the philosophical quest, the Holocaust, and the State of Israel, all in light of the Hebrew Bible and the way it is filtered through the rabbinic, philosophical, and mystical traditions. For all intents and purposes the Torah no longer originates in heaven, but flows upstream, so to speak, from the earth, propelled by the interpretive genius of human beings.
Psychic Phenomena and the Existence of God
Authors: Fantl Jeremy
Published: June 2018

This chapter applies the conclusions of the previous chapters to two cases of controversial belief: atheistic belief and the denial of psychic phenomena (psi). In both cases, in line with so-called “phenomenal conservatism,” the felt obviousness—to the denier—of the non-existence of what they’re denying figures large in their knowledge, if they have it. In both cases, the deniers’ knowledge runs up counterarguments—for example, the fine tuning argument or meta-analyses of a number of controlled studies that purport to demonstrate the existence of psychic phenomena. But these arguments need not destroy knowledge, even if the atheist or psi-denier can’t figure out what’s wrong with those arguments. Knowledge can survive precisely because some atheists and psi-deniers lack sufficient methodological expertise, though it’s crucial that there is no consensus of trustworthy experts offering testimony that the counterarguments are sound.
Reality Categories in Periodical Poems
Authors: Renker Elizabeth
Published: June 2018

One of the larger questions hovering over scholarship in American literary realism is how certain orders of experience came to count as “real,” and, crucially, as opposed to what. Yet, ironically, most scholarship on realism has not “counted” poems as part of the evolving discourse of realism. Periodical poems about reality categories are in fact extremely common in print culture after 1866. This chapter traces the larger dialogic scene in which poems articulate an array of emergent realist and idealist positions as antitheses. Individual poems work out (or take confused sides in) these larger debates about reality categories as philosophical concepts, as artistic concepts, and as both pertain to the sphere of “poetry” in particular. The meanings of these poems are social ones, arising in public scenes of conversation, dispute, and debate.
Faith and Humility
Authors: Kvanvig Jonathan L.
Published: June 2018

This work is devoted to articulating the connection between the nature, value, and virtues of faith and humility. The goal is to understand both in a way that does not discriminate between religious andmundane contexts, between sacred and secular. It arises from a conviction that these two character traits are important to a flourishing life, and intimately related to each other in such a way that the presence of one demands the presence of the other. In particular, the book defends the claim that each of these virtues provides a necessary, compensating balance to the potential downside of the other virtue. The result of such an inquiry, if that inquiry is successful, will require a reorienting of discussions surrounding faith, including the interminable and, to my mind, stagnant debates about the relationship between faith and reason.
Dewey, Epistemic Fetishism, and Classical Theism
Authors: Kvanvig Jonathan L.
Published: June 2018

John Dewey’s discussion of faith deserves more attention than it has received in the dominant kind of academic philosophy in Europe, Australia, and North America in recent history. In the present context, the motivation for looking carefully at what he says about faith is that it is a sustained attempt to develop a functional account of faith, though decidedly hostile to religious expressions of such faith. The goal of this chapter is to clarify the useful conception of faith to which he points, and argue that the hostility toward religious faith is unsustainable in light of the arguments for the value of the kind of faith he identifies.
Literalism and Mechanistic Explanation
Authors: Figdor Carrie
Published: June 2018

Chapters 8 and 9 present objections to Literalism inspired by its implications. Chapter 8 presents the homuncular functionalist view of psychological explanation, which holds that in order to naturalize the mind we need to posit “homunculi”, or ever-simpler capacities, to avoid explaining intelligence with intelligence. Otherwise one commits the homuncular fallacy. The Literalist responds that the fallacy is not a fallacy. Many contemporary mechanistic explanations commonly ascribe the same capacities at many levels in the same decomposition, and there is no plausible way to carve out an exception for psychology. It reinterprets the demand for “discharging” the psychological capacities in terms of finding mathematical models to illuminate old concepts rather than inventing new ones. It also argues that decompositional hierarchies of simple and basic capacities and simple and basic objects are not mirror images of each other.
Self-Consciousness and "Split" Brains
Authors: Schechter Elizabeth
Published: June 2018

The largest fiber tract in the human brain is the corpus callosum, which connects the two cerebral hemispheres. A number of surgeries severing this structure were performed on adults in the United States in the second half of the twentieth century. After they are surgically separated from each other in this way, a “split-brain” subject’s hemispheres begin to operate unusually independently of each other in the realms of perception, cognition, and the control of action—almost as if each had a mind of its own. But can a mere hemisphere really see? Speak? Feel? Know what it has done? The split-brain cases raise questions of psychological identity: How many subjects of experience are there within a split-brain subject? How many persons? How many minds? Under experimental conditions, split-brain subjects often act as though they were animated by two distinct conscious beings, evoking the duality intuition. On the other hand, a split-brain subject seems like one of us—not like two of us sharing one body. Split-brain subjects thus also evoke the unity intuition.This book is devoted to reconciling these two apparently opposing intuitions. The key to doing so are facts about the way self-consciousness operates in split-brain subjects. A split-brain subject is composed of two conscious psychological beings that fail to recognize each other’s existence and indeed cannot distinguish themselves from each other. Instead, each must first-personally identify with the split-brain subject as a whole, and in so doing, the two make themselves into one person.
Objection from Sub-Cortical Structures
Authors: Schechter Elizabeth
Published: June 2018

This chapter explains and responds to the major objection to the duality claims, the objection from sub-cortical structures. What gives rise to the duality intuition is that, after split-brain surgery, mental state interaction appears to operate oddly indirectly—when the mental states in question are in opposite hemispheres. Nonetheless, interhemispheric mental interaction is not entirely indirect, that is, not exclusively mediated by sensation/perception and re/action. According to the objection from sub-cortical structures, remaining direct interhemispheric interaction is substantial enough to support the 1-thinker claim over the 2-thinkers claim. I argue instead that remaining direct interhemispheric interaction is not so substantial, and that what remaining direct interhemispheric interaction there is remains consistent with the 2-thinkers claim that the rest of the data support. R and L are thus not discrete but still distinct thinkers.
Gratitude
Authors: Kristjánsson Kristján
Published: June 2018

Chapter 3 offers a reconstruction of gratitude as an Aristotelian virtuous emotion, along the argumentative lines suggested in Chapter 1. The chapter begins with an overview of recent discourses on gratitude in philosophy and psychology. It then proceeds to spell out a formal characterization of gratitude as an Aristotelian virtuous emotion. The fourth section pauses to explore how such a characterization can be squared with Aristotle’s apparently unambiguous remarks about gratitude as a non-component of the virtuous make-up of the megalopsychoi (the paragons of moral virtue). Finally, the chapter concludes by demonstrating the virtuousness of gratitude—what makes it intrinsically valuable as part of eudaimonia—by elucidating its association with the overarching emotional virtue of nemesis (poetic justice).
Being in Touch
Authors: Marshall Colin
Published: June 2018

This chapter argues for the existence of a specific irreplaceable epistemic good: being in touch. Being in touch is more or less the good of perceiving or experiencing things as they are in themselves. The distinctiveness of this good is argued for by considering a real case of human echolocation and by considering three fictional cases. In these cases, differences in being in touch are contrasted with differences in propositional knowledge and imaginative ability. The fictional cases make the intuitive value of being in touch clear, and help detail the conditions for it: for a subject to be in touch with some property of an object, the object must really have that property and the subject must have a phenomenologically given experience of the object that reveals that property to her.
Compassion and Being in Touch
Authors: Marshall Colin
Published: June 2018

This chapter argues that only compassion can provide the epistemic good of putting an agent in touch with a suffering creature’s pain. The argument proceeds by showing that only compassion satisfies the conditions for being in touch, according to which a subject must experience the suffering creature in a way that reveals the property of pain. To show that compassion can be part of phenomenologically basic experience, the views of René Descartes, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Max Scheler are discussed. Neither propositional knowledge nor accurate imagination, it is argued, are sufficient for an agent to be in touch. This chapter also proposes capturing the motivational structure of pain and compassion in imperatival terms (drawing on recent work in the philosophy of mind), and argues that there is no barrier to states with imperatival content providing epistemic, world-matching goods.
Representing and Caring that Pain is Bad
Authors: Marshall Colin
Published: June 2018

This chapter extends Compassionate Moral Realism with an eye towards the issue of judgment internalism, that is, whether moral representation is necessarily connected to motivation. The challenges of giving a uniform account of the cognitive and motivational aspects of moral judgment are illustrated, and the possibility of a non-uniform, pluralist view is considered. After noting Compassionate Moral Realism’s compatibility with judgment pluralism, accounts are offered of both emotionally hot and emotionally cool moral judgments, using Chapter 12’s partial analysis of objective badness. In each case, a necessary connection to moral motivation is identified. For emotionally cool judgments, an agent who is not motivated is epistemically lacking by a standard that she acknowledges in that very judgment. Finally, it is explained how the present view can offer an attractive understanding of moral perception, as understood by Lawrence Blum and others.
Summary and Prospects for Extension
Authors: Marshall Colin
Published: June 2018

This chapter reviews the main claims of the arguments of previous chapters, summarizing the core claims of Compassionate Moral Realism and the reasons why it qualifies as a form of moral realism. Several dimensions along which Compassionate Moral Realism might be expanded are also considered. The expansions concern moral reasons, objective goodness, moral virtue, moral rightness, moral permissibility, and moral vice. One surprising potential result is that compassionate pains might be necessary for moral virtue, but themselves, as pains, be morally bad. The chapter concludes with reflections about the significance of the view and of metaethics generally in light of recent political events.
The Difficulty of Moral Knowledge
Authors: May Joshua
Published: June 2018

While empirical debunking arguments fail to support wide-ranging moral skepticism, there are more modest threats to moral knowledge. First, debunking arguments are more successful if highly selective, targeting specific sets of moral beliefs that experimental research reveals to be distinguished for morally irrelevant reasons (thus flouting consistency reasoning). Second, the science of political disagreement suggests that many ordinary people can’t claim to know what they believe about controversial moral issues. Drawing on moral foundations theory, the best examples come from disagreements between liberals and conservatives within a culture. Controversial moral beliefs at least are disputed by what one should regard as epistemic peers, at least because others are just as likely to be wrong, even if not right, due to cognitive biases that affect proponents of all ideologies, such as motivated reasoning. Still, both of these empirical threats to moral knowledge are limited.
Why Sovereignty Matters Despite Injustice
Authors: Miller Richard W.
Published: June 2018

This chapter argues for greater reluctance to launch humanitarian military interventions, without appealing to any inherent value in sovereignty or autonomous political community. Instead, it appeals to the likely consequences of such intervention—both within the target country and for international relations. Miller considers four types of candidate for intervention: stable tyrannies, unstable tyrannies, popular secessions, and ongoing large-scale killing and displacement. Only in the last of these should we be disposed to support intervention according to Miller, since the likely consequences that plague the other three types are here less challenging. Stable tyrannies are usually maintained because the regime has engineered a wide base of support among elites. External overthrow thus risks unleashing violent conflict between divided groups. In unstable tyrannies internally-driven regime change is preferable. Finally, in popular secession external intervention can stoke Great Power worries about spheres of influence and inspire military build-up.
Closing the R2P Chapter
Authors: Sanyal Sagar
Published: June 2018

Sagar Sanyal implores us to look beyond the analytical just war tradition in our thinking about humanitarian intervention. The standards and assumptions built into this approach are its trappings: they necessarily limit our appreciation of what is at stake, morally and politically. What is more, if we persist in this approach Sanyal fears that philosophers of war and military ethicists will become ‘decreasingly relevant to political reality’. To avoid this fate, Sanyal argues, Marxist concepts and precepts must be taken more seriously in our appraisal of war and conflict. If we start with a Marxist understanding of states and the wars they wage—as rooted in economic competition and driven by imperialist ambitions—we will be in a better position to confront the problems of the real world.
The New Failure of Nerve
Authors: Byers Mark
Published: June 2018

The first chapter asks how the postwar American avant-garde emerged, and under what conditions. It considers a constellation of works from 1945 to 1947 which figured the need to ‘begin again’ both aesthetically and philosophically. The first section suggests that the roots of this movement can be found in critiques of the Enlightenment tradition which emerged in the United States from 1943 and informed a new independent left politics focused on the radical individual. The following sections reveal how these critiques (which included the work of émigrés such as Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer) initiated an American neo-primitivism exemplified by Olson’s early oeuvre as well as those of Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, and John Cage.
From the Barricade to the Bedroom
Authors: Byers Mark
Published: June 2018

Taking up the arguments of the first chapter, the second chapter examines what was seen at the time as a ‘he-man cult’ within the new American modernism. The first section places this ‘cult’ within a contemporary controversy on the early postwar independent left: the identification of sex as a revolutionary force, supplanting an ‘impotent’ labour movement. The following sections read this ‘gonad theory of revolution’ in Olson’s poems and unpublished prose of 1945 and 1946, as well as in the contemporary work of Adolph Gottlieb, Rothko, Pollock, Newman, and Robert Duncan. The final section reads Olson’s understanding of sexual and social potency in the early ‘Maximus’ poems as a symptom of this broader ideological moment.
Thrown Down Glyphs
Authors: Byers Mark
Published: June 2018

The ‘modest’ aesthetic imagined by Olson and his contemporaries, critical of abstract or scientific reason, is seen in the fourth chapter to have found expression in a second major formal development. The chapter begins by asking why pictographic or ideographic writing emerged so strongly in American visual art between 1943 and 1951. Turning to the ‘sign which refuses to signify’ (Ad Reinhardt), American artists—including Olson, Pollock, Gottlieb, Lee Krasner, and the photographer Aaron Siskind—are shown to have found a language which reflected their critique of both scientific reason and those political languages (especially Marxism) which had failed to account for historical contingency. The avant-garde is seen to have valued the glyph, pictogram, or ideograph for its ‘uncertainty’; a major theme in Olson’s work of the period.
Egocentric Predicaments
Authors: Byers Mark
Published: June 2018

The penultimate chapter explores a major conjunction between literary and music aesthetics in the period. The first section shows how Olson and the New York School of music began to address, in 1950, the problem of the artist’s unwanted presence in the work of art. The following sections reveal that Olson and the composers found similar formal solutions to this problem, foregrounding individual sound units with new forms of spatial notation that relied upon ‘composition by field’. Anxieties about the interfering ‘ego’ were rooted, the chapter suggests, in contemporary critiques of the organizing, Enlightenment intellect and reflected the avant-garde’s commitment to uncertainty and immediacy.
Contemporary Rights Theories
Authors: Gilbert Margaret
Published: June 2018

The most influential theories of claims within contemporary rights theory are considered in relation to the demand-right problem. Starting with Hohfeld’s equivalence, contemporary theorists generally aim for an account of claims such that the members of a certain canonical set of claim-ascriptions are true. In pursuit of this aim they tend to focus on directed duties and to assume that these are in part constituted by plain duties. Reviewing the results obtained by adopting this aim and method, this chapter argues that in order to solve the demand-right problem we need to go beyond the resources of Thomson’s constraint theory, Joseph Raz’s “interest” theory, and similar views. The same goes for Hart’s “choice” theory and related positions, and several other approaches more briefly considered.
Problems with Moral Principle Accounts
Authors: Gilbert Margaret
Published: June 2018

In offering accounts of the obligation accrued by a promisor on the basis of his promise some theorists invoke a social convention or practice of promising and some do not. Promise theorists of both types generally assume that the primary obligation of a promisor is a moral requirement derived from a moral principle. Taking Thomas Scanlon’s prominent practice-independent account as its focus, this chapter argues that moral principle approaches cannot account for the inevitability of a promisor’s obligation. Nor can they account for its directedness. They cannot therefore account for a promisee’s demand-right which is equivalent to the directed obligation of his promisor. The demand-right problem for promises, therefore, remains unsolved.
Jesus as Philosopher
Authors: Thorsteinsson Runar M.
Published: June 2018

The main purpose of the book is to examine the possible ways in which the authors of the Synoptic Gospels, Mark, Matthew, and Luke, were inspired by contemporary philosophical traditions about the ideal philosophical sage in their description of their ideal human being, Jesus Christ. Questions that are raised and discussed in the study include the following: How does the author in question speak of Jesus in relation to contemporary philosophy? Do we see Jesus take on a certain ‘philosophical’ role in the Gospels, either by his statements and reasoning or his way of life? In what way are Jesus’ words and actions analogous to that of leading philosophical figures in Graeco-Roman antiquity, according to these texts? Conversely, in what way do his words and actions differ from theirs? While a number of Graeco-Roman sources are presented and discussed in the study, the emphasis is on the question of how these parallel texts help us better to understand the Gospel authors’ perception and presentation of the character of Jesus. While the fields of theology and ethics are often intertwined in these texts, the main focus of the study is aimed at the ethical aspect. It is argued that the Gospel authors drew in some ways on classical virtue ethics. The Gospel authors inherited stories and sayings of Jesus that they wanted to improve upon and recount as truthfully as possible, and they did so in part by making use of philosophical traditions, especially Stoicism and Cynicism, about the ideal sage.
Jesus as Philosopher in the Gospel of Mark
Authors: Thorsteinsson Runar M.
Published: June 2018

The chapter discusses the following aspects of the question of Jesus as philosopher in the Gospel of Mark: ascetic appearance, abandoning one’s family, attitude towards material possessions and outward appearance, Jesus and the philosophers as messengers of God, the wisdom of Jesus, the philosopher’s emotions, and the philosopher’s suffering and death. It is concluded that, in many respects, the figure of Jesus is consistent with contemporary philosophical figures, especially the Stoics, as regards his reported words and deeds. To be sure, there are some minor differences, particularly as regards the feelings of Jesus and the philosopher. In this case, Jesus showed and expressed feelings, like grief and anger, that were not considered characteristic of philosophical figures in general. However, most other features dealt with suggest that Mark may have benefited from contemporary discussions of the philosophical sage.
On nó as an optional expletive in Vietnamese
Authors: Greco Ciro , Phan Trang , Haegeman Liliane
Published: June 2018

This chapter focuses on the use of the pronoun nó as an optional expletive in spoken Vietnamese, a radical pro-drop language. Having provided a detailed description of the distribution and interpretation of this element against the general background of the place of overt expletives in pro-drop languages, we argue that the expletive is inserted not to satisfy purely formal requirements, such as the EPP requirement, but rather to impose a specificity requirement on the eventive content of the clause. The present chapter shows that Vietnamese contributes to a better understanding of the nature of expletives and the conditions of their use cross-linguistically. This chapter also discusses the implications of our findings for the articulation of subject predicate structures and for the well-known distinction between thetic structures and categorical structures.
On the interpretation of gerundival null subjects and the theory of control
Authors: Egerland Verner
Published: June 2018

It is generally known that gerunds can have a null subject (NS) that takes the preceding clause as its antecedent. Given certain restrictions independently argued for in the literature, the NS in question cannot be pro, neither can it be maintained that such gerunds have the status of relative clauses. Therefore, the subject in question must be analysed as PRO, which entails that the theoretical status of such a category must be recognized in a theory of syntax. Regardless of whether the case of Clausal Control is to be understood as Non Obligatory Control or Obligatory Control, the data present a serious problem for Hornstein’s (1999) reductionist approach to Control and subsequent work in the same spirit. If the phenomenon of Clausal Control is an instance of Obligatory Control, an analysis formulated in terms of A-binding is a feasible alternative as discussed here.
Wordsworth's Monastic Inheritance
Authors: Fay Jessica
Published: June 2018

This is the first extended study of Wordsworth’s complex, subtle, and often conflicted engagement with the material and cultural legacies of monasticism. It reveals that a set of topographical, antiquarian, and ecclesiastical sources consulted by Wordsworth between 1806 and 1822 provided extensive details of the routines, structures, landscapes, and architecture of the medieval monastic system. In addition to offering a new way of thinking about religious dimensions of Wordsworth’s work and his views on Roman Catholicism, the book offers original insights into a range of important issues in his poetry and prose, including the historical resonances of the landscape, local attachment and memorialization, gardening and cultivation, Quakerism and silence, solitude and community, pastoral retreat and national identity. Wordsworth’s interest in monastic history helps explain significant stylistic developments in his writing. In this often-neglected phase of his career, Wordsworth undertakes a series of generic experiments in order to craft poems capable of reformulating and refining taste; he adapts popular narrative forms and challenges pastoral conventions, creating difficult, austere poetry that, he hopes, will encourage contemplation and subdue readers’ appetites for exciting narrative action. This book thus argues for the significance and innovative qualities of some of Wordsworth’s most marginalized writings. It grants poems such as The White Doe of Rylstone, The Excursion, and Ecclesiastical Sketches the centrality Wordsworth believed they deserved, and reveals how Wordsworth’s engagement with the monastic history of his local region inflected his radical strategies for the creation of taste.
Circumscription
Authors: Tollefsen Torstein Theodor
Published: June 2018

The concept of circumscription is central to the iconoclast argument against the icons: if the icon is a true image of Christ, it must represent his divine as well as his human nature. If it cannot do that, the image is an idol. The divine nature is uncircumscribed, therefore an image cannot be made of it. This is the challenge Theodore tries to counter. He develops a detailed Christological position in order to show that Christ somehow must appear in this world in a concrete (circumscribed) and visible form. The chapter presents an interpretation of both iconoclast Christology and Theodore’s Christology. Theodore manages to define his Christological position in such a way that he can show how Christ may be a subject of painting. The concepts of the eidos (appearance) and likeness allow Theodore to work out a doctrine of painting that is almost phenomenological, to use a modern term.
Francesca and the Others
Authors: Lombardi Elena
Published: June 2018

This chapter discusses the most famous episode of medieval reading—the moment in which Francesca da Rimini and her lover Paolo simultaneously kiss and fall into perdition while reading the story of Lancelot in Inferno 5, which has long been at the centre of my research. Here I investigate further aspects of this rich episode of reading, such as the connection to the visual (for instance, to illuminations of the scene of the kiss in the Lancelot) and the highly nuanced ways in which Dante has Francesca using literary texts in her speech. Next, I explore the ways in which ‘reading together’ has performative effects in medieval courtly literature, and then I contextualize Francesca’s reading within a genealogy of unconventional women readers: Heloise and Alyson of Bath, Mary and Flamenca, bringing to light the force of their heterodox, bodily, and creative ways of reading ‘as a woman’.
Lewis Among His Peers
Authors: Derrick Stephanie L.
Published: June 2018

Lewis was widely admired by his contemporaries, but the recollections, letters, and diaries of those who knew him also make clear that many British intellectuals found him less than satisfying as a writer and scholar or difficult and abrasive as an individual. The plethora of negative critiques from colleagues and students should be seen in light of his persona and his tendency to look back to the authorities and sensibilities of a past age. His stance as a reactionary outsider and his speaking from within a type of British controversialism cost him a more serious hearing on intellectual matters. Then again, the 1930s–1950s were years in which universities and their faculties were being pressed into a more meritocratic and pluralistic future. Lewis’s reception among his intellectual contemporaries was complex, indivisible from his persona and the politics and culture of his insular Oxbridge milieu.
The Pythagorean
Authors: Otto Jennifer
Published: June 2018

Clement of Alexandria cites Philo by name four times in his surviving works. On two of these occasions, Philo is called “the Pythagorean.” This chapter examines Clement’s usage of the terms Jew, Hebrew, Israel, and his descriptions of Pythagoras and Pythagorean philosophy and then offers an analysis of the four explicit citations of Philo in relation to Clement’s comments about Jewishness and Pythagoreanism. By depicting Philo as expert in Jewish history and as a successor to Pythagoras, Clement presents him and his exegetical methods as embodying the best of Hebrew and Greek wisdom. At the same time he associates Philo “the Pythagorean” with a tradition that falls short of fully comprehending the divine logos made manifest in Jesus.
“Of the Hebrew Race”
Authors: Otto Jennifer
Published: June 2018

Eusebius refers to Philo far more frequently than any previous early Christian writer. In most of these citations, he describes Philo as a Hebrew. The chapter begins with an analysis of the clear distinction Eusebius draws between Hebrews and Jews. By describing Philo as a Hebrew, Eusebius associates him with a philosophical way of life, or bios, practiced before the institution of the Mosaic law and perpetuated by the Essenes, the Therapeutae, and ultimately, Eusebius’s Christian contemporaries. Philo the Hebrew is invoked to support Eusebius’s claim that the Christians are the legitimate heirs to the Hebrew scriptures, scriptures better understood by the Christians than by the Jews. When Eusebius cites Philo as a witness to the suffering of the Jews in the aftermath of Jesus’ crucifixion, however, he does not refer to him as a Hebrew.