bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Reminiscences and Reflections at Eighty
Authors: Cohan Robert
Published: July 2008

The memoirs which follow, resulted from three extensive interviews (on 22 and 23 May 2004 in Nîmes, France, and on 23 July 2004 in London); the transcripts were then edited and submitted to Mr Cohan for amendment and approval. The text that follows is a full encapsulation of what was said, apart from a lengthy excursus on orientalism in Miss Graham's work and a shorter one on improvisation in dance.

This is a personal account, not a connected history of Mr Cohan's activities: many episodes from a long and varied life in dance were not encompassed in the interviews, notably the dance company Robert Cohan formed after he left the Graham Company for the first time and the work in Broadway musicals that he also undertook at this stage of his performing career. The commentary on the Graham repertory and that of London Contemporary Dance Theatre (LCDT) is also indicative rather than exhaustive. Robert Cohan is aware of major episodes from the Graham years – such as the first Asian Tour – that form no part of this account. Similarly, he does not seek to retrace the ground so amply covered in the history of London Contemporary Dance Theatre.

On the other hand, some of the subjects that did come up, have been discussed before – usually with some differences of emphasis or detail. But it is worth recalling in this regard that memory can exercise a refining and a condensing, as well, sometimes, as a distorting influence. In establishing the ‘truth’ about any matter it is as useful to have several accounts by the same witness as it is to have one account by several witnesses – just as in an epistolary novel by Richardson, an event looked at and described by the same person several times or by a number of different people, can produce a richer version of ‘reality’ than a single ‘definitive’ statement.

Although every attempt has been made to rectify errors of minor detail, the decision has been taken not to provide any scholarly notes to the text. This contribution to the journal is best received as a primary historical document. Those seeking a chronological account of the events mentioned in the text, or further guidance on matters of detail, are referred to the standard works.
From Tragicomedy to Epic: The Court Ballets of Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin
Authors: Canova-Green Marie-Claude
Published: July 2008

It was customary in the seventeenth century to assimilate court ballet with drama, as both art forms were seen to strive for a common aim: the imitation or representation of nature. However, critics were also keen to point out their essential differences, for, unlike tragedy, ballet disregarded the rules of neo-classical aesthetics and its only concern seemed to be to please and to entertain. This was particularly evident in the court ballets written by Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin between 1639 and 1641. Unsurprisingly, they were singled out for special criticism by theorists of the ballet, who highlighted their dramatic shortcomings, and failed to see that they constituted another form of dramatic aesthetics, which was conspicuous precisely because of its emancipation from the strictures of Aristotelian theory. It could be said that the ballets of Desmarets had all the hallmarks of contemporary tragicomedy: irregularity of construction, diversity of action, disregard for the unity of tone, etc., but in adapting the principles of this new aesthetics to the ballet, Desmarets ran the risk of transgressing the boundaries of tragicomedy and even of drama, approaching a genre which was no longer dramatic but narrative, i.e. epic poetry.
The Search for Security in Muslim Northern Nigeria
Authors: Last Murray
Published: July 2008

The article puts forwards the argument that there is a pervasiveanxiety among Muslims over their security, both physical and spiritual, in today's northern Nigeria. It is an anxiety partly millenarian, partly political, that seeks to recreate a stronger sense of the ‘core North’ asdar al-Islam, with notionally ‘closed’ boundaries – just as it was in the pre-colonial Sokoto Caliphate. This has led first to the re-establishment, within twelve of Nigeria's 36 states, of fullshari‘alaw and then to the formation of a sometimes large corps ofhisba(wrongly called ‘vigilantes’) – this despite Nigeria having a constitution that both is secular and reserves to the federal government institutions like police and prisons. The article explores the various dimensions, past and present, of ‘security’ in Kano and ends with the problem of ‘dual citizenship’ where pious Muslims see themselves at the same time both as Nigerians and as members of the wider Islamicumma.
‘Without Women, Nothing Can Succeed’: Yoruba Women in The Oodua People's Congress (OPC), Nigeria
Authors: Nolte Insa
Published: July 2008

This article examines the role of women in the politics of the Oodua People's Congress (OPC), a militant ethno-nationalist movement of the Yoruba people in south-west Nigeria. Women's inclusion in the organizational structure and their typical roles within the OPC, the article suggests, expand the political agency of women but at the same time ensure that their contributions are contained within the OPC's overall politics. Women play important roles within the OPC, primarily by enabling and supporting the vigilante activities of male OPC members. In the provision of this support, women overwhelmingly draw on the knowledge and powers associated with typically female life experiences. As a result, women's interests are represented within the overall agenda of the OPC, but on the basis of complementary rather than egalitarian gender roles.
Gender, Hisba and The Enforcement of Morality in Northern Nigeria
Authors: Adamu Fatima L.
Published: July 2008

Vigilantism is a term often used to describe any form of policing and ordering that is non-state, and under analysis ‘vigilantism’ has often emerged as negative, associated with violence and violation of individual rights. However, a closer examination of the origin, practice, function and structure of some of the groups often referred to as vigilantes in Nigeria has revealed that not all of them fit into our understanding of vigilantes as gangs of youths that mete out violence and jungle justice to their victims. Some of these vigilantes have their roots in the community and are a preferred form of policing in Nigeria. Many such groups exist across the shari‘a states of northern Nigeria, drawing their legitimacy from different and sometimes competing sources: the Yan'banga from the Hausa traditional and communal establishment, the hisba from the religious establishment and the Yan'achaba from the political establishment. What can we say about the operation, structure and function of these various `vigilantes'? How is the politicking and struggle between religio-political and Hausa traditionalist elites shaping and reforming these three forms? What impact does this struggle have on women and the vulnerable? This article has two aims. One is to question the over-generalization associated with vigilantism in Nigeria by analysing one form of vigilantism – hisba – within the context of informal policing in Zamfara and Kano states. The other is to situate the issue of vigilantes within the northern Nigerian political context rather than within a simple moral framework that casts vigilantes as violent criminals.
The Ecology of Fencing
Authors: Sheridan Michael J.
Published: July 2008

In the autumn of 2004, a remarkable gathering of 102 scholars took place at St Antony's College, Oxford: they had come for an interdisciplinary symposium on ‘Trees, rain, and politics in Africa: the dynamics and politics of climatic and environmental change’. Symposium papers were grouped into panels that focused on either particular resources (such as trees and water) or particular aspects of social relationships (such as politics and discourses). This format resulted in a series of dialogues between the natural science and social science paradigms, and this first half of the present issue of Africa takes as its theme just one of those interdisciplinary conversations. Taken together, these authors demonstrate how the hybridization of natural science and social science can benefit understandings of the African past, interpretations of the African present and planning for the African future.1
One Hundred Years of Separation: The Historical Ecology of a South African ‘Coloured Reserve’
Authors: Rohde R. F. , Hoffman M. T.
Published: July 2008

During the twentieth century, the 20,000 hectares commons surrounding the village of Paulshoek as well as the neighbouring privately-owned farms have been significantly influenced by evolving land-use practices driven largely by socio-economic and political change in the broader Namaqualand and South African region. Land-use practices in the communal lands of Namaqualand were based initially on transhumant pastoralism, then on extensive dryland cropping associated with livestock production under restricted mobility, and more recently on a sedentarized labour reserve where agricultural production now forms a minor part of the local economy. For the first half of the twentieth century, farmers on communal and privately-owned farms shared similar transhumant pastoral practices and both moved across unfenced farm boundaries. By the middle of the century, however, fence-lines were established and commercial farming on privately-owned farms was increasingly managed according to rangeland science principles. As the population grew in the communal areas, families gravitated to new ‘service’ villages such as Paulshoek and became increasingly dependent on migrant labour and state welfare. While the majority of former croplands are now fallow, many of them for decades or more, communal livestock populations have remained relatively high, fluctuating with rainfall. The impact of this history of land use can be compared with that of neighbouring privately-owned farms where low stocking rates, coupled with a variety of state subsidies, have had a very different environmental outcome. This article charts the environmental transformations that have occurred in the area of Paulshoek as a direct result of the region's political history and the evolution of the regional economy. We present a variety of evidence drawn from archival sources, oral history, repeat aerial and ground photography, and detailed climate, cropping and livestock records to show that events far beyond the borders of Namaqualand's communal areas have had a profound influence on their environments.
Between Global Interests and Local Needs: Conservation and Land Reform in Namaqualand, South Africa
Authors: Benjaminsen Tor A. , Kepe Thembela , Bråthen Stine
Published: July 2008

This article presents the case of the creation and expansion of Namaqua National Park in Namaqualand, South Africa, to highlight the contradictions between global interests in biodiversity conservation and local livelihoods. Despite the policy shift in the conservation literature from ‘fortress’ to community-based conservation, we argue that in practice conservation still tends to dominate when there is a trade-off between Western-style conservation and support to the livelihoods of marginalized communities. This can again be explained by the hegemony of a conservation discourse that is shared by a network of actors. The article highlights the role played by powerful environmental organizations and wealthy individuals supporting conservation at the expense of land redistribution in Namaqualand. The combination of scientific research and finances provided by this actor-network aided the creation and expansion of the Park. Local people, however, see the expansion of the Park as direct and unfair competition for land that they wish to acquire through the land redistribution programme, as well as an indirect challenge to their local livelihoods. Whatever the merits of their case, it seems clear that communities aspiring to more land, together with advocates of human rights and poverty alleviation, remain on the margins in terms of policy influence, especially when they pursue goals that are perceived by the conservation advocates to be in conflict with those of biodiversity conservation.
Atonality and Tonality: Musical Analogies in Roland Barthes's Lectures at the Collège de France
Authors: O'MEARA LUCY
Published: July 2008

Though explicit references to music are infrequent in Barthes's Collège de France lectures, Barthes's use of music in other work from the 1970s makes it clear that music can act as a fruitful analogy in consideration of the text. This article uses the serialist or atonal analogy, as set up by Barthes in ‘From Work to Text’ and elsewhere, to examine the structuring of Comment vivre ensemble and The Neutral. In viewing these courses as serial or open works we can, it is hoped, arrive at a fuller understanding of their methodology and the role they ascribe to the listener or reader. The atonal analogy, however, is left behind in 1978, as Barthes's major projects (La Préparation du roman and Camera Lucida) employ more conventional, developmental structuring. It is here, then, that the analogy with tonality, again suggested by Barthes, can be usefully employed.
‘The Paideia of the Greeks’: On the Methodology of Roland Barthes's Comment vivre ensemble1.Thanks to Diana Knight, Miriam Leonard, Anneleen Masschelein, Judith Mossman and Luc Van der Stockt for their help and advice during the writing process of this text.
Authors: DE POURCQ MAARTEN
Published: July 2008

When Barthes starts to conceptualize his courses at the Collège de France, he envisions a methodology which he actually considers to be an ‘anti-method’, that is to say, an ‘unscientific’ method which goes against the grain of traditional education. He pursues the method of his seminars at the École Pratique des Hautes Etudes, especially the seminar that ended up with the publication of A Lover's Discourse. In the conclusion to the seminar, Barthes turns to Nietzsche to ground this ‘anti-method’ and to substantiate his claim that literature is a vital dimension of his research and teaching. In the introductory session of Comment vivre ensemble, Barthes labels this ‘anti-method’ – once more with the help of Nietzsche – ‘paideia’. This article aims to scrutinize the scope, the potentialities and the risks of this Greek word to Barthes's theory and ideas on life, criticism and literature.
How to Become What One Is: Roland Barthes's Final Fantasy
Authors: PINT KRIS
Published: July 2008

In his inaugural lecture at the Collège de France, Barthes introduced the fantasy as an important epistemological tool for the reading strategy he would try to develop in his lecture courses. The notion of fantasy oscillates between two important, but apparently irreconcilable intertexts: Lacanian psychoanalysis and Nietzschean philosophy. True to his desire for the Neutral, Barthes refused to choose between them and instead searched for a third term which would outplay the opposition. I argue that Barthes finally found this term in a revaluation of the imaginary and a plea for a return of the repressed ‘ego’ in literary theory, a ‘romanesque’ ego, which ‘writes’ itself in the search for a readable oeuvre.
Suspending Events, Loving the Margin: Solitude According to Barthes
Authors: HILLEN SABINE
Published: July 2008

In our contemporary society one would be tempted to see solitude as the result of individualism. The most striking idea Barthes developed in Comment vivre ensemble was the way in which solitude could be lived as a collective experience. This collective enterprise was not the result of a selfish retreat devoted to personal preoccupations. It fulfilled itself rather as an action dedicated to the other. In front of this singular way of seeing, the question arises how Barthes conceived this culture of distance as a ‘social’ action. Is it correct to present this ideological pathway as a form of courtesy, implying that others do not need to be confronted with the inner life of the individual? Taking these preliminary thoughts as a keystone, my article explores the content Barthes gives to his so-called socialisme des distances and how texts of early mystical societies develop this notion of distance.
Barthes without Althusser: A Different Style of Marxism
Authors: LECERCLE JEAN-JACQUES
Published: July 2008

The first section of the essay assesses the similitude and differences between the Althusserian concept of ideology and Barthes's concept of ‘ideosphere’, as developed in the seminar on the Neutral. The second section rehearses the different stages of Barthes's complex relation to Marxism and suggests that, in spite of the explicit rejection of the doctrine, there remains a Marxist substratum to Barthes's thought. The third section compares the two theories of ideology and shows that Barthes's insistence on the centrality of language allows him to offer a more comprehensive account of ideology: what begins in a form of allusion to Marxism ends up at a certain distance. The last section wonders what contribution Barthes's theory of ideosphere can make to a Marxist philosophy of language: one unexpected aspect of the answer makes use of the concept of style.
The ‘Inkredible’ Roland Barthes
Authors: BADMINGTON NEIL
Published: July 2008

The opening of the fourth session of The Neutral — the course given by Roland Barthes at the Collège de France in 1977–8 — is marked by a dramatic spillage of ink. Rather than take this as an incidental, trivial moment, I read it as one of the many ‘ink blots’ that colour the work of Barthes. Tracing his ‘almost obsessive relation to writing instruments’ and the material act of inscription, this essay relates the ‘ink blots’ to the development of a ‘non-arrogant’, non-expressive, non-idealistic theory of language in The Neutral and other texts by Barthes.
The Politics of Providence in Dryden's Fables Ancient and Modern
Authors: Williams Abigail
Published: July 2008

The politics of Dryden's Fables Ancient and Modern (1700) are at once transparent and obscure. These poems speak the idiom of late seventeenth-century political debate, introducing into, or simply discovering in the fictions of Chaucer, Ovid, Homer, and Boccaccio, the language and concepts of patriotism, abdication, passive obedience, arbitrary power, and political flattery. They seem to invite political reading on account of their subject matter itself – their narratives of tyrants, wronged parents and children, dynastic disputes, and usurpation. Moreover, they have been shown to incorporate numerous topical reflections on contemporary political issues: there are clear allusions to the standing army debates in Sigismonda and Guiscardo and Cymon and Iphigenia; to contemporary controversy over moral reformation and satire on Puritanism in The Cock and the Fox. Yet although the seventeenth century, and the 1690s in particular, saw an outpouring of explicitly political fables, Dryden's translations frustrate the application of sustained political allegory, as numerous critics have found.1 They offer contradictory signals: so, for example, we are invited to identify the conquering Theseus at the beginning of Palamon and Arcite as a type of William III, but by the end of the translation he has become a stoic figure offering a humanist consolation on loss and love.2 The collection as a whole tends to deny us the consistent political allegory that it invites us to make through its vocabulary and topical allusion.3
Pound's ‘The Garden’ as Modernist Imitation: Samain, Lowell, H.D.
Authors: Piette Adam
Published: July 2008

Translation, for Ezra Pound before the First World War, was transference of energy. As was poetry: in an infamously cumbersome simile, Pound argued, in 1911, that words in a language were like steel cones charged with the electricity of cultural energy: Let us imagine that words are like great hollow cones of steel of different dullness and acuteness; I say great because I want them not too easy to move; they must be of different sizes. Let us imagine them charged with a force like electricity, or, rather, radiating a force from their apexes – some radiating, some sucking in. We must have a greater variety of activity than with electricity – not merely positive and negative; but let us say +, −, ×, ÷, +a, −a, ×a, ÷a, etc. Some of these kinds of force neutralise each other, some augment; but the only way any two cones can be got to act without waste is for them to be so placed that their apexes and a line of surface meet exactly …This peculiar energy which fills the cones is the power of tradition, of centuries of race consciousness, of agreement, of association.1
Translation – Theory and Practice: A Historical Reader. Edited by Daniel Weissbort and Astradur Eysteinsson. Pp. 672. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Hb. £65. An Anthology of Chinese Discourse on Translation. Edited by Martha P. Y. Cheung. Vol. 1: From the Earliest Times to the Buddhist Project. Pp. 300. Manchester: St Jerome Publishing, 2006. Hb. £45.
Authors: REYNOLDS MATTHEW
Published: July 2008

Both these anthologies fence in new territory for thoughts about translation to roam. Volume 1 of Martha Cheung's Anthology of Chinese Discourse on Translation – compiled with the help of a large advisory board of Chinese scholars – ranges from Laozi in the sixth century BC to the mid Song dynasty in the twelfth century. Almost all this material is brought into English for the first time. Daniel Weissbort and Astradur Eysteinsson's Historical Reader, again edited with the help of other experts, reaches out to include snippets of ethnography and life-writing alongside the familiar core of St Jerome, Dryden, Pound, Benjamin, et al. Though focused on translation into English, it gives space to German romantic arguments and to French views from the Renaissance and eighteenth century. And, though most concerned with the translation of literature, especially poetry, it also samples the counterpoint tradition of Bible translation, into German as well as English. Best of all, it is truly – as its title announces – an anthology of both Theory and Practice. Many translations (and some of their source texts) are included, in recognition of the obvious but neglected fact that translations themselves often resist or elude the statements criticism and theory make about them; that they are themselves instances of thinking through translation, not just raw material to be thought about. It is a magnificently compendious volume.
Introduction: Perspectives on Testimony
Authors: Lackey Jennifer
Published: July 2008

Almost everything we know depends in some way on testimony. Without the ability to learn from others, it would be virtually impossible for any individual person to know much beyond what has come within the scope of her immediate perceptual environment. The fruits of science, history, geography – all of these would be beyond our grasp, as would much of what we know about ourselves. We do not, after all, perceive that we belong to one family rather than to another – this is something we are told.

Despite the overwhelming importance of testimony, it has been neglected to a large extent in the philosophical tradition. Arguably, this has resulted from a general sense that our other cognitive faculties, such as perception, are more basic and therefore ought to be the primary focus of our investigations. In recent years, however, the idea that testimony is of secondary importance has been forcefully challenged, and new ways of thinking of testimony have been fruitfully explored by a number of philosophers. The present issue of Episteme aims to build on this body of work and to broaden it by incorporating insights from three different groups of people: philosophers who have already done considerable work in social epistemology, philosophers who are for the first time applying their work in other areas of epistemology to testimony, and psychologists who study the development of our ability to learn from others. The papers in this issue, with one exception, were delivered at the fourth annual Episteme conference, held at Rutgers University in June, 2007.
Beyond Words: Communication, Truthfulness, and Understanding
Authors: Rysiew Patrick
Published: July 2008

Testimony is an indispensable source of information. Yet, contrary to ‘literalism’, speakers rarely mean just what they say; and even when they do, that itself is something the hearer needs to realize. So, understanding instances of testimony requires more than merely reading others' messages off of the words they utter. Further, a very familiar and theoretically well-entrenched approach to how we arrive at such understanding serves to emphasize, not merely how deeply committed we are to testimony as a reliable source of information, but that epistemological questions about testimonial belief are – perhaps even must be – posterior to such a commitment. This result does not itself dictate any particular views on the epistemology of testimony. However, not only does the failure of literalism not support the view that the justificatory basis of testimony-based beliefs is importantly inferential; it in fact undermines a key premise in one important argument for the view that one needs independent, positive reasons for accepting a given testimonial report. More generally, the present paper illustrates how discussions of the epistemology of testimony might usefully interact with an examination of the epistemology of understanding.
Testimony and A Priori Knowledge
Authors: Casullo Albert
Published: July 2008

Tyler Burge offers a theory of testimony that allows for the possibility of both testimonial a priori warrant and testimonial a priori knowledge. I uncover a tension in his account of the relationship between the two, and locate its source in the analogy that Burge draws between testimonial warrant and preservative memory. I contend that this analogy should be rejected, and offer a revision of Burge's theory that eliminates the tension. I conclude by assessing the impact of the revised theory on the scope of a priori knowledge.
Reasonable Disagreement and Rational Group Inquiry
Authors: Moffett Marc
Published: July 2008

According to one widely held view, a belief is fully justified only if it holds up against the strongest available counterarguments, and we can be appropriately confident that it does hold up only if there is free and open critical discussion of those beliefs between us and our epistemic peers. In this paper I argue that this common picture of ideal rational group inquiry interacts with epistemic problems concerning reasonable disagreement in a way that makes those problems particularly difficult to resolve. By focusing on this idealized context, we get a clearer picture of the epistemic principles at issue. In the end, I argue that the best way to resolve the resulting epistemic conflicts is by appeal to the underdetermination of theory by evidence together with a principle of epistemic conservatism.
Epistemic Authority, Testimony and the Transmission of Knowledge
Authors: Keren Arnon
Published: July 2008

I present an account of what it is to trust a speaker, and argue that the account can explain the common intuitions which structure the debate about the transmission view of testimony. According to the suggested account, to trust a speaker is to grant her epistemic authority on the asserted proposition, and hence to see her opinion as issuing a second order, preemptive reason for believing the proposition. The account explains the intuitive appeal of the basic principle associated with the transmission view of testimony: the principle according to which, a listener can normally obtain testimonial knowledge that p by believing a speaker who testifies that p only if the speaker knows that p. It also explains a common response to counterexamples to this principle: that these counterexamples do not involve normal cases of testimonial knowledge.
Introduction: Epistemic Approaches to Democracy
Authors: Estlund David
Published: July 2008

The papers published in this special issue can fairly be unified under the heading “Epistemic Democracy,” but there is more variety among them than this might indicate. They exhibit the broad range of ways in which epistemological considerations are figuring in contemporary philosophical discussions of democracy. The authors range from young and promising to established and distinguished. I'd like to introduce a few of the issues that run through the papers, sprinkling references to the actual papers along the way.

From the beginning, democratic forms of government have included discussion and debate. In real life the value of democracy can hardly be separated from the value of free public discussion, prior to voting, about the issues and candidates. This is not to say that either the discussion or the vote have always been inspiring, but whatever value democracy is thought to have, it seems inseparable from public political discussion. One way of accounting for the value of the discussion is to suppose that voters exchange reasons (not always cooperatively) about what to do. Even a quick look at the content of political debate seems to confirm that it is mostly about which decision would be best for the country or city whose laws or leaders are in question.
An Epistemic Defense of Democracy: David Estlund's Democratic Authority
Authors: Anderson Elizabeth
Published: July 2008

In Democratic Authority, David Estlund (2008) presents a major new defense of democracy, called epistemic proceduralism. The theory claims that democracy exercises legitimate authority in virtue of possessing a modest epistemic power: its decisions are the product of procedures that tend to produce just laws at a better than chance rate, and better than any other type of government that is justifiable within the terms of public reason. The balance Estlund strikes between epistemic and non-epistemic justifications of democracy is open to question, both for its neglect of the roles of non-epistemic values of equality and collective autonomy in democracy, and for the ways his use of the public reason standard overshadows empirically based epistemic arguments for democracy. Nevertheless, Estlund presents telling critiques of rival theories and develops a sophisticated alternative that illuminates some central normative features of democracy.
Group Knowledge Versus Group Rationality: Two Approaches to Social Epistemology
Authors: Goldman Alvin I.
Published: July 2008

Social epistemology is a many-splendored subject. Different theorists adopt different approaches and the options are quite diverse, often orthogonal to one another. The approach I favor is to examine social practices in terms of their impact on knowledge acquisition (Goldman 1999). This has at least two virtues: it displays continuity with traditional epistemology, which historically focuses on knowledge, and it intersects with the concerns of practical life, which are pervasively affected by what people know or don't know. In making this choice, I am not blind to the allure of alternative approaches. In this paper I explain and motivate the knowledge-centered approach by contrasting it with a newly emerging alternative that has a definite appeal of its own. According to this alternative, the chief dimension of social epistemological interest would be rationality rather than knowledge.
Money, Method and Medical Research
Authors: Brown James Robert
Published: July 2008

It's sometimes useful to start with a quiz, even if it seems irrelevant to the issues at hand. Suppose you have to organize a tennis tournament with, say, 1025 players. Match winners will go on to the next round while losers bow out until all have been eliminated except, of course, the final champion. Your problem is this: How many matches must you book for this tournament?
Is Trust an Epistemological Notion?
Authors: Origgi Gloria
Published: July 2008

Knowledge is a collective good. Only a small part of our knowledge of the world is generated by our own personal experience. Relying on what others say is one of the most fundamental ways to acquire knowledge, not only about the external world, but also about who we are, for instance about when and where we were born. To use Mary Douglas' words: “Our colonisation of each others' minds is the price we pay for thought”.
Mysticism and Social Epistemology
Authors: Kukla André , Walmsley Joel
Published: July 2008

This article deals with the grounds for accepting or rejecting the insights of mystics. We examine the social-epistemological question of what thenon-mystic should make of the mystic's claim, and what shemightbe able to make of it, given various possible states of the evidence available to her.

For clarity, let's reserve the term “mystic” for one who claims to have had an ineffable insight. As such, there are two parts to the mystic's claim: first, asubstantiveinsight into the way the world works; second, a (perfectly effable)meta-insight that the substantive insight is ineffable. The two parts to the claim are independent: it is possible to accept that the mystic has been struck by an ineffable idea, but refuse to lend credence to the idea itself. Similarly, it is possible to accept the mystic's claim that she has had a veridical insight, whilst denying her claim that it is ineffable, or that she can know that it's ineffable. Thus, we could inquire into the grounds for accepting either part of the mystic's conjunctive claim. In this article, we deal only with the grounds for rejecting or accepting thesubstantiveinsight of a mystic, granting the meta-insight that the insight is ineffable.
Collective Epistemology
Authors: Gilbert Margaret
Published: July 2008

Philosophical epistemology is concerned with knowledge and related phenomena such as belief. In order to have a general label for such phenomena I shall refer to them as cognitive states. Differing accounts of a variety of cognitive states have been produced. For instance, according to one venerable – if debated – account of knowledge, it is justified true belief. Belief has been contrasted with acceptance, though the belief-acceptance contrast has been drawn in a variety of different ways.
Social Prerequisites for the Proper Function of Individual Reason
Authors: Kornblith Hilary
Published: July 2008

Human beings form beliefs by way of a variety of psychological processes. Some of these processes of belief acquisition are innate; others are acquired. A good deal of interesting work has been done in assessing the reliability of these processes. Any such assessment must examine not only features intrinsic to the psychological processes themselves, but also features of the environments in which those processes are exercised; a mechanism which is reliable in one sort of environment may be quite unreliable in others. This is true not only of the physical environment; it is true of the social environment as well. This has important implications for how we should think about the exercise of individual reason, as well as the interpersonal practice of giving and asking for reasons.
What Are the Aims of Education?
Authors: Schmitt Frederick
Published: July 2008

Theorists of education have long debated the ultimate aims of education, often proposing one or another cognitive aim, such as true belief or critical thinking. I will argue first that there are no ultimate aims common to all kinds of education, apart from the vacuous ones of transmitting cognition and improving the student's cognition. In light of this conclusion, the matter to investigate is the ultimate aims of certain broad kinds of education. I will restrict my inquiry here to cognitive ultimate aims, and I will focus on liberal arts education. I will propose that the organizing cognitive ultimate aim of liberal arts education is justified belief rather than true belief.
Containing Multitudes: Reflection, Expertise and Persons as Groups
Authors: Evnine Simon J.
Published: July 2008

From time to time, philosophers like to raise the possibility of the existence of group minds or group persons. In order for something to be interestingly and appropriately described as a group person it must satisfy two conditions. First, it must itself exhibit various characteristics that are distinctive of persons. Unless it did this, it would not be a group person. Secondly, it must be composed of entities that are themselves persons or relevantly person-like. Without this, it would not be a group person. It is the difficulty of seeing how these two conditions can be satisfied together that has made the existence and possible natures of group persons problematic. For the things that paradigmatically satisfy the first condition, namely persons, are not obviously thought of as being composed of person-like entities related in some group-like way. And the things that paradigmatically satisfy the second condition, such as sports teams, committees and string quartets, are not obviously thought of as themselves displaying personal characteristics. Investigators of group persons – though not always thinking of themselves as such – have usually approached the problem by starting with paradigmatic and uncontroversial groups and exploring the extent to which personal characteristics can be attributed to them. Since it would be unreasonable to expect such groups to exhibit, even in some possibly attenuated way, all the characteristics of an ordinary person, attention is usually directed to some subset of these characteristics. Can such a group have a single consciousness? Can it be the subject of intentional mental states like belief? Can it act? Can it be guilty?
Science as a Persuasion Game: An Inferentialist Approach
Authors: Bonilla Jesús Zamora
Published: July 2008

Scientific research is reconstructed as a language game along the lines of Robert Brandom's inferentialism. Researchers are assumed to aim at persuading their colleagues of the validity of some claims. The assertions each scientist is allowed or committed to make depend on her previous claims and on the inferential norms of her research community. A classification of the most relevant types of inferential rules governing such a game is offered, and some ways in which this inferentialist approach can be used for assessing scientific knowledge and practices are explored. Some similarities and differences with a game-theoretic analysis are discussed.
Group Deliberation, Social Cohesion, and Scientific Teamwork: Is There Room for Dissent?
Authors: Tollefsen Deborah Perron
Published: July 2008

Recent discussions of rational deliberation in science present us with two extremes: unbounded optimism and sober pessimism. Helen Longino (1990) sees rational deliberation as the foundation of scientific objectivity. Miriam Solomon (1991) thinks it is overrated. Indeed, she has recently argued (2006) that group deliberation is detrimental to empirical success because it often involves groupthink and the suppression of dissent. But we need not embrace either extreme. To determine the value of rational deliberation we need to look more closely at the practice and practitioners of science. I offer a closer look here by exploring the joint agency of small research teams. Although there are factors that contribute to the suppression of dissent in group contexts, a closer look at the literature on group dynamics suggests that there are ways to mitigate the effects of groupthink. Thus, there is reason to be cautiously optimistic about the value of rational deliberation within certain scientific contexts.
When Experts Disagree
Authors: Coady David
Published: July 2008

Alvin Goldman has criticized the idea that, when evaluating the opinions of experts who disagree, a novice should “go by the numbers”. Although Goldman is right that this is often a bad idea, his argument involves an appeal to a principle, which I call the non-independence principle, which is not in general true. Goldman's formal argument for this principle depends on an illegitimate assumption, and the examples he uses to make it seem intuitively plausible are not convincing. The failure of this principle has significant implications, not only for the issue Goldman is directly addressing, but also for the epistemology of rumors, and for our understanding of the value of epistemic independence. I conclude by using the economics literature on information cascades to highlight an important truth which Goldman's principle gestures toward, and by mounting a qualified defense of the practice of going by the numbers.
The Case against Epistemic Relativism: Replies to Rosen and Neta
Authors: Boghossian Paul
Published: July 2008

Unlike the relativistic theses drawn from physics, normative relativisms involve relativization not to frames of reference but to something like our standards, standards that we have to be able to think of ourselves as endorsing or accepting. Thus, moral facts are to be relativized to moral standards and epistemic facts to epistemic standards. But a moral standard in this sense would appear to be just a general moral proposition and an epistemic standard just a general epistemic proposition. Pulling off either relativism, then, requires not just relativizing the facts in the domain in question to the relevant standards; it requires taking a non-absolutist view of the standards themselves. Otherwise a commitment to absolute truths in the domain in question will show up in one’s attitude towards the standards themselves. But it is very hard to see how to take a genuinely non-absolutist attitude towards the standards themselves. That, in essence, is the difficulty for a relativistic view of a normative domain that I tried to develop in Chapter 6 of Fear of Knowledge. In their commentaries, Gideon Rosen and Ram Neta come up with ingenious ways of attempting to circumvent that difficulty. In my reply, I try to explain why I don’t believe they succeed.
Why (Wittgensteinian) Contextualism Is Not Relativism
Authors: Williams Michael
Published: July 2008

This article distinguishes Wittgensteinian contextualism from epistemic relativism. The latter involves the view that a belief’s status as justified depends on the believer’s epistemic system, as well as the view that no system is superior to another. It emerges from the thought that we must rely, circularly, on our epistemic system to determine whether any belief is justified. Contextualism, by contrast, emerges from the thought that we need not answer a skeptical challenge to a belief unless there is good reason to doubt the belief; so we need not rely on our epistemic system to determine whether a belief is justified. Accordingly contextualism is not committed to the view that a belief’s status depends on the believer’s epistemic system, nor to the view that no system is superior to another. The contextualist is not committed to epistemic relativism.
God as the Ultimate Conspiracy Theory
Authors: Keeley Brian L.
Published: July 2008

Traditional secular conspiracy theories and explanations of worldly events in terms of supernatural agency share interesting epistemic features. This paper explores what can be called “supernatural conspiracy theories”, by considering such supernatural explanations through the lens of recent work on the epistemology of secular conspiracy theories. After considering the similarities and the differences between the two types of theories, the prospects for agnosticism both with respect to secular conspiracy theories and the existence of God are then considered. Arguments regarding secular conspiracy theories suggest ways to defend agnosticism with respect to God from arguments that agnosticism is not a logically stable position and that it ultimately collapses into atheism, as has been argued by N. Russell Hanson and others. I conclude that such attacks on religious agnosticism fail to appreciate the conspiratorial features of God's alleged role in the universe.
Rational Fundamentalism? An Explanatory Model of Fundamentalist Beliefs
Authors: Baurmann Michael
Published: July 2008

The article sketches a theoretical model which explains how it is possible that fundamentalist beliefs can emerge as a result of an individual rational adaptation to the context of special living conditions. The model is based on the insight that most of our knowledge is acquired by trusting the testimony of some kind of authority. If a social group is characterized by a high degree of mistrust towards the outer society or other groups, then the members of this group will rely solely on the authorities of their own group for their acquisition of knowledge. In this way they can adopt a corpus of beliefs which may seem absurd from an external point of view. However, they may be locked in a “fundamentalist equilibrium” in which particularistic trust, common sense plausibility, epistemic seclusion, social isolation and fundamentalist beliefs are mutually reinforcing - and in which individuals who adopt the “fundamentalist truths” of their group do not behave more irrationally than individuals in an open society who accept the “enlightened” worldview oftheirculture.
Conspiracy Theories and the Conventional Wisdom
Authors: Pigden Charles
Published: July 2008

Conspiracy theories should be neither believed nor investigated - that is the conventional wisdom. I argue that it is sometimes permissible both to investigate and to believe. Hence this is a dispute in the ethics of belief. I defend epistemic “oughts” that apply in the first instance to belief-forming strategies that are partly under our control. But the belief-forming strategy of not believing conspiracy theories would be a political disaster and the epistemic equivalent of self-mutilation. I discuss several variations of this strategy, interpreting “conspiracy theory” in different ways but conclude that on all these readings, the conventional wisdom is deeply unwise.
‘Not In Our Name’: Blanchot, Politics, the Neuter
Authors: Hill Leslie
Published: July 2008

Readers of Blanchot have long been aware of the importance of politics in the writer's intellectual itinerary. But though the history of Blanchot's political involvements is now quite well documented (albeit frequently misrepresented to polemical ends), much remains to be understood about Blanchot's conception of the political. Prompted in part by his support for the ‘Not In Our Name’ appeal, which was to be one of Blanchot's last political gestures, this essay fragment, which is part of a longer inquiry, reconstructs the writer's thinking on the question of the subject of politics and the closely related issue of the relationship between law and violence. It examines Blanchot's response to Hölderlin's translation of a famous fragment from Pindar entitled ‘Das Höchste’ (‘The Most High’) and places Blanchot's writing within the wider context of the political thought of Benjamin, Schmitt, Agamben, and Derrida.
The Time of his Life
Authors: Holland Michael
Published: July 2008

Throughout his life, contemporaries of Blanchot either sought to relegate his writing to the past, or else espoused it uncritically in a gesture akin to what Jean-Luc Nancy once called syncope. Blanchot thus divided his epoch in a way that was less a polarization than a struggle for the present in which thought takes place. Consequently, readers today in search of what makes Blanchot continue to be a contemporary find that the time of his writing is shrouded in a curiously unstable quantity of oblivion. This article argues that Blanchot's refusal of biography brings about an inaugural disruption of the temporality of rational thought. From the outset, the ‘I am’ of reflection is accompanied in his writing by an ‘I am dead’ which is narrative in nature. Jacques Derrida's work is taken to exemplify the espousal of Blanchot by his contemporaries. Despite the acuity of Derrida's analyses of the fractured present of rational discourse, however, the article seeks to demonstrate that the priority of narrative in Blanchot's thought gives rise to a temporality for which philosophy can never find the measure.