Title: Symbols, computation, and intentionality: a critique of the computational theory of mind 
Author: Horst, Steven W 1960-
Published: University of California Press,  1996
Subjects: Philosophy | Social and Political Thought | Psychology
Publisher's Description: The computational theory of mind - the belief that the mind can be likened to a computer and that cognitive states possess the generative and compositional properties of natural languages - has proven enormously influential in recent philosophical studies of cognition. In this carefully argued critique, Steven Horst pronounces the theory deficient. He refutes its claims and assumptions, particularly the assertion that symbolic representations need not have conventional meaning. Horst goes on to sketch a new methodology for looking at the philosophy of psychology, one that provides a more fruitful way of comparing computational psychology with rival views emerging from connectionism and neuroscience. Original and comprehensive, his book is certain to provoke controversy and stimulate debate.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: Inference, explanation, and other frustrations: essays in the philosophy of science 
Author: Earman, John
Published: University of California Press,  1992
Subjects: Philosophy | History and Philosophy of Science
Publisher's Description: These provocative essays by leading philosophers of science exemplify and illuminate the contemporary uncertainty and excitement in this changing field. The papers are rich in new perspectives, and their far-reaching criticisms challenge arguments long prevalent in classic philosophical problems of induction, empiricism, and realism. By turns empirical or analytic, historical or programmatic, confessional or argumentative, the authors' arguments both describe and demonstrate the fact that philosophy of science is in a ferment more intense than at any time since the heyday of logical positivism seventy years ago.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: Ethics in an epidemic: AIDS, morality, and culture 
Author: Murphy, Timothy F 1955-
Published: University of California Press,  1994
Subjects: Philosophy | Sociology | Ethics | Medicine | Social Problems
Publisher's Description: AIDS strikes most heavily at those already marginalized by conventional society. With no immediate prospect of vaccination or cure, how can liberty, dignity, and reasoned hope be preserved in the shadow of an epidemic? In this humane and graceful book, philosopher Timothy Murphy offers insight into our attempts - popular and academic, American and non-American, scientific and political - to make moral sense of pain.Murphy addresses the complex moral questions raised by AIDS for health-care workers, politicians, policy makers, and even people with AIDS themselves. He ranges widely, analyzing contrasting visions of the origin and the future of the epidemic, the moral and political functions of obituaries, the uncertain value of celebrity involvement in anti-AIDS education, the functional uses of AIDS in the discourse of presidential campaigns, the exclusionary function of HIV testing for immigrants, the priority given to AIDS on the national health agenda, and the hypnotic publicity given to "innocent" victims.Murphy's discussions of the many social and political confusions about AIDS are unified by his attempt to articulate the moral assumptions framing our interpretations of the epidemic. By understanding those assumptions, we will be in a better position to resist self-serving and invidious moralizing, reckless political response, and social censure of the sick and the dying.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: The fate of place: a philosophical history
Author: Casey, Edward S 1939-
Published: University of California Press,  1997
Subjects: Philosophy | Classical Philosophy | Architecture | Intellectual History | Geography
Publisher's Description: In this imaginative and comprehensive study, Edward Casey, one of the most incisive interpreters of the Continental philosophical tradition, offers a philosophical history of the evolving conceptualizations of place and space in Western thought. Not merely a presentation of the ideas of other philosophers, The Fate of Place is acutely sensitive to silences, absences, and missed opportunities in the complex history of philosophical approaches to space and place. A central theme is the increasing neglect of place in favor of space from the seventh century A.D. onward, amounting to the virtual exclusion of place by the end of the eighteenth century.Casey begins with mythological and religious creation stories and the theories of Plato and Aristotle and then explores the heritage of Neoplatonic, medieval, and Renaissance speculations about space. He presents an impressive history of the birth of modern spatial conceptions in the writings of Newton, Descartes, Leibniz, and Kant and delineates the evolution of twentieth-century phenomenological approaches in the work of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Bachelard, and Heidegger. In the book's final section, Casey explores the postmodern theories of Foucault, Derrida, Tschumi, Deleuze and Guattari, and Irigaray.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: Nietzsche, genealogy, morality: essays on Nietzsche's Genealogy of morals
Author: Schacht, Richard 1941-
Published: University of California Press,  1994
Subjects: Philosophy | German Studies | European History | European Literature
Publisher's Description: Written at the height of the philosopher's intellectual powers, Friedrich Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals has become one of the key texts of recent Western philosophy. Its essayistic style affords a unique opportunity to observe many of Nietzsche's persisting concerns coming together in an illuminating constellation. A profound influence on psychoanalysis, antihistoricism, and poststructuralism and an abiding challenge to ethical theory, Nietzsche's book addresses many of the major philosophical problems and possibilities of modernity.In this unique collection focusing on the Genealogy , twenty-five notable philosophers offer diverse discussions of the book's central themes and concepts. They explore such notions as ressentiment , asceticism, "slave" and "master" moralities, and what Nietzsche calls "genealogy" and its relation to other forms of inquiry in his work. The book presents a cross section of contemporary Nietzsche scholarship and philosophical investigation that is certain to interest philosophers, intellectual and cultural historians, and anyone concerned with one of the master thinkers of the modern age.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: Profane illumination: Walter Benjamin and the Paris of surrealist revolution
Author: Cohen, Margaret
Published: University of California Press,  1993
Subjects: German Studies | Philosophy | Literary Theory and Criticism
Publisher's Description: Margaret Cohen's encounter with Walter Benjamin, one of the twentieth century's most influential cultural and literary critics, has produced a radically new reading of surrealist thought and practice. Cohen analyzes the links between Breton's surrealist fusion of psychoanalysis and Marxism and Benjamin's post-Enlightenment challenge to Marxist theory. She argues that Breton's surrealist Marxism played a formative role in shaping postwar French intellectual life and is of continued relevance to the contemporary intellectual scene.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: Plato's Euthydemus: analysis of what is and is not philosophy 
Author: Chance, Thomas H
Published: University of California Press,  1992
Subjects: Philosophy | Social and Political Thought | Classical Philosophy | Literature
Publisher's Description: With Plato's Euthydemus , Thomas Chance solves a longstanding riddle of Platonic studies. Thought to be an early, immature work, the Euthydemus has come across to scholars as lacking Plato's characteristic greatness. This apparent lack, Chance argues, is not a failure of the text but of scholarly perception. He advances a single thesis: that Plato deliberately presents eristic - contentious debate - as the antithesis to his own philosophical method. Once this thesis is accepted, the "hidden" purpose of the Euthydemus becomes manifest: Plato has used the occasion of his dialogue to combine a brilliantly crafted parody of sophistic antilogy with a subtle yet forceful exhortation designed to persuade all of us to pursue virtue and to love wisdom.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: Learning to be a sage: selections from the Conversations of Master Chu, arranged topically
Author: Zhu, Xi 1130-1200
Published: University of California Press,  1990
Subjects: Philosophy | Asian Studies | China | Intellectual History
Publisher's Description: Students and teachers of Chinese history and philosophy will not want to miss Daniel Gardner's accessible translation of the teachings of Chu Hsi (1130-1200) - a luminary of the Confucian tradition who dominated Chinese intellectual life for centuries. Homing in on a primary concern of our own time, Gardner focuses on Chu Hsi's passionate interest in education and its importance to individual development.For hundreds of years, every literate person in China was familiar with Chu Hsi's teachings. They informed the curricula of private academies and public schools and became the basis of the state's prestigious civil service examinations. Nor was Chu's influence limited to China. In Korea and Japan as well, his teachings defined the terms of scholarly debate and served as the foundation for state ideology.Chu Hsi was convinced that through education anyone could learn to be fully moral and thus travel the road to sagehood. Throughout his life, he struggled with the philosophical questions underlying education: What should people learn? How should they go about learning? What enables them to learn? What are the aims and the effects of learning?Part One of Learning to Be a Sage examines Chu Hsi's views on learning and how he arrived at them. Part Two presents a translation of the chapters devoted to learning in the Conversations of Master Chu .   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: History and tropology: the rise and fall of metaphor 
Author: Ankersmit, F. R
Published: University of California Press,  1994
Subjects: Philosophy | Literary Theory and Criticism | Intellectual History
Publisher's Description: "The chief business of twentieth-century philosophy is to reckon with twentieth-century history," claimed Collingwood. In this remarkable collection of essays, many published for the first time, Frank Ankersmit demonstrates the prescience of that remark and goes a long way toward meeting its challenge. Responding to the work of Hayden White, Arthur Danto, and Hans-Georg Gadamer, he examines such issues as the difference between historical representation and artistic expression, the status of metaphor in historical description, and the relation of postmodernism to historicism. Ankersmit's fluent grasp of European thought and his ability to incorporate concepts from literary theory, art history, the philosophy of science, and political thought into his analyses assure that this collection will interest readers throughout the humanities.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: Descartes's imagination: proportion, images, and the activity of thinking 
Author: Sepper, Dennis L
Published: University of California Press,  1996
Subjects: Philosophy | History and Philosophy of Science
Publisher's Description: Renè Descartes is commonly portrayed as a strict rationalist, a philosopher who theorized a radical, unresolvable split between mind and body. In this long-overdue examination of the role of imagination in Descartes's thought, Dennis Sepper reveals a Descartes quite different from the usual dualistic portrayals and offers a critical reconception of the genesis and nature of the philosopher's thought.In a vigorous analysis of the less-known early works, Sepper finds that initially Descartes assigned the imagination a central role in the mind's activity. Although Descartes eventually lost confidence in the philosophy of imagination, an early understanding of its central role in cognition came to shape the most fundamental notions of his mature philosophy. Sepper's radical reassessment of Descartes ultimately raises new questions about the development of modern philosophy.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: The flux of history and the flux of science 
Author: Margolis, Joseph 1924-
Published: University of California Press,  1993
Subjects: Philosophy | History and Philosophy of Science
Publisher's Description: Does thinking have a history? If there are no necessarily changeless structures to be found in things and in our inquiry into them, then what knowledge of the world and ourselves is possible? In this boldly original and elegantly written study, Joseph Margolis argues for a radically historicized view of history that treats it as both a real process and a narrative account, each a product of continual change. Developing his argument through discussions of such influential philosophers of history and the natural sciences as Vico, Danto, Collingwood, Habermas, Hempel, Popper, Putnam, and Gadamer, he provides a coherent theory of flux and invariance that resolves several deep puzzles regarding human nature and understanding.While maintaining a thorough command of Anglo-American philosophy, Margolis challenges many of its most cherished assumptions and demonstrates the sense in which history and interpretation are one and the same. Exploring one of the master themes of this century, his book offers a novel theory of the human condition whose conclusions and concerns seem certain to inform philosophy in the next century as well.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: Form and good in Plato's Eleatic dialogues: the Parmenides, Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman 
Author: Dorter, Kenneth 1940-
Published: University of California Press,  1994
Subjects: Classics | Philosophy | Classical Literature and Language
Publisher's Description: In this innovative analysis, Plato's four eleatic dialogues are treated as a continuous argument. In Kenneth Dorter's view, Plato reconsiders the theory of forms propounded in his earlier dialogues and through an examination of the theory's limitations reaffirms and proves it essential. Contradicted are both those philosophers who argue that Plato espoused his theory of forms uncritically and those who argue that Plato in some sense rejected the theory and moved toward the categorical analysis developed byAristotle. Dorter's reexamination of Plato's insights implies an important new direction for modern philosophical inquiry.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: Revenge of the aesthetic: the place of literature in theory today 
Author: Clark, Michael 1950-
Published: University of California Press,  2000
Subjects: Literature | Literary Theory and Criticism | Philosophy
Publisher's Description: This cutting-edge collection of essays showcases the work of some of the most influential theorists of the past thirty years as they grapple with the question of how literature should be treated in contemporary theory. The contributors challenge trends that have recently dominated the field--especially those that emphasize social and political issues over close reading and other analytic methods traditionally associated with literary criticism. Written especially for this collection, these essays argue for the importance of aesthetics, poetics, and aesthetic theory as they present new and stimulating perspectives on the directions which theory and criticism will take in the future. In addition to providing a selection of distinguished critics writing at their best, this collection is valuable because it represents a variety of fields and perspectives that are not usually found together in the same volume. Michael Clark's introduction provides a concise, cogent history of major developments and trends in literary theory from World War II to the present, making the entire volume essential reading for students and scholars of literature, literary theory, and philosophy.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: The unity of the common law: studies in Hegelian jurisprudence 
Author: Brudner, Alan
Published: University of California Press,  1995
Subjects: Philosophy | Law | Social and Political Thought | Political Theory
Publisher's Description: Countering the influential view of Critical Legal Studies that law is an incoherent mixture of conflicting political ideologies, this book forges a new paradigm for understanding the common law as being unified and systematic. Alan Brudner applies Hegel's legal and moral philosophy to fashion a comprehensive synthesis of the common law of property, contract, tort, and crime.At a time when there is a strong tendency among scholars to view the common law as essentially fragmentary, inconsistent, and contradictory, Brudner suggests instead a coherence that synthesizes several interrelated dichotomies: good-centered and right-based legal paradigms, instrumental and non-instrumental conceptions of law, externalist and internalist interpretations of the common law system, and communitarian and individualist attempts to found the legal enterprise.Brudner covers genuinely new ground through an interpretation of the common law from the standpoint of Hegelian legal philosophy. His unifying notion of common law corresponds to Hegel's notion of Geist , suggesting a designation of the mutual dependence of the community and the atomistic self for their confirmation as ends.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: Images and ideologies: self-definition in the Hellenistic world 
Author: Bulloch, A. W
Published: University of California Press,  1994
Subjects: Classics | Philosophy | Classical Philosophy | Ancient History | Art History
Publisher's Description: This volume captures the individuality, the national and personal identity, the cultural exchange, and the self-consciousness that have long been sensed as peculiarly potent in the Hellenistic world. The fields of history, literature, art, philosophy, and religion are each presented using the format of two essays followed by a response.Conveying the direction and focus of Hellenistic learning, eighteen leading scholars discuss issues of liberty versus domination, appropriation versus accommodation, the increasing diversity of citizen roles and the dress and gesture appropriate to them, and the accompanying religious and philosophical ferment. The result is an arresting view of the incredible and unprecedented diversity of the Hellenistic world.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: Yorick's world: science and the knowing subject 
Author: Caws, Peter
Published: University of California Press,  1993
Subjects: Philosophy | History and Philosophy of Science
Publisher's Description: Peter Caws provides a fresh and often iconoclastic treatment of some of the most vexing problems in the philosophy of science: explanation, induction, causality, evolution, discovery, artificial intelligence, and the social implications of technological rationality.Caws's work has been shaped equally by the insights of Continental philosophy and a concern with scientific practice. In these twenty-eight essays spanning more than a quarter of a century, he ranges from discussions of the work of French philosopher Gaston Bachelard, to relations between science and surrealism, to the concept of intentionality, to the limits of quantitative description. A lively mix of history, theory, speculation, and analysis, Yorick's World presents a vision of science that includes human history and social life. It will interest professional philosophers and scientists, and at the same time its directness will make it readily accessible to nontechnical readers.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: Foregone conclusions: against apocalyptic history 
Author: Bernstein, Michael André 1947-
Published: University of California Press,  1994
Subjects: Philosophy | Jewish Studies | Literature | Literary Theory and Criticism
Publisher's Description: Michael André Bernstein's passionate denunciation of apocalyptic thinking provides a moral, philosophical, and literary challenge to the way most of us make sense of our worlds. In our search for coherence, Bernstein argues, we tend to see our lives as moving toward a predetermined fate. This "foreshadowing" demeans the variety, the richness, and especially the unpredictability of everyday life. Apocalyptic history denies the openness and choice available to its actors.Bernstein chooses the Holocaust as the prime example of our tendency toward foregone conclusions. He argues eloquently against politicians and theologians who depict the Holocaust as foreordained and its victims as somehow implicated in a fate they should have been able to foresee. But his argument ranges wider. From recent biographies of Kafka to the Israeli-P.L.O. peace accords, from campus cultural diversity debates to the Crown Heights riots, Bernstein warns against our passive acceptance of historical or personal victimization.An essential contribution to Holocaust studies, this book is also a lucid call to transform the way we read and write history and the way we make sense of our lives.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: Oedipus lex: psychoanalysis, history, law 
Author: Goodrich, Peter 1954-
Published: University of California Press,  1995
Subjects: Philosophy | Social and Political Thought | Law | Intellectual History
Publisher's Description: Oedipus Lex offers an original and evocative reading of legal history and institutional practice in the light of psychoanalysis and aesthetics. It explores the unconscious of law through a wealth of historical and contemporary examples. Peter Goodrich provides an anatomy of law's melancholy and boredom, of addiction to law, of legal repressions, and the aesthetics of jurisprudence. He retraces the genealogy of law and invokes the failures and exclusions - the poets, women, and outsiders - that legal science has left in its wake.Goodrich analyzes the role and power of the image of law and details the history of law's plural jurisdictions and traditions of resistance to law. He explores mechanisms of repression and representation as constituents of modern subjectivity, using long-abandoned medieval texts and early appearances of feminism as resources for the understanding and renewal of legal scholarship. Not simply deconstruction but also reconstruction, this work is keenly attuned to the discontinuties, silences, and gaps in the cultural tradition called law.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: Thinking from things: essays in the philosophy of archaeology
Author: Wylie, Alison
Published: University of California Press,  2002
Subjects: Philosophy | Archaeology | History of Science
Publisher's Description: In this long-awaited compendium of new and newly revised essays, Alison Wylie explores how archaeologists know what they know. Examining the history and methodology of Anglo-American archaeology, Wylie puts the tumultuous debates of the last thirty years in historical and philosophical perspective.
Similar Items

Title: Nuptial arithmetic: Marsilio Ficino's commentary on the fatal number in Book VIII of Plato's Republic 
Author: Allen, Michael J. B
Published: University of California Press,  1994
Subjects: Classics | Philosophy | Medieval Studies | Renaissance History
Publisher's Description: The latest of Michael Allen's distinguished studies of the Renaissance Neoplatonist, Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), presents a difficult, fascinating text. Late in his career, Ficino wrote a commentary on the intractable passage in Book VIII of Plato's Republic that concerns the mysterious geometric or "fatal" number. He was thus the first modern interpreter of this famous passage, and Allen is the first in our era to translate and elucidate his remarkable commentary.Allen's critical translation of Ficino's analysis of the fatal number passage shows how it develops philosophical, psychological, numerological, astrological, and prophetic themes that had a particular resonance at the end of the fifteenth century.   [brief]
Similar Items