scholarly journals In Memoriam

2020 ◽  
pp. 106-109
Author(s):  
Abraham D. Stone
Keyword(s):  
Actual World ◽  
David Lewis ◽  
Counterpart Theory ◽  
Postdoctoral Fellow ◽  
The World ◽  
In Memoriam ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Transworld Identity

I remember distinctly the moment I learned that David Lewis had died. It was during my years as a postdoctoral fellow, when I was more than a little isolated, and so it turned out to have been some time—months, maybe—since the event. I recall thinking: the world in which I thought I was living, during those months, turned out not to be the actual world, and so I turned out not to be the person I thought I was, but merely a counterpart of that person. And thus arose the half-formed thought (still only half-formed now, alas) that therein lay some insight into what is actually at stake in the conflict between counterpart theory and transworld identity.

scholarly journals Another way to look at counterfactuals

2021 ◽  
Vol 47 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 189-226
Author(s):  
Wolfgang Klein
Keyword(s):  
Actual World ◽  
Additional Assumption ◽  
Semantic Analysis ◽  
David Lewis ◽  
Main Clause ◽  
Alternative Analysis ◽  
Strict Implication ◽  
Supportive Role ◽  
The World ◽  
Finite Verb

Abstract Counterfactuals such as If the world did not exist, we would not notice it have been a challenge for philosophers and linguists since antiquity. There is no generally accepted semantic analysis. The prevalent view, developed in varying forms by Robert Stalnaker, David Lewis, and others, enriches the idea of strict implication by the idea of a “minimal revision” of the actual world. Objections mainly address problems of maximal similarity between worlds. In this paper, I will raise several problems of a different nature and draw attention to several phenomena that are relevant for counterfactuality but rarely discussed in that context. An alternative analysis that is very close to the linguistic facts is proposed. A core notion is the “situation talked about”: it makes little sense to discuss whether an assertion is true or false unless it is clear which situation is talked about. In counterfactuals, this situation is marked as not belonging to the actual world. Typically, this is done in the form of the finite verb in the main clause. The if-clause is optional and has only a supportive role: it provides information about the world to which the situation talked about belongs. Counterfactuals only speak about some nonactual world, of which we only know what results from the protasis. In order to judge them as true or false, an additional assumption is required: they are warranted according to the same criteria that warrant the corresponding indicative assertion. Overall similarity between worlds is irrelevant.

Classical theism and modal realism are incompatible

2016 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 561-572 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHAD VANCE
Keyword(s):  
Actual World ◽  
Possible Worlds ◽  
David Lewis ◽  
Counterpart Theory ◽  
Possible Worlds Semantics ◽  
Intrinsic Properties ◽  
Modal Realism ◽  
Possible World ◽  
Necessary Being ◽  
Special Case

AbstractThe classical conception of God is that of a necessary being. On a possible worlds semantics, this entails that God exists at every possible world. According to the modal realist account of David Lewis, possible worlds are understood to be real, concrete worlds – no different in kind from the actual world. But, modal realism is equipped to accommodate the existence of a necessary being in only one of three ways: (1) By way of counterpart theory, or (2) by way of a special case of trans-world identity for causally inert necessary beings (e.g. pure sets), or else (3) causally potent ones which lack accidental intrinsic properties. I argue that each of these three options entails unacceptable consequences – (1) and (2) are incompatible with theism, and (3) is incompatible with modal realism. I conclude that (at least) one of these views is false.

“There is no such thing as pure fiction”: Impossible worlds and the principle of minimal departure reconsidered

2011 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kai Mikkonen
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Actual World ◽  
David Lewis ◽  
Impossible Worlds ◽  
The Other ◽  
Strong Sense ◽  
Fictional World ◽  
The World ◽  
The One ◽  
Literary Devices

AbstractAs has been argued in various theories of fiction, there can be no such thing as a totally fictional world. This paper seeks to examine the principle of minimal departure, defined by David Lewis and Marie-Laure Ryan, as an explanation for the impossibility of total fiction that would undermine all assumptions based on our actual world. The principle says that readers reconstrue the fictional world as being the closest possible to the reality we know, unless otherwise indicated.By drawing examples from the ontologically fluid worlds in Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series, I suggest new areas in narrative analysis where the principle could be applied and point out some limitations in earlier definitions of this notion. On the one hand, we can examine those narrative and literary devices that directly play upon the principle of mimimal departure and allow fiction to enlarge the scope of the world that must be explained. On the other hand, I argue that questions of modality in fiction may be relatively immune to this principle. I thus introduce the rule of suspension of modal claims, indicating the need to refrain from making assumptions, in any strong sense, about what may be possible, necessary, or contingent in a fictional world. The principle of suspension of modal claims emphasizes the way fiction may encourage epistemological and ontological doubt rather than mimetic or antimimetic expectations (i.e. principles of minimal and maximal departure), compelling our judgement of the possibility and reality of fiction to hesitate, to linger over a range of possibilities.

scholarly journals How Literature Delivers Knowledge and Understanding, Illustrated by Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles and Wharton’s Summer

2019 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-222
Author(s):  
Rik Peels
Keyword(s):  
Natural Science ◽  
Actual World ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Full Understanding ◽  
Epistemic Values ◽  
Aesthetic Value ◽  
Tess Of The D'urbervilles ◽  
Literary Art ◽  
The World ◽  
Insight Into

Abstract Some philosophers, like Alex Rosenberg, claim that natural science delivers epistemic values such as knowledge and understanding, whereas, say, literature and, according to some, literary studies, merely have aesthetic value. Many of those working in the field of literary studies oppose this idea. But it is not clear exactly how works of literary art embody knowledge and understanding and how literary studies can bring these to the light. After all, literary works of art are pieces of fiction, which suggests that they are not meant to represent the actual world. How then can they deliver knowledge and understanding? I argue that literature and literary studies confer knowledge and understanding in at least five ways: they give us insight into the work and the world of the work of art in question, they shape our intellectual virtues, they invite us to apply various hypotheses, they deliver moral propositional knowledge, and they increase or bring about full understanding with respect to meaning, virtue, and significance. In the course of my argument, I refer at several junctures to Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles and Edith Wharton’s Summer, in order to illustrate each of these claims.

Digital phenotyping for psychiatry: Accommodating data and theory with network science methodologies

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Lydon-Staley ◽  
Ian Barnett ◽  
Theodore D. Satterthwaite ◽  
Danielle S Bassett
Keyword(s):  
Psychiatric Disorders ◽  
Network Science ◽  
Psychiatric Symptoms ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Digital Devices ◽  
Digital Phenotyping ◽  
The World ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Selection Of

Digital phenotyping is the moment-by-moment quantification of our interactions with digital devices. With appropriate tools, digital phenotyping data afford unprecedented insight into our transactions with the world and hold promise for developing novel signatures of psychopathology that will aid in diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment selection of psychiatric disorders. In this review, we highlight empirical work merging digital phenotyping data, and particularly experience-sampling data collected via smartphone, with network theories of psychopathology and network science methodologies. The intensive, longitudinal, and multivariate data collected through digital phenotyping designs provide the necessary foundation for the application of network science methodologies to parsimoniously test network theories of psychopathology emphasizing causal interactions among psychiatric symptoms, as well as other phenotypes, across time

scholarly journals APPROVING OR MORTIFYING ONLINE AND CITIZEN JOURNALISM BY MAINSTREAM JOURNALISTS: A CASE FOR CREDIBILITY TRANSFER HYPOTHESIS

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Chierike Ikegbunam ◽  
Fabian Ikechukwu Agudosy
Keyword(s):  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Online Media ◽  
Citizen Journalism ◽  
Online Journalism ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
The World ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into

The relationship between online and mainstream journalism, over the years, has been critically reviewed negatively by practising journalists. Among the mainstream practising journalists, online and citizen journalism are peddlers of uncensored and junk contents. This study, though a review of reported events, looked at the relationship between mainstream and online contents. The purpose of the study is to verify whether the mainstream media mortify or certify online journalism. This study adopted the critical discourse analysis in reviewing what was reported in both mainstream and online media. The study, which made a case for the credibility transfer hypothesis, revealed that rather than spread junk contents, the online press helps the mainstream media in explaining to the world what is happening around them. Drawing from the outcome of the study, it was found that the online media and citizen journalists break the news while the mainstream media follow suit with few additional contents that give more insight into the stories of the moment. The study concluded that rather than mortify the contents of online media, the mainstream media transfer credibility to it by drawing their publications from the online materials. The study, therefore dismissed allegations from mainstream journalists against online and citizen journalists that they spread junks. It was recommended that the mainstream media journalists and media experts should desist from making some derogatory remarks about online media contents but rather, incorporate online and citizen journalisms’ contents in their mainstream reports for adequate and on-the-event coverage of issues

Ultrastructure of neuromuscular relationships in the canine heartworm (dirofilaria immitis)

1986 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
pp. 278-279
Author(s):  
W. L. Steffens ◽  
Nancy B. Roberts ◽  
J. M. Bowen
Keyword(s):  
Dirofilaria Immitis ◽  
Domestic Dogs ◽  
Structural Description ◽  
Pharmacological Effects ◽  
Free Living ◽  
Canine Heartworm ◽  
The World ◽  
Synaptic Region ◽  
Muscle Innervation ◽  
Insight Into

The canine heartworm is a common and serious nematode parasite of domestic dogs in many parts of the world. Although nematode neuroanatomy is fairly well documented, the emphasis has been on sensory anatomy and primarily in free-living soil species and ascarids. Lee and Miller reported on the muscular anatomy in the heartworm, but provided little insight into the peripheral nervous system or myoneural relationships. The classical fine-structural description of nematode muscle innervation is Rosenbluth's earlier work in Ascaris. Since the pharmacological effects of some nematacides currently being developed are neuromuscular in nature, a better understanding of heartworm myoneural anatomy, particularly in reference to the synaptic region is warranted.

On Metaphysics and the Political: A Polemics of Reading Baudelaire in the 1930s

2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-259
Author(s):  
Joseph Acquisto
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern Poetry ◽  
Progressive Politics ◽  
The World ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into

This essay examines a polemic between two Baudelaire critics of the 1930s, Jean Cassou and Benjamin Fondane, which centered on the relationship of poetry to progressive politics and metaphysics. I argue that a return to Baudelaire's poetry can yield insight into what seems like an impasse in Cassou and Fondane. Baudelaire provides the possibility of realigning metaphysics and politics so that poetry has the potential to become the space in which we can begin to think the two of them together, as opposed to seeing them in unresolvable tension. Or rather, the tension that Baudelaire animates between the two allows us a new way of thinking about the role of esthetics in moments of political crisis. We can in some ways see Baudelaire as responding, avant la lettre, to two of his early twentieth-century readers who correctly perceived his work as the space that breathes a new urgency into the questions of how modern poetry relates to the world from which it springs and in which it intervenes.

PINGVINAS IR PROTĖJAS. Įsivaizdavimas kaip kitybė manyje

2007 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 21-37
Author(s):  
Kristupas Sabolius
Keyword(s):  
Fight Club ◽  
The World ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Hollywood Movie

Kitybės klausimas dažniausiai kyla iš ego santykio su kitais arba su pasauliu. Šiame straipsnyje daroma prielaida, kad įsivaizdavimo funkcija ištirpdo subjektą ir jame pačiame atveria intersubjektyvią perspektyvą. Šiuo tikslu sugretinami Sartre’o, Husserlio bei Merleau-Ponty įsivaizdavimo funkcijos tyrimai, kuriuose išryškėja vaizdo kaip iš ego centro išslystančios ribos statusas, ir Holivudo filmo „Kovos klubas“ siužetas. Viename iš šios juostos epizodų pasirodantis pingvinas žymi egologinės schizmos akimirką ir tampa fantazijos apsireiškimu ir įsikūnijimu.Išgryninus žaidybinį, savarankišką ir multiformišką charakterį, galime konstantuoti, kad įsivaizdavimas, jei kalbėtume Kanto terminais, yra ne papildanti tarpinė funkcija, bet transcendentalinio subjekto genezėje atlieka paradoksalų „svetimos vidujybės“ arba „vidinės svetimybės“ vaidmenį. Vaizduotė yra katalizatoriaus, kuris, likdamas šalia, įgalina transcendentalinių formų išsikristalizavimą.Pagrindiniai žodžiai: vaizduotė, įsivaizdavimas, fantazija, ego, kitybė, sąmonė.PENGUIN AND PROTEUSImagination as Otherness in meKristupas Sabolius SummaryThe question of Otherness is usually taken into account while discussing the Ego’s relation with Others as well as with the World. This article is based on the premises that the function of phantasy melts the subjectivity, revealing the perspective of intersubjectivity within it. On this purpose Sartre’s, Husserl’s and Merleau-Ponty’s researches on the function of imagination, which elucidate the image as the boundary slipping from the centre of Ego, are compared to the story of Hollywood’ movie „Fight Club“. The penguin, which appears in one of the episodes, registers the moment of egological schism, thus becoming the revelation and incarnation of phantasy. While the playful, autonomous and multiform character of imaginary is cleared out, we can ascertain, speaking in Kantian terms, that it has not a complementary or intermediary function, but, in the genesis of transcendental subject, plays the paradoxical role of „allien innerness“ or „inner alienity“. Thought remaining always beside, imagination is a catalyzer which enables crystallization of transcendental forms.Keywords: imagination, imaginary, phantasy, ego, otherness, consciousness.

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