Digital Structure

In this chapter, I consider whether digital images are digital in the strongest sense; namely, qua images. Assuming that a digital image is one that is made and screened digitally, there is a further question as to whether the representational scheme to which the image belongs has a fundamentally digital structure. Answering this question requires close analysis of Nelson Goodman’s classical account of the analog/digital distinction. It also requires a response to Goodman’s insistence on the essential analogicity of the pictorial. Such a response points to the uses of digital sampling and quantization technology to impose digital structure on encoded, replicable images.

"At Least I Have the Flowers of Myself": Revisionist Myth-Making in H.D.'s "Eurydice"

Taking its cue from the rediscovery of H.D.’s works initiated in the 1980s, this article aims to advance the efforts destined to recover the modernist poet’s revisionist legacy and, in particular, her revisionary myth-making. To this end, adopting a myth-criticism interpretative approach, I will analyse one of the most relevant examples of H.D.’s work in this respect: her lyric poem “Eurydice” (1925). In particular, I will examine H.D.’s ‘tactics of revisionary mythopoesis’, that is, narrative strategies which distance her poem from the dominant account of the myth and that enable the poet to contest the established classical tradition. The examination will ultimately bring to the surface H.D.’s invaluable contribution to the re-shaping and re-writing of myth from a female perspective and the way in which she created a different, subverted, version of the classical account.

How large is the left periphery of Present-Day German? A unifying approach to multiply-filled-prefield configurations

In this article, it is proposed that different types of apparent “non-V2” arrangements in Present-Day German matrix clauses which are generally treated independently are similar in nature and derivable by means of a limited number of syntactic operations that do not challenge or put into question the classical account of German as a structural V2 language. The analysis reveals that an adequate formalization of all possible left-peripheral word orders must rest upon three basic assumptions: (i) V2 in Modern German main clauses can be neither movement to the head position whose specifier hosts a moved or base-generated XP nor (necessarily) movement to Force°, but can be generalized to raising of the Vfin to Fin°; (ii) German has a Split CP which is fundamentally similar, mutatis mutandis, to that of Romance languages; (iii) this language is subject to the bottleneck effect, which states that all movement into the CP passes through [Spec,FinP]. The theoretical approach pursued here attempts to account for left dislocation and other (frame-setting and non-frame-setting) topicalization phenomena by assuming that in German (differently from other Split-CP languages), XPs base-generated in the middle field move to their surface position by cyclical movement within the left periphery. This allows us to avoid ad hoc explanations, as well as violations of the bottleneck effect.

A Commonsense Theory of Secrets

With the advent of social robots, precise accounts of an increasing number of social phenomena are called for. Although the phenomenon of secrets is an important part of everyday social situations, logical accounts of it can only be found, in a rather strict sense, within logical investigations of systems security. This paper is an attempt to formalize the logic of a commonsense notion of secrets as a contribution to ontologies of social and epistemological phenomena. We take a secret to be a five-way relation between a proposition, a group of secret-keepers, a group of nescients, a condition of secrecy, and a time point. A bare-bones notion of secrets is defined by providing necessary and sufficient conditions for said relation to hold. Special classes of secrets are then identified by considering an assortment of extra conditions. The logical language employed formalizes a classical account of belief and intention, a theory of groups, and a novel notion of revealing. In such a rich theory, interesting properties of secrets are proved.

A dilemma for permissibility-based solutions to the paradox of supererogation

We argue that permissibility-based solutions to the paradox of supererogation encounter a nested dilemma. Such approaches solve the paradox by distinguishing moral and rational permissions. If they do not also include a bridge condition that relates these two permissions, then they violate a very plausible monotonicity condition. If they do include a bridge condition, then permissibility-based solutions either amount to rational satisficing or they collapse back into the classical account of supererogation and fail to resolve the paradox.

The Brahmin, the Aryan, and the Powers of the Priestly Class: Puzzles in the Study of Indian Religion

The classical account of the Brahmin priestly class and its role in Indian religion has seen remarkable continuity during the past two centuries. Its core claims appear to remain unaffected, despite the major shifts that occurred in the theorizing of Indian culture and in the study of religion. In this article, we first examine the issue of the power and status of the Brahmin and show how it generates explanatory puzzles today. We then turn to 18th- and 19th-century sources to identify the cognitive conditions which sustained the classical account of the Brahmin priest and allowed for its transmission. Three clusters of concepts were crucial here: Christian-theological ideas concerning heathen priesthood and idolatry; racial notions of biological and cultural superiority and inferiority; and anthropological speculations about ‘primitive man’ and his ‘magical thinking’. While all three clusters were rejected by 20th- and 21st-century scholarship, the related claims about Brahmanical ritual power continue to be presented as facts. What accounts for this peculiar combination of continuities and discontinuities in the study of (ancient) Indian religion? We turn to some insights from the philosophy of science to sketch a route toward answering this question.

Vulnerability and Trust

The paper outlines an attempt at phenomenological description of two intermingled dimensions of human vulnerability. First, vulnerability understood as an essential dimension in the constitution of embodiment and second, vulnerability in regard to trust, as a form of emotive interpersonal disposition. In either case, vulnerability does not only refer to mere physical fragility but to the situational horizon where from emerge progressive anticipations of “possible harm”. According to this account, vulnerability appears as a practical horizon of emotional awareness of risk involving not only bodily fragility but a dimension of concrete existence of individual persons, namely, the intimate affectation of being harmed, injured or deprived or a practical aim. In this context the paper claims for a second and more radical sense of vulnerability that problematize the classical account of emotive protentionality, following Anthony Steinbock´s description of moral emotions. In this regard, vulnerability of trust involves an emotional risk and fragility that opens to consideration a dimension of human existence revealing human persons in their absolute and individual concreteness.

Concepts and Categories of Art: A Very Brief Primer

Chapter 3 expands on the discussion of categories of art. The chapter evaluates four models for a theory of concepts for categories of art: a classical account derived from traditional, definitional theories of art; a prototype theory derived from Kendall Walton’s canonical discussion of categories of art; an exemplar theory derived from Morris Weitz’s anti-essentialism; and a knowledge-based account derived from Arthur Danto and Noël Carrol’s cognitivist theories of art. The chapter continues with a discussion of artworks and artifact concepts and concludes by arguing that a knowledge-based account of concepts provides the best model for understanding the structure of categories of art. and their role in our engagement with artworks.

وھبۃ الزحیلی بطور فقیہ: الفقہ الاسلامی و ادلتہ کا مطالعہ

The development of Islamic Jurisprudence tradition over time produces the Juris-prudential product with different approaches, methodologies, and interpretations. Nowadays, the difference of opinion in the Islamic Jurisprudence is marked by the reconstruction of the jurisprudential tradition because they are no longer relevant to address the issue of masculinity. In this study, the author discusses one of the recent literatures of Islamic Jurisprudence, Al Fiqh Al Islami wa Adilatuhu, written by Wahbah Al-Zuḥaylī (1932-2015 AD). In this article, he tried to reach a compromise between classical jurisprudence with a contemporary one; this is due to some modern views that classical account is no longer able to solve the recent problems. Therefore Al-Zuḥaylī tried to integrate classical interpretation to the contemporary style with a consistent method. To find some pictures of his jurisprudential approach, the author discusses the different aspects of his masterpiece in this paper. Keywords: , ,

Fodder for Despair, Masquerading as Hope: Diagnosing the Postures of Hope(lessness) at the End of Life

Hope is needed for persons confronting the limits of human life, antagonised by the threats of death. It is needed also for those health and medical professionals constrained by the institution of medicine, determined by market metaphors and instrumental reasoning. Yet, despair can masquerade as hope for such persons when functional hoping for particular outcomes or aims proves futile and aimless. The following will examine such masquerades, while giving attention to particular expressions of autonomy, which persist as fodder for despair in our late modern milieu. The late classical account of Hercules and his death, as well as contemporary reasons for soliciting medical assistance in dying, will focus on the diagnostics of despair, while a Christian account practicing presence, and of hope as a concrete posture enfleshed by habits of patience, among other virtues, will point toward counter-narratives that might sustain persons in times of crisis and enable persons’ flourishing as human beings, even unto death.