Author: Karl Jaspers File Type: pdf First published in 1965, this collection of three essays by influential German philosopher Karl Jaspers deals with the response of the philosophical mind to the world of reality, with the search for truth. In Leonardo, this search is shown in the thinking and the works of a supreme artist whose means of apperception are the senses. The essay on Max Weber commemorates a man Jaspers knew personally and ardently admired. The main essay in the collection is an exhaustive, three part study of Descartes analysing Descartes new philosophical operation, Descartes Method, and the position of his philosophy within the wider historical context of philosophical thought.

Author: Brenda Coultas File Type: epub In this nuanced and moving new collection of poems, Brenda Coultas weaves a meditation on contemporary life and our place in it. Coultas, who is known for her investigative documentary approach, turns her attention to landfills and the odd histories embedded in the materials found there. The poems make their home among urban and rural detritus, waste, trinkets, and found objects. The title poem, for example, takes its cue from the random, often perfect, pigeon feathers found on city streets. In a seamless weave of poetic sentences, The Tatters explores how our human processes of examination are often bound up with destruction. These poems enable us to be present with the sorrow and horror of our destructive nature, and to honor the natural world while acknowledging that this world no longer exists in any pure form, calling to us instead from cracks in the sidewalk, trash heaps, and old objects. Check for the online readers companion at tatters.site.wesleyan.edu.**

Author: Aksana Ismailbekova File Type: pdf A pioneering study of kinship, patronage, and politics in Central Asia, Blood Ties and the Native Son tells the story of the rise and fall of a man called Rahim, an influential and powerful patron in rural northern Kyrgyzstan, and of how his relations with clients and kin shaped the economic and social life of the region. Many observers of politics in post-Soviet Central Asia have assumed that corruption, nepotism, and patron-client relations would forestall democratization. Looking at the intersection of kinship ties with political patronage, Aksana Ismailbekova finds instead that this intertwining has in fact enabled democratizationboth kinship and patronage develop apace with democracy, although patronage relations may stymie individual political opinion and action. **About the Author Aksana Ismailbekova is an affiliated researcher at Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology.

Author: Raymond John Nelson File Type: pdf The problem of reference is central to the fields of linguistics, cognitive science, and epistemology yet it remains largely unresolved.Naming and Referenceexplains the reference of lexical terms, with particular emphasis placed on proper names, demonstrative pronouns and personal pronouns. It examines such specific issues as how to account for the reference of names that are empty or speculative, which abound in science and philosophy, and how to account forintentionalreference as in he took Mary to be Jane. Naming andReferencebegins with a survey of the history of the subject within a philosophical and critical setting, from Locke, Brentano, Peirce, Frege, Russell, Strawson, Tarski, Carnap and Quine up to Kripke and Fodor. The rest of the book is devoted to an algorithmic theory of reference derived from Peirces idea that signification is a three-way relationship involving a term, an object and an interpretant. Thetheory rounds out the causal notion of reference, while at the same time preserving Freges distinction between sense and reference, and making a place for indexical terms. Through the use of various computer models, R. J. Nelson explores the meaning and reference of words to objects and the relationship of these phenomena to perception, belief and truth. The models used are parallel, connectionist computational models rather than the sequential models of mid-century artificial intelligence. The aim, in opposition to nativist and mental representation theories, is to account for the genesis of semantically interpretable symbols, not to assume them. The problem of reference is central, and largely unresolved, in linguistics, cognitive science and epistemology. The aim of this book is to explain the reference of lexical terms (especially proper names, demonstrative pronouns and personal pronouns). The specific issues how to account for the reference of names that are empty or speculative, which abound in science and philosophy? How to account for intentional reference as in he took Mary to be Jane or if that were George, he would have called John?Naming and Reference begins by surveying the history of the subject, within a philosophical and critical setting, from Locke, Brentano, Peirce, Frege, Russell, Strawson, Tarski, Carnap and Quine up to Kripke and Fodor. In this fascinating account the author explores and evaluates several of the key debates in the analytic tradition.The rest of the book is devoted to the authors own solution to the problem of naming and referring. His algorithmic theory of reference is derived from Peirces idea that signification is a three-way relation between a term, an object, and an interpretant. The theory rounds-out the causal notion of reference, while at the same time preserving Freges distinction between sense and reference, and making a place for indexical items.By using various computer models, an exploration is made of the meaning and reference of words to objects and the relation of these phenomena to perception, belief and truth. The models used are parallel, connectionist computational models rather than the sequential models of mid-century artificial intelligence. The aim, in opposition to nativist and mental representation theories, is to account for the genesis of semantically interpretable symbols, not to assume them. It presents an important alternative to Chomskys psychology of language.The author approaches this work from a background in mathematics and computing (senior mathematician at IBM), as well as in philosophy. Students of philosophy of language, mind and logic, as well as those studying in the areas of cognitive science and artificial intelligence, will find this book invaluable. As a source of information and inspiration for readers and workers from the areas of cognitive science and psychology, linguistics, computer science, as well as neuroscience and brain biology, Naming and Reference is ideal.