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Author: Gavin Kitching Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 100024721X Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 131
Book Description
Postmodern theory has engaged the hearts and heads of the brightest students because of its apparent political and social radicalism. Despite this Professor Gavin Kitching claims that, 'At the heart of postmodernism is very poor, deeply confused and misbegotten philosophy. As a result even the very best students who fall under its sway produce radically incoherent ideas about language, meaning, truth and reality.' This is not another conservative attack on postmodernism. Rather, it is a carefully considered analysis from a dedicated university teacher who is convinced that we have gone terribly astray. He shows that postmodern theory is at best irrelevant to, and at worst undermining of, persuasive political arguments, and reveals the basic philosophical confusion at its heart which makes this so. Essential reading for any student writing a thesis in the humanities and the social sciences, and for their teachers. 'It is the strongest and best attack on the ravages of routine post-modernism that I have ever read. I applaud the way he lists the good causes that students warmly espouse, and then suggests a simpler way to support them without the self-destructive it's all just language that is implicit in their work.' - Professor Sir Bernard Crick, Emeritus Professor of Politics, Birkbeck College, University of London 'Gavin Kitching rattles the cages. Will the inmates hear this? They should, if only for the reason that there is virtue in learning to argue against yourself. This is a serious book.' - Professor Peter Beilharz, Sociology, La Trobe University 'Required reading for anyone who wants to understand how and why postmodernism has had such disastrous pedagogical consequences.' - Professor David G. Stern, Philosophy, University of Iowa
Author: Gavin Kitching Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 100024721X Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 131
Book Description
Postmodern theory has engaged the hearts and heads of the brightest students because of its apparent political and social radicalism. Despite this Professor Gavin Kitching claims that, 'At the heart of postmodernism is very poor, deeply confused and misbegotten philosophy. As a result even the very best students who fall under its sway produce radically incoherent ideas about language, meaning, truth and reality.' This is not another conservative attack on postmodernism. Rather, it is a carefully considered analysis from a dedicated university teacher who is convinced that we have gone terribly astray. He shows that postmodern theory is at best irrelevant to, and at worst undermining of, persuasive political arguments, and reveals the basic philosophical confusion at its heart which makes this so. Essential reading for any student writing a thesis in the humanities and the social sciences, and for their teachers. 'It is the strongest and best attack on the ravages of routine post-modernism that I have ever read. I applaud the way he lists the good causes that students warmly espouse, and then suggests a simpler way to support them without the self-destructive it's all just language that is implicit in their work.' - Professor Sir Bernard Crick, Emeritus Professor of Politics, Birkbeck College, University of London 'Gavin Kitching rattles the cages. Will the inmates hear this? They should, if only for the reason that there is virtue in learning to argue against yourself. This is a serious book.' - Professor Peter Beilharz, Sociology, La Trobe University 'Required reading for anyone who wants to understand how and why postmodernism has had such disastrous pedagogical consequences.' - Professor David G. Stern, Philosophy, University of Iowa
Author: G. N. Kitching Publisher: Penn State Press ISBN: 9780271034515 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 244
Book Description
"A critique of postmodernism and poststructuralism and an examination of their impact on higher education. Argues that students influenced by these trends in philosophy produce radically incoherent ideas about language, meaning, truth, and reality"--Provided by publisher.
Author: Cheryl Hall Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1135336474 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 174
Book Description
Political theorists have long argued that passion has no place in the political realm where reason reigns supreme. But, is this dichotomy between reason and passion sustainable? Does it underestimate the indispensable role of passion in a fully democratic society? Drawing upon Plato, Rousseau, and contemporary feminist theorists, Cheryl Hall argues that passion is an essential component of a just political community and that the need to educate passion together with reason is paramount. Trouble with Passion provides a compelling defense of the crucial place of passion in politics.
Author: Adam Becker Publisher: Basic Books ISBN: 0465096069 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 389
Book Description
"A thorough, illuminating exploration of the most consequential controversy raging in modern science." --New York Times Book Review An Editor's Choice, New York Times Book Review Longlisted for PEN/E.O. Wilson Prize for Literary Science Writing Longlisted for Goodreads Choice Award Every physicist agrees quantum mechanics is among humanity's finest scientific achievements. But ask what it means, and the result will be a brawl. For a century, most physicists have followed Niels Bohr's solipsistic and poorly reasoned Copenhagen interpretation. Indeed, questioning it has long meant professional ruin, yet some daring physicists, such as John Bell, David Bohm, and Hugh Everett, persisted in seeking the true meaning of quantum mechanics. What Is Real? is the gripping story of this battle of ideas and the courageous scientists who dared to stand up for truth. "An excellent, accessible account." --Wall Street Journal "Splendid. . . . Deeply detailed research, accompanied by charming anecdotes about the scientists." --Washington Post
Author: Donna J. Haraway Publisher: Duke University Press ISBN: 0822373785 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 228
Book Description
In the midst of spiraling ecological devastation, multispecies feminist theorist Donna J. Haraway offers provocative new ways to reconfigure our relations to the earth and all its inhabitants. She eschews referring to our current epoch as the Anthropocene, preferring to conceptualize it as what she calls the Chthulucene, as it more aptly and fully describes our epoch as one in which the human and nonhuman are inextricably linked in tentacular practices. The Chthulucene, Haraway explains, requires sym-poiesis, or making-with, rather than auto-poiesis, or self-making. Learning to stay with the trouble of living and dying together on a damaged earth will prove more conducive to the kind of thinking that would provide the means to building more livable futures. Theoretically and methodologically driven by the signifier SF—string figures, science fact, science fiction, speculative feminism, speculative fabulation, so far—Staying with the Trouble further cements Haraway's reputation as one of the most daring and original thinkers of our time.
Author: Aaron Schuster Publisher: MIT Press ISBN: 0262528592 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 241
Book Description
An investigation into the strange and troublesome relationship to pleasure that defines the human being, drawing on the disparate perspectives of Deleuze and Lacan. Is pleasure a rotten idea, mired in negativity and lack, which should be abandoned in favor of a new concept of desire? Or is desire itself fundamentally a matter of lack, absence, and loss? This is one of the crucial issues dividing the work of Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Lacan, two of the most formidable figures of postwar French thought. Though the encounter with psychoanalysis deeply marked Deleuze's work, we are yet to have a critical account of the very different postures he adopted toward psychoanalysis, and especially Lacanian theory, throughout his career. In The Trouble with Pleasure, Aaron Schuster tackles this tangled relationship head on. The result is neither a Lacanian reading of Deleuze nor a Deleuzian reading of Lacan but rather a systematic and comparative analysis that identifies concerns common to both thinkers and their ultimately incompatible ways of addressing them. Schuster focuses on drive and desire—the strange, convoluted relationship of human beings to the forces that move them from within—“the trouble with pleasure." Along the way, Schuster offers his own engaging and surprising conceptual analyses and inventive examples. In the “Critique of Pure Complaint” he provides a philosophy of complaining, ranging from Freud's theory of neurosis to Spinoza's intellectual complaint of God and the Deleuzian great complaint. Schuster goes on to elaborate, among other things, a theory of love as “mutually compatible symptoms”; an original philosophical history of pleasure, including a hypothetical Heideggerian treatise and a Platonic theory of true pleasure; and an exploration of the 1920s “literature of the death drive,” including Thomas Mann, Italo Svevo, and Blaise Cendrars.
Author: Richard Dawid Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1107067588 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 213
Book Description
String theory has played a highly influential role in theoretical physics for nearly three decades and has substantially altered our view of the elementary building principles of the Universe. However, the theory remains empirically unconfirmed, and is expected to remain so for the foreseeable future. So why do string theorists have such a strong belief in their theory? This book explores this question, offering a novel insight into the nature of theory assessment itself. Dawid approaches the topic from a unique position, having extensive experience in both philosophy and high-energy physics. He argues that string theory is just the most conspicuous example of a number of theories in high-energy physics where non-empirical theory assessment has an important part to play. Aimed at physicists and philosophers of science, the book does not use mathematical formalism and explains most technical terms.
Author: Stanley Fish Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 9780674910126 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 348
Book Description
The author explains that history and context determine a principle's content and power and that "intellectual and religious liberty ... are artifacts of the very partisan politics they supposedly transcend."--Jacket.
Author: John R. Searle Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA ISBN: 0199385157 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 255
Book Description
This book provides a comprehensive account of the intentionality of perceptual experience. With special emphasis on vision Searle explains how the raw phenomenology of perception sets the content and the conditions of satisfaction of experience. The central question concerns the relation between the subjective conscious perceptual field and the objective perceptual field. Everything in the objective field is either perceived or can be perceived. Nothing in the subjective field is perceived nor can be perceived precisely because the events in the subjective field consist of the perceivings, whether veridical or not, of the events in the objective field. Searle begins by criticizing the classical theories of perception and identifies a single fallacy, what he calls the Bad Argument, as the source of nearly all of the confusions in the history of the philosophy of perception. He next justifies the claim that perceptual experiences have presentational intentionality and shows how this justifies the direct realism of his account. In the central theoretical chapters, he shows how it is possible that the raw phenomenology must necessarily determine certain form of intentionality. Searle introduces, in detail, the distinction between different levels of perception from the basic level to the higher levels and shows the internal relation between the features of the experience and the states of affairs presented by the experience. The account applies not just to language possessing human beings but to infants and conscious animals. He also discusses how the account relates to certain traditional puzzles about spectrum inversion, color and size constancy and the brain-in-the-vat thought experiments. In the final chapters he explains and refutes Disjunctivist theories of perception, explains the role of unconscious perception, and concludes by discussing traditional problems of perception such as skepticism.
Author: Gavin Kitching
Author: Gavin Kitching
Author: Lee Smolin
Author: G. N. Kitching
Author: Cheryl Hall
Author: Adam Becker
Author: Donna J. Haraway
Author: Aaron Schuster
Author: Richard Dawid
Author: Stanley Fish
Author: John R. Searle