Results for 'John Brendan Killoran'
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- Disentangling contextual diversity: Communicative need as a lexical organizer.Brendan T. Johns -2021 -Psychological Review 128 (3):525-557.
- Perceptual Inference Through Global Lexical Similarity.Brendan T. Johns &Michael N. Jones -2012 -Topics in Cognitive Science 4 (1):103-120.The literature contains a disconnect between accounts of how humans learn lexical semantic representations for words. Theories generally propose that lexical semantics are learned either through perceptual experience or through exposure to regularities in language. We propose here a model to integrate these two information sources. Specifically, the model uses the global structure of memory to exploit the redundancy between language and perception in order to generate inferred perceptual representations for words with which the model has no perceptual experience. We (...) test the model on a variety of different datasets from grounded cognition experiments and demonstrate that this diverse set of results can be explained as perceptual simulation (cf. Barsalou, Simmons, Barbey, & Wilson, 2003) within a global memory model. (shrink)
- A Large‐Scale Analysis of Variance in Written Language.Brendan T. Johns &Randall K. Jamieson -2018 -Cognitive Science 42 (4):1360-1374.The collection of very large text sources has revolutionized the study of natural language, leading to the development of several models of language learning and distributional semantics that extract sophisticated semantic representations of words based on the statistical redundancies contained within natural language. The models treat knowledge as an interaction of processing mechanisms and the structure of language experience. But language experience is often treated agnostically. We report a distributional semantic analysis that shows written language in fiction books varies appreciably (...) between books from the different genres, books from the same genre, and even books written by the same author. Given that current theories assume that word knowledge reflects an interaction between processing mechanisms and the language environment, the analysis shows the need for the field to engage in a more deliberate consideration and curation of the corpora used in computational studies of natural language processing. (shrink)
- Mining a Crowdsourced Dictionary to Understand Consistency and Preference in Word Meanings.Brendan T. Johns -2019 -Frontiers in Psychology 10.
- The Role of Negative Information in Distributional Semantic Learning.Brendan T. Johns,Douglas J. K. Mewhort &Michael N. Jones -2019 -Cognitive Science 43 (5):e12730.Distributional models of semantics learn word meanings from contextual co‐occurrence patterns across a large sample of natural language. Early models, such as LSA and HAL (Landauer & Dumais, 1997; Lund & Burgess, 1996), counted co‐occurrence events; later models, such as BEAGLE (Jones & Mewhort, 2007), replaced counting co‐occurrences with vector accumulation. All of these models learned from positive information only: Words that occur together within a context become related to each other. A recent class of distributional models, referred to as (...) neural embedding models, are based on a prediction process embedded in the functioning of a neural network: Such models predict words that should surround a target word in a given context (e.g., word2vec; Mikolov, Sutskever, Chen, Corrado, & Dean, 2013). An error signal derived from the prediction is used to update each word's representation via backpropagation. However, another key difference in predictive models is their use of negative information in addition to positive information to develop a semantic representation. The models use negative examples to predict words that should not surround a word in a given context. As before, an error signal derived from the prediction prompts an update of the word's representation, a procedure referred to as negative sampling. Standard uses of word2vec recommend a greater or equal ratio of negative to positive sampling. The use of negative information in developing a representation of semantic information is often thought to be intimately associated with word2vec's prediction process. We assess the role of negative information in developing a semantic representation and show that its power does not reflect the use of a prediction mechanism. Finally, we show how negative information can be efficiently integrated into classic count‐based semantic models using parameter‐free analytical transformations. (shrink)
- The Role of Semantic Diversity in Word Recognition across Aging and Bilingualism.Brendan T. Johns,Christine L. Sheppard,Michael N. Jones &Vanessa Taler -2016 -Frontiers in Psychology 7:195083.Frequency effects are pervasive in studies of language, with higher frequency words being recognized faster than lower frequency words. However, the exact nature of frequency effects has recently been questioned, with some studies finding that contextual information provides a better fit to lexical decision and naming data than word frequency ( Adelman et al., 2006 ). Recent work has cemented the importance of these results by demonstrating that a measure of the semantic diversity of the contexts that a word occurs (...) in provides a powerful measure to account for variability in word recognition latency ( Johns et al., 2012, 2015 ; Jones et al., 2012 ). The goal of the current study is to extend this measure to examine bilingualism and aging, where multiple theories use frequency of occurrence of linguistic constructs as central to accounting for empirical results ( Gollan et al., 2008 ; Ramscar et al., 2014 ). A lexical decision experiment was conducted with four groups of subjects: younger and older monolinguals and bilinguals. Consistent with past results, a semantic diversity variable accounted for the greatest amount of variance in the latency data. In addition, the pattern of fits of semantic diversity across multiple corpora suggests that bilinguals and older adults are more sensitive to semantic diversity information than younger monolinguals. (shrink)
- Goddesses in the bosporus - (d.) braund greek religion and cults in the Black sea region. Goddesses in the bosporan kingdom from the archaic period to the byzantine era. Pp. XVI + 314, ills, maps. Cambridge: Cambridge university press, 2018. Cased, £75, us$99.99. Isbn: 978-1-107-18254-7. [REVIEW]JohnBrendan Knight -2020 -The Classical Review 70 (1):239-241.
- Determining the Relativity of Word Meanings Through the Construction of Individualized Models of Semantic Memory.Brendan T. Johns -2024 -Cognitive Science 48 (2):e13413.Distributional models of lexical semantics are capable of acquiring sophisticated representations of word meanings. The main theoretical insight provided by these models is that they demonstrate the systematic connection between the knowledge that people acquire and the experience that they have with the natural language environment. However, linguistic experience is inherently variable and differs radically across people due to demographic and cultural variables. Recently, distributional models have been used to examine how word meanings vary across languages and it was found (...) that there is considerable variability in the meanings of words across languages for most semantic categories. The goal of this article is to examine how variable word meanings are across individual language users within a single language. This was accomplished by assembling 500 individual user corpora attained from the online forum Reddit. Each user corpus ranged between 3.8 and 32.3 million words each, and a count‐based distributional framework was used to extract word meanings for each user. These representations were then used to estimate the semantic alignment of word meanings across individual language users. It was found that there are significant levels of relativity in word meanings across individuals, and these differences are partially explained by other psycholinguistic factors, such as concreteness, semantic diversity, and social aspects of language usage. These results point to word meanings being fundamentally relative and contextually fluid, with this relativeness being related to the individualized nature of linguistic experience. (shrink)
- True and false recognition in MINERVA2: Integrating fuzzy-trace theory and computational memory modeling.Minyu Chang,Brendan T. Johns &Charles J. Brainerd -forthcoming -Psychological Review.
- Ancient space beyond maps. Barker, bouzarovski, pelling, isaksen new worlds from old texts. Revisiting ancient space and place. Pp. XVIII + 385, figs, ills, maps. Oxford: Oxford university press, 2016. Cased, £85, us$135. Isbn: 978-0-19-966413-9. [REVIEW]JohnBrendan Knight -2017 -The Classical Review 67 (1):253-255.
- Approaches to Wisdom.JohnKilloran -2000 -Maritain Studies/Etudes Maritainiennes 16:131-144.
- About the Use of the Words "Riqht"and "Left".JohnKilloran -1989 -Maritain Studies/Etudes Maritainiennes 5:75-82.No categoriesExport citation
Bookmark - The Role of Habitus in St. Thomas's Moral Thought.John B.Killoran -1991 -Maritain Studies/Etudes Maritainiennes 7:79-94.No categories
- Coercion, Power Relations, and the Expectations Patients Bring to Mental Health Treatment.Brendan Saloner Jennifer Blumenthal-Barby A. Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Healthb Baylor College of Medicine -2024 -American Journal of Bioethics 24 (12):6-7.Volume 24, Issue 12, December 2024, Page 6-7.
- Maritain's Critique of Liberalism.John B.Killoran -1987 -Maritain Studies/Etudes Maritainiennes 3:139-162.
- Perspectives on Erving Goffman’s “Asylums” fifty years on.John Adlam,Irwin Gill,Shane N. Glackin,Brendan D. Kelly,Christopher Scanlon &Seamus Mac Suibhne -2013 -Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 16 (3):605-613.Erving Goffman’s “Asylums” is a key text in the development of contemporary, community-orientated mental health practice. It has survived as a trenchant critique of the asylum as total institution, and its publication in 1961 in book form marked a further stage in the discrediting of the asylum model of mental health care. In this paper, some responses from a range of disciplines to this text, 50 years on, are presented. A consultant psychiatrist with a special interest in cultural psychiatry and (...) mental health legislation, two collaborating psychotherapists in adult and forensic mental health, a philosopher, and a recent medical graduate, present their varying responses to the text. The editors present these with the hope of encouraging further dialogue and debate from service users, carers, clinicians, and academics and researchers across a range of disciplines. (shrink)
- False and Genuine Knowledge: A Philosophical Look at The Peasant of the Garonne.John B.Killoran -1992 -Maritain Studies/Etudes Maritainiennes 8:85-100.No categories
- Studies on Plato, Aristotle and Proclus: The Collected Essays on Ancient Philosophy ofJohn Cleary.John M. Dillon,Brendan O'Byrne &Fran O'Rourke (eds.) -2013 - Boston: Brill.John J. Cleary was an internationally recognised authority in ancient Greek philosophy. This volume of penetrating studies of Plato, Aristotle, and Proclus, philosophy of mathematics, and ancient theories of education, display Cleary’s range of expertise and originality of approach.
- Critical Friendships Among Beginning Philosophers.Brendan Larvor,John Lippitt &Kathryn Weston -2011 -Discourse: Learning and Teaching in Philosophical and Religious Studies 10 (2):111-146.No categories
- The Black Cogito and the History of Unreason.BrendanJohn Brown -2022 -CLR James Journal 28 (1):33-60.This essay seeks to unsettle the overrepresented, Eurocentric grounds of a pivotal debate in the history of Western philosophy. The debate between Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida on the topic of madness has had central significance for twentieth-century continental thought due to its lasting impact on the development, reception, and stakes of the respective thinker’s methodologies. While heavily written on and analyzed from the perspective of Western academic philosophy, little attention has been paid to the racialized, ‘Third World’ origins and (...) structures of the debate and its content. I contend that the work of Sylvia Wynter addresses, critiques, and ameliorates these structures in heretofore previously unacknowledged ways. Specifically, Wynter’s work in “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom”, her diptych on the Ceremony (Must Be) Found, and her critical engagements with the submerged “abducting logic” of Western thought marks an incisive critique of both Foucault and Derrida’s interpretation of reason and madness in Western philosophy. As I argue, Wynter is committed to deconstructing the binary of madness/reason so as to unsettle the overrepresentation of Western logos. She does so through the liminal figure of the “black cogito” which disrupts and shakes the foundations of the debate, nor can either conflicting interpretation neatly assimilate this figure. That is, by deconstructing the debate on the history of madness Wynter demonstrates the paucity of their arguments about, on the one hand, the history of reason and the exclusion of madness, and, on the other, the metaphysical ambiguity of the Cartesian cogito. This essay aims to set out on an alternative history of the deconstruction of Western metaphysics initiated from the demonic grounds of being. (shrink)
- Design, Mediation, and the Posthuman.Kristie S. Fleckenstein,Brendan Keogh,Jonathan Rey Lee,Matthew A. Levy,Emily McArthur,Josh Mehler,Nicole M. Merola,Anthony Miccoli,Elise Takehana,John Tinnell &Yoni van den Eede (eds.) -2014 - Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books.Weiss, Propen, and Reid gather a diverse group of scholars to analyze the growing obsolescence of the human-object dichotomy in today's world. In doing so, Design, Mediation, and the Posthuman brings together diverse disciplines to foster a dialog on significant technological issues pertinent to philosophy, rhetoric, aesthetics, and science.
- Mind, the Body and the World: Psychology After Cognitivism?Tony Anderson,John Davies,Alastair Ross &Brendan Wallace (eds.) -2007 - Imprint Academic.The roots of cognitivism lie deep in the history of Western thought, and to develop a genuinely post-cognitivist psychology, this investigation goes back to presuppositions descended from Platonic/Cartesian assumptions and beliefs about the nature of thought.No categories
- Visual Search in 3D: Effects of Monoscopic and Stereoscopic Cues to Depth on the Validity of Feature Integration Theory and Perceptual Load Theory.Ciara M. Greene,John Broughan,Anthony Hanlon,Seán Keane,Sophia Hanrahan,Stephen Kerr &Brendan Rooney -2021 -Frontiers in Psychology 12.Previous research has successfully used feature integration theory to operationalise the predictions of Perceptual Load Theory, while simultaneously testing the predictions of both models. Building on this work, we test the extent to which these models hold up in a 3D world. In two experiments, participants responded to a target stimulus within an array of shapes whose apparent depth was manipulated using a combination of monoscopic and stereoscopic cues. The search task was designed to test the predictions of feature integration (...) theory, as the target was identified by a single feature or a conjunction of features and embedded in search arrays of varying size, and perceptual load theory, as the task included congruent and incongruent distractors presented alongside search tasks imposing high or low perceptual load. Findings from both experiments upheld the predictions of feature integration theory, regardless of 2D/3D condition. Longer search times in conditions with a combination of monoscopic and stereoscopic depth cues suggests that binding features into three-dimensional objects requires greater attentional effort. This additional effort should have implications for perceptual load theory, yet our findings did not uphold its predictions; the effect of incongruent distractors did not differ between conjunction search trials and feature search trials. Individual differences in susceptibility to the effects of perceptual load were evident and likely explain the absence of load effects. Overall, our findings suggest that feature integration theory may be useful for predicting attentional performance in a 3D world. (shrink)
- Wot u @ uni 4?Brendan Larvor &John Lippitt -2009 -Discourse: Learning and Teaching in Philosophical and Religious Studies 9 (1):93-109.No categories
- Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics. [REVIEW]John B.Killoran -1990 -Review of Metaphysics 43 (3):622-624.Using moral realism as its reference point, David Brink's book provides a sophisticated metaethical defense of ethical cognitivism. The principal elements of Brink's position include: moral realism, an externalist moral psychology, a coherentist moral epistemology, a nonreductive form of ethical naturalism, and an objective conception of utilitarianism. Moral realism is defined as "the view that there are moral facts and true moral claims whose existence and nature are independent of our beliefs about what is right or wrong". Since moral inquiry (...) generally seeks to establish moral facts independently of moral beliefs, Brink contends there is a presumption in favor of moral realism. (shrink)
- Processio and The Place of Ontic Being:John Milbank and James K.A. Smith On Participation.Brendan Peter Triffett -2016 -Heythrop Journal 57 (6):900-916.James K.A. Smith argues that the ontology of participation associated with Radical Orthodoxy is incompatible with a Christian affirmation of the intrinsic being and goodness of creatures. In response, he proposes a Leibnizian view in which things are endowed with the innate dynamism of ‘force’. Creatures have a certain depth of being, and are intrinsically good, just because they each have an inner virtuality that they bring into expression. Such force is said to be a metaphysical component of the agent. (...) In this paper it is asked whetherJohn Milbank's ontology of participation can be defended by distinguishing between two senses of being a subject. Perhaps it is possible for a creature to bring into expression what is an infused ‘alien’ gift rather than a metaphysical component – to be expressive subject, but not ontic subject, for divine power. However, while this distinction promises to make sense of the reception of an indwelling ‘other’ in grace, knowledge and love, neither proper substance nor proper existence can be received in this way. A creature must be the ontic subject for its being, after all. Still, divine being might proceed from God as radical indwelling gift, as non-ontic ground for ontic being. (shrink)
- Any Democracy Worth its Name: Bernstein's democratic ethos and a role for representation.Brendan Hogan &Lawrence Marcelle -2016 - In Marcia Morgan & Megan Craig,Thinking The Plural: Richard J. Bernstein and the Expansion of American Philosophy. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
- Update on the ethical, legal and technical challenges of translating xenotransplantation.Rebecca Thom,David Ayares,David K. C. Cooper,John Dark,Sara Fovargue,Marie Fox,Michael Gusmano,Jayme Locke,Chris McGregor,Brendan Parent,Rommel Ravanan,David Shaw,Anthony Dorling &Antonia J. Cronin -2024 -Journal of Medical Ethics 50 (9):585-591.This manuscript reports on a landmark symposium on the ethical, legal and technical challenges of xenotransplantation in the UK. King’s College London, with endorsement from the British Transplantation Society (BTS), and the European Society of Organ Transplantation (ESOT), brought together a group of experts in xenotransplantation science, ethics and law to discuss the ethical, regulatory and technical challenges surrounding translating xenotransplantation into the clinical setting. The symposium was the first of its kind in the UK for 20 years. This paper (...) summarises the content of the expert lectures showcasing the progress which has been made in xenotransplantation including—the history of xenotransplantation, advances in gene edited animals and progress towards clinical xenotransplantation. We then set out the ethical and legal issues still to be resolved. Finally, we report the themes of the roundtable discussion highlighting areas of consensus and controversy. While the detail of the legal discussion was directed towards the UK, the principles and summary reported here are intended to be applicable to any jurisdiction seeking to implement clinical xenotransplantation. (shrink)
- The Imaginative Character of Pragmatic Inquiry.Brendan Hogan -2008 -Cognitio Estudos 5 (2).John Dewey’s lifelong labor to articulate an alternative account of logic from -/- the ‘abstract thought’ predominant in discussions of logic culminates in his 1938 Logic: the -/- theory of inquiry. In this text Dewey argues that all inquiry involves the instantiation of a general -/- pattern of inquiry. Articulating the role of imagination in the general pattern of inquiry is crucial -/- to illuminating the practical character and theoretical scope of this activity. Specifically, the -/- agency of the (...) inquirer as a future-directed, project-oriented organism highlights the imaginative -/- dimension to problem solving. In addition, Dewey’s theory of concepts as hypotheses whose -/- meaning is practically and experimentally tested and reconstructed is deeply indebted to -/- imagination. This is due to the fact that ideas, concepts, and meanings are not understood from -/- the perspective of speculative or theoretical reason, but rather circumscribed within the practical -/- problem solving context, what Dewey calls ‘the situation’ , in which all activity of human -/- being takes place. The meaning of our concepts and scientific achievements is then constantly -/- available for revision. This revision is a practical affair, giving the pragmatic version of ‘the -/- primacy of practical reason’ an overarching scope to intellectual activity. -/- This paper extends these insights regarding the general pattern of inquiry -/- into Dewey’s comments on social science in the penultimate chapter of the 1938 Logic, ‘Social -/- Inquiry’. The result is that Dewey’s pragmatic reconstruction of imagination is fundamental -/- to inquiry, agency, and understanding human agency. The consequences for a pragmatic -/- philosophy of social science will be sketched briefly in conclusion. (shrink)Export citation Bookmark
- “Notions” and “Things” inJohn Henry Newman’s Grammar of Assent.Brendan Case -2013 -Newman Studies Journal 10 (1):15-27.In discussing apprehension, assent, and inference in his Grammar of Assent, Newman contrasted “notions” and “things”—terms that distinguish knowledge of the abstract and “unreal” from knowledge of the singular and concrete. This essay proposes that Newman’s contrast between “notions” and “things” is an adverbial distinction, qualifying a person’s mode of engagement with the world, rather than an adjectival distinction, qualifying the metaphysical status of particular terms.No categories
- Deep Control: Essays on Free Will and Value. ByJohn Martin Fischer.Brendan Palla -2013 -International Philosophical Quarterly 53 (3):342-344.
- Implementation of complex adaptive chronic care: the Patient Journey Record system (PaJR).Carmel M. Martin,Carl Vogel,Deirdre Grady,Atieh Zarabzadeh,Lucy Hederman,John Kellett,Kevin Smith &Brendan O’ Shea -2012 -Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice 18 (6):1226-1234.
- Imagination, imaginaries, and emancipation.Brendan Hogan -2015 -Pragmatism Today 6 (2):48-61.This reflection on the topic of emancipation stems from an ongoing project in tune with a wider development in pragmatic philosophy. Specifically, the project aims to piece together some of the consequences of pragmatism’s reconstruction of the tradition of philosophical inquiry, from the angle of human imagination. More recently this project has taken a different direction, in light of our critical situation under intensifying anti-democratic forces in the US, but also in many parliamentary democracies. Emancipation from forces that undermine democratic (...) transformation is arguably a goal that anyone gathering under the banner of pragmatism shares. The use of the pronoun ‘our’ in modifying ‘critical situation’ above is intended. It points to the scope of the problem. The problematic situation of ‘intensifying anti-democratic forces’ that sets the agenda for pragmatic inquiry is most aptly termed ‘neoliberal global hegemony’. Neoliberalism is a much-used technical term and its meaning is hotly contested. For the purposes of this paper, then, I would like to lift out several features common to almost all parties in the contest to provide a definition. This description will then be employed for the purposes of determining the character of the contemporary social context in which emancipatory practices take place. Second, by tying this description of the ‘background’ of our practices to the primacy of practical reason thesis, and specifically the role of imagination in practical reason, the pragmatic conception of agency comes into relief. A pragmatic conception of this social context of agency, the contemporary neoliberal imaginary, contributes to articulating prospects for emancipatory practice in a non-abstract sense. An example of experimentalist democratic practices of emancipation responding to crises generated by neoliberal practices is provided by recent efforts in worker co-operatives in Argentina. (shrink)
- The Crisis of Democratic Pluralism: The Loss of Confidence in Reason and the Clash of Worldviews.Brendan Sweetman -2021 - Springer Verlag.This book argues that contemporary liberal democracy is reaching a crisis.Brendan Sweetman contends that this crisis arises from a contentious pluralism involving the rise of incommensurable worldviews that emerge out of the absolutizing of freedom over time in a democratic setting. This clash of worldviews is further complicated by a loss of confidence in reason and by the practical failure of public discourse. A contributory factor is the growing worldview of secularism which needs to be distinguished from both (...) the process of secularization and the concept of the secular state. After describing the crisis, and exploring these themes, and also rejecting proposed solutions from recent liberal political theory, Sweetman develops an approach to pluralist disagreement which requires a re-envisioning of the relationship between religion, secularism and politics, and which allows a limited place for all worldviews in the state, including religious worldviews. Engaging with the work of Philip Kitcher, Robert Audi,John Rawls, A.C. Grayling, Martin Luther King, Cécile Laborde,John Stuart Mill,John Locke, and Plato, Sweetman's approach is a formidable innovation in the quest to maintain a free and fair society. (shrink)
- Pragmatism, Power, and the Situation of Democracy.Brendan Hogan -2016 -Journal of Speculative Philosophy 30 (1):64-74.ABSTRACT Pragmatism as a theoretical enterprise has been criticized since its inception for not having a coherent account of the role of power and violence in human affairs as well as a moral justification and criteria for marshaling arguments in favor of democracy. In this essay I approach recent developments in pragmatic democratic theory with those persistent criticisms in mind. Rather than lacking justificatory resources and underthematizing the role of violence and asymmetrical power relations, Robert Talisse's and James Bohman's works, (...) respectively, demonstrate the epistemological depth and power of updating pragmatism as a theory of situated and critical political inquiry. However, each could be extended by utilizing a more robust description of the problematic situation polities currently face. Specifically, I turn to Dewey for guidance in how our pragmatic epistemological and evaluative practices might incorporate the facts of our problematic situation. I do this in terms of the power structures of economic processes both in terms of contract and in terms of the intellectual discourses that attempt to scientifically describe these processes. (shrink)
- Haught,John F. Responses to 101 Questions on God and Evolution. [REVIEW]Brendan Sweetman -2002 -The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 2 (2):350-351.No categories
- Kavanaugh,John F., S.J. Who Count as Persons? Human Identity and the Ethics of Killing. [REVIEW]Brendan Sweetman -2003 -The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 3 (4):857-859.
- Triangular Landscapes: Environment, Society, and the State in the Nile Delta under Roman Rule by Katherine Blouin (review).Brendan Haug -2015 -American Journal of Philology 136 (3):528-532.In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Triangular Landscapes: Environment, Society, and the State in the Nile Delta under Roman Rule by Katherine BlouinBrendan HaugKatherine Blouin. Triangular Landscapes: Environment, Society, and the State in the Nile Delta under Roman Rule. London and New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. xxvi + 429 pp. 14 halftones, 28 tables, 5 maps. Cloth, $150.00.American journalist Hal Boyle is often said to have remarked, “What makes a river so restful (...) to people is that it doesn’t have any doubt—it is sure to get where it is going and it doesn’t want to go anywhere else.” Restful, perhaps. But the single-mindedness of a river’s flow can also be a source of anxiety. In contemporary America, the Lower Mississippi’s steady westward shift is a prominent example. Were its floodgates removed and the river allowed to “get where it is going,” it would soon abandon the cities of Baton Rouge and New Orleans, decimating their port-dependent economies.An awareness of such fluvial hazards has percolated into the study of ancient history over the last decade and a half, and works on the ancient Mediterranean’s riverine environments have been appearing with frequency. As in ancient environmental [End Page 528] history more broadly, Francophone scholars have led the way; Philippe Leveau’s work on the Rhône and the multiple colloquia spearheaded by Ella Hermon are particularly notable (e.g., Philippe Leveau, ed. “Le Rhône romain,” Gallia 56 [1999]; Ella Hermon, ed. Riparia dans l’Empire romain [2010]). On the Anglophone side, Gregory Aldrete’s Floods of the Tiber in Ancient Rome 2007, Peter Thonemann’s The Maeander Valley 2011, and Brian Campbell’s Rivers and the Power of Ancient Rome 2012 are essential.Katherine Blouin’s new study of the Mendesian nome (administrative division) in Egypt’s northeastern Nile Delta unites these twin streams. The book, an updated version of a French dissertation supervised by Hermon, focuses on the changing course and eventual extinction of the Nile’s Mendesian branch, documenting the effects of a shifting fluvial landscape, environmental stressors, and Roman agro-fiscal policy on the society and economy of the Delta during the first few centuries c.e. By merging Francophone scholarship on rivers, theoretical perspectives drawn from American environmental history, and a thorough command of the papyrological evidence, Blouin has made a significant contribution to the emerging field of ancient environmental history.In her introduction, Blouin grounds herself in what Hermon dubs “l’approche écosystémique” to environmental history. Casting aside environmental determinism and lachrymose tales of pristine nature violated (“l’approche égologique”), ecosystems thinking characterizes environments as “dynamic, multidimensional entities made up of a complex amalgam of continuities and ruptures” (7). While humanity is regarded as a constituent element of the natural world, human beings nonetheless possess the ability to adapt natural phenomena in significant ways. Thus, nature’s impacts upon society are never predetermined, for they are always mediated by human decision-making at multiple levels.The rest of the book is divided into four thematic sections. Part I situates the reader within the geomorphological and hydrological contexts of the Mendesian nome and reviews the surviving evidence. Parts II and III reconstruct the landscape and investigate agricultural diversification. Part IV offers environmental perspectives on a fiscal crisis in the late second century c.e. and the famous revolt of the Boukoloi.Synthesizing previous geomorphological and archaeological scholarship, chapter 1 traces the evolution of the Nile Delta from at least seven major branches to the modern two—the Rosetta and Damietta—by the early Arab period, a process significantly abetted by large-scale canalization projects (35). (See alsoJohn P. Cooper, The Medieval Nile [2014], who carries the story forward.)In chapter 2, Blouin surveys the archaeological and papyrological evidence for the Mendesian nome. Although excavations at its two ancient metropoleis of Mendes (Tell al-Rub’a) and Thmuis (Tell al-Timai) are ongoing—the latter partly under Blouin’s own direction—their evidence is secondary to her arguments, which depend primarily upon the papyri. This corpus is comprised of some ninety texts spanning the fourth century b.c.e. to the sixth century c.e., the majority... (shrink)No categories
- Guest Editor Introduction to a Symposium on Robert Westbrook’s Democratic Hope: Pragmatism and the Politics of Truth.Brendan Hogan -2007 -Contemporary Pragmatism 4 (2):1-2.This symposium on Robert Westbrook'sJohn Dewey and American Democracy explores the continuing relevance of pragmatism for democratic political theory.
- Richard J. Bernstein.Brendan Hogan -2005 - In John R. Shook & Richard T. Hull,The dictionary of modern American philosophers. Bristol: Thoemmes Continuum.This encyclopedia article traces the development of Richard J. Bernstein's philosophical work and provide s short biography.
- The Christian Academic in Higher Education: The Consecration of Learning. ByJohn Sullivan. Pp. xvi, 335, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, £96.50. [REVIEW]Brendan Carmody -2018 -Heythrop Journal 59 (5):864-865.
- Pragmatic hegemony: questions and convergence.Brendan Hogan -2015 -Journal of Speculative Philosophy 29 (1):107-117.ABSTRACT The question concerning the connection of scientific inquiry to democratic praxis is central to both Antonio Gramsci andJohn Dewey. They share a common philosophical origin in Hegel and are essentially both in the tradition of Left Hegelian thought. Likewise, their respective analyses of the forces obstructing democratic emancipation were sharply focused on the distortions of social life caused by economic agents cooperating under hugely unequal power relations. As Gramsci wrote from his prison cell from 1929 to 1937 (...) in Italy, Dewey went through his most fruitful philosophical period in the United States, including his writings on politics and democracy. They both found targets of critique by diagnosing the pathologies of public life resulting from the power of private capital interests in collusion with a co-opted representative body, the authoritarian crimes and attendant culture of fascism, and the theoretical rigidity of the Soviet Marxists. In addition, true to their Hegelian roots, they marshaled their critiques of the abstractions of liberalism and its attendant moral and economic theory by insisting on the embedded, cultural, and historically deep contexts in which emancipatory practice need take place. (shrink)
- Book Review : The Making of Moral Theology: A Study of the Roman Catholic Tradition. The Martin D'Arcy Memorial Lectures 1981-2, byJohn Mahoney. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1987. xxv + 357pp. 32.50. [REVIEW]Brendan Soane -1989 -Studies in Christian Ethics 2 (1):99-103.
- Religious Commitment and Secular Reason. [REVIEW]Brendan Sweetman -2004 -Philosophia Christi 6 (1):163-168.
- Practices of Interpretation: Social Inquiry as Problem Solving and Self-Definition.Brendan Hogan -2019 - In Vinicio Busacchi & Anna Nieddu,Pragmatismo ed ermeneutica. Soggettività, storicità, rappresentazione. Milano: Mimesis.John Dewey attempted a pragmatic aufhebung of the disparate methodological aims of social science-explanation, understanding, and critique- in his 1938 Logic: the theory of Inquiry. There, in his penultimate chapter ‘Social Inquiry’, Dewey performed a trademark implementation of his deflation of absolutistic and universalistic pretensions in intellectual and theoretical discourse, in this case with respect to any one approach to social science. This deflation--as elsewhere in his analogous treatments of epistemology, ethics, and the theory of action-- involved the reconstruction (...) of the claims of the naturalist, interpretivist, and critical schools of social science into one overall pattern of social inquiry. This recasts the different and seemingly irreconcilable aims of these schools into a series of steps in a practice. That these claims, then, simultaneously stand independently but in varying degrees of tension with, and support of, each other is a hallmark of pragmatism’s embrace of pluralism in intelligent problem solving. Dewey’s discussion of interpretation needs supplementation from his broader philosophical commitments in order to see the full sense of both the compatibility and the incompatibility of his theory with philosophical hermeneutics. (shrink)
- Pushing Social Philosophy to Its Democratic Limits.Brendan Hogan -2021 -Contemporary Pragmatism 18 (3):311-324.Roberto Frega’s Pragmatism and the Wide View of Democracy reformulates the question of democracy posed by our current historic conjuncture using the resources of a variety of pragmatic thinkers. He brings into the contemporary conversation regarding democracy’s fortunes both classical and somewhat neglected figures in the pragmatic tradition to deal with questions of power, ontology, and politics. In particular, Frega takes a social philosophical starting point and draws out the consequences of this fundamental shift in approach to questions of democratic (...) and political theory. This turn to social philosophy as a theoretically more sufficient conceptual vocabulary, extended in detail by Frega, raises questions regarding the work that a social ontology does in clarifying the role of economic and political approaches to democracy that are worth further exploration. Likewise, the practical proposals for moving beyond methodological nationalism with respect to forming publics for the sake of problem-solving, while providing a clarifying and fresh starting point, are still too beholden to models of agency and expressions of coordinated action that themselves are the very fruit of those systems which undermine democratic power in the first instance. (shrink)
- The Scavenger.Brendan Hogan -2023 -Dewey Studies 7 (1):64-81.In this reflection I draw out Richard J. Bernstein’s claim that he was a ‘scavenger’ and put it to use in revisiting main themes of his engagements with pragmatism, hermeneutics, Hegel, and critical theory. This piece is included in a memorial issue of Dewey Studies on Bernstein.
- Deux notes de titulature relatives à l’empire de Thessalonique et au despotat d’Épire (xiiie siècle).Brendan Osswald -2021 -Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique 145 (145.2):775-822.This article re‑examines two questions linked to the history of the State of Epirus and the Empire of Thessalonica in the 13th century: that of the title of Manuel I Komnenos during his reign over Thessalonica from 1230 to 1237 and the date from which his nephew, Michael II, who ruled over Epirus from the 1230s until 1267/68, bore the title of despot. This article examines both of these questions by reviewing available sources and the full bibliography before proposing a (...) re‑examination of the whole issue. Regarding the first question, it concludes that Manuel first ruled under the title of despot, which enabled him to govern in the name of his brother Emperor Theodore, who was imprisoned in Bulgaria at the time, before taking over the title of Emperor, likely in early 1235. Rather than simply acquiring a prestigious title, his main concern was to proclaim the fall of Theodore in order to be able to govern in his own name. In the second case, the article concludes that Michael II most probably received the title of despot fromJohn, Emperor of Thessalonica upon Manuel’s death in 1238/39 and was later confirmed as such by EmperorJohn III of Nicaea between 1243 and 1246. In both cases, the complexity of the case reveals the institutional crisis of the Empire of Thessalonica from 1230 onwards, and the time needed to install the despotate, a then original form of government. (shrink)No categories
- What is economics for?Brendan Hogan -2021 - In Peter Róna, László Zsolnai & Agnieszka Wincewicz-Price,Words, Objects and Events in Economics: The Making of Economic Theory. Cham: Springer International Publishing.The methodological foundations of any scientific discipline are shaped by the goals towards which that discipline is aiming. While it is almost universally accepted that the goals of explanation and prediction of natural and non-human phenomena have been met with great success since the scientific revolution, it is almost just as universally accepted that the social sciences have not even come close to achieving these goals. This raises the question addressed in this paper, namely, what is economics, and social science (...) more broadly speaking, for? What is their aim, and how is it similar and dissimilar to that of the natural sciences as we have come to classify them? I take up this question from a pragmatic perspective in this paper, setting economics within the wider context of social inquiry. Specifically, I turn to Hilary Putnam andJohn Dewey as exemplars of the pragmatic critique of any economics that sees its goals in line with those of the natural sciences, that is, as aiming for explanation and prediction according to governing laws of human behaviour. NB: this is a preprint that underwent some minor edits. (shrink)
- Education in a Catholic Perspective. Edited by Stephen J. McKinney &John Sullivan. Pp. 255, Farnham, Ashgate, 2013, $94.29. [REVIEW]Brendan Carmody -2017 -Heythrop Journal 58 (6):994-996.
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Area Editors:
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