Between the Absolute and the Arbitrary

Between the Absolute and the Arbitrary
Author: Catherine Z. Elgin
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 228
Release: 1997
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780801483998

In Between the Absolute and the Arbitrary, Catherine Z. Elgin maps a constructivist alternative to the standard Anglo-American conception of philosophy's problematic. Under the standard conception, unless answers to philosophical questions are absolute, they are arbitrary. Unless a philosophy is grounded in determinate, agent-neutral facts, it is right only relative to a perspective that cannot in the end be justified. Elgin charts a course between the two poles, showing how fact and value intertwine, where art and science intersect. Between the Absolute and the Arbitrary cuts a path through philosophy of science, philosophy of language, and philosophy of art, disclosing common problems, resources, and solutions. Elgin highlights the ineliminability of values from the realm of facts, the dependence of facts on category schemes, and the ways human interests, practices, and goals affect the categories we contrive. Individually, the essays in this book contribute to ongoing debates in their respective fields. Collectively, they constitute a sustained critique of an entrenched conception of the resources available to philosophy, and argue for a constructive nominalist alternative. Once free of the conceptual stranglehold of traditional dualisms, Elgin argues, people can contrive a variety of frameworks, tailor-made to suit evolving interests and ends. The results are neither absolute nor arbitrary.

Re-reading Saussure

Re-reading Saussure
Author: Paul J. Thibault
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 388
Release: 1997
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780415104111

Saussure's theory of language is generally considered to be a formal theory of abstract sign-types and systems, separate from our individual and social practices of making meaning. In this challenging book, Thibault presents a different view of Saussure. Paying close attention to the original texts, including Cours de linguistique generale, he demonstrates that Saussure was centrally concerned with trying to formulate a theory of how meanings are made.

Absolute Zero and the Conquest of Cold

Absolute Zero and the Conquest of Cold
Author: Tom Shachtman
Publisher: HMH
Total Pages: 275
Release: 2000-12-12
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0547525958

“A lovely, fascinating book, which brings science to life.” —Alan Lightman Combining science, history, and adventure, Tom Shachtman “holds the reader’s attention with the skill of a novelist” as he chronicles the story of humans’ four-centuries-long quest to master the secrets of cold (Scientific American). “A disarming portrait of an exquisite, ferocious, world-ending extreme,” Absolute Zero and the Conquest of Cold demonstrates how temperature science produced astonishing scientific insights and applications that have revolutionized civilization (Kirkus Reviews). It also illustrates how scientific advancement, fueled by fortuitous discoveries and the efforts of determined individuals, has allowed people to adapt to—and change—the environments in which they live and work, shaping man’s very understanding of, and relationship, with the world. This “truly wonderful book” was adapted into an acclaimed documentary underwritten by the National Science Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, directed by British Emmy Award winner David Dugan, and aired on the BBC and PBS’s Nova in 2008 (Library Journal). “An absorbing account to chill out with.” —Booklist

Arbitrary Power

Arbitrary Power
Author: William Keach
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2015-07-28
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 140087324X

This book explores previously unexamined links between the arbitrary as articulated in linguistic theories on the one hand, and in political discourse about power on the other. In particular, Willam Keach shows how Enlightenment conceptions of the arbitrary were contested and extended in British Romantic writing. In doing so, he offers a new paradigm for understanding the recurrent problem of verbal representation in Romantic writing and the disputes over stylistic performance during this period. With clarity and force, Keach reads these phenomena in relation to a rapidly shifting literary marketplace and to the social pressures in Britain generated by the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, and the class antagonisms that culminated in the Peterloo Massacre. The question of what it means to think of language or politics as arbitrary persists through postmodern thinking, and this book advances an unfinished dialogue between Romantic culture and the critical techniques we currently use to analyze it. Keach's intertwined linguistic and political account of arbitrary power culminates in a detailed textual analysis of the language of revolutionary violence. Including substantial sections on Blake, Wollstonecraft, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, P. B. Shelley, Keats, and Anna Jameson, Arbitrary Power will engage not only students and scholars of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature but also those interested in critical and linguistic theory and in social and political history.

The Motivated Syntax of Arbitrary Signs

The Motivated Syntax of Arbitrary Signs
Author: Erica C. Garcia
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2009
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027215707

This detailed study challenges the claim that syntax is arbitrary and autonomous, as well as the assumption that Spanish clitic clusters constitute grammaticalized units. Diverse--apparently unrelated--restrictions on clitic clustering in both simplex VP's and Accusative cum Infinitive structures are shown to be cognitively motivated, given the meaning of the individual clitics, and the compositional/interpretative routines those meanings motivate. The analysis accounts, in coherent and principled fashion, for the absolute non-occurrence of some clusters, and the interpretation-dependent acceptability of all remaining clitic combinations: cluster acceptability depends on the ease with which the given clitic combination can be processed to yield a congruent message; there is no point in combining clitics whose meanings preclude speedy processing of the cluster. The monograph goes beyond previous work on Spanish clitics in its wealth of data, the range of syntactic phenomena discussed, and its analytic scope.

Considered Judgment

Considered Judgment
Author: Catherine Z. Elgin
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 238
Release: 1999-02-21
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0691005230

Philosophy long sought to set knowledge on a firm foundation, through derivation of indubitable truths by infallible rules. For want of such truths and rules, the enterprise foundered. Nevertheless, foundationalism's heirs continue their forbears' quest, seeking security against epistemic misfortune, while their detractors typically espouse unbridled coherentism or facile relativism. Maintaining that neither stance is tenable, Catherine Elgin devises a via media between the absolute and the arbitrary, reconceiving the nature, goals, and methods of epistemology. In Considered Judgment, she argues for a reconception that takes reflective equilibrium as the standard of rational acceptability. A system of thought is in reflective equilibrium when its components are reasonable in light of one another, and the account they comprise is reasonable in light of our antecedent convictions about the subject it concerns. Many epistemologists now concede that certainty is a chimerical goal. But they continue to accept the traditional conception of epistemology's problematic. Elgin suggests that in abandoning the quest for certainty we gain opportunities for a broader epistemological purview--one that comprehends the arts and does justice to the sciences. She contends that metaphor, fiction, emotion, and exemplification often advance understanding in science as well as in art. The range of epistemology is broader and more variegated than is usually recognized. Tenable systems of thought are neither absolute nor arbitrary. Although they afford no guarantees, they are good in the way of belief.

The Routledge Companion to Digital Journalism Studies

The Routledge Companion to Digital Journalism Studies
Author: Bob Franklin
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 641
Release: 2016-11-18
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317499077

The Routledge Companion to Digital Journalism Studies offers an unprecedented collection of essays addressing the key issues and debates shaping the field of Digital Journalism Studies today. Across the last decade, journalism has undergone many changes, which have driven scholars to reassess its most fundamental questions, and in the face of digital change, to ask again: ‘Who is a journalist?’ and ‘What is journalism?’. This companion explores a developing scholarly agenda committed to understanding digital journalism and brings together the work of key scholars seeking to address key theoretical concerns and solve unique methodological riddles. Compiled of 58 original essays from distinguished academics across the globe, this Companion draws together the work of those making sense of this fundamental reconceptualization of journalism, and assesses its impacts on journalism’s products, its practices, resources, and its relationship with audiences. It also outlines the challenge presented by studying digital journalism and, more importantly, offers a first set of answers. This collection is the very first of its kind to attempt to distinguish this emerging field as a unique area of academic inquiry. Through identifying its core questions and presenting its fundamental debates, this Companion sets the agenda for years to come in defining this new field of study as Digital Journalism Studies, making it an essential point of reference for students and scholars of journalism.