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This book adopts the rationalist research path to bring forward an innovative theory of foreign policy, and the central question is: How can we define the overall national interests of great powers appropriately and thus help states make consistent and rational grand strategies? The answer can't be found among existing Foreign Policy Analysis and other theoretical research. In this book, Positional Realism is proposed as a new theory to define the overall national interests from the power position and order position perspectives and specify the four kinds of positional interests of hegemonic states, contending states, potential contending states, and non-contending states. Different great powers have different positional power and order objectives. Based on these positional interests, Positional Realism brings different foreign policy hypotheses and suggestions. The book also examines the six great powers in the nineteenth century to verify these hypotheses and finds that Positional Realism can not only convincingly explain the success or failure of their acts, but also give useful and important directions for strategy making of great powers.
Interrogating the language that gives meaning to IR theories and practice
This book constitutes thoroughly reviewed, revised and selected papers from the 5th International Conference on Human Centered Computing, HCC 2019, held in Čačak, Serbia, in August 2019. The 48 full and 23 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 133 submissions. The papers focus on deep learning and its applications on a variety of real-life problems, ranging from image/video analysis, to human-computer interaction, and to logistics and supply chain management.
More than 15 years have passed since the speculative realism conference at Goldsmiths College, London, hosted Ray Brassier, Iain Hamilton Grant, Graham Harman, and Quentin Meillassoux. Their dictum was simple: Reality is not what it seems. 15 Years of Speculative Realism begins with four chapters, each dedicated to the work of a speculative realism panellist. On one level, their respective projects engaged with the great philosophical systems of yesteryear: Cartesian dualism; the Platonist distinction between reality and appearance; and the Kantian revival of noumena. But there is much more at stake here, such as the repositioning of the subject as yet another object in the universe, and the radically egalitarian view that individual human thought is best described as a local manifestation of nature. Through these observations, we are also encouraged to ask: 'Could the laws of physics change at any moment?' and 'How does thought think the gradual extinction of itself as but another perishable phenomenon in the physical universe?' Two further chapters offer wider context: the Analysis & Impact chapter evaluates speculative realism's relevance to the wider domain of philosophy, as well as its achievements and shortcomings, with commentary by Slavoj Žižek, and the Interviews chapter has contributions from Graham Harman, Ray Brassier, and Goldsmiths College's speculative realism conference coordinator, Alberto Toscano. As we prophetically enter into a new epoch - characterized by artificial intelligence and a withering climate - we call the Anthropocene, it seems that many of the insights offered to us through the speculative realist lens have come to fruition. The objective, now, is to speculate upon how far this major shift in the humanities will ensue, and how different this reality will be from our preconceived notion of the real offered to us by previous tenets of realism. This book charts the essential meaning of the movement in the wake of its spell as one of the most significant philosophical movements of the twenty-first century.
In Subjectivity, sixteen leading scholars examine the turn to the subject in modern philosophy and consider its historical antecedents in ancient and medieval thought. Some critics of modernity reject the turn to the subject as a specifically modern error, arguing that it logically leads to nihilism and moral relativism by divorcing the human mind from objective reality. Yet, some important thinkers of the last half-century--including Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin, John Finnis, and Bernard Lonergan--consider a subjective starting point and claim to find a similar position in ancient and medieval thought. If correct, their positions suggest that one can adopt the subjective turn and remain true to the tradition. This is a timely question. The common good of our polity encounters a situation in which many believe that there is no objective reality to which human minds and wills ought to conform, a conclusion that suggests we can define and construct reality. In light of this, the notion of a natural or objective reality to which human beings ought to conform becomes particularly vital. Should we, then, adopt the modern turn to subjectivity and argue for objective truth and moral order on its basis, or reject the subjective turn as part of the problem and return to an earlier approach that grounds these things in nature or some other external reality? Critics of modern subjectivity argue that the modern turn to subjectivity must be abandoned because it is the very source of the nominalism that threatens to undermine liberal democracy. Others argue, however, that subjectivity itself logically leads to the recognition of an objective reality beyond the mind of the individual. Edited by R. J. Snell and Steven F. McGuire, this collection will be of particular interest to intellectual historians, political philosophers, theologians, and philosophers.
All Thoughts Are Equal is both an introduction to the work of French philosopher François Laruelle and an exercise in nonhuman thinking. For Laruelle, standard forms of philosophy continue to dominate our models of what counts as exemplary thought and knowledge. By contrast, what Laruelle calls his “non-standard” approach attempts to bring democracy into thought, because all forms of thinking—including the nonhuman—are equal. John Ó Maoilearca examines how philosophy might appear when viewed with non-philosophical and nonhuman eyes. He does so by refusing to explain Laruelle through orthodox philosophy, opting instead to follow the structure of a film (Lars von Trier’s documentary The Five Obstructions) as an example of the non-standard method. Von Trier’s film is a meditation on the creative limits set by film, both technologically and aesthetically, and how these limits can push our experience of film—and of ourselves—beyond what is normally deemed “the perfect human.” All Thoughts Are Equal adopts film’s constraints in its own experiment by showing how Laruelle’s radically new style of philosophy is best presented through our most nonhuman form of thought—that found in cinema.
In assessing the current state of feminism and gender studies, whether on a theoretical or a practical level, it has become increasingly challenging to avoid the conclusion that these fields are in a state of disarray. Indeed, feminist and gender studies discussions are beset with persistent splits and disagreements. This reader suggests that returning to, and placing centre-stage, the role of philosophy, especially critical realist philosophy of science, is invaluable for efforts that seek to overcome or mitigate the uncertainty and acrimony that have resulted from this situation. In particular, it claims that the dialectical logic that runs through critical realist philosophy is ideally suited to advancing feminist and gender studies discussions about broad ontological and epistemological questions and considerations, intersectionality, and methodology, methods, and empirical research. By bringing together four new and eight existing writings this reader provides both a focal point for renewed discussions about the potential and actual contributions of critical realist philosophy to feminism and gender studies and a timely contribution to these discussions.
Several debates of the last years within the research field of contemporary realism – known under titles such as "New Realism," "Continental Realism," or "Speculative Materialism" – have shown that science is not systematically the ultimate measure of truth and reality. This does not mean that we should abandon the notions of truth or objectivity all together, as has been posited repeatedly within certain currents of twentieth century philosophy. However, within the research field of contemporary realism, the concept of objectivity itself has not been adequately refined. What is objective is supposed to be true outside a subject’s biases, interpretations and opinions, having truth conditions that are met by the way the world is. The volume combines articles of internationally outstanding authors who have published on either Idealism, Epistemic Relativism, or Realism and often locate themselves within one of these divergent schools of thought. As such, the volume focuses on these traditions with the aim of clarifying what the concept objectivity nowadays stands for within contemporary ontology and epistemology beyond the analytic-continental divide. With articles from: Jocelyn Benoist, Ray Brassier, G. Anthony Bruno, Dominik Finkelde, Markus Gabriel, Deborah Goldgaber, Iain Hamilton Grant, Graham Harman, Johannes Hübner, Andrea Kern, Anton F. Koch, Martin Kusch, Paul M. Livingston, Paul Redding, Sebastian Rödl, Dieter Sturma.
When, if ever, is it permissible to afford special consideration to friends and family? How can we strive to be objective in our thinking, and is this always a feasible or appropriate aim? This book examines the categories of impartiality and objectivity by showing how they frame certain debates in epistemology, moral psychology, and metaethics, arguing that many traditional conceptions of objectivity fail to capture what is important to our identities as knowers, social beings, and moral agents. A new thesis of ‘perspectival realism’ is offered as a critique of strong objectivity, but in a way that avoids radical subjectivism or relativism. Locally-situated identities can provide their own criteria of epistemic and moral justification, and we may aspire to be impartial in a way that need not sacrifice particular perspectives and relationships. Arguments throughout the book draw heavily on resources from classical Chinese philosophy, and significant attention is given to applications of arguments to concrete issues in applied ethics, cross-cultural anthropology, and political science.