A recent commentary defends 1) the concept of 'brain arrest' to explain what brain death is, and 2) the concept that death occurs at 2–5 minutes after absent circulation. I suggest that both these claims are flawed. Brain arrest is said to threaten life, and lead to death by causing a secondary respiratory then cardiac arrest. It is further claimed that ventilation only interrupts this way that brain arrest leads to death. These statements imply that brain arrest is not death (...) itself. Brain death is a devastating state that leads to death when intensive care, which replaces some of the brain's vital functions such as breathing, is withdrawn and circulation stops resulting in irreversible loss of integration of the organism. Circulatory death is said to occur at 2–5 minutes after absent circulation because, in the context of DCD, the intent is to not attempt reversal of the absent circulation. No defense of this weak construal of irreversible loss of circulation is given. This means that paents in identical physiologic states are dead (in the DCD context) or alive (in the resuscitation context); the current state of death (at 2–5 minutes) is contingent on a future event (whether there will be resuscitation) suggesting backward causation; and the commonly used meaning of irreversible as 'not capable of being reversed' is abandoned. The literature supporting the claim that autoresuscitation does not occur in the context of no cardiopulmonary resuscitation is shown to be very limited. Several cases of autoresuscitation are summarized, suggesting that the claim that these cases are not applicable to the current debate may be premature. I suggest that brain dead and DCD donors are not dead; whether organs can be harvested before death from these patients whose prognosis is death should be debated urgently. (shrink)

This paper examines the affective disorders plaguing many young people and the problem of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder in particular. It aims to define the limits of the critique of British educationalist Sir Ken Robinson in terms of his philosophy of ‘creativity’ through a consideration of the ideas of French philosopher Bernard Stiegler, especially the notions of ‘industrial temporal objects’ and stupidity. It makes the case for adopting elements of each distinct research paradigm as a prolegomena to forging a social critique (...) of capitalist-dominated, market-led educational institutions. The former, it will be seen, identifies some of the problems facing teachers in terms of the use and application of technology, the false divide between arts and the humanities, but falls short of explaining the root of the structural and psychic malaise in neo-liberal regimes regarding classroom breakdown in general. The latter, despite the apocalyptic tone of some his pronouncements provides an update and radicalization of Deleuze’s societies of control thesis in terms of what Stiegler designates ‘uncontrollable societies’. Stiegler, it will be seen, presents a critique of technology that is all the more pressing in an age in which the loss of expectation in the lives of young people can lead to a corresponding fall off or destruction in ‘deep attention’. I want to test the hyperbole of Stiegler’s assertion that young people today suffer from a ‘colossal’ attention deficit disorder of unprecedented scale and magnitude. (shrink)

This paper sets out to analyze how causation works by focusing on biology, as represented by epidemiology and by scientific information on how the body works (“physiology”). It starts by exploring the specificity of evolved physiological systems, in which evolutionary, developmental and proximal causes all fit together, and the concept of function is meaningful; in contrast, this structure does not apply in epidemiology (or outside biology). Using these two contrasting branches of biology, I examine the role both of mechanism and (...) of difference making in causation. I find that causation necessarily involves both mechanism and difference making, and that they play complementary roles. Both are seen as ontologically necessary, even if the evidence is not always available for both. Influential monist accounts that focus on one of these, at the expense of ignoring the other, are found to be inadequate on these and on other grounds. Recent attempts to combine them are reviewed, notably that of Russo and Williamson (Int Stud Philos Sci 21:157–170, 2007), and it is argued that their epistemic view requires there to be a source of the different types of evidence that a rational agent would consider, and that this source must be ontic. I then analyze how causal relationships work in evolved physiological systems and in those studied by epidemiology, with a particular focus on how mechanism interacts with input. Finally, I consider this concept of causation from the perspective of everyday language, and of its possible generalisability outside biology. (shrink)

In this experimental piece of writing I want to think about the pedagogy of contact and the plight of the hikikomori or social recluse in Japan. I am interested in exploring how the hikikomori practices a kind of contactlessness or what I will call a deadly ipseity of desire. What does it mean to resist contact, to be without contact, to be without desire? What does it mean to risk contact, to risk being tactile with the other, to risk affirming (...) one’s desires? I want to generate a discussion about what has happened to desire, to its promise and possibility and why it is so difficult to anticipate or forecast what is to come. For me the BwO of hikikomori is the ruin of desire, the collapse of desire, a disaster of desire. I am pursuing a line of thought which highlights the loss of the possibility of processual schizophrenic breakthrough and in its place the becoming-autistic of the self, the perilous breakdown of the self. (shrink)

At first glance a Russian anarchist’s revolutionary address to the youth of his day made in the late 19th century and the address to youth made by a contemporary French philosopher may appear to have little in common as their context and era are ostensibly very different. How would Petr Kropotkin’s address be understood in our time? Are Kropotkin’s concerns the same as those raised by Bernard Stiegler? Could Kropotkin speak of universal concerns, a sense of elevation and sublimation not (...) governed, undermined or circumvented by digital relations, calculation or algorithmic determination? I find a mutual concern with the coming into maturity of youth, but, I am concerned that as we are passing through an epochal and revolutionary transformation driven by digital and cognitive capitalism and in our toxic and crisis-ridden milieu, Kropotkin’s rhetoric would inevitably fall on deaf ears? Is his rhetoric on revolution anachronistic? How would his rhetoric be crafted for a youth seemingly indifferent to the plight of fellow brethren? Is it conceivable that the humanist-inflected prospects of youth so vaunted by Kropotkin have now been devastated by the inhuman and nihilistic tendencies of the so-called miscreant, ‘blank generation’ as described by Stiegler? True, while it is difficult to calibrate the vision of youth affirmed in Kropotkin with the fear of youth in Stiegler, and, despite differences in episteme, tradition and political orientation, both thinkers I think are concerned with the trials and tribulations of youth and both hold out the prospect of the not-yet of youth, of the coming into being of the maturity of youth, of Aufklärung. It is this shared focus I wish to examine further. (shrink)

Drawing on an array of sources, from Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy through to non-philosophy, this paper concerns itself with the manifestation of the concepts of hope and despair in utopian thought and continental philosophy and the experience of hopelessness, despair and exhaustion in the contemporary moment. I aim to demonstrate such pressing concerns through a comparison of Japanese philosopher Kojin Karatani and Japanese fiction writer Ryū Murakami with the American science fiction-thriller film directed by Michael Bay, The Island. What is (...) explored in these works is the dialectic of exhaustion and possibility. The focus of the paper is on the fecund moment inhering in the incapacity of thought to think the possibility of utopia. In terms of the philosophy of education, this hones in on the perceived lack of vision of such a possibility among youth and the failure of the university qua institution to proffer an alternative world to its cohort. To demon... (shrink)

Brain death is accepted in most countries as death. The rationales to explain why brain death is death are surprisingly problematic. The standard rationale that in brain death there has been loss of integrative unity of the organism has been shown to be false, and a better rationale has not been clearly articulated. Recent expert defences of the brain death concept are examined in this paper, and are suggested to be inadequate. I argue that, ironically, these defences demonstrate the lack (...) of a defensible rationale for why brain death should be accepted as death itself. If brain death is death, a conceptual rationale for brain death being equivalent to death should be clarified, and this should be done urgently. (shrink)

My intention is to consider Bernard Stiegler’s concept of ‘journeys of knowledge’. Open Humanities Press, 2020) and to explore how one might rethink the knowledge-creating potentialities of information itself. This has become all the more apparent in the time of lockdowns, physical distancing during the pandemic but the primary purpose of the paper is to look at the distinction between knowledge/information and the role of the teacher in using technology pharmacologically to safeguard the savoirs and to stem the proletarianization of (...) knowledge or stupidity as such. The point is that the pandemic is bringing home the question of the role of the teacher, the role of the school and the necessity of the co-production and co-creation of knowledge. It seems essential to understand the concept of ‘journeys of knowledge’ in the time of the pandemic as students are left at home without a journey to voyage upon. As such, there is a lack of futurally-bound collective protentions, an absence of any vision projection into the future. What is there in the concept of ‘journeys of knowledge’ that demonstrates how to use the Internet in bifurcatory ways, to produce what Stiegler calls negentropic knowledge or new forms of knowledge, or what I want to designate as experiments with truth-telling. What does it mean to produce negentropic knowledge without the teacher to guide, curate and care? With the above in mind, and by writing out of the wound of thinking, it is by rethinking the concept of curation in a different way that it is hoped one can contribute to educational research to produce unheard-of bifurcations of knowledge, to invoke Deleuze’s sense of the incomprehensible and Stiegler’s sense of the impossible, the improbable and the incalculable in educational concerns, to pave a path out of the aporia of the present—a present which is without decision and epoch. (shrink)

According to international scientific medical consensus, death is a biological, unidirectional, ontological state of an organism, the event that separates the process of dying from the process of disintegration. Death is not merely a social contrivance or a normative concept; it is a scientific reality. Using this paradigm, the international consensus is that, regardless of context, death is operationally defined as “the permanent loss of the capacity for consciousness and all brainstem function. This may result from permanent cessation of circulation (...) or catastrophic brain injury. In the context of death determination, ‘permanent’ refers to loss of function that cannot resume spontaneously and will not be restored through intervention.” The word “permanent” replaces “irreversible” (used in the United States’ 1980 Uniform Declaration of Death Act) in this new definition, arguably invented to allow donation after circulatory determination of death (DCDD) while still complying with the dead donor rule. I will show that this invention fails, for at least four reasons. (shrink)

Ariane Lewis reviewed medicolegal challenges to Death by Neurologic Criteria (DNC) in the United Kingdom in order to identify and discuss the ethical issues raised (Lewis 2024). Here I briefly clar...

Building upon previous research on the therapeutic object, specifically the objet re-petit-ive abc, which draws from Lacan, Winnicott, and Guattari, I explore the generation, contribution, and erosion of knowledge in the so-called smart city. I will investigate how digital pedagogical objects, functioning as transitional objects, can serve as therapeutic purposes both within and outside institutional settings. I examine the notions of the dérive and psychogeography and compare them with Bernard Stiegler’s concept of the “journey of knowledge” and then delve into (...) the curation of “negentropic forms of knowledge” and the mnemonic technique of the dérive. Taking ecological and ecosophical perspectives into account, I consider mnemonic techniques as a means to critically reflect upon the urban landscape and its transformation into a technical milieu. My overall goal is to contemplate the possibility of a Stieglerian and/or Guattarian détournement (philosophical hijacking) of the smart city. (shrink)

Here, I wish to pursue an analysis of the potential link between the thinkers Félix Guattari and Bernard Stiegler as I see in both thinkers a profound rumination of the question of therapeutic care and curation at the institutional level. My concern is with the institutional object and its deadly repetitions. By and through agitating the coefficient of transversality, my argument is that this might problematize the dyadic and sometimes dysfunctional transindividual relationships between doctor and patient, teacher and pupil. My (...) concern is with the passage from the machinic objet petit ‘a’ in Lacan to Winnicott’s transitional object (objet petit ‘b’), and then beyond their functions to the institutional object itself which Guattari idiosyncratically calls the objet petit ‘c’. The rationale behind this move is to consider how the mediating third object needs to be recast in light of the poisonous and addictive nature of transitional objects such as smartphone technology. My point is that we must rethink the pharmacological possibility of the incorporation of the transitional object at the institutional level, which is to say, to understand the relationship between institutional objects such as the therapeutic club and the transitional object (digital technologies) in order to appreciate critically the toxic effects of the latter. Yet we also must understand the pharmacological or therapeutic aspects of the transitional object in itself, which is to say to understand its precise curative usage at the institutional level. (shrink)

In what follows I distinguish «postmodern animism» from my preferred term «postmedia animism», which I propose is a better term to express a minor, virtual, contrarian art and media. In the time of planetary trauma, ecological devastation and collapse, this term will serve as a heuristic concept to trace the passage from pandemic, panic, catastrophe and crisis to the series pandemonium, delirium and the carnivalesque. My gambit is to invoke a rebellious and affirmative Yōkai imaginary (妖怪, ghost, phantom, strange apparition) (...) in order to contest passive forms of «transcendental narcissism» or «transcendental miserabilism».This we shall designate s an aesthetics of existence. In particular, I will analyse the relationship between natural disasters and politics within the Japanese imagination through reference to Namazu-e (鯰絵, woodblock prints depicting catfish), and their political effects in the aftermath of the earthquake of October 1855 (安政江戸地震, Ansei Edo Jishin) in the Edo period of Japanese history (FIG 1). My intention is to show that this historic art form, which grew out of trauma, demonstrates a fabulatory, dissensual and political aesthetics of resistance and creativity. It is an imaginary which appears conspicuously absent in our contemporary moment. (shrink)

In the Journal of Medical Ethics, Joffe et al recently published an article titled “What do patients value in their hospital care? An empirical perspective on autonomy centred bioethics”.1 This empirical study evaluates whether patients’ willingness to recommend their hospital to others is more strongly associated with their belief that they were treated with respect and dignity than with their belief that they had an adequate say in their treatment.* Joffe et al go on to suggest that confirmation (...) of these empirical hypotheses would constitute a prescription for elevating the principle of respect for persons to the level that the principle of respect for autonomy currently enjoys in our model of the ideal patient–physician relationship .1 In other words, they suggest that by some means empirical findings could influence our ranking of the normative principles. Earlier in the article, they make an even stronger claim about the influence of empirical data on our acceptance of normative principles. They suggest that, if it were demonstrated empirically that some patients prefer to delegate medical decisions to health care professionals, a serious challenge would be levied against the normative assumptions underlying the principle of respect for autonomy, at least under the mandatory autonomy view, which holds that patients not only have a right but also an obligation to act autonomously .1 In the light of many recent empirical studies challenging the centrality of patient autonomy and shared decision making in bioethical theory, I think it is instructive to evaluate the means by which empirical findings, like those offered in Joffe et al, strengthen or weaken our arguments for ethical principles. In particular, I would be interested in how these authors propose that their data led them to the normative conclusions they reached.In the last …. (shrink)

Motivated by Lord Joffe’s Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill, but with one eye on any possible future legislation, I consider the justifications that might be offered for limiting assistance in dying to those who are suffering unbearably from terminal illness. I argue that the terminal illness criterion and the unbearable suffering criterion are not morally defensible separately: that a person need be neither terminally ill (or ill at all), nor suffering unbearably (or suffering at all) to have (...) a right to assisted dying. Indeed: I shall suggest that the unbearable suffering criterion undermines the Bill (or any proposal like it) wholesale. On the other hand, the criteria taken together are defensible, and this defence would be built on a concern for the protection of the vulnerable. However, I also claim that this implies that the law might justifiably—and maybe even properly—aim to prevent a person from gaining access to that to which they have a serious moral right. This seems paradoxical, and, towards the end of the paper, I seek to tease apart the paradox. (shrink)

Since its introduction in 1987, Benjamin Freedman’s principle of clinical equipoise has enjoyed widespread uptake in bioethics discourse. Recent years, however, have witnessed a growing consensus that the principle is fundamentally flawed. One of the most vocal critics has undoubtedly been Franklin Miller. In a 2008 paper, Steven Joffe and Miller build on this critical work, offering a new conception of clinical research ethics based on science, taking what they call a “scientific orientation” toward the ethics of clinical research. (...) Though there is much to recommend Joffe and Miller’s scientifically oriented conception of clinical research ethics, I believe that both the critical and constructive projects suffer from the same basic mistake: inattention to context. The internal norms of science cannot be fully specified, let alone satisfied, independently of contextual (external) factors that only come into view when we are attentive to the particular context of that form of inquiry. (shrink)

In this issue of the Hastings Center Report, Moti Gorin, Steven Joffe, Neal Dickert, and Scott Halpern offer a comprehensive defense of the use of nudging techniques in the clinical context, with the aim of promoting the best interests of patients. Their argument is built on three important claims: Nudging is ubiquitous and inescapable in clinical choice situations, and there is no neutral way of informing patients about their treatment choices; many patients do not have authentic preferences concerning their (...) treatment choices, and those that do can easily resist nudging; and, finally, since many people lack authentic preferences and those that do can still act on their preferences, nudging in the patients’ best interest is justified. I agree with the authors that if these three claims stand up to scrutiny, then they will provide a justification for many types of clinical nudging. I am, however, skeptical as to whether the claims can be sustained, despite the valiant efforts of Gorin and colleagues. (shrink)

The classification of preserved hypothalamic activity in brain death and brainstem death as functional or non-functional has become a subject of debate. While proponents of the neurological criterion claim that these activities lack functional significance (Shemie et al. 2014), Nair-Collins and Joffe (2023) argue for their functional physiological role. However, the interpretation of the term "function" within the medico-legal framework, where death is characterized by the irreversible cessation of all brain functions, remains unclear. -/- My intention here is not (...) to engage in a debate over the validity of different viewpoints regarding the functional significance of preserved activities in the hypothalamus or the heart. Rather, I aim to highlight the critical importance of exploring and defining the concept of function in medicine, which currently lacks clarity. My point is that, whatever our position in the brain death debate, reaching a consensus on this conceptual matter would minimize misunderstandings and establish a robust foundation for further insightful analysis. (shrink)

Salafism is one of the most important issues of the last few centuries. There are intense discussions on the issues related to Salafism, its emergence, how it was first used by whom and in what sense. Discussions about Salafism are sometimes experienced in relation to whether this concept corresponds to a mentality or to a sect, and sometimes this phenomenon is brought up in relation to a number of important names that have taken place in the history of Islamic thought. (...) Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328) emerges as the most frequently mentioned name in this context. Therefore, in this article, we have examined how Salafism/Salafiyya concept is used in the works of Ibn Taymiyya who is accepted as the theorist and the most powerful representative of Salafism. We have discussed the issue in a comprehensive manner by including the concept of Salaf, which is one of the most used concepts of Ibn Taymiyya. When we consider Ibn Taymiyya's use of the concepts of Salaf and Salafiyya, the concept of Salaf is seen to be used much more than the concept of Salafiyya. Thus, the concept of Salaf in the thought of Ibn Taymiyya refers to the Islamic society that lived in the early centuries and the conception of religion revealed by this society. The concept of Salafiyya, however, appears to have been used in a way that reflects a mentality and a way of thinking rather than a particular school or sect.Summary: Sects are human made structures that emerged with the institutionalization of differentiations in the conception of religion. The production of systematic theology and fiqh, the formation of its own literature, its dissemination and dissociation from other systems of thought are the most important turning points for the emergence of sects. One of the most important variables that determine the formation process of sects is the mentality of sect. It is known that the sects come into the realm of existence when the mindsets with the implicit reference system become visible. Therefore, there is a mentality on which every sect is based, but not every mentality has come to the point of being a sect. While some mentalities have influenced different sects in different shades, some of them have been confronted with only one sect.In fact, Salafism is one of the ways of thinking which is a mindset and it is a subject of important debates about whether it is a sect. Although the use of salafiyya is seen in the literature in the past, the fact that Salafism felt its existence as a kind of religion or mentality was realized in the 18th and 19th centuries. It is also known that the discussions about the definition of Salafism have started since these periods. From the second half of the 20th century, Salafism began to take a place in the agenda of both the Islamic world and the West. This has naturally led to efforts to define Salafism. Thus, Salafism is subjected to attempts to identify and associate with structures, such as denomination, ideology, religious understanding and mentality. In this direction, it is seen that Salafism is tried to be defined by establishing close link with the structures, such as Ahl al-Sunnah, Ahl-i Hadith, Hanbalism and Wahhabism or by reducing them directly to one of these structures. Thus, Salafism is sometimes backed up to the early stages of Islamic thought and sometimes associated with multilayered structures, such as the Ahl al-Sunnah, which embodies many political-mythic and fiqh structures.In line with the efforts of defining Salafism, it is also seen that many names that have had a say in classical Islamic thought or have been mentioned in modern times have been brought to the agenda. In addition to the names, such as Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Ibn Taymiyya, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, the names of Emir al-Saneyani, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, Muhammad al-Shawkani, Shaykh Abdulaziz ibn Baz and Muhammad Nasir al-din al-Albani are frequently mentioned in this process. It should be noted that there is a special place of Ibn Taymiyya among these names. Ibn Taymiyya took the place of both in history of Islamic thought and Ahl al-Hadith-Hanbalite tradition and made a name for himself in the context of many subjects. It is claimed that Ibn Taymiyya, who was the theorist of the Hanbalite conception of religion, and the missionary of the New Hanbalism, was also the founding figure and the most important representative of Salafism. In modern times, most of those who declare ideas about Salafism place Ibn Taymiyya at the center of Salafism and present him as the founding name of this mentality. However, the question of what kind of relationship between the mentality called Salafism and Ibn Taymiyya's world of thought and religion is not the subject of academic studies. However, the works of Ibn Taymiyya, who is an author of a very velocity, should be analyzed from this point of view and all kinds of words about Ibn Taymiyya-Salafism relationship should be left behind this effort. Our study, which aims to fulfill this gap, was designed to explain topics, such as whether the concept of salafiyya was used in the works of Ibn Taymiyya, whether and how the past was used, and the extent to which the meaning attributed to the salafiyya coincided with the current Salafism. Understanding of the concept of the salafiyya in the works of Ibn Taymiyya depends on the explanation of how the term salaf was derived and used by Ibn Taymiyya. When the works of Ibn Taymiyya are scanned, it is seen that he used the word salaf much more than the word salafiyya. In fact, the word of salafiyya, which Ibn Taymiyya has rarely included, has been placed in some places in a way that refers to the meaning field of the word salaf. When we consider the use of the word salaf in the works of Ibn Taymiyya, we first see the generations who lived in the early historical periods of Islamic thought and the conception of religion which these generations have revealed. Other names that have taken place in the history of Islamic thought have similar opinions about the generation of the predecessors and the religious understanding of this generation. In other words, according to the general opinion of the predecessor, especially the first three centuries came to mind. However, it is seen that Ibn Taymiyya made some attempts to periodize both the generation of the predecessors and to define the understanding of religion of this generation. Nevertheless, Ibn Taymiyya could not provide a clear picture on this issue, and he occasionally contradicted his findings regarding his involvement in the predecessor generation. Nevertheless, he generally adopted generalizations and an attitude to limit the meaning of the predecessor to the first generations. The word salafiyya, which Ibn Taymiyya placed on the meaning of the word salaf, is used less compared to the word salaf and is given in more complete terms. This indicates that the main factor that influenced Ibn Taymiyya's salafi thought was salaf, not salafiyya as a systematic structure. These findings make it necessary to reconsider the claims of Salafism being a sect and it is being represented at the time of Ibn Taymiyya. (shrink)

Els estudis sobre la filosofia de Wittgenstein darrerament han posat de manifest la potència del seu pensament sobre qüestions morals, estètiques i, fins i tot, polítiques, a més dels problemes lògics, lingüístics o epistemològics que va plantejar. Les qüestions estètiques van ocupar bona part del seu treball en filosofia i, com mostren els treballs recollits en aquest volum, la vinculació entre el pensament filosòfic de Wittgenstein, les qüestions estètiques i la seua pròpia biografia és tan estreta que cal considerar-la com (...) un dels pòrtics d’entrada que ens permeten endinsar-nos en l’univers de la filosofia wittgensteiniana. (shrink)

We show that the variety of n -dimensional weakly higher order cylindric algebras, introduced in Németi [9], [8], is finitely axiomatizable when n > 2. Our result implies that in certain non-well-founded set theories the finitization problem of algebraic logic admits a positive solution; and it shows that this variety is a good candidate for being the cylindric algebra theoretic counterpart of Tarski’s quasi-projective relation algebras.

We do not usually draw conclusions and summarize the results of our round table meetings. The speakers share their ideas, divergent viewpoints are discussed, and a certain level of approach to the problems under discussion is formulated. Therefore, today I will also not attempt to draw a conclusion.

The concept of truth is a fundamental category in the theory of knowledge and philosophy in general. Other philosophical categories presuppose the concept of truth as their content or as the goal of investigatory inquiry. Philosophy begins historically with rejection of any form of opinion in the name of truth and with the counterposing of what truly exists to the variety of appearance. Thus was born theoretical thought, for which in antiquity philosophy was a synonym.

SummaryIf you know you can recognise positive instances of a property, can you use this knowledge so as to be able to recognise also its negative instances? This is the question to be adressed.

Spatial evolutionary game theory explains how cooperative traits can survive the intense competition in biological systems. If the spatial distribution allows cooperators to interact with each other frequently, the benefits of cooperation will outweigh the losses due to exploitation by selfish organisms. However, for a cooperative behavior to get established in a system, it needs to be found initially in a sufficiently large cluster to allow a high frequency of intracooperator interactions. Since mutations are rare events, this poses the question (...) of how cooperation can arise in a biological system in the first place. We present a simple model which captures two concepts from genetics that can explain how evolution overcomes the emergence problem. The first concept is, often in nature, a gene may not express its phenotype except under specific environmental conditions, rendering it to be a “silent” gene. The second key idea is that a neutral gene, one that does not harm or improve an organism’s survival chances, can still spread through a population if it is physically near to another gene that is positively selected. Through these two ideas, our model offers a possible solution to the fundamental problem of emergence of cooperation in biological systems. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “What Can the Global Observer Know?” by Diana Gasparyan. Upshot: I introduce some distinctions that I hold to be useful for understanding the global observer problem and then sketch a hypothetical scenario that suggests the existence of an observer that is as good as a global one.

It is a huge pleasure to engage with Prof. Shaw’s careful and close reading of my article. Though almost a decade old, many of the issues are becoming only more relevant as it seems that Roe v Wade will be overruled in the U.S. and travel for abortion will become a sad reality.1 I appreciate how deeply Prof. Shaw interacts with my article and am full of praise for his work, but given the small space allocated here I only focus (...) on our few places of disagreement. (shrink)

In current philosophical literature we encounter many contradictions, in particular, numerous difficulties and conflicts concerned with differentiation between the logical and ontological approaches to defining the category of matter; with an adequate interpretation of the categories of essence, substance, structure, and quality; with certain problems in the dialectics of practice and theory; and so forth. In this article, I shall consider the problem of being and structure. A correct understanding of this problem presumes, above all, a fundamental distinction between the (...) basic questions of epistemology, i.e., the question of the independence of being from consciousness, and the ontological characteristics of being. (shrink)

My discussion in previous chapters was limited to the origin of Chinese culture and its fundamental spirit exhibited in the process of historical development. In what follows, I am going to discuss the spirit of Chinese culture in specific areas such as philosophy of nature, theory of human nature, ideals of moral life, the world of daily living, the world of ideal personalities, and the spirit of art and religion. The center of discussion will be a comparison between Chinese and (...) Western philosophy and culture. Therefore, before discussing Chinese cosmologies, I am going to present the cosmologies in the West as a preparation for comparison. Nevertheless, the main task of this chapter is not a special treatise on the natural sciences and philosophies of China and the West. Instead, my focus is on the differences between ideas of nature, their values and fundamental spirit. I hope my readers understand this point first. (shrink)

Many methods are conceivable for resolution of the difficulties arising when motion is depicted in the logic of concepts. We shall set forth some of these methods, presenting them within the framework of the discussion in which V. I. Sviderskii, B. A. Dragun, and I. S. Narskii have already participated. In our opinion, attention must be directed primarily to the fact that in resolving the contradictions in the presentation of motion by means of ideal mathematical abstractions, it is impossible to (...) base ourselves directly upon that which is occurring in the sphere of the things which we perceive with our senses. It is particularly when one forgets this fact that contradictory situations usually result. However, this does not at all mean that these data are of little value in treating of motion. Furthermore, the refinement of the meaning of the concepts in terms of which motion is described, taken together with the requirement that there be a rigorous differentiation between theories based on ideal abstractions and theories based on concepts derived from the sphere of empirical existence, may lead to the resolution of Zeno's paradoxes. (shrink)

The theme "Dostoevsky and Nietzsche" is one of the most important for understanding the meaning of the abrupt changes that took place in European philosophy and culture at the turn of the nineteenth century. This epoch is still a puzzle: it was a flourishing period for the creative powers of European humanity and at the same time the beginning of the tragic "breakdown" of history that gave birth to two world wars and unprecedented calamities, the consequences of which Europe has (...) been unable to overcome, as shown by the uninterrupted decline of traditional culture, which began at the end of World War II and still continues today. In this epoch, as in the eighteenth century, which culminated in the Great French Revolution, philosophy came out of the study onto the street and became a practical force that steadily undermines the existing order of things; in a certain sense it was precisely philosophy that called forth the catastrophic events of the first half of the twentieth century, which had as never before a metaphysical subtext. At the center of the upheaval that engulfed absolutely all forms of European civilization and culminated, at the beginning of the twentieth century, with the rise of nonclassical science, "nonclassical" art, and "nonclassical" philosophy, was the problem of man, his essence, the meaning of his existence, and the problem of man's relations with society, the world, and the Absolute. It is no coincidence that M. Scheler used the term "anthropological turn" to describe the changes that occurred in philosophy in this epoch; what had long been implicit in philosophy and art and in paradoxical fashion had become apparent even in the new scientific theories, was now made clear: man is not a tiny "atom" in boundless and alien being, but the starting point for all suppositions, the primary field of meanings from which any philosophical or scientific "questioning" must depart. (shrink)