Logical pluralism is the view that there is more than one correct logic. In this article, I explore what logical pluralism is, and what it entails, by: (i) distinguishing clearly between relativism about a particular domain and pluralism about that domain; (ii) distinguishing between a number of forms logical pluralism might take; (iii) attempting to distinguish between those versions of pluralism that are clearly true and those that are might be controversial; and (iv) surveying three prominent attempts to argue for (...) logical pluralism and evaluating them along the criteria provided by (ii) and (iii). (shrink)

The Vedanta of conciousness : transcendence, enlightenment and everyday life -- The alienated self and the Kabbala of transformation -- The Zen of creativity and the critique of the discursive intellect -- The Tao of love and unconditionality in commitment -- The yoga of action and effortless efficiency -- The nous of perception and the re-enchantment of the tree of life -- The gnosis of freedom and the Fana of fulfilment.

This enjoyable book presents a potpourri of paradoxes with the purpose of showing how they connect to serious philosophical issues. The main paradoxes are Zeno's, the sorites, Newcomb's problem, the paradoxes of confirmation, the surprise examination, and the paradoxes of self-reference. A final chapter defends the assumption that contradictions are unacceptable and an appendix throws in sixteen minor paradoxes. Along the way, R. M. Sainsbury peppers the reader with helpful queries and provocative asides.

The evidence for a panhuman, cognitively rooted, essence-based concept of basic natural kind and for certain prototypical phenomenal forms is increasingly compelling, but there remain doubts as to whether these two elements combine with a principle of taxonomy to form a unified, domain-specific theory in the way Atran claims. The appropriateness of the notion of meme can also be questioned, as can the assertion that humans are always grouped in ethnobiological classifications in unambiguous contrast to other animals.

Art and the Form of Life takes a classic theme—philosophy as the art of living—and gives it a contemporary twist. The book examines a series of watershed moments in artistic practice alongside philosophers’ most enduring questions about the way we live. Coupling Tino Sehgal with Wittgenstein, cave art with Foucault, Stanley Kubrick with Nietzsche, and the Bauhaus with Walter Benjamin, the book animates the idea that life is literally ours to make. It reflects on universal themes that connect the long (...) histories of art and philosophy, and it does so using a contemporary approach. Drawing on great philosophical works, it argues that life practiced as an art form affords an experience of meaning, in the sense that it is engaging, creative, and participatory. It thus effects a fundamental renewal of experience. (shrink)

First Published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This paper explores the semiotic status of algebraic variables. To do that we build on a structuralist and post-structuralist train of thought going from Mauss and L vi-Strauss to Baudrillard and Derrida. We import these authors' semiotic thinking from the register of indigenous concepts (such as mana), and apply it to the register of algebra via a concrete case study of generating functions. The purpose of this experiment is to provide a philosophical language that can explore the openness of mathematical (...) signs to reinterpretation, and bridge some barriers between philosophy of mathematics and critical approaches to knowledge. (shrink)

Suppose you have an infinite past. If you had banked the spare dollar you have always had, then the interest would have made you rich by now. Your procrastination is inexcusable. But what should you have done? At any time at which you invest the dollar you would regret not investing it earlier. Satisficers can solve prospective puzzles involving infinite choice but cannot solve this retrospective puzzle about regret. A moral version of the puzzle suggests that there can be inevitable (...) moral failure. It does so without appeal to moral luck, moral dilemmas or original sin. (shrink)

The current spread of coronavirus has caught our modern world by surprise, which leads to widespread panic, fear and confusion. However, if we view the unfolding of these events from a scientific historical perspective of past human evolution, we may discover the reoccurring patterns of the environmental conditions that give rise to such epidemics. Hence, we can figure out better methods to prepare and react to the infectious agents that spread diseases that have shaped the course of human history before. (...) Here, I propose a holistic view of human evolution, with an interdisciplinary approach that studies how cyclic variation in solar UV energy affects the evolution of viruses and shapes the symbiotic dynamics of human life on earth. (shrink)

During World War I, in response to substantial advancements in wartime surveillance, it became a common practice to rely on “vision specialists” to devise effective methods of fooling the enemy. These methods, collectively referred to now as camouflage, were designed by so-called camoufleurs, men who in civilian life had been trained as artists, graphic designers, architects, and theatre scenographers. Among the techniques they employed were perspective-based spatial distortions, of the sort that are also frequently used in theatrical set design, trompe (...) l’oeil paintings, and wildlife displays. This paper describes these methods, explains how they were intended to work, and discusses their effectiveness. (shrink)

Fundamental science is rapidly approaching its asymptote because it has been so successful. We already have a “theory of everything, that matters to the human race.” The laws of chemistry and physics cannot be replaced. Although most scientists react to this as though it were religious blasphemy, the proof is in our record. Since the discovery of quantum mechanics, no fundamental science of any significance to other sciences has appeared—in 70 years and with, perhaps, expenditures of$ 0.5 trillion. In contrast, (...) engineering and applied sciences have taken over the fundamental role, insofar as it is their advances from electric lights to cars, to planes, to computers that affect all science and all citizens. The reductionist model of approaching reality has been discredited. The most visible arena for the victory of the new integrationist approaches is in the reemergence of integrative medicine, which includes high-tech medicine in the larger body-mind-spirit, or whole person approach. (shrink)

In recent years, the sharing economy has attracted considerable attention, both scholarly and popular, relating to its capacity to enforce or undermine extant economic conventions. However, the process through which technological developments can effectively have this outcome of altering extant conventions on what is morally acceptable or desirable is still unclear. In this paper, we draw on the work of Boltanski and Thévenot and the notion of agencement to investigate the moral and performative dimension of controversies related to the SE. (...) The research stems from a qualitative case-based study of the controversy following Uber’s implementation in Montréal’s taxi market. We contribute to the literature on the SE through an empirical study of the moral debates entailed in the unfolding in situ of a SE device. We also add to the literature using the ‘Orders of Worth’ framework by showing how a compromise is solidified. We find that beyond discursive strategies, it is the concrete recomposition of laws, conventions, devices, persons, etc. that harmonised different definitions of the common good. Finally, we contribute to the literature on the relationship between technology, ethics, and social change by capturing the specific values that legitimise Uber, and by following their unfolding throughout a controversy. (shrink)

Positive thinkers love Watty Piper's The little engine that could. The story features a train laden with toys for deserving children on the other side of the mountain. After the locomotive breaks down, a sequence of snooty locomotives come up the track. Each engine refuses to pull the train up the mountain. They are followed by a weary old locomotive that declines, saying "I cannot. I cannot. I cannot." But then a bright blue engine comes up the track. He manages (...) to chug over the mountain by averring "I think I can. I think I can. I think can.". (shrink)

Coleridge rarely mentions Hegel in his philosophical writings and seems to have read very little of Hegel's work. Yet I argue that Coleridge's criticisms of Schelling's philosophy—as recorded in letters and marginalia—betray remarkable intellectual affinities with his nearly exact contemporary Hegel, particularly in their shared doubts about Schelling's foundationalist intuitionism. With this background in place, I seek to demonstrate that volume one of Coleridge's Biographia Literaria is a radically self-undermining text: its philosophical argument, far from slavishly recapitulating Schelling's philosophy, remains (...) haunted by a quasi-Hegelian skepticism toward intuition even as it advances intuition as the foundation of its theoretical edifice. (shrink)

Andrew Feenberg’s critical theory of technology features a sophisticated analysis of the ways by which social forces influence processes of technological design, production and use. While Feenberg is foremostly read as a critical theorist, this essay argues that his call to democratize technology stands on distinct phenomenological grounds. This is based on the way he illustrates the role of experience in subtending potentials for the progressive transformation of the sociotechnical sphere. Against this background, this essay identifies an important shift in (...) the way Feenberg articulates experience, from relating it to lifelong processes of learning and identity-construction (Bildung) to an emphasis on visceral immediacy (Erlebnis). This shift manifests a newfound focus on material, embodied meanings over-against linguistic ones, and results in a considerable tension between Feenberg’s appeal to experiential self-evidence and his critical position toward technology. The discussion of the two modes of experience exemplifies the current that underlies Feenberg’s work, namely the creation of traffic between ontological and ontic accounts of sociotechnical entities, practices and relations. (shrink)

We present the notion of finite high-order Gowers games, and prove a statement parallel to Gowers's Combinatorial Lemma for these games. We derive ‘quantitative’ versions of the original Gowers Combinatorial Lemma and of Gowers's Dichotomy, which place them in the context of the recently introduced infinite dimensional asymptotic theory for Banach spaces.

Stereotypically, computation involves intrinsic changes to the medium of representation: writing new symbols, erasing old symbols, turning gears, flipping switches, sliding abacus beads. Perspectival computation leaves the original inscriptions untouched. The problem solver obtains the output by merely alters his orientation toward the input. There is no rewriting or copying of the input inscriptions; the output inscriptions are numerically identical to the input inscriptions. This suggests a loophole through some of the computational limits apparently imposed by physics. There can be (...) symbol manipulation without inscription manipulation because symbols are complex objects that have manipulatable elements besides their inscriptions. Since a written symbol is an ordered pair of consisting of a shape and the reader's orientation to that inscription, the symbol can be changed by changing the orientation rather than inscription. Although there are the usual physical limits associated with reading the answer, the computation is itself instantaneous. This is true even when the sub-calculations are algorithmically complex, exponentially increasing or even infinite. (shrink)

But a winner must supply a nonevasive picture with no limit on potential detail--a purely imagistic depiction that does not rely on a mere description of an impossibility. There are logical minded philosophers from David Hume to Saul Kripke who think the prize cannot be won: What is conceivable is possible and whatever is depicted is thereby conceived, therefore, impossibilities cannot be depicted. Yet there is a rich aesthetics of inconsistency, best known through M. C. Escher. So I proceed with (...) the fine print for the competition. (shrink)

The Indian philosophy of warfare remains terra incognita. Most Western commentators emphasize the underdeveloped nature of military theory in ancient India, while two American political scientists...

Peter Slezak and William Boos have independently advanced a novel interpretation of Descartes's "cogito". The interpretation portrays the "cogito" as a diagonal deduction and emphasizes its resemblance to Godel's theorem and the Liar. I object that this approach is flawed by the fact that it assigns 'Buridan sentences' a legitimate role in Descartes's philosophy. The paradoxical nature of these sentences would have the peculiar result of undermining Descartes's "cogito" while enabling him to "disprove" God's existence.

Michael Polanyi names Augustine as inaugurates of his “postcritical”philosophy. To understand what this means by exploring creation in the Confessions will clarify complex problems in Augustine and articulate theological implications in Polanyi. Specifically, it will show why an autobiographical account of conversion ends speaking of creation; how creation can thus be understood as “personal” language; how creation can be recovered in a time preoccupied with conversion; how conversion and creation are linked with incarnation, hermeneutics, and confessional rhetoric; and it will (...) suggest a contemporary use of creation language that connects the scientific and the religious. (shrink)

Further Thoughts on Counterfactuals, Compatibilism, Conceptual Mismatches, and Choices: Response to Commentaries Content Type Journal Article Pages 31-34 DOI 10.1007/s12152-010-9067-3 Authors Roy F. Baumeister, Department of Psychology, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL USA A. William Crescioni, Department of Psychology, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL USA Jessica L. Alquist, Department of Psychology, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL USA Journal Neuroethics Online ISSN 1874-5504 Print ISSN 1874-5490 Journal Volume Volume 4 Journal Issue Volume 4, Number 1.

There is an apparent tension between two familiar platitudes about the meaning of life: (i) that 'meaning' in this context means 'value', and (ii) that such meaning might be ineffable. I suggest a way of trying to bring these two claims together by focusing on an ideal of a meaningful life that fuses both the axiological and semantic senses of 'significant'. This in turn allows for the possibility that the full significance of a life might be ineffable not because its (...) axiological significance is ineffable, but because its semantic significance is ineffable in virtue of the signification relation itself being unsignifiable. I then explore to what degree this claim about signification can be adequately defended. (shrink)

Pragmatic competence includes the capacity to express illocutionary force and successfully achieve perlocutionary effects, in order to guarantee fully functional communication exchanges. Alzheimer’s Disease is characterized by a constellation of limitations derived from progressive cognitive impairment, which is usually viewed as a global uniform phenomenon. In this paper it is argued that looking independently at the loss and recovery of pragmatic function related to illocutionary and perlocutionary abilities can be a productive way of understanding the progressive deterioration of communicative capacities (...) by patients or their improvement under targeted treatment. (shrink)