A fascinating exploration of the very essence of life itself sheds new light on the order and evolution in complex life systems and defines and explains autonomous agents and work within the contexts of thermodynamics and information theory, setting the stage for a dramatic technological revolution. 50,000 first printing.

At Home in the Universe presents and extends the intellectual core ofKauffman's earlier book The Origins of Order (OUP 1993) for any intelligentgeneral reader can understand and appreciate. The reader is very effectivelyinvited into Kauffman's vision and thought processes, in one of the moreexhilarating and important books of popular science.

Explores the possiblity and process of evolution beyond the standard and established scientific principles.

Fetal pain has long been a contentious issue, in large part because fetal pain is often cited as a reason to restrict access to termination of pregnancy or abortion. We have divergent views regarding the morality of abortion, but have come together to address the evidence for fetal pain. Most reports on the possibility of fetal pain have focused on developmental neuroscience. Reports often suggest that the cortex and intact thalamocortical tracts are necessary for pain experience. Given that the cortex (...) only becomes functional and the tracts only develop after 24 weeks, many reports rule out fetal pain until the final trimester. Here, more recent evidence calling into question the necessity of the cortex for pain and demonstrating functional thalamic connectivity into the subplate is used to argue that the neuroscience cannot definitively rule out fetal pain before 24 weeks. We consider the possibility that the mere experience of pain, without the capacity for self reflection, is morally significant. We believe that fetal pain does not have to be equivalent to a mature adult human experience to matter morally, and so fetal pain might be considered as part of a humane approach to abortion. (shrink)

Ultimately we will only understand biological agency when we have developed a theory of the organization of biological processes, and science is still a long way from attaining that goal. It may be possible nonetheless to develop a list of necessary conditions for the emergence of minimal biological agency. The authors offer a model of molecular autonomous agents which meets the five minimal physical conditions that are necessary (and, we believe, conjointly sufficient) for applying agential language in biology: autocatalytic reproduction; (...) work cycles; boundaries for reproducing individuals; self-propagating work and constraint construction; and choice and action that have evolved to respond to food or poison. When combined with the arguments from preadaptation and multiple realizability, the existence of these agents is sufficient to establish ontological emergence as against what one might call Weinbergian reductionism. Minimal biological agents are emphatically not conscious agents, and accepting their existence does not commit one to any robust theory of human agency. Nor is there anything mystical, dualistic, or non-empirical about the emergence of agency in the biosphere. Hence the emergence of molecular autonomous agents, and indeed ontological emergence in general, is not a negation of or limitation on careful biological study but simply one of its implications. (shrink)

Sober and Lewontin's critique of genic selectionism is based upon the principle that a unit of selection should make a context‐independent contribution to fitness. Critics have effectively shown that this principle is flawed. In this paper I show that the context independence principle is an instance of a more general principle for characterizing causes,called the contextual unanimity principle. I argue that this latter principle, while widely accepted, is erroneous. What is needed is to replace the approach to causality characterized by (...) the contextual unanimity criterion with an approach based on the concept of causal mechanism. After sketching such an approach, I show how it can be used to shed light on the units of selection problem. (shrink)

We investigate the notion of definability with respect to a full satisfaction class σ for a model M of Peano arithmetic. It is shown that the σ-definable subsets of M always include a class which provides a satisfaction definition for standard formulas. Such a class is necessarily proper, therefore there exist recursively saturated models with no full satisfaction classes. Nonstandard extensions of overspill and recursive saturation are utilized in developing a criterion for nonstandard definability. Finally, these techniques yield some information (...) concerning the extendibility of full satisfaction classes from one model to another. (shrink)

This paper provides a reading of Heidegger's work on the question of animality. Like the majority of discussions of this topic it utilises the 1929–30 course The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, but the analysis seeks to go beyond this course alone in order to look at the figure or figures of animals in Heidegger's work more generally. This broader analysis shows that animals are always figured as lacking: as poor in world, without history, without hands, without dwelling, without space. The (...) article shows how all these claims are grounded upon the most fundamental distinction: that the human is the zoon logon ekhon. In Heidegger's analysis this is not the animal rationale of metaphysical thought, but the living being that has and is held by logos, speech. Looking at how the logos became ratio, the paper notes how the way that animals do not calculate is the sole positive accreditation of animals in Heidegger's work. (shrink)

Accounts of video game play developed from an ethnomethodological and conversation analytic perspective remain relatively scarce. This study collects together an emerging, if scattered, body of research which focuses on the material, practical “work” of video game players. The study offers an example-driven explication of an EMCA perspective on video game play phenomena. The materials are arranged as a “tactical zoom.” We start very much “outside” the game, beginning with a wide view of how massive-multiplayer online games are played within (...) dedicated gaming spaces; here, we find multiple players, machines, and many different sorts of activities going on. Still remaining somewhat distanced from the play of the game itself, we then take a closer look at the players themselves by examining a notionally simpler setting involving pairs taking part in a football game at a games console. As we draw closer to the technical details of play, we narrow our focus further still to examine a player and spectator situated “at the screen” but jointly analyzing play as the player competes in an online first-person shooter. Finally, we go “inside” the game entirely and look at the conduct of avatars on-screen via screen recordings of a massively multiplayer online game. Having worked through specific examples, we provide an elaboration of a selection of core topics of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis that is used to situate some of the unstated orientations in the presentation of data fragments. In this way, recurrent issues raised in the fragments are shown as coherent, interconnected phenomena. In closing, we suggest caution regarding the way game play phenomena have been analyzed in this study, while remarking on challenges present for the development of further EMCA-oriented research on video game play. (shrink)

In recent years we have seen a dramatic shift, in several different areas of communication studies, from an information-theoretic to a dynamic systems paradigm. In an information processing system, communication, whether between cells, mammals, apes, or humans, is said to occur when one organism encodes information into a signal that is transmitted to another organism that decodes the signal. In a dynamic system, all of the elements are continuously interacting with and changing in respect to one another, and an aggregate (...) pattern emerges from this mutual co-action. Whereas the information-processing paradigm looks at communication as a linear, binary sequence of events, the dynamic systems paradigm looks at the relation between behaviors and how the whole configuration changes over time. One of the most dramatic examples of the significance of shifting from an information processing to a dynamic systems paradigm can be found in the debate over the interpretation of recent advances in ape language research (ALR). To some extent, many of the early ALR studies reinforced the stereotype that animal communication is functional and stimulus bound, precisely because they were based on an information-processing paradigm that promoted a static model of communicative development. But Savage-Rumbaugh's recent results with bonobos has introduced an entirely new dimension into this debate. Shifting the terms of the discussion from an information-processing to a dynamic systems paradigm not only highlights the striking differences between Savage-Rumbaugh's research and earlier ALR studies, but further, it sheds illuminating light on the factors that underpin the development of communication skills in great apes and humans, and the relationship between communicative development and the development of language. Key Words: apes; ape language research (ALR); brain development; co-regulation; communication; dynamic systems; language development; symbols. (shrink)

In this paper I present both a critical appraisal of Humphreys' probabilistic theory of causality and a sketch of an alternative view of the relationship between the notions of probability and of cause. Though I do not doubt that determinism is false, I claim that the examples used to motivate Humphreys' theory typically refer to subjective rather than objective chance. Additionally, I argue on a number of grounds that Humphreys' suggestion that linear regression models be used as a canonical form (...) for the description of causal relations is untenable. I conclude by exploring the variety of ways in which probabilistic elements can be embedded into the structure of causal mechanisms. This investigation suggests both that deterministic mechanisms can produce stochastic behavior and stochastic mechanisms can produce deterministic behavior. Note: Link is to the article in a subscription database available to users affiliated with Butler University. Appropriate login information will be required for access. Users not affiliated with Butler University should contact their local librarian for assistance in locating a copy of this article. (shrink)

Clinical ethics literature typically presents ethics consultations as having clear beginnings and clear ends. Experience in actual clinical ethics practice, however, reflects a different characterization, particularly when the moral experiences of ethics consultants are included in the discussion. In response, this article emphasizes listening and learning about moral experience as core activities associated with clinical ethics consultation. This focus reveals that responsibility in actual clinical ethics practice is generated within the moral scope of an ethics consultant's activities as she or (...) he encounters the unique and specific features that emerge from interactions with a specific patient, or family, or practitioner within a given situation and over time. A long-form narrative about an ethics consultant's interactions is interwoven with a more didactic discussion to highlight the theme of responsibility and to probe questions that arise regarding follow-up within the practice of clinical ethics consultation. (shrink)

In 1950, Alan Turing proposed his eponymous test based on indistinguishability of verbal behavior as a replacement for the question "Can machines think?" Since then, two mutually contradictory but well-founded attitudes towards the Turing Test have arisen in the philosophical literature. On the one hand is the attitude that has become philosophical conventional wisdom, viz., that the Turing Test is hopelessly flawed as a sufficient condition for intelligence, while on the other hand is the overwhelming sense that were a machine (...) to pass a real live full-fledged Turing Test, it would be a sign of nothing but our orneriness to deny it the attribution of intelligence. The arguments against the sufficiency of the Turing Test for determining intelligence rely on showing that some extra conditions are logically necessary for intelligence beyond the behavioral properties exhibited by an agent under a Turing Test. Therefore, it cannot follow logically from passing a Turing Test that the agent is intelligent. I argue that these extra conditions can be revealed by the Turing Test, so long as we allow a very slight weakening of the criterion from one of logical proof to one of statistical proof under weak realizability assumptions. The argument depends on the notion of interactive proof developed in theoretical computer science, along with some simple physical facts that constrain the information capacity of agents. Crucially, the weakening is so slight as to make no conceivable difference from a practical standpoint. Thus, the Gordian knot between the two opposing views of the sufficiency of the Turing Test can be cut. (shrink)

Henri Lefebvre has been celebrated as one of the most influential social theorists of the twentieth century. Understanding Henri Lefebvre places Lefebvre in his historical and intellectual context and analyzes the extraordinary range of his work, across politics, philosophy, history, literature and culture. Particular emphasis is given to Lefebvre's trilogy of inspirational thinkers—Hegel, Marx and Nietzsche; his links to contemporaries such as Heidegger, Axelos and the Situationalists; and his critiques of existentialism and structuralism. Analysis of his writings on cities are (...) balanced with those on rural communities, the production of space connected to ideas of time and history, and everyday life linked to the festival and cultural revolution. Understanding Henri Lefebvre offers the most wide-ranging and reliable account of this central theorist available. (shrink)

We have lived under the hegemony of the reductionistic scientific worldview since Galileo, Newton, and Laplace. In this view, the universe is meaningless, as Stephen Weinberg famously said, and organisms and a court of law are "nothing but" particles in morion. This scientific view is inadequate. Physicists are beginning to abandon reductionism in favor of emergence. Emergence, both epistemological and ontological, embraces the emergence of life and of agency. With agency comes meaning, value, and doing, beyond mere happenings. More organisms (...) are conscious. None of this violates any laws of physics, but it cannot be reduced to physics. Emergence is real, and the tiger chasing the gazelle are real parts of the real universe. We live, therefore, in an emergent universe. This emergence often is entirely unpredictable beforehand, from the evolution of novel functionalities in organisms to the evolution of the economy and human history. We are surrounded on all sides by a creativity that cannot even be prestated. Thus we have the first glimmerings of a new scientific worldview, beyond reductionism. In our universe emergence is real, and there is ceaseless, stunning creativity that has given rise to our biosphere, our humanity, and our history. We are partial co-creators of this emergent creativity. It is our choice whether we use the God word. I believe it is wise to do so. God can be our shared name for the true creativity in the natural universe. Such a view invites a new sense of the sacred, as those aspects of the creativity in the universe that we deem worthy of holding sacred. We are not logically forced to this view. Yet a global civilization, hopefully persistently diverse and creative, is emerging. I believe we need a shared view of God, a fully natural God, to orient our lives. We need a shared view of the sacred that is open to slow evolution, because rigidity in our view of the sacred violates how our most precious values evolve and invites ethical hegemony. We need a shared global ethic beyond our materialism. I believe a sense of God as the natural, awesome creativity in the universe can help us construct the sacred and a global ethic to help shape the global civilization toward what we choose with the best of our limited wisdom. (shrink)

Many philosophers suggest (1) that our emotional engagement with fiction involves participation in a game of make-believe, and (2) that what distinguishes an emotional game from a dispassionate game is the fact that the former activity alone involves sensations of physiological and visceral disturbances caused by our participation in the game. In this paper I argue that philosophers who accept (1) should reject (2). I then illustrate how this conclusion illuminates various puzzles in aesthetics and the philosophy of mind.

For the ancient Greeks, the world was both Eros, the god of chaos and creativity, and Logos, the regularity of the heavens as law. From chaos the world came forth. The world was home to ultimate creativity. Two thousand years later Kepler, Galileo, and then mighty Newton created deterministic classical physics in which all that happens in the universe is determined by the laws of motion, initial and boundary conditions. The Theistic God who worked miracles became the Deistic God who (...) set up the universe and let Newton’s laws take over. Eros, raw creativity, is dead, all is Logos.Quantum mechanics replaced the determinism of classical physics with fundamental indeterminism. This was a major crisis in physics, but remained entirely within the Newtonian paradigm of laws, here the Schrödinger equation, initial and boundary conditions. The Schrödinger equation entails the deterministic propagation of a probability distribution. The probabilities concern the indeterminate outcomes of quantum measurement events.The central issue of this article is to show that no laws at all determine or entail the becoming of our biosphere or any other among the 1022 solar systems in the universe. This claim is radical. If no laws determine or entail the becoming of biospheres, and biospheres are part of the universe, the Pythagorean dream that All is Number, All is Logos, is dead. There is no Final Theory that entails all that become in the universe. Eros is again, and always was, rambunctiously alive in the raw creativity of the becoming of life anywhere in the universe. The becoming of life is based on physics, on Logos, but beyond it, emerging from Eros.The reasons Eros is at play in the evolution of biospheres are fourfold.First, the universe will not make all possible complex things. That is, the universe is vastly non-ergodic. Yet complex things such as the human heart exist.Second, the reason human hearts exist is that organisms are Kantian Wholes in which the parts exist for and by means of the whole. Hearts exist because they fulfill the function of pumping the blood that keeps the whole organism alive. Such organisms propagate progeny that carry with them the hearts that keep them alive.Third, adaptations like hearts, the flagellar motor, the loop of Henle in kidneys that concentrates urine, and flight feathers, are tinkered-together contraptions stumbled upon in evolution. Parts and processes that arise in evolution are jury-rigged for unprestatable new functions that help keep the entire Kantian Whole organism alive and propagating in the evolving biosphere. There is no deductive theory of jury rigging. We cannot deduce the emergence of such novel functions.Fourth, the functions of parts of organisms emerge in unprestatable ways and form the unprestatable and ever-changing phase space of evolution. Since we cannot prestate the ever-changing phase space of evolution, we can write no laws of motion in differential equation form, so cannot integrate the equations we do not have. Thus, no laws entail the becoming of any biosphere.Evolving biospheres are everywhere creative. This is Eros, the chaos from which the world emerges. This profound creative emergence is the stuff of story, of narrative. Evolving biospheres always were and always will be both Eros and Logos, the stuff of story and the stuff of law. We always live in a world of Art and Science. (shrink)

With a mass digitisation programme underway and the addition of non-print legal deposit and web archive collections, the National Library of Scotland is now both producing and collecting data at an unprecedented rate, with over 5PB of storage in the Library’s data centres. As well as the opportunities to support large scale analysis of the collections, this also presents new challenges around data management, storage, rights, formats, skills and access. Furthermore, by assuming the role of both creators and collectors, libraries (...) face broader questions about the concepts of ‘collections' and ‘heritage', and the ethical implications of collecting practices. While the ‘collections as data’ movement has encouraged cultural heritage organisations to present collections in machine-readable formats, new services, processes and tools also need to be established to enable these emerging forms of research, and new modes of working need to be established to take into account an increasing need for transparency around the creation and presentation of digital collections. This commentary explores the National Library of Scotland's new digital scholarship service, the implications of this new activity and the obstacles that libraries encounter when navigating a world of Big Data. (shrink)

As Nelson Goodman highlighted, there are two main senses of “abstract” that can be found in discussions about abstract art. On the one hand, a representation is abstract if it leaves out certain features of its target. On the other hand, something can be abstract to the extent that it does not represent a concrete subject. The first sense of “abstract” is well-known in philosophy of science. For example, philosophers discuss mathematical models of physical, biological, and economic systems as being (...) abstract in this sense. However, it is the second sense that dominates discussions of abstract art in aesthetics. For example, abstract art was (and is) considered revolutionary precisely for being non-figurative. Through an analysis of artists including Kandinsky, Malevich, and Mondrian, we develop a reading of this second sense, which we call “generative abstraction,” as opposed to “subtractive” abstraction. Generative abstraction is a process in which a new artifact is created which does not represent the initial concrete target system that inspired it (if there was one), where the artifact’s features are explored for their own sake, and where the “language” of the new artifact is in some way more “universal.” Focusing on this sense of abstraction is helpful in revealing the complexity of the process of crafting an abstract artifact, in problematizing the notion that abstraction can always be un-done (or concretized), as well as revealing new ways for abstractions to be epistemically (un)successful. (shrink)

This paper examines the question of whether a fetus can feel pain. The question is divided into four sub questions: What is pain? What is the neurology of pain processing? What is the fetus? Are there good reasons for holding that fetuses feel pain? Pain is suggested to be a multi‐dimensional phenomenon drawing on emotional and sensory processes – a consequence of a gradual development involving a number of noxious events rather than an automatic consequence of injury or disease. The (...) non‐automaticity of pain is emphasised in the discussion of pain neurology that defies explanations based on a specialised neuronal ‘pain‐centre’. The development of the fetus is considered with respect to developmental neurobiology, behavioural and neurological responses to stimulation, and hormonal and neurochemical responses to noxious stimulation. While acknowledging that the development of the fetus is complex, especially after 26 weeks gestation, considerable development is still to occur, even after birth. The fetal pain literature is criticised for tending to exaggerate fetal development. Finally, the difficulty of explaining the subjectivity of pain in materialist terms is discussed. Pain is suggested to arise with development of the necessary neurological, cognitive and emotional structures. Pain experience is placed at approximately 12 months of age, though this is within the context of a continuum of awareness rather than a straight ‘on‐off’ switch. The major moral implication of this stance is to place the burden of proof for analgesic use onto clinical measures, rather than relying upon the, so far, poorly supported assumption of pain awareness. (shrink)

Ongoing global efforts to circumcise adolescent and adult males to reduce their risk of acquiring HIV constitute the largest public health prevention initiative, using surgical means, in human history. Voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC) programs in Africa have significantly altered social norms related to male circumcision among previously non-circumcising groups and groups that have practiced traditional (non-medical) circumcision. One consequence of this change is the stigmatization of males who, for whatever reason, remain uncircumcised. This paper discusses the ethics of stigma (...) with regard to uncircumcised adolescent males in global VMMC programs, particularly in certain recruitment, demand creation and social norm interventions. Grounded in our own experiences gained while conducting HIV-related ethics research with adolescents in Kenya, we argue that use of explicit or implicit stigma to increase the number of VMMC volunteers is unethical from a public health ethics perspective, particularly in campaigns that leverage social norms of masculinity. Ongoing global efforts to circumcise adolescent and adult males to reduce their risk of acquiring HIV constitute the largest public health prevention initiative, using surgical means, in human history. VMMC programs in Africa have significantly altered social norms related to male circumcision among previously non-circumcising groups and groups that have practiced traditional (non-medical) circumcision. One consequence of this change is the stigmatization of males who, for whatever reason, remain uncircumcised. This paper discusses the ethics of stigma with regard to uncircumcised adolescent males in global VMMC programs, particularly in certain recruitment, demand creation and social norm interventions. Grounded in our own experiences gained while conducting HIV-related ethics research with adolescents in Kenya, we argue that use of explicit or implicit stigma to increase the number of VMMC volunteers is unethical from a public health ethics perspective, particularly in campaigns that leverage social norms of masculinity. (shrink)

We prove results about nonstandard formulas in models of Peano arithmetic which complement those of Kotlarski, Krajewski, and Lachlan in [KKL] and [L]. This enables us to characterize both recursive saturation and resplendency in terms of statements about nonstandard sentences. Specifically, a model M of PA is recursively saturated iff M is nonstandard and M-logic is consistent.M is resplendent iff M is nonstandard, M-logic is consistent, and every sentence φ which is consistent in M-logic is contained in a full satisfaction (...) class for M. Thus, for models of PA, recursive saturation can be expressed by a (standard) Σ 1 1 -sentence and resplendency by a ▵ 1 2 -sentence. (shrink)

This lecture offers a reading of the work of the French Marxist Henri Lefebvre, particularly focusing on his writings on the question of space. It suggests that this is a simultaneously political and philosophical project and that it needs to be understood as such. Accordingly we need to examine and work with both terms in Lefebvre’s book The Production of Space — thinking about the Marxist analysis of production and the question of space which goes beyond the resourcesMarxism can offer. (...) The paper concludes by offering some reflections on Lefebvre scholarship through the relation of space and history. (shrink)

John Locke's first letter to Stillingfleet addresses a number of important philosophical topics, including the idea of substance, knowledge without clear and distinct ideas, the existence of spiritual substances, the ontological argument for the existence of God, and the real essences of things. He notes that his Essay does not contain a single argument against the doctrine of the Trinity, and indeed, he says that he wrote the entire book "without any Thought of the controversy between the Trinitarians and Unitarians". (...) One episode in Locke's second letter that nicely illustrates its overall character is a 48‐page discursion in which he recounts conversations that he had with some friends about Stillingfleet's efforts to explain certain key concepts. Locke's second letter focused mainly on Stillingfleet's muddledness, and on the thinness of the pretext for involving Locke in the first place. Stillingfleet's reply to each of these letters is presented in this chapter. (shrink)

Reading through Mechanica1 Intelligence, volume III of Alan Turing's Collected Works, one begins to appreciate just how propitious Turing's timing was. If Turing's major accomplishment in ‘On Computable Numbers’ was to expose the epistemological premises built into formalism, his main achievement in the 1940s was to recognize the extent to which this outlook both harmonized with and extended contemporary psychological thought. Turing sought to synthesize these diverse mathematical and psychological elements so as to forge a union between ‘embodied rules’ and (...) ‘learning programs’. Through their joint service in the Mechanist Thesis each would validate the other: and the frameworks from whence each derived. In this paper I will try to show how Turing's psychological thesis forces us to reassess the consequences of establishing AI on the epistemological foundation that underlies behaviourism. (shrink)

The grammatical manipulation and production of language is a great deceiver. We have become habituated to accept the use of well-constructed language to indicate intelligence, understanding and, consequently, intention, whether conscious or unconscious. But we are not always right to do so, and certainly not in the case of large language models (LLMs) like ChapGPT, GPT-4, LLaMA, and Google Bard. This is a perennial problem, but when one understands why it occurs, it ceases to be surprising that it so stubbornly (...) persists. This paper will have three main sections. In the Introduction I will say a little about language, its aetiology, and useful sub-divisions into natural and cultural. In the second section I will explain the current situation with regard to large language models and fill in the background debates which set the problem up as one of increased complexity rather than one of a qualitatively different kind from narrow or specific AI. In the third section I will present the case for the missing phenomenological background and why it is necessary for the co-creation of shared meaning in both natural and cultural language, and I will conclude this section by presenting a rationale for why this situation arises and will continue to arise. Before we do any of this, I need to clarify one point: I do not wish to challenge the ascription of artificial general intelligence (AGI) to LLMs, indeed I think agnosticism is best in this respect, but I do challenge the more serious, and erroneous, ascription of understanding, intention, reason, and consciousness to them. And so, I am making two points: an epistemological one about why we fall into error in our ascription of a mental life to LLMs, and an ontological one about the impossibility of LLMs being or becoming conscious. (shrink)

Georges Bataille made no secret of the importance Friedrich Nietzsche’s life and work held for him. But Bataille’s encounter with Nietzsche remained paradoxical: he rejected or ignored most of Nietzsche’s major concepts while nevertheless insisting on the value of Nietzsche’s thought and experience as a necessary counterpoint to the political, religious, and social currents of modernity. This paper demonstrates the extent to which Bataille owes the content and to some degree also the form of his idiosyncratic reading of Nietzsche to (...) the influence and example of the Russian emigré philosopher Lev Shestov (1866–1938). In 1925, Georges Bataille published a translation of Shestov’s The Idea of the Good in Tolstoy and Nietzsche: Philosophy and Preaching, co-signed with Shestov’s daughter Tatiana Beresovski-Chestov. The translation was the product of a period during which Bataille also spent time with the older man and benefited from his tutelage. It was Shestov’s interpretation of the meaning of the death of God in Nietzsche’s life and thought that would have the most decisive influence on Bataille’s own life and work and make him, in his turn, a philosopher of tragedy. (shrink)

_Hegel After Derrida_ provides a much needed insight not only into the importance of Hegel and the importance of Derrida's work on Hegel, but also the very foundations of postmodern and deconstructionist thought. It will be essential reading for all those engaging with the work of Derrida and Hegel today and anyone seeking insight into some of the basic but neglected themes of deconstruction.

One kind of philosopher takes it as a working hypothesis that belief/desire psychology (or, anyhow, some variety of prepositional attitude psychology) is ...

Faced with the absurdity of continued climate inaction, more people are becoming morally outraged about the projections of human suffering and loss due to global warming impacts. This article draws from the work of Albert Camus to examine human responses to absurdity through rebellion and how this can be applied to understand the notion of climate rebellion. Focusing on Camus’ works The Rebel and The Plague, as well as his speech “The Human Crisis”, I examine the conditions of climate injustice (...) that present the grounds for climate rebellion, what becoming a climate rebel might mean, the importance of solidarity in climate rebellion, and lastly how Camus’ value of limitation might inform ethical responses to minimize climate-related harm. (shrink)