The most efficient known method for solving certain computational problems is to construct an iterated map whose fixed points are by design the problem's solution. Although the origins of this idea go back at least to Newton, the clearest expression of its logical basis is an example due to Mermin. A contemporary application in image recovery demonstrates the power of the method.

Ever since John Leslie Mackie’s ‘popularization’ of moral error theories in meta-ethics, increasing attention has been focused on how to escape the force of nihilism. For many opponents of the moral error theory, ‘moral nihilism’ is used as a derogatory synonym associated with immorality and selfishness, but such a defamatory usage of the label is obviously not very helpful for a serious philosophical examination of the view. The goal of this paper is to draw on insights by David Hume and (...) other Humean philosophers such as J.L. Mackie, Richard Joyce, and Richard Garner, in order to turn ‘moral nihilism’ from a term of abuse to a ‘badge of honour’. (shrink)

Debates about the EU show that the holy trinity of absolute, indivisible sovereignty, nationality/citizenship and national identity/loyalty should be replaced by multilayered, pluralist concepts for descriptive, explanatory and normative purposes. Democratic pluralism criticizes replacement‐strategies (of the nation‐state by a European state, citizenship‐rights by human rights, national obligations by European or global ones). It opts for productive complementarity guided by two principles: “proximity and accountability” and “correspondence of powers and democratic say” and for progressive transdomestic shifts. The inclusion of the articles (...) on citizenship in the EC Treaty has, unintendedly, contributed to such a shift though it missed historical chances to develop a more democratic and social EU living up to minimal global obligations. (shrink)

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The world is an untidy place, and the sciences—all of them—reflect this. One source of this untidiness is the relationship between levels of organization. Reducing macrolevels to microlevels—explaining the former in terms of the latter—has met with successes but has never been the whole story. In the biological sciences, there has been much attention lately to the shortcomings of reductionism on the grounds that (i) it changes the subject rather than explaining, (ii) it leads to a myopically molecular view of (...) the biological world, and (iii) the behavior or behaviors of complex systems are often very poorly predicted based solely on their microproperties. It is just for these reasons that biologists of many stripes have called for a move away from reductionism and toward a new kind of biology for the 21st century. But what shape might this new biology take? (shrink)

Benenson et al. provide a compelling case for treating greater investment into self-protection among females as an adaptive strategy. Here, we wish to expand their proposed adaptive explanation by placing it squarely in modern state-based and behavioural life-history theory, drawing on Veit'spathological complexityframework. This allows us to make sense of alternative “lifestyle” strategies, rather than pathologizing them.

Department of Geography and Planning, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands There is a growing sense of dissatisfaction among political philosophers with the practical sterility and empirical inadequacy of the discipline. Post-Rawlsian philosophy is wrestling with the need to construct a ‘contextualized morality’ that is sensitive to the particularities and complexities of actual moral reasoning but does not succumb to the temptations of relativism. We argue that this predicament is due to its inability to take the pluralism of our moral universe, (...) the multi-layeredness of our social reality, the indeterminacy of our normative principles and the complexity of our practical reasoning seriously. To incorporate these properties of the ‘human condition’ we have constructed a complex evaluative framework, balancing moral, ethico-political, prudential and realist criteria. We argue that political philosophy new style is well advised to adopt such a framework and to position itself, as a true ‘art’, between political philosophy old style and the social sciences. Thus political philosophy is better equipped to deal with the big tradeoffs of today, rekindle our utopian hopes and regain political bite. Key Words: comparative institutionalism • evaluation studies • political philosophy • political theory. (shrink)

The familiar problems of democratic capitalism have given way to a deep crisis challenging the basic forms of governance introduced around the late 18th century and then gradually expanded and developed until the late 20th century. Associative Democracy and the Crises of Representative Democracies argues that we are in urgent need of normative guidelines and a strong understanding of a broad range of institutional options and innovative experiments in associative democracy in order to address the structural problems that existing institutional (...) arrangements are confronted with whilst maintaining and strengthening democratic forms of government and governance. The argument is developed against the background of a thorough survey of empirical social scientific studies on the crises of capitalisms and representative democracies. This book focuses primarily on democratic alternatives, though it also works out principles and institutions of democratic socialism as alternatives to capitalism. After introducing the theoretical approach, the book illustrates the ways this framework of analysis can be of use, with particular focus on three issues that are highly topical when it comes to the challenges our institutions are confronted with: democratic governance in relation to ecological crises and uncertainty; the threats to democracy raised by the crisis of political parties and representative party-democracy, and the challenges related to privatization and marketization of public services, particularly in healthcare. The book concludes by exploring opportunities to democratize the economy, locating viable alternatives to capitalism in the tradition of democratic socialism. This urgent and thought-provoking book will be of great interest to academics and students in various disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, including political science, sociology, and economics. (shrink)

Associative Democracy has been developed as a specific response to statist socialism and neoliberal capitalism, drawing on older traditions such as associationalism, democratic socialism, and cooperative socialism. As the ‘real third way’, it is distinct from neoliberal privatization and deregulation in the Blair–Schröder varieties of social democracy and in the conservative Reagan–Thatcher–Cameron varieties. This article summarizes what seemed to make AD an attractive realist utopia: its combination of economic, societal and political democracy; its focus on democratic institutional pluralism in all (...) these regards; its considered moral/political minimalism; and its practical experimentalism. It recapitalizes some of the important economic, societal and political changes during the last decennia that seem to make AD plainly utopian again. It focuses on an outline of basic principles and institutions of socio-economic alternatives to capitalism because, if neoliberalism rules supreme, no viable alternatives can emerge and grow. Even if there is not one institutional design that fits all countries and contexts, we can show what the basic tenets of such alternatives are and how such a colourful democratic socialism relates to and can integrate other approaches such as ‘circular economy’, ‘foundational economy’ and ‘radical social innovation’. The hope is that AD’s broad institutional pluralism and its emphasis on practical experimentalism show new ways of thinking which are urgently needed for sustainable and socially fair economic development and for renewing representative democracy. (shrink)

(2001). Problems and prospects of associative democracy: Cohen and Rogers revisited. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy: Vol. 4, Associative Democracy: The Real Third Way, pp. 31-70.

This book attempts to advance Donald Griffin's vision of the "final, crowning chapter of the Darwinian revolution" by developing a philosophy for the science of animal consciousness. It advocates a Darwinian bottom-up approach that treats consciousness as a complex, evolved, and multidimensional phenomenon in nature rather than a mysterious all-or-nothing property immune to the tools of science and restricted to a single species. -/- The so-called emergence of a science of consciousness in the 1990s has at best been a science (...) of human consciousness. This book aims to advance a true Darwinian science of consciousness in which its evolutionary origin, function, and phylogenetic diversity are moved from the field’s periphery to its very centre, thus enabling us to integrate consciousness into an evolutionary view of life. Accordingly, this book has two objectives: (i) to argue for the need and possibility of an evolutionary bottom-up approach that addresses the problem of consciousness in terms of the evolutionary origins of a new ecological lifestyle that made consciousness worth having and (ii) to articulate a thesis and beginnings of a theory of the place of consciousness as a complex evolved phenomenon in nature that can help us to answer the question of what it is like to be a bat, an octopus, or a crow. -/- A Philosophy for the Science of Animal Consciousness will appeal to researchers and advanced students interested in advancing our understanding of animal minds as well as anyone with a keen interest in how we can develop a science of animal consciousness. (shrink)

The goal of this article is to break down the dimensions of consciousness, attempt to reverse engineer their evolutionary function, and make sense of the origins of consciousness by breaking off those dimensions that are more likely to have arisen later. A Darwinian approach will allow us to revise the philosopher’s concept of consciousness away from a single “thing,” an all-or-nothing quality, and towards a concept of phenomenological complexity that arose out of simple valenced states. Finally, I will offer support (...) for an evaluation-first view of consciousness by drawing on recent work in experimental philosophy of mind. (shrink)

The idea that consciousness and complexity are closely related has been a major driver of the popularity of integrated information theory of consciousness, despite its major formal, phenomenological, and neuroscientific shortcomings. Here, I argue that we can recover this intuition by replacing its biologically neutral notion of complexity with an evolutionary one that I shall dub “pathological complexity.”.

In his Enarrationes in Genesin, Martin Luther finds stories of suffering he can ‘hardly read with dry eyes’. Recent scholars attribute profound ethical value to Luther's tears, especially those shed over the suffering of female characters. This article reconsiders the ethical salience of Luther's tears as a demonstration of interpretive empathy by examining his reading of Hagar and its modern reception history. By comparing Luther's reading of the enslaved Hagar to his reading of her master Abraham, it is argued that (...) gender, power and inequality shape the very conditions in which terms like ‘empathy’, ‘charity’ and ‘suspicion’ appear and this, in turn, invites a reconsideration of the ethical responsibilities we incur as we read texts of terror in light of their role in enduring histories of violence. (shrink)

Until now, the literature on Kant s Opus Postumum has lacked a commentary on the key draft, Transition 1 14. The study offers a systematic interpretation with reference to Kant s other works especially the Critique of Pure Reason. Kant s presentation of natural science as a true science of nature is thereby placed in the context of his transcendental philosophy.".

This goal of this thesis in the philosophy of nature is to move us closer towards a true biological science of consciousness in which the evolutionary origin, function, and phylogenetic diversity of consciousness are moved from the field’s periphery of investigations to its very centre. Rather than applying theories of consciousness built top-down on the human case to other animals, I argue that we require an evolutionary bottomup approach that begins with the very origins of subjective experience in order to (...) make sense of the place of mind in nature. To achieve this goal, I introduce and defend the pathological complexity thesis as both a framework for the scientific investigation of consciousness and as a lifemind continuity thesis about the origins and function of consciousness. (shrink)

In this article, I respond to commentaries by Eva Jablonka and Simona Ginsburg and by David Spurrett on my target article “Complexity and the Evolution of Consciousness,” in which I have offered the first extended articulation of my pathological complexity thesis as a hypothesis about the evolutionary origins and function of consciousness. My reply is structured by the arguments raised rather than by author and will offer a more detailed explication of some aspects of the pathological complexity thesis.

In order to develop a true biological science of consciousness, we have to remove humans from the center of reference and develop a bottom-up comparative study of animal minds, as Donald Griffin intended with his call for a “cognitive ethology.” In this article, I make use of the pathological complexity thesis (Veit 2022a, b, c ) to show that we can firmly ground a comparative study of animal consciousness by drawing on the resources of state-based behavioral life history theory. (...) By comparing the different life histories of gastropods and arthropods, we will be able to make better sense of the possible origins of consciousness and its function for organisms in their natural environments. (shrink)

(2001). Associative democracy and the incorporation of minorities: Critical remarks on Paul Hirst's associative democracy. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy: Vol. 4, Associative Democracy: The Real Third Way, pp. 187-202. doi: 10.1080/13698230108403343.

Constantine the African's significance as the first important translator of medical texts from Arabic into Latin is indisputable due to the fact that his work contributed decisively to the enlargement of medical knowledge in the Latin West. Among his considerable œuvre the translation of al-Maˇgūsī's Kitāb al-Malakī under its Latin title Pantegni, the first real medical compendium in Latin, holds a particularly important position because of its popularity. The Pantegni is divided into the two parts Theory and Practice with ten (...) books each. Yet while the Theorica Pantegni corresponds basically to the Theory in the Kitāb al-Malakī, this is only partly the case for the Practica Pantegni. The content of the differing parts has been put together mainly from other medical texts. The identification of these other medical texts was the aim of some important researches while the last ten years. The aim of this article is to present the sources of the Pantegni, Practica’s third book and to give some indications on the person who made the compilation who – as it seems – wasn't Constantine the African himself. (shrink)

One of the primary concerns in animal research is ensuring the welfare of laboratory animals. Modern views on animal welfare emphasize the role of animal sentience, i.e. the capacity to experience subjective states such as pleasure or suffering, as a central component of welfare. The increasing official recognition of animal sentience has had large effects on laboratory animal research. The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness (Low et al., University of Cambridge, 2012) marked an official scientific recognition of the presence of sentience (...) in mammals, birds, and cephalopods. Animal sentience has furthermore been recognized in legislation in the European Union, UK, New Zealand and parts of Australia, with discussions underway in other parts of the world to follow suit. In this paper, we analyze this shift towards recognition of sentience in the regulation and practice in the treatment of laboratory animals and its effects on animal welfare and use. (shrink)

In the last two decades, there has been a blossoming literature aiming to counter the neglect of plant capacities. In their recent paper, Miguel Segundo-Ortin and Paco Calvo begin by providing an overview of the literature to then question the mistaken assumptions that led to plants being immediately rejected as candidates for sentience. However, it appears that many responses to their arguments are based on the implicit conviction that because animals have far more sophisticated cognition and agency than plants, and (...) that plants should not have the same moral status as animals, plants should not have any moral status. Put in simpler terms: it is not as bad to eat plants than to eat, say, pigs. While there are still uncertainties around comparative moral and policy implications between animals and plants, given a gradualist account of quasi-sentience and partial moral status, both of which we claim are a matter of degree, we may not have to abolish our convictions by declaring that plants have no sentience or moral status at all. Indeed, we can hold two things at the same time: that animals and plants have moral status, but animals have prima facie more moral status than plants. (shrink)

Policies dealing with religious diversity in liberal democratic states—as well as the established institutions that enforce those policies—are increasingly under pressure. Politics and political theory are caught in a trap between the fully secularized state and neo-corporate regimes of selective cooperation between states and organized religion. This volume proposes an original, comprehensive, and multidisciplinary approach to problems of governing religious diversity—combining moral and political philosophy, constitutional law, history, sociology, and religious anthropology. Drawing on such diverse scholarship, _Secularism or Democracy?_ proposes (...) an associational governance—a moderately libertarian, flexible variety of democratic institutional pluralism—as the plausible third way to overcome the inherent deficiencies of the predominant models. (shrink)

The last decade has seen an explosion of interest in the subject of animal consciousness. Conferences, journals, and new books are emerging at an accelerating rate. Why is this happening? In this article, I explain the ethical and scientific importance of animal consciousness that has fuelled this rising interest in animal minds. First, I will focus on the relevance of consciousness to the status of animals as subjects of moral concern. Second, I will explain the significance of the scientific study (...) of animal consciousness for understanding consciousness more broadly, including insights into ourselves. (shrink)

Climate change mitigation has become a paradigm case both for externalities in general and for the game-theoretic model of the Tragedy of the Commons (ToC) in particular. This situation is worrying, as we have reasons to suspect that some models in the social sciences are apt to be performative to the extent that they can become self-fulfilling prophecies. Framing climate change mitigation as a hardly solvable coordination problem may force us into a worse situation, by changing real-world behaviour to fit (...) our model, rather than the other way around. But while this problem of the performativity of the ToC has been noted in a recent paper in this journal by Matthew Kopec, his proposed strategies for dealing with their self-fulfilling nature fall short of providing an adequate solution. Instead of relying on the idea that modelling assumptions are always strictly speaking false, this paper shows that the problem may be better framed as a problem of underdetermination between competing explanations. Our goal here is to provide a framework for choosing between this set of competing models that allows us to avoid a ‘Russian Roulette’-like situation in which we gamble with existential risk. (shrink)