The deceptive strangeness of prescience in Dune is typical of Herbert's ideas. The ancient Babylonians were able to systematically predict astronomical events, but contemporary astrophysicists can forecast distant events beyond the Babylonians’ wildest dreams. Herbert describes the prescience of characters like Paul as a hyperawareness of possibilities and probabilities given certain choices, rather than being able to examine a fixed future. Common sense suggests that prescience should help us live together better. The Prisoner's Dilemma can be interpreted (...) in different ways, but the basic logic is always the same. The Prisoner's Dilemma is an imaginary interaction between “prisoners,” but it actually might make more sense with prescient characters from the Duniverse. Stuart Hampshire argued that self‐knowledge tends to have the opposite effect – that it makes us freer. Prescience is a vastly expanded understanding of possible and probable consequences given information and choices, not the observation of a fixed future. (shrink)

After having given in the "Essay" a definition of freedom which straightforwardly entails its compatibility with – among other things – God's foreknowledge, Locke surprisingly writes in a 1693 letter to Molyneux that he does not see how human liberty can coexist with divine prescience. I argue that the confession to Molyneux can be made consistent with the "Essay"'s definition by embracing the view that the problem Locke had in mind when he drafted it was not a problem concerning (...) the reality of human freedom but, rather, its value. (shrink)

In their seminal work, Dialectics of Enlightenment, Horkheimer and Adorno interpreted capitalism as the irrational monetization of nature. In the present work, I analyze three 21st century concepts, Anthropocene, Capitalocene and Machinocene, in light of Horkheimer and Adorno’s arguments and recent arguments from the philosophy of biology. The analysis reveals a remarkable prescience of the term “instrumental reason”, which is present in each of the three concepts in a profound and cryptic way. In my interpretation, the term describes the (...) propensity of science based on the notion of physicalism to interpret nature as the machine analyzable and programmable by the human reason. As a result, the Anthropocene concept is built around the mechanicist model, which may be presented as the metaphor of the car without brakes. In a similar fashion, the Machinocene concept predicts the emergence of the mechanical mind, which will dominate nature in the near future. Finally, the Capitalocene concept turns a perfectly rational ambition to expand knowledge into an irrational obsession with over-knowledge, by employing the institutionalized science as the engine of capitalism without brakes. The common denominator of all three concepts is the irrational propensity to legitimize self-destruction. Potential avenues for countering the effects of “instrumental reason” are suggested. (shrink)

Platonic religiosity is the first of two volumes devoted to the analysis of religiosity or religious feeling (pathos) in Plato. -/- (Back cover) Platonic Religiosity is a hermeneutical attempt to read Platonic works from the perspective of their religiosity. The aspects examined in the book are limited for the moment to the most basic, perhaps even the simplest, dimensions of religious feeling, those involving the representation of a relationship between man and divinity, Earth and Heaven, "low" and "high". Low and (...) high are spatial metaphors constitutive of our thinking. Although, in this case, they indicate the link between man and the super-sensible world, they also presuppose, at all times, the devout feeling (and the risk) of an insurmountable distance and remoteness that divides men from the numen. The need to affirm the relationship partly overcomes the presence of this feeling of distance, but never manages to neutralise it completely. -/- Religious feeling as such always oscillates between two terms: the need to establish a relationship with the divinity, and thus to guarantee its proximity to man, and the affirmation of its transcendence, namely the distance that divides us from the numen, up to the point, eventually, where the danger becomes the greatest: the denial of the god by man (atheism) or the human feeling of being abandoned by the god. The presence of these oscillations in the Platonic texts is analysed in several chapters of the book, devoted to different themes, such as the representations of reciprocity (do ut des), the images of the friendly god and the hostile god, the feeling of the threshold, prayers and invocations, verecundia and nostalgia, the feeling of dependence, the notion of prescience, assimilation to the god, the different types of ineffability, the role of atheism and incredulity, and lastly the notion of conversion, which substantiates Platonic religiosity by characterising it in the sense of a redemption-belief. (shrink)

The paper aims to expound on the issue of science being different from non science or prescience in the form of the scientific methodology used. Popper’s method of falsifiability ensures the aim of science to be successful. The aim of science which also needs a critical attitude, can enable scientific progress by rejecting inductivism as its scientific methodology. Popper’s view on what the aim of science is and why and how inductivism fails in the case of science, along with (...) examples from history of science besides its impact on philosophical foundations of science, has been stressed in the paper. (shrink)

Consciousness is defined as cognizance about cosmic secrets in the causal level ( sookshma thala jnanam). It is the insight on the invisible and inexplicable realms of the nature of nature. It is the intuitive perception, logical analysis, perceptual synthesis and conviction on Truth within truth and beyond in its pure and primordial state which is hitherto imperceptible to normal human beings who stays in the mundane plane. In its subtle sense there is only single consciousness and all the states (...) of consciousness with other prefixed appellations should have to be attained by inner transformation happening within the progressive layers of consciousness. Awakening consciousness is really the enlightenment on the consciousnesses in progression. Soul is the seat of consciousness. This supranano cosmic biochip is the boundless mine of knowledge, intelligence, awareness, memory, understanding, wisdom, love, intuition and prescience that is confined with elemental limitations. A person elevates to the sublime state of supra consciousness when he or she evolves into transhuman energy beyond elemental limits. (shrink)

La storia di un’idea che ha attraversato i secoli, dal mondo pagano e poi cristiano fino alle soglie dell’età contemporanea, passando per il lungo millennio medievale: l’intelligenza del diavolo, che si manifesta nella preveggenza e in capacità cognitive fuori dal comune. Ma qual è la natura di questo potere? Com’è possibile che Lucifero, principe degli angeli e sommamente sapiente, abbia peccato? E ciò significa che l’intelligenza è intrinsecamente demoniaca? Conoscenza e bontà possono convivere, e si può essere al contempo intelligenti (...) e malvagi, o addirittura malvagi perché intelligenti? Tutti interrogativi che si raccolgono attorno alla figura teologica del diavolo e al suo “scandaloso” potere cognitivo. Una questione che si muove tra filosofia, teologia, letteratura, scienza e mito, tessendo le fila di una storia intellettuale che vede spesso come protagonisti autori e testi poco noti, ma capaci di raccogliere il testimone di auctoritas come Agostino d’Ippona e Anselmo d’Aosta, Dante e Tommaso d’Aquino, Cartesio e Voltaire. (shrink)