A critical discussion of J.B. Shank, 'Before Voltaire: the French Origins of "Newtonian" Mechanics,' University of Chicago Press, 2018.

In an era of digital revolution, artificial intelligence, big data and augmented reality, technology has shifted from being a tool of communication to a primary medium of experience and sociality. Some of the most basic human capacities are increasingly being outsourced to machines and we increasingly experience and interpret the world through digital interfaces, with machines becoming ever more ‘social’ beings. Social interaction and human perception are being reshaped in unprecedented ways. This book explores this technologisation of the social and (...) the attendant penetration of permanent liminality into those aspects of the lifeworld where individuals had previously sought some kind of stability and meaning. Through a historical and anthropological examination of this phenomenon, it problematises the underlying logic of limitless technological expansion and our increasing inability to imagine either ourselves or our world in other than technological terms. Drawing on a variety of concepts from political anthropology, including liminality, the trickster, imitation, schismogenesis, participation, and the void, it interrogates the contemporary technological revolution in a manner that will be of interest to sociologists, social and anthropological theorists and scholars of science and technology studies with interests in the digital transformation of social life. -/- Table of Contents -/- Introduction: The Technologisation of the Social: A 21st-Century Megamachine? Paul O’Connor -/- 1. Communication as Theatricalisation: Self-Presentation in the Digital Age Arpad Szakolczai -/- 2. Parasites of the Social: Digital Disruptions of the Labour Market Tom Boland -/- 3. Possessed by Technology: The Metastasis of Absence Agnes Horvath -/- 4. Technologisation of the Social: Symbiosis, Parasitism, or Predation? Daniel Gati -/- 5. J'accuse Zéro: The Technology of Zero and the Making of a Personal Void Ray Griffin -/- 6. Digital Affordances and the Liminal Stephen Turner -/- 7. The Smart Womb: Digital Technologies and the Maze of Trickster Politics Marius Ion Benta -/- 8. Brave New Industry? The Dark Side of Dematerialisation and Industry 4.0 Thomas S.J. Smith -/- 9. ‘What Have You Caught?’: Nannycams and Hidden Cameras as Normalised Surveillance of the Intimate Janos Mark Szakolczai -/- 10. Coercive Visibility: Discipline in the Digital Public Arena Paul O’Connor -/- Conclusion: Is There a Way Out of the Technologisation of the Social? Marius Ion Benta. (shrink)

Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac emphasizes values of receptivity and perceptivity that appear to be mutually reinforcing, critical to an ecological conscience, and cultivatable through concrete and embodied experience. His priorities bear striking similarities to elements of the ethics of care elaborated by feminist philosophers, especially Nel Noddings, who notably recommended receptivity, direct and personal experience, and even shared Leopold’s attentiveness to joy and play as sources of moral motivation. These commonalities are so fundamental that ecofeminists can and should (...) see Leopold as a philosophical ally. The three ecofeminist scholars who have devoted the most concerted attention to Leopold’s work argue that his Land Ethic is not, and does not provide a basis for, an ecofeminist ethic. I dispute the main criticisms of these scholars, and conclude that ecofeminists should attend more often to Leopold’s work, which extends possibilities for excellent praxis. (shrink)

Information can be public among a group. Whether or not information is public matters, for example, for accounts of interdependent rational choice, of communication, and of joint intention. A standard analysis of public information identifies it with (some variant of) common belief. The latter notion is stipulatively defined as an infinite conjunction: for p to be commonly believed is for it to believed by all members of a group, for all members to believe that all members believe it, and so (...) forth. This analysis is often presupposed without much argument in philosophy. Theoretical entrenchment or intuitions about cases might give some traction on the question, but give little insight about why the identification holds, if it does. The strategy of this paper is to characterize a practical-normative role for information being public, and show that the only things that play that role are (variants of) common belief as stipulatively characterized. In more detail: a functional role for “taking a proposition for granted” in non-isolated decision making is characterized. I then present some minimal conditions under which such an attitude is correctly held. The key assumption links this attitude to beliefs about what is public. From minimal a priori principles, we can argue that a proposition being public among a group entails common commitment to believe among that group. Later sections explore partial converses to this result, the factivity of publicity and publicity from the perspective of outsiders to the group, and objections to the aprioricity of the result deriving from a posteriori existential presuppositions. (shrink)

Much early modern metaphysics grew with an eye to the new science of its time, but few figures took it as seriously as Emilie du Châtelet. Happily, her oeuvre is now attracting close, renewed attention, and so the time is ripe for looking into her metaphysical foundation for empirical theory. Accordingly, I move here to do just that. I establish two conclusions. First, du Châtelet's basic metaphysics is a robust realism. Idealist strands, while they exist, are confined to non-basic regimes. (...) Second, her substance realism seems internally coherent, so her foundational project appears successful.I have two aims in this paper. Historically, I show that du Châtelet's main source of inspiration was Christian... (shrink)

Accountability for corporate social responsibility (CSR) and its societal challenges is undetermined, and it is unclear whether business or society should carry these responsibilities. Despite severe criticism from some, many organizations continue to invest in and promote CSR. The purpose of this multiple-case study was to increase the understanding of the phenomenon from the perspective of a purposeful sample of participants who contribute to CSR execution and who were representatives of the 10 organizations identified as active promoters. The participant corporations (...) (case studies), in Europe and North America, were mainly in the telecommunications industry. Study data came from 11 face-to-face, semistructured interviews with chief executive officers (CEOs) and other CSR key participants, a review of corporate archival records, and a review of other sources regarding the effective implementation of CSR in these organizations. The conceptual framework consisted of Carroll’s constructs of CSR based on economic, legal, social, and discretionary elements. The constant comparative method was used to analyze the interview data and identify factors leading corporations to continue to engage in CSR. These factors were economic, social impact, legal compliance, or good reputation, sponsored by transformational or adaptive leaderships and endorsed by visionary CEOs. The findings may enlighten and motivate other organizations to engage in CSR programs and connect stakeholders’ contribution to a broadened positive social change. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.

My thesis in this paper is: the modern concept of laws of motion—qua dynamical laws—emerges in 18th-century mechanics. The driving factor for it was the need to extend mechanics beyond the centroid theories of the late-1600s. The enabling result behind it was the rise of differential equations. -/- In consequence, by the mid-1700s we see a deep shift in the form and status of laws of motion. The shift is among the critical inflection points where early modern mechanics turns into (...) classical mechanics as we know it. Previously, laws of motion had been channels for truth and reference into mechanics. By 1750, the laws lose these features. Instead, now they just assert equalities between functions; and serve just to entail (differential) equations of motion for particular mechanical setups. This creates two philosophical problems. First, it’s unclear what counts as evidence for the laws of motion in the Enlightenment. Second, it’s a mystery whether these laws retain any notion of causality. That subverts the early-modern dictum that physics is a science of causes. (shrink)

This paper examines the origin, range and meaning of the Principle of Action and Reaction in Kant’s mechanics. On the received view, it is a version of Newton’s Third Law. I argue that Kant meant his principle as foundation for a Leibnizian mechanics. To find a ‘Newtonian’ law of action and reaction, we must look to Kant’s ‘dynamics,’ or theory of matter. I begin, in part I, by noting marked differences between Newton’s and Kant’s laws of action and reaction. I (...) argue that these are explainable by Kant’s allegiance to a Leibnizian mechanics. I show (in part II) that Leibniz too had a model of action and reaction, at odds with Newton’s. Then I reconstruct how Jakob Hermann and Christian Wolff received Leibniz’s model. I present (in Part III) Kant’s early law of action and reaction for mechanics. I show that he devised it so as to solve extant problems in the Hermann-Wolff account. I reconstruct Kant’s views on ‘mechanical’ action and reaction in the 1780s, and highlight strong continuities with his earlier, pre-Critical stance. I use these continuities, and Kant’s earlier engagement with post-Leibnizians, to explain the un-Newtonian features of his law of action and reaction. (shrink)

The problem of trickster leadership is discussed in this chapter in the context of the Romanian experience of modernity. This experience has emerged as a Post-Byzantine condition; it was strongly marked by the forty years of communist regimes and was loaded with a high amount of duplicity and ambivalence. The chapter argues that the communist type of trickster leadership in Romania was the outcome of a clash between two types of corruption: a domestic one and a global one. The idea (...) of ‘forms without substance’, coined in 1868 by the historian Titu Maiorescu, is shown to be indicative of the exilic condition in which Romanians remained caught even after their country became independent. The description of this paradoxical condition is followed by a review of the main eras of Romania as a modern state, arguing that this condition has led to an accumulation of disharmony and the absurd in the social fabric of the people. (shrink)

In book X, Plato's rejection of mimetic poetry can be read as a parallel to rejecting the conventions of the poetic style contemporary to his time. This rejection can, owing to the premises derived and the analyses made in this paper, further be read as to suggest that Plato presses for a reformation of the poetic vocabulary. That is, as to suggest that Plato proposes that the non-rational imagistic tradition, embodied in mimetic poetry, get replaced by a rational and noetic-aspiring (...) rhetoric that opts for knowledge and truth. (shrink)

Much scholarship has claimed the physics of Emilie du Châtelet’s treatise, Institutions de physique, is Newtonian. I argue against that idea. To do so, I distinguish three strands of meaning for the category ‘Newtonian science,’ and I examine her book against them. I conclude that her physics is not Newtonian in any useful or informative sense. To capture what is specific about it, we need better interpretive categories.

This paper examines the young Kant’s claim that all motion is relative, and argues that it is the core of a metaphysical dynamics of impact inspired by Leibniz and Wolff. I start with some background to Kant’s early dynamics, and show that he rejects Newton’s absolute space as a foundation for it. Then I reconstruct the exact meaning of Kant’s relativity, and the model of impact he wants it to support. I detail (in Section II and III) his polemic engagement (...) with Wolffian predecessors, and how he grounds collisions in a priori dynamics. I conclude that, for the young Kant, the philosophical problematic of Newton’s science takes a back seat to an agenda set by the Leibniz-Wolff tradition of rationalist dynamics. This results matters, because Kant’s views on motion survive well into the 1780s. In addition, his doctrine attests to the richness of early modern views of the relativity of motion. (shrink)

Newton rested his theory of mechanics on distinct metaphysical and epistemological foundations. After Leibniz's death in 1716, the Principia ran into sharp philosophical opposition from Christian Wolff and his disciples, who sought to subvert Newton's foundations or replace them with Leibnizian ideas. In what follows, I chronicle some of the Wolffians' reactions to Newton's notion of absolute space, his dynamical laws of motion, and his general theory of gravitation. I also touch on arguments advanced by Newton's Continental followers, such as (...) Leonhard Euler, who made novel attempts to defend his mechanical foundations against the pro-Leibnizian attack. This examination grants us deeper insight into the fate of Newton's mechanics on the Continent during the early eighteenth century and, more specifically, sheds needed light on the conflicts and tensions that characterized the reception of Newton's philosophy of mechanics among the Leibnizians. (shrink)

If the world itself is metaphysically indeterminate in a specified respect, what follows? In this paper, we develop a theory of metaphysical indeterminacy answering this question.

I argue that the key dynamical concepts and laws of Newton's Principia never gained a solid foothold in Germany before Kant in the 1750s. I explain this absence as due to Leibniz. Thus I make a case for a robust Leibnizian legacy for Enlightenment science, and I solve what Jonathan Israel called “a meaningful historical problem on its own,” viz. the slow and hesitant reception of Newton in pre-Kantian Germany.

I explain and assess here Huygens’ concept of relative motion. I show that it allows him to ground most of the Law of Inertia, and also to explain rotation. Thereby his concept obviates the need for Newton’s absolute space. Thus his account is a powerful foundation for mechanics, though not without some tension.

Newton had a fivefold argument that true motion must be motion in absolute space, not relative to matter. Like Newton, Kant holds that bodies have true motions. Unlike him, though, Kant takes all motion to be relative to matter, not to space itself. Thus, he must respond to Newton’s argument above. I reconstruct here Kant’s answer in detail. I prove that Kant addresses just one part of Newton’s case, namely, his “argument from the effects” of rotation. And, to show that (...) rotation is relative to matter, Kant changes the meaning of ‘relative motion.’ However, that change puts Kant’s doctrine in deep tension with Newton’s science. Based on my construal, I correct earlier readings of Kant by John Earman and Martin Carrier. And, I argue that we need to revise Michael Friedman’s influential view of Kant. Kant’s struggle, I conclude, illustrate the difficulties that early modern relationists faced as they turned down Newtonian absolute space ; and it typifies their selective engagement with Newton’s case for it. (shrink)

I examine here if Kant’s metaphysics of matter can support any late-modern versions of classical mechanics. I argue that in principle it can, by two different routes. I assess the interpretive costs of each approach, and recommend the most promising strategy: a mass-point approach.

I uncover here a conflict in Kant’s natural philosophy. His matter theory and laws of mechanics are in tension. Kant’s laws are fit for particles but are too narrow to handle continuous bodies, which his doctrine of matter demands. To fix this defect, Kant ultimately must ground the Torque Law; that is, the impressed torque equals the change in angular momentum. But that grounding requires a premise—the symmetry of the stress tensor—that Kant denies himself. I argue that his problem would (...) not arise if he had kept his early theory of matter as made of mass points, or “physical monads.”. (shrink)

Richard Rorty is well known as a propagandist of pragmatism and of a "post-philosophical" culture in which many traditional philosophical debates are dismissed as outrightly fruitless. The paper is mainly concerned with Rorty's dismissal of the realism-antirealism debate. The shift from argument to propaganda which is typical of much of Rorty's reasoning is critically investigated from different perspectives. In particular, it is argued that Rorty cannot convincingly establish a pragmatist position beyond realism and antirealism, and that pragmatism seems to be (...) inadequate with respect to scientific practice. Finally, the fruitfulness of the realism-antirealism debate is defended. (shrink)

This book offers a theoretical investigation into the general problem of reality as a multiplicity of ‘finite provinces of meaning’, as developed in the work of Alfred Schutz. A critical introduction to Schutz’s sociology of multiple realities as well as a sympathetic re-reading and reconstruction of his project, Experiencing Multiple Realities traces the genesis and implications of this concept in Schutz’s writings before presenting an analysis of various ways in which it can shed light on major sociological problems, such as (...) social action, social time, social space, identity, or narrativity. (shrink)

This article is a study on Paul’s mystical experiences using an interpretive framework that relies on multiple grounds: Alfred Schutz’s phenomenology of the “multiple realities” applied to the problem of religion, political anthropology and general scholarship on Paul. The aim of this study is also multiple: I seek to draw an interpretive insight into those mystical experiences that have been traditionally attributed to Paul by using a hermeneutic lens provided by Schutzian phenomenology, to clarify this hermeneutic method as such and (...) explore its interpretive potential for the phenomenology of religion in general, and to interpret the results of this analysis from the reflexive-historical perspective of political anthropology. (shrink)

In this article, I examine the discourse around evil from the perspective of philosophical anthropology. Through an analysis of the religious symbolism of evil and an associated quest for a complete study of being, I intend in this article to explore fresh ways of establishing the relation between our rhetorical practices of evil and moral responsibility. I draw on Ricoeur’s work on the primary symbols of evil, which can be seen as a means for clarifying and extending our understanding of (...) evil and moral responsibility. I employ the concept of “the double intentionality of symbol” to advance an expressive-performative model of speaking about the full shape of moral responsibility. At stake in my paper is the possibility of recognizing the need to valorise subordinate resources of knowledge that might prevent us from studying and responding to the elusive reality of evil in intellectual abstraction. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Newton's Metaphysics: Essays by Eric SchliesserMarius StanEric Schliesser. Newton's Metaphysics: Essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Pp. 328. Hardback, $99.90.Newton owes his high regard to the quantitative science he left us, but his overall picture of the world had some robustly metaphysical threads woven in as well. Posthumous judgment about the value of these threads has varied wildly. Christian Wolff thought him a metaphysical rustic, as did Hans (...) Reichenbach some two centuries later ("Die Bewegungslehre bei Newton, Leibniz und Huygens," Kant-Studien 29 [1924]: 416–38). In the 1960s, the tide would turn, as Howard Stein and James Edward McGuire separately began to show that Newton's metaphysics was not just sophisticated, but often more compelling than its early modern alternatives (see respectively "Newtonian Spacetime," Texas Quarterly 10 [1967]: 174–200; and Tradition and Innovation: Newton's Metaphysics of Nature [Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1995]). Eric Schliesser's book unfolds in that same register of appreciative, high scholarship, and it attests to the enduring attraction of its subject.The book grew out of previous discrete papers, to which he added a few more for this occasion. Accordingly, it does not come with a master argument. Rather, it is an in-depth exploration of some key metaphysical themes in Newton. As such, it befits its subject figure, who reflected on themes and concepts while stopping short of working out systems.The first major theme is Newton and Spinozism. The latter does not denote Spinoza's metaphysics. In fact, Schliesser explains, Newton shared with Spinoza some weighty commitments, for example, to space being actually infinite, and to substance monism: "for Newton, there is strictly speaking only one genuine substance," namely, God (33). Rather, "Spinozism" is an interpreter's category for a bundle of three theses: identifying God and nature; denying final causation in the physical world; and the assumption of "blind" metaphysical necessity. Some counted Hobbes and John Toland as Spinozist in this sense, and even Epicurus, avant la lettre. Newton and his followers argued vehemently against this package, as Schliesser shows in chapters 4, 5, and 8. Their chief complaint was that Spinozism is unable to account for the "origin of motion," for a certain type of order, and for the stability of cosmological structure—and to do so in a way that "meets the standards of Newtonian mechanics" (122). This interpretive lens allows Schliesser to draw Kant in, by reading his youthful Theory of Heaven as a possible Spinozist reply to their objections (chapter 3). [End Page 157]A second theme is the metaphysics of mechanics, where Schliesser weaves together several strands. One is the ontology of gravity, for which he offers a novel construal: for Newton, gravity counts as real, but in a qualified sense. Namely, it is not essential and not intrinsic: "even after creation, a lonely partless particle of matter in the universe would not be said to gravitate." And gravity is relational: a "shared quality" of two or more bits of matter, which obtains in virtue of their sharing a nature (19). Another strand is Newton's ontology of time—really, a subtle, difficult topic long neglected. Famously, Newton in Principia defends absolute, true, and mathematical time. The question is what these three qualifiers denote, and whether Newton thought they were synonymous. Schliesser in chapter 7 argues for the provocative view that "absolute" and "true" time are not identical concepts; rather, they pick out different entities. These entities share a common structure, namely, metric and topological. That makes them species of "mathematical" time (179). But, Schliesser contends, Newton has unequal warrant for his two concepts of time.Yet another theme is formal causation. It comes to the fore in chapter 5, which grapples with Newton's opaque idea that space is an "emanative effect." Schliesser explains that here, "emanation picks out a species of formal causation" (147), but in a novel, early modern sense that comes from Bacon, not Aristotle. If space has a formal cause, then so has its twin brother, time, the topic of chapter 7. God is their common formal cause. Then in chapter 6 (coauthored with Zvi Biener) Schliesser adds that, for Newton, laws... (shrink)

I examine here if Kant can explain our knowledge of duration by showing that time has metric structure. To do so, I spell out two possible solutions: time’s metric could be intrinsic or extrinsic. I argue that Kant’s resources are too weak to secure an intrinsic, transcendentally-based temporal metrics; but he can supply an extrinsic metric, based in a metaphysical fact about matter. I conclude that Transcendental Idealism is incomplete: it cannot account for the durative aspects of experience—or it can (...) do so only with help from a non-trivial metaphysics of material substance. (shrink)

One of the important components considered in this research approach is given by the study on teaching-learning strategies, methods and techniques in the lessons aimed at organizing economic activities. It is understood that such a topic takes into account, on the one hand, a series of aspects related to an economic issue, and on the other hand, issues of a methodological / didactic nature found in the teaching-learning-assessment activity. At the same time, the approach that is intended to be highlighted (...) reflects the practical-theoretical dimension of such a possible approach in class. Under these conditions, the research approach assumed involves an analysis focused, on the one hand, on the theoretical aspects related to the approached topic, and on the other hand, on the conceptual-theoretical operationalization with practical implications. In other words, there is an interest in valorizing and capitalizing on the contents approached both theoretically and practically. Therefore, it is considered that we will analyze, from a theoretical and pragmatic perspective, the strategies, methods and teaching-learning techniques at the level of economic-themed classes, also revealing the impact it has in the economic-educational dimension. (shrink)

This chapter looks at Euler’s relation to Newton, and at his role in the rise of ‘Newtonian’ mechanics. It aims to give a sense of Newton’s complicated legacy for Enlightenment science, and to raise awareness that some key ‘Newtonian’ results really come from Euler.

Modern philosophy of physics debates whether motion is absolute or relative. The debate began in the 1600s, so it deserves a close look here. Primarily, it was a controversy in metaphysics, but it had epistemic aspects too. I begin with the former, and then touch upon the latter at the end.

In the Critique of Judgment, Kant claims that genius is a talent for art, but not for science. Despite his restriction of genius to the domain of fine art, several recent interpreters have suggested that genius has a role to play in Kant’s account of cognition in general and scientific practice in particular. In this paper, I explore Kant’s reasons for excluding genius from science as well as the reasons that one might nevertheless be tempted to think that his account (...) allows room for the scientific genius. I then argue that Kant’s concerns are not only epistemic, but also moral, and together, they give us good reason for resisting the veneration of genius. (shrink)

On an influential view, Newton's mechanics is built into Kant's very theory of exact knowledge. However, Newtonian dynamics had serious explanatory limits already known by 1750. Thus, we might worry that Kant's Analytic is too narrow to ground enough exact knowledge. In this paper, I draw on Enlightenment dynamics to show that Kant's notion of determinate objecthood is sufficiently broad, non-trivial, and still relevant to the present.

This paper is an exploration of the multiple meanings that the invention of the brick – this simple artefact that has permitted the raising of complex and durable buildings – has brought to civilisation and to humans in their relationship with the world. I suggest that bricks may have brought a number of novel experiences to society, whose meanings are important for the understanding of the modern condition and its emphasis on rationalism, replicability, precision, standardisation and modularity among other principles. (...) I also point out that bricks, along with rectangular types of packaging, are eminently liminal objects that entail a peculiar form of violence. (shrink)

Questo non è un libro perfetto, ma è unico, e se scorri le prime 400 pagine o giù di lì, le ultime 300 (circa 700) sono un buon tentativo di applicare ciò che è noto sul comportamento ai cambiamenti sociali nella violenza e nelle maniere nel tempo. L'argomento di base è: come fa la nostra genetica a controllare e limitare il cambiamento sociale? Sorprendentemente non riesce a descrivere la natura della selezione dei parenti (idoneità inclusiva) che spiega gran parte della (...) vita sociale animale e umana. Egli manca anche (come quasi tutti) manca di un quadro chiaro per descrivere la struttura logica della razionalità (termine preferito di John Searle) che preferisco chiamare la Psicologia descrittiva del Pensiero dell'Ordine Superiore (DPHOT). Avrebbe dovuto dire qualcosa sui molti altri modi di abusare e sfruttare le persone e il pianeta, dal momento che questi sono ora molto più gravi da rendere quasi irrilevanti altre forme di violenza. Estendere il concetto di violenza per includere leconseguenze globali a lungoterminedella replicazione dei geni diqualcuno, e avere una comprensione della natura di come funziona l'evoluzione (cioè la selezione dei parenti) fornirà una prospettiva molto diversa sulla storia, gli eventi attuali e come le cose probabilmente andranno nei prossimi centinaia di anni. Si potrebbe iniziare notando che la diminuzione della violenza fisica nel corso della storia è stata abbinata (e resa possibile) dallo stupro spietato in costante aumento del pianeta (cioè dalla distruzione del futuro del proprio discendente).’ Pinker (come la maggior parte delle persone) è spesso distratto dalle superficialità della cultura quando è la biologia che conta. Guarda le mie recenti recensioni di Wilson 'The Social Conquest of Earth' e 'SuperCooperators' di Nowak e Highfield qui e in rete per un breve riassunto della vacuità del 'vero altruismo'(selezione di gruppo), e l'operazione di selezione dei parenti e l'inutilità e la superficialità di descrivere il comportamento in termini culturali. Questo è il classico problema della natura/nutrimento e la natura vince nutrita --infinitamente. Ciò che conta veramente è la violenza fatta sulla terra dall'incessante aumento della popolazione e della distruzione delle risorse (a causa della medicina e della tecnologia e della repressione dei conflitti da parte della polizia e dei militari). Circa 200.000 persone in più al giorno (un altro Las Vegas ogni 10 giorni, un'altra Los Angeles ogni mese), le 6 tonnellate o giù di lì di pisolino che vanno in mare / persona / anno – circa l'1% del totale del mondo che scompare ogni anno, ecc. significa che se qualche miracolo accadrà la biosfera e la civiltà crollerà in gran parte durante i prossimi due secoli, e ci sarà fame, violenza e violenza di ogni tipo su scala impressionante. Le maniere, le opinioni e le tendenze delle persone a commettere atti violenti non hanno alcuna importanza a meno che non possano fare qualcosa per evitare questa catastrofe, e non vedo come ciò accadrà. Non c'è spazio per gli argomenti, e nessun punto sia (sì io sono un fatalista), quindi mi limiterò a fare alcuni commenti come se fossero fatti. Non immaginate di avere un'informazione personale nel promuovere un gruppo a spese degli altri. Io sono 78, nonhanno discendenti e non hanno parenti stretti e non si identificano con alcun gruppo politico, nazionale o religioso e considerano quelli a cui appartengo di default come ripugnanti come tutti gli altri. I genitori sono i peggiori nemici della vita sulla Terra e, tenendo la vista generale delle cose, le donne sono violente come gli uomini se si considera il fatto che la violenza delle donne (come la maggior parte di quella fatta dagli uomini) è in gran parte fatta al rallentatore, a distanza nel tempo e nello spazio e per lo più effettuata per procura dai loro discendenti e dagli uomini. Sempre più spesso, le donne portano figli indipendentemente dal fatto che abbiano un compagno e l'effetto di impedire a una donna di riprodursi è in media molto maggiore dell'arresto di un uomo, poiché sono il collo di bottiglia riproduttivo. Si può ritenere che le persone e la loro prole meritino riccamente qualsiasi miseria arrivi la loro strada e (con rare eccezioni) i ricchi e famosi sono i peggiori trasgressori. Meryl Streep o Bill Gates o J.K Rowling e ognuno dei loro figli può distruggere 50 tonnellate di suolo ogni anno per generazioni nel futuro, mentre un contadino indiano e il suo possono distruggere 1 tonnellata. Se qualcuno nega che va bene, e ai loro discendenti dico "Benvenuti all'inferno sulla Terra" (WTHOE). Oggi l'accento è sempre posto sui diritti dell'uomo, ma è chiaro che se si vuole che la civiltà abbia una possibilità, le responsabilità umane devono sostituire i diritti umani. Nessuno ottiene diritti senza essere un cittadino responsabile e la prima cosa che ciò significa è ladistruzione ambientalemi nimal. La responsabilità più fondamentale non è quella dei bambini a meno che la vostra società non vi chieda di produrli. Una società o un mondo che permette alle persone di allevare a caso sarà sempre sfruttato dai geni egoisti fino a quando non crolla (o raggiunge un punto in cui la vita è così orribile che non vale la pena di vivere). Se la società continua a mantenerei diritti umani come primari, ai loro discendenti si può dire con fiducia "WTHOE". Coloro che desiderano un quadro aggiornato completo per il comportamento umano dalla moderna vista a due systems possono consultare il mio libro 'La struttura logica dellafilosofia, psicologia, Mind e il linguaggio in Ludwig Wittgenstein e John Searle' 2nd ed (2019). Coloro che sono interessati a più dei miei scritti possono vedere 'Talking Monkeys--Filosofia, Psicologia, Scienza, Religione e Politica su un Pianeta Condannato--Articoli e Recensioni 2006-2019 3rd ed (2019) e Suicidal Utopian Delusions nel 21st Century 4th ed (2019) . (shrink)

Nel 1884 usciva l’articolo What is an Emotion?, con il quale William James, nel clima scientifico influenzato dalle idee di Darwin, provava a dare una risposta ad un interrogativo oggi ancora aperto. Le emozioni, infatti, sono attualmente un campo di ricerca interdisciplinare dove c’è ancora molto da scoprire. Questo libro intende offrire un contributo dal punto di vista filosofico, trattando la questione delle emozioni attraverso un percorso che parte dall’empirismo associazionistico di J. S. Mill, transita per i risultati dell’opera di (...) W. James e termina con la teoria delle emozioni di J. Dewey, lasciando emergere intersezioni con istanze contemporanee, in particolare affini alla fenomenologia. (shrink)

I emphasize two merits of Eric Watkins’ account in "Kant on Laws": the strong evidential support it has, and the central place it gives to Kant’s laws of mechanics. Then, I raise two questions for further research. 1. What kind of evidential reasoning confirms a Kantian law? 2. Do natures explain Kantian laws? If so, how?

Husserlian phenomenology, as the study of conscious experience, has often been accused of solipsism. Husserl’s method, it is argued, does not have the resources to provide an account of consciousness of other minds. This chapter will address this issue by providing a brief overview of the multiple angles from which Husserl approached the theme of intersubjectivity, with specific focus on the details of his account of the concrete interpersonal encounter – “empathy.” Husserl understood empathy as a direct, quasi-perceptual form of (...) intentionality through which the sense of the Other is constituted. Furthermore, his account of empathy is holistically integrated with his overall theory of intersubjectivity, including his discussions of the objectivity of nature, and the social, historical, and communal aspects of subjectivity. Husserl’s theory of empathy continues to cast a long shadow, influencing both the analytic and continental approaches to the problem of other minds, as well as contemporary account of social cognition in the cognitive sciences. (shrink)

This work is a critical introduction to Alfred Schutz’s sociology of the multiple reality and an enterprise that seeks to reassess and reconstruct the Schutzian project. In the first part of the study, I inquire into Schutz’s biographical con- text that surrounds the germination of this conception and I analyse the main texts of Schutz where he has dealt directly with ‘finite provinces of meaning.’ On the basis of this analysis, I suggest and discuss, in Part II, several solutions to (...) the shortcomings of the theoretical system that Schutz drew upon the sociological problem of multiple reality. Specifically, I discuss problems related to the struc- ture, the dynamics, and the interrelationing of finite provinces of meaning as well as the way they relate to the questions of narrativity, experience, space, time, and identity. (shrink)

Leibniz is committed to a form of cosmic eternity, on account of his natural theology and foundations for dynamics. However, his views on perpetuum mobiles entail that a particularly attractive type of cosmic eternity is out of reach for Leibniz.

We develop and apply a multi-dimensional conception of explanatory depth towards a comparative analysis of inflationary and bouncing paradigms in primordial cosmology. Our analysis builds on earlier work due to Azhar and Loeb (2021) that establishes initial condition fine-tuning as a dimension of explanatory depth relevant to debates in contemporary cosmology. We propose dynamical fine-tuning and autonomy as two further dimensions of depth in the context of problems with instability and trans-Planckian modes that afflict bouncing and inflationary approaches respectively. In (...) the context of the latter issue, we argue that the recently formulated trans-Planckian censorship conjecture leads to a trade-off for inflationary models between dynamical fine-tuning and autonomy. We conclude with the suggestion that explanatory preference with regard to the different dimensions of depth is best understood in terms of differing attitudes towards heuristics for future model building. (shrink)

A volume of papers inspired by the work of George E. Smith on confirmation and evidence in advanced science—from Newton's gravitation theory to the physics of molecules.

The core insight of neutral monism is that there might be something underlying both mind and matter which is neither and of which mind and matter could be seen as particular manifestations. In this paper, I shall present some directions for developing neutral monism as a metaphysical position on the mind-brain problem and argue that its core insight may be applied to other debates in philosophy of mind, in particular debates about the metaphysics of phenomenologies, such as the phenomenology of (...) thought and cognitive phenomenologies. (shrink)

The hypothesis that we want to test is whether the Kantian revolution, based on a Copernican-type hypothesis, is a revolution in the Kuhnian sense of “scientific revolution”. By answering it we accomplish the two aims of this paper: to draw a recuperative and justificatory perspective to the fundamental ideas from Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions, related in particular to the refutation of Larry Laudan’s criticism on it and, by our own Kuhn-type reconstruction of the term “Copernican revolution” attributed to (...) Kant, to demonstrate the nominal hypothesis formulated above. Accordingly, we argue not only that, with Kant, we find analogously the Kuhntype model of revolution, and that the results of his revolutionary hypothesis on how reporting to the object coincide not only with the results provided by science and with their scientific status; but also that it is consistent with the model provided by Kuhn . (shrink)

The study of the mind has to grapple with both the unconscious and the conscious. While the phenomenon of cognitive penetration has already been explored especially in connection to the modularity of perceptual and cognitive processes, the phenomenon of cognitive-phenomenological penetration, the penetration within the stream of consciousness of the phenomenological fabric of experiences by the phenomenology of thought, has not been given much attention thus far. In this paper, I focus with analytic-phenomenological methods on cognitive-phenomenological penetration as a phenomenon (...) whereby the texture of non-cognitive phenomenologies gets modified by cognitive phenomenologies. I present a metaphysical model of cognitive-phenomenological penetration and argue that it can be used to support a non-modular view in the metaphysics of the conscious and unconscious mind, to confirm the hypothesis that there exists a sui generis phenomenology of thought, and to defend the view that cognitive-phenomenological penetration has a pivotal role to play in appraisals of rationality, irrationality, and cognitive distortions at the intrasubjective, intersubjective, and extra-mental levels. (shrink)

In this introductory chapter, we discuss some of the challenges raised by the project of pluralization in the discipline of philosophy. We look at a few theoretical approaches to pluralization that this volume takes up—namely, the figure-based approach, the global approach, and the genre-based approach—and we consider what the pluralization project might also mean for philosophical pedagogy. Finally, we give a brief summary of the contributions in this volume and provide possible cross-references for each chapter.

It has been widely argued that words are analogous to species such that words, like species, are natural kinds. In this paper, I consider the metaphysics of word-kinds. After arguing against an essentialist approach, I argue that word-kinds are homeostatic property clusters, in line with the dominant approach to other biological and psychological kinds.