The new narcissist is haunted not by guilt but by anxiety. He seeks not to inflict his own certainties on others but to find a meaning in life. Liberated from the superstitions of the past, he doubts even the reality of his own existence. Superficially relaxed and tolerant, he finds little use for dogmas of racial and ethnic purity but at the same time forfeits the security of group loyalties and regards everyone as a rival for the favors conferred (...) by a paternalistic state. His sexual attitudes are permissive rather than puritanical, even though his emancipation from ancient taboos brings him no sexual peace. Fiercely competitive in his demand for approval and acclaim, he distrusts competition because he associates it unconsciously with an unbridled urge to destroy. Hence he repudiates the competitive ideologies that flourished at an earlier stage of capitalist development and distrusts even their limited expression in sports and games. He extols cooperation and teamwork while harboring deeply antisocial impulses. He praises respect for rules and regulations in the secret belief that they do not apply to himself. Acquisitive in the sense that his cravings have no limits, he does not accumulate goods and provisions against the future, in the manner of the acquisitive individualist of nineteenth-century political economy, but demands immediate gratification and lives in a state of restless, perpetually unsatisfied desire. (shrink)

Local and global dependencies and interactions between individuals, groups and institutions are becoming increasingly opaque and risky. This is due to increased importance of highly complex abstract systems created and supported in order to maintain of transport, communications, finance, energy, media, security infrastructure, as well as social and cultural institutions. These systems require the knowledge and skills of experts. Professionals that not only satisfy identified needs, but also create new thereby contribute the development of cultural narcissism phenomenon. The aim of (...) the book is to discuss relations of experts and mass narcissism, on the background of shaping the knowledge societies and knowledge-based economies, and moreover their transformations towards the societies and economies based on creativity and wisdom. Undertaken analysis is contribute to sociology of expertise and intervention by indicating four selected contemporary issues: dilemmas of the knowledge society development; selection between trust substitutes and its reconstruction methods; transformations of social stratification; and the choice of pathways to socio-economic development. (shrink)

In a recent study appearing in Neuroethics, I reported observing 11 significant correlations between the “Dark Triad” personality traits – Machiavellianism, Narcissism, and Psychopathy – and “conservative” judgments on a 17-item Moral Intuition Survey. Surprisingly, I observed no significant correlations between the Dark Triad and “liberal” judgments. In order to determine whether these results were an artifact of the particular issues I selected, I ran a follow-up study testing the Dark Triad against conservative and liberal judgments on 15 additional moral (...) issues. The new issues examined include illegal immigration, abortion, the teaching of “intelligent design” in public schools, the use of waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques” in the war on terrorism, laws defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman, and environmentalism. 1154 participants (680 male, 472 female; median age 29), recruited online through Amazon Mechanical Turk, completed three surveys: a 15-item Moral Intuition Survey (MIS), the 28-item Short Dark Triad personality inventory, and a five-item demographic survey. The results strongly reinforce my earlier findings. Twenty-two significant correlations were observed between “conservative” judgments and the Dark Triad (all of which were significant past a Bonferonni-corrected significance threshold of p = .0008), compared to seven significant correlations between Dark Triad and “liberal” judgments (only one of which was significant past p = .0008). This article concludes by developing a novel research proposal for determining whether the results of my two studies are “bad news” for conservatives or liberals. (shrink)

Drawing on Adorno and Horkheimer's oft-quoted 1944 essay, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception,” Bernard Stiegler’s The Age of Disruption affirms that the Frankfurt School duo scrupulously envisaged a “new kind of barbarism,” or an inversion of modernity’s Enlightenment project illustrated by our contemporary political semblance. Surveying the critical social fissures that index contemporary Western civil society—from 9/11 to the 2002 Nanterre massacre and the 2015 Charlie Hebdo shooting—Stiegler diagnoses that our epoch is plagued by the “absence of epoch,” (...) whereby computational capitalism and algorithmic governmentality have extirpated the “transcendental imagination” underlying vital primordial narcissism. In short, these are symptoms a world increasingly “going mad,” in a thousand ways, possible because we are the bearers of “a negative protention of a becoming without future,” yet “we prefer not to say so: we do not want to know about it.”. (shrink)

In order to grasp the true ethical meaning of Foucault's aesthetics of existence, I begin by explaining in what sense he was an anti-normativist, arguing that the most important thing about the "final" Foucault is his strong emphasis on the idea of human freedom. I go on with a brief discussion about Foucault's sources of inspiration and a criticism of Rorty's kindred plea for "aesthetic life". I strongly reject the interpretation of Foucault's aesthetics of existence in terms of narcissistic individualism, (...) arguing, on the contrary, that it has a definite communitarian dimension. I also claim that it is rooted in the Socratic and Stoic understanding of "care of the self," at the same time allowing new challenging developments fitted for our "post-duty" historical age, by way of analogy with the process of artistic making. I conclude with some short answers to a few questions regarding the status of this aesthetics of living. (shrink)

Despite the diversity of viewpoints throughout the history of philosophy on the subject of blame, one thing philosophers appear to agree on is that blame is an irreducible feature of experience. That is to say , no philosophical approach makes the claim to have entirely eliminated the need for anger and blame. On the contrary, a certain conception of blameful anger is at the very heart of both modern and postmodern philosophical foundations. As a careful analysis will show, this is (...) true even for those philosophical arguments that pop up from time to time extolling the virtues of moving beyond blame and anger. In this paper, I assert that all forms of blame, including the cool, non-emotional, rational desire for accountability and justice and well as rageful craving for vengeance, are grounded in a spectrum of affective comportments that share core features. This affective spectrum includes irritation, annoyance, hostility, disapproval, condemnation, feeling insulted, taking umbrage, resentment, anger, exasperation, impatience, hatred, fury, ire, outrage, contempt, righteous indignation, ‘adaptive’ or rational anger, perceiving the other as deliberately thoughtless, rude, careless, negligent, complacent, lazy, self-indulgent, malevolent, dishonest, narcissistic, malicious, culpable, perverse, inconsiderate, intentionally oppressive, anti-social, hypocritical, repressive or unfair, disrespectful, disgraceful, greedy, evil, sinful, criminal, a miscreant. Blame is also implicated in cooly, calmly and rationally determining the other to have deliberately committed a moral transgression, a social injustice or injustice in general, or as committing a moral wrong. -/- I challenge the reader to recognize that every time you experience any of the blameful attitudes, emotions and assessments I mentioned above, you are displaying your own failure of understanding. I challenge you to do away with your need for concepts of blame, anger and punitive justice in any of their philosophical guises, and with them the equally unctuous discourses of forgiveness. -/- Anger is neither inherently immoral nor irrational and destructive, but represents a limited understanding of human behavior. To the extent that concepts of ethico-political justice imply appraisal of blameful, guilty intent, they also represent a failure of understanding and a form of violence and an impetus of conformity. There’s no such thing as adaptive, moral or righteous blame or anger. Modern legal concepts of justice, to the extent they imply blame, depend on an inadequate grasp of motivation and intent. (shrink)

Video-objects are often discussed in terms of their ability to reflect upon the speed of our narcissistic culture, but less acknowledged is video’s agency to perform electronic events outside of human experience. This article engages in scholarship interested in the space of video operations where lived and imagined, real and virtual phenomena are experienced at the threshold of perception. Bringing into this conversation a discussion of The Waves (2003), an interactive installation by video pioneer and media critic Thierry Kuntzel, the (...) article moves away from the time/movement nexus grounded in a filmic understanding of the image to position video-memory as the emergence of a volume of time. Different from the time-image and movement-image of cinema, the volume-image of video defines a mode of engaging with multiple temporalities within the continuum of the video itself. Constituted progressively through layers of ever-changing signal processes, the volume-image of video technology is an open field, a transductive zone where multiple intensities create new representational rhythms, which disrupt the durational model of time so often attached to human experience. (shrink)

There has been a general failure among mental health theorists and social psychologists to understand the etiology of work-engendered depression. Yet the condition is increasingly prevalent in highly industrialized societies, where an exclusionary focus upon work, money, and the things that money can buy has displaced values that traditionally exerted a liberating and humanizing influence. Social critics have called the result an impoverishment of the spirit, a state of cultural bankruptcy, and an incapacity for genuine leisure. From a clinical perspective, (...) the condition has been diagnosed as widespread narcissism and obsessive work. -/- Acedia, a concept developed by the Scholastics, throws clarifying light on the origin of this form of depression. (shrink)

In this essay, I look at two negative portrayals of egoism. I summarize in detail the superb All About Eve—which won six Academy Awards, including Best Picture. The movie is about the rise of a ruthlessly ambitious actress, and how she treats her main competitor. Eve Harrington worms her way into top theatrical actress Margo Channing’s inner circle by pretending to be an admirer, but she is really a schemer who wants to eclipse Margo’s star in the theater universe. However, (...) Eve runs into trouble when she attempts to manipulate tart-tongued theater critic, Addison de Witt. The movie portrays the New York theater industry as being full of narcissists. I then review the classic film noir The Third Man (1949), rated by the prestigious British Film Institute as the greatest film of the 20th century. The film centers around a charismatic, handsome criminal mastermind Harry Lime living in bombed-out post-War Vienna. Lime is a man of no conscience or empathy—a true psychopath. He cripples children by selling hospitals adulterated penicillin. But we (the audience) still feel sympathy for him. I end the piece by explaining the psychological mechanisms at work that give rise to our paradoxical sympathy. (shrink)

Teachers encountered numerous challenges posed by the COVID-19 outbreak. Herewith, this study aimed to determine the challenges encountered by Filipino teachers in the new normal and their coping mechanisms. This study employed a qualitative inquiry to determine the challenges encountered and coping mechanisms employed by teachers amid modular instruction, involving 10 teachers from five secondary schools in the Philippines who participated voluntarily. Data were gathered through a written narrative from each participant and were analyzed thematically. Themed findings showed that these (...) teachers are greatly challenged in terms of learning quality transfer, module distribution and retrieval, students’ difficulties in following instruction, power disruption, internet connection, and health risks posed by the pandemic. Nevertheless, these teachers dealt with these difficulties by employing their own coping techniques. Teaching can be challenging and frustrating, especially in these difficult times, but as these teachers demonstrated, everything is possible. Hence, educators must be ready for any situation that may arise. This situation is unlikely to get better anytime soon; instead, teachers will need to adjust to and accept this reality. (shrink)

According to internalism about prudential value, the token states of affairs that are basically good for you must be suitably connected, under the proper conditions, to your positive attitudes. It is commonly thought that any theory of welfare that implies internalism is guaranteed to respect the alienation constraint, the doctrine that you cannot be alienated from that which is basically good for you. The assumption is that because internalism requires a necessary connection between a subject’s positive attitudes and each state (...) of basic benefit to that subject, theories that imply internalism will only postulate goods that resonate with the subject. In this paper, I show that extant formulations of internalism do not have this desirable feature. The central defect of traditional formulations is that they do not respect an important but overlooked truth about alienation: namely, that even if a state of affairs is suitably connected to your positive attitudes, your negative attitudes can nonetheless render you alienated from it. By taking into account the relevance of the negative attitudes, I propose the new internalism—the view that x is basically good for you only if you have a net positive attitude towards it—as a way to advance our thinking about what is required to avoid alienating theories of welfare. (shrink)

The New Evil Demon Problem presents a serious challenge to externalist theories of epistemic justification. In recent years, externalists have developed a number of strategies for responding to the problem. A popular line of response involves distinguishing between a belief’s being epistemically justified and a subject’s being epistemically blameless for holding it. The apparently problematic intuitions the New Evil Demon Problem elicits, proponents of this response claim, track the fact that the deceived subject is epistemically blameless for believing as she (...) does, not that she is justified for so believing. This general strategy—which I call the “unjustified-but-blameless maneuver”—is motivated, in part, by the assumption that the distinction between epistemic justification and blamelessness is merely an extension of the familiar distinction between moral justification and blamelessness. In this paper, I consider three ways of drawing the distinction between justification and blamelessness familiar from the moral domain: the first in terms of a connection with reactive attitudes, the second in terms of the distinction between wrongness and wronging, and the third in terms of reasons-responsiveness. All three ways of drawing the distinction, I argue, make it difficult to see how an analogous distinction in the epistemic domain could help externalists explain away the intuitions which underwrite the New Evil Demon Problem. Motivating the unjustified-but-blameless maneuver, I conclude, is a much less straightforward task than its proponents tend to assume. (shrink)

Evidentialists and Pragmatists about reasons for belief have long been in dialectical stalemate. However, recent times have seen a new wave of Evidentialists who claim to provide arguments for their view which should be persuasive even to someone initially inclined toward Pragmatism. This paper reveals a central flaw in this New Evidentialist project: their arguments rely on overly demanding necessary conditions for a consideration to count as a genuine reason. In particular, their conditions rule out the possibility of pragmatic reasons (...) for action. Since the existence of genuine pragmatic reasons for action is common ground between the Evidentialist and the Pragmatist, this problem for the New Evidentialist arguments is fatal. The upshot is that the deadlock between these two positions is restored: neither side can claim to be in possession of an argument that could convince the other. As it happens, I myself favor Pragmatism about reasons for belief, and although I don't claim to be able to convince a committed Evidentialist, I do make a prima facie case for Pragmatism by describing particular scenarios in which it seems to be true. I then go on to develop my own preferred version of the view: Robust Pragmatism, according to which a consideration never constitutes a reason for believing a proposition purely in virtue of being evidence for it. (shrink)

The new philosophy of superdeterminism is a specific approach to answering fundamental questions about existence, knowledge, and morality based on a single scientific fact about the universe, namely that cause and effect in physics are not real. In 2020, Swedish theoretical physicist, Dr. Johan Hansson published a physics proof that our universe is superdeterministic meaning a predetermined static block universe without cause and effect in physics. A new philosophy of superdeterminism based on this scientific discovery that cause and effect are (...) not real has many important implications for human beings, but one especially important implication is a disproof of existentialism. The major tenets of existentialism cannot be true in the absence of cause and effect in physics, such as the existence of free will or freedom of choice, the lack of predetermined human behavior, the absurdity of life in the face of the inevitability of death, and the meaninglessness of existence, life and the universe. (shrink)

This paper explores the relationship between technological and human intelligence through ‘The New Natural’, a term which at once accepts the nature of technological intelligence as real instead of forever ‘artificial’. It supports an evolutionary, reciprocal relationship between humans and technology that culminates in technological singularity and rejects the primacy of human perception known to popular human access theories, before seriously considering the ‘decentered’ implications of posthuman access. In conversation with western-centric sci-fi film of the late twentieth century, then, this (...) philosophical study explores how the concept of a technology-only intelligence entity can: (1) help us dispose of the core problems often associated with human-only access, (2) neutral-ize our fears of human annihilation at the hands of technological intelligence, and (3) establish strong grounds for why we may have to push back against early conceptions of nature’s opposition to technology, if only so we may resist falling into the great, and most human-centered traps known to the Anthropocene. (shrink)

Jim Sterba’s Is a Good God Logically Possible? looks to resurrect J. L. Mackie’s logical argument from evil. Sterba accepts the general framework that theists seeking to give a theodicy have favored since Leibniz invented the term: the search for some greater good provided or greater evil averted that would justify God in permitting the type and variety of evil we actually observe. However, Sterba introduces a deontic twist, drawing on the Pauline Principle (let us not do evil that good (...) may come) to introduce three deontic side constraints on God’s choice of action. He then splits the possible goods into four categories: first- vs. second-order goods, goods to which we have a right, and goods to which we do not have a right. He argues that his deontic constraints rule out each combination, thereby showing that no God-justifying good is on offer. To defuse the argument, I draw on a pair of ideas from Marilyn McCord Adams: (i) God is outside the bounds of morality, and (ii) God can defeat evils by incorporating them into an incommensurately valuable friendship with each human. Properly appreciated, these show that the new logical argument relies on a false premise that is not easily repaired. (shrink)

At the beginning of the XXI century, human societies are entering a period of "late modernity" characterized by new forms of trust and risk, untransparent social situations and economic, political and cultural globalization. These processes are associated with the presence of abstract systems that surround people and which require support of people with expertise in the fields which include transport, telecommunications, finance, security, media, energy. At the same time, it is noted that the expertise cult is born and specialists not (...) only meet the identified needs, but also produce new, thus contributing to the development of a culture of narcissism. Article aims to explain the characteristics of expert systems and cultural narcissism, experts role as a participant in social change, model types and kinds of experts with their arcane in to ontological and epistemological structures of the social world. I also highlight the problems associated with the suppression of restrictions in to the access of expertise knowledge. ** Wraz z początkiem XXI wieku społeczeństwa ludzkie wchodzą w okres „późnej nowoczesności” cechujący się nowymi formami zaufania i ryzyka, nieprzejrzystością sytuacji społecznych oraz postępującą globalizacją ekonomiczną, polityczną i kulturową. Procesy te wiążą się z obecnością systemów abstrakcyjnych, które otaczają ludzi i do funkcjonowania wymagają wsparcia osób z wiedzą specjalistyczną z zakresu m.in. transportu, telekomunikacji, finansów, bezpieczeństwa, mediów, energetyki. Jednocześnie zauważa się, iż rodzi się kult ekspertyzy a specjaliści nie tylko zaspokajają rozpoznane potrzeby, ale też wytwarzają nowe, przyczyniając się tym samym do rozwoju kultury narcyzmu. Artykuł ma na celu przybliżenie specyfiki systemów eksperckich i narcyzmu kulturowego, roli eksperta jako uczestnika przemian społecznych, modelowych typów ekspertów i rodzajów ich wtajemniczeń w struktury ontologiczne i epistemologiczne świata społecznego oraz zwrócenie uwagi na problemy związane ze znoszeniem ograniczeń dostępu do wiedzy specjalistycznej. -/- . (shrink)

Support for the biological concept of race declined slowly but steadily during the second half of the twentieth century. However, debate about the validity of the race concept has recently been reignited. Genetic-clustering studies have shown that despite the small proportion of genetic variation separating continental populations, it is possible to assign some individuals to their continents of origin, based on genetic data alone. Race naturalists have interpreted these studies as empirically confirming the existence of human subspecies, and by extension (...) biological races. However, the new racial naturalism is not convincing. The continental clusters appealed to by race naturalists are arbitrary and superficial groupings, which should not be elevated to subspecies status. Moreover, the criteria applied to humans are not consistent with those used to define subspecies in nonhuman animals, and no rationale has been given for this differential treatment. (shrink)

This paper, which is a homage to the life and work of Stephen Gaukroger, explores competing receptions of Spencer’s programmatic synthetic philosophy. In so doing, I show how T.H Huxley and C.S. Peirce reconfigured a familiar, long-standing debate about cosmogeny and cosmology in the early modern period.

The philosophy of superdeterminism is based on a single scientific fact about the universe, namely that cause and effect in physics are not real. In 2020, accomplished Swedish theoretical physicist, Dr. Johan Hansson published a physics proof using Albert Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity that our universe is superdeterministic meaning a predetermined static block universe without cause and effect in physics. This new scientific understanding of the nature of our universe largely comports with Catholic doctrine. The new philosophy of superdeterminism (...) supports Catholic doctrines, such as original sin, the Trinity, the divine attributes of God, the incarnation, the resurrection of Jesus, the authority of the Roman Catholic Church, the existence of an afterlife in Heaven, Hell or Purgatory, miracles and spiritual experiences. The philosophy of superdeterminism supports Catholicism albeit under a new scientific way of thinking about our universe as a predetermined static block reality without cause and effect in physics. (shrink)

I critically evaluate the influential new wave account of theory reduction in science developed by Paul Churchland and Clifford Hooker. First, I cast doubt on claims that the new wave account enjoys a number of theoretical virtues over its competitors, such as the ability to represent how false theories are reduced by true theories. Second, I argue that the genuinely novel claim that a corrected theory must be specified entirely by terms from the basic reducing theory is in fact too (...) restrictive for scientific practice and should be rejected. Basic theories co-evolve with nonbasic theories in a mutually interactive way, and thus the basic theories incorporate the concepts and concerns of nonbasic theories. Third, I show that once its ontological consequences are duly noted, the reductive part the new wave account collapses into the classical theory developed within the logical empiricist tradition. As such, it still falls prey to standard anti-reductionist argument based upon multiple realizability and the cross-classification of special science and physical science terms. (shrink)

It was once held to be a virtue of the growing block theory that it combines temporal dynamism with a straightforward account of in virtue of what past-tensed propositions are true, and an explanation for why some future-tensed propositions are not true (assuming they are not). This put the growing block theory ahead of its principal dynamist rival: presentism. Recently, new growing block theorists have suggested that what makes true, past-tensed propositions, is not the same kind of thing as what (...) makes true, present-tensed propositions. They have done so in an attempt to defuse a particular epistemic objection to their view. In this paper it is argued that the new growing block theorist faces a dilemma. The more unified a strategy is for responding to the epistemic objection, the more that strategy results in the new growing block model positing truthmakers that are similar to those posited by the presentist, which erodes the purported advantage of the growing block theory over presentism. On the other hand, versions of the new growing block theory that embrace disunified strategies are better able to differentiate themselves from presentism, but are unattractive because of their disunity. (shrink)

This research will discuss the new destination of Toraja coffee as a tourism development strategy. Questions that will be answered is what is the attraction of Toraja coffee tourism as a new tourist destination. Methods of research conducted are field observation and interviews with coffee stakeholders as an informant and foreign tourists as respondents. The results of this study concluded that the appeal of Toraja coffee as a tourism destination is Toraja coffee has characteristic (taste) differently based on the planting (...) area Toraja coffee. There are 15 names of coffee products based on the region and the name of Toraja coffee products taken from the region. E.g. coffee Toraja Sapan, derived from the Sapan area, and coffee Sesean derived from the village of Sesean. Perception of foreign tourists to Toraja coffee is that the taste of Toraja coffee is different based on the height of the coffee planting area to be a tourism identity Toraja Agritourism. (shrink)

In this paper we discuss the new Tweety puzzle. The original Tweety puzzle was addressed by approaches in non-monotonic logic, which aim to adequately represent the Tweety case, namely that Tweety is a penguin and, thus, an exceptional bird, which cannot fly, although in general birds can fly. The new Tweety puzzle is intended as a challenge for probabilistic theories of epistemic states. In the first part of the paper we argue against monistic Bayesians, who assume that epistemic states can (...) at any given time be adequately described by a single subjective probability function. We show that monistic Bayesians cannot provide an adequate solution to the new Tweety puzzle, because this requires one to refer to a frequency-based probability function. We conclude that monistic Bayesianism cannot be a fully adequate theory of epistemic states. In the second part we describe an empirical study, which provides support for the thesis that monistic Bayesianism is also inadequate as a descriptive theory of cognitive states. In the final part of the paper we criticize Bayesian approaches in cognitive science, insofar as their monistic tendency cannot adequately address the new Tweety puzzle. We, further, argue against monistic Bayesianism in cognitive science by means of a case study. In this case study we show that Oaksford and Chater’s (2007, 2008) model of conditional inference—contrary to the authors’ theoretical position—has to refer also to a frequency-based probability function. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.

This chapter contains section titled: Kepler's New Astronomy Kepler's New Science of Vision Galileo and the Telescope Galileo and the Creation of Mathematical Physics Mersenne and the New Science.

The diagnostic category of borderline personality disorder (BPD) has come under increasing criticism in recent years. In this paper, we analyze the role and impact of epistemic injustice, specifically testimonial injustice, in relation to the diagnosis of BPD. We first offer a critical sociological and historical account, detailing and expanding a range of arguments that BPD is problematic nosologically. We then turn to explore the epistemic injustices that can result from a BPD diagnosis, showing how they can lead to experiences (...) of testimonial injustice which impede patient engagement in meaning-making activities, thereby undermining standard therapeutic goals. We conclude by showing how our arguments bolster ongoing efforts to replace the diagnostic category of BPD with alternatives such as complex post-traumatic stress disorder. (shrink)

This text offers major re-evaluation of Wittgenstein's thinking. It is a collection of essays that presents a significantly different portrait of Wittgenstein. The essays clarify Wittgenstein's modes of philosophical criticism and shed light on the relation between his thought and different philosophical traditions and areas of human concern. With essays by Stanley Cavell, James Conant, Cora Diamond, Peter Winch and Hilary Putnam, we see the emergence of a new way of understanding Wittgenstein's thought. This is a controversial collection, with essays (...) by highly regarded Wittgenstein scholars that may change the way we look at Wittgenstein's body of work. (shrink)

The new philosophy of superdeterminism is a specific approach to answering fundamental questions about existence, knowledge, and morality based on a single scientific fact about the universe, namely that cause and effect in physics are not real. Although the notion that cause and effect are not real has a long history in philosophy, recently a Swedish theoretical physicist, Dr. Johan Hansson published a physics proof that our universe is superdeterministic meaning a predetermined static block universe without cause and effect in (...) physics. A new philosophy of superdeterminism based on this scientific discovery that cause and effect are not real has many important implications for human beings, but three especially important implications are a disproof of libertarian free will, existentialism and moral evolution. Libertarian free will is impossible in the absence of cause and effect in physics. Existentialism is impossible in a predetermined universe. And one can infer that a Creator God endorsed objective Christian morality for all time disproving moral evolution. (shrink)

Philosophical Psychology, Volume 0, Issue 0, Page 1-4, Ahead of Print.

The philosophy of superdeterminism is based on a single scientific fact about the universe, namely that cause and effect in physics are not real. In 2020, accomplished Swedish theoretical physicist, Dr. Johan Hansson published a physics proof using Albert Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity that our universe is superdeterministic meaning a predetermined static block universe without cause and effect in physics. In the absence of cause and effect in physics, past, present and future events must all exist equally in logical (...) relationship. Our experience of time must be an illusion, because our experience of change in our world is not actually caused in time. Rather, the change we experience in our world is caused by the changing appearances in our static block universe in the static fourth dimension of time. We should think of time as a distance in the fourth dimension of time from our present position in the dimension of time to another position either towards or away from the beginning of the universe. Because physical reality is not actually caused to change in our static block universe, then static physical reality is actually timeless. But, because very good evidence supports the creation of timeless physical reality, then non-temporal causation of timeless physical reality outside of time is real. (shrink)

"New wave" reductionism aims at advancing a kind of reduction that is stronger than unilateral dependency of the mental on the physical. It revolves around the idea that reduction between theoretical levels is a matter of degree, and can be laid out on a continuum between a "smooth" pole (theoretical identity) and a "bumpy" pole (extremely revisionary). It also entails that both higher and lower levels of the reductive relationship sustain some degree of explanatory autonomy. The new wave predicts that (...) reductions of folk psychology to neuroscience will be located in the middle of this continuum; as neuroscientific evidence about mental states checks in, theoretical folk psychology will therefore be moderately revised. However, the model has conceptual problems which preclude its success in reviving reductionism, and its commitment to a syntactic approach wrecks its attempt to rescue folk psychology. Moreover, the architecture of the continuum operates on a category mistake that sneaks in an eliminativist conclusion. I argue that new wave reductionism therefore tends to be eliminativism in disguise. (shrink)

Grey power may be characterised as the ability to control events and people’s behaviour by influencing the influencers, behind the scenes. Grey power exists in every type of society and the two change together, as concauses, via a complex interchange of economic, technological and societal factors. This paper discusses the emergence of éminences grises in the modern digital age and the pressing need to gain a better understanding of their likely nature and development. The article concludes that it is only (...) by doing this that we can keep these New Grey Powers in check and prevent their usurpation of legitimate socio-legal and political power. (shrink)

In "Has Semantics Rested on a Mistake?", Howard Wettstein denies that semantics must account for cognitive significance. He thus rejects Frege's condition of adequacy for semantics and rids the new theorists from seemingly intractable puzzles. In a more recent article, Wettstein claims that not only reference but even cognitive significance is not a matter of how the referent is presented to the mind of the speaker. In this paper, I submit that the crucial element in the debate between new theorists (...) and neo-Fregeans concerning the semantic significance of language is the connection between semantic matters and the human thougth. (shrink)

Skeptical puzzles and arguments often employ knowledge-closure principles . Epistemologists widely believe that an adequate reply to the skeptic should explain why her reasoning is appealing albeit misleading; but it’s unclear what would explain the appeal of the skeptic’s closure principle, if not for its truth. In this paper, I aim to challenge the widespread commitment to knowledge-closure. But I proceed by first examining a new puzzle about failing to know—what I call the New Ignorance Puzzle . This puzzle resembles (...) to the Old Ignorance Puzzle , although it does not involve a closure principle. It instead centers on the standard view of ignorance, a highly intuitive principle stating that ignorance is merely a failure to know. In Sects. 2 and 3, I argue that the best way to solve the New Ignorance Puzzle is to reject the standard view of ignorance and to explain away its appeal via conversational implicature. I then use this solution to the New Ignorance Puzzle as a way of explaining why knowledge-closure principles would seem true, and why abominable conjunctions would seem abominable, even if such principles were false . The upshot is a new way of explaining why the skeptic’s reasoning is appealing albeit misleading. (shrink)

For years philosophers argued for the existence of distinct yet materially coincident things by appealing to modal and temporal properties. For instance, the statue was made on Monday and could not survive being flattened; the lump of clay was made months before and can survive flattening. Such arguments have been thoroughly examined. Kit Fine has proposed a new set of arguments using the same template. I offer a critical evaluation of what I take to be his central lines of reasoning.

The philosophy of superdeterminism is based on a single scientific fact about the universe, namely that cause and effect in physics are not real. In 2020, accomplished Swedish theoretical physicist, Dr. Johan Hansson published a physics proof using Albert Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity that our universe is superdeterministic meaning a predetermined static block universe without cause and effect in physics. So, what impact does living in a predetermined static block universe without cause and effect in physic have on living (...) your life? The single most important impact is the strong scientific evidence supporting the existence of God. The second most important impact is that you can infer that God endorsed Christianity and the Catholic Church, because one would expect God to communicate with humanity by predetermining His will to be the predominant religion and Church on Earth. The third most important impact is the realization that your life is endlessly repeated in our block universe. The philosophy of superdeterminism has many other significant impacts on our understanding of God, the universe and meaning in life. (shrink)

The philosophy of superdeterminism is based on a single scientific fact about the universe, namely that cause and effect in physics are not real. In 2020, accomplished Swedish theoretical physicist, Dr. Johan Hansson published a physics proof using Albert Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity that our universe is superdeterministic meaning a predetermined static block universe without cause and effect in physics. Consequently, all your future behaviors and thoughts must also be predetermined and already exist in a future portion of the (...) static dimension of time in our block universe. Because consciousness must be an aspect of physical reality, then the physical reality of the brain must be capable of producing your subjective experience of the world. Our conscious subjective experience of ourselves and the world around us is a construct of our own brain’s neural network containing ideas and concepts representing the physical reality of the world and ourselves. Moreover, our conscious minds must exist at all points in our existence within our block universe whether our past, present or future selves, because our block universe always exists because nothing within physics can cause our universe not to exist in the absence of cause and effect in physics. One should be concerned with every moment of your conscious life to guard against conscious experiences you would not want endlessly repeated in our block universe. (shrink)

The philosophy of superdeterminism is based on a single scientific fact about the universe, namely that cause and effect in physics are not real. In 2020, accomplished Swedish theoretical physicist, Dr. Johan Hansson published a physics proof using Albert Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity that our universe is superdeterministic meaning a predetermined static block universe without cause and effect in physics. Scientists have observed purely random behavior at the quantum level, which has led some physicists to claim that our universe (...) started out as a purely random quantum fluctuation. While quantum randomness makes a real appearance in our static block universe, such predetermined quantum randomness does not prove a random cause for our universe. With good scientific evidence supporting the belief that our universe was created despite the absence of cause and effect in physics, one can infer that a non-temporal non-physical cause was responsible for the creation of our universe. However, this non-temporal cause would logically have to know of and understand everything about the universe it was creating before it created our universe. Consequently, this creator would have had to already know about the appearance of quantum randomness in our universe in order to create our universe to exhibit that quantum randomness in our static block universe. The philosophy of superdeterminism supports the existence of such a Creator God, who created our static block universe outside of time without the use of any natural causal forces to exhibit predetermined quantum randomness disproving any random cause for our universe. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to develop an argument against metaphysical debates about the existence of human races. I argue that the ontology of race is underdetermined by both empirical and non-empirical evidence due to a plurality of equally permissible candidate meanings of "race." Furthermore, I argue that this underdetermination leads to a deflationist diagnosis according to #hich disputes about the existence of human races are non-substantive verbal disputes. $hile this diagnosis resembles general deflationist strategies in contemporary metaphysics" I (...) show that my argument does not presuppose controversial metametaphysical assumptions. (shrink)

Over the past 25 years, several new “medicines” have come screeching onto health care’s various platforms, including narrative medicine, personalized medicine, precision medicine and person-centred medicine. Philosopher Miriam Solomon calls the first three of these movements different “ways of knowing” or “methods,” and argues that they are each a response to shortcomings of methods that came before them. They should also be understood as reactions to the current dominant model of medicine. In this article, I will describe our dominant model, (...) which I call “the new medical model.” I will argue that several towering problems in modern medicine can be traced to its philosophical foundations, which calls for philosophical analysis. (shrink)

The foundational gesture of New Materialism and Speculative Realism dismisses vast swaths of past philosophy and theory in order to signify their own avant-garde status. The violence of this gesture, which tries to corral difference within past texts in order to feign its own purity, can be considered as a theoretical quarantine. Examples of medical and spiritual quarantine, the 2014 ebola epidemic and Jesus’ temptation, are analyzed to show that the figure is inherently compromised – the harder one fights to (...) keep the other away, the more one becomes inseparable from it. Derrida's reflections on the reactions against deconstruction show that this desire for progress is always inherently conservative; Meillassoux and Jane Bennett are considered as contemporary examples. A deconstruction of corralation and the academico-capitalist forces driving these ‘innovations’ might open us to reading the never-simply-past text, and to the possibility of the event. (shrink)

It is the conclusion advanced in this paper that there is a necessary and sufficient causal relationship between theory of mind and the neurological creation of conscious and unconscious quantum logic existing in superposition in the human brain. It takes two intelligent agents to make one self-aware agent. -/- A key element of my reasoning is the instantiation of superposition by way of a logical device I call the “state-system.” The newly conscious human remains unaware of the inner transformation caused (...) by theory of mind because, unlike a change of state within a quantum system, a change in the system itself is unobservable from within the system. This hides the dual nature of human self-awareness and preserves superposition with the unconscious. Only the internal state of the other is observed to start. The simultaneous split creating consciousness and the unconscious is not observed. Further, once this superposition is observed, it is suggested that human consciousness achieves a new state that is the next step in the evolution of human experience; quantum interbeing. The result of quantum consciousness is the ability to perceive superposition without reducing it into one of its components, while maintaining the integrity of each. It also confirms freedom of choice. After learning to hold two ideas simultaneously, the mind experiences itself as free by virtue of its ability to choose sides in the moment of observation, eliminating the quantum firewall that is determinism. -/- We start by looking at four key scientific works: the 1978 Vernon Mountcastle paper, the Sebastian Schepis paper of 2023, and the recent work of Allan Schore, all resting upon the well-known foundational quantum mechanical interpretation of Carlo Rovelli. They are each connected in indirect but profound ways. In the Mountcastle, it is argued that intelligence is a matter of scale—an argument based on the uniform appearance of all functionally unique command centers in the neocortex, and of their universal constituents: cortical columns. In the Schepis, it is argued that consciousness is a quantum phenomenon that requires the existence of two intelligent agents in logical superposition. And in the work of Schore, the key direction in neuropsychological research is established as interpersonal neurobiology and—implicitly—theory of mind. -/- These works collectively support a path to quantum consciousness as the logical consequence of intelligence scaling. Its implications include the invalidation of the ontological basis of the science of physics. Physical existence is real, but only as a metaphor for quantum informational processes. In his seminal 1996 paper “Relational Quantum Mechanics” Carlo Rovelli laid down the bedrock upon which my conclusions rest. In it he proposes that the reader “consider a reformulation of quantum mechanics in terms of information theory.” He posits that physical objects are not real. Only interactions between nodes in the network of quantum information are fundamental. He thus nullifies the measurement problem in quantum mechanics and shifts its ontology from the physical to the informational. -/- This paper seeks to validate his proposal while establishing the logical inevitability of human quantum consciousness as a consequence of the diverse but convergent research cited here. (shrink)

In this article I evaluate a resurrected French resistance movement--to biotechnological commodification. The official French view that ‘the body is the person’ has been dismissed as a ‘taboo’ by the French political scientist Dominique Memmi . Yet France has indeed resisted the models of globalised commodification adopted in US bioechnology, as, for example, when the government blocked a research collaboration between the American firm Millennium Pharmaceuticals and a leading genomics laboratory, le Centre d’Etude du Polymorphisme Humain, on the grounds the (...) ‘French DNA’ should not be given away. -/- This example, however, itself suggests why the ‘new French Resistance’ is not altogether liberating. The absolutist conception of all bodies as belonging to the French state—indeed, as constituting the body politic —is so potentially invasive that a counter-ideology of inviolability of the body is maintained assiduously. This inviolability is defended particularly strongly against commercialisation, but only at the moment when tissue is taken from the individual subject, who is not to be paid or compensated-- although commercial enterprises who subsequently use the tissue are not similarly constrained. -/- . (shrink)

The New Evil Demon Problem is meant to show that reliabilism about epistemic justification is incompatible with the intuitive idea that the external-world beliefs of a subject who is the victim of a Cartesian demon could be epistemically justified. Here, I present a new argument that such beliefs can be justified on reliabilism. Whereas others have argued for this conclusion by making some alterations in the formulation of reliabilism, I argue that, as far as the said problem is concerned, such (...) alterations are redundant. No reliabilist should fear the demon. (shrink)

For decades scholars thought they knew Hume's position on the existence of causes and objects he was a sceptic. However, this received view has been thrown into question by the `new readings of Hume as a sceptical realist. For philosophers, students of philosophy and others interested in theories of causation and their history, The New Hume Debate is the first book to fully document the most influential contemporary readings of Hume's work. Throughout, the volume brings the debate beyond textual issues (...) in Hume to contemporary philosophical issues concerning causation and knowledge of the external world and issues in the history of philosophy, offering the reader a model for scholarly debate. This revised paperback edition includes three new chapters by Janet Broughton, Peter Kail and Peter Millican. Contributors: Kenneth A. Richman, Barry Stroud, Galen Strawson, Kenneth P. Winkler, John P. Wright, Simon Blackburn, Edward Craig, Martin Bell, Daniel Flage, Anne Jaap Jacobson, Rupert Read, Janet Broughton, Peter Millican, Peter Kail. (shrink)

ABSTRACT LeDoux's pioneering work on the neurobiology of fear has played a crucial role in informing debates in the philosophy of emotion. For example, it plays a key part in Griffiths’ argument for why emotions don’t form a natural kind. Likewise, it is employed by Faucher and Tappolet to defend pro-emotion views, which claim that emotions aid reasoning. LeDoux, however, now argues that his work has been misread. He argues that using emotion terms, like ‘fear’, to describe neurocognitive data adds (...) a ‘surplus meaning’: it attributes phenomenal properties to survival circuits which they don’t possess. This paper aims to explore LeDoux's new proposal, and examine the potentially devastating consequences that ensue for the aforementioned views. I end by addressing the worry that these lessons are conditional on LeDoux's own higher-order theory of emotional consciousness being true. (shrink)

Although community cohesion and human rights are currently two of the most discussed political discourses in the UK, their links for policy are underplayed. This article presents the findings of a nine-month research project that included interviews with a selected expert sample, and which aimed to explore whether human rights values and legislation can be used as tools for community cohesion. Available levers within human rights and the 1998 Human Rights Act are identified, and evidence-based policy recommendations are posited. The (...) article aims to start a new and more inclusive dialogue on community cohesion policy. (shrink)