Over the last three years I have been fortunate to teach an unusual class, one that provides an academic background in ethical and social and political theory using the medium of comedy. I have taught the class at two schools, a private liberal arts college in western Pennsylvania and a public regional state university in southern Georgia. While the schools vary widely in a number of ways, there are characteristics that the students share: the school in Pennsylvania had a (...) large population of students raised in a middle class industrial context, and the school in Georgia had a majority of students from middle-to-lower class agricultural backgrounds. Because of recent collapses in the economy of the tool and dye industry in the Great Lakes region, and the ongoing concerns for development in rural and urban areas of the southeastern United States, both groups of students were in similarly dire economic and working conditions. All faced the distinct possibility that they would not do as well in life as their parents. Most of the students grew up with television and film and had a love of comedy when they arrived at college. -/- Entertainment and mass media contributed to the students' mindset and the lens through which they viewed and interpreted their lived experience. Comedic mass media in the form of television sitcoms and films were common choices for inexpensive entertainment, in their childhood, in their past, in their homes, and now in their college dorms and apartments. In asking students to connect their own history with cultural trends depicted in comedy in film and television, even through the history of television, gave the students a familiar venue to critically consider their own intellectual growth and development and that of American society as a whole. -/- Many of them were familiar with the internet, and enjoyed the internet as a source of information about celebrities as well as the history and episodes of their favorite television shows and films. Students are rediscovering and discovering television programs that their professors may have watched as children, with the availability of a wide range of comedy television programs available on cable, especially TVLand, Comedy Central and Nick-at-Night. -/- In this article I will elaborate on the value of comedy as a teaching tool for philosophers and professors. I will provide a number of examples, showing how comedy can provide fertile examples of ethical theory at work, and I will show how comedy can be used to clarify cultural norms and values. Finally, I will discuss the political activism and student empowerment involved in teaching Philosophy, Comedy and Film in southern Georgia. (shrink)

I set the stage for Socrates and Aristophanes’ alliance by beginning with Hegel’s question, what is the object of art?, in the context of his analysis of ancient Greek “art-religion.” Hegel traces the shifting object of art through a variety of artistic practices before arriving at comedy, which he identifies as the last stage of Greek aesthetic life. He finally asks, what is the object of comedy? Unlike other artistic practices that are positively defined by their created object (...) or creative activity, ancient comedy appears to be purely destructive, terminating anything that might be traditionally recognizable as an object of art. Hegel points to Aristophanes and Socrates as representing two sides of the defacement of the object of art-religion as such. Moving beyond Hegel, I turn to Aristophanes and Plato to consider how in the performative destruction of the object of aesthetic and philo- sophical reflection, something slips into being that may be identified as the phantom form of the Subject. (shrink)

This essay discusses five main topoi in the Divine Comedy through which teachers might encourage students to explore the question of the Divine Comedy’s treatment of philosophy. These topoi are: (1) The Divine Comedy’s representations in Inferno of noble pagans who are allegorically or historically associated with philosophy or natural reason; (2) its treatment of the relationship between faith and reason and that relationship’s consequences for the text’s understanding of the respective authoritativeness of theology and (...) philosophy; (3) representations in the Divine Comedy that relate to the question of the practical value of philosophical (not to mention theological) speculation; (4) the text’s treatment of the respective merits of practical and contemplative activities; and (5) its implicit defense of philosophy’s authority with respect to ethical and political questions. (shrink)

Greek tragedy, in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, represents the performative realization of binary political difference, for example, “private versus public,” “man versus woman” or “nation versus state.” On the other hand, Roman comedy and French Revolutionary Terror, in Hegel, can be taken as radical expressions of political in-difference, defined as a state where all mediating structures of association and governance have collapsed into a world of “bread and circuses.” In examining the dialectical interplay between binary, tragic difference and comedic, (...) terrible in-difference, the paper arrives at hypothetical conclusions regarding how these political forms may be observed today. (shrink)

Towards the very end of his wide-ranging lectures on the philosophy of art, Hegel unexpectedly expresses a preference for comedy over tragedy. More surprisingly, given his systematic claims for his aesthetic theory, he suggests that this preference is arbitrary. This essay suggests that this arbitrariness is itself systematic, given Hegel’s broader claims about unity and necessity in art generally and his analysis of ancient as opposed to modern drama in particular. With the emergence of modern subjectivity, tragic plots (...) lose their necessity and so their redemptive conclusions; comic plots disintegrate into mockery and entertainment. In many cases, the dramas in question consequently fail to be art. This does not, however, mean that art ends: insofar as it inspires humans to a better understanding of their unity with the divine, it will continue to meet its mandate. But the lack of necessity in modern drama means we are free to prefer happy endings. Hegel’s seemingly arbitrary preference is, in the end, systematically justified. (shrink)

I discuss Dante’s understanding that human existence is “ordered by two final goals” and how, for Dante, this understanding defines philosophy’s and revelation’s respective scopes of authority in guiding human conduct. Specifically, I show that, although Dante subordinates our earthly beatitude to spiritual beatitude in a way that seems to suggest the subordination of the authority of philosophy to that of revelation, he in fact limits philosophy’s scope to an arena in which its authority is not only (...) legitimate but also crucial to the cultivation of the higher, spiritual beatitude of human activity. (shrink)

The present essay argues that Bergson’s account of the comic can only be fully appreciated when read in conjunction with his later metaphysical exposition of the élan vital in Creative Evolution and then by the account of fabulation that Bergson only elaborates fully three decades later in The Two Sources of Morality and Religion. The more substantive account of the élan vital ultimately shows that, in Laughter, Bergson misses his own point: laughter does not simply serve as a means for (...) correcting human behavior but is rather the élan vital’s vital summons, the demand of life itself, that human beings challenge their obligations, question their societal forms, and thereby create new and, for Bergson, more ideal forms of life and community. (shrink)

Our reception of Hegel’s theory of action faces a fundamental difficulty: on the one hand, that theory is quite clearly embedded in a social theory of modern life, but on the other hand most of the features of the society that gave that embedding its specific content have become almost inscrutably strange to us (e.g., the estates and the monarchy). Thus we find ourselves in the awkward position of stressing the theory’s sociality even as we scramble backwards to distance ourselves (...) from the particular social institutions that gave conceptualized form to such sociality in Hegel’s own opinion. My attempt in this article is to make our position less awkward by giving us at least one social-ontological leg to stand on. Specifically, I want to defend a principled and conceptual pluralism as forming the heart of Hegel’s theory of action. If this view can be made out, then we will have a social-ontological structure that might be filled out in different ways in Hegel’s time and our own while simultaneously giving real teeth to the notion that Hegel’s theory of action is essentially social. (shrink)

Dave Chappelle took an extended leave from comedy for moral reasons. I argue that, while he had every right to leave comedy because of his moral concerns, he was not obliged to do so. To make this case, I present Chappelle’s argument that the potential negative consequences of his racial humor obliged him to leave. Next, I argue against Chappelle’s argument about avoidable harms as the harms are not his responsibility, he was not being negligent, and the benefits (...) of his humor outweigh the harms. I also argue in support of the intuition that another’s failure of comprehension or moral character, even if that failure will predictably result in harms to others, should not convert moral acts into immoral ones. (shrink)

Bill Cosby’s immorality has raised intriguing aesthetic and ethical issues. Do the crimes that he has been convicted of lessen the aesthetic value of his stand-up and, even if we can enjoy it, should we? This article first discusses the intimate relationship between the comedian and audience. The art form itself is structurally intimate, and at the same time the comedian claims to express an authentic self on stage. After drawing an analogy between the question of the moral character of (...) comedians and the aesthetic value of their stand-up and the debate over the ethical criticism of art, this article argues that it is reasonable to find a comedian’s performance less funny, because stand-up’s artistic success relies on this intimacy. It contrasts the comedy of Bill Cosby with that of Louis C.K. C.K.’s moral flaws are much more present in his comedy, and it is therefore more difficult to find him funny. Last, it is ethically permissible to enjoy their comedy, if no harm to others results, both because it does not corrupt the audience’s character and because amusement is valuable. (shrink)

Art plays a significant role in Iris Murdoch’s moral philosophy, a major part of which may be interpreted as a proposal for the revision of religious belief. In this paper, I identify within Murdoch’s philosophical writings five distinct but related ways in which great art can assist moral/religious belief and practice: art can reveal to us “the world as we were never able so clearly to see it before”; this revelatory capacity provides us with evidence for the existence of (...) the Good, a metaphor for a transcendent reality of which God was also a symbol; art is a “hall of reflection” in which “everything under the sun can be examined and considered”; art provides us with an analogue for the way in which we should try to perceive our world; and art enables us to transcend our selfish concerns. I consider three possible objections: that Murdoch’s theory is not applicable to all forms of art; that the meaning of works of art is often ambiguous; and that there is disagreement about what constitutes a great work of art. I argue that none of these objections are decisive, and that all forms of art have at least the potential to furnish us with important tools for developing the insight required to live a moral/religious life. (shrink)

I discuss Dante’s understanding that human existence is “ordered by two final goals” and how this understanding defines philosophy’s and theology’s respective scopes of authority in guiding human conduct. I show that, while Dante devalues the philosophical authority associated with the traditional Aristotelian emphasis on the significance of contemplative activity, he does so in order to highlight philosophy’s ethico-political authority to guide human conduct toward its “earthly beatitude.” Moreover, I argue that, although Dante subordinates earthly beatitude to spiritual (...) beatitude, he nonetheless maintains that philosophy’s authority to reveal a path to spiritual beatitude requires its fundamental independence from theology. (shrink)

The artform of standup comedy can be seen as having much in common with the discipline of philosophy, particularly with the way philosophy is carried out or “performed,” whether professionally or otherwise. There are, for instance, certain basic similarities between how standup comedians and philosophers value ideals of clarity and precision when it comes to the issue of determining what kind of language is best to employ if one seeks to either effectively deliver a funny joke, as (...) in the case of standup comedy, or if one seeks to effectively articulate and present an argument that can later be assessed as sound, as in the case of philosophy. The reason this is of note is because it is rooted in another similarity that serves not only to bring these two activities significantly closer but to isolate standup comedy from most artforms when it comes to how it conceives of matters pertaining to interpretation and purpose. More specifically, this is the fact that standup comedians and philosophers alike hope, and even expect on some level, that, in the best of cases, their respective jokes and reasoned arguments will compel some form of unanimous approval from those who properly understand and engage with their content. When this observation is combined with the additional observation that jokes can also serve as vehicles for imparting wisdom of a genuinely philosophical nature despite the fact that generating laughter rather than seeking truth per se represents standup comedy’s ostensive primary goal, this leads one to wonder how porous the boundaries that otherwise serve to distinguish these two activities might be. In particular, in light of the nature and scope of the many similarities that can be said to exist between them, which I lay out and discuss in the article, it seems that standup comedy could even be reasonably argued to be the artform closest to philosophy. (shrink)

This essential reference text on the life, thought and writings of Plato uses over 160 short, accessible articles to cover a complete range of topics for both the first-time student and seasoned scholar of Plato and ancient philosophy. It is organized into five parts illuminating Plato’s life, the whole of the Dialogues attributed to him, the Dialogues’ literary features, the concepts and themes explored within them and Plato’s reception via his influence on subsequent philosophers and the various interpretations of (...) his work. This fully updated 2nd edition includes 19 newly commissioned entries on topics ranging across comedy, tragedy, Xenophon, metatheatre, gender, musical theory, animals, Orphism, political theory, religion, time, Hellenistic philosophy and post-Platonic ancient commentaries. It also features revisions to the majority of articles from the 1st edition, including 8 which have been completely re-written, and 12 which have had the references substantially revised. Reflecting the growing diversity of Plato scholarship across the world, this edition includes contributions from a wide range of scholars who enrich the field and provide students and scholars with a vital resource for study and reference. (shrink)

Aristotle’s Poetics is the first philosophical account of an art form and is the foundational text in the history of aesthetics. The Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Aristotle and the Poetics is an accessible guide to this often dense and cryptic work. Angela Curran introduces and assesses: Aristotle’s life and the background to the Poetics the ideas and text of the Poetics , including mimēsis ; poetic technē; the definition of tragedy; the elements of poetic composition; the Poetics’ recommendations for (...) tragic plot patterns; catharsis ; epic and comedy; the nature of our emotional response to drama; the proper pleasure of tragedy; and the role that art plays in a human life the relevance of Aristotle’s work in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and philosophical psychology to the Poetics a comparison of Plato and Aristotle on the value of mimetic art the continuing importance of Aristotle’s Poetics to contemporary philosophy, aesthetics, and philosophy of film. (shrink)

The Southern Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

This paper presents the main topics, arguments, and positions in the philosophy of AI at present (excluding ethics). Apart from the basic concepts of intelligence and computation, the main topics of ar-tificial cognition are perception, action, meaning, rational choice, free will, consciousness, and normativity. Through a better understanding of these topics, the philosophy of AI contributes to our understand-ing of the nature, prospects, and value of AI. Furthermore, these topics can be understood more deeply through the discussion of (...) AI; so we suggest that “AI Philosophy” provides a new method for philosophy. (shrink)

The article deals with the problem of the divine light in the mystical works of St Symeon the New Theologian in the context of the Eastern Christian ascetical tradition. The author focuses on the passages referring to the divine light in the works of Evagrios Pontikos, St Isaac the Syrian, St Maximus the Confessor, and in the Makarian corpus. As is shown in the present contribution, none of these authors created a fully-developed theory of the vision of the divine light. (...) Being close to these writers in many ideas, St Symeon was generally independent of any of them in his treatment of the theme of vision of light, always basing himself primarily upon his own experience. (shrink)

An introduction to contemporary debates in philosophy of perception.

Genres inform our appreciative practices. What it takes for a work to be a good work of comedy is different than what it takes for a work to be a good work of horror, and a failure to recognize this will lead to a failure to appreciate comedies or works of horror particularly well. Likewise, it is not uncommon to hear people say that a film or novel is a good work, but not a good work of x (where (...) x is the genre of that work). A work can be good all things considered, but genre membership provides us with an additional set of evaluative criteria over and above those of the medium, which colors how we interpret and appreciate the work. Given this importance, it is not surprising that philosophers of art have been interested in providing an account of what, exactly, a genre is. Despite this interest, there is not widespread agreement about what it takes for something to be a genre, nor what kinds of considerations are relevant in determining whether a work is a member of that genre. Beyond this, we might also want to know to what degree we ought to consider genre in evaluating a work of art and why it should matter at all. Here, I explore the variety of recent theories that philosophers have taken up on the topic of genre and why we should ultimately think of genres as artistic practices rather than the alternatives. (shrink)

Experimental philosophy of consciousness aims to investigate and explain our thinking about phenomenally conscious states. Based on empirical studies, researchers have argued (a) that we lack a folk concept of consciousness, (b) that we do not think entities like Microsoft feel regret, (c) that unfelt pains are widely accepted, and (d) that people do not attribute phenomenally conscious states to duplicated hamsters. In this article, I review these and other intriguing claims about people’s understanding of phenomenal consciousness. In doing (...) so, I also show why experimental philosophy of consciousness is challenging, although perhaps not quite as daunting as studying phenomenal consciousness itself. (shrink)

"In 'I Don't Know, Just Wait: Remembering Remarriage in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind', William Day shows how Kaufman's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind should be considered part of the film genre known as remarriage comedy; but he also shows how Kaufman contributes something new to the genre. Day addresses, in particular, how the conversation that is the condition for reunion involves discovering 'what it means to have memories together as a way of learning how to be (...) together'. One of the most innovative aspects of Kaufman's filmic representation of such a conversation is its effect on the audience: how the narrative structure 'replicates for the viewer the felt contingency of memory that we attribute' to the characters we see onscreen - a couple contending with the interrelated experiences of remarriage and remembering." --David LaRocca, Introduction to The Philosophy of Charlie Kaufman, 12. (shrink)

Contents: Anna Lemańska, The Autonomous Philosophy of Nature ; Anna Latawiec, The Progress in the Philosophy of Nature ; Grzegorz Bugajak, Philosophy of Nature, Realism, and the Postulated Ontology of Scientific Theories ; Maria-Magdalena Weker, Multi-dimensional Image of the World ; Jarosław Kukowski, The Application of Principia Mathematica and Principia Metaphisica for Resolving the Incommensurate Paradigms. The Comparative Study in Philosophy of Physics and Philosophy of Nature ; Danuta Ługowska, The Dilemmas Concerning the Essence of (...) Life ; Adam Świeżyński, The Beginning of the Universe in the Concept of Creation and in Contemporary Cosmology. The Philosopher’s of Nature Considerations . (shrink)

This chapter will evaluate humor used with the specific intent to reveal glaring epistemic errors that lead to injustice; flaws in reasoning so transparent that straightforward logic, argument, and evidence seem ineffectual against them, and in some cases, just silly to think such tools would be needed. Laughter seems to be one of the only sane responses. In particular, I will assess how humor can combat conspiracy theories, propaganda, lies, and bullshit. The last one I view in Harry Frankfurt's sense (...) of a complete lack of concern for truth or reality, which I think sums up former President Donald Trump's epic lack of curiosity which has a trickle-down effect on his ardent followers. The sort of conspiracy theories I will focus on are an intermingling of propaganda, well defined and analyzed by Jason Stanley in his work How Propaganda Works, and the "new conspiracism", outlined by Muirhead and Rosenblum in A Lot of People are Saying: The New Conspiracism and The Assault on Democracy. There are perils with this potency of pugilistic comedy. It is easy to punch up, humorously fume at the foibles and fantastical blunders of a world leader who seriously considers ingesting bleach to combat the plague, who also, without irony, regales us of his capacious mnemonic prowess in recalling the following words on a cognitive test: "Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV." The self-proclaimed "stable genius" aced it. But when Trumpism and QAnon e.g., spreads among many who are impoverished and disempowered, the very people to whom Trump and others in his powerful orbit have incessantly lied, it becomes less clear how to wield truth-and justice-seeking wit. Are consciousness-raising comedians seeking to uncover and undermine obvious and dangerous falsehoods punching in the morally correct direction, and how can we tell? (shrink)

A series of essays on film and philosophy whose authors - philosophers or film studies experts - write on a wide variety of films: classic Hollywood comedies, war films, Eastern European art films, science fiction, showing how film and watching it can not only illuminate philosophy but, in an important sense, be doing philosophy. The book is crowned with an interview with Wittgensteinian philosopher Stanley Cavell, discussing his interests in philosophy and in film and how they (...) can come together. (shrink)

How language works — its functions, mechanisms, and limitations — matters to the early moderns as much as it does to contemporary philosophers. Many of the moderns make reflection on language central to their philosophical projects, both as a tool for explaining human cognition and as a weapon to be used against competing views. Even in philosophers for whom language is less central, we can find important connections between their views on language and their other philosophical commitments.

The term ‘scientism’ has not attracted consensus about its meaning or about its scope of application. In this paper, we consider Mizrahi’s suggestion to distinguish ‘Strong’ and ‘Weak’ scientism, and the consequences this distinction may have for philosophical methodology. While we side with Mizrahi that his definitions help advance the debate, by avoiding verbal dispute and focussing on questions of method, we also have concerns about his proposal as it defends a hierarchy of knowledge production. Mizrahi’s position is that Weak (...) Scientism should be adopted, stating that “of all the knowledge we have, scientific knowledge is the best knowledge”. This version of scientism, however, has consequences for philosophical methodology. In particular, if one conceives of philosophy as an a priori discipline and holds Weak Scientism, the introduction of empirical methods in philosophy may threaten its very essence or soul. In this chapter, we will defend the move to adopt empirical methods in philosophy and argue that, rather than threatening its essence or soul, these methods put philosophy in a better position to contribute to knowledge production, an endeavor shared with the sciences, and in a very interdisciplinary spirit. Our point of disagreement with Mizrahi is that we should avoid any hierarchy of knowledge, and instead focus on what each perspective -- scientific, philosophical, historical, or other -- can contribute to understanding phenomena. (shrink)

Mathematics is everywhere and yet its objects are nowhere. There may be five apples on the table but the number five itself is not to be found in, on, beside or anywhere near the apples. So if not in space and time, where are numbers and other mathematical objects such as perfect circles and functions? And how do we humans discover facts about them, be it Pythagoras’ Theorem or Fermat’s Last Theorem? The metaphysical question of what numbers are and the (...) epistemological question of how we know about them are central to the philosophy of mathematics. These and related philosophical questions are of particular interest because of mathematics’ unusual status. Mathematics is exceptional in that, on the one hand, it appears unhesitatingly true—no one doubts that 2 + 3 = 5—but on the other, as just noted, it is not about the physical world. This ambivalent status is what gives the philosophy of mathematics its special interest. The philosophy of mathematics is also one of the oldest academic fields, more or less coeval with philosophy itself. But contemporary philosophy of mathematics is rather different from its pre-twentieth-century antecedents, largely for three reasons. The first is that since the seventeenth century, mathematics has become integral to science. Science has over the past few centuries become increasingly mathematical, and indeed the fundamental science of nature, physics, is today recognised as a branch of applied mathematics. The second is that mathematics underwent a transformation in the course of nineteenth century: having started the century as a rather traditional-looking science of quantity it emerged a hundred years later a radically transformed abstract theory of structure. The final factor in the transformation of the philosophy of mathematics is the rise of modern logic. Developed by Frege, Cantor and others in the late nineteenth century, modern logic pervades contemporary mathematics, philosophy and computer science, and has had an immeasurable effect on the philosophy of mathematics. These volumes will collect the major works in this major field, with a focus on the last few decades. The anthology will include technical work, which interprets philosophically significant mathematical results or subfields of mathematics, as well as purely philosophical writing, aimed at those without advanced mathematics. The collection should be of interest to both philosophers and mathematicians, as well as to anyone who is susceptible to wondering what the main intellectual tool used in science, economics and finance, and indeed everyday life is ultimately about. (shrink)

The philosophy of AI has seen some changes, in particular: 1) AI moves away from cognitive science, and 2) the long term risks of AI now appear to be a worthy concern. In this context, the classical central concerns – such as the relation of cognition and computation, embodiment, intelligence & rationality, and information – will regain urgency.

David Hume (1711-1776) is widely recognized as one of the most influential and significant critics of religion in the history of philosophy. There remains, nevertheless, considerable disagreement about the exact nature of his views. According to some, he was a skeptic who regarded all conjectures relating to religious hypotheses to be beyond the scope of human understanding – he neither affirmed nor denied these conjectures. Others read him as embracing a highly refined form of “true religion” of some kind. (...) On the other side of this spectrum, it is claimed that Hume was committed to atheism, although due to social conditions at the time, this had to be (thinly) concealed or masked. The aim of this article is to provide an overview of Hume’s core concerns and arguments on this subject and to provide the reader with a framework for interpreting and assessing his various contributions. (shrink)

In Chapter 1 I discuss the basic problem which made me undertake the issue of human death. That problem was the dualism in the depiction of human nature which has not been fully overcome yet, the dualism which leads to the emergence of new difficulties in contemporary attempts at adequately solving the problem of human death. They include the separation of soul from the body in the moment of death, and the borderline between the moment of death and the moment (...) of resurrection. Chapter 2 is devoted to the presentation of a new anthropological perspective, of an anthropology build “from the bottom up”, that is “from foundations”, and taking into account man’s rooting in the biological environment, and thus also in the genetic heritage taken over from our pre-human ancestors. That anthropology brings new aspects into traditional anthropology by extending it to include new ways of explaining the genesis of the human body and spirit, and new depictions of man’s death. In Chapter 2 I will also present the concept of evolution proposed by P.T. de Chardin, which I appreciate for its comprehensive evolutionary perception of the world. This concept has provoked various responses, but it certainly provides a creative inspiration for further attempts at applying the idea of evolution to various issues. The general framework of the evolutionary model proposed by the French researcher turns out to be useful also when applied to the evolutionary understanding of human death. Chapter 3 contains a discussion of the principal premises of the evolutionary concept of human death taken from analyses carried out by T. Wojciechowski concerning the issue of time, space, and the structure of variable material beings. A being is variable because it has a temporal structure, and the changes that occur are the derivatives of that structure. The temporal structure may be seen as endless, in which a being, even though its existence had a beginning, will exist for ever. Material substance should not be seen statically, but in dynamic and evolutionary terms. In evolution, time becomes a driver of development, an element shaping and directing the evolution of the entire cosmos. Man’s substance has been made capable of two levels of being and acting: the spatial and temporal level, and the endless and immanent level. Together, they form the one essence of man. Thus, the human person is partially immersed in the material cosmos, and partially elevated above it. Chapter 4 presents the evolutionary approach to the moment of man’s death. The views of T. Wojciechowski will be presented in which the moment of death is seen as a moment of transformation and perfection of the structure of the essence of human existence. Furthermore, the issue of the relationship existing, according to T. Wojciechowski, between man’s death and resurrection will be discussed. Understood in evolutionary terms, the moment of death is the time when the structure of human existence is transformed. Death transfers man fully into eternity and enables his life on a higher level of existential being. The element of flesh is retained, but changes its nature. Such view of death allows it to be understood as the moment of resurrection and the culmination of the evolutionary process of life. Death is therefore an “invention” of the evolution and should be seen as a natural and positive phenomenon. At this point, I also propose a solution to the question about reconciliation between temporal and endless existence. In Chapter 5 I take up the issue of consequences flowing from the postulated understanding of human death. They have been pointed to by T. Wojciechowski, but need to be further developed and clarified. He believed two lines in man’s development need to be recognized: that of natural and that of supernatural evolution. Both have the same direction, while occurring on different planes. In each of these lines, death is a natural element of life, pre-planned and, so to say, “encoded” in the cosmic matter. Therefore, the treatment of biological death as the consequence of sin is not only contrary to the evolutionary understanding of life, but in addition artificially combines that which is natural with that which is supernatural. Man’s authentic experience of his own present is a condition of his achieving full existential perfection in the moment of this death. Full engagement in the present is, in a way, a harbinger of the future; thus, the life “here” and “there” may not be inherently inconsistent. In the light of the evolutionary concept, death is not a punishment, but the most positive experience of man’s life in that it enables him to achieve full existential perfection. Chapter 6 is devoted to a substantiation of the possibility of evolutionary transformation of the structure of human existence in the moment of death. An adequate cause needs to be identified which could substantiate that transformation and achievement of perfection. I believe an appropriate substantiation can be found in God’s creative act, interpreted in evolutionary terms. The process of evolution, with its subsequent stages, is only a necessary condition for that “transformation” and “elevation”. The sufficient condition is fulfilled by the continuous creative intervention of God. The concept of God’s creative activity in the moment of man’s death finds its continuation in Chapter 7, where I present a detailed analysis of God’s activity at the time of man’s death. The concept of God’s creative activity extended over the entire process of evolution makes it possible to consider the moment of death as the moment of man’s resurrection. The moment of death is thus a moment of creation in evolutionary terms. Thus, as long as man is related to temporal and spatial elements, his development, or creation, continues. Death is only the completion of the final stage of creation, which may be painful and evoke fear, but in fact should give hope, for it involves resurrection. I also propose that the creative act in the moment of man’s death-resurrection be considered a basic action of God, which explains the manner in which God’s activity is contained within the framework of the creative act, encompassing also the moment of death-resurrection. The final Chapter 8 describes a didactic model illustrating the concept proposed here. I use the analogy of white light dispersion effect in the prism, and compare the incident ray to the creative act, and the dispersed rays going through the prism to the line of man’s natural and supernatural evolution. This model also shows the difference in the perspectives from which the phenomenon of death is seen by God and by man. (shrink)

Creativity pervades human life. It is the mark of individuality, the vehicle of self-expression, and the engine of progress in every human endeavor. It also raises a wealth of neglected and yet evocative philosophical questions: What is the role of consciousness in the creative process? How does the audience for a work for art influence its creation? How can creativity emerge through childhood pretending? Do great works of literature give us insight into human nature? Can a computer program really be (...) creative? How do we define creativity in the first place? Is it a virtue? What is the difference between creativity in science and art? Can creativity be taught? The new essays that comprise The Philosophy of Creativity take up these and other key questions and, in doing so, illustrate the value of interdisciplinary exchange. Written by leading philosophers and psychologists involved in studying creativity, the essays integrate philosophical insights with empirical research. CONTENTS I. Introduction Introducing The Philosophy of Creativity Elliot Samuel Paul and Scott Barry Kaufman II. The Concept of Creativity 1. An Experiential Account of Creativity Bence Nanay III. Aesthetics & Philosophy of Art 2. Creativity and Insight Gregory Currie 3. The Creative Audience: Some Ways in which Readers, Viewers and/or Listeners Use their Imaginations to Engage Fictional Artworks Noël Carroll 4. The Products of Musical Creativity Christopher Peacocke IV. Ethics & Value Theory 5. Performing Oneself Owen Flanagan 6. Creativity as a Virtue of Character Matthew Kieran V. Philosophy of Mind & Cognitive Science 7. Creativity and Not So Dumb Luck Simon Blackburn 8. The Role of Imagination in Creativity Dustin Stokes 9. Creativity, Consciousness, and Free Will: Evidence from Psychology Experiments Roy F. Baumeister, Brandon J. Schmeichel, and C. Nathan DeWall 10. The Origins of Creativity Elizabeth Picciuto and Peter Carruthers 11. Creativity and Artificial Intelligence: a Contradiction in Terms? Margaret Boden VI. Philosophy of Science 12. Hierarchies of Creative Domains: Disciplinary Constraints on Blind-Variation and Selective-Retention Dean Keith Simonton VII. Philosophy of Education (& Education of Philosophy) 13. Educating for Creativity Berys Gaut 14. Philosophical Heuristics Alan Hájek. (shrink)

I will start my inaugural address by outlining the main argument of my lecture. First, I will identify the phenomenon that philosophers of technology research. This subject matter, in my view, consists not only of ethical issues that disruptive technologies raise but also of the disruption of the world in which we live and act by these technologies. I will illustrate this disruption by reflecting on the convergence of the physical and the virtual in the digital world, which is expected (...) to change the way we live together. I propose that philosophers of technology should research new disruptive technologies and the digital world in which they are embedded in an integrated manner. Subsequently, I will ask how the emergence of digital technologies disrupts the world’s design in the digital age. My hypothesis is that technological innovations themselves constitute the World in a non-anthropocentric and non-determinist manner. To make my case, I will first draw attention to the difference between technology and innovation and propose a philosophy of innovation. This will enable me to consider how innovation processes have an economic, social-political and ontological impact on the world. Based on historical and contemporary examples, I will illustrate the redesign of the world in the digital age. This broader understanding of the impact of digital technologies will subsequently enable me to articulate some of the critical questions I have regarding digitalisation, and how the philosophical tradition can be made fruitful to critically reflect on the elision between the physical and the virtual in the digital age. This criticism informs my engagement with ethical questions in ethics of technology, ELSA (Ethical, Legal and Social Aspects) and Responsible Innovation. As a final step, I open a progressive perspective on the emancipatory potential of disruptive innovations to set the world free. In times of climate change, we are urgently in need of an emancipation of the World. We need to move beyond the classical opposition between technophobia and technophilia and look for innovations that can set the World free and contribute to a sustainable future. I will illustrate the emancipatory potential of disruptive technological innovations by considering the shift from human-centred technology to bio-centred technology in biomimetic design. (shrink)

CATEGORY: Philosophy play; historical fiction; comedy; social criticism. -/- STORYLINE: Tim, a physics professor with a certain taste for young female university students, recently got a new appointment at a London university. But, as it turns out, he is still unsatisfied. Why? Is it because Rachael unexpectedly left him under strange circumstances? Or does it have to do with his sudden departure from another university? Or is it his research? When Tim meets Christianus for a brown-bag discussion on (...) philosophy and science, new facts and perspectives are revealed. -/- TOPICS: In the course of the play, Tim and Christianus discuss different metaphysical, epistemological, and ontological ideas. Many of these are either related to isssues in the philosophy of science (explanation, methodology, scientific investigation, etc.), or to issues in human psychology and the philosophy of mind (the self vs. the mind, dualism, ‘Who am I?’, etc.). In one scene, for example, Tim tries to invoke ‘Ockham’s Razor’ (or ‘Occam’s Razor’) to quickly dismiss some of Christianus’s metaphysical ideas (see Scene VII: Ockham’s Raisin; Scene XIII: The Raisin Tale Revisited); in another scene, Christianus introduces his ‘Postman’ scenario, and the idea that successful (‘scientific’) prediction or forecasting is not necessarily a sure sign of true understanding (see Scene XV: The Postman Always Turns Twice). -/- NOTES: This work features elaborate footnotes and comments (including full bibliographical references) by the author, to enhance the reader's experience of the play and its philosophizing characters. (shrink)

The Abrahamic faiths of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are typically recognized as the world’s major monotheistic religions. However, African Traditional Religion is, despite often including lesser spirits and gods, a monotheistic religion with numerous adherents in sub-Saharan Africa; it includes the idea of a single most powerful God responsible for the creation and sustenance of everything else. This Element focuses on drawing attention to this major world religion that has been much neglected by scholars around the globe, particularly those working (...) in the West or Northern Hemisphere. It accomplishes this primarily by bringing it into conversation with topics in the Anglo-American philosophy of religion. (shrink)

This collection of essays explores the metaphysical thesis that the living world is not made up of substantial particles or things, as has often been assumed, but is rather constituted by processes. The biological domain is organised as an interdependent hierarchy of processes, which are stabilised and actively maintained at different timescales. Even entities that intuitively appear to be paradigms of things, such as organisms, are actually better understood as processes. Unlike previous attempts to articulate processual views of biology, which (...) have tended to use Alfred North Whitehead’s panpsychist metaphysics as a foundation, this book takes a naturalistic approach to metaphysics. It submits that the main motivations for replacing an ontology of substances with one of processes are to be found in the empirical findings of science. Biology provides compelling reasons for thinking that the living realm is fundamentally dynamic, and that the existence of things is always conditional on the existence of processes. The phenomenon of life cries out for theories that prioritise processes over things, and it suggests that the central explanandum of biology is not change but rather stability, or more precisely, stability attained through constant change. This edited volume brings together philosophers of science and metaphysicians interested in exploring the consequences of a processual philosophy of biology. The contributors draw on an extremely wide range of biological case studies, and employ a process perspective to cast new light on a number of traditional philosophical problems, such as identity, persistence, and individuality. (shrink)

Relevant logics are a family of non-classical logics characterized by the behavior of their implication connectives. Unlike some other non-classical logics, such as intuitionistic logic, there are multiple philosophical views motivating relevant logics. Further, different views seem to motivate different logics. In this article, we survey five major views motivating the adoption of relevant logics: Use Criterion, sufficiency, meaning containment, theory construction, and truthmaking. We highlight the philosophical differences as well as the different logics they support. We end with some (...) questions for future research. (shrink)

CATEGORY: Philosophy play; historical fiction; comedy; social criticism. -/- STORYLINE: Katherine, a neurotic American lawyer, meets Christianus for a philosophy session at The Late Victorian coffee shop in London, where they also meet Wendy the waitress and Baldy the player. Will Katherine be able to overcome her deep depression by adopting some of Christianus’s satisfactionist ideas? Or will she stay unsatisfied and unhappy by stubbornly sticking to her own neti-neti nothingness philosophy? And what roles do Baldy, (...) Wendy, and the Okefenokee Man-Monster have in this connexion? -/- TOPICS: In the course of this philosophy play, Katherine and Christianus discuss many things: friendship, a Renoir painting, global warming, elephant conservation, freemasons, Prince of Wales and his tiger-hunting experience in Nepal, Victorian Chartism and a Kennington Common daguerreotype, a Mortality Proof, and, last but not least, Baldy, Wendy, and the gory plot of the Okefenokee Man-Monster. -/- NOTES: This work features elaborate footnotes and comments (including full bibliographical references) by the author, to enhance the reader's experience of the play and its philosophizing characters. (shrink)

Two Socratic dialogues often considered “comic”—Ion and Hippias Major—have also been contested as to their Platonic authenticity. Plato’s dialogues; while certainly engaging, can also seem grim in their philosophical intensity: At least one author has contended that the dialogue more firmly established as genuinely by Plato, Symposium; has some comic elements: This article goes a step further in suggesting that this dialogue does not merely have comic elements but is in fact a comedy. It draws on several texts in (...) the literature on Greek comedy over the past century and suggests that; although the dialogue sets itself serious philosophical challenges, its structure; style; and method are deeply steeped in comedic modes from around Plato’s day. This is not to presume whether Plato was deliberately writing a comedy. In general, writers are often strongly influenced by literary fashions of the day, so it would not be far stretching the matter to understand the work as comedic. Thereby, the article offers, via textual analysis, an argument for how the dialogue is a comedy along withcounter-arguments against such a notion. In the end, indeed, acknowledging it is a comedy promises to open up new angles on interpreting that dialogue. (shrink)

This chapter outlines an alternative interpretation of Hume’s philosophy, one that aims, among other things, to explain some of the most perplexing puzzles concerning the relationship between Hume’s skepticism and his naturalism. The key to solving these puzzles, it is argued, rests with recognizing Hume’s fundamental irreligious aims and objectives, beginning with his first and greatest work, A Treatise of Human Nature. The irreligious interpretation not only reconfigures our understanding of the unity and structure of Hume’s thought, it also (...) provides a radically different picture of the way in which Hume’s philosophy is rooted in its historical context. By altering our understanding of the fundamentals of Hume’s philosophy in this way, the irreligious interpretation also challenges the adequacy of the familiar and entrenched framework of “British Empiricism.”. (shrink)

In this chapter we explain what experimental philosophy of science is, how it relates to the philosophy of science, and STS more broadly, and what sorts of contributions is can make to ongoing research in the philosophy of science.

Slurs have been standardly assumed to bear a very direct, very distinctive semantic relationship to what philosophers have called “neutral counterpart” terms. I argue that this is mistaken: the general relationship between paradigmatic slurs and their “neutral counterparts” should be assumed to be the same one that obtains between ‘chick flick’ and ‘romantic comedy’, as well a huge number of other more prosaic pairs of derogatory and “less derogatory” expressions. The most plausible general relationship between these latter expressions — (...) and thus, I argue, between paradigmatic slurs and “neutral counterpart” terms — is one of overlap in presumed extension, grounded in overlap in associated stereotypes. The resulting framework has the advantages of being simple, unified, and, unlike its orthodox rivals, neatly accommodating of a much wider range of data than has previously been considered. More importantly, it positions us to better understand, identify, and confront the insidious mechanisms of ordinary bigotry. (shrink)

What is the ontological status of mathematical structures? Michael Resnic, Stewart Shapiro and Gianluigi Oliveri, are contemporaries of American philosophers on mathematics, they give Platonic answers on this question.

Hofstadter [1979, 2007] offered a novel Gödelian proposal which purported to reconcile the apparently contradictory theses that (1) we can talk, in a non-trivial way, of mental causation being a real phenomenon and that (2) mental activity is ultimately grounded in low-level rule-governed neural processes. In this paper, we critically investigate Hofstadter’s analogical appeals to Gödel’s [1931] First Incompleteness Theorem, whose “diagonal” proof supposedly contains the key ideas required for understanding both consciousness and mental causation. We maintain that bringing sophisticated (...) results from Mathematical Logic into play cannot furnish insights which would otherwise be unavailable. Lastly, we conclude that there are simply too many weighty details left unfilled in Hofstadter’s proposal. These really need to be fleshed out before we can even hope to say that our understanding of classical mind-body problems has been advanced through metamathematical parallels with Gödel’s work. (shrink)

Based upon the concept of Law qualified in Monarchia, II.50, Dante was not only a general philosopher (a lover of knowledge) as well as a political disputant in his times, but also his primary contribution (not always obvious) in legal speculation could be demonstrated. In fact, if his thought reflected the platonic ordo sapientiae through a deep intersection between téchne and episteme (phronesis) toward a linguistic koiné, could we say the same thing on his concept of justice as a rational (...) ars boni et aequi? This essay aims to depict Dante as legal theorist of his times and theorist of Justice beyond them, adopting the hermeneutical point of view, not just as an interest into textual interpretation but referring his use of language as form of life and his works an inexhaustible sources of education for legal philosophy. (shrink)