Since the release of ChatGPT, there has been a lot of debate about whether AI systems pose an existential risk to humanity. This paper develops a general framework for thinking about the existential risk of AI systems. We analyze a two-premise argument that AI systems pose a threat to humanity. Premise one: AI systems will become extremely powerful. Premise two: if AI systems become extremely powerful, they will destroy humanity. We use these two premises to construct a taxonomy of ‘ (...) class='Hi'>survival stories’, in which humanity survives into the far future. In each survival story, one of the two premises fails. Either scientific barriers prevent AI systems from becoming extremely powerful; or humanity bans research into AI systems, thereby preventing them from becoming extremely powerful; or extremely powerful AI systems do not destroy humanity, because their goals prevent them from doing so; or extremely powerful AI systems do not destroy humanity, because we can reliably detect and disable systems that have the goal of doing so. We argue that different survival stories face different challenges. We also argue that different survival stories motivate different responses to the threats from AI. Finally, we use our taxonomy to produce rough estimates of ‘P(doom)’, the probability that humanity will be destroyed by AI. (shrink)

You can survive after death in various kinds of artifacts. You can survive in diaries, photographs, sound recordings, and movies. But these artifacts record only superficial features of yourself. We are already close to the construction of programs that partially and approximately replicate entire human lives (by storing their memories and duplicating their personalities). A digital ghost is an artificially intelligent program that knows all about your life. It is an animated auto-biography. It replicates your patterns of belief and desire. (...) You can survive after death in a digital ghost. We discuss a series of digital ghosts over the next 50 years. As time goes by and technology advances, they are progressively more perfect replicas of the lives of their original authors. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss an argument for the existence of God known as “The Argument from the Survival of the Jews.” This argument has the form of an Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE). It proceeds from the phenomenon of Jewish survival to the existence of God as the best explanation for this phenomenon. I will argue that, even if we grant that Jewish survival is a remarkable occurrence that demands an explanation, and even if we (...) gloss over the difficulties in defining the terms “Jewish” and “survive,” the argument ultimately fails as an argument for the existence of God. It fails because it postulates divine supervision in order to explain Jewish endurance, but it doesn’t provide any clues as to what might be the underlying mechanism at work. (shrink)

Does consciousness survive bodily death? This question remains a profound, perennial mystery. Although scientific studies have focused on out-of-body experiences (OBEs) and near-death experiences (NDEs), there is scant evidence to support the claim that consciousness survives death. Many speculative theories state that consciousness moves through various afterlife realities. Tantalizing clues are found in world religion, esoteric philosophy, extrasensory perception, hypnotic regression, and scientific experimentation. At the present time, there is an abundance of theoretical scholarly discourse on the topic of “ (...) class='Hi'>survival.” After 60 years of NDE research, common ground has been established from NDEers’ anecdotal evidence and perceptual experiences. (shrink)

Suppose that it was possible to teletransport. The teletransporter would destroy your old brain and body and construct an identical brain and body at a new location. Would you survive teletransportation? Many people think that teletransportation would kill you. On their view, the person that emerges from the teletransporter would be a replica of you, but it wouldn't be you. In contrast, I argue that there's no relevant difference between teletransportation and ordinary survival. So, if you survive ordinary life, (...) then you survive teletransportation. Yet my argument may also show that we have little prudential reason to care about our survival in general. (shrink)

Claudia Card did not live long enough to complete her work on surviving evils. Yet she left us an invaluable body of work on this topic. This essay surveys Card's views about the nature of evils and the ethical quandaries of surviving them. It then develops an account of survival agency that is based on Card's insights and in keeping with the agentic capacities exercised by Yezidi women and girls who have escaped from ISIS's obscene program of trafficking in (...) women and sexual violence. Card holds that true survival requires not only staying alive and as healthy as possible but also preserving your good moral character. The essay maintains that while exercising agency to elude evil and protect yourself often depends on your own skills and personality traits, exercising agency to restore or develop your moral character often depends on social support. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that reflection on the patterns of practical concern that agents like us exhibit strongly suggests that the same person relation comes in continuous degrees rather than being an all or nothing matter. We call this the SP-degree thesis. Though the SP-degree thesis is consistent with a range of views about personal-identity, we argue that combining desire-first approaches to personal-identity with the SP-degree thesis better explains our patterns of practical concern, and hence gives us reason to (...) endorse such an approach. We then argue that the combination of the SP-degree thesis and the desire-first approach are best modelled by a stage-theoretic view of persistence according to which temporal counterpart relations are non-symmetric relations that come in continuous degrees. Ultimately, we think that the overall appeal of this package of views provides reason to accept the package: reasons that outstrip the reasons we have to endorse any particular member of the package. (shrink)

Abstract: The sinking of the RMS Titanic in 1912 remains a poignant historical event that continues to captivate our collective imagination. In this research paper, we delve into the realm of data-driven analysis by applying Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) to predict the chances of survival for passengers aboard the Titanic. Our study leverages a comprehensive dataset encompassing passenger information, demographics, and cabin class, providing a unique opportunity to explore the complex interplay of factors influencing survival outcomes. Our ANN-based (...) predictive model achieved an accuracy rate of 78%, shedding light on the underlying patterns within the data. However, this paper underscores the multifaceted nature of survival prediction and acknowledges several challenges. These include missing data imputation, feature engineering, and the inherent noise within historical datasets. We further discuss the importance of model evaluation metrics, showcasing not only accuracy but also precision, recall, and F1-score as essential indicators of predictive performance. The research paper meticulously outlines the architecture of the ANN model, emphasizing the key hyperparameters, activation functions, and regularization techniques employed in model development. Additionally, we address ethical considerations related to data handling and potential biases within the dataset. While our achieved accuracy is a notable achievement, this study emphasizes the importance of interpreting the results with due caution. It underscores the need for a holistic perspective that considers the practical implications of false positives and false negatives, especially in the context of a disaster scenario. In conclusion, this research contributes to our understanding of survival prediction in historical events like the Titanic disaster using modern machine learning techniques. It calls for further exploration and refinement of predictive models, with a focus on enhancing the interpretability and generalizability of such models to real-world applications. (shrink)

When deciding how ‘death’ should be defined, it is helpful to consider cases in which vital functions are restored to an organism long after those vital functions have ceased. Here I consider whether such restoration cases can be used to refute termination theses. Focusing largely on the termination thesis applied to human animals, I develop a line of argument from the possibility of human restoration to the conclusion that in many actual cases, human animals continue to exist after they die. (...) The line of reasoning developed here can be extended to show that other organisms survive death in many actual cases. This line of reasoning improves on other arguments that have been offered against termination theses. And if my argument regarding human animals surviving death is successful, then assuming that human persons are animals, we can also conclude that human persons in many actual cases continue to exist after death. (shrink)

Can it be rational to be risk-averse? It seems plausible that the answer is yes—that normative decision theory should accommodate risk aversion. But there is a seemingly compelling class of arguments against our most promising methods of doing so. These long-run arguments point out that, in practice, each decision an agent makes is just one in a very long sequence of such decisions. Given this form of dynamic choice situation, and the (Strong) Law of Large Numbers, they conclude that those (...) theories which accommodate risk aversion end up delivering the same verdicts as risk-neutral theories in nearly all practical cases. If so, why not just accept a simpler, risk-neutral theory? The resulting practical verdicts seem to be much the same. In this paper, I show that these arguments do not in fact condemn those risk-aversion-accommodating theories. Risk aversion can indeed survive the long run. (shrink)

Can interests survive dementia, permanent unconsciousness--even death? If not, what kills them off? Perhaps lack of attention (one could almost say "lack of interest"), if having the interest requires believing that you have it, caring about its object, and in some sense investing in that object. Thus, once you no longer care about the object, the investment--and the interest--is gone. If an interest disappears when you stop caring about its object, will it disappear when you are mentally incompetent and unable (...) to care about it? If so, then it seems such interests cannot survive the onset of incompetence (let alone death). -/- This issue arises with living wills and other ways to decide the medical care you will receive when you become mentally incapacitated and unable to decide for yourself. Such decisions are made to protect certain kinds of interest. For example, you may want to avoid expensive end-of-life care in order to protect your family's inheritance, thereby protecting your interest in your family's welfare. Or you might have a religious commitment to the sanctity of life, and therefore an interest in keeping your biological life going as long as possible, even when you are permanently unconscious. We use living wills and similar forms of advance medical decision making to protect our such interests when we anticipate being unable to protect those interests by acting autonomously at the time of treatment. If, however, those interests do not survive incompetence, then the moral authority of living wills is severely undermined, for the interests they are meant to protect do not exist. It will be argued that some interests can survive a permanent loss of mental capacity, for sometimes, as strange as it sounds, you can be disposed to care about a thing even when you will never be conscious again. (shrink)

Abstract: Breast cancer is reported to be the most common cancer type among women worldwide and it is the second highest women fatality rate amongst all cancer types. Notwithstanding all the progresses made in prevention and early intervention, early prognosis and survival prediction rates are still not sufficient. In this paper, we propose an ANN model which outperforms all the previous supervised learning methods by reaching 99.57 in terms of accuracy in Wisconsin Breast Cancer dataset. Experimental results on Haberman’s (...) Breast Cancer Survival dataset show the superiority of proposed method by reaching 88.24 % in terms of accuracy. The results are the best reported ones obtained from Artificial Neural Network using JNN environment without any preprocessing of the dataset. (shrink)

Thinking of the evils of homophobia and what is needed to survive them requires acknowledging a new category of evil besides the evils of individual deeds, social practices and social structures. That further category is evil social environments. Building on the work of Jeremy Waldron on the harm in hate speech, this chapter extends that account to certain hate crimes that, like the written word, send a lingering social message. The cases of four women survivors of homophobia are then examined (...) in relation to such harm. Two who wrote memoirs had been targeted for murder, one in an evil environment, the other in a more positively responsive environment. The remaining two survival stories are less dramatic. But they are important in how they illustrate ordinary challenges faced successfully by lesbians and gay men in emotionally toxic environments, and how, in this sense, those not directly threatened with murder might still be justly regarded as survivors. The chapter concludes with reflections on the meanings of survival and some of the costs of surviving an evil homophobic environment. (shrink)

According to the neo-Aristotelian moral tradition, every living thing has an ultimate end: To flourish as a member of its species. This view of the ultimate end shapes inquiry into what is the ultimate end of human living things. In this paper, I develop an alternative view of the ultimate end of a living thing: The ultimate end is only to survive, not as a member of a species, but as a living thing. There are four steps to my development. (...) First, I criticize the prevailing species-based view of the ultimate end. Second, I argue that other-regarding behavior is not normative for living things; only survival is. Third, I elucidate a new and what I take to be correcting understanding of survival. Fourth, I programmatically develop the idea that inquiry into human well-being and into morality (for human beings) should be understood as aspects of inquiry into human survival. (shrink)

This is a review of Johnston's book Surviving Death.

Revisionary theories of logic or truth require revisionary theories of mind. This essay outlines nonclassically based theories of rational belief, desire, and decision making, singling out the supervaluational family for special attention. To see these nonclassical theories of mind in action, this essay examines a debate between David Lewis and Derek Parfit over what matters in survival. Lewis argued that indeterminacy in personal identity allows caring about psychological connectedness and caring about personal identity to amount to the same thing. (...) The essay argues that Lewis's treatment of two of Parfit's puzzle cases—degreed survival and fission—presuppose different nonclassical treatments of belief and desire. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that standard psychological continuity theory does not account for an important feature of what is important in survival – having the property of personhood. I offer a theory that can account for this, and I explain how it avoids the implausible consequences of standard psychological continuity theory, as well as having certain other advantages over that theory.

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)

Morality is one of the most important issues for humans and a common concern of human beings. Talking about the importance of morality, prompts people to think about the question of why should we live morally? The answer to this question can be found among the various functions that thinkers have proposed for ethics, because if the agent’s knowledge confirms the usefulness of the action, then the agent will be motivated to do it. Therefore, the functions of an action can (...) be an answer to why the action is performed. One of the functions of moral life is to increase the chance of survival, which has been introduced by moral evolutionists. The question of the present article is: how much this function can create motivation for a person to perform a moral act? Can the agent’s knowledge that ethical life increases the chances of survival motivate her/him to observe moral values? Considering the challenge of not believing in resurrection and sacrificing life, and many problems in life and the difficulties of ethical life, it is concluded that although increasing the chance of survival can motivate a person to live morally, but just increasing the chances of survival is not worth accepting the costs of being moral and does not provide enough motivation to endure the hardships of moral life. Therefore, evolutionary ethics is facing the challenge of lack of explanatory power for moral motivations and cannot be accepted as a comprehensive theory in the field of moral motivation. (shrink)

Many global catastrophic risks are threatening human civilization, and a number of ideas have been suggested for preventing or surviving them. However, if these interventions fail, society could preserve information about the human race and human DNA samples in the hopes that the next civilization on Earth will be able to reconstruct Homo sapiens and our culture. This requires information preservation of an order of magnitude of 100 million years, a little-explored topic thus far. It is important that a potential (...) future civilization will discover this information as early as possible, thus a beacon should accompany the message in order to increase visibility. The message should ideally contain information about how humanity was destroyed, perhaps including a continuous recording until the end. This could help the potential future civilization to survive. The best place for long-term data storage is under the surface of the Moon, with the beacon constructed as a complex geometric figure drawn by small craters or trenches around a central point. There are several cost-effective options for sending the message as opportunistic payloads on different planned landers. (shrink)

A long-form review essay on Alexis Pauline Gumbs's Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde (2024) and the task of reading Audre Lorde as a philosopher.

Recently many methods for reducing the risk of human extinction have been suggested, including building refuges underground and in space. Here we will discuss the perspective of using military nuclear submarines or their derivatives to ensure the survival of a small portion of humanity who will be able to rebuild human civilization after a large catastrophe. We will show that it is a very cost-effective way to build refuges, and viable solutions exist for various budgets and timeframes. Nuclear submarines (...) are surface independent, and could provide energy, oxygen, fresh water and perhaps even food for their inhabitants for years. They are able to withstand close nuclear explosions and radiation. They are able to maintain isolation from biological attacks and most known weapons. They already exist and need only small adaptation to be used as refuges. But building refuges is only “Plan B” of existential risk preparation; it is better to eliminate such risks than try to survive them. (shrink)

​In the wake of the extremely divisive 2016 presidential election, many US Americans are feeling deeply unsettled by the sense that the basic norms that govern life in our society are in a state of flux. How might we best describe and analyze the experience of living in a society that is so divided, a society whose very normative structure seems to be disintegrating? What problematic behaviors might arise in this situation? And how might we continue to work for positive (...) social change without further disrupting the normative order of our society? In this paper, I explore some insights into these issues that can be found in the work of Mexican phenomenologist Jorge Portilla, whose fascinating essays on cultural politics are just beginning to be translated into English. Portilla lived at a time in which his society’s normative structure was also in a state of flux. He argues that this state of normative disintegration generates a widely shared sense of zozobra—a profound anxiety that is not a psychological state but a state of existence, and that tends to provoke a number of defensive reactions that may be familiar to us today. I argue that Portilla's analysis of zozobra is a valuable resource for navigating the contemporary world.​. (shrink)

On April 19, 2024, the New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness was announced at the “Emerging Science of Animal Consciousness” conference held at New York University. The New York Declaration is an effort to showcase a scientific consensus on the presence of conscious experiences across all vertebrates (including reptiles, amphibians, and fish) and many invertebrates (at least including cephalopods, decapod crustaceans, and insects). Scientifically, the New York Declaration marks a significant advancement for humanity. However, it also brings heightened awareness to (...) the moral challenges associated with animals that have conscious experiences (or phenomenal consciousness). This article will discuss philosophical approaches to the moral issue of killing sentient beings, thereby highlighting an existing moral dilemma in human society: In sustaining human survival, a species considered to have morality, we have to violate our own moral standards by killing other species with intrinsic value, consciousness, or sentience. This moral dilemma has long been present in human society. Various solutions have been proposed and implemented in practice to address this issue, such as the non-violence and vegetarian approach of Buddhism, the application of Islamic law and sacred rituals to animals in Islam, animal rights movements and voluntary extinction in Western countries, and the technology producing meat using animal cells. However, despite these approaches, we have not yet been able to fully resolve the dilemma, as sentient beings continue to be killed for our survival. We believe the most feasible solution is to change the current food consumption culture, build an eco-surplus culture to mitigate climate change, prevent deforestation, and promote peace. (shrink)

During the last century, the new, exciting field of Artificial Intelligence has risen. With its promises, fears for the uncertain future development of this area started to rise. Is it going to be sentient? Is it going to be smarter than us? Is it going to "understand" our uselessness? Is it going to decide that we are no more fundamental? And consequently decide to end our species? These and more questions emerged, nourished by the apprehension of the possible dangers that (...) we would need to face. A number of possible solutions were proposed, to try to limit these yet-to-exist new beings. But none of them got universally accepted, thus leaving this primordial fright unscathed. In this paper a novel point of view is considered where, instead of limiting and preventing the possible worst outcomes, an analysis of the human psyche is performed. This work of introspection grants us the great power of copying: once we understand how our psyche is divided - or "stratified" - and how we can, socially speaking, live together and coexist, we are able to try and replicate this abstract structure inside the "mind" of an hypothetical new artificial being. Using - and possibly improving - this set of abstract mental tools and intrinsic barriers for the creation of a new being should, hypothetically, remove the chance - and the fear - of a future repercussion from its original root. (shrink)

Purpose Islands have long been discussed as refuges from global catastrophes; this paper will evaluate them systematically, discussing both the positives and negatives of islands as refuges. There are examples of isolated human communities surviving for thousands of years on places like Easter Island. Islands could provide protection against many low-level risks, notably including bio-risks. However, they are vulnerable to tsunamis, bird-transmitted diseases, and other risks. This article explores how to use the advantages of islands for survival during global (...) catastrophes. Methodology: Preliminary horizon scanning based on the application of the research principles established in the previous global catastrophic literature to the existing geographic data. Findings The large number of islands on Earth, and their diverse conditions, increase the chance that one of them will provide protection from a catastrophe. Additionally, this protection could be increased if an island were used as a base for a nuclear submarine refuge combined with underground bunkers, and/or extremely long-term data storage. The requirements for survival on islands, their vulnerabilities, and ways to mitigate and adapt to risks are explored. Several existing islands, suitable for the survival of different types of risk, timing, and budgets, are examined. Islands suitable for different types of refuges and other island-like options that could also provide protection are also discussed. Originality/value The possible use of islands as refuges from social collapse and existential risks has not been previously examined systematically. This article contributes to the expanding research on survival scenarios. (shrink)

Humankind is facing many existential global problems that require international and transgenerational efforts to be solved. Preparing our next generation with sufficient knowledge and skills to deal with such problems is imperative. Fortunately, the digital environment provides foundational conditions for children’s and adolescents’ exploration and self-learning, which might help them cultivate the necessary knowledge and skills for future survival. We conducted the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics on a dataset of 2069 students from 54 Vietnamese elementary, secondary, and high (...) schools to test this presumption. The results showed that students with higher digital literacy are more curious and have better knowledge regarding global issues (i.e., climate change, disease, overpopulation, aging, etc.). Students’ curiosity also mediates the relationship between digital literacy and global issues knowledge. Based on these findings, we argue that digital explorative space is essential for digital natives’ education for survival, individually (i.e., for future employment requirements) and socially (i.e., for making informed decisions and creating innovations that can be helpful to society). Children’s and adolescents’ exposure to digital explorative space should be promoted to improve their digital literacy rather than prohibition. During the exploration, emotional intelligence is critical in mitigating existential risks, or threats, to digital natives to navigate and overcome chaotic processes occurring in unchartered waters in the virtual world. (shrink)

The article contains a reconstruction of the rapid psychological change argument by Scott Campbell. According to the standard psychological approach, the identity of a person is tied to persistence one’s memories, beliefs, wants and intentions. A person stays the same person if one holds strongly psychologically connected and continuous over time. the structure of rapid psychological change argument is compared with the argument of incredibly long-lasting psychological change by David lewis. It is concluded that the main goals of critical attacks (...) of these arguments are the temporal mismatch of psychological connectedness and continuity as well as the reductionist claim that all the facts what matters for survival can be described in an impersonal way. (shrink)

Using incoming revenues and the associated costs that underpin the concept of breakeven analysis, this article investigates the business survival strategies of immigrant-own-businesses in the context of African immigrants in the Cape Town Metropolitan Area of South Africa, and proposes a framework for the start-up survival of these businesses. The study was designed within the quantitative and qualitative research paradigms. A triangulation of three methods was utilised to collect and analyze the data. The research revealed that African immigrant (...) entrepreneurs face a range of challenges when starting their businesses and again as they try to grow or stay afloat. Furthermore, the study indicated that African immigrants rely more on certain entrepreneurial attributes as they seek innovative solutions to the problems that they encounter relating to business. As a business survival strategy, these immigrants develop a number of unconventional initiatives aimed at increasing sales revenue while minimising cost. (shrink)

This paper defends moral realism against Sharon Street’s “Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value” (this journal, 2006). I argue by separation of cases: From the assumption that a certain normative claim is true, I argue that the first horn of the dilemma is tenable for realists. Then, from the assumption that the same normative claim is false, I argue that the second horn is tenable. Either way, then, the Darwinian dilemma does not add anything to realists’ epistemic worries.

This document represents some preliminary and unpublished content of a chapter in the edited book titled A New Theory of Serendipity: Nature, Emergence and Mechanism, which will soon be published and distributed by De Gruyter Poland (Sciendo Imprint; part of Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin, Germany). -/- A proper referencing should be like: -/- Tam-Tri Le. (2022). Natural and social survival: the drivers of serendipity. In: QH Vuong. (Ed.) A New Theory of Serendipity: Nature, Emergence and Mechanism (pp. 75-90). (...) Berlin, Germany: De Gruyter. (shrink)

This paper defends the view that intrinsic benefit to a human being consists exclusively in survival. It takes as its point of departure the neo-Aristotelian view that inquiry into intrinsic benefit to a human being should take place within a wider theory of intrinsic benefit to living things, generally. The paper first argues that the neo-Aristotelian view that intrinsic benefit to a living thing consists in flourishing as a member of its species, is mistaken. Rather, intrinsic benefit to a (...) living thing consists in survival, and not survival as a member of its species, but survival simpliciter. A refined understanding of survival is developed in the paper. The paper then applies this Survivalist account of intrinsic benefit to human beings: The things we take to be good for human beings—e.g., pleasure, desire-fulfillment, etc.—are good to the extent and because they promote the one intrinsic benefit of survival. (shrink)

According to the Psychological-Continuity Account of What Matters, you are justified in having special concern for the well-being of a person at a future time if and only if that person will be psychologically continuous with you as you are now. On some versions of the account, the psychological continuity is required be temporally ordered, whereas, on other versions, it is allowed to be temporally unordered. In this paper, I argue that the account is implausible if the psychological continuity is (...) allowed to be temporally unordered. I also argue that, if the psychological continuity is required to be temporally ordered, it cannot plausibly be purely psychological (in the sense that the psychological continuity is not required to be caused through spatio-temporal continuity of a brain). The upshot is that no plausible version of the Psychological-Continuity Account of What Matters is purely psychological. So psychological continuity is not what matters in survival. (shrink)

The article presents some new developments in the development process that add more in-depth arguments to the SM3D theoretical system of knowledge production/technical-technological innovation processes. The name SM3D is an abbreviation of “Serendipity-Mindsponge-3D”. The theoretical framework is not a mechanical connection but reflects an organic connection, which has a familiar starting point: information.

For a long time, economic growth has been seen as the most promising source of funds to use toward reducing economic inequality, as well as a necessity if we are aiming at achieving full employment. But one of the most troubling aspects of the recent exponential rise in economic inequality is that this rise has occurred despite continued economic growth. Increases in national income have gone almost exclusively to the super-rich, while real wages for almost everybody else have stagnated or (...) even declined. And while the unemployment rate dropped significantly before the coronavirus pandemic hit, good, permanent, high-wage jobs with benefits had by then often been replaced by temporary, part-time, low-wage jobs without benefits, leaving even the employed feeling economically insecure. And now, of course, unemployment is again skyrocketing, and it is unclear how long it might take to come down. As a result, we have now arrived at a point of reckoning: can we continue to believe that liberal capitalism is the most promising combination of economic and political ideologies for securing a prosperous and just future? If not, what might replace it? Is the problem capitalism, or is it liberalism? Are we up against economic forces that we cannot influence or control, or is it our political will and the liberal values we endorse that are being tested? This paper looks at all these questions, and suggests how we might think about the prospects for a liberal future. (shrink)

The problem of surviving the end of the observable universe may seem very remote, but there are several reasons it may be important now: a) we may need to define soon the final goals of runaway space colonization and of superintelligent AI, b) the possibility of the solution will prove the plausibility of indefinite life extension, and с) the understanding of risks of the universe’s end will help us to escape dangers like artificial false vacuum decay. A possible solution depends (...) on the type of the universe’s ending that may be expected: very slow heat death or some abrupt end, like a Big Rip or Big Crunch. We have reviewed the literature and identified several possible ways of survival the end of the universe, and also suggest several new ones. There are seven main approaches to escape the end of the universe: use the energy of the catastrophic process for computations, move to a parallel world, prevent the end, survive the end, manipulate time, avoid the problem entirely or find some meta-level solution. (shrink)

There is a well-documented Pre-Reflective Hostility against Machine Art (PRHMA), exemplified by the sentiments of fear and anxiety. How can it be explained? The present paper attempts to find the answer to this question by surveying a considerable amount of research on machine art. It is found that explanations of PRHMA based on the (alleged) fact that machine art lacks an element that is (allegedly) found in human art (for example, autonomy) do not work. Such explanations cannot account for the (...) sentiments of fear and anxiety present in PRHMA, because the art receiver could simply turn to human art for finding the element she is looking for. By contrast, an explanation based on the idea that machine art is “symbolically” a threat to human survival can be successful, since the art receiver’s turning from machine art to human art does not eliminate the (alleged) “symbolic” threat machine art poses for human survival. If there is a pre-reflective belief or feeling that machine art is such a threat, then it is perfectly understandable why humans exhibit a pre-reflective hostility against machine art. (shrink)

The large number of hungry people in a global economy based on industrialization, privatization, and free trade raises the question of the ethical dimensions of the worsening food crisis in the world in general and in developing countries in particular. Who bears the moral responsibility for the tragic situation in Africa and Asia where people are starving due to poverty? Who is morally responsible for their poverty - the hungry people themselves? the international community? any particular agency or institution? In (...) the context of Article 3 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, which states that "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security" (UNDHR, 1948), the ethical question of poverty and hunger becomes a major human concern that should be discussed publicly and resolved by whatever means available. But how can the poor and hungry realize their right to life and security if their very survival is at stake? This paper maintains that responsibility for global poverty at present lies in recent neo-liberal trends in the global economy and with those individuals and organizations who, though small in number, have acquired a disproportionate share of the world's assets and financial resources. That being the case, it is suggested that our monetary and financial policies are in need of drastic changes with regard to global responsibility towards the hungry and impoverished. (shrink)

Drawing upon empirical studies of racial discrimination dating back to the 1940’s, the Movement for Black Lives platform calls for the abolition of capital punishment. Our purpose here is to defend the Movement’s call for death penalty abolition in terms congruent with its claim that the death penalty in the U.S. is a “racist practice” that “devalues Black lives.” We first sketch the jurisprudential history of race and capital punishment in the U.S., wherein courts have occasionally expressed worries about racial (...) injustice but have usually taken such evidence to warrant reform but not outright abolition. We argue that the racial discrimination at issue flows in significant part from implicit biases concerning race, criminality, and violence, which do not fit comfortably within the picture of racial bias advanced by the courts. The case for abolition, we contend, rests on Black Americans as a class (not merely those who interact with the criminal justice system as capital defendants or as murder victims) being subject to such bias and thereby not being accorded equal status under the law. (shrink)

Is there a possible biological explanation for religion? That is, is there a genetic basis for believing in mystical, supernatural beings when there is no scientifi c evidence for their existence? Can we explain why some people prefer to accept myth over science? Why do so many people still accept creation and refuse to embrace evolution? Is there an evolutionary basis for religious beliefs? It is certainly true that religions have been part of human civilization throughout most of its recent (...) history, at least for the last 5,000 years, and probably for much longer. Even great nonmystical philosophers such as Confucius, Buddha, and Lao Tzu have had their teachings evolve into mystical religions with spiritual ancestors, gods and reincarnation. On the other hand, religion is largely absent in modern Chinese culture, and of diminishing importance in Japanese and European cultures. In all cultures, the degrees of education gained by individuals correlate inversely with attachments to mystical deities. Atheists abound although they may be reluctant to come out of the closet and affi rm their rational convictions. In this article, we seek explanations for human irrationality. (shrink)

This essay examines the promise of the notion of modus vivendi for realist political theory. I interpret recent theories of modus vivendi as affirming the priority of peace over justice, and explore several ways of making sense of this idea. I proceed to identify two key problems for modus vivendi theory, so conceived. Normatively speaking, it remains unclear how this approach can sustain a realist critique of Rawlsian theorizing about justice while avoiding a Hobbesian endorsement of absolutism. And conceptually, the (...) theory remains wedded to a key feature of social contract theory: political order is conceived as based on agreement. This construes the horizontal tensions among individual or group agents in society as prior to the vertical, authoritative relations between authorities and their subjects. Political authority thereby appears from the start as a solution to societal conflict, rather than a problem in itself. I argue that this way of framing the issue abstracts from political experience. Instead I attempt to rethink the notion of modus vivendi from within the lived experience of political conflict, as oriented not primarily toward peace, but political survival. With this shift of perspective, the idea of modus vivendi shows us, pace Bernard Williams, that the “first political question” is not how to achieve order and stability, but rather: what can I live with? (shrink)

The paper defends the claim that it is metaphysically possible that continuants of at least some kinds can have life-histories that incorporate temporal gaps -- i.e., the continuants can go out of existence and then come into existence again. Opponents of this view have included Graham Nerlich and Bernard Williams, whose writings I discuss.i.

The purpose of the article was 1) to assess the relationship between the organizational culture (OC) type and business strategy (BS); 2) to prove that OC influences the survival strategy success/implementation; 3) to contribute to the expansion of organizational theory by analyzing the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) strategy palette as the basis for developing an effective company survival strategy during the crisis. To achieve the purpose, correlation analysis between OC types (authors' typology) and BS (Boston Consulting Group and (...) Miles & Snow Models) was used (561 employees of different industries participated in the survey; the data collected laid the foundation for the research). As a result, it was proved that 1) certain types of organizational culture correspond to certain types of strategies; 2) during the period when the company overcomes the recession, OC affects strategic innovation decisions; 3) building a sustainable business ecosystem enhances the positive impact. The main limitations of the study are 1) some elements of subjectivity assessment, 2) constant changes in OC and BS, 3) the probability of different subcultures coexistence. Implications for a Central European audience: The results confirmed that there is a need for managers to 1) take into account the organizational culture characteristics/features to implement chosen strategies successfully; 2) be ready to adapt the OC before the BS is approved; 3) adopt the idea that building an innovation ecosystem can be crucial to confront the crisis with confidence. (shrink)

Despite the fact that the history of eugenics in Canada is necessarily part of the larger history of eugenics, there is a special role for oral history to play in the telling of this story, a role that promises to shift us from the muddled middle of the story. Not only has the testimony of eugenics survivors already played perhaps the most important role in revealing much about the practice of eugenics in Canada, but the willingness and ability of survivors (...) to share their own oral histories makes the situation in western Canada almost unique. Conversely, I also discuss the role that oral history plays in “surviving a eugenic past”, trading on the ambiguity of this phrase to reflect both on the survivorship of those who have been viewed as subhuman via some kind of eugenic lens and on the collective legacy with which Canada’s eugenic past presents us. (shrink)

Abstract: Knowledge requires more than mere true belief, and we also tend to think it is more valuable. I explain the added value that knowledge contributes if its extra ingredient beyond true belief is tracking . I show that the tracking conditions are the unique conditions on knowledge that achieve for those who fulfill them a strict Nash Equilibrium and an Evolutionarily Stable Strategy in what I call the True Belief Game. The added value of these properties, intuitively, includes preparedness (...) and an expectation of survival advantage. On this view knowledge is valuable not because knowledge persists but because it makes the bearer more likely to maintain an appropriate belief state—possibly nonbelief—through time and changing circumstances. When Socrates concluded that knowledge of the road to Larissa was no more valuable than true belief for the purpose of getting to Larissa, he did not take into account that one might want to be prepared for a possible meeting with a misleading sophist along the way, or for the possibility of road work. (shrink)

I develop an argument that believing in the survivability of a mind uploading procedure conveys value to its believers that is assessable independently of assessing the truth of the belief. Regardless of whether the first-order metaphysical belief is true, believing it conveys a kind of Darwinian fitness to the believer. Of course, a further question remains of whether having that Darwinian property can be a basis—in a rational sense of being a basis—for one’s holding the belief. I’ll also make some (...) remarks in the present article toward answering that latter question. (shrink)

A slightly abbreviated English version of the German paper on personal identity and resurrection.

The Zhuangzi 莊子 depicts persons as surviving their deaths through the natural transformations of the world into very different forms—such as roosters, cart-wheels, rat livers, and so on. It is common to interpret these passages metaphorically. In this essay, however, I suggest employing a “Conventionalist” view of persons that says whether a person survives some event is not merely determined by the world, but is partly determined by our own attitudes. On this reading, Zhuangzi’s many teachings urging us to embrace (...) transformation are not merely a psychological aid for dealing with death, but also serve as a tool for literally surviving it. (shrink)