Abstract In this article we develop a relational understanding of sociality, that is, an account of social life that takes relation as primary. This stands in contrast to the common assumption that relations arise when subjects interact, an account that gives logical priority to separation. We will develop this relational understanding through a reading of the work of Martin Buber, a social philosopher primarily interested in dialogue, meeting, relationship, and the irreducibility and incomparability of reality. In particular, the article contrasts (...) Buber’s work with that of poststructuralist theorists who take as their starting point the deconstruction of the Hegelian logic of binary oppositions. Deconstruction understands difference as the excess that undoes the binary, but Buber, we argue, shows how difference derives from the primacy and ontological undefinability of relation. Relational logic does not exclude the logic of separations and oppositions: relation is the primal ground that makes separations possible. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-13 DOI 10.1007/s11841-011-0278-9 Authors Andrew Metcalfe, School of Social Sciences and International Studies, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia Ann Game, School of Social Sciences and International Studies, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia Journal Sophia Online ISSN 1873-930X Print ISSN 0038-1527. (shrink)

(1993). Cognitive maps and reflections on the Globalisation of the mind. World Futures: Vol. 38, Theoretical Achievements and Practical Applications of General Evolutionary Theory, pp. 171-189.

Both biosemiotics and evolutionary epistemology are concerned with how knowledge evolves. (Applied) Evolutionary Epistemology thereby focuses on identifying the units, levels, and mechanisms or processes that underlie the evolutionary development of knowing and knowledge, while biosemiotics places emphasis on the study of how signs underlie the development of meaning. We compare the two schools of thought and analyze how in delineating their research program, biosemiotics runs into several problems that are overcome by evolutionary epistemologists. For one, by emphasizing signs, biosemiotics (...) needs to delineate a semiotic threshold, which is a problem not encountered by evolutionary epistemologists. Instead, the latter recognizes that all organisms are knowers that evolve knowledge, which they recognize to extend toward phenomena produced by organisms such as behavior, cognition, language, culture, science, and technology. Secondly, biosemiotics attempts at continuing adaptationist notions on how organisms relate to their environment, while especially Applied Evolutionary Epistemology comes to redefine the nature of the organism–environment relationship in such a way that it recognizes the spatiotemporal boundedness of existence, which in turn makes adaptationist accounts obsolete. (shrink)

The inherently subjective nature of consciousness severely limits our ability to make progress on the problem of consciousness. The inability to acquire objective, publicly available data on the phenomenal aspect of consciousness makes evaluating alternative theories very difficult, if not impossible. However, the anomalous nature of subjective states with respect to our conventional theories of the physical world suggests the possibility of considering other anomalous data around consciousness that happen to be objective. For such purposes, I propose that we examine (...) the psi data gathered under laboratory conditions, which generally receive little attention. I wish to consider whether we have theories or frameworks of consciousness that attempt to account for subjective qualia but also fit the psi data. I argue that Russellian monism can be combined with an argument regarding quantum holism to arrive at a version of cosmopsychism that fits very well with the psi data. While I do not argue that such a framework exhausts the theoretical possibilities, I do suggest we can move forward with a framework that has attractive theoretical features and is also consistent with objective data currently on the table. (shrink)