This article seeks to identify the political and ideological dimensions of the contemporary presence of information technology or infotech. This presence is experienced as the progressive unfolding of technology as the logic of the social itself. Rather than approaching these dimensions through their reduction to a ground, a symbolic totality or a specific interest, and argument is constructed from Laclau and Mouffe's concept of `antagonism' in conjunction with Claude Lefort's notion of `invisible ideology'. This gives the argument the advantage of (...) relating the constitution of ideology to a historically specific political formation, instead of positing a timeless relation to the constitution of an abstract subject as the ground of an explanation. The argument is that insofar as information technology appears as a substance that absorbs the dynamic of community, which I call autotechnopoiesis, then ideology constructs the identity of this space with itself. The political is understood as the failure of this self-presence. In conclusion, these issues are located in terms of the governmentality of the `performative state' which seeks the recruitment of subjects to the `promotion of the social' through an investment in the banality of communication. (shrink)

My primary aim in this chapter is to explain in what the traditional mind–body problem consists, what its possible solutions are, and what obstacles lie in the way of a resolution. The discussion will develop in two phases. The first phase, sections 1.2–1.4, will be concerned to get clearer about the import of our initial question as a precondition of developing an account of possible responses to it. The second phase, sections 1.5–1.6, explains how a problem arises in our attempts (...) to answer the question we have characterized, and surveys the various solutions that can be and have been offered. More specifically, sections 1.2–1.4 are concerned with how to understand the basic elements of our initial question – how we should identify the mental, on the one hand, and the physical, on the other – and with what sorts of relations between them we are concerned. Section 1.2 identifies and explains the two traditional marks of the mental, consciousness and intentionality, and discusses how they are related. Section 1.3 gives an account of how we should understand ‘physical’ in our initial question so as not to foreclose any of the traditional positions on the mind–body problem. Section 1.4 then addresses the third element in our initial question, mapping out the basic sorts of relations that may hold between mental and physical phenomena, and identifying some for special attention. Sections 1.5–1.6 are concerned with explaining the source of the difficulty in answering our initial question, and the kinds of solutions that have been offered to it. Section 1.5 explains why our initial question gives rise to a problem, and gives a precise form to the mind–body problem, which is presented as a set of four propositions, each of which, when presented independently, seems compelling, but which are jointly inconsistent. Section 1.6 classifies responses to the mind–body problem on the basis of which of the propositions in our inconsistent set they reject, and provides a brief overview of the main varieties in each category, together with some of the difficulties that arise for each. Section 1.7 is a brief conclusion about the source of our difficulties in understanding the place of mind in the natural world. (shrink)

This article presents a case for the revaluation of vitalism in sociological theory. It argues for the relevance of such a Lebenssoziologie in the global information age. The body of the article addresses what a vitalist sociology might be through a consideration of Georg Simmel. The analysis works from the juxtapositon of vitalist monadology with postivist atomism. It shows how Simmel drew on the Kantian cognition to develop an idea of the social. Here Kant’s Newtonian atomism was transformed into Simmel’s (...) Darwinian atomism. ‘Form’, for Kant, is the a priori of the cognitive categories. For Simmel form is the functions that constitute the social a priori. The other of form is substance. Simmelian ‘substance’, we see, is understood as ‘life’. We view this in the context of Leibniz’s monadology. In this the monad is simple substance as difference. The monad is self-organizing, conceived on the lines of not the extensivity of res extensa, but the intensivity of res cogitans; the monad is possessed with memory as trace; it is comprised of relations of perception; it is reflexive. In each case monadology is systematically contrasted with atomism. We consider the Bergsonian and Nietzschean impetus in Simmel’s shift from Darwinian atomistic evolution to monadological creative evolution. We compare Marx’s labour theory of value with Simmel’s ‘life theory of value’. For Marx it is labour that makes up value-substance: for Simmel life is value-substance. We examine Simmel’s core notion of life as social substance: as a primordial inter-subjectivity of flux. We conclude with a contrast of such ‘flux’ and flow: of such a flux of ‘becoming’ and invention in contrast to the flows of domination of today’s global capitalism. (shrink)

Priority monism is the doctrine that there is exactly one substance: the whole concrete cosmos. This paper develops an objection to priority monism. The objection is that although every substance is necessarily a substance, for the priority monist the cosmos is not necessarily a substance. It follows that the cosmos is not a substance and so priority monism is false. The priority monist's pluralist opponent, I argue, can avoid a parallel objection to her view.

Malebranche argues that we lack a clear idea of the mind because we cannot, even in principle, derive all the possible modes of mind solely from the idea of thought. But we can, in principle, derive all the possible modes of body from the idea of extension. Therefore, there is epistemic asymmetry between our ideas of mind and body. I offer a defense of Descartes whereby he can assert that we have a clear idea of mind despite this asymmetry. I (...) argue that he can do this by distinguishing the simplicity of mind from the divisibility of body. (shrink)

As part of a defense of a physicalist view of experiences, David Papineau has offered an explanation for the intuition that properties found in experiences are distinct from neural properties. After providing some necessary background, I argue that Papineau’s explanation is not the best explanation of the distinctness intuition. An alternative explanation that is compatible with dualism is offered. Unlike Papineau’s explanation, this alternative does not require us to suppose that the distinctness intuition rests on fallacious reasoning. Relations of the (...) alternative explanation to representationalism and to cases of genuine property identity are discussed. (shrink)