Despite best efforts, every aspect of life is in a state of flux. To adapt is to survive. That is why we must learn to embrace the Buddhist philosophy of impermanence. The essence of impermanence is that reality is never stagnant but is dynamic throughout. The one‐by‐four blue brick with bow that was once associated with the roof of the LEGO Cinderella's Dream Carriage may now be unidentifiable. Skills evolve, experience accumulates, and every LEGO project raises the bar (...) for the next endeavor. When we dismantle it brick by brick, systematically examining each piece, we find that the self, like the Death Star, lacks any substantial permanent essence, that it is bereft of the sum of self. LEGO enthusiasts recognize the MOC (My Own Creation) as a LEGO creation that monks designed and built. Destruction of a mandala, like dismantling LEGO creations, demonstrates that beauty is only meant for this world for a short time. (shrink)

From the beginning in 1932, LEGO toys have expressed and were designed with an ethos grounded in simplicity, care, fun, and sustainability. The LEGO corporation's emphasis on openness parallels the philosopher Martin Heidegger's emphasis on openness, releasement, and working creatively within the structures and limitations of history and culture. When one play with LEGO toys, he/she eventually realize his/her creations can be taken apart or knocked down. Heidegger explains that these moments of destruction are opportunities for (...) understanding. For Heidegger, play is especially important because it reconnects them with the awe and wonder. The open structure of LEGO toys invites openness from creators. Other toys might create, require, and sustain different moods and modes of play. However, LEGO play reveals moods and desires in a unique way. LEGO play often extends over a sustained period of time, inviting play with the same bricks in diverse environments with different emotional settings. (shrink)

Although the prohibition of human cloning for reproductive purposes has been proclaimed internationally, embryo stem cell research is progressively considered as a positive field for future therapeutical developments. Implicitly cloning is then becoming a tool which allows the creation of new forms of life, including human life.

This article deals with the English translations of the adverb oikeiôs in Aristotle's texts. In chapter 7 of the Categories, Aristotle advises speakers to create words if necessary, on the condition that the new word is given oikeiôs. However, the English translations does not render in an accurate way what Aristotle wants to express regarding name-giving, since the adverb oikeiôs, deriving from the adjective oikeios, denotes 'property' and 'familiarity', the second meaning obviously originating from the first. Oikeiôs is crucial for (...) us to comprehend Aristotle's concept of name-giving, since he combines it with forms of the verbs apodidômi or legô, more than eight times in this particular chapter, where he is concerned with correct linguistic rendition. In sense of 'familiarity', oikeiôs sheds more light on the philosopher's semantic theory in On Interpretation, helping us to understand exactly how Aristotle conceived of conventionality, i.e., combined with familiarity. (shrink)

This chapter first distinguishes between originality and creativity. True originality is rare, whether in art, science, or LEGO, because to be truly original means to have done something that no one has ever done before, and that no one could have anticipated. Most LEGO creations will not meet that condition, for with the exception of serious hobbyists who undertake massive builds, most players who make original creations are making creations that are commonplace. Painting or remolding (...) or placing stickers on the bricks counts against the spirit of LEGO creation. The chapter then discusses The LEGO Movie embodies the paradox that presents three conflicting models of creative LEGO play, illustrated by the Master Builders, Finn's father, and Emmet. The movie's creators were deliberately playing around with conflicting popular conceptions of creativity: creativity as madness, creativity as thinking outside the box, and creativity as vision. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the versatile LEGO minifigure to introduce some major themes, questions, and problems tackled in the "philosophy of the human person". It begins with the question of just what parts are involved in making a human person. After that, the chapter considers the problems surrounding any individual's continued existence over time, and also discusses the philosophical view according to which the acts of decision‐making and imaginative creation are the very things. The cheerful yellow LEGO minifig presents (...) a wonderful tool for exploring the human person, who similarly appears unique within the complicated systems of reality. The issue of personal identity is as problematic as it is important for understanding our nature as human individuals in an ever‐changing world. The chapter further provides examples that focus on the problem of personal identity, particularly identity over time. (shrink)

continent. 1.3 (2011): 149-155. The world is teeming. Anything can happen. John Cage, “Silence” 1 Autonomy means that although something is part of something else, or related to it in some way, it has its own “law” or “tendency” (Greek, nomos ). In their book on life sciences, Medawar and Medawar state, “Organs and tissues…are composed of cells which…have a high measure of autonomy.”2 Autonomy also has ethical and political valences. De Grazia writes, “In Kant's enormously influential moral philosophy, autonomy (...) , or freedom from the causal determinism of nature, became prominent in justifying the human use of animals.”3 One of the oldest uses of autonomy in English is a description of the French civil war from the late sixteenth century: “Others of the…rebellion entred in counsell, whether they ought to admit the King vpon reasonable conditions, specially hauing their autonomy.”4 Life, and in particular human life, and in particular human politics, is well served by the usages of autonomy . What about the rest of reality, however? Should it be thought of, if it's even considered real and mind-independent, as pure stuff for the manipulation or decorative tastes of truly autonomous beings? We tend to think of things such as paperweights and iPhones as mere tools of human design and human use. To use them is to cause them to exist as fully and properly as they can. But according to Martin Heidegger, when a tool such as a paperweight is used, it disappears, or withdraws ( Entzug ). We are preoccupied with copying the page that the paperweight is holding down. We are concerned with an essay deadline, and the paperweight simply disappears into this general project. If the paperweight slips, or if the iPhone freezes, we might notice it. All of a sudden it becomes vorhanden (present-at-hand) rather than zuhanden (ready-to-hand).5 Yet Heidegger is unable to draw a meaningful distinction between what happens to a paperweight when it slips from the book I'm copying from and what happens to the paperweight when it presses on the still resilient pages of the thick paperback itself. Further still and related to this point, even when I am using the paperweight as part of some general task, I am not using the entirety of the paperweight as such. My project itself selects a thin slice of paperweight-being for the purposes of holding down a book. Even when it is zuhanden the paperweight is withdrawn. Graham Harman is the architect of this way of thinking.6 Harman discovered a gigantic coral reef of withdrawn entities beneath the Heideggerian submarine of Da-sein, which itself is operating at an ontological depth way below the choppy surface of philosophy, beset by the winds of epistemology, and infested with the sharks of materialism, idealism, empiricism and most of the other isms that have defined what is and what isn't for the last several hundred years. At a moment when the term ontology was left alone like a piece of well chewed old chewing gum that no one wants to have anything to do with, object-oriented ontology (OOO) has put it back on the table. The coral reef isn't going anywhere and once you have discovered it, you can't un-discover it. And it seems to be teeming with strange facts. The first fact is that the entities in the reef—we call them “objects” somewhat provocatively—constitute all there is: from doughnuts to dogfish to the Dog Star to Dobermans to Snoop Dogg. People, plastic clothes pegs, piranhas and particles are all objects. And they are all pretty much the same, at this depth. There is not much of a distinction between life and non-life (as there isn't in contemporary life science). And there is not much of a distinction between intelligence and non-intelligence (as there is in contemporary artificial intelligence theory). A lot of these distinctions are made by humans, for humans (anthropocentrism). And the concept autonomy has come into play in policing such distinctions. In this essay I shall to try to liberate autonomy for the sake of nonhumans. I shall do so by parsing carefully the title, which is taken from Hakim Bey's work The Temporary Autonomous Zone .8 First we shall explore the term autonomous . Then we shall explore what the full meaning of zone is. Finally, we shall investigate what temporary means. Each of these terms is of great value. An object withdraws from access. This means that its very own parts can't access it. Since an object's parts can't fully express the object, the object is not reducible to its parts. OOO is anti-reductionist. But OOO is also anti-holist. An object can't be reduced to its “whole” either, “reduced upwards” as it were. The whole is not greater than the sum of its parts. So we have a strange irreductionist situation in which an object is reducible neither to its parts nor to its whole. A coral reef is made of coral, fish, seaweed, plankton and so on. But one of these things on its own doesn't embody part of a reef. Yet the reef just is an assemblage of these particular parts. You can't find a coral reef in a parking lot. In this way, the vibrant realness of a reef is kept safe both from its parts and from its whole. Moreover, the reef is safe from being mistaken for a parking lot. Objects can't be reduced to tiny Lego bricks such as atoms that can be reused in other things. Nor can be reduced upwards into instantiations of a global process. A coral reef is an expression of the biosphere or of evolution, yes; but so is this sentence, and we ought to be able to distinguish between coral reefs and sentences in English. The preceding facts go under the heading of undermining . Any attempt to undermine an object—in thought, or with a gun, or with heat, or with the ravages of time or global warming—will not get at the withdrawn essence of the object. By essence is meant something very different from essentialism . This is because essentialism depends upon some aspect of an object that OOO holds to be a mere appearance of that object, an appearance-for some object. This reduction to appearance holds even if that object for which the appearance occurs is the object itself! Even a coral reef can't grasp its essential coral reefness. In essentialism, a superficial appearance is taken for the essence of a thing, or of things in general. In thinking essentialism we may be able to discern another way of avoiding OOO. This is what Harman has christened overmining .? The overminer decides that some things are more real than others: say for example human perception. Then the overminer decides that other things are only granted realness status by somehow coming into the purview of the more real entity. When I measure a photon, when I see a coral reef, it becomes what it is. But when I measure a photon, I never measure the actual photon. Indeed, since at the quantum scale to measure means “to hit with a photon or an electron beam” (or whatever), measurement, perception ( aisthesis ), and doing become the same. What I “see” are deflections, tracks in a diffusion cloud chamber or interference patterns. Far from underwriting a world of pure illusion where the mind is king, quantum theory is one of the very first truly rigorous realisms, thinking its objects as irreducibly resistant to full comprehension, by anything.9 So far we have made objects safe from being swallowed up by larger objects and broken down into smaller objects—undermining. And so far we have made objects safe from being mere projections or reflections of some supervenient entity—overmining. That's quite a degree of autonomy. Everything in the coral reef, from the fish to a single coral lifeform to a tiny plankton, is autonomous. But so is the coral reef itself. So are the heads of the coral, a community of tiny polyps. So is each individual head. Each object is like one of Leibniz's monads, in that each one contains a potentially infinite regress of other objects; and around each object, there is a potentially infinite progress of objects, as numerous multiverse theories are now also arguing. But the infinity, the uncountability, is more radical than Leibniz, since there is nothing stopping a group of objects from being an object, just as a coral reef is something like a society of corals. Each object is “a little world made cunningly” (John Donne).10 We are indeed approaching something like the political valance of autonomy . The existence of an object is irreducibly a matter of coexistence. Objects contain other objects, and are contained “in” other objects. Let us, however, explore further the ramifications of the autonomy of objects. We will see that this mereological approach (based on the study of parts) only gets at part of the astonishing autonomy of things. Yet there are some more things to be said about mereology before we move on. Consider the fact that since objects can't be undermined or overmined, it means that there is strictly no bottom object . There is no object to which all other objects can be reduced, so that we can say everything we want to say about them, hypothetically at least, based on the behavior of the bottom object. The idea that we could is roughly E.O Wilson's theory of consilience .11 Likewise, there is no object from which all things can be produced, no top object . Objects are not emanations from some primordial One or from a prime mover. There might be a god, or gods. Suppose there were. In an OOO universe even a god would not know the essential ins and outs of a piece of coral. Unlike even some forms of atheism, the existence of god (or nonexistence) doesn't matter very much for OOO. If you really want to be an atheist, you might consider giving OOO a spin. If there is no top object and no bottom object, neither is there a middle object . That is, there is no such thing as a space, or time, “in” which objects float. There is no environment distinct from objects. There is no Nature (I capitalize the word to reinforce a sense of its deceptive artificiality). There is no world, if by world we mean a kind of “rope” that connects things together.12 All such connections must be emergent properties of objects themselves. And this of course is well in line with post-Einsteinian physics, in which spacetime just is the product of objects, and which may even be an emergent property of a certain scale of object larger than 10?¹?cm).13 Objects don't sit in a box of space or time. It's the other way around: space and time emanate from objects. How does this happen? OOO tries to produce an explanation from objects themselves. Indeed, the ideal situation would be to rely on just one single object. Otherwise we are stuck with a reality in which objects require other entities to function, which would result in some kind of undermining or overmining. We shall see that we have all the fuel we need “inside” one object to have time and space, and even causality. We shall discover that rather than being some kind of machinery or operating system that underlies objects, causality itself is a phenomenon that floats ontologically “in front of” them. In so doing, we will move from the notion of autonomy and begin approaching a full exploration of the notion of zone , which was promised at the outset of this essay. Since an object is withdrawn, even “from itself,” it is a self-contradictory being. It is itself and not-itself, or in a slightly more expanded version, there is a rift between essence and appearance within an object (as well as “between” them). This rift can't be the same as the clichéd split between substance and accidents , which is the default ontology. On this view, things are like somewhat boring cupcakes with somewhat less boring sugar sprinkles on them of different colors and shapes. But on the OOO view, what is called substance is just another limited slice of an object, a way of apprehending something that is ontologically fathoms deeper. What is called substance and what is called accidence are just on the side of what this essay calls appearance. The rift (Greek, chorismos ) between essence and appearance means that an object presents us with something like what in logic is known as the Liar: some version of the sentence “This sentence is false.” The sentence is true, which means that it is a lie, which means that it is false. Or the sentence is false, which means that it is telling the truth, which means that it is true. Now logic since Aristotle has tried desperately to quarantine such beasts in small backwaters and side streets so that they don't act too provocatively.14 But if OOO holds, then at least one very significant thing in the universe is both itself and not-itself: the object. An object is p ? ¬p. To cope with this fact, we shall need some kind of paraconsistent or even fully dialetheic logic, one that is not allergic to dialetheias (double-truthed things). Yet if we accept that objects are dialetheic, p ? ¬p, we can derive all kinds of things easily from objects. Consider the fact of motion. If objects only occupy one location “in” space at any “one” time, then Zeno's paradoxes will apply to trying to think how an object moves. Yet motion seems like a basic, simple fact of our world. Either everything is just an illusion and nothing really moves at all (Parmenides). Or objects are here and not-here “at the same time.”15 This latter possibility provides the basic setup for all the motion we could wish for. Objects are not “in” time and space. Rather, they “time” (a verb) and “space.” They produce time and space. It would be better to think these verbs as intransitive rather than transitive, in the manner of dance or revolt . They emanate from objects, yet they are not the object. “How can we know the dancer from the dance?” (Yeats).16 The point being, that for there to be a question, there must be a distinction—or there must not be (p ? ¬p).17 It becomes impossible to tell: “What constitutes pretense is that, in the end, you don't know whether it's pretense or not.”18 In this notion of the emergence of time and space from an object we can begin to understand the term zone . Zone can mean belt , something that winds around something else. We talk of temperate zones and war zones. A zone is a place where a certain action is taking place: the zone winds around, it radiates heat, bullets fly, armies are defeated. To speak of an autonomous zone is to speak of a place that a certain political act has carved out of some other entity. Cynically, Tibet is called TAR, the Tibetan Autonomous Region, for this very reason. In this phrase, Region tries to emulate zone : it sounds as if the place has its own rules, but of course, it is very much under the control of China. What action is taking place? “[N]ot something that just is what it is, here and now, without mystery, but something like a quest…a tone on its way calling forth echoes and responses…water seeking its liquidity in the sunlight rippling across the cypresses in the back of the garden.”19 If as suggested earlier there is no functional difference between substance and accidence; if there is no difference between perceiving and doing; if there is no real difference between sentience and non-sentience—then causality itself is a strange, ultimately nonlocal aesthetic phenomenon. A phenomenon, moreover, that emanates from objects themselves, wavering in front of them like the astonishingly beautiful real illusion conjured in this quotation of Alphonso Lingis. Lingis's sentence does what it says, casting a compelling, mysterious spell, the spell of causality, like a demonic force field. A real illusion: if we knew it was an illusion, if it were just an illusion, it would cease to waver. It would not be an illusion at all. We would be in the real of noncontradiction. Since it is like an illusion, we can never be sure: “What constitutes pretense…” A zone is what Lingis calls a level . A zone is not entirely a matter of “free will”: this concept has already beaten down most objects into abject submission. Objects are far more threateningly autonomous, and sensually autonomous, than the Kantian version of autonomy cited in the first paragraph of this essay. A zone is not studiously decided upon by an earnest committee before it goes into action. One of its predominant features is that it is already happening . We find ourselves in it, all of a sudden, in the late afternoon as the shadows lengthen around a city square, giving rise to an uncanny sensation of having been here before. Objects emit zones. Wherever I find myself a zone is already happening, an autonomous zone. It is the nonautonomous zones that are impositions on what is already the case. Or rather, these zones are autonomous zones that exclude and police. They are brittle. Every object is autonomous, but some objects try to maintain themselves through rigidity and brittleness, like (and such as) a police state. Paradoxically, the more rigidly one tries to exclude contradiction, the more virulent become the dialetheias that are possible. I can get around “This sentence is false” by imagining that there are metalanguages that explain what counts as a sentence. Then I can decide that this isn't a real sentence. This is basically Alfred Tarski's strategy, since he invented the notion of metalanguage specifically to cope with dialetheias.20 For example we might claim that sentences such as “This sentence is false” are neither true nor false. But then you can imagine a strengthened version of the Liar such as: “This sentence is not true”; or “This sentence is neither true nor false.” And we can go on adding to the strengthened Liar if the counter-attack tries to build immunity by specifying some fourth thing that a sentence can be besides true, false, and neither true nor false: “This sentence is false, or neither true nor false, or the fourth thing.” And so on.21 It seems as if language becomes more brittle the more it tries to police the Liars of this world. Why? I believe that this increasing brittleness is a symptom of a deep fact about reality. What is this deep fact? Simply that there are objects, that these objects are withdrawn, and that they are walking contradictions. This means indeed that (as Lacan put it) “there is no metalanguage,” since a metalanguage would function as a “middle object” that gave coherency and evenness to the others.22 Since there is no metalanguage, there is no rising above the disturbing illusory play of causality. This may even have political implications: no global critique is therefore possible, and attempts to smooth out or totalize are doomed to fail. To think the zone is to think the notion of temporary , which we shall now begin to discuss in greater detail. The zone is not in time: rather it “times.” But because a zone is an emanation of an object, it is based on a wavering fragility, since objects are p ? ¬p. When an object is born, that means that it has broken free of some other object. An object can be born because it and other objects are fragile. If not, no movement would be possible. Objects contain the seeds of their own destruction, a dialetheic sentence that says something like “This sentence cannot be proved.” Kurt Gödel argues that every true system of propositions contains at least one sentence that the system cannot prove. In order to be true, the system must have a minimum incoherence. To be real, it has to be fragile. Imagine a record player. Now imagine a record called I Cannot Be Played on This Record Player . When you play it on this record player, it produces sympathetic vibrations that cause the record player to shudder apart. No matter how many defense mechanisms you build in, there will always be the possibility of at least one record that destroys the record player.23 That is what being physical is. An object is inherently fragile because it is both itself and not-itself. When the rift between appearance and essence collapses, that is called destruction, ending, death. When an object breaks, several new objects are born. An opera singer sings a loud note in tune with the resonant frequency of a wine glass. (See the movie included below.) The singing is a zone, an autonomous level of intensity, opening a rift between appearance and essence. The glass ripples—for a moment it is nakedly a glass and a not-glass—almost as if it were having an orgasm, a little death. It is caught in the rift of the singing. Then its structure can't handle the coherence of the sound waves, and it breaks. It is incoherence and inconsistency that is the mark of existence, not consistency and noncontradiction. When things break or die, they become coherent. Essence disappears into appearance. I become the memories of friends. A glass becomes a dancing wave. Instantly, there are glass fragments, new temporary autonomous zones. The fragments have broken free from the glass. They are no longer its parts, but emanate their own time and space, becoming perhaps accidental weapons as they bury themselves in my flesh. Thus Hakim Bey's instructions on creating temporary autonomous zones oscillate disturbingly between performance art and politics, circus clowning and revolution. To play with the aesthetic is to play with causality, to rip from the sensual ether emanating from things new regions, new zones. Anarchist politics is the creation of fresh objects in a reality without a top or a bottom object, or for that matter a middle object: Everything in nature is perfectly real including consciousness, there's absolutely nothing to worry about. Not only have the chains of the Law been broken, they never existed; demons never guarded the stars, the Empire never got started, Eros never grew a beard. … There is no becoming, no revolution, no struggle, no path; already you're the monarch of your own skin—your inviolable freedom waits to be completed only by the love of other monarchs: a politics of dream, urgent as the blueness of sky.24 Bey imagines that this is because chaos is a primordial “undifferentiated oneness-of-being.” A Parmenides or a Spinoza or a Laruelle would read this a certain way. Individual objects, or decisions to talk about this rather than that, are just maggot-like things crawling around on the surface of the giant cheese of oneness.25 Yet he also describes chaos as “Primordial uncarved block, sole worshipful monster, inert & spontaneous, more ultraviolet than any mythology.” This image is of an inconsistent object, not of an undifferentiated field. An object, indeed, that can be distinguished from other things. If not, then the first part of The Temporary Autonomous Zone , subtitled “The Broadsheets of Ontological Anarchism,” is a kind of onto-theology. Onto-theology proclaims that some things are more real than others. Bey, however, is writing poetically, and thus ambiguously. We are at liberty to read “undifferentiated oneness-of-being” as something like the irreducibility of a thing to its parts and so forth (undermining and overmining). This certainly seems closer to the language in the following paragraph: “There is no becoming … already you're the monarch of your own skin.”26 On this view, there is no difference between art and politics: “When ugliness, poor design & stupid waste are forced upon you, turn Luddite, throw your shoe in the works, retaliate.” Since Romanticism this has been the war cry of the vanguard artist.27 To say to is to fall prey to the tired axioms of the avant-garde, and we think we know how the game goes. But OOO is not simply a way to advocate “new and improved” versions of this shock-the-bourgeoisie boredom. Bey's text is certainly full enough of that. Rather, since causality as such is aesthetic, and since nonhumans are not that different from humans, the new approach would be to form aesthetic–causal alliances with nonhumans. These alliances would have to resist becoming brittle, whether that brittleness is right wing (authoritarianism) or left wing (the endless maze of critique). No “ism,” especially not the ultimate forms, nihilism and cynicism, is in any sense effective at this point. All forms of brittleness are based on the mistaken assumption that there is a metalanguage and that therefore “Anything you can do, I can do meta.” I will not be listing any approaches here, as Bey does. Such lists and manifestos belong to the vanguardism that no longer works. Why? Not because of some marvelous revolution in human consciousness, but because nonhumans have so successfully impinged upon human social, psychic and aesthetic space. It is the time after the end of the world. That happened in 1945, when a thin layer of radioactive materials was deposited in Earth's crust. Geology now calls it this era the Anthropocene . Ironically, this period, named after humans, is the moment at which even the most thick headed of us make decisive contact with nonhumans, from mercury in our blood to manta rays to magnesium. Richard Dawkins, Pat Robertson and Lady Gaga all have to deal with global warming and mass extinction, somehow. We now live in an Age of Asymmetry marked by a skewed, spiraling relationship between vast knowledge and vast nonhuman things—both become vaster and vaster because of one another and for the same reasons.28 This means that coming up with the perfect attitude or the perfect aesthetic prescription just won't work any more. Even the most hardened anthropocentrist now has to pay through the nose for basic food supplies, and has to use more sunscreen. Whether he knows it or acknowledges it, he is already acting with regard towards nonhumans. There is nothing special to think, no special critique that will get rid of the stains of coexistence. The problem won't fit into the well-established modern boxes, which is why the “mystical,” “spiritual” quality of Bey's prose is welcome. Of course, when I put it this way, you may immediately close off and decide that I am talking about perfect attitudes after all, or something outside of politics, or other ways that the radical left marshals to police its thinking of the nonhuman. Because that is what is really at stake in all this: the nonhuman in its coexistence with the human—bosons, gods, clouds, spirits, lifeforms, experiences, the sunlight rippling across the cypresses. Bey begins to get at this in a Latour litany in the second part of The Temporary Autonomous Zone , “The Assassins”: Pomegranate, mulberry, persimmon, the erotic melancholy of cypresses, membrane-pink shirazi roses, braziers of meccan aloes & benzoin, stiff shafts of ottoman tulips, carpets spread like make-believe gardens on actual lawns—a pavilion set with a mosaic of calligrammes—a willow, a stream with watercress—a fountain crystalled underneath with geometry— the metaphysical scandal of bathing odalisques, of wet brown cupbearers hide-&-seeking in the foliage—“water, greenery, beautiful faces.”29 This will be conveniently dismissed as orientalism. If we're never allowed to escape the crumbling prison of modernity for fear of imperialism there is truly no hope. In a similar way, the fear of anthropocentrism and anthropomorphism is very often staged from a place that just is anthropocentrism .30 Critique turns into ressentiment . An object radiates a zone that is aesthetic and therefore causal. Because objects “time” they are temporary. Not because they exist “in” time that eventually gets the better of them. Their very existence implies the possibility of their non-existence. Since objects are not consistent, they can cease to exist. But nothing, no one, will ever be able to insert a blade between appearance and existence, even thought there is a rift there. Now that's what I call autonomy. NOTES 1. John Cage, Silence: Lectures and Writings (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1973), 96. 2. P. B. Medawar and J. S. Medawar, The Life Science: Current Ideas in Biology (London: Wildwood House, 1977), 8. 3. David DeGrazia, Animal Rights: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 5. 4. Antony Colynet, A True History of the Civil Warres in France (London, 1591), 480. 5. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time , tr. Joan Stambaugh (Albany, N.Y: State University of New York Press, 1996) 62–71. 6. Graham Harman, Tool-Being: Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Objects (Peru, IL: Open Court, 2002). 7. Hakim Bey, The Temporary Autonomous Zone (Brooklyn: Autonomedia, 1991). 8. Graham Harman, The Quadruple Object (Ripley: Zero Books, 2011), 7–18. 9. This is not the place to get into an argument about quantum theory, but I have argued that quanta also do not endorse a world that I can't speak about because it is only real when measured. This world is that of the reigning Standard Model proposed by Niels Bohr and challenged by De Broglie and Bohm (and now the cosmologist Valentini, among others). See Timothy Morton, “Here Comes Everything: The Promise of Object-Oriented Ontology,” Qui Parle 19.2 (Spring–Summer, 2011), 163–190. 10. John Donne, Holy Sonnets 15, in The Major Works: Including Songs and Sonnets and Sermons , ed. John Carey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 11. Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (New York: Knopf, 1998). 12. Martin Heidegger, What Is a Thing? (Washington: Regnery, 1968), 243. 13. Albert Einstein, Relativity: The Special and the General Theory (London: Penguin, 2006); Petr Horava, “Quantum Gravity at a Lifshitz Point,” arXiv:0901.3775v2 [hep-th]. 14. Graham Priest, In Contradiction (Oxford University Press, 2006), passim: the most notable recent quarantine officers have been Tarski, Russell, and Frege. 15. Priest, In Contradiction , 172–181. 16. William Butler Yeats, “Among School Children,” Collected Poems , ed. Richard J. Finneran (New York: Scribner, 1996). 17. Paul de Man, “Semiology and Rhetoric,” Diacritics 3.3 (Autumn, 1973), 27–33 (30). 18. Jacques Lacan, Le seminaire, Livre III: Les psychoses (Paris: Editions de Seuil, 1981), 48. See Slavoj Zizek, The Parallax View (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2006), 206. 19. Alphonso Lingis, The Imperative (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 29. 20. Priest, In Contradiction , 9–27. 21. See Graham Priest and Francesco Berto, “ Dialetheism ,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2010 Edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta. 22. Jacques Lacan, Écrits: A Selection , tr. Alan Sheridan (London: Tavistock, 1977), 311. 23. The analogy can be found at length in Douglas Hofstadter, “Contracrostipunctus,” Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (New York: Basic Books, 1999), 75–81. 24. Bey, “ Chaos: The Broadsheets of Ontological Anarchism ,” Temporary Autonomous Zone . 25. This is closest to the language of François Laruelle in Philosophies of Difference: A Critical Introduction to Non-Philosophy (New York: Continuum, 2011) 179. 26. Bey, “ Chaos: The Broadsheets of Ontological Anarchism ,” Temporary Autonomous Zone . 27. Peter Bürger, Theory of the Avant Garde (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984). 28. For further discussion see Timothy Morton, “From Modernity to the Anthropocene: Ecology and Art in the Age of Asymmetry,” The International Social Science Journal 209 (forthcoming). 29. Bey, “ The Assassins ,” Temporary Autonomous Zone . 30. Timothy Morton, The Ecological Thought (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2010), 75–76. (shrink)

RésuméAprès avoir déflni la Psychologie comme la science des personnaliés, de leurs activité au sein des situations qui les confrontent, et de leur développement dans un milieu physique, social et culturel donné, le Dr Murray formule un certain nombre de propositions et conceptions théo‐riques destinées à rendre compte des faits psychiques. Les unes sont ?ordre général, les autres concernent la motivation. Propositions générales. 1. La personnalitéà son siège dans le cerveau.2. Elle dure et se développe dans le temps par suite (...) des opérations qu'elle est amenée à produire.3. Ces opérations sont internes ou externes, et correspondent à des attitudes ?introversion ou ?extroversion. Toutes comportent une dimension temporelle, un début, un déroulement de longueur variable, une fin.4. Les opérations externes sont constituteées ?une série de champs momentanés , le champ lui‐même résultant de la combinaison ?une situation externe et ?un état interne. II importe de distinguer de la situation réelle, la situation telle que la voit le sujet. Cette distinction revêt une importance particulière dans le cas des relations sociales.5. Ľobjet ?étude du Psychologue consiste alors, non pas dans le comportement du seul sujet, mais dans ľinteraction du sujet et de ľobjet. Celle‐ci, avec ses deux aspects complémentaires de besoin et de pression est ce que le Dr Murray à appeié ailleurs un théme.6. Les actions Psychologiques s'ordonnént fréquemment en séquences tendant àľobtention ?un but éioigné. Les démarches intermédiates s'expliquent alors, non pas par ľinfluence des facteurs externes contemporains, mais par celle des facteurs internes antérieurs. Ce sont, non des réactions, mais des proactions. Elles ne sont pas homéostatiques et subor‐données à la restitution ?un équilibre antérieur, mais _HYPERLINK “superstatiqu.es” et visant à la production de quelque chose de neuf. Séquences et proactions composent pour une grande part ľego‐system.7. Ľévolution de la personnalité s'ordonné en périodes relativement longues dont il est possible de prendre au cours de brefs laps de temps une sorte ?échantillonnage.8. La personnalité fait montre ?une intégration variable, perceptible aux niveaux des opérations, des séquences ou des périodes.9. Elle se transforme sans cesse par ľeffet des opérations ou elle est engageée, ces transformations graduelles et insensibles pouvant s'accumuler jusquà déclencher à un moment donné des revirements spectaculaires tels que les conversions.10. Le donné du Psychologue est de deux sortes: faits subjectifs communiqués par le sujet, faits objectifs recueillis par ľobservateur extérieur. II importe ensuite ?expliquer ce donné, autrement dit de construire une représentation hypothétique du psychisme du sujet, qui permette de comprendre ses conduites passées et de prédire ses conduites futures. Ces constructions n'ont pas encore atteint le stade ?une tľpologie satisfaisante. Concepts relatifs à la motivation. Dans la représentation théorique dont il vient ?être parlé, une place éminente revient aux concepts relatifs à la motivation: tendance, instinct, besoin, vecteur psychique concu à la façon de Lewin. La Psychologie américaine à pendant longtemps tendu à restreindre le nombre de ces besoins, et à n'admettre comme tout à fait fondamentaux et originels que ceux qui concernent la nourriture et le sexe. II est impossible de comprendre les actions humaines si ľon ne réserve une place à des tendances, activités et satisfactions ?un ordre plus élevé. Notamment:1. Ľêtre vivant peut dépenser le surplus ?énergie dont il dispose dans des actions spontanées, non déclenchées par un stimulus externe. Ľaction trouve alors sa gratification en elle‐même et non dans le résultat qu'elle procure .2. Un plaisir supplémentaire peut résulter de la manière plus ou moins harmonieuse dont se déroule ľaction, indépendamment de ľeffet où elle arrive.3‐4. Il existe des besoins ?ordre mental oùľesprit cherche sa satisfaction propre et non celle de ľorganisme. On voit alors ľimagination ľemporter sur la perception et le donné s'analyser et se recomposer en créations originales. Ces besoins et les actes qu'ils provoquent procurent les trois sortes de plaisirs distingués plus haut. Leur but n'est pas préala‐blement donné, mais doit être construit pièce par pièce.5‐6. à côté des besoins positifs existent des besoins négatifs qui poussent àéviter, exclure, ou détruire. De même, aux besoins réactifs s'opposent les besoins proactifs, spontanés et créateurs. Les premiers peuvent devenir proréactifs par ľintervention de ľanticipation, les seconds réproactifs sous ľeffet de circonstances inattendues. Ces diverses sortes de conduites peuvent servir à classer les individus ?après la place considérable ou réduite qu'elles occupent dans son comportement.7. Les besoins se spécifient par canalisation ou cathection . Ils peuvent aussi par généralisation sétendre à de nouveaux objets. Ľexcès ou le manque absolu de fixation sont des symptômes ?immaturityé. – Une importance particulière revient, dans le cadre de cette théorie, à la notion freudienne de cathexis. Certains objets et buts sont adoptés à la faveur de circonstances où joue le trial and error. Dautres, purement idéaux àľorigine, sont recherchds par ľindividu sans jamais avoir été rencontrés par lui. Si le trial and error intervient ici, c'est sur le plan de ľimagination. – La Psychologie américaine à restreint en général la notion et le terme ?apprentissage àľacquisition des moyens de satisfaction àľexclusion des fins. De même, la civilisation contemporaine, si elle à prodigieusement développé’ les techniques, à perdu la notion ?un commun idéal humaniste. II importerait de revenir, ?un point de vue théorique non moins que pratique, àľapprentissage des fins, autrement dit au processus par lequel ľindividu, sous la poussée de besoins largement indifférenciés adopte tel nouveau but, s'attache à telle valeur, jugée par lui source de satisfaction.8. Les besoins peuvent être conscients ou inconscients. Dans le dernier cas, ľindividu les refoule sous la pression des impératifs sociaux. Ils se mafestent alors de diverses façons détournées, éventuellement névrotiques, et peuvent se retourner contre le sujet.9‐10. II existe un ordre ?urgence dans la satisfaction des besoins, les plus biologiques réclamant le plus impérieusement satisfaction, les plus Aleves et altruistes ne se faisant sentir qu'ensuite.11. La Psychologic sociale récente à artificiellement dissoci^ les notions ?inUret, attitude et valeur de celle de besoin. Mais la notion de besoin à son tour demande une analľse plus poussee. Le besoin comprend deux composantes : Ľaction à quoi il pousse ou vedeur proprement dit, la valeur ou entite valorisee au benefice de laquelle s'effectue cette action. Toute conduite concrete apparait alors comme un systéme valeur‐uecteur et peut être analľsee de ce double point de vue. (shrink)

This collection of 16 original articles by prominent theorists from a variety of disciplines provides an excellent insight into current thinking about artifacts. The four sections address issues concerning the metaphysics of artifacts, the nature and cognitive development of artifact concepts, and the place of artifacts in evolutionary history. The most overtly philosophical contributions are in the first two sections. Metaphysical issues addressed include the ‘mind-dependence’ of artifacts and the bearing of this on their ‘real’ existence, and the distinction between (...) natural and artifact kinds, and its implications for issues in epistemology and semantics – for example, whether there is ‘maker's knowledge’ of artifacts, and whether ‘direct’ theories of reference apply to artifact-kind terms. The papers concerned with the nature of artifact concepts – the ways in which we represent artifacts to ourselves – address how judgements of artifact identity track judgements about manifest appearance, function, and maker's intentions, and the neuroscientific basis for artifact categorization. Papers …. (shrink)

Three decades ago, planned obsolescence was a widely discussed ethical issue in marketing classrooms. Planned obsolescence is topical again today because an increasing emphasis on continuous product development promotes shorter durables replacement and disposal cycles with troublesome environmental consequences. This paper offers explanations of why product obsolescence is practiced and why it works. It then examines the ethical responsibilities of product developers and corporate strategists and their differing responses to this problem. Pro-environment product design and marketing practices and innovative government (...) policies may alleviate the problem over time. However, given the current lack of understanding about consumer replacement and disposal behavior, it is questionable as to whether these practices and policies will be sufficiently informed to be effective. Thus, marketing scholars have a significant opportunity to contribute to sustainable durables product development. (shrink)

Recently, there has been an upsurge of attention focused on bias and its impact on specialized artificial intelligence applications. Allegations of racism and sexism have permeated the conversation as stories surface about search engines delivering job postings for well-paying technical jobs to men and not women, or providing arrest mugshots when keywords such as “black teenagers” are entered. Learning algorithms are evolving; they are often created from parsing through large datasets of online information while having truth labels bestowed on them (...) by crowd-sourced masses. These specialized AI algorithms have been liberated from the minds of researchers and startups, and released onto the public. Yet intelligent though they may be, these algorithms maintain some of the same biases that permeate society. They find patterns within datasets that reflect implicit biases and, in so doing, emphasize and reinforce these biases as global truth. This paper describes specific examples of how bias has infused itself into current AI and robotic systems, and how it may affect the future design of such systems. More specifically, we draw attention to how bias may affect the functioning of a robot peacekeeper, a self-driving car, and a medical robot. We conclude with an overview of measures that could be taken to mitigate or halt bias from permeating robotic technology. (shrink)

This paper delves into the nature of intellectual property rights in aesthetic creations, particularly works of visual art and literary works. The discussion focuses on copyrights interests, but there are also implications for trademark and patent rights. The argument assumes a fairly conventional definition of "property," namely, the set of legal relations between the owner and all other persons relating to the use, enjoyment and disposition of a tangible thing. The problem with such a definition as applied to aesthetic (...) creations is that no ordinary tangible thing necessarily embodies a creation which can exist in multiple copies, so the paper takes the transcendent view that the tangible thing subject to legal relations is the entire terra firma or material universe being shaped in the image, sounds or words of the aesthetic creation. Therefore, the paradigm suggested for intellectual property is a monopoly on shaping the entire physical universe, thus the Worldmaking concept. It then follows that intellectual property in an aesthetic creation enables the owner to stop plagiarists from using any part of the material world to recreate in the audience the imaginative experiences first created by the protected work. (shrink)

This chapter explores how LEGO compare to the metaphysics of the real, actual world—our universe. LEGO worlds and real worlds at least differ in how many there are: there are many LEGO worlds, but only one real world. According to David Lewis, there are worlds in which people were saved from entering the dark ages. There are worlds where they have a billion bricks at their disposal. But there are also worlds where LEGO has never been (...) invented. On Lewis's view, other worlds are just as real as the actual world. Lewis's plausible thesis of Humean supervenience need not be combined with his extravagant claim that there is a real world for any possible arrangement of the fundamental building blocks. A pervasive and obvious phenomenon of our world, is absent in a LEGO world. Things change—cars move, babies grow, coffee goes cold, leaves turn brown. (shrink)

The LEGO Movie provides more ways to think about the nature of autonomy and how others can either help or hinder one's development. At the beginning of The LEGO Movie, Emmet Brickowoski is an extreme case of someone who is not autonomous. Emmet is also contrasted with the Master Builders, who are autonomous, making decisions for themselves with confidence and gusto. When Emmet comes into his own as The Special, it is only with the help of others. Emmet (...) begins his development by convincing the Master Builders to follow his plan. Among them, only he has the capacity to really understand others' expectations in a way that will result in a successful plan to stop Lord Business's plot. Wyldstyle experiences a development similar to Emmet's. Her given name is Lucy, and she molds her personality to others' expectations. Wyldstyle's case examines what might be missing in the Master Builders. (shrink)

Playing with LEGO is naturally educational—it supports free play, imagination, and creativity. LEGO is forward‐thinking—it was one of the first toys to promote gender equality. LEGO advertises itself as a lifestyle choice whose values include being part of a team that educates people, that does the right thing, and that prides itself on its wholesomeness. This image is rather different from the reality of LEGO as a for‐profit company. The Greenpeace video undermines the entire ideology behind (...) the LEGO brand and everything it stands for. This chapter examines the relation between one's ideology and politics, on the one hand, and one's status as a consumer of LEGO toys, on the other. It also considers LEGO's long‐standing and problematic partnership with Shell. Shell, of course, is one of the world's largest and most profitable oil companies. The Greenpeace video hints at many possible criticisms of LEGO's relationship with Shell. (shrink)

In January 2014, seven‐year‐old Charlotte Benjamin wrote a letter to LEGO in which she described a lack of LEGO options for girls. Charlotte's letter has since gone viral. Many critics of the LEGO Friends theme have cited it in articles and blog posts about how this girls theme reinforces negative gender stereotypes. LEGO introduced the Friends theme in early 2012 explicitly as the "girls theme" to replace the unsuccessful LEGO Belville theme. Many fans of (...) class='Hi'>LEGO found the gender imbalance unfortunate, because, as studies indicate, playing with blocks, in particular in structural play, can significantly enhance spatial and mathematical skills. LEGO's solution was to create a theme in which purple and pink colors dominate the fictional place: Heartlake City. LEGO also introduced a new kind of figure: the mini‐doll. The mini‐doll is different from the traditional LEGO minifigures in being less blocky, more styled and taller; it is also a bit more feminine in appearance. (shrink)

This fascinating collection on artifacts brings together seven papers by philosophers with nine by psychologists, biologists, and an archaeologist. The psychological papers include two excellent discussions of empirical work on the mental representation of artifact concepts – an assessment by Malt and Sloman of a large variety of studies on the conflicting ways we classify artifacts and extend our applications of artifact categories to new cases, and a review by Mahon and Caramazza of data from semantically impaired patients and from (...) neuroimaging on concepts of living kinds versus artifact kinds. Following these are three papers on the development of artifact concepts in children, including a short but provocative piece by Keil, Greif, and Kerner arguing that there is a mismatch between the patterns of development for our concepts of artifacts and the patterns of representation we end up developing. The final part of the book includes authoritative papers on artifact use by insects, birds, and mammals, by primates, and by Australopithecines and Neanderthals. (shrink)

LEGO and Creativity -- LEGO, Ethics, and Rules -- LEGO and Identity -- LEGO, Consumption, and Culture -- LEGO, Metaphysics, and Math.

The Human Mind undertakes two tasks. One is to demonstrate that centuries of debate over how to state correctly the nature of the human mind and its relation to the human body arise from muddled thinking. By attending with care to ordinary, everyday language, this bogus thinking is exposed. The traditional distinction between the human mind and the human body is revealed as misbegotten. For that reason it is to be junked, along with centuries of misguided competing theories. The second (...) task is to draw attention to an alternative distinction we already make in everyday language. It is the distinction between a person and that person’s body. A previously undetected set of arrangements in everyday language is teased into full view to expose the character of a person’s physical and mental capacities. This set of arrangements applies to talk of all human capacities, such as the capacities to think, make a promise, dislike, be annoyed, turn left or reach for a banana. There is one simple pattern or formula that personal capacities have in common. To understand this arrangement in everyday language is to have the key to authentic understanding of the human mind and its place in the universe. (shrink)

LEGO bricks have spread in popularity to include many adults among their fan base. LEGO bricks form one small arena in which culture is expressed. LEGO offers an example to understand a subtle and difficult cultural critique of society offered by Jean Baudrillard, an influential French philosopher whose works contribute to postmodern understandings of the world and people's place in it. This chapter describes Baudrillard's four stages that are a model of the way the world works. These (...) stages are as follows: reality representing basic bricks; conflict play and masking; sky‐fi and the absence of reality; and ApocaLEGO and self‐simulation. His four stages merely describe the process from reality producing the image to the image producing reality. The chapter deals with bricks that seem to effectively represent the real, but through subsequent developments the bricks have come to supplant the real. Baudrillard argues this happens throughout media‐saturated culture. (shrink)

LEGO and math are both about what one do with the objects. In LEGO, he/she can build sets following the instructions, or alternatively dump a whole bunch of LEGO on the floor and build whatever he/she like. In math, he/she have a similar freedom to create new things, solve problems, and play around. Geometry makes far greater use of pictures and diagrams than tends to be the case for other areas of mathematics. This chapter focuses on diagrammatic (...) proofs as a key case where proofs guide him/her through a series of actions. If one accepts the LEGO account of diagrammatic proofs then he/she has strongly sided with the geometers against Plato. The main principle of departure from Plato is to focus on mathematical activities. The same thought is meant to apply to LEGO: the particular bricks are only important insofar as they facilitate the things we can practically do with them. (shrink)

LEGO tells about not just LEGO architecture but architecture generally: its objects, its aesthetic properties, and how people judge them. To illustrate how thinking about LEGO can help people with such matters, this chapter considers some scenarios. These scenarios illustrate two very different ways of thinking about architecture. On the one hand, people might think architectural objects (more commonly, "works of architecture"), like buildings, bridges, and aqueducts, have forms that stand on their own, and which thereby do (...) not depend on historical, environmental, or any other contexts. On the other hand, they might think that architectural objects are best understood (maybe only understood) if they have one or more kinds of contextual information. From a different angle, some might see formalism as a better fit with original LEGO world design than with real‐world architectural design. Proponents of formalism take note of what makes architectural objects distinctive. (shrink)

The evolutionary origins of complex capacities such as musicality are not simple, and likely involved many interacting steps of musicality-specific adaptations, exaptations, and cultural creation. A full account of the origins of musicality needs to consider the role of ancient adaptations such as credible singing, auditory scene analysis, and prediction-reward circuits in constraining the emergence of musicality.

In this essay I discuss how I built a cognitive‐robotics lab using inexpensive LEGO® MINDSTORMS™ robot kits. The lab has provided pedagogical and research opportunities for a number of philosophy courses, and I briefly describe the results of those efforts. I also describe how one might build a similar lab. Philosophers need to be more directly involved in the field of robotics. There is much work to do in tidying up the philosophical debris left by the last wave of (...) robotics research, which the researchers have been unwilling or unable to do themselves. The major barriers to participation have been hardware costs and a lack of technical expertise among most philosophers. In recent years, though, these barriers have become less of a problem. At the end, I present some ideas about the kinds of experiments that such kits make possible and how to expand beyond the limitations of the basic LEGO® hardware. (shrink)

Robot enthusiasts envision robots will become a “race unto themselves” as they cohabit with the humankind one day. Profound questions arise surrounding one of the major areas of research in the contemporary world—that concerning artificial intelligence. Fascination and anxiety that androids impose upon us hinges on how we come to conceive of the “Cultural Other.” Applying the notion of the “other” in multicultural research process, we will explore how the “Other” has been used to illustrate values and theories about robots, (...) as a mirror for the self. In this paper, we focus on the social, cultural, and religious implications of humans’ attitudes toward relationships between humans with robots. Six major views on humanoid robots are proposed: (1) robots as the “Frightening Other,” (2) robots as the “Subhuman Other,” (3) robots as the “Human Substitute,” (4) robots as the “Sentient Other,” (5) robots as the “Divine Other,” and (6) robots as the “Co-evolutionary Path to Immortality.” The likely and preferable scenario is the last one, which is compatible with an optimistic posthuman world in our evolutionary future. We imagine whether humans will meet the challenge of loving all living and non-living beings (including mechanical entities) might be the key to the co-evolution of both species and the ultimate happiness. (shrink)

Creation Ethics illuminates an array of issues in "reprogenetics" through the lens of moral philosophy. With novel frameworks for understanding prenatal moral status and human identity, David DeGrazia tackles the ethics of abortion and embryo research, genetic enhancement and prenatal genetic interventions, procreation and parenting, and obligations to future generations.

‘Fundamental’ is a prime example of what philosopher John Post called an “accordion word”: highly flexible and capable of expanding or contracting depending on context. Physicists and many cosmologists will view their domain as fundamental, and one will often see the expression ‘fundamental physics’ to describe an actual subject area—the idea being that such practitioners are dealing in ‘compositional ultimates’.

LEGO bricks have an enormous educational potential. The article analyzes the possibility of using the bricks in teaching philosophy. As a case in point, it describes the LEGO-LOGOS project, a method where the bricks have been successfully used in opening students to philosophical ideas. The project makes use of play (in this case with the LEGO bricks) to introduce students to philosophy and philosophizing. It tackles one of the biggest obstacles in teaching this subject, that is the (...) resistance of students to formulate and express their thoughts as the method allows for a free and creative expression of ideas and interpretations. The article describes the structure of the classes where the method is to be used and provides an analysis of educational and philosophical assumptions of LEGO-LOGOS also touching on the possibility of using the method as a tool in the school setting and beyond. (shrink)

This article critically considers Castoriadis’ central concept of creation ex nihilo. It does so in two ways. It first draws on recent research to suggest that the historical inauguration of the project of autonomy in ancient Greece - in both its political and philosophical aspects - was more complex and contextually anchored than Castoriadis acknowledges: it did not surge forth out of nothing. Second, it considers the idea of creation from a theoretical perspective. Here the idea of creation as contextual (...) rather than absolute is offered. Within this suggested qualification, two lines of discussion - drawn from the hermeneutical and phenomenological traditions - are broached. (shrink)

Refugee crises are one of the grand challenges of the 21st century. Despite the theoretical importance attached to value created for beneficiaries in the partnership literature, research tends to focus on internal processes and value created for partners and partnerships, leading to widespread calls to further specify the value created by partnerships for beneficiaries. Applying an analytical framework from the value creation and social impact literatures, we report on a study of multiple social partnerships of a nongovernmental organization in the (...) refugee issue field. Our results demonstrate that frames of refugees held by partners and in partnerships’ implementation contexts shape the value creation activities undertaken for beneficiaries, and determine whether value is created and what types of value. The dual contribution of this article comprises a rare empirical study of value creation activities for beneficiaries (here, refugees) and theorization of how and when implementation context affects value creation by partnerships. (shrink)