Enseñan los estudiosos del Talmud que los Profetas no profetizan en contra de algo que acontecerá de modo inexorable. Por el contrario lo hacen en contra de algo que sucederá si no somos capaces de rectificar el rumbo de nuestras vidas. Rectificar el rumbo mientras sea posible, recuperar la realidad, recuperar la vida de todos como condición indispensable de posibilidad y racionalidad de cualquier forma de existencia social, es el llamado secularmente profético que formula Franz Hinkelammert ..

Durante todo el último medio siglo Franz Hinkelammert ha venido representado uno de los manantiales inagotables en los que abreva el pensamiento crítico latinoamericano. Su creatividad y profundo desprejuicio frente a las absurdas normas de producción de conocimiento en la sociedad occidental y capitalista, le han permitido formular una de las impugnaciones más contundentes de la globalización neoliberal. Era necesario entonces un trabajo que diera cuenta de los avatares de su biografía, tant..

The past two decades have seen an explosion in the methods and directions of neuroscience research. Along with many others, complexity research has rapidly gained traction as both an independent research field and a valuable subdiscipline in computational neuroscience. In the past decade alone, several studies have suggested that psychiatric disorders affect the spatiotemporal complexity of both global and region-specific brain activity (Liu et al., 2013; Adhikari et al., 2017; Li et al., 2018). However, many of these studies have not (...) accounted for the distributed nature of cognition in either the global or regional complexity estimates, which may lead to erroneous interpretations of both global and region-specific entropy estimates. To alleviate this concern, we propose a novel method for estimating complexity. This method relies upon projecting dynamic functional connectivity into a low-dimensional space which captures the distributed nature of brain activity. Dimension-specific entropy may be estimated within this space, which in turn allows for a rapid estimate of global signal complexity. Testing this method on a recently acquired obsessive-compulsive disorder dataset reveals substantial increases in the complexity of both global and dimension-specific activity versus healthy controls, suggesting that obsessive-compulsive patients may experience increased disorder in cognition. To probe the potential causes of this alteration, we estimate subject-level effective connectivity via a Hopf oscillator-based model dynamic model, the results of which suggest that obsessive-compulsive patients may experience abnormally high connectivity across a broad network in the cortex. These findings are broadly in line with results from previous studies, suggesting that this method is both robust and sensitive to group-level complexity alterations. (shrink)

A evidência textual primária confirma que Schopenhauer estava ciente da adoção generalizada do confinamento solitário no sistema penitenciário americano e alguns de seus efeitos prejudiciais. Ele entende sua perniciosidade no que diz respeito ao tédio, fenômeno pelo qual é conhecido por ter nele pensado e analisado extensivamente. Neste artigo, eu interpreto o relato de Schopenhauer sobre o tédio e sua relação com o confinamento solitário. Defendo Schopenhauer contra a objeção de que os casos de confinamento servem apenas para ilustrar a (...) inadequação geral de sua explicação do tédio como a falta de coisas para se querer. Esta defesa chega à conclusão de que, ao contrário, alguém pode muito bem sofrer da falta de coisas para querer como resultado direto de estar confinado; e que o tédio, entendido como a privação de vontade — fenômeno que sugiro poder ser chamado de privação conativa — faz uma contribuição esclarecedora para a nossa compreensão teórica da nocividade do confinamento solitário. (shrink)

This work is descriptive observational, with transversal design, was to analyze the time of motor commitment in Physical Education classes in three subsystems of Venezuelan education. The analysis unit consisted of a discretionary sample of 6 Physical Education classes between initial education, basic education and secondary education, at the rate of 2 classes for each subsystem. The number of students participating was 192. For the observation and registration, was used, the temporal variables were recorded, and in the second instance, the (...) classes were recorded considering variables associated with: organization of groups, activities, disposition of materials, use and distribution of physical space. The results confirm the little use of the Physical Education class to favor the motor development; none of the observed classes managed to accumulate 50% of the time of motor commitment, thus confirming the trend of other investigations. (shrink)

A evidência textual primária confirma que Schopenhauer estava ciente da adoção generalizada do confinamento solitário no sistema penitenciário americano e alguns de seus efeitos prejudiciais. Ele entende sua perniciosidade no que diz respeito ao tédio, fenômeno pelo qual é conhecido por ter nele pensado e analisado extensivamente. Neste artigo, eu interpreto o relato de Schopenhauer sobre o tédio e sua relação com o confinamento solitário. Defendo Schopenhauer contra a objeção de que os casos de confinamento servem apenas para ilustrar a (...) inadequação geral de sua explicação do tédio como a falta de coisas para se querer. Esta defesa chega à conclusão de que, ao contrário, alguém pode muito bem sofrer da falta de coisas para querer como resultado direto de estar confinado; e que o tédio, entendido como a privação de vontade — fenômeno que sugiro poder ser chamado de privação conativa — faz uma contribuição esclarecedora para a nossa compreensão teórica da nocividade do confinamento solitário. (shrink)

This is the introduction to the Special Issue ‘Foundational Issues in Conceptual Engineering’. The issue contains contributions by James Andow, Delia Belleri, David Chalmers, Catarina Dutilh Novaes, Eugen Fischer, Viktoria Knoll, Edouard Machery and Amie Thomasson. We, the editors, provide a brief introduction to the main topics of the issue and then summarize its contributions.

Tras una breve introducción al materialismo filosófico de Gustavo Bueno y a su antropología, se expone su teoría acerca de la diferencia entre individuo humano y persona, y se distingue entre la muerte del individuo humano biológico y el fallecimiento de la persona humana. Se pasa, entonces, a presentar la diferencia entra las normas éticas, morales y políticas, con el objeto de discutir el significado de una muerte buena y un buen fallecimiento desde cada uno de esos tres sistemas (...) axiológicos. Por último, se expone y discute, tanto desde un punto de vista ético como político, la teoría de la «eutanasia procesal» propuesta por Gustavo Bueno. (shrink)

Chalmers e Dennett se encontram em lados opostos da discussão do problema da consciência. Para Chalmers, ela é um dado indubitável que não pode ser explicada em termos de outra coisa. Para Dennett, o que existe verdadeiramente são múltiplos julgamentos sobre nossa consciência. Cada um acusa o outro de circularidade. Isto só é possível porque a diferença entre estas duas teorias é verdadeiramente uma diferença de princípios. A mesma oposição que encontramos no aparato teórico encontramos também em suas pressuposições mais (...) básicas e fundamentais. Este fato torna extremamente difícil escolher entre as duas ao mesmo tempo em que radicaliza a diferença entre elas. De um lado temos que argumentos podem refutar intuições, de outro temos que é preciso primeiro sondar nossas intuições para depois criar argumentos a partir delas. Entre um extremo e outro nos encontramos com o velho dilema de “o que vem primeiro?”. No entanto, mais importante do que escolher lados é mostrar o quanto é difícil escolher. (shrink)

The book is a collection of essays written by Gustavo Esteva over the last 20 years. In this book, Gustavo Esteva, renowned in Mexico as a philosopher on education and on developmentalism, collects four major areas of his writings: on learning, development, autonomy, and interculturality. A memorial to a great thinker, this book stimulates thoughts on developmentalism across the global south.

This paper analyzes the transformation from the human zygote to the implanted embryo under the prism of substantial change. After a brief introduction, it vindicates the Aristotelian ideas of substance and accident, and those of substantial and accidental change. It then claims that the transformation from the multicelled zygote to the implanted embryo amounts to a substantial change. Pushing further, it contends that this substantial change cannot be explained following patterns of genetic reductionism, emergence, and self-organization, and proposes Gustavo (...) Bueno’s idea of anamorphosis as a means to encapsulate criticism against such positions. (shrink)

This paper opens by distinguishing between the multiple concepts of system and the philosophical idea of system. It then goes on to discuss the differences between systems and other proximate ideas, such as whole, set, aggregate and structure. Subsequently, it proposes a definition of system, and then lays out three classifications of systems. When elaborating a general definition of system, the main challenge is finding a general criterion with which to characterize both technical systems built by men, and scientific systems (...) independent of human subjects. The criterion proposed in the text solves this difficulty. Lastly, from the tenets of Gustavo Bueno’s hyperrealist philosophy of categorial closure, I put forward the consideration of the sciences as systems. (shrink)

Ponencia al Congreso Filosofía y Cuerpo: debates sobre la filosofía de Gustavo Bueno.

The Book of Job is certainly one of the most enigmatic and attractive books in all of the Hebrew Scriptures. As a masterfully written poem, Job utilizes imagery and metaphor in such a way as to leave even the secular reader in awe. It tells the story of a pious man who, through many sufferings, is tested by the Divine and sent on a spiritual journey which culminates in a face to face meeting with God. As a poem and as (...) Scripture, Job has been the subject many interpretations over thousands of years. Often read as an insight into the mysteries of evil, innocent suffering, human nature, and the Divine, this piece of poetic Scripture has been the source of much debate and frustration among scholars and the faithful alike. It is not the purpose of this essay to attempt an overview of these various interpretations with the intention of settling upon one superior interpretation. Also, it is not the purpose of this essay to refute any previous interpretations. What I will offer is merely one interpretation among many – an interpretation which I hope might further, if only to the smallest degree, the significance of this great text for even one reader.This essay will take the theology of Friedrich Schleiermacher and, relying on an interpretation of Job given by Gustavo Gutierrez, offer a way of reading Job which leads to a transcendental spirituality. I will accomplish this in three parts: first, I will lay out certain Schleiermacherian concepts which advocate a form of transcendental spirituality; next, relying on Gutierrez's interpretation, I will draw parallels between Schleiermacher's concepts and the spiritual journey of Job; finally, I will show how the book of Job itself can be read as a tool for developing a transcendental spirituality within the reader. In the end, it will be clear that, without fear of ‘misinterpretation,’ the Book of Job can guide the reader to a transcendental spirituality. (shrink)

The Spanish philosopher Gustavo Bueno coined the expression “substantive arts” to refer to those arts that do not serve any immediate, mundane or practical purpose. In this paper, I briefly present this idea and put forward a definition of the substantive arts as an alternative to those used until now. Starting from the assumption that since the end of the 18th century there has been a set of arts that have their own substantivity, I expound on certain criteria widely (...) used as distinctive features to define the substantive arts. I subsequently put forward an alternative intensional criterion to characterize the substantive arts. To end, I draw some corollaries following from the application of this criterion. (shrink)

David Wallace argues that we should take quantum theory seriously as an account of what the world is like--which means accepting the idea that the universe is constantly branching into new universes. He presents an accessible but rigorous account of the 'Everett interpretation', the best way to make coherent sense of quantum physics.

Consciousness and Mind presents David Rosenthal's influential work on the nature of consciousness. Central to that work is Rosenthal's higher-order-thought theory of consciousness, according to which a sensation, thought, or other mental state is conscious if one has a higher-order thought that one is in that state. The first four essays develop various aspects of that theory. The next three essays present Rosenthal's homomorphism theory of mental qualities and qualitative consciousness, and show how that theory fits with and helps (...) sustain the HOT theory. A crucial feature of homomorphism theory is that it individuates and taxonomizes mental qualities independently of the way we're conscious of them, and indeed independently of our being conscious of them at all. So the theory accommodates the qualitative character not only of conscious sensations and perceptions, but also of those which fall outside our stream of consciousness. Rosenthal argues that, because this account of mental qualities makes no appeal to consciousness, it enables us to dispel such traditional quandaries as the alleged conceivability of undetectable quality inversion, and to disarm various apparent obstacles to explaining qualitative consciousness and understanding its nature. Six further essays build on the HOT theory to explain various important features of consciousness, among them the complex connections that hold in humans between consciousness and speech, the self-interpretative aspect of consciousness, and the compelling sense we have that consciousness is unified. Two of the essays, one an extended treatment of homomorphism theory, appear here for the first time. There is also a substantive introduction, which draws out the connections between the essays and highlights their implications. (shrink)

This paper is on the metaphysics and normativity of Jewish identity. It starts with a metaphysical question: “Can a Jewish person become non-Jewish?” This question and the related question “What is Jewishness?” are both ambiguous, because the word “Jewish” is ambiguous. The paper outlines five concepts of Jewishness: halachic, religious, ethnic, and cultural Jewishness, as well as being Jewish in the sense of belonging to the Jewish community. In some of these senses of “Jewish” a Jewish person is always Jewish. (...) In other senses a Jewish person can become non-Jewish. The paper closes with a normative question: Should a person who is Jewish, in the sense of belonging to the Jewish community, become non-Jewish? The paper explains reasons for and against staying in the Jewish community and in doing so highlights a tension, rather than telling anyone how they should identify. (shrink)

Psychological and philosophical studies have extended J. J. Gibson’s notion of affordances. Affordances are possibilities for bodily action presented to us by the objects of our perception. Recent work has argued that we should extend the actions afforded by perception to mental action. I argue that we can extend the notion of affordance itself. What I call ‘Introspective Affordances’ are possibilities for mental action presented to us by introspectively accessible states. While there are some prima facie worries concerning the non-perceptual (...) nature of introspection, I will argue that our internal mental lives share enough commonalities with experiences in our environment to warrant this extension. I will demonstrate the value of introspective affordances by showing how they allow us to explain an underexplored aspect of thought insertion. (shrink)

I argue that it is metaphysically necessary that: (i) every fundamental entity is conscious, and (ii) every fundamental property is a phenomenal property.

This dialogue explores the question of whether intentionality—the “ofness”, “aboutness”, or “directedness” of mental states—is a relation. We explore three views: the Naive View, on which intentionality is a relation to ordinary, everyday objects, facts, and other such items; the Abstract Contents View, on which intentionality is a relation to mind-independent abstract entities that are our contents; and the Aspect View, on which intentionality is a matter of having intentional states with particular (non-relational) aspects that are our contents. We consider (...) the challenges facing these views, which include empirical challenges in accounting for all the contents our intentional states can represent, metaphysical challenges in making sense of how contents can be entertained or otherwise represented by us and how they can play a psychological role in the mental economy, and challenges in making sense of how intentionality connects us to the world—if at all. Along the way, we consider the question of how consciousness is related to intentionality and how this affects one’s choice of views. (shrink)

The resemblance theory of representation is the view that one thing represents another by virtue of resembling it. Typically, it is taken as non-controversial that Berkeley accepts the resemblance theory of representation – even if the plausibility of the resemblance theory itself comes under scrutiny. One piece of evidence in favour of this reading of Berkeley is his commitment to the ‘likeness principle’: the view that ‘an idea can be like nothing but an idea’ (PHK § 8). The likeness principle (...) is typically seen as a rejection of the kind of indirect theory of perception that is often attributed to Locke. However, by paying particular attention to Berkeley’s account of how mental representation via the imagination works, Dávid Bartha casts doubt on the consensus view that Berkeley does accept the resemblance theory of representation. (shrink)

There is a difference between merely thinking that P and really grasping that P. For example, Jackson's (1982) black-and-white Mary cannot (before leaving her black-and-white room) fully grasp what it means to say that fire engines are red, but she can perfectly well entertain the thought that fire engines are red. The contrast between merely thinking and grasping is especially salient in the context of certain moral decisions. For example, an individual who grasps the plight of starving children thanks to (...) evocative images seems much more likely to donate for the children's benefit than someone who is merely told about their plight. This paper offers a phenomenal account of grasping according to which grasping a content (whether a proposition or concept) consists in one's thoughts about the content being constituted by phenomenal experiences of constituents of the content. This account improves on earlier phenomenal accounts of grasping (Bourget 2017a, 2018) by allowing for partial grasping and generalizing to concepts. The paper also addresses objections to phenomenal accounts of grasping, including the objection that recent developments in AI technology show that consciousness is irrelevant to grasping and understanding. (shrink)

Many philosophers of physics think that physical rates of change, like velocity or acceleration in classical physics, are extrinsic. Many philosophers of mind think that phenomenal properties, which characterize what it’s like to be an agent at a time, are intrinsic. I will argue that these two views can’t both be true. Given that these two views are in tension, we face an explanatory challenge. Why should there be any interesting connection between these physical quantities and consciousness in the first (...) place? In a speculative spirit, I close by developing a panpsychist view which promises to explain this connection in a particularly satisfying way. (shrink)

Can we conceive of a market economy that fulfils the ideals of socialism? In this book, David Miller provides a comprehensive examination, from the standpoint of political theory, of an economy in which market mechanisms retain a central role, but in which capitalist patterns of ownership have been superseded.

Dark matter is a fundamental component of the standard cosmological model, but in spite of four decades of increasingly sensitive searches, no-one has yet detected a single dark-matter particle in the laboratory. An alternative cosmological paradigm exists: MOND (Modified Newtonian Dynamics). Observations explained in the standard model by postulating dark matter are explained in MOND by proposing a modification of Newton's laws of motion. Both MOND and the standard model have had successes and failures – but only MOND has repeatedly (...) predicted observational facts in advance of their discovery. In this volume, David Merritt outlines why such predictions are considered by many philosophers of science to be the 'gold standard' when it comes to judging a theory's validity. In a world where the standard model receives most attention, the author applies criteria from the philosophy of science to assess, in a systematic way, the viability of this alternative cosmological paradigm. (shrink)

Know how and ability have a seemingly fraught relationship. I deepen the tension here, by arguing for two new pieces of data concerning know how and ability. First, know how ascriptions have two distinct readings that differ in their entailments to ability: one entails ability, the other does not. Second, in certain cases, the indeterminacy of certain ability claims infects both readings of know how claims. No existing accounts of the relationship between know how and ability captures both data points, (...) I argue; but a certain kind of intellectualism has special resources to account for them. Ascriptions of knowledge of infinitival questions give rise to a distinctive kind of context-sensitivity specific to infinitivals. I show how on an intellectualist view where, very roughly, knowing how to do something is knowing an answer to an infinitival question about your abilities, this context-sensitivity accounts for the relationship between know how and ability. (shrink)

Explores the cosmological and metaphysical thought in the Zhuangzi from the perspective of nothingness. Zhuangzi and the Becoming of Nothingness offers a radical rereading of the Daoist classic Zhuangzi by bringing to light the role of nothingness in grounding the cosmological and metaphysical aspects of its thought. Through a careful analysis of the text and its appended commentaries, David Chai reveals not only how nothingness physically enriches the myriad things of the world, but also why the Zhuangzi prefers nothingness (...) over being as a means to expound the authentic way of Dao. Chai weaves together Dao, nothingness, and being in order to reassess the nature and significance of Daoist philosophy, both within its own historical milieu and for modern readers interested in applying the principles of Daoism to their own lived experiences. Chai concludes that nothingness is neither a nihilistic force nor an existential threat; instead, it is a vital component of Dao’s creative power and the life-praxis of the sage. “Chai provides an elaborate philosophical meontological interpretation of the ontology/cosmology found in the Zhuangzi and the implications for existential practice. It’s a close, careful, but in many respects quite original reading of the classic that contributes significantly to the field of philosophical Daoist studies.” — Geir Sigurðsson, author of Confucian Propriety and Ritual Learning: A Philosophical Interpretation. (shrink)

The question of whether Everettian quantum mechanics (EQM) justifies the existence of metaphysical indeterminacy has recently come to the fore. Metaphysical indeterminacy has been argued to emerge from three sources: coherent superpositions, the indefinite number of branches in the quantum multiverse and the nature of these branches. This paper reviews the evidence and concludes that those arguments don’t rely on EQM alone and rest on metaphysical auxiliary assumptions that transcend the physics of EQM. We show how EQM can be ontologically (...) interpreted without positing metaphysical indeterminacy by adopting a deflationary attitude towards branches. Two ways of developing the deflationary view are then proposed: one where branches are eliminated, and another where they are reduced to the universal quantum state. (shrink)

This article examines the way in which public controversies affect regulatory science. It describes the controversy that unfolded in Europe around the use of the ninety-day rat-feeding tests for the risk assessment of genetically modified plants. This type of test had been criticized for almost two decades by toxicologists, nongovernmental organizations, and industry alike for its inability to capture the specific health effects of GM plants. But GM risk assessment experts showed great reluctance to move toward a more systematic use (...) of other tests, such as chronic two-year studies or toxicogenomic techniques, and made sure that official guidance continues to recommend the use of the ninety-day rat-feeding study. The article shows that these tactics of standardization are a defining feature of regulatory science, and a resource for toxicity experts to defend their authority and credibility against competing expertises that arise during controversies. (shrink)

Ontic structural realism claims that all there is to the world is structure. But how can this slogan be turned into a worked-out metaphysics? Here I consider one potential answer: a metaphysical framework known as ‘generalism’. According to the generalist, the most fundamental description of the world is not given in terms of individuals bearing properties, but rather, general facts about which states of affairs obtain. However, I contend that despite several apparent similarities between the positions, generalism is unable to (...) capture the two main motivations for OSR. I suggest instead that OSR should be construed as a meta-metaphysical position. 1Introduction 2Motivations 2.1Theory change 2.2Permutation invariance 3Metaphysics 4Generalism 4.1Quantifier generalism 4.2Algebraic generalism 5Why Generalism Is Not Ontic Structural Realism 6Ontic Structural Realism as Meta-metaphysics 7Conclusion. (shrink)

In _Thinking After Heidegger_, David Wood takes up the challenge posed by Heidegger - that after the end of philosophy we need to learn to _think_. But what if we read Heidegger with the same respectful irreverence that he brought to reading the Greeks, Kant, Hegel, Husserl and the others? For Wood, it is Derrida's engagements with Heidegger that set the standard here – enacting a repetition through transformation and displacement. But Wood is not content to crown the new (...) king. Instead he sets up a many-sided conversation between Heidegger, Hegel, Adorno, Nietzsche, Blanchot, Kierkegaard, Derrida and others. Derrida and deconstruction are first critically addressed and then drawn into the fundamental project of philosophical renewal, or renewal _as_ philosophy. The book begins by rewriting Heidegger's inaugural lecture, 'What is Metaphysics?' and ends with an extended analysis of the performativity of his extraordinary _Beitrage_. _Thinking after Heidegger_ will be a valuable text for scholars and students of contemporary philosophy, literature and cultural studies. (shrink)

#1 New York Times bestselling author David Brooks, a controversial and eye-opening look at how our culture has lost sight of the value of humility - defined as the opposite of self-preoccupation - and why only an engaged inner life can yield true meaning and fulfillment.

It is widely believed that we are facing a problem, even a crisis, caused by so-called “echo chambers” and “filter bubbles.” Here, David Coady argues that this belief is mistaken. There is no such problem, and we should refrain from using these neologisms altogether. They serve no useful purpose, since there is nothing we can say with them that we cannot say equally well or better without them. Furthermore, they cause a variety of harms, including, ironically, a tendency to (...) narrow public debate within predetermined limits. (shrink)

This book provides an up-to-date revision of materialism’s central tenets, its main varieties, and the place of materialistic philosophy vis a vis scientific knowledge. Materialism has been the subject of extensive and rich controversies since Robert Boyle introduced the term for the first time in the 17th century. But what is materialism and what can it offer today? The term is usually defined as the worldview according to which everything real is material. Nevertheless, there is no philosophical consensus about whether (...) the meaning of matter can be enlarged beyond the physical. As a consequence, materialism is often defined in stark exclusive and reductionist terms: whatever exists is either physical or ontologically reducible to it. This conception, if consistent, mutilates reality, excluding the ontological significance of political, economic, sociocultural, anthropological and psychological realities. Starting from a new history of materialism, the present book focuses on the central ontological and epistemological debates aroused by today’s leading materialist approaches, including some little known to an anglophone readership. The key concepts of matter, system, emergence, space and time, life, mind, and software are checked over and updated. Controversial issues such as the nature of mathematics and the place of reductionism are also discussed from different materialist approaches. As a result, materialism emerges as a powerful, indispensable scientifically-supported worldview with a surprising wealth of nuances and possibilities. (shrink)

On explanationist accounts of genealogical debunking, roughly, a belief is debunked when its explanation is not suitably related to its content. We argue that explanationism cannot accommodate cases in which beliefs are explained by factors unrelated to their contents but are nonetheless independently justified. Justification-specific versions of explanationism face an iteration of the problem. The best account of debunking is a probabilistic account according to which subject S’s justification J for their belief that P is debunked when S learns that (...) J is no more likely to be true on the hypothesis that P than on the hypothesis that ¬P. The probabilistic criterion is fully general, applying not only to cases where the learned undercutting defeater is a proposition about our beliefs or other mental states but to any case of undercutting defeat, providing the grounds for a debunking argument against the existence of a special, metacognitive debunking principle. (shrink)

The Long Arc of Legality breaks the current deadlock in philosophy of law between legal positivism and natural law by showing that any understanding of law as a matter of authority must account for the interaction of enacted law with fundamental principles of legality. This interaction conditions law's content so that officials have the moral resources to answer the legal subject's question, 'But, how can that be law for me?' David Dyzenhaus brings Thomas Hobbes and Hans Kelsen into a (...) dialogue with H. L. A. Hart, showing that philosophy of law must work with the idea of legitimate authority and its basis in the social contract. He argues that the legality of international law and constitutional law are integral to the main tasks of philosophy of law, and that legal theory must attend both to the politics of legal space and to the way in which law provides us with a 'public conscience'. (shrink)

Rapid technological change is resulting in the development of ever increasingly capable autonomous weapon systems. As they become more sophisticated, the calls for developing restrictions on their use, up to and including their complete prohibition, are growing. Not unlike the call for restrictions on the sale and use of drones, most proposed restrictions are well-intentioned but are often ill-informed, with a high likelihood of degrading national security and putting additional lives at risk. Employed by experienced operators well-versed in the laws (...) of armed conflict, autonomous weapons can advance the objectives of those who would prohibit their use. This essay takes an operational perspective to examine the role that autonomous weapon systems can play while complying with the laws of armed conflict. With responsible design and incorporation of applicable control measures, autonomous weapons will be able not just to comply but also to enhance the ethical use of force. This essay contends that efforts by the international community to use international legal means and/or institutions to over-regulate or even ban lethal autonomous weapons are counterproductive. It considers and describes the end-game results of the use of autonomous weapons in enhancing the application of both international law and human ethical values. (shrink)

One of the first comprehensive treatments of Deleuzian thought. There is always something schizophrenic about logic in Deleuze, which represents another distinctive characteristic: a deep perversion of the very heart of philosophy. Thus, a preliminary definition of Deleuze's philosophy emerges: an irrational logic of aberrant movements. —from Aberrant Movements In Aberrant Movements, David Lapoujade offers one of the first comprehensive treatments of Deleuzian thought. Drawing on the entirety of Deleuze's work as well as his collaborations with Félix Guattari, from (...) the “transcendental empiricism” of Difference and Repetition to the schizoanalysis and geophilosophy of Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus, Lapoujade explores the central problem underlying the delirious coherence of Deleuze's philosophy: aberrant movements. These are the movements that Deleuze wrests from Kantian idealism, Nietzsche's eternal return, and the nonsense of Lewis Carroll; they are the schizophrenic processes of the unconscious and the nomadic line of flight traversing history—in short, the forces that permeate life and thought. Tracing and classifying their “irrational logics” represent the quintessential tasks of Deleuzian philosophy. Rather than abstract notions, though, these logics constitute various modes of populating the earth—involving the human as much as the animal, physical, and chemical—and the affective, mental, and political populations that populate human thought. Lapoujade argues that aberrant movements become the figures in a combat against the forms of political, social, philosophical, aesthetic, and scientific organization that attempt to deny, counter, or crush their existence. In this study of a thinker whose insights, theoretical confrontations, and perverse critiques have profoundly influenced philosophy, literature, film, and art over the last fifty years, Lapoujade invites us to join in the discordant harmonies of Deleuze's work—and in the battle that constitutes the thought of philosophy, politics, and life. (shrink)

General epistemic polarization arises when the beliefs of a population grow further apart, in particular when all agents update on the same evidence. Epistemic factionalization arises when the beliefs grow further apart, but different beliefs also become correlated across the population. I present a model of how factionalization can emerge in a population of ideally rational agents. This kind of factionalization is driven by probabilistic relations between beliefs, with background beliefs shaping how the agents’ beliefs evolve in the light of (...) new evidence. Moreover, I show that in such a model, the only possible outcomes from updating on identical evidence are general convergence or factionalization. Beliefs cannot spread out in all directions: if the beliefs overall polarize, then it must result in factionalization. (shrink)