This interview with N. Katherine Hayles, one of the foremost theorists of the posthuman, explores the concerns that led to her seminal book How We Became Posthuman, the key arguments expounded in that book, and the changes in technology and culture in the ten years since its publication. The discussion ranges across the relationships between literature and science; the trans-disciplinary project of developing a methodology appropriate to their intersection; the history of cybernetics in its cultural and political context ; the (...) changed role for psychoanalysis in the technoscientific age; and the altering forms of mediated ‘embodiment’ in the posthuman context. (shrink)

Much attention has been directed to the philosophical implications of quantum field theory (QFT) in recent years; this paper attempts a survey in low-technical terms. First the relations of QFT to other kinds of theory, classical and quantum, particle and field, are discussed. Then various formulations of QFT are introduced, along with related interpretations. Finally a review is made of some of the most interesting foundational problems.

N. Tennant; XI*—Entailment and Proofs, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 79, Issue 1, 1 June 1979, Pages 167–190, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristote.

Sensations represent our subjective 'take' on sensory stimulation — how we feel about red light falling on the retina, salt dissolving on the tongue, a thorn piercing the skin. They tell — in the language of phenomenal properties -- what the experience is like for us. In so far as they represent the reality of this subjective relationship, they cannot be said to be illusory. The relationship, magical as it may seem, is not being misrepresented as something it is not. (...) If anything, it is being represented as something 'super-real'. (shrink)

Researchers in artificial intelligence and robotics often include a timeline stretching into the future in which they predict the convergence between human and artificial intelligence. Ray Kurzweil, for example, predicts that in a mere 100 years humans and intelligent machines will become indistinguishable from one another, both ceasing to have permanent corporeal forms. This article argues that the one thing we can know for sure about the future is that when it arrives, it will be different from what we imagined. (...) The cultural work that predictions like Kurzweil’s perform is less to prognosticate the future than to shape our understanding of what it means to be human in the present. Working from the ‘sense-think-act’ paradigm foundational to work in artificial intelligence and robotics, this article argues that predictions in all three areas feed back to affect how the human is envisioned in the present. The reconfigurations these predictions bring about are to downplay consciousness, embodied cognition, and evolutionary inertia. The article concludes by critically evaluating contemporary resistances to the posthuman, especially in the writings of Rodney Brooks and Francis Fukuyama. (shrink)

We introduce Kripke models for propositional substructural logics with strong negation, and show the completeness theorems for these logics using an extended Ishihara's canonical model construction method. The framework presented can deal with a broad range of substructural logics with strong negation, including a modified version of Nelson's logic N$^-$, Wansing's logic COSPL, and extended versions of Visser's basic propositional logic, positive relevant logics, Corsi's logics and M\'endez's logics.

"This volume is concerned with how we ought to evaluate the individual and collective actions on which the existence, numbers and identities of future people depend - discussed here as the "problem of contingent future persons." For it seems that those future persons who are brought into existence by such actions cannot benefit from or be harmed by them in any conventional sense. This is a relatively novel problem in ethics and as yet there is simply no consensus on how (...) we ought to evaluate such actions or, indeed, on whether we can. However, the pursuit of a solution to the problem has been interestingly employed by moral philosophers to press the limits of ethics and to urge a reconsideration of the nature and source of value at its most fundamental level. Intended for professional ethicists, policy researchers, and graduate students, this volume explores the theological implications of the problem and advances the investigation of it both philosophical and in theological terms." --Book Jacket. (shrink)

Definición del derecho natural -- Definición del derecho de gentes -- Diferencia de otras ciencias -- Del derecho público -- De la política -- Necesidad y utilidad del derecho natural y de gentes -- Origen y antiguedad de este derecho -- Formación de esta ciencia -- Progresos y escritores principales. Hugo Grotius -- John Selden -- Thomas Hobbes -- Samuel Pufendorf -- Christian Thomasius -- Johann Gottlieb Heineccius -- Christian Wolff -- Emer de Vattel -- Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui. Fortunato Bartolomeo De (...) Felice -- Otros escritores en com un -- Montesquieu -- Simon-Nicolas-Henri Linguet -- Jean-Jacques Rousseau -- Escritos modernos detestables -- Vicios y defectos de muchos modernos -- Modo para conocer los autores sospechosos -- Autores católicos con que se refutan -- Precaución para establecer las reglas del derecho natural -- Falsa preocupaci on de buscar un primer principio -- Métodos que se proponen -- No son necesarios -- Del método escolástico -- Universidades en que se enseña este derecho. (shrink)

N. M. L. Nathan; VI*—Scepticism and the Regress of Justification, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 75, Issue 1, 1 June 1975, Pages 77–88, https:/.

tic sequenzen-kalkul of Gentzen, into rules for PCc, the classical sequenzenkalkul. We shall limit ourselves here to sequenzen or turnstile statements of the form A„A„..., A„ I- B, where A„A„..., A„(n ~ 0), and B are wffs consisting of propositional variables, zero or more of the connectives '5', "v', ' ', ')', and '=', and zero or more parentheses. One can pass from PCi to PCc by amending the intelim rules for ' a result of long standing, or by amending (...) the intelim rules for either one of.. (shrink)

Study of Śivasvarodaya, work on yoga; includes original Sanskrit text with English translation.

Movido no sólo por haber experimentado intensas ilusiones a lo largo de su vida, sino por su propia vocación teórica, y, una vez puesto a la tarea, por los sorprendentes hallazgos, en primer lugar, de que la palabra ilusión -«tan general, de tan larga historia, de tan claro linaje latino, común a tantas lenguas»- es algo privado del hispanohablante, y en segundo, de la casi absoluta ignorancia acerca de esta emoción, J. Marías aborda en este libro un insólito y fascinante (...) recorrido por este «secreto de la lengua española». A partir de aquí, y a través de sus distintos capítulos, Marías analiza con su indiscutible sabiduría las relaciones del término, y aquello que designa, con la imaginación, el tiempo, el deseo, la vocación, el amor y, por último, con la presencia y la ausencia del propio objeto de la ilusión. (shrink)

N. M. L. Nathan; VIII*—Democracy, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 93, Issue 1, 1 June 1993, Pages 123–138, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotelian/.

On the eminence and dignity of parents; in the light of Koran and Hadith (Islamic traditions).

The paper explores the ethical and psychological issues that arise when family members request that “everything possible” be done for a particular patient. The paper first illustrates this phenomenon by reviewing the well known case of Helga Wanglie. We proceed to argue that in Wanglie and similar cases family members may request futile treatments as a means of conveying that (1) the loss of the patient is tantamount to losing a part of themselves; (2) the patient should not be abandoned (...) or disvalued in any way; or (3) the patient is owed special obligations by virtue of the special relationship in which the family and the patient stand. We maintain that families can best express these important messages by caring for patients, rather than by making requests for futile interventions. Likewise, when life-sustaining measures are futile, health providers can best fulfill their professional obligations by assuring patients' dignity and comfort, rather than by applying futile interventions. (shrink)