This paper examines the relationship between deconstruction and Marxism by turning to recent attempts to read Derrida as a materialist philosopher. Following Martin Hägglund, I propose that Derrida’s critique of logocentrism implies a commitment to certain seemingly materialistic philosophical positions, most importantly, the radical foreclosure of an entity exempt from a transcendental field of differences. However, Derrida’s materialism remains speculative to the extent that it results in a philosophy of infinite finitude itself premised upon a transcendental style of argumentation excluded (...) from scientific verification or falsification. By contrast, I suggest that Marxism with its commitment to Promethean scientism—the claim that all limits on human theory and practice are relative and subject to possible transformation—offers a more radical form of philosophical materialism. (shrink)

In this paper I address Jacques Derrida's consistent phenomenological critique of his colleague Louis Althusser. Over the course of many decades, Derrida explicitly draws attention to what he takes to be Althusser's problematic pre-critical scientism, which is the direct result of the latter's failure to engage with Husserl and Heidegger. However, as I attempt to show, Althusser sought to reveal deeper problems associated with transcendental-critical questions in post-Kantian philosophy. For Althusser, questions concerning the ‘conditions of possibility’ of knowledge and experience (...) reproduce the idealist problematic that he calls ‘empiricism’. Charting a different trajectory within contemporary French philosophy, Althusser combines insights from Spinoza, Marx, and other figures often unmentioned by Derrida to produce a novel, non-transcendental philosophical approach to key problems that arise in epistemology and the philosophy of science. (shrink)

"Alexandre Matheron is considered one of the most important interpreters of Spinoza's philosophy in the 20th century. These 20 essays, translated into English for the first time, focus on ontology, knowledge, politics and ethics in Spinoza, his predecessors and his contemporaries."--Publisher description.

In this brief essay Stiegler synthesizes his critical approach to Simondon’s philosophy of individuation. He states his debt toward Simondon’s concept of a systemic indeterminacy in the processes of transindividual individuation, and focusses on his underdeveloped intuition concerning the role played by technics in anthropogenic processes. Situating himself in the phenomenological lineage of Husserl through Derrida, Stiegler explains his own “pharmacological” understanding of “technical individuation” as, at the same time, the intrinsic condition of individuation and the inevitable risk of disindividuation (...) defining the political as such. On this basis he critically extends Simondon’s understanding of religion and psychanalysis. This allows him to move beyond the political optimism implicit in Simondon’s “theoretical indecision” concerning the binding power of technical individuation yet relying on his very study of the question of individuation, which “is political through and through.”. (shrink)

In a discussion of Victor Delbos, the doyen of early twentieth-century French Spinozism, Alexandre Matheron recalls with fondness a remark once made by his former doctoral sponsor, and fellow Spino...

In a discussion of Victor Delbos, the doyen of early twentieth-century French Spinozism, Alexandre Matheron recalls with fondness a remark once made by his former doctoral sponsor, and fellow Spino...

From religion to philosophy to science, all human systems of definition are formed by human brains. The nature and limits of the human brain are the nature and limits of those systems. This essay shows how the human brain works normally then unusually, and what this reveals about the limits of human knowledge. There are many conditions and instances where the brain processes information unusually, including mental disorders, physical events, and drug use. This essay focuses on the neurological events called (...) mystical experiences. (shrink)

This short peer-reviewed text is a concise look at the psychology of how human beings make decisions, including how they form their worldviews and make arguments.

This paper aims to provide two abductive considerations adducing in favor of the thesis of Necessitism in modal ontology. I demonstrate how instances of the Barcan formula can be witnessed, when the modal operators are interpreted 'naturally' -- i.e., as including geometric possibilities -- and the quantifiers in the formula range over a domain of natural, or concrete, entities and their contingently non-concrete analogues. I argue that, because there are considerations within physics and metaphysical inquiry which corroborate modal relationalist claims (...) concerning the possible geometric structures of spacetime, and dispositional properties are actual possible entities, the condition of being grounded in the concrete is consistent with the Barcan formula; and thus -- in the geometric setting -- merits adoption by the Necessitist. (shrink)

Part of the appeal of the biological approach to personal identity is that it does not have to countenance spatially coincident entities. But if the termination thesis is correct and the organism ceases to exist at death, then it appears that the corpse is a dead body that earlier was a living body and distinct from but spatially coincident with the organism. If the organism is identified with the body, then the unwelcome spatial coincidence could perhaps be avoided. It is (...) argued that such an identification would be a mistake. A living organism has a different part/whole relationship and persistence conditions than the alleged body. A case will be made that the concept ‘human body’ is a conceptual mess, vague in an unprincipled manner, and that an eliminativist stance towards dead bodies is the appropriate response. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Oxford Philosophical Texts Series Editor: John Cottingham The Oxford Philosophical Texts series consists of authoritative teaching editions of canonical texts in the history of philosophy from the ancient world down to modern times. Each volume provides a clear, well laid out text together with a comprehensive introduction by a leading specialist, giving the student detailed critical guidance on the intellectual context of the work and the structure and philosophical importance of the main arguments. Endnotes are supplied which provide further commentary (...) on the arguments and explain unfamiliar references and terminology, and a full bibliography and index are also included. The series aims to build up a definitive corpus of key texts in the Western philosophical tradition, which will form a reliable and enduring resource for students and teachers alike. David Hume's aim in writing An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding was to introduce his philosophy to a European culture in which many educated people read original works of philosophy. He gives an elegant and accessible presentation of strikingly original and challenging views about the limited powers of human understanding, the attractions of scepticism, the compatibility of free will and determinism, and weaknesses in the foundations of religion. Hume's philosophy was highly controversial in the eighteenth century and remains so today. The text printed in this edition is that of the Clarendon critical edition of Hume's works. A substantial introduction by the editor explains the intellectual background to the work and surveys its main themes. The volume also includes detailed explanatory notes on the text, a glossary of terms, a full list of references, and a section of supplementary readings. (shrink)

As a continuation of the work of the third author in [5], we make further observations on the features of Galois cohomology in the general model theoretic context. We make explicit the connection between forms of definable groups and first cohomology sets with coefficients in a suitable automorphism group. We then use a method of twisting cohomology (inspired by Serre’s algebraic twisting) to describe arbitrary fibres in cohomology sequences—yielding a useful “finiteness” result on cohomology sets. Applied to the special case (...) of differential fields and Kolchin’s constrained cohomology, we complete results from [3] by proving that the first constrained cohomology set of a differential algebraic group over a bounded, differentially large, field is countable. (shrink)

[This is an edited version of a keynote talk at the conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) on November 28, 2022, with some minor additions and subtractions.] -/- There has recently been widespread discussion of whether large language models might be sentient or conscious. Should we take this idea seriously? I will break down the strongest reasons for and against. Given mainstream assumptions in the science of consciousness, there are significant obstacles to consciousness in current models: for example, their (...) lack of recurrent processing, a global workspace, and unified agency. At the same time, it is quite possible that these obstacles will be overcome in the next decade or so. I conclude that while it is somewhat unlikely that current large language models are conscious, we should take seriously the possibility that successors to large language models may be conscious in the not-too-distant future. (shrink)

This volume is devoted to Lewis's work in metaphysics and epistemology. Topics covered include properties, ontology, possibility, truthmaking, probability, the mind-body problem, vision, belief, and knowledge. The purpose of this collection, and the volumes that precede and follow it, is to disseminate more widely the work of an eminent and influential contemporary philosopher. The volume will serve as a useful work of reference for teachers and students of philosophy.

Religion, science, and naturalism -- Perception and religious experience -- Panexperientialism, freedom, and the mind-body relation -- Naturalistic, dipolar theism -- Natural theology based on naturalistic theism -- Evolution, evil, and eschatology -- The two ultimates and the religions -- Religion, morality, and civilization -- Religious language and truth -- Religious knowledge and common sense.

One of Hume's most well-known works and a masterpiece of philosophy, A Treatise of Human Nature is indubitably worth taking the time to read.

One of Hume's most well-known works and a masterpiece of philosophy, A Treatise of Human Nature is indubitably worth taking the time to read.

"My work has had nothing to do with gay liberation," Michel Foucault reportedly told an admirer in 1975. And indeed there is scarcely more than a passing mention of homosexuality in Foucault's scholarly writings. So why has Foucault, who died of AIDS in 1984, become a powerful source of both personal and political inspiration to an entire generation of gay activists? And why have his political philosophy and his personal life recently come under such withering, normalizing scrutiny by commentators as (...) diverse as Camille Paglia, Richard Mohr, Bruce Bawer, Roger Kimball, and biographer James Miller? David M. Halperin's Saint Foucault is an uncompromising and impassioned defense of the late French philosopher and historian as a galvanizing thinker whose career as a theorist and activist will continue to serve as a model for other gay intellectuals, activists, and scholars. A close reading of both Foucault and the increasing attacks on his life and work, it explains why straight liberals so often find in Foucault only counsels of despair on the subject of politics, whereas gay activists look to him not only for intellectual inspiration but also for a compelling example of political resistance. Halperin rescues Foucault from the endless nature-versus-nurture debate over the origins of homosexuality ("On this question I have absolutely nothing to say," Foucault himself once remarked) and argues that Foucault's decision to treat sexuality not as a biological or psychological drive but as an effect of discourse, as the product of modern systems of knowledge and power, represents a crucial political breakthrough for lesbians and gay men. Halperin explains how Foucault's radical vision of homosexuality as a strategic opportunity for self-transformation anticipated the new anti-assimilationist, anti-essentialist brand of sexual identity politics practiced by contemporary direct-action groups such as ACT UP. Halperin also offers the first synthetic account of Foucault's thinking about gay sex and the future of the lesbian and gay movement, as well as an up-to-the-minute summary of the most recent work in queer theory. "Where there is power, there is resistance," Michel Foucault wrote in The History of Sexuality, Volume I. Erudite, biting, and surprisingly moving, Saint Foucault represents Halperin's own resistance to what he views as the blatant and systematic misrepresentation of a crucial intellectual figure, a misrepresentation he sees as dramatic evidence of the continuing personal, professional, and scholarly vulnerability of all gay activists and intellectuals in the age of AIDS. (shrink)

Conceptual engineering is the design, implementation, and evaluation of concepts. Conceptual engineering includes or should include de novo conceptual engineering (designing a new concept) as well as conceptual re-engineering (fixing an old concept). It should also include heteronymous (different-word) as well as homonymous (same-word) conceptual engineering. I discuss the importance and the difficulty of these sorts of conceptual engineering in philosophy and elsewhere.

*[[This paper appears in _Toward a Science of Consciousness II: The Second Tucson Discussions and Debates_ (S. Hameroff, A. Kaszniak, and A.Scott, eds), published with MIT Press in 1998. It is a transcript of my talk at the second Tucson conference in April 1996, lightly edited to include the contents of overheads and to exclude some diversions with a consciousness meter. A more in-depth argument for some of the claims in this paper can be found in Chapter 6 of my (...) book _The Conscious Mind_ (Chalmers, 1996). ]]. (shrink)

In this innovative study, Lea David critically investigates the relationship between human rights and memory, suggesting that, instead of understanding human rights in a normative fashion, human rights should be treated as an ideology. Conceptualizing human rights as an ideology gives us useful theoretical and methodological tools to recognize the real impact human rights has on the ground. David traces the rise of the global phenomenon that is the human rights memorialization agenda, termed 'Moral Remembrance', and explores what (...) happens once this agenda becomes implemented. Based on evidence from the Western Balkans and Israel/Palestine, she argues that the human rights memorialization agenda does not lead to a better appreciation of human rights but, contrary to what would be expected, it merely serves to strengthen national sentiments, divisions and animosities along ethnic lines, and leads to the new forms of societal inequalities that are closely connected to different forms of corruptions. (shrink)

Liberal thinkers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were alert to the political costs and human cruelties involved in European colonialism, but they also thought that European expansion held out progressive possibilities. In Progress, Pluralism, and Politics David Williams examines the colonial and anti-colonial arguments of Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant, Jeremy Bentham, and L.T. Hobhouse. Williams locates their ambivalent attitude towards European conquest and colonial rule in a set of tensions between the impact of colonialism on European states, the (...) possibilities of progress in distant and diverse places, and the relationship between universalism and cultural pluralism. In so doing he reveals some of the central ambiguities that characterize the ways that liberal thought has dealt with the reality of an illiberal world. Of particular importance are appeals to various forms of universal history, attempts to mediate between the claims of identity and the reality of difference, and the different ways of thinking about the achievement of liberal goods in other places. Pointing to key elements in still ongoing debates within liberal states about how they should relate to illiberal places, Progress, Pluralism, and Politics enriches the discussion on political thought and the relationship between liberalism and colonialism. (shrink)

Confronted with the apparent explanatory gap between physical processes and consciousness, there are many possible reactions. Some deny that any explanatory gap exists at all. Some hold that there is an explanatory gap for now, but that it will eventually be closed. Some hold that the explanatory gap corresponds to an ontological gap in nature.

Thus, Meyers provides a valuable account, not only of current medical attitudes, but also of relevant case and statute law as it stands at present.

In Phenomenology and the Problem of History. David Carr examines the paradox involving Husserl's transcendental philosophy and his later historicist theory.

A key to modern studies of 18th century Western philosophy, the Treatise considers numerous classic philosophical issues, including causation, existence, freedom and necessity and morality. This abridged edition has an introduction which explain's Hume's thought and places it in the context of its times.

This Introduction introduces readers to the concepts of political philosophy: authority, democracy, freedom and its limits, justice, feminism, multiculturalism, and nationality. Accessibly written and assuming no previous knowledge of the subject, it encourages the reader to think clearly and critically about the leading political questions of our time. THe book first investigates how politcial philosophy tackles basic ethical questions such as 'how should we live together in society?' It furthermore looks at political authority, discusses the reasons society needs politics in (...) the first place, explores the limitations of politics, and asks if there are areas of life that shouldn't be governed by politics. Moreover, the book explores the connections between political authority and justice, a constant theme in political philosophy, and the ways in which social justice can be used to regulate rather than destroy a market economy. In his travels through this realm, Miller covers why nations ar the natural units of government and wonders if the rise of multiculturalism and transnational co-operation will change all this, and asks in the end if we will ever see the formation of a world government. (shrink)

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)

Recent objections to epistemic permissivism have a metaepistemic flavor. Impermissivists argue that their view best accounts for connections between rationality, planning and deference. Impermissivism is also taken to best explain the value of rational belief and normative assessment. These objections pose a series of metaepistemic explanatory challenges for permissivism. In this paper, I illustrate how permissivists might meet their explanatory burdens by developing two permissivist metaepistemic views which fare well against the explanatory challenges.

In this classic work David Bohm, writing clearly and without technical jargon, develops a theory of quantum physics which treats the totality of existence as an unbroken whole.

How should we account for the extraordinary regularity in the world? Humeans and Non-Humeans sharply disagree. According to Non-Humeans, the world behaves in an extraordinarily regular way because of certain necessary connections in nature. However, Humeans have thought that Non-Humean views are metaphysically objectionable. In particular, there are two general metaphysical principles that Humeans have found attractive that are incompatible with all existing versions of Non-Humeanism. My goal in this paper is to develop a novel version of Non-Humeanism that is (...) consistent with (and even entails) both of these general metaphysical principles. By endorsing such a view, one can have the explanatory benefits of Non-Humeanism while at the same time avoiding two of the major metaphysical objections towards Non-Humeanism. (shrink)

Beneath the stylized violence and thrilling car crashes, the Mad Max films consider universal questions about the nature of human life, order and anarchy, justice and moral responsibility, society and technology, and ultimately, human redemption. In Mad Max and Philosophy, a diverse team of political scientists, historians, and philosophers investigates the underlying themes of the blockbuster movie franchise, following Max as he attempts to rebuild himself and the world. -/- This book guides you through the barren wastelands of a post-apocalyptic (...) future as you explore ethics and politics in The Wasteland, the importance of costumes and music, humankind's relationship with nature, commerce, gender, religion, madness, and more. (shrink)

Making Sense of Education provides a contemporary introduction to the key issues in educational philosophy and theory. Exploring recent developments as well as important ideas from the twentieth century, this book aims to make philosophy of education relevant to everyday practice for teachers and student teachers, as well as those studying education as an academic subject.

Originally published: Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932.

David Hume's Enquiry concerning Human Understanding is the definitive statement of the greatest philosopher in the English language. His arguments in support of reasoning from experience, and against the "sophistry and illusion"of religiously inspired philosophical fantasies, caused controversy in the eighteenth century and are strikingly relevant today, when faith and science continue to clash. The Enquiry considers the origin and processes of human thought, reaching the stark conclusion that we can have no ultimate understanding of the physical world, or (...) indeed our own minds. In either sphere we must depend on instinctive learning from experience, recognizing our animal nature and the limits of reason. Hume's calm and open-minded skepticism thus aims to provide a new basis for science, liberating us from the "superstition" of false metaphysics and religion. His Enquiry remains one of the best introductions to the study of philosophy, and his edition places it in its historical and philosophical context. (shrink)

This paper responds to comments and criticisms by Stefan Brandt and Eva-Maria Jung, directed at the book "Know-how as Competence. A Rylean Responsibilist Account".

The model of human intelligence that is most widely adopted derives from psychometrics and behavioral genetics. This standard approach conceives intelligence as a general cognitive ability that is genetically highly heritable and describable using quantitative traits analysis. The paper analyzes intelligence within the debate on natural kinds and contends that the general intelligence conceptualization does not carve psychological nature at its joints. Moreover, I argue that this model assumes an essentialist perspective. As an alternative, I consider an HPC theory of (...) intelligence and evaluate how it deals with essentialism and with intuitions coming from cognitive science. Finally, I highlight some concerns about the HPC model as well, and conclude by suggesting that it is unnecessary to treat intelligence as a kind in any sense. (shrink)