Theories of consciousness divide over whether perceptual consciousness is rich or sparse in specific representational content and whether it requires cognitive access. These two issues are often treated in tandem because of a shared assumption that the representational capacity of cognitive access is fairly limited. Recent research on working memory challenges this shared assumption. This paper argues that abandoning the assumption undermines post-cue-based “overflow” arguments, according to which perceptual conscious is rich and does not require cognitive access. Abandoning it (...) also dissociates the rich/sparse debate from the access question. The paper then explores attempts to reformulate overflow theses in ways that don’t require the assumption of limited capacity. Finally, it discusses the problem of relating seemingly non-probabilistic perceptual consciousness to the probabilistic representations posited by the models that challenge conceptions of cognitive access as capacity-limited. (shrink)

The target paper (building on Ginsburg and Jablonka in JTB 381:55–60, 2015, The evolution of the sensitive soul: Learning and the origins of consciousness, MIT Press, USA, 2019) makes a significant and novel claim: that positive cases of non-human consciousness can be identified via the capacity of unlimited associative learning (UAL). In turn, this claim is generated by a novel methodology, which is that of identifying an evolutionary ‘transition marker’, which is claimed to have theoretical and empirical advantages (...) over other approaches. In this commentary I argue that UAL does not function as a successful transition marker (as defined by the authors), and has internal problems of its own. However, I conclude that it is still a very productive anchor for new research on the evolution of consciousness. (shrink)

This commentary focuses on the importance of attention skills in the development of universal associative learning, and it explains why the centrality of attention in UAL presents a considerable difficulty for the UAL approach. Attentional abilities are not just developmentally related to UAL but are in fact explanatory of UAL. The main problem is that all the types of attention involved in UAL can be dissociated from consciousness. This means that while attention skills for UAL might be necessary for consciousness, (...) they are not sufficient because they can all occur unconsciously. Thus, the possibility that UAL capacities might not be sufficient for consciousness cannot be eliminated, thereby challenging the key claim of the UAL approach. (shrink)

This paper examines the relation between Cartwright's concept of 'capacities' and Mill's concept of 'tendencies' and argues that they are not equivalent. Cartwright's concept of 'capacities' and her motivation to adopt it as a central notion in her philosophy of science are described. It is argued that the Millian concept of 'tendencies' is distinct because Mill restricts its use to a set of special cases. These are the cases in which causes combine 'mechanically'. Hence for Mill 'tendencies' do not merely (...) describe the operation of causes, but also and perhaps even primarily how they combine. This does not hold of Cartwrightian capacities which are meant to have unlimited applicability. Mill also explicitly denies the realism of 'capacities' in a sense which overlaps with Cartwright's. Her attempt to derive empirist credentials for her notion of capacity from Mill is therefore unsuccessful. (shrink)

The greatest intensity of “live” life is captured from as close as possible in order to be borne as far as possible away. Jacques Derrida. Echographies of Television . Rainer Ganahl has made a study of studying. As part of his extensive autobiographical art practice, he documents and presents many of the ambitious educational activities he undertakes. For example, he has been videotaping hundreds of hours of solitary study that show him struggling to learn Chinese, Arabic and a host of (...) other languages. The stacked boxes of tapes are then presented like minimalist monoliths, dense archives of effort. About fifteen years ago, Ganahl began photographing the lectures that he attends. At the time, he hadn’t seen anyone else doing it, so besides his spare selection of images of the speaker and the audience, much of the time the lectures would just pass into memory, undocumented, or recorded in writing alone. Since then, he has felt the transition to digital cause a significant shift in his process. At the same time, he has seen the habit become ubiquitous as others photograph, record, and videotape the lectures all around him. In keeping with the theme of this inaugural issue of continent. , can we propose each small grouping of photographs that result an isthmus stretching between two disparate bodies of mind? The first being the body of the lecture as spelled out in the title of each work – the experience of the event in all its constituent parts. The second is the body of the recipient, the listener, in this case an artist, who plays a minimal role just beyond the prescripted behavior of sitting and listening. He uses a gesture of documentation to draw a line between himself and the event, creating an artwork. Františka + Tim Gilman: As we mentioned before, the theme of the magazine for this issue is "isthmus." It seems like a very good way into your work, and it leads us to ask what connection you see between your photographs of the lecture and the lecture itself? Rainer Ganahl: The relationship is of course a concrete, pictorial one, or if you want a mimetic one but also an abstract one because the photographs carry the title of the lecture, the names of the lecturers, the site, the institution and the time of the lecture. Photos are fixed moments of time and can reproduce images displayed and reproduce visuals presented at a moment but they don’t come with time based recordings that video or sound takes are offering. What remains of a lecture is usually just the memory, some notes and all the announcements of it. In my case I end up with a visual product I declare as my artwork. It might not differ from any snapshot taken by any other student or member of the audience but I do this in a semi-systematic way with certain rules and procedures I have set up. While I am at a lecture I am mainly focusing on the lecture itself. Last night I went to one of Slavoj Žižek which demanded quite some concentration. I even was asking him a question at the end. I took photos as well but still didn’t lose track of the lecture. I didn’t walk around, I was not preoccupied by where I was sitting and what light I was having like some of the other photographing and filming people in the room who came and left, moved around and tried to capture him from this and that angle, from close and far. I just sat there and concentrated on the lecture and yet managed to take about 30 or so images of him, the public around me and of the film clips he presented. Once the lecture is over the story changes: it all becomes a question of the images, their selection, their visual qualities, their labeling and archiving. The function of the images also change: not only do they stand for an intellectual event in a row of lectures that become part of my intellectual history within many possible such histories but they also have to function as art, something not everybody else with images of lecturers demands of their images. This is my specific claim as an artist to impose them as artworks. And as with all artistic propositions the offer can be accepted or rejected. I basically spend my life trying to do exactly that: making what I declare as art, offering something to anybody interested in it as my art, an offer that is not and will never be accepted as such by all people. F+T: What are your criteria for selection, i.e. how do you choose which lectures to photograph, by lecturer, by topic, or do you photograph any and every lecture you can? RG: As everything in my life, I go by my interest which is the result of many factors. If I am aware of a lecturer, read his books or appreciate his works my interest of attending his much higher than if I am not aware of it. I usually don’t go to lecturers simply based on their subjects—something that can happen of course, if the subject, the title of the lecture is promising or at the heart of my interest. Sometimes I also wait for years to get a change to photograph certain people but I do that in a very low-level “keep your ears up” mentality and not in a systematic scanning of all channels and possibilities. I do not go into philosophy departments and photograph everybody teaching there. I go with the flow—and unfortunately a great deal of great talks I also miss because I hear too late of them. Often, I also stumble into them by traveling, by getting emails from friends and by simply being in the right spot at the right time. Somehow you could look at my lecture par cours as some kind of loose intellectual flâneurism . If you know of interesting lectures and events, please, let me know. F+T: Is your selection of images more of a production or post-production method? That is, do you take a lot of photos and select only a few images from each lecture, or do you take them very selectively? Do you have a particular methodology for the selection of images? RG: This all changed a bit with the arrival of digital photography. In the beginning I had to pay a lot of money for film developing. Hence, I was taking either one role - 36 images - or half a role - 13 images - depending on who talked and whether they projected images. With the unlimited capacity of digital imaging I easily end up between 30 and 150 images of one event still depending of whether images are presented or not. In the first years of that project when I wasn’t fully aware yet of what I was doing, I printed at least 2 images of any lecture and sometimes three or even four, a choice that was also constrained by costs. But again, since I have a web site and since images can easily be selected and presented on my web site without generating remarkable costs I have now more and more pain to reduce them to less than ten or eight images for an event. Now, before I have them printed which really is expensive, I can present them already as artwork on my web site without any immediate costs. Thus the economic factor is at the end of the chain which enables me to be more ‘generous’ and include more images. Over the last years I have been mostly selecting at least four photographs for a lecture unit but recently also as many as ten. But so far only one set above four images has been actually printed and sold. What might sound even more shocking is the likely fact that if a curator or a collector demands me to reduce the number of images due to costs, I might compromise at this current stage if the images have not been yet printed or published outside my own web site. This means that to a certain degree any selection that has only seen publication on my web site and not yet been produced runs the risk to change in numbers of images included. Needless to say, I am the last one that finally makes a decision and I do honor all given earlier decision if those were final. F+T: How do you feel the act of photographing the lecture affects your reception of the contents of the lecture? And your recollection afterwards, do you remember the lecture more having photographed it, or just having sat and listened? RG: As mentioned above, I get very little distraction from photographing since I can multitask well and do not obsess about the quality of the image: I photograph from where I am and listen with my ears and not my eyes. I am not sure whether the images serve as a mnemonic devise to the content of the lecture if there are no images involved but they at least remind me that the lecture existed, the title of the lecture and the name of the people and institutions involved. The titles of the hundreds of lectures I took during the past 15 years can also be read as an essay of theoretical life in that period. This will be come more and more visible as time passes by. These images age much better than I do. F+T: You mentioned at the outset of our discussions that you started this practice some time ago and have seen the practice of photographing lecturers become more commonplace. Why do you think that this shift has taken place? RG: The answer is very simple. Photographing is now free of any charge and hence omnipresent. You buy a phone or any other personal digital assistant and it has a camera integrated in it whether you want it or not. There is no need to develop images and there is no hassle to keep images, to distribute images, to organize images and save them. It is all virtual, not creating any costs and doesn’t require any efforts. You don’t spend twenty dollars for photo-developing anymore, you don’t need to walk anymore to your pharmacy or your photo shop to drop off and return to pick up and pay. You don’t need to go to the post office to send somebody a picture. You have a program like Photoshop already built into your camera. Photographing is now a thing for everybody—with functioning cameras made for two year olds. It is technically now nearly impossible to make bad images. The image quality is virtually guaranteed by cheap, high performing, mini-computers packed into miniscule cameras. With all these technological changes, we are undergoing now a cultural paradigm shift that includes permanent recording (not only still image taking) of everything. I wonder even whether babies are just born to be photographed—at least a process where the first photograph is right there. What is interesting now, is how the law is trying to catch up. I am experiencing and expecting more restrictions on photographing and recording—something already in place in many museums and in certain galleries—as the recording devices become more and more invisible and undetectable. It is an interesting cat and mouse play and will end up with some of us that are photographing the world around us in court. The world has become very transparent and everybody is contributing to it with social networking technologies—like twitter and Facebook—that are designed to monitor and communicate every step we make in our lives. F+T: Why did you start the practice? As a way to remember, or to capture the experience of the lecture and the environment there? RG: A couple of years earlier I started to photograph my own reading seminars as part of my art work with results that surprised me positively. I really liked these images of students and people discussing heavy non-fiction with me. The reading seminars justified this kind of pictorialism. Then in 1995 I had the chance to attend an entire seminar by Edward Said entitled “The Representation of Intellectuals at Columbia University,” which really gave me the idea to start this series. Why not also photograph these lectures I visit all the time since this really is a way of representing intellectuals? F+T: The constellation of images and the title seem like a kind of portrait, do you agree? If so, is it a portrait of the speaker, of yourself, or of the event? RG: Well, to follow up on the previous question the lectures are more than just portraits of lecturers since I include not only the speakers but also the audience, an audience that is not named or specifically highlighted as is the speaker. So if we stick with the metaphor of the portrait we would have to extend it also to the environment, the class room, the lecture hall, the arrangements of seats or benches, tables, lecture stands and other stuff typically seen on my images. Often the walls are decorated or even tagged with graffiti or posters and other stuff. There is a big difference between a small seminar room at the English Department of Columbia University, full with books and cabinets and a lecture room at a Paris or Frankfurt university that accommodates 50 to 150 people. We should, maybe, also distinguish between lectures that are one time events—mostly open to the public, free of charge or paid—and events that are weekly, closed to the public and held mostly in universities that can cost fortunes or be paid by the State as it is still predominantly the case in continental Europe. All this, of course, is not necessarily announced in the title of the lecture and is subject to information that isn’t visible on the images. To a certain degree we see also portraits of a general privilege when it comes to the public of certain institutions that are highly selective and extremely costly without forgetting that most of the lectures are dealing with theory, art, philosophy and other highbrow subjects. In general, I would say we see very little if we don’t know already what’s going on, who the lecturer, the institutions, the context are in which we subsequently can zoom into variants like sexual, racial, or age-related make-up without ignoring clothing fashions, hair styling, body mannerisms, gadgets and stuff. F+T: Do you see a relation between this body of work and your other work, for example your language studies? RG: Everything I do is “unfortunately” related. I say unfortunately because this makes my work not so easy to grasp. The relationship to the language studies is relatively clear since both are originally grounded in the domain of education and knowledge production. Nearly all my work comes across that nexus where knowledge and power are addressed. I was at one point wondering what the relationship was to some of my earlier indexical work where I was happy alone with footnotes from books painted on the walls: I came to understand that both are just different manifestations of knowledge and information. F+T: Do you foresee continuing the series indefinitely, or is there an end to it? RG: I think that I will continue this series indefinitely or to be more precise, as long as I go listen to lectures and want to learn something which brings me to your previous question: What do the reading seminars, language studies, historical research and lecture hopping have in common: I learn something. Further Reading Rainer Ganahl’s website William Kaizen. “ Vulgar Politics .” art&education . April 2009. Web. Smith, Roberta. “ Rainer Ganahl: ‘Language of Emigration & Pictures of Emigration .’” New York Times April 23 2010. Web. (shrink)

The phenomena referred to by the term attention were not discovered by scientific psychology. They were discovered and described within philosophy and gently handed over to the emerging academic psychology of the nineteenth century. The main contributors and contributions to the delineation and construction of attention as an empirical phenomenon and a topic for theorizing were Aristotle, who noticed that not all that reaches the senses is clearly perceived; Augustine, who interpreted attention as an effort of the soul; Descartes, who (...) distinguished active attention from passive attention; and Leibniz, who discussed the relation between attention, perception, and consciousness. (For further information on attention's philosophical past the reader is referred to Neumann's (in press) brief history of this philosophical past that is badly in need of an English translation.). (shrink)

This is a response to the nine commentaries on our target article “Unlimited Associative Learning: A primer and some predictions”. Our responses are organized by theme rather than by author. We present a minimal functional architecture for Unlimited Associative Learning that aims to tie to together the list of capacities presented in the target article. We explain why we discount higher-order thought theories of consciousness. We respond to the criticism that we have overplayed the importance of learning and (...) underplayed the importance of spatial modelling. We decline the invitation to add a negative marker to our proposed positive marker so as to rule out consciousness in plants, but we nonetheless maintain that there is no positive evidence of consciousness in plants. We close by discussing how UAL relates to development and to its material substrate. (shrink)

The scientific study of consciousness or subjective experiencing is a rapidly expanding research program engaging philosophers of mind, psychologists, cognitive scientists, neurobiologists, evolutionary biologists and biosemioticians. Here we outline an evolutionary approach that we have developed over the last two decades, focusing on the evolutionary transition from non-conscious to minimally conscious, subjectively experiencing organisms. We propose that the evolution of subjective experiencing was driven by the evolution of learning and we identify an open-ended, representational, generative and recursive form of associative (...) learning, which we call Unlimited Associative Learning (UAL), as an evolutionary transition marker of minimal consciousness. This evolutionary marker provides evidence that the evolutionary transition to consciousness has gone to completion and allows reverse-engineering from this learning capacity to the system that enables it – making possible the construction of a toy model of UAL. The model allows us to identify some of the key processes and structures that constitute minimal consciousness, points its taxonomic distribution and the ecological context in which it first emerged, highlights its function and suggests a framework for exploring developmental and evolutionary modifications of consciousness. We point to ways of experimentally testing the relationship between UAL and consciousness in human and in non-human animals and discuss the theoretical and ethical implications of our approach. The framework we offer allows the exploration of the evolutionary changes in agency, value systems, selective processes and goals that were involved in the transition to subjective experiencing from a perspective that resonates with the approaches of bio-semioticians. (shrink)

Digital technology has revolutionized connectivity, but it has also overcome spatial obstacles that used to shield people from subjugating gazes and unlimited exercise of power. The home as an auratic space is dead, and this alienation has hindered our democratic capacities and created complex crises. The Death of Home aims to intellectually engage readers via enhancing spatial literacy to critically confront today’s crises.

The pandemic compels us to ask fundamental questions about our place in the world: the many ways humans rely on one another, how we vitally and sometimes fatally breathe the same air, share the surfaces of the earth, and exist in proximity to other porous creatures in order to live in a social world. What we require to live can also imperil our lives. How do we think from, and about, this common bind? Judith Butler shows how COVID-19 and all (...) its consequences—political, social, ecological, economic—have challenged us to reconsider the sense of the world that such disasters bring about. Drawing on the work of Max Scheler, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and critical feminist phenomenology, Butler illuminates the conditions in which we seek to make sense of our disorientation, precarity, and social bonds. What World Is This? offers a new account of interdependency in which touching and breathing, capacities that amid a viral outbreak can threaten life itself, challenge the boundaries of the body and selfhood. Criticizing notions of unlimited personal liberty and the killing forces of racism, sexism, and classism, this book suggests that the pandemic illuminates the potential of shared vulnerabilities as well as the injustice of pervasive inequalities. Exposing and opposing forms of injustice that deny the essential interrelationship of living creatures, Butler argues for a radical social equality and advocates modes of resistance that seek to establish new conditions of livability and a new sense of a shared world. (shrink)

A contrast is often drawn between standard adult capacities for autonomy, which allow informed consent to be given or withheld, and patients' reduced capacities, which demand paternalistic treatment. But patients may not be radically different from the rest of us, in that all human capacities for autonomous action are limited. An adequate account of paternalism and the role that consent and respect for persons can play in medical and other practice has to be developed within an ethical theory that does (...) not impose an idealised picture of unlimited autonomy but allows for the variable and partial character of actual human autonomy. (shrink)

A metaphor that has dominated linguistics for the entire duration of its existence as a discipline views sentences as edifices consisting of Lego-like building blocks. It is assumed that each sentence is constructed (and, on the receiving end, parsed) ab novo, starting (ending) with atomic constituents, to logical semantic specifications, in a recursive process governed by a few precise algebraic rules. The assumptions underlying the Lego metaphor, as it is expressed in generative grammar theories, are: (1) perfect regularity of what (...) Saussure called langue, (2) infinite potential recursivity of syntactic structures, (3) unlimited human capacity for linguistic creativity, (4) the impossibility of acquiring structural knowledge from examples, and (5) the impossibility of such knowledge being stored in a memory-intensive form (ensembles of exemplars). (shrink)

My aim in this commentary article is to observe and comment on some of the main conceptual and methodological continuities and discontinuities between recent biosemiotics-informed learning theory and the model of Unlimited Associative Learning (UAL) that Jablonka and Ginsburg ( 2022 ) present in this Target Article. UAL as a model, presents important synthesis and clarity around the ecological context and evolutionary dynamics underlying learning, with a wide range of implications. Still, there are conceptual “grey areas” that the authors (...) themselves note and that biosemiotics in particular has problematized in various ways. I highlight the general challenge of defining minimal consciousness in relation to a concept of minimal Umwelt, as well as the issue of animal cultures, and the transition from UAL to symbolic-cognition and human language, making connections to the evolution of hominin musicking capacities. (shrink)

This article discusses successive positions of the Frankfurt School, contrasts them to the unfolding ideas of Castoriadis and argues for a critical theory centred on a concept of autonomy, but aware of the obstacles and complications inherent in social–historical reality and its modern configuration. To clarify this perspective, we need a concept of society that distances itself from the Parsonian paradigm, more so than recent theorists of the Frankfurt School have done. The critique of over-integrated images of society, developed by (...) various sociologists in the 1970s and 1980s but not properly assimilated by the mainstream of the discipline and never taken on board by Frankfurt theorists, is an important source of reference, and it can be taken further in the light of Castoriadis’s reflections on the social–historical. The result is a definition of autonomy as a capacity of explicit and unlimited interrogation, confronted with its own hubristic temptations in the context of a multidimensional social world. (shrink)

If the incompatibilist is right, determinism annuls free will, but not necessarily autonomy. The possibly deterministic origin of values and beliefs that are objectively grounded does not undermine the autonomy of agents who maintain these for the right reasons. Nonobjective perspectives—preferences about lifestyle, profession, choice of mate— cannot anyway be entirely removed even for an unlimited being. Moreover, if one were lucky to have inherited contingencies that mesh perfectly with the world one happened to inhabit even if it is (...) deterministic, one would have the capacity for perfect autonomy. The extreme incompatibilist position that autonomy requires creation of self ex nihilo is incoherent. (shrink)

The multiple realizability thesis (MRT) is an important philosophical and psychological concept. It says any mental state can be constructed by multiple realizability (MR), meaning in many distinct ways from different physical parts. The goal of our study is to find if the MRT applies to the mental state of consciousness among animals. Many things have been written about MRT but the ones most applicable to animal consciousness are by Shapiro in a 2004 book called The Mind Incarnate and by (...) Polger and Shapiro in their 2016 work, The Multiple Realization Book. Standard, classical MRT has been around since 1967 and it says that a mental state can havevery manydifferent physical realizations, in a nearly unlimited manner. To the contrary, Shapiro’s book reasoned that physical, physiological, and historical constraints force mental traits to evolve in just a few, limited directions, which is seen as convergent evolution of the associated neural traits in different animal lineages. This is his mental constraint thesis (MCT). We examined the evolution of consciousness in animals and found that it arose independently in just three animal clades—vertebrates, arthropods, and cephalopod mollusks—all of which share many consciousness-associated traits: elaborate sensory organs and brains, high capacity for memory, directed mobility, etc. These three constrained, convergently evolved routes to consciousness fit Shapiro’s original MCT. More recently, Polger and Shapiro’s book presented much the same thesis but changed its name from MCT to a “modest identity thesis.” Furthermore, they argued against almost all the classically offered instances of MR in animal evolution, especially against the evidence of neural plasticity and the differently expanded cerebrums of mammals and birds. In contrast, we argue that some of these classical examples of MR are indeed valid and that Shapiro’s original MCT correction of MRT is the better account of the evolution of consciousness in animal clades. And we still agree that constraints and convergence refute the standard, nearly unconstrained, MRT. (shrink)

Fichte offers separate analyses of the conditions for the possibility of representing or referring to (i) material objects and (ii) other minds – extra-subjective entities of importantly distinct sorts. These analyses are importantly akin, in that both postulate, as a necessary condition for the mental accomplishment under consideration, some sort of basic incapacity or limitation that is partly constitutive of human rationality. But the two accounts also involve interestingly different understandings of the nature and implications of the basic constraints in (...) question. As a first approximation, we can say that, for Fichte, (i) a rational being posits a putatively mind-independent object only if that being’s self-initiated mental activity encounters a pre- or proto-objective “check” or “affront” (Anstoß), and (ii) a rational being can first become concretely conscious of its own capacity for rational self-determination only as the addressee of a “summons” (Aufforderung) that calls upon it to actuate that very capacity. -/- In this essay I roughly reconstruct the indicated arguments. In the process, I endeavor to show that Fichte does not suppose that either argument firmly backs philosophical assent to the existence of material objects or of other minds. On the contrary: the goal of his professed ‘deductions’ of our everyday ‘convictions’ concerning such things is not to philosophically legitimate those prephilosophical beliefs. Instead, the aim of these arguments is to vindicate Fichte’s transcendental idealism – which, if anything, epistemically undermines said beliefs – by demonstrating that any experience that is putatively ‘of’ such things has, as its necessary and sufficient conditions, nothing but states and activities of the I. Thus, in the case of material objects, a radical difference manifest within the I – self-initiated rational activity versus “simple sensation” – is ‘set forth’ (vorgestellt) in a representation (Vorstellung) of an extra-subjective bearer of sensed qualities. And – much more controversially – in the case of other minds, a demand that the I (qua pure reason, constitutively committed to its own unlimited self-activity and efficacy) makes upon itself (qua rational individual capable of intelligent self-determination) is outwardly depicted as an appeal originating from an extra-subjective source. (shrink)

Since both berkeley and hume are committed to the view that a line is composed of finitely many fundamental parts, They must find responses to the standard geometrical proofs of infinite divisibility. They both repeat traditional arguments intended to show that infinite divisibility leads to absurdities, E.G., That all lines would be infinite in length, That all lines would have the same length, Etc. In each case, Their arguments rest upon a misunderstanding of the concept of a limit, And thus (...) are not successful. Berkeley, However, Adds a further ingenious argument to the effect that the standard geometrical proofs of infinite divisibility misread the unlimited representational capacity of geometrical diagrams as a substantive feature of the objects that these diagrams represent. The article concludes that berkeley is right on this matter, And that the traditional proofs of infinite divisibility do not show what they are intended to show. (shrink)

Kant’s conception of autonomy has been criticised for identifying acting freely with acting morally. As a result, many Kantians have moved away from Kant’s moral conception of autonomy, instead proposing what I will call an “end-set- ting” or “two-way capacity” account of autonomy. I believe that we should resist these revisions and that doing so makes clear why it is only the capacity for moral autonomy that is of unlimited value. What fundamentally distinguishes our free capacity (...) of volition is the fact that we are autonomous. This capacity en- ables us to have a conception of unlimited goodness that gives us the dignity, i. e. the unlimited value, that non-autonomous beings lack. (shrink)

What is this about “the practicality of metaphysics?” Everyone knows that on a scale from “practical” to “theoretical,” metaphysics stands as far toward the “theoretical” pole as one can get, except perhaps for pure mathematics; but mathematics is not about anything, unless you count numbers as “something”—which is a metaphysical question that outflanks, encompasses, and overtakes even mathematics on the theory scale. This capacity to encompass and devour other fields illustrates the unlimited comprehensiveness of metaphysics, tottering dangerously at (...) one extreme, the most theoretical of all theory. (shrink)

Three experts collaborate in this passionate and rewarding dialogue on the legacy of the great American philosopher and educator John Dewey (1859 1952). Focused on growth and the creation of value within the context of real life, Dewey s pragmatic philosophy shares much with humanistic Buddhism. These similarities, which arise throughout the book, add richness to a dialogue already overflowing with faith in our capacity to find common ground and expand human well being in our rapidly globalizing world. For (...) Dewey, individual and social potential alike are unlimited. Readers will come away ready to embrace rather than fear the increasing complexity of our world.". (shrink)

In this paper we review and argue for the relevance of the concept of open-ended evolution in biological theory. Defining it as a process in which a set of chemical systems bring about an unlimited variety of equivalent systems that are not subject to any pre-determined upper bound of organizational complexity, we explain why only a special type of self-constructing, autonomous systems can actually implement it. We further argue that this capacity derives from the ‘dynamic decoupling’ (in its (...) minimal or most basic sense: the phenotype–genotype decoupling) by means of which a radically new way of material organization (minimal living organization) is achieved, allowing for the long-term sustenance of systems whose individual-metabolic and collective-historical pathways become thereafter deeply intertwined. (shrink)

Pluripotent stem cells have gained special attraction because of their almost unlimited proliferation and differentiation capacity in vitro. These properties substantiate the potential of pluripotent stem cells in basic research and regenerative medicine. Here three types of in vitro‐cultured pluripotent stem cells (embryonic carcinoma, embryonic stem and induced pluripotent stem cells) are compared in their historical context with respect to their different origin and properties. It became evident that tumourigenicity is an inherent property of pluripotent cells based on (...) p53 down‐regulation, expression of tumour‐related genes and high telomerase activity that allow unlimited proliferation. In addition, culture‐adapted genetic and epigenetic changes may induce tumourigenicity of pluripotent cells. The use of stem cells in regenerative medicine, however, requires non‐malignant cell types and strategies that circumvent stages of malignancy. Reprogramming strategies of adult somatic cells that avoid the tumourigenic state of pluripotency may offer alternatives for future biomedical application. (shrink)

While largely agreeing with Ruiping Fan, Chenyang Li makes three points regarding the handling of COVID-19. First, in addition to state capacity, social trust, and leadership, as identified by Francis Fukuyama, factors responsible for successful pandemic responses include the value of individual freedom upheld by citizens. A high level of individual freedom can make it difficult to implement strict measures even when they are objectively necessary. Second, a strong state can be effective in handling a pandemic, but without checks (...) and balances it also runs the risk of leading a country into a major catastrophe. Third, Confucian ethics and other ethics can aid in coping with the pandemic. However, their efficacy is not unlimited, and ultimately, human survival overrides other concerns. (shrink)

Identity as traditionally conceived in mainstream Western thought is focused on theory, representation, knowledge, subjectivity and is centrally important in the works of Emmanuel Levinas. His critique of Western culture and corresponding notion of identity at its foundations typically raises the question of the other. Alterity in Levinas indicates existence of something on its own account, in itself independently of the subject’s will or consciousness. The objectivity of alterity tells of the impossible evasion of signs from their destiny, which is (...) the other. The implications involved in reading the signs of the other have contributed to reorienting semiotics in the direction of semioethics. In Levinas, the I-other relation is not reducible to abstract cognitive terms, to intellectual synthesis, to the subject-object relation, but rather tells of involvement among singularities whose distinctive feature is alterity, absolute alterity. Humanism of the other is a pivotal concept in Levinas overturning the sense of Western reason. It asserts human duties over human rights. Humanism of alterity privileges encounter with the other, responsibility for the other, over tendencies of the centripetal and egocentric orders that instead exclude the other. Responsibility allows for neither rest nor peace. The “properly human” is given in the capacity for absolute otherness, unlimited responsibility, dialogical intercorporeity among differences non-indifferent to each other, it tells of the condition of vulnerability before the other, exposition to the other. The State and its laws limit responsibility for the other. Levinas signals an essential contradiction between the primordial ethical orientation and the legal order. Justice involves comparing incomparables, comparison among singularities outside identity. Consequently, justice places limitations on responsibility, on unlimited responsibility which at the same time it presupposes as its very condition of possibility. The present essay is structured around the following themes: Premiss; Justice, uniqueness, and love; Sign and language; Dialogue and alterity; Semiotic materiality; Globalization and the trap of identity; Human rights and rights of the other: for a new humanism; Ethics; The World; Outside the subject; Responsibility and Substitution; The face; Fear of the other; Alterity and justice; Justice and proximity; Literary writing; Unjust justice; Caring for the other. (shrink)

As a high school student, I rediscovered Hume’s problem of induction on my own. For a while, I was horrified. I thought, “We cannot know anything!” After a couple of weeks I calmed down and reasoned that there had to be something wrong with my thinking, and that led me quickly to the realization that good reasons need not be deductive, and to the discovery of defeasible reasoning. From there it was a short jump to a more general interest in (...) how rational cognition works. I am interested in rational cognition in general. Epistemology is one constituent of rational cognition, practical cognition (rational decision making) another. Much of the work on rational cognition begins with the supposition that only ideal agents can be truly rational. Real agents have limited powers of reasoning and limited memory capacity. It is often supposed that such resource-bounded agents can only approximate rationality, and that as philosophers we should confine our attention to ideal agents. If one wishes, one can of course define “rationality” in this way, but this has never been what interested me. We come to philosophy wondering what we should believe, what we should do, and how we should go about deciding these matters. These are questions about ourselves, with all of our cognitive limitations. For example, it is often claimed that ideal agents, with unlimited cognitive powers, should believe all of the logical consequences of their beliefs. But we, as real resource-bounded agents, cannot do that, so that is not something we should do. What I want to know is how I, as a real agent, should go about deciding what to believe and what to do. Thus my topic is real rationality as opposed to ideal rationality. In the realm of practical decision making, I have explored this distinction at great length in my recent book (2006). Here I will focus on its implications for epistemology. For many years epistemology was derailed by the Gettier problem.. (shrink)

Art opens itself to many different functions. In principle, one cannot exclude that a work of art acts as stimulant or relaxant, that it provides cognitive benefits or serves social aims. However, the fact that it fulfills a certain function does not transform a product into an artistic creation, nor does it prevents it from being art. Rather the capacity to open an unlimited functional and meaningful space is what comprises the autonomy and the artistic quality of a (...) work. (shrink)

The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul is a landmark attempt to make progress on the problem of animal consciousness. Ginsburg and Jablonka propose a general cognitive marker of the presence of consciousness: Unlimited Associative Learning. They use this marker to defend a generous view about the distribution of consciousness in the natural world, on which a capacity for conscious experience is common to all vertebrates, many arthropods and some cephalopod molluscs. They use this inferred distribution to defend a (...) view about the evolution of consciousness, on which it has evolved at least three times, first evolved at around the time of the Cambrian explosion, and was in fact the driving force behind that explosion. In this essay review, I reflect critically on the book’s central idea: the proposal that Unlimited Associative Learning provides a general marker of consciousness. (shrink)

Much thought is being given nowadays to the ways in which society might continue to substantiate the principle of solidarity in the economic sphere. Predictable cost increases in the social security system stand at the root of a number of problems that have arisen. While those concerned look for solutions, a discussion is emerging concerning the communal scope of solidarity. People are not only asking themselves how they are to remain in solidarity, but also with whom they should share the (...) means at their disposal. The concomitant question ‘with whom?’ is not always as evident as it might seem, since the ethical scope of solidarity appears, in principle at least, to be unlimited.De facto, however, the limits of solidarity tend to coincide with those of the political community. The ongoing unification of Europe should broaden matters in this regard, but whether this process will also broaden our perspective on world-wide solidarity remains to be seen. At the same time, certain groups are calling for a stricter delimitation of our solidarity. The elections in Europe during the past ten years have made it clear that a number of emotional factors play a role in this context, factors which are not infrequently expressed in the slogan ‘our own first’.The intention of this article is to confront, with the Christian principle of solidarity, certain spontaneous and emotional motivating forces which call for a limitation of our solidarity. Solidarity implies both a feeling and a rational decision. In line with any other emotion, the feeling of solidarity is rooted in motivating factors of which we are not always consciously aware. Such factors are rarely thematised in an explicit fashion, partly because they are as such difficult to discuss and partly because they are difficult to make operational at the ‘scientific’ level. As a rule, our attention tends to be focused on the ethical desirability and practical-economical achievabilty of solidarity.As a starting point, I would like to broaden our vision of the emotional and subconscious motivating factors of solidarity. As a means to this end I will call upon a number of theories concerning the processes of social influence which go beyond the individual’s capacity to decide in the context of realising concrete initiatives. Having done this our second step will be to relate the problem of the emotional limitation of solidarity to the Christian concept of solidarity. (shrink)

Introductory collection of writings by a creative and subversive thinker, ranging from the origins of “non-philosophy” to its evolution into what Laruelle now calls “non-standard philosophy.” The question “What is non-philosophy?” must be replaced by the question about what it can and cannot do. To ask what it can do is already to acknowledge that its capacities are not unlimited. This question is partly Spinozist: no-one knows what a body can do. It is partly Kantian: circumscribe philosophy's illusory power, (...) the power of reason or the faculties, and do not extend its sufficiency in the shape of by way of another philosophy. It is also partly Marxist: how much of philosophy can be transformed through practice, how much of it can be withdrawn from its “ideological” use? And finally, it is also partly Wittgensteinian: how can one limit philosophical language through its proper use? This introductory collection of writings by creative and subversive thinker François Laruelle opens with an introduction based upon an in-depth interview that traces the abiding concerns of his prolific output. The eleven newly translated essays that follow, dating from 1985 to the present, range from the origins of “non-philosophy” to its evolution into what Laruelle now calls “non-standard philosophy.” Two appendices present a number of Laruelle's experimental texts, which have not previously appeared in English translation, and a transcript of an early intervention and discussion on his “transvaluation” of Kant's transcendental method. (shrink)

Unsustainability is an old problem - human societies have collapsed with disturbing regularity throughout history. I argue that a genetic predisposition for unsustainability is encoded in certain human physiological, social and behavioral traits that once conferred survival value but are now maladaptive. A uniquely human capacity - indeed, necessity - for elaborate cultural myth-making reinforces these negative biological tendencies. Our contemporary, increasingly global myth, promotes a vision of world development centered on unlimited economic expansion fuelled by more liberalized (...) trade. This myth is not only failing on its own terms but places humanity on a collision course with biophysical reality - our ecological footprint already exceeds the human carrying capacity of Earth. Sustainability requires that we acknowledge the primitive origins of human ecological dys-function and seize conscious control of our collective destiny. The final triumph of enlightened reason and mutual compassion over scripted determinism would herald a whole new phase in human evolution. (shrink)

Hanne Darboven’s numerical practice fulfils Alain Badiou’s definition of a new artistic configuration (albeit one that the philosopher does not foretell). Darboven’s writing – like that of Isidore Ducasse – subverts ordinary thinking through the ‘alien qualities’ of mathematics. Yet, in Darboven’s grammatical oeuvre, infinity emerges as a function of number’s capacity to be thought simultaneously across an unlimited number of discursive series. Her art affirms the plasticity of number by dispersing numerical series across a continuous surface. These (...) surface effects simultaneously recall the disjunctive temporality of the Aion described by Gilles Deleuze in The Logic of Sense (2004). Finally, Darboven’s writing of number also reveals traces of broader social transformations that emerged during the 1960s in tandem with unprecedented advances in automation and computing: particularly neo-Taylorist and cybernetic approaches to the administration of workers’ time. But crises in labour practices are appropriated by Darboven as techniques of subjectivization that the artist always subverts to her own ends. (shrink)

This paper is for the purpose of clarify that perception is a conscious act through Bergson’s theory of images and perception in Matter and Memory. And yet this ‘act’ is not a pure action of consciousness or of sprit, which is transcendental from the reality and composes or recomposes it. That is, our perception is not pure knowledge. A pure conception is unconscious one, which takes place infinitely within the system of matter that is an ‘aggregate of images’ in which (...) all the elements act and react upon one another according to the law of nature. This system is excentric. On the contrary, the consciousness comes into being in themoment when these unlimited actions/reactions are limited and with choice, that is, when the passage from the ‘immediate’ to ‘useful’ in done. Therefore an activity of consciousness is already a practice of life. However, this perception as act reveals at the same time a proper capacity to subject/being, in that it forms a realm of subjectivity and creates its own field of perception, which are not reducible to the movement or nature of matter, so are different system from matter, every moment through memory. (shrink)

In this collection of essays on the core values of liberalism, Stephen Holmes—noted for his scathing reviews of books by liberalism's opponents—challenges commonly held assumptions about liberal theory. By placing it into its original historical context, _Passions and Constraints_ presents an interconnected argument meant to fundamentally change the way we conceive of liberalism. According to Holmes, three elements of classical liberal theory are commonly used to attack contemporary liberalism as antagonistic to genuine democracy and the welfare state: constitutional constraints on (...) majority rule, the identification of individual freedom with an absence of government involvement, and a strong emphasis on the principle of self-interest. Through insightful essays on Hobbes's analysis of the English Civil War in _Behemoth_, Bodin's writings on the benefits of limited government, and Mill's views on science and politics, Holmes shows that these basic principles provide, to the contrary, a necessary foundation for the development of democratic, regulatory, and redistributionist politics in the modern era. Holmes argues that the aspirations of liberal democracy—including individual liberty, the equal dignity of citizens, and a tolerance for diversity—are best understood in relation to two central themes of classical liberal theory: the psychological motivations of individuals and the necessary constraint on individual passions provided by institutions. Paradoxically, Holmes argues that such institutional restraints serve to enable, rather than limit, effective democracy. In explorations of subjects ranging from self-interest to majoritarianism to "gag rules," Holmes shows that limited government can be more powerful than unlimited government—indeed, that liberalism is one of the most effective philosophies of state building ever contrived. By restricting the arbitrary powers of government officials, Holmes states, a liberal constitution can increase the state's capacity to focus on specific problems and mobilize collective resources for common purposes. _Passions and Constraint_ is an assessment of what that tradition has meant and what it can mean today. (shrink)

From the modern period until the present day, artworks have exhibited a well-known paradox: they promise a rich aesthetic experience and revolutionary qualities of innovation while simultaneously serving as a luxury commodity whose sale is directed toward a global class of oligarchs. Art's Properties proposes a new way of understanding this paradox, relating art's qualities-its properties-to its status as commercial property. In Art's Properties, esteemed art historian and theorist David Joselit argues that art's fundamental ontological property is its capacity (...) to give access to experiences of alterity--the state of being other, or different. These experiences may appear as the image of a god, or the utopian dimensions of a black square on a white ground. Joselit goes on to explore artwork's relation to infinitude. As he explains, every work of art, in its material and visual qualities, can be host to an unlimited number of events and encounters with spectators, which persist through and over time. This infinitude is curtailed as art becomes property and is made to serve as a representation. In the modern period, white artists have been presumed to manifest an unmarked, supposedly neutral national character in Europe and the United States, while artists of color are often made to stand in for the identity attributed to them. In place of this dynamic of representation, Art's Properties will advocate for privileging narration over representation. While representation is finite-one thing is put in the place of another-narration has no end; it can be multiplied to encompass the many stories an artwork might enable. In focusing on the forms of narration that an artwork can contain, this book explores art's infinite aesthetic and material alterity. (shrink)

Throughout the long centuries of western metaphysics the problem of the infinite has kept surfacing in different but important ways. It had confronted Greek philosophical speculation from earliest times. It appeared in the definition of the divine attributed to Thales in Diogenes Laertius (I, 36) under the description "that which has neither beginning nor end. " It was presented on the scroll of Anaximander with enough precision to allow doxographers to transmit it in the technical terminology of the unlimited (...) (apeiron) and the indeterminate (aoriston). The respective quanti tative and qualitative implications of these terms could hardly avoid causing trouble. The formation of the words, moreover, was clearly negative or privative in bearing. Yet in the philosophical framework the notion in its earliest use meant something highly positive, signifying fruitful content for the first principle of all the things that have positive status in the universe. These tensions could not help but make themselves felt through the course of later Greek thought. In one extreme the notion of the infinite was refined in a way that left it appropriated to the Aristotelian category of quantity. In Aristotle (Phys. III 6-8) it came to appear as essentially re quiring imperfection and lack. It meant the capacity for never-ending increase. It was always potential, never completely actualized. (shrink)

Descartes thought that belief was a voluntary matter. His account of error in the Fourth Meditation is based on this. Given his account of what it is to have a true idea he thought that our false beliefs could be accounted for by the fact that while our intellectual capacity is limited our capacity for willing is unlimited, and so allows us to give our assent to what we do not truly perceive. Spinoza, on the other hand, (...) thought that the intellect and will cannot be separated in such a way, and urged that ‘In the mind there is no volition or affirmation and negation excepting that which the idea, in so far as it is an idea, involves’ . One philosopher, S. Hampshire, sees this distinction between Descartes and Spinoza as one of the dividing lines of philosophy . Yet it is not easy to see wherein the division lies. (shrink)

Today, two forces combine to produce a systematic transformation in all that is given. First, the economic force of the global market is propelled by a series of techno-scientific advances that continually reinvent that market. Second, the political force of modern democracies, in spite of their different actualizations, centers individual autonomy as the ultimate norm that would create each individual’s future. The human body, in virtue of its intrinsic plasticity and because it is always the body of a particular individual, (...) lends itself to this process of unlimited transformation in a privileged way. As such, the human body is the promise of enhancement without end. The following questions thus arise: Does the human body possess normative aspects that would bound or enclose its future transformations when considered from the modern frame of the autonomous individual? Could Merleau-Ponty’s notion of le corps propre point us in the direction of an answer? Is there a bodily given that authorizes self-experience, apart from any external or theological frame? Or, is the bodily given only a myth that obscures the human body’s actual capacity for unlimited transformation?Aujourd’hui, deux forces se combinent pour produire une transformation systématique sur tout ce qui est donné. Premièrement, la force économique du marché mondial est mue par une série de progrès techno-scientifiques qui le réinvente continuellement. Deuxièmement, la force politique des démocraties modernes, en dépit de leurs différentes actualisations, centre l’autonomie individuelle en tant que norme ultime qui pourrait créer le futur de chaque individu. Le corps humain, en vertu de sa plasticité intrinsèque et parce qu’il est toujours le corps d’un individu particulier, se prête lui-même à ce processus de transformation illimitée d’une manière privilégiée. Ainsi, le corps humain est la promesse d’une amélioration sans fin. Émergent alors les questions suivantes : le corps humain possède-t-il des aspects normatifs qui lieraient ou enfermeraient ses transformations futures lorsqu’il est considéré à partir du cadre moderne de l’autonomie individuelle? La notion merleau-pontienne de corps propre peut-elle nous donner une réponse? Y a-t-il un corporellement donné qui autorise une expérience de soi, en dehors de tout cadre extérieur ou théologique? Ou bien, le corporellement donné n’est-il qu’un mythe qui obscurcit la capacité actuelle de transformation illimitée du corps humain?Oggi, due forze contribuiscono a produrre una trasformazione sistematica di tutto ciò che è dato. In primo luogo, la forza economica del mercato globale, alimentata da una serie di progressi tecnologici che continuano a reinventare il mercato. In secondo luogo, la forza politica delle moderne democrazie, che, nonostante le loro differenti attualizzazioni, indicano l’autonomia individuale come norma ultima, in grado di garantire il futuro del singolo. Il corpo umano, in virtù della sua plasticità intrinseca e dal momento in cui esso è sempre il corpo di uno specifico individuo, si presta in modo privilegiato a questo processo di continua trasformazione. In quanto tale, il corpo umano è la promessa di un potenziamento illimitato. Il chè suscita le seguenti domande: vi sono degli aspetti normativi che verrebbero a limitare o vincolare le future trasformazioni del corpo umano, considerato nella prospettiva moderna dell’individuo autonomo? La nozione di corpo proprio elaborata da Merleau-Ponty può metterci sulle tracce di una risposta? Esiste un “corpo dato” che autorizzi un’esperienza di sé, a prescindere da ogni orizzonte esterno o teleologico? Oppure il “corpo dato” è puramente un mito che verrebbe a oscurare le illimitate capacità di trasformazione del corpo umano? (shrink)

Carbon and nitrogen are essential elements for life. Glucose as a carbon source and glutamine as a nitrogen source are important nutrients for cell proliferation. About 100 years ago, it was discovered that cancer cells that have acquired unlimited proliferative capacity and undergone malignant evolution in their host manifest a cancer‐specific remodeling of glucose metabolism (the Warburg effect). Only recently, however, was it shown that the metabolism of glutamine‐derived nitrogen is substantially shifted from glutaminolysis to nucleotide biosynthesis during (...) malignant progression of cancer—which might be referred to as a “second” Warburg effect. In this review, address the mechanism and relevance of this metabolic shift of glutamine‐derived nitrogen in human cancer. We also examine the clinical potential of anticancer therapies that modulate the metabolic pathways of glutamine‐derived nitrogen. This shift may be as important as the shift in carbon metabolism, which has long been known as the Warburg effect. (shrink)

Much thought is being given nowadays to the ways in which society might continue to substantiate the principle of solidarity in the economic sphere. Predictable cost increases in the social security system stand at the root of a number of problems that have arisen. While those concerned look for solutions, a discussion is emerging concerning the communal scope of solidarity. People are not only asking themselves how they are to remain in solidarity, but also with whom they should share the (...) means at their disposal. The concomitant question ‘with whom?’ is not always as evident as it might seem, since the ethical scope of solidarity appears, in principle at least, to be unlimited.De facto, however, the limits of solidarity tend to coincide with those of the political community. The ongoing unification of Europe should broaden matters in this regard, but whether this process will also broaden our perspective on world-wide solidarity remains to be seen. At the same time, certain groups are calling for a stricter delimitation of our solidarity. The elections in Europe during the past ten years have made it clear that a number of emotional factors play a role in this context, factors which are not infrequently expressed in the slogan ‘our own first’.The intention of this article is to confront, with the Christian principle of solidarity, certain spontaneous and emotional motivating forces which call for a limitation of our solidarity. Solidarity implies both a feeling and a rational decision. In line with any other emotion, the feeling of solidarity is rooted in motivating factors of which we are not always consciously aware. Such factors are rarely thematised in an explicit fashion, partly because they are as such difficult to discuss and partly because they are difficult to make operational at the ‘scientific’ level. As a rule, our attention tends to be focused on the ethical desirability and practical-economical achievabilty of solidarity.Ours is a talkative age. Never before have people talked so much. The telephone, radio, cinema, television, audio and video recording have all increased our opportunities for speaking to one another not only when we are together but across distance and across time as well. This has been the century of chatter .Chattering carries in itself the risk of superficiality. Before we realise it, we are talking without thinking deeply. Messengers of doom, such as Postman and Finkielkraut , warn the western world against the dangers of the television and video culture which they contend constitute a threat to western democracy. As we grow accustomed to the high speed and fleeting character of the ‘new media’, we tend to gradually lose our capacity to think things over and reflect. Ultimately, its cursory and uncritical approach to things becomes the norm.For those who consider television as the summit of idle chatter, reading is not merely a relief but a threatened activity which needs all our support. If we consider thoughtfulness and consideration to be virtues, then the unhurriedness associated with reading must be seen as a virtuous quality. More than at any other time in our history, being literate is of great importance in our industrialised societies. Hence, there is a growing awareness of the need to link critical thinking with literacy skills. More than ever before, we need the writings of others – distant in history, geography and profession – to understand our complex world. Such writings provide information, recommend actions and promote political and philosophical orientations.Discourse analysis proves that the complexity of the discourse is higher in written than in spoken language. Written language integrates more idea units in a clause, making use of nominalisation, embedded constituents, etc. Gaining access to such thorough knowledge is a first step in the long process of asserting control. Being literate creates the opportunity for increasing access to knowledge not generally available in the direct experience of life. Being able to read enables the individual to transcend time and space and to liberate his or her own mind and spirit. It removes the individual from dependence on immediate senses, direct contacts, commonplace talk.All these elements are important in the shaping of one’s personality. Confrontation with challenging, original and even provocative ideas forces the individual to make up his or her own mind. Democracy needs this kind of individualism. (shrink)

The situation of public functioning of philosophy today is being fundamentally changed in comparison with it that even was by the end of last century. The new opportunities of free appeal to philosophical concepts and meanings and their use by every participant of unlimited networks of open communication raise issues of preservation and protection of normative philosophical discourse. The author formulates the need in such normativity as an issue of difference between the context of reproduction and the innovation one (...) or as interdependence of reproduction and elaborating interpretation of normative meanings in philosophy. He takes attention to highlighting the issue of making and recognizing normativity in discourse/communicative practices that could be find out in works of Michel Foucault and Jurgen Habermas. It helps to clarify a role and place of validity claims in communication actions including their meaning in philosophical discourse. Following Habermas’ theory of both linguistic and contextual depending of discourse’s normative meanings the author pays particular attention to meaning creation role of lifeworld as a cultural context that determines communicators’s understanding. It gives an opportunity to point out a principle role of communicator’s position or his or her self-understanding the lifeworld context they embodied. It also makes it possible to demonstrate clear examples of inconsistency of philosophical discourses depending on the position taken by a philosopher as we can meet radical critical position of Roger Scruton in his assessment of many prominent European philosophers’ works. In conclusion the author stresses on dependence of capacity to get added interpretation value in philosophy not only from a level of theoretical knowledge, but from his or her personal appropriation of own horizon of cultural meanings. Following Habermas's theory of linguistic and contextual dependence of normative values of discourse on context, the author draws attention to the role in the creation of values of the lifeworld as a cultural context that determines the participant's understanding. It gives an opportunity to point out a principle role of communicator’s position or his or her understanding the lifeworld context they embodied. It also allows to demonstrate clear examples of inconsistency of philosophical discourses depending on the position taken by a philosopher as we can meet in radical critical position of Roger Scruton within his assessment of many prominent European philosophers’ works. In conclusion the author stresses capacity to get added interpretation value in philosophy depends not only on a level of theoretical knowledge a person owns, but from his or her personal appropriation of own horizon of cultural meanings. (shrink)

During the last two centuries, property understood as an exclusive and unlimited dominion became common sense. Before, the idea of property as a fiduciary relationship, which is still present in contemporary social constitutionalism, was closely linked to the view that the exercise of freedom entails the capacity to shape those property rights that channel socioeconomic life. Today, new ways to operationalise such an approach must be found. This article explores the scope of ‘direct strategies’ and ‘indirect strategies’ in (...) the recovery of the idea and the practice of collective fiduciary control over the economic realm. (shrink)

In the years that have passed since publication of the Club of Rome's seminal report "Limits to Growth," the issues raised in terms of development, resource use and the environment have become ever more pressing. The potential of advances in science and technology to affect all aspects of life, including development, was then little understood. Today's unparalleled burst in scientific and technological creativity has given new options and opportunities to the world economic system. Central to this process is a series (...) of concepts which includes the scientification of technology, by which technology is increasingly generated and developed on scientific bases, the breaking down of interdisciplinary barriers and mankind's new found capacity literally to invent resources, leading to the emergence of whole categories of new materials. These changes make possible a new approach to economic growth, relying on decentralization and flexibility and the selection of technology mixes best suited to different socio-economic and cultural contexts. In parallel, the key importance above all of the information technologies is producing a dematerialization of goods, a trend exemplified by the shift from product oriented to function oriented industries. The new technologies of the 1980s are cross-fertilizing and self-disseminative. They are creating an exceptional number of innovative options in processes, products, services, organization and markets. Mature industrial sectors can undergo a process of rejuvenation to recover competitiveness by the grafting of advanced technologies onto traditional activities. The results are already evident in industrialized countries, such as Italy. The flexibility offered by the new technologies offers perhaps our best hope for a solution to the widening gap between rich and poor nations, contrary to the belief that identifies in advances in science and technology the seeds of a process of polarization dividing the world. The countries of the United States, Japan and Western Europe--the so-called Triad Power--dominate the emerging technologies and their applications. In fact, given the pace of today's technological revolution, developing countries are effectively excluded from active participation in the process of technological change. New technologies are not "off the peg," they have to be learned and controlled, to be introduced into an existing flexible system possessing trained manpower and an adequate capital base. Introduction into the Third World, where these essential conditions are frequently lacking, will not be a painless process. Technology transfer without adaptation is likely to have undesirable cultural and societal disadvantages. North and South are simultaneously experiencing radically different processes of evolution: the former, through restructuring and innovation; the latter, through the drive for more quantitative growth. Continuing stress on quantitative growth carries with it the risk that other goals--environmental quality, even the eradication of poverty--may suffer. Here lies the possibility that unless economic patterns change, today's imbalance between the haves and the have nots may be perpetuated or even consolidated. The countries of the North individually all face problems in addressing these issues. The international banking system is hamstrung with the problems of Third World debt. Primary producers no longer command high prices for their raw materials on world markets and so this source of development funding is also drying up. The need is therefore for a global approach. In each Third World situation, specific needs and requirements must be identified to be tackled via technology blending, whereby a mix of emerging and traditional technologies is selected to raise the quality of output to the levels now demanded by a sophisticated world economy. Another important area is that of energy, together with the worsening environmental and even climatic effects of energy policies. The need is for a long term strategic view to marshall the contribution new technologies can make to improving the lot of mankind in full respect for his environment. Technological change also implies societal change. In labor markets, labor mismatch creates pockets of employment which are difficult to eradicate. Yet, overall, the hope is that expanding economic horizons will create unlimited opportunities for new jobs and new skills. The key is education and training. A feed and feedback mechanism between education and the economy represents an intangible investment in the future. Economic growth, technological innovation, development of culture and society, have always moved together with synergism. Current changes are not so much just physical as conceptual. We are passing from a mechanical (or mechanistic) society to one that can be termed cybernetic. Causality, sequentiality and hierarchy are giving way to a functional interdependence at a systems level. Greater participation will produce more opportunities for self-fulfillment. As old social equilibria collapse, management of social change can be seen to be as important as management of technological change. The technological revolution has deep roots in Western culture. It is a liberating force that can lead to greater cultural enrichment. By understanding the changes now underway, we can ensure that the new pattern of society that emerges from exploitation of the new technologies retains man at its center and so benefits the whole of humanity. (shrink)

Over the past two decades, Ginsburg and Jablonka have developed a novel approach to studying the evolutionary origins of consciousness: the Unlimited Associative Learning framework. The central idea is that there is a distinctive type of learning that can serve as a transition marker for the evolutionary transition from non-conscious to conscious life. The goal of this paper is to stimulate discussion of the framework by providing a primer on its key claims and a clear statement of its main (...) empirical predictions. (shrink)

We offer an original argument for the existence of universal fictions—that is, fictions within which every possible proposition is true. Specifically, we detail a trio of such fictions, along with an easy-to-follow recipe for generating more. After exploring several consequences and dismissing some objections, we conclude that fiction, unlike reality, is unlimited when it comes to truth.