This essay discusses hope and optimism with reference to current rhetoric around COVID-19. It draws on Spinoza to suggest that much of that rhetoric rests on questionable assumptions about the supremacy of human reason within Nature.

Notwithstanding the notion of progress, the social and environmental record of our age poses serious doubts for the present and the future. Technology, being the mainspring of progress, may be seen, accordingly, as the master of history more than the servant of society. In line with this view, a case can be made to strengthen the value of technology and to weaken the deterministic character of history. To do so, the paper canvasses the use of artificial markets designed to improve (...) compliance of technology with environmental or social standards. The emerging interest in following this path poses a radical departure from the traditional policy approach to technology assessment. The traditional approach may be described asex ante, relying on cost-benefit analysis to anticipate the welfare effects of technology, combining this analysis with bureaucratic management based on command and control. Cost-benefit analysis, however, is piecemeal and shortsighted and, in a dynamic and synergistic world, can be considered of limited value to ensure longer-term goals. On the other hand, artificial markets operateex post and on the basis of ambient standards. As such, they constitute an artificial device that does not require discretion and a predictive capacity that social science cannot offer. Nonetheless, and given political will, this new approach offers the potential to ensure efficient and sustainable outcomes under conditions of uncertainty. (shrink)

The selected effects or ‘etiological’ theory of Proper function is a naturalistic and realist account of biological teleology. It is used to analyse normativity in philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, philosophy of medicine and elsewhere. The theory has been developed with a simple and intuitive view of natural selection. Traits are selected because of their positive effects on the fitness of the organisms that have them. These ‘selected effects’ are the Proper functions of the traits. Proponents argue that this (...) analysis of biological teleology has the unique advantage that the selected effect function of a trait is also a causal explanation of the trait: the trait exists because it performs this function. We show, however, that selected effect functions as currently defined explain the existence of traits only under highly restrictive assumptions about evolutionary dynamics. In many common scenarios in which traits evolve by natural selection, selected effect functions do not explain those traits. This is because definitions of selected effect function extract from any evolutionary scenario only the information that would be explanatorily relevant in the simple evolutionary scenario implicit in those definitions. When applied to more complex scenarios selected effect functions omit the key information that is explanatorily relevant in those scenarios. The assumptions required for selected effect functions to be explanatory are particularly unlikely to hold in the domain that its proponents care most about - the evolution of representation. A more adequate selected effects theory of Proper functions may be possible, but will require much greater attention to the structure of actual evolutionary explanations. (shrink)

The classical-Christian model of friendship has operated for many centuries from oral traditions and through the age of print. However, technological developments in communication and media rearrange mindscapes. Consequently, values, or, those things that give meaning, can change, such as perceptions of friendship. If one accepts that communication is vital to human relationships, the paradigm for the classical-Christian friendship should operate according to the new vocabulary of expanding communication and media possibilities. This work examines literature and philosophical thought within their (...) historical contexts in order to gauge the operation of the classical-Christian friendship model from the beginning of Western literature to Western literature at the apex of print culture. (shrink)

This paper studies the history of teleological thought in Antiquity, after Aristotle, analyzing three relevant episodes: the contribution of Theophrastus – a companion and successor of Aristotle; Stoicism, as described by Cicero in his work On the nature of gods; and Galen’s anatomical and physiological works, especially his book On the utility of the parts of the human body. This analysis exhibits the broad diversity of views concerning final causes in Antiquity, all of them widely different from Aristotle’s one, and (...) the strong influence of theological concerns in some of those philosophers – such as the Stoics and Galen. (shrink)

What does it mean to ‘make love?’ Or, rather, what are we doing when we ‘make love?’ This expression makes of love a praxis on which the history of philosophy, rather modest, has said little. Philosophy has certainly evoked love, but always as a passion, an emotion, a feeling, and rarely as an action, exercise or even as a test. It is this aspect of the issue that it is important to study in order to determine it. At bottom, only (...) a definition will be in question. (shrink)

Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet's sermon to Louis XIV on the "Devoirs des rois" and John Donne's sermon to Queen Anne at Denmark House are both texts that offer indirect critiques of their royal audiences--critiques which, if stated more bluntly, might be politically dangerous to the respective speakers. What makes such oblique criticism "safe" and what ultimately makes it understood? The answer lies in the rhetor's ability to build common ground with the audience.