In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hypermediated Art CriticismPamela G. Taylor (bio) and B. Stephen Carpenter II (bio)Technological media catapults our perception into what Marshall McLuhan called "new transforming vision and awareness."1 As our lives become more and more immersed in such technologies as television, film, and interactive computers, we find ourselves inundated with a heightened sense of mindfulness—an aesthetic experience made possible through such computer technological characteristics as hyperlinks, hypermedia, and hyperreality. In (...) these terms, the prefix "hyper" represents various linking devices inherent to computer technology that allure and transport us between, above, below, and toward vast areas of information, places, and peoples. Hypermediacy, according to Bob Cotton and Richard Oliver, is "an entirely new kind of media experience born from the marriage of TV and computer technologies. Its raw ingredients can be brought together in any combination. It is a medium that offers random access; it has no physical beginning, middle, or end."2 In other words, there is no set or static structure inherent in technological media. It is not so much an "anything goes" apparatus as it is an "anything is possible" system. The seemingly vast possibilities inherent to technological media offer us many and alternate views of the world.Just as technological media encourage multiple means of viewing the world, no single approach to art criticism can be considered dominant, as several methods, methodologies, and approaches exist for responding to [End Page 1] works of art. We conceive of art criticism as a complex means of making meanings about works of art and communicating those meanings to other people. Following the lead of art educator Terry Barrett,3 art criticism hinges on the four activities of describing, interpreting, judging, and theorizing about art. Barrett suggests that, although all four overlap, interpretation is the most important and most likely the most complex aspect of art criticism. Although interwoven with description, analysis, and judgment, interpretation of the meanings of individual works of art is of foremost concern in contemporary art criticism. Similarly, we situate hypermediated art criticism as a synthesis of our descriptions, interpretations, judgments, and theories—both verbal and visual—with the various ways in which computer technology facilitates the simultaneous existence, representation, storage, and presentation of these and other forms of meaning making about works of art.Hypermediated art criticism is built upon our own technological abilities to both create and follow divergent paths, ideas, and beliefs according to our choices. Hypermediated art criticism is inclusive of the ways that our choices change daily depending upon our situation, role, and purpose, or simply as a result of what we witness or experience in a moment. In the hypermediated criticism process, our ways of seeing and knowing change from a linear to multilinear perspective, from single to multilayered, and from static to mutable perception. Indeed, the disparate ways of seeing and knowing made possible through technological media and hypermedia provide us with an expansive and personally reflective approach to art criticism.Personal Reflection and Art CriticismMichael Joyce, known for his poetic approach to computer hypertext theory and fictional writing, says, "We are who we are. Layered and overlaid, we make a world within our bodies."4 Possibly now more than ever that world within our bodies can be represented, re-presented, and re-invented right before our eyes through technological media. Digital ethnographer Ricki Goldman-Segall refers to this technological world as a learning constellation in which "we are each composed of many selves, all of which interact with each other as we learn.... With the use of new computer technologies, we extend not only our technological abilities, but also our various personae—the societies of our minds—in the form of new objects for others to think with."5 In the classroom, hypermediated art criticism generated through computer technology functions just this way—as new objects that we, and our students, use to help us extend the ways in which we think about works of art.Contrary to the antihumanist approach so often associated with computer technology theory,6 our discussion of hypermediated art criticism—the symbiotic relationship of art criticism and technology—begins with the [End Page 2] basic assumption that a primary purpose of... (shrink)

The book, which stepwise develops successively more powerful logical and grammatical systems, covers an unusually broad range of material.

In the Timaeus, plants are granted soul, and specifically the sort of soul capable of perception and desire. But perception, according to the Timaeus, requires the involvement of to phronimon. It seems to follow that plants must be intelligent. I argue that we can neither avoid granting plants sensation in just this sense, nor can we suppose that the phronimon is something devoid of intelligence. Indeed, plants must be related to intelligence, if they are to be both orderly and good (...) – for intelligence is the cause of normativity and teleology. And yet, plants are not intelligent creatures. While plants must have individual souls if they are to be distinct from each other, each having its own orderly life, the intelligence they require for their individual sensations is not similarly individuated, but is rather that of the cosmos itself. Plants’ peculiar partial individuation arises from the fact that their ultimate good is only derivative: unlike animals, it is only by completing the body of the cosmos that a plant’s good a Good Thing. (shrink)

This paper reviews the hole argument as an argument against spacetime substantivalism. After a careful presentation of the argument itself, I critically review possible responses.

In their article, Romanis and Adkins delineate pregnancy loss and procreative loss to show that the former is possible without the latter, as in the case of artificial amnion and placenta technology.1 Here, we are interested in examining the reverse—procreative loss without pregnancy loss—to further tease apart these two types of loss. We discuss two cases: being forced to continue a pregnancy despite fetal demise due to abortion restrictions and choosing to selectively reduce a multifetal pregnancy. Our analysis buttresses the (...) authors’ conclusion: due to our fetal-centric conception of pregnancy, we are only able to value pregnancy instrumentally (ie, for the fetus), not intrinsically. Understanding pregnancy as an embodied state rather than a process that not only acknowledges the intrinsic value of pregnancy for pregnant people but also encourages society to intrinsically value pregnant people is important. In 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States removed the constitutional right to an abortion in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, shifting the responsibility of determining abortion regulations to individual US states.2 Due to the Dobbs decision, there …. (shrink)

Plato articulates a deep perplexity about inquiry in ?Meno's Paradox??the claim that one can inquire neither into what one knows, nor into what one does not know. Although some commentators have wrestled with the paradox itself, many suppose that the paradox of inquiry is special to Plato, arising from peculiarities of the Socratic elenchus or of Platonic epistemology. But there is nothing peculiarly Platonic in this puzzle. For it arises, too, in classical Indian philosophical discussions, where it is formulated with (...) great clarity, and analysed in a way that casts it in a new light. We present three treatments of the puzzle in Indian philosophy, as a way of refining and sharpening our understanding of the paradox, before turning to the most radical of the Indian philosophers to tackle it. The Indian philosophers who are optimistic that the paradox can be resolved appeal to the existence of prior beliefs, and to the resources embedded in language to explain how we can investigate, and so move from ignorance to knowledge. Highlighting this structural feature of inquiry, however, allows the pessimist philosopher to demonstrate that the paradox stands. The incoherence of inquiry is rooted in the very idea of aiming our desires at the unknown. Asking questions and giving answers rests on referential intentions targeting objects in a region of epistemic darkness, and so our ?inquiry sceptic? also finds structurally similar forms of incoherence in the pragmatics of interrogative discourse. (shrink)

What is morality? How many moral values are there? And what are they? According to the theory of morality-as-cooperation, morality is a collection of biological and cultural solutions to the problems of cooperation recurrent in human social life. This theory predicts that there will be as many different types of morality as there are different types of cooperation. Previous research, drawing on evolutionary game theory, has identified at least seven different types of cooperation, and used them to explain seven different (...) types of morality: family values, group loyalty, reciprocity, heroism, deference, fairness and property rights. Here we explore the conjecture that these simple moral ‘elements’ combine to form a much larger number of more complex moral ‘molecules’, and that as such morality is a combinatorial system. For each combination of two elements, we hypothesise a candidate moral molecule, and successfully locate an example of it in the professional and popular literature. These molecules include: fraternity, blood revenge, family pride, filial piety, gavelkind, primogeniture, friendship, patriotism, tribute, diplomacy, common ownership, honour, confession, turn taking, restitution, modesty, mercy, munificence, arbitration, mendicancy, and queuing. These findings indicate that morality – like many other physical, biological, psychological and cultural systems – is indeed a combinatorial system. Thus morality-as-cooperation provides a principled and powerful theory, that explains why there are many moral values, and successfully predicts what they will be; and it generates a systematic framework that has the potential to explain all moral ideas, possible and actual. Pursuing the many implications of this theory will help to place the study of morality on a more secure scientific footing. (shrink)

We propose that the crucial difference between human cognition and that of other species is the ability to participate with others in collaborative activities with shared goals and intentions: shared intentionality. Participation in such activities requires not only especially powerful forms of intention reading and cultural learning, but also a unique motivation to share psychological states with others and unique forms of cognitive representation for doing so. The result of participating in these activities is species-unique forms of cultural cognition and (...) evolution, enabling everything from the creation and use of linguistic symbols to the construction of social norms and individual beliefs to the establishment of social institutions. In support of this proposal we argue and present evidence that great apes understand the basics of intentional action, but they still do not participate in activities involving joint intentions and attention. Human children's skills of shared intentionality develop gradually during the first 14 months of life as two ontogenetic pathways intertwine: the general ape line of understanding others as animate, goal-directed, and intentional agents; and a species-unique motivation to share emotions, experience, and activities with other persons. The developmental outcome is children's ability to construct dialogic cognitive representations, which enable them to participate in earnest in the collectivity that is human cognition. Key Words: collaboration; cooperation; cultural learning; culture; evolutionary psychology; intentions; shared intentionality; social cognition; social learning; theory of mind; joint attention. (shrink)

Introduction: The role of animals in philosophies of man -- Part I: What's wrong with animal rights? -- The right to remain silent -- Part II: Animal pedagogy -- You are what you eat : Rousseau's cat -- Say the human responded : Herder's sheep -- Part III: Difference worthy of its name -- Hair of the dog : Derrida's and Rousseau's good taste -- Sexual difference, animal difference : Derrida's sexy silkworm -- Part IV: It's our fault -- The (...) beaver's struggle with species-being : De Beauvoir and the praying mantis -- Answering the call of nature : Lacan walking the dog -- Part V: Estranged kinship -- The abyss between humans and animals : Heidegger puts the bee in being -- Strange kinship : Merleau-Ponty's sensuous stickleback -- Stopping the anthropological machine : Agamben's tick-tocking tick -- Psychoanalysis and the science of kinship -- Psychoanalysis as animal by-product : Freud's zoophilia -- Animal abjects, maternal abjects : Kristeva's strays -- Conclusion: Sustainable ethics. (shrink)

Explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) seeks to produce explanations for those machine learning methods which are deemed opaque. However, there is considerable disagreement about what this means and how to achieve it. Authors disagree on what should be explained (topic), to whom something should be explained (stakeholder), how something should be explained (instrument), and why something should be explained (goal). In this paper, I employ insights from means-end epistemology to structure the field. According to means-end epistemology, different means ought to be (...) rationally adopted to achieve different epistemic ends. Applied to XAI, different topics, stakeholders, and goals thus require different instruments. I call this the means-end account of XAI. The means-end account has a descriptive and a normative component: on the one hand, I show how the specific means-end relations give rise to a taxonomy of existing contributions to the field of XAI; on the other hand, I argue that the suitability of XAI methods can be assessed by analyzing whether they are prescribed by a given topic, stakeholder, and goal. (shrink)

English has plural terms as well as singular terms. But our standard formal languages, e.g., the predicate calculus, feature only singular terms. How can the plural idiom be formalized?‘Changing the subject’ is by far the most common plurals strategy among both philosophers and linguists: a plural term is replaced by a singular term standing for some complex object that ‘contains’ the individuals to which the plural term alludes. For example, one might simply replace ‘A, B imply C’ with ‘{A, B} (...) implies [singular] C’. We uncover a surprising variety of ways to change the subject, of ever‐increasing complexity and ingenuity. Our question is whether any can made to work. (shrink)

In _Death in Documentaries: The Memento Mori Experience_, Benjamin Bennett-Carpenter suggests that documentaries are an especially apt form of contemporary _memento mori_; that is, documentaries offer transformative experiences for a viewer to renew one’s consciousness of mortality.

This early work first published in 1912 by poet, philosopher, and gay activist, Edward Carpenter is both expensive and hard to find in its first edition. It details the changing ideas of masculinity and femininity in his contemporary culture and is thoroughly fascinating for anyone interested in social history. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using (...) the original text and artwork. (shrink)

Substantivalists believe that spacetime and its parts are fundamental constituents of reality. Relationalists deny this, claiming that spacetime enjoys only a derivative existence. I begin by describing how the Galilean symmetries of Newtonian physics tell against both Newton's brand of substantivalism and the most obvious relationalist alternative. I then review the obvious substantivalist response to the problem, which is to ditch substantival space for substantival spacetime. The resulting position has many affinities with what are arguably the most natural interpretations of (...) special and general relativity. I move on to consider and reject two recent antisubstantivalist lines of thought. The interim conclusion is that the best argument for relationalism is an appeal to Ockham's razor. However, for this to be successful there must be genuine relationalist theories that share the theoretical virtues of their substantivalist rivals but without the additional ontological commitment. The bulk of the paper is therefore an investigation of various concrete relationalist proposals. I distinguish three options for the relationalist in the face of the success of Galilean invariant physics and trace how these generalise to relativistic physics. One of the options is particularly promising but, since its basic objects end up being spacetime points, this does not help the prospects of relationalism as traditionally conceived. I end with some reflections on the fate of substantivalism in the aftermath of the Hole Argument, concluding that we have as yet to be given good reasons to abandon the natural, substantivalist interpretation of current physics. (shrink)

One of postmodernism's toughest challenges to Christian thought is its wholesale rejection of metaphysics. This profound book meets the challenge squarely, offering a surer foundation for the idea of being and a new theological perspective of supreme relevance to today's world. In a brilliant turn of postmodern thought itself, Oliver Davies argues for a renewal of metaphysics based on a dynamic new understanding of ontology as narrative and performance. His repairing of the Western metaphysical tradition is grounded both in (...) the divine self-naming in Exodus -- which, for the rabbis, identified God's presence in the world with God's compassionate acts -- and in the compassionate resistance of Etty Hillesum and Edith Stein to the violence of the Holocaust. Building on a new metaphysics of compassion that is attentive to the deepest histories of the contemporary world, Davies offers a renewed systematic theology focused on divine speech and God's compassionate relation to human culture. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant is often considered to be the source of the contemporary idea of human dignity, but his conception of human dignity and its relation to human value and to the requirement to respect others have not been widely understood. Kant on Human Dignity offers the first in-depth study in English of this subject. Based on a comprehensive analysis of all the passages in which Kant uses the term ;dignity, as well as an analysis of the most prominent arguments for (...) a value of human beings in the Kant literature, the book carefully examines different ways of construing the relationship between dignity, value and respect for others. It takes seriously Kant s Copernican Revolution in moral philosophy: Kant argues that moral imperatives cannot be based on any values without yielding heteronomy. Instead it is imperatives of reason that determine what is valuable. The requirement to respect all human beings is one such imperative. Respect for human beings does not follow from human dignity for this would violate autonomy but is an unconditional command of reason. Following this train of thought yields a unified account of Kant s moral philosophy. (shrink)

Recent advances in evolutionary biology and ethology suggest that humans are not the only species capable of empathy and possibly morality. These findings are of no little consequence for theology, given that a nonhuman animal as a free moral agent would beg the question if human beings are indeed uniquely created in God's image. I argue that apes and some other mammals have moral agency and that a traditional interpretation of the imago Dei is incorrectly equating specialness with exclusivity. By (...) framing the problem in terms of metaphor, following the work of Paul Ricoeur and Sallie McFague, I propose that the concept of the imago Dei could be extended to accommodate moral species other than our own. (shrink)

Philosophy in the English-speaking world is dominated by analytic approaches to its problems and projects; but theology has been dominated by alternative approaches. Many would say that the current state in theology is not mere historical accident, but is, rather, how things ought to be. On the other hand, many others would say precisely the opposite: that theology as a discipline has been beguiled and taken captive by 'continental' approaches, and that the effects on the discipline have been largely deleterious. (...) The methodological divide between systematic theologians and analytic philosophers of religion is ripe for exploration. The present volume represents an attempt to begin a much-needed interdisciplinary conversation about the value of analytic philosophical approaches to theological topics. Most of the essays herein are sympathetic toward the enterprise the editors are calling analytic theology; but, with an eye toward balance, the volume also includes essays and an introduction that try to offer more critical perspectives on analytic theology. (shrink)

Ever since Eve tempted Adam with her apple, women have been regarded as a corrupting and destructive force. The very idea that women can be used as interrogation tools, as evidenced in the infamous Abu Ghraib torture photos, plays on age-old fears of women as sexually threatening weapons, and therefore the literal explosion of women onto the war scene should come as no surprise. From the female soldiers involved in Abu Ghraib to Palestinian women suicide bombers, women and their bodies (...) have become powerful weapons in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. In _Women as Weapons of War_, Kelly Oliver reveals how the media and the administration frequently use metaphors of weaponry to describe women and female sexuality and forge a deliberate link between notions of vulnerability and images of violence. Focusing specifically on the U.S. campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, Oliver analyzes contemporary discourse surrounding women, sex, and gender and the use of women to justify America's decision to go to war. For example, the administration's call to liberate "women of cover," suggesting a woman's right to _bare_ arms is a sign of freedom and progress. Oliver also considers what forms of cultural meaning, or lack of meaning, could cause both the guiltlessness demonstrated by female soldiers at Abu Ghraib and the profound commitment to death made by suicide bombers. She examines the pleasure taken in violence and the passion for death exhibited by these women and what kind of contexts created them. In conclusion, Oliver diagnoses our cultural fascination with sex, violence, and death and its relationship with live news coverage and embedded reporting, which naturalizes horrific events and stymies critical reflection. This process, she argues, further compromises the borders between fantasy and reality, fueling a kind of paranoid patriotism that results in extreme forms of violence. (shrink)

Cooperation requires that individuals are able to identify, and preferentially associate with, others who have compatible preferences and the shared background knowledge needed to solve interpersonal coordination problems. The present study investigates the nature of such similarity within social networks, asking: What do friends have in common? And what is the relationship between similarity and altruism? The results show that similarity declines with frequency of contact; similarity in general is a significant predictor of altruism and emotional closeness; and, specifically, sharing (...) a sense of humor, hobbies and interests, moral beliefs, and being from the same area are the best predictors. These results shed light on the structure of relationships within networks and provide a possible checklist for predicting attitudes toward strangers, and in-group identification. (shrink)

As a linguist, Julia Kristeva has pioneered a revolutionary theory of the sign in its relation to social and political emancipation; as a practicing psychoanalyst, she has produced work on the nature of the human subject and sexuality, and on the "new maladies" of today's neurotic. _The Portable Kristeva_ is the only fully comprehensive compilation of Kristeva's key writings. The second edition includes added material from Kristeva's most important works of the past five years, including _The Sense and Non-Sense of (...) Revolt_, _Intimate Revolt_, and _Hannah Arendt_. Editor Kelly Oliver has also added new material to the introduction, summarizing Kristeva's latest intellectual endeavors and updating the bibliography. (shrink)

Generative AI has gained a lot of attention in society, business, and science. This trend has increased since 2018, and the big breakthrough came in 2022. In particular, AI-based text and image generators are now widely used. This raises a variety of ethical issues. The present paper first gives an introduction to generative AI and then to applied ethics in this context. Three specific image generators are presented: DALL-E 2, Stable Diffusion, and Midjourney. The author goes into technical details and (...) basic principles, and compares their similarities and differences. This is followed by an ethical discussion. The paper addresses not only risks, but opportunities for generative AI. A summary with an outlook rounds off the article. (shrink)

When people use the phrase “personal relationship with Jesus,” how does one explain its significance? Normally attributed to evangelical Protestant Christians, use of the phrase “personal relationship with Jesus” is a complicated phenomenon, and an explanation of it requires drawing upon resources from across multiple disciplines rather than a single discipline only. Attempts to explain exactly what the phrase “personal relationship with Jesus” means frequently can be mystifying, on the one hand, or dismissive and simplistic, on the other hand. This (...) article moves potentially toward a better context for understanding use of the phrase “personal relationship with Jesus” by drawing upon insights from multiple disciplines, including rhetorical and cultural-historical studies, evolutionary and cognitive psychology, and biological/behavioral and social/anthropological studies in order to set forth some basic lines of explanation for use of the phrase “personal relationship with Jesus.” The article concludes with some possible testable statements for future empirical studies. (shrink)

When people use the phrase “personal relationship with Jesus,” how does one explain its significance? Normally attributed to evangelical Protestant Christians, use of the phrase “personal relationship with Jesus” is a complicated phenomenon, and an explanation of it requires drawing upon resources from across multiple disciplines rather than a single discipline only. Attempts to explain exactly what the phrase “personal relationship with Jesus” means frequently can be mystifying, on the one hand, or dismissive and simplistic, on the other hand. This (...) article moves potentially toward a better context for understanding use of the phrase “personal relationship with Jesus” by drawing upon insights from multiple disciplines, including rhetorical and cultural-historical studies, evolutionary and cognitive psychology, and biological/behavioral and social/anthropological studies in order to set forth some basic lines of explanation for use of the phrase “personal relationship with Jesus.” The article concludes with some possible testable statements for future empirical studies. (shrink)

John Earman's recent proposal that a substantive version of general covariance consists in the requirement that diffeomorphism invariance be a gauge symmetry is critically assessed. I argue that such a principle does not serve to differentiate general relativity from pre-relativistic theories. A model-theoretic characterization of two formulations of specially-relativistic theories is suggested. Diffeomorphisms are symmetries of only one such style of formulation and, I argue, Earman's proposal does not provide a reason to deny diffeomorphisms the status of gauge transformations relative (...) to this formulation. Carlo Rovelli's distinction between "passive" and "active" diffeomorphism invariance is also clarified. (shrink)

Is the objective passage of time compatible with relativistic physics? There are two easy routes to an affirmative answer: (1) provide a deflationary analysis of passage compatible with the block universe, or (2) argue that a privileged global present is compatible with relativity. (1) does not take passage seriously. (2) does not take relativity seriously. This paper is concerned with the viability of views that seek to take both passage and relativity seriously. The investigation proceeds by considering how traditional A-theoretic (...) conceptions of passage might be generalized to relativistic space-times without incorporating a privileged global present. I argue that the most promising position marries the idea that open possibilities for the future are settled as time passes with a ‘non-standard’ interpretation of the relevant formal models. (shrink)

In his paper ``What is Structural Realism?'' James Ladyman drew a distinction between epistemological structural realism and metaphysical (or ontic) structural realism. He also drew a suggestive analogy between the perennial debate between substantivalist and relationalist interpretations of spacetime on the one hand, and the debate about whether quantum mechanics treats identical particles as individuals or as `non-individuals' on the other. In both cases, Ladyman's suggestion is that an ontic structural realist interpretation of the physics might be just what is (...) needed to overcome the stalemate. The main thesis of this paper is that, whatever the interpretative difficulties of generally covariant spacetime physics are, they do not support or suggest structural realism. In particular, I hope to show that there is in fact no analogy that supports a similar interpretation of the metaphysics of spacetime points and of quantum particles. (shrink)

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to add one further value to the previously articulated “universal values” and to describe the constituent components of three universal values.Design/methodology/approachThis interpretive/constructivist study of Australia's largest online community of seniors involved a 30‐month ethnographic investigation. After an initial period of 11 months of observing social interaction on the entire site, in‐depth, semi‐structured interviews were conducted with 30 participants, selected according to criterion sampling, a form of purposive sampling.FindingsFour key moral values were identified: equality, freedom, (...) respect and trust. All of them had been found in other studies, with equality and respect (as human dignity) identified as universal values. The findings from this study suggest that freedom is another universal value.Originality/valueThis study extends the understanding of universal values to include freedom. Further, it demonstrates the constituent components for freedom, and those of two other universal values previously identified in the literature, equality and human dignity, as well as revealing linkages between these three values. (shrink)

A systematic treatment of Hume's conception of imagination in all the main topics of his philosophy.

This paper uses a schema for infinite regress arguments to provide a solution to the problem of the infinite regress of justification. The solution turns on the falsity of two claims: that a belief is justified only if some belief is a reason for it, and that the reason relation is transitive.

Islamic philosophy has often been treated as mainly of historical interest, belonging to the history of ideas rather than to philosophy. This volume challenges this belief, and provides an indispensable reference tool. It includes: * Detailed discussions of the most important figures from earliest times to the present day * Chapters on key concepts in Islamic philosophy, and on relevant traditions in Greek and western philosophy * Contributions by 50 leading experts in the field, from over 16 countries * Analysis (...) of a vast geographical area with discussions of Arabic, Persian, Indian, Jewish, Turkish and South East Asian philosophy * Comprehensive bibliographical information and an extensive index Seyyed Hossein Nasr is Professor of Islamic Studies at the George Washington University, Washington D.C. He has held academic positions across the United States, as well as in Beirut and Tehran. He has written extensively on many aspects of Islamic philosophy; his work has been translated into over 20 languages. Oliver Leaman is a Reader in Philosophy at Liverpool's John Moores University and has published widely on Islamic philosophy and the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

Diffeomorphism invariance is sometimes taken to be a criterion of background independence. This claim is commonly accompanied by a second, that the genuine physical magnitudes (the ``observables'') of background-independent theories and those of background-dependent (non-diffeomorphism-invariant) theories are essentially different in nature. I argue against both claims. Background-dependent theories can be formulated in a diffeomorphism-invariant manner. This suggests that the nature of the physical magnitudes of relevantly analogous theories (one background free, the other background dependent) is essentially the same. The temptation (...) to think otherwise stems from a misunderstanding of the meaning of spacetime coordinates in background-dependent theories. (shrink)

We make some remarks on the mathematics and metaphysics of the hole argument, in response to a recent article in this journal by Weatherall ([2018]). Broadly speaking, we defend the mainstream philosophical literature from the claim that correct usage of the mathematics of general relativity `blocks' the argument.

The synthetization of voices, or speech synthesis, has been an object of interest for centuries. It is mostly realized with a text-to-speech system, an automaton that interprets and reads aloud. This system refers to text available for instance on a website or in a book, or entered via popup menu on the website. Today, just a few minutes of samples are enough to be able to imitate a speaker convincingly in all kinds of statements. This article abstracts from actual products (...) and actual technological realization. Rather, after a short historical outline of the synthetization of voices, exemplary applications of this kind of technology are gathered for promoting the development, and potential applications are discussed critically to be able to limit them if necessary. The ethical and legal challenges should not be underestimated, in particular with regard to informational and personal autonomy and the trustworthiness of media. (shrink)

The main markets for this book are in the areas of philosophy, Islamic studies, Middle Eastern studies, cultural studies, religious studies and theology.