The focus of this volume is on political discourse about the pattern and desirability of economic development, and how/why historical interpretations of social phenomena connected to this systemic process alter. It is a trajectory pursued here with reference to the materialism of Marxism, via the mid-nineteenth century ideas about race, through the development decade, the 'cultural turn', debates about modes of production and their respective labour regimes, culminating in the role played by immigration before and after the Brexit referendum. Also examined is the trajectory followed by travel writing, and how many of its core assumptions overlap with those made in the social sciences and development studies. The object is to account for the way concepts informing these trajectories do or do not alter.

'Oh friends, not these sounds, let us instead strike up ones more pleasing and more joyful'. Written during the corona of 2020 and stretching into 2021, the sounds and words of music are here given a deeper and wider meaning. The words quoted above were Beethoven's own in the lockdown of his own deafness and just before letting the chorus loose to proclaim that 'all people become brothers'. The sounds he refers to are those of despair, exuberance, and utopian peace that his symphony has just portrayed. For him, and for us, the Ode is less the vision of an alternative world than an expression of a constant need to seek a joy which, beyond happiness and once-in-a-while cheerfulness, is a sense of doing something worthwhile with and, where possible, for others.

The technology of Artificial Intelligence is here, and moving fast, without ethical standards in place. A Blueprint for the Regulation of Artificial Intelligence Technologies leans on classical western philosophy for its ethical grounding. Values such as conscience, rights, equity, and discrimination, establish a basis for regulatory standards. Multiple international agencies with governing interests are compared. The development of ethical standards is suggested through two new non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The first is to develop standards that evolve from practice, while the second acts as an ombudsman to settle abuse. Both NGOs are envisioned to cooperate with regulators. More than seeking a perfect solution, the book aims to balance the tension between conflicting interests, with the goal to keep this dangerously wonderful technology under global human control. For that to materialize, the technology needs to have a seat on the table of global ethics. The final chapter lists fourteen thinking points to achieve an ethics balance for new technologies.

Unified Philosophy: Interdisciplinary Metaphysics, Ethics, and Liberal Arts demonstrates how an integrated vision of metaphysics, ethics, and hermeneutics can serve as an underlying philosophy for general education or liberal arts courses and programs. Its unique approach elevates such courses to orientation and reorientation courses and seminars within higher education. The book introduces and reintroduces concepts in philosophy in ethics for students and faculty. It underscores that philosophy is theoretical and applied metaphysics; metaphysics is applied ethics and hermeneutics; and ethics and hermeneutics are applied metaphysics. The opening chapter explores metaphysics: inquiry into reality. It consists of two sections: part and whole; and change and stability. Part and whole involve four positions about reality: part-alone, holistic or limited part, part-whole dualism, or whole-alone. Change and stability also entail four positions about reality: change-alone, holistic or directed change, change-stability dualism, or stability-alone. In turn, each of the eight positions integrates the apparently unrelated languages of game theory, mereology, functions, sets, virtue ethics, phenomenology, cybernetics, and ergonomics/human factors. Chapter One forms the model of which the remaining chapters are applications. The third edition expands Alphonse Chapanis' environment-user interface to four interfaces: environment-environment, environment-person, person-environment, and person-person interfaces. New chapters include Chapter One, Chapter Two, and Chapter Seven. Chapter Two examines positivism through subjectivity spectrum. Chapter Seven examines management reality including authority. Written in recognition of ethics and metaphysics as fundamental components of philosophy and the quest for wisdom, Unified Philosophy is a thought-provoking text for students of theology, ethics, law, medicine, and engineering, education, and city planning/environmental science.

The Evolution of Consciousness brings together interdisciplinary insights from philosophy, neuroscience, psychology and cognitive science to explain consciousness in terms of the biological function that grounds it in the physical world. Drawing on the novel analogy of a house of cards, Paula Droege pieces together various conceptual questions and shows how they rest on each other to form a coherent, structured argument. She asserts that the mind is composed of unconscious sensory and cognitive representations, which become conscious when they are selected and coordinated into a representation of the present moment. This temporal representation theory deftly bridges the gap between mind and body by highlighting that physical systems are conscious when they can respond flexibly to actions in the present. With examples from evolution, animal cognition, introspection and the free will debate, this is a compelling and animated account of the possible explanations of consciousness, offering answers to the conceptual question of how consciousness can be considered a cognitive process.