Our sensory relationships with the social and biological world have altered appreciably as a result of recent developments in internet and other mobile communication technologies. We now look at a screen, we touch either the screen or a keyboard in response to what we see and, somehow, an element of our sensory presence is transmitted elsewhere. It is often claimed that this change in the way we perceive the world and each other is without precedent, and is solely the result of twenty-first-century life and technologies. This book argues otherwise. The author analyses the evolving portrayals of 'haptic' sensations - that is, sensations that are at once tactile and visual - in the theories and prose of the writer-philosophers Georges Bataille (1897-1962), Maurice Blanchot (1907-2003) and Michel Serres (1930-). In exploring haptic perception in the works of Bataille, Blanchot and Serres, the author examines haptic theories postulated by Alois Riegl, Laura U. Marks, Mark Paterson and Jean-Luc Nancy.

Scientific advances in genetics, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence signal the end of our traditional concept of the human being. The most vigorous movements dealing with this ongoing crisis of humanism are posthumanism and transhumanism. While posthumanism reconsiders what it means to be human, transhumanism actively promotes human enhancement. Both approaches address the posthuman condition in the technological age. In 20 articles, written by leading scholars of the field, this volume provides the first comprehensive introduction to debates beyond humanism.

Providing a clear interpretation of Hegel's characterizations of possibility and actuality in the Science of Logic, this book departs from the standard understandings of these concepts to break new ground in Hegelian scholarship. The book draws out some of the implications of Hegel's view of immanent possibility, especially as it relates to Leibniz's thesis of modal optimism: his view that this world is the best of all possible worlds. Reading Hegel as a philosopher of possibility, against a tradition that has conceived of him primarily as a philosopher of necessity, rationality, and finitude, Nahum Brown demonstrates the historical background and philosophical traditions from which Hegel's concept of possibility emerges. Systematically outlining Hegel's conceptions of positive and negative freedom, Brown reveals the Hegelian underpinnings of our conception of reality and what it is to be in the world itself. Original and convincing, this book is crucial for philosophers approaching modality from any tradition.

Bertrand Russell famously quipped that he didn't believe in God for the same reason that he didn't believe in a teapot in orbit between the earth and Mars: it is a bizarre assertion for which no evidence can be provided. Is belief in God really like belief in Russell's teapot? Kenneth L. Pearce argues that God is no teapot. God is a real answer to the deepest question of all: why is there something rather than nothing? Graham Oppy argues that we should believe that there are none but natural causal entities with none but natural causal properties-and hence should believe that there are no gods. Beginning from this basic disagreement, the authors proceed to discuss and debate a wide range of philosophical questions, including questions about explanation, necessity, rationality, religious experience, mathematical objects, the foundations of ethics, and the methodology of philosophy. Each author first presents his own side, and then they interact through two rounds of objections and replies. Pedagogical features include standard form arguments, section summaries, bolded key terms and principles, a glossary, and annotated reading lists. In the volume foreword, Helen De Cruz calls the debate "both edifying and a joy," and sums up what's at stake: "Here you have two carefully formulated positive proposals for worldviews that explain all that is: classical theism, or naturalistic atheism. You can follow along with the authors and deliberate: which one do you find more plausible?" Though written with beginning students in mind, this debate will be of interest to philosophers at all levels and to anyone who values careful, rational thought about the nature of reality and our place in it.

This collection of original essays brings together a world-class lineup of philosophers to provide the most comprehensive critical treatment of Ted Honderich's philosophy, focusing on three major areas of his work: (1) his theory of consciousness; (2) his extensive and ground-breaking work on determinism and freedom; and (3) his views on right and wrong, including his Principle of Humanity and his judgments on terrorism. Grote Professor Emeritus of the Philosophy of Mind and Logic at University College London, Honderich is a leading contemporary philosopher of mind, determinism and freedom, and morals. The collection begins with a comprehensive introduction written by Honderich followed by fourteen original chapters separated into three sections. Each section concludes with a set of remarks by Honderich. Contributors include Noam Chomsky, Paul Snowdon, Alastair Hannay, Barbara Gail Montero, Barry Smith, Derk Pereboom, Paul Russell, Kevin Timpe, Gregg D. Caruso, Mary Warnock, Paul Gilbert, Richard J. Norman, Michael Neumann, and Saul Smilansky.

For a thing to be real, it must be able to communicate with other things. If this is so, then the problem of being receives a straightforward resolution: to be is to be in communion. So the fundamental science, indeed the science that needs to underwrite all other sciences, is a theory of communication. Within such a theory of communication the proper object of study becomes not isolated particles but the information that passes between entities. In Being as Communion philosopher and mathematician William Dembski provides a non-technical overview of his work on information. Dembski attempts to make good on the promise of John Wheeler, Paul Davies, and others that information is poised to replace matter as the primary stuff of reality. With profound implications for theology and metaphysics, Being as Communion develops a relational ontology that is at once congenial to science and open to teleology in nature. All those interested in the intersections of theology, philosophy and science should read this book.

The purpose of this work is to critically assess Errol E. Harris's process philosophy in the face of contemporary research in the special sciences. Harris devoted his life to grappling with the big questions concerning the relationships between nature, mind, and knowledge. His 70-plus year career was distinguished, his texts on the history of philosophy, philosophy of science, political philosophy, philosophy of religion, and consciousness were widely published, and yet his metaphysics has until now remained excluded from mainstream discussions. This book's contention is that Harris's work reveals as yet unnoticed connections between theories in numerous scientific disciplines ranging from psychology to cosmology and that an examination of certain theories within these disciplines may serve to strengthen his original arguments. This work maintains that the resulting metaphysics frames a transdisciplinary paradigm shift and provides a viable solution to the hard problem of consciousness.

The Metaphysics of Good and Evil is the first, full-length contemporary defence, from the perspective of analytic philosophy, of the Scholastic theory of good and evil - the theory of Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, and most medieval and Thomistic philosophers. Goodness is analysed as obedience to nature. Evil is analysed as the privation of goodness. Goodness, surprisingly, is found in the non-living world, but in the living world it takes on a special character. The book analyses various kinds of goodness, showing how they fit into the Scholastic theory. The privation theory of evil is given its most comprehensive contemporary defence, including an account of truthmakers for truths of privation and an analysis of how causation by privation should be understood. In the end, all evil is deviance - a departure from the goodness prescribed by a thing's essential nature. Key Features: Offers a comprehensive defence of a venerable metaphysical theory, conducted using the concepts and methods of analytic philosophy. Revives a much neglected approach to the question of good and evil in their most general nature. Shows how Aristotelian-Thomistic theory has more than historical relevance to a fundamental philosophical issue, but can be applied in a way that is both defensible and yet accessible to the modern philosopher. Provides what, for the Scholastic philosopher, is arguably the only solid metaphysical foundation for a separate treatment of the origins of morality.

This book explores the role of time in rational agency and practical reasoning. Agents are finite and often operate under severe time constraints. Action takes time and unfolds in time. While time is an ineliminable constituent of our experience of agency, it is both a theoretical and a practical problem to explain whether and how time shapes rational agency and practical thought. The essays in this book are divided into three parts. Part I is devoted to the temporal structure of action and agency, from metaphysical and metaethical perspectives. Part II features essays about the temporal structure of rational deliberation, from the perspective of action theory and theories of practical reasoning. Part III includes essays about the temporal aspects of failures of rationality. Taken together, the essays in this book shed new light on our understanding of the temporality of agency that coheres with our subjective sense of finitude and explains rational agency both in time and over time. Time in Action will be of interest to advanced students and researchers working on the philosophy of time, metaphysics of action, action theory, practical reasoning, ethical theory, moral psychology, and rational justification.

This volume, edited by Dorota Probucka, criticizes the modern approach to hunting by incorporating legal, ethical, cultural, social, theological, and linguistic perspectives into the analysis. The collection of articles contains thorough argumentation against hunting and determines social change strategies for eliminating it from cultural behavior patterns. It utilizes the expertise of Polish experts from many fields to describe and criticize the practice of hunting, illustrate its inhumane nature and unimaginable cruelty, and condemn the devastation of the natural environment that comes as a direct consequence of the actions of hunters. This volume argues that, unless dictated by biological need, hunting as a practice ought to be outlawed and culturally shunned, much like slavery.

Building from foundations of modern science and cosmic evolution, as well as psychological and philosophical perspectives of value and meaning, this book explores some of humanity's biggest questions: * Is the Universe "about something"? * What might be roles for life and intelligence in cosmic evolution? * How might we think about value, meaning, purpose, and ethics in a cosmic evolutionary context? The author explores how the sciences of relativity and quantum theory, combined with cosmic evolution and philosophical traditions such as process philosophy, contribute to the development of a broad "relationalist framework". That framework helps inform perspectives such as "scientific minimalism" and "cosmological theories of value". Cosmological Reverence, Cosmocultural Evolution, and the Connection-Action Principle are explored as examples of cosmological theories of value, all of which help inform how we might think about ethics, value, and meaning in a cosmic context - including application to the search for extraterrestrial life and the future of intelligence in the universe. This book will benefit a diverse range of practitioners in philosophy, science, and policy, including interdisciplinary fields such as Science and Society and cultural evolution studies. From the Foreword: "This volume ranges from the sciences of cosmic evolution, relativity, and quantum mechanics, to value theory and process philosophy, all with the goal of exploring how they relate to humanity in the sense of worldviews and meaning. With his three cosmological theories of value, Lupisella goes beyond the bounds of most books on naturalism, and into fundamental questions about the nature of the universe and our relation to it. To read Lupisella is to have a mind-boggling experience, to want to race to references, to want to know more." Steven J. Dick Former Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/ Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology Former NASA Chief Historian

In this little but profound volume, Robert Kane and Carolina Sartorio debate a perennial question: Do We Have Free Will? Kane introduces and defends libertarianism about free will: free will is incompatible with determinism; we are free; we are not determined. Sartorio introduces and defends compatibilism about free will: free will is compatible with determinism; we can be free even while our actions are determined through and through. Simplifying tricky terminology and complicated concepts for readers new to the debate, the authors also cover the latest developments on a controversial topic that gets us entangled in questions about blameworthiness and responsibility, coercion and control, and much more. Each author first presents their own side, and then they interact through two rounds of objections and replies. Pedagogical features include standard form arguments, section summaries, bolded key terms and principles, a glossary, and annotated reading lists. Short, lively and accessible, the debate showcases diverse and cutting-edge work on free will. As per Saul Smilansky's foreword, Kane and Sartorio, "present the readers with two things at once: an introduction to the traditional free will problem; and a demonstration of what a great yet very much alive and relevant philosophical problem is like." Key Features: Covers major concepts, views and arguments about free will in an engaging format Accessible style and pedagogical features for students and general readers Cutting-edge contributions by preeminent scholars on free will.

The present volume posits the themes of freedom, action, and motivation as the central principles that drive Spinoza's Ethics from its first part to its last. It assembles essays by internationally leading scholars who provide different, sometimes opposing interpretations of these fundamental themes as they operate across the five parts of the Ethics and within its manifold domains. The diversity of issues, approaches, and perspectives within this volume, along with the chapters' common focus, open up new ways of understanding not only some of the key concepts and main objectives in the Ethics but also the threads unifying the entire work. The sequence of essays in the book broadly follows the order of the Ethics, providing up-to-date perspectives of Spinoza's views on freedom, action, and motivation in their ontological, cognitive, physical, affective, and ethical facets. This enables readers to engage with a variety of new interpretations of these key themes of the Ethics and to reconsider their consequences both for other related issues in the Ethics and for the relevance of the Ethics to contemporary trends in philosophy of action and motivation. The essays will contribute to the growing interest in Spinoza's Ethics and spark further discussion and debate within and outside the vast body of scholarship on this important work. Freedom, Action, and Motivation in Spinoza's Ethics will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working on Spinoza and early modern philosophy, as well as on philosophy of action and motivation.

This book begins with a survey of various readings of Locke as a materialist, as a substance dualist, and as a property dualist, and demonstrates that these inconsistent interpretations result from a general failure of modern commentators to notice the significance of Locke's 'mind-body nominalism'. By illuminating this largely overlooked aspect of Locke's philosophy, this book reveals a common mistake of previous interpretations: that of treating what Locke conceives to be 'nominal' as real. The nominal symmetry that Locke posits between mind and body is distinct from any form of metaphysical dualism, whether substance dualism or property dualism. It is a brand of naturalism, but does not insist that the material is ontologically more basic than the mental or that the former determines the latter. On this view, the material and the mental both relate solely to a certain set of functional roles, rather than to an intrinsic property that plays these roles. The term 'matter' is thus rendered vague, and materialism is conceived as a precariously grounded ontological doctrine. Elaborating on this interpretation of Locke's Essay, this book examines the insightful readings of Locke developed by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century thinkers such as Richard Burthogge, William Carroll, and Joseph Priestley. This book also seeks to clarify what Locke's position would look like in a modern setting by noting some significant parallels with the ideas of leading contemporary philosophers such as Donald Davidson, David Lewis, and Colin McGinn.

What kind of experience might help to confirm and make sense of the puzzling belief in divine creation, so central to the main monotheistic religions? Anselm and Aquinas developed a philosophical understanding of 'Creation' as an asymmetrical relationship between the world and God, that is, that the world is really related to God in a relationship of total dependence but God is in no way really related to or modified by this created world. This idea of an asymmetrical relationship is the key concept unifying all aspects of this book which discusses the three main inter-related questions in a philosophical discussion about God -- the question of meaning, the question of existence, and the question of co-existence. The book explores various 'ciphers' of this asymmetrical relationship in our pre-philosophical lived experience. These are experiences such as that of the relationship between our knowledge and what we know, or our sense of obligation to our vulnerable neighbour. It argues that deciphering such experiences helps to make sense of the 'asymmetrical' relation of creation and that it in turn makes sense of them. Masterson argues further that this idea of asymmetrical relationship provides insight into the main questions of philosophy of religion and is an illuminating source of critical dialogue with contemporary Anglo/American and Phenomenological approaches in philosophy of religion.

Peter Sloterdijk is an internationally renowned philosopher and thinker whose work is now seen as increasingly relevant to our contemporary world situation and the multiple crises that punctuate it, including those within ethical, political, economic, technological, and ecological realms. This volume focuses upon one of his central ideas, anthropotechnics. Broadly speaking, anthropotechnics refers to the technological constitution of the human as its fundamental mode of existence, which is characterized by the ability to create dwelling places that 'immunize' human beings from exterior threats while at the same time instituting practices and exercises that call on humanity to transcend itself 'ascetically'. The essays included in this volume enter a critical dialogue with Sloterdijk and his many philosophical interlocutors in order to interrogate the many implications of anthropotechnics in relation to some of the most pressing issues of our time, including and especially the question of the future of humanity in relation to globalism and modernization, climate change, the post-secular, neoliberalism, and artificial intelligence. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Angelaki.

This book explores how Paul Tillich's systematic theology, focusing on the concepts of being and reason can benefit nonhuman animals, while also analysing how taking proper account of nonhuman animals can prove immensely beneficial. The author first explains the body of Tillich's system, examining reason and revelation, life and the spirit, and history and the kingdom of God. The second section undertakes a critical analysis of Tillichian concepts and their adequacy in relation to nonhuman animals, addressing topics such as Tillich's concept of 'technical reason' and the multidimensional unity of life. The author concludes by discussing the positive concepts in Tillich's systematic theology with respect to nonhuman animals and creation, including the concept of universal salvation and Tillich's interpretation of nonhuman animals and the Fall in Genesis.

This book is about the role of knowledge in information systems. Knowledge is usually articulated and exchanged through human language(s). In this sense, language can be seen as the most natural vehicle to convey our concepts, whose meanings are usually intermingled, grouped and organized according to shared criteria, from simple perceptions ( every tree has a stem ) and common sense ( unsupported objects fall ) to complex social conventions ( a tax is a fee charged by a government on a product, income, or activity ). But what is natural for a human being turns out to be extremely difficult for machines: machines need to be instilled with knowledge and suitably equipped with logical and statistical algorithms to reason over it. Computers can t represent the external world and communicate their representations as effectively as humans do: ontologies and NLP have been invented to face this problem: in particular, integrating ontologies with (possibly multi-lingual) computational lexical resources is an essential requirement to make human meanings understandable by machines. This book explores the advancements in this integration, from the most recent steps in building the necessary infrastructure, i.e. the Semantic Web, to the different knowledge contents that can be analyzed, encoded and transferred (multimedia, emotions, events, etc.) through it. The work aims at presenting the progress in the field of integrating ontologies and lexicons: together, they constitute the essential technology for adequately represent, elicit and exchange knowledge contents in information systems, web services, text processing and several other domains of application.

Strong collection on a perennial topic in philosophy Distinctive in bringing together three approaches to personal identity: metaphysical, phenomenological and social

First handbook on liberal naturalism Superb line up of international contributors, many of whom are leading names in the field Covers hot topics such as history of philosophical naturalism, key figures from Aristotle to Quine and contemporary issues such as ethical, metaphysical and epistemological naturalism

This book offers new ways of thinking about and assessing the impact of virtual reality on its users. It argues that we must go beyond traditional psychological concepts of VR "presence" to better understand the many varieties of virtual experiences. The author provides compelling evidence that VR simulations are capable of producing "virtually real" experiences in people. He also provides a framework for understanding when and how simulations induce virtually real experiences. From these insights, the book shows that virtually real experiences are responsible for several unaddressed ethical issues in VR research and design. Experimental philosophers, moral psychologists, and institutional review boards must become sensitive to the ethical issues involved between designing "realistic" virtual dilemmas, for good data collection, and avoiding virtually real trauma. Ethicists and game designers must do more to ensure that their simulations don't inculcate harmful character traits. Virtually real experiences, the author claims, can make virtual relationships meaningful, productive, and conducive to welfare but they can also be used to systematically mislead and manipulate users about the nature of their experiences. The Ethics of Virtual and Augmented Reality will appeal to philosophers working in applied ethics, philosophy of technology, and aesthetics, as well as researchers and students interested in game studies and game design.

This volume advances discussion between critics and defenders of the force-content distinction and opens up new ways of thinking about force and speech acts in relation to the unity problem. The force-content dichotomy has shaped the philosophy of language and mind since the time of Frege and Russell. Isn't it obvious that, for example, the clauses of a conditional are not asserted and must therefore be propositions and propositions the forceless contents of forceful acts? But, others have recently asked in response, how can a proposition be a truth value bearer if it is not unified through the forceful act of a subject that takes a position regarding how things are? Can we not instead think of propositions as being inherently forceful, but of force as being cancelled in certain contexts? And what do assertoric, but also directive and interrogative force indicators mean? Force, Content and the Unity of the Proposition will be of interest to researchers working in philosophy of language, philosophical logic, philosophy of mind and linguistics.

What does place mean for human beings? What does it mean to exist in space? How do we place ourselves not only in physical space, but within the interior landscape of consciousness? Place Meant is an interdisciplinary exploration of these and related questions, through the lenses of psychoanalysis, sociology, anthropology, geography, folklore, memoir, and the history of ideas. It will be of interest to anyone who has traveled the earth and pondered their relationship to home, away, and the world at large.

This book is the first detailed and focused defense of necessitarianism. The author's original account of necessitarianism encourages a reexamination of commonly held metaphysical positions as well as important issues in other, related areas of philosophy. Necessitarianism is the view that absolutely nothing about the world could have been otherwise in any way, whatsoever. Most philosophers believe that necessitarianism is just plain false and presume that some things could have been otherwise than what they are. In this book, the author argues that necessitarianism is true and the view that some things in the world are contingent-what the author terms contingentarianism-is false. The author assesses various theories of contingency, including the possible worlds theory, combinatorialism, and dispositionalism, and argues that no theory can successfully explain why an entity is such as it is rather than not. She then lays out a case for necessitarianism and provides responses to various objections. The book concludes with an explanation of the ways in which necessitarianism is relevant to issues in ethics, philosophy of mind, and social philosophy. A Case for Necessitarianism will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in metaphysics, logic, and philosophy of science.