Anaximander, the sixth century BCE philosopher of Miletus, is often credited as being the instigator of both science and philosophy. The first recorded philosopher to posit the idea of the boundless cosmos, he was also the first to attempt to explain the origins of the world and humankind in rational terms. Anaximander's philosophy encompasses theories of justice, cosmogony, geometry, cosmology, zoology and meteorology. "Anaximander: A Re-assessment" draws together these wide-ranging threads into a single, coherent picture of the man, his worldview and his legacy to the history of thought. Arguing that Anaximander's statements are both apodeictic and based on observation of the world around him, Andrew Gregory examines how Anaximander's theories can all be construed in such a way that they are consistent with and supportive of each other. This includes the tenet that the philosophical elements of Anaximander's thought (his account of the" apeiron," the extant fragment) can be harmonised to support his views on the natural world. The work further explores how these theories relate to early Greek thought and in particular conceptions of theogony and meterology in Hesiod and Homer.

This book provides cross-cultural ethical exploration of sex robots and their social impact. What are the implications of sex robots and related technological innovations for society and culture? How should we evaluate the significance of sexual relations with robots that look like women, men or children? Critics argue that sex robots present a clear risk to real persons and a social degradation that will increase sexual violence, objectify women, encourage pedophilia, reinforce negative body images, increase forms of sexual dysfunction, and pass on sexually transmitted disease. Proponents judge robotic sexual companionship as just another step in the exploration of human desire. They see sex robots, and similar technology, such as virtual reality pornography, as providing autonomy affirming companionship for the lonely and a relatively harmless outlet for sexual fantasies that avoids the use of human prostitutes and thus reduces sexual victimization. Some appreciate sex robots as a social evil, others as a positive good, and still others as a harmless pastime. How we come to terms with such conceptual and moral concerns will have significant implications for society and the future of human relations. This book is of great interest to researchers in bioethics, human sexual behavior, AI ethics, and philosophy of sex.

The essays in this volume provide a state-of-the-art overview of the central elements of Hobbes's political philosophy and the ways in which they can be interpreted. The volume's contributors offer their own interpretations of Hobbes's philosophical method, his materialism, his psychological theory and moral theory, and his views on benevolence, law and civil liberties, religion, and women. Hobbes's ideas of authorization and representation, his use of the 'state of nature', and his reply to the unjust 'Foole' are also critically analyzed. The essays will help readers to orient themselves in the complex scholarly literature while also offering groundbreaking arguments and innovative interpretations. The volume as a whole will facilitate new insights into Hobbes's political theory, enabling readers to consider key elements of his thought from multiple perspectives and to select and combine them to form their own interpretations of his political philosophy.

Context and the Attitudes collects thirteen seminal essays by Mark Richard on semantics and propositional attitudes. These essays develop a nuanced account of the semantics and pragmatics of our talk about such attitudes, an account on which in saying what someone thinks, we offer our words as a 'translation' or representation of the way the target of our talk represents the world. A broad range of topics in philosophical semantics and the philosophy of mind are discussed in detail, including: contextual sensitivity; pretense and semantics; negative existentials; fictional discourse; the nature of quantification; the role of Fregean sense in semantics; 'direct reference' semantics; de re belief and the contingent a priori; belief de se; intensional transitives; the cognitive role of tense; and the prospects for giving a semantics for the attitudes without recourse to properties or possible worlds. Richard's extensive, newly written introduction gives an overview of the essays. The introduction also discusses attitudes realized by dispositions and other non-linguistic cognitive structures, as well as the debate between those who think that mental and linguistic content is structured like the sentences that express it, and those who see content as essentially unstructured.

This book comments on growing authoritarianism in democracy and suggests how it ought to be instead. It asks if some degree of authoritarianism is the need of the hour to address potentially existential issues facing the human race. Readers are encouraged to analyse the state of democracy in their own countries and verify if it meets their expectations, or if it is just a myth or an imposter, or a necessary but imperfect compulsion in the absence of a perfect alternative. The book presents a commentary on the state of democracy in some of the world's leading democracies. It aims to challenge the human mind, which seems to be getting accustomed to not having to think, thanks to a constant bombardment of information-real and fake and in-between-that it receives through social and print media, which is freely accessible through smartphone to which it has become addicted. It discusses how the drivers of capitalism - through their business-like connections with powerful and influential politicians and celebrities-could be cleverly manipulating the gullible human mind and exploiting the system to their own material benefit.

Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics is an annual forum for new work in normative ethical theory. Leading philosophers present original contributions to our understanding of a wide range of moral issues and positions, from analysis of competing approaches to normative ethics (including moral realism, constructivism, and expressivism) to questions of how we should act and live well. OSNE will be an essential resource for scholars and students working in moral philosophy.

Georges Bataille's influence upon 20th-century philosophy is hard to overstate. His writing has transfixed his readers for decades - exerting a powerful influence upon Foucault, Blanchot and Derrida amongst many others. Today, Bataille continues to be an important reference for many of today's leading theorists such as Giorgio Agamben, Roberto Esposito, Jean-Luc Nancy and Adrianna Caverero. His work is a unique and enigmatic combination of mystical phenomenology, politics, anthropology and economic theory - sometimes adopting the form of literature, sometimes that of ontology. This is the first book to take Bataille's ambitious and unfinished Accursed Share project as its thematic guide, with individual contributors isolating themes, concepts or sections from within the three volumes and taking them in different directions. Therefore, as well as providing readings of Bataille's key concepts, such as animality, sovereignty, catastrophe and the sacred, this collection aims to explore new terrain and new theoretical problems.Georges Bataille and Contemporary Thought acts simultaneously as a companion to Bataille's three-volume secular theodicy and as a laboratory for new syntheses within his thought.

Taking seriously Jacques Lacan's claim that 'the unconscious is politics', this volume proposes a new understanding of political power, interrogating the assumption that contemporary capitalism functions by tapping into forms of unconscious enjoyment, rather than providing transcendental conditions for the articulation of political meanings and desires. Whether we're aware of it or not, political communication today targets the audience's libidinal response through political and institutional language: in policies, speeches, tweets, social media appearances, gestures and images. Yet does this mean that current power structures no longer need symbolic or ideological frameworks? The authors in this volume think not. Far from demonstrating a shift to a post-ideological age, they argue instead that such methods inaugurate an altogether novel approach to political power. Written by leading scholars from around the world, including Roberto Esposito and Slavoj Zizek, each chapter reflects on contemporary power and inspires consideration of new political potentialities, which our focus on politics in transcendental rather than immanent terms has thus far obscured. In so doing, Capitalism and the New Political Unconscious provides an original and forceful exploration of the centrality of both psychoanalytic theory and the philosophy of immanence to an alternative understanding of the political.

Speculative realism is one of the most talked-about movements in recent Continental philosophy. It has been discussed widely amongst the younger generation of Continental philosophers seeking new philosophical approaches and promises to form the cornerstone of future debates in the field. This book introduces the contexts out of which speculative realism has emerged and provides an overview of the major contributors and latest developments. It guides the reader through the important questions asked by realism (what can I know? what is reality?), examining philosophy's perennial questions in new ways. The book begins with the speculative realist's critique of 'correlationism', the view that we can never reach what is real beneath our language systems, our means for perception, or our finite manner of being-in-the-world. It goes on to critically review the work of the movement's most important thinkers, including Quentin Meillassoux, Ray Brassier, and Graham Harman, but also other important writers such as Jane Bennett and Catherine Malabou whose writings delineate alternative approaches to the real. It interrogates the crucial questions these thinkers have raised and concludes with a look toward the future of speculative realism, especially as it relates to the reality of time.

This book focuses on logic and logical language. It examines different types of words, terms and propositions in detail. While discussing the nature of propositions, it illustrates the procedures used to determine the truth and falsity of a proposition, and the validity and invalidity of an argument. In addition, the book provides a clear exposition of the pure and mixed form of syllogism with suitable examples. The book encompasses sentential logic, predicate logic, symbolic logic, induction and set theory topics. The book is designed to serve all those involved in teaching and learning courses on logic. It offers a valuable resource for students and researchers in philosophy, mathematics and computer science disciplines. Given its scope, it is an essential read for everyone interested in logic, language, formulation of the hypotheses for the scientific enquiries and research studies, and judging valid and invalid arguments in the natural language discourse.

In this comprehensive assessment of Kant's metaethics, Frederick Rauscher shows that Kant is a moral idealist rather than a moral realist and argues that Kant's ethics does not require metaphysical commitments that go beyond nature. Rauscher frames the argument in the context of Kant's non-naturalistic philosophical method and the character of practical reason as action-oriented. Reason operates entirely within nature, and apparently non-natural claims - God, free choice, and value - are shown to be heuristic and to reflect reason's ordering of nature. The book shows how Kant hesitates between a transcendental moral idealism with an empirical moral realism and a complete moral idealism. Examining every aspect of Kant's ethics, from the categorical imperative to freedom and value, this volume argues that Kant's focus on human moral agency explains morality as a part of nature. It will appeal to academic researchers and advanced students of Kant, German idealism and intellectual history.