A standard way to challenge convergence-based accounts of inductive success is to claim that they are too weak to constrain inductive inferences in the short run. We respond to such a challenge by answering some questions raised by Juhl (1994). When it comes to predicting limiting relative frequencies in the framework of Reichenbach, we show that speed-optimal convergence—a long-run success condition—induces dynamic coherence in the short run.

Many philosophers appeal to intuitions to support some philosophical views. However, there is reason to be concerned about this practice as scientific evidence has documented systematic bias in philosophically relevant intuitions as a function of seemingly irrelevant features (e.g., personality). One popular defense used to insulate philosophers from these concerns holds that philosophical expertise eliminates the influence of these extraneous factors. Here, we test this assumption. We present data suggesting that verifiable philosophical expertise in the free will debate-as measured by (...) a reliable and validated test of expert knowledge-does not eliminate the influence of one important extraneous feature (i.e., the heritable personality trait extraversion) on judgments concerning freedom and moral responsibility. These results suggest that, in at least some important cases, the expertise defense fails. Implications for the practice of philosophy, experimental philosophy, and applied ethics are discussed. (shrink)

By considering carefully Socrates' invocations of 'compulsion' in Plato's Republic, I seek to explain how both justice and compulsion are crucial to the philosophers' decision to rule in Kallipolis, so that this decision does not contradict Socrates' central thesis that it is always in one's interests to act justly. On my account, the compulsion is provided by a law, made by the city's lawgivers, that requires people raised to be philosophers take turns ruling. Justice by itself does not require the (...) philosophers to rule, but it does require them to obey just laws. I also consider the implications of this view for Plato's politics. (shrink)

Recently, Doolittle and Inkpen formulated a thought provoking theory, asserting that evolution by natural selection was responsible for the sideways evolution of two radically different kinds of selective units (also called Domains). The former entities, termed singers, correspond to the usual objects studied by evolutionary biologists (gene, genomes, individuals, species, etc.), whereas the later, termed songs, correspond to re‐produced biological and ecosystemic functions, processes, information, and memes. Singers perform songs through selected patterns of interactions, meaning that a wealth of critical (...) phenomena might receive novel evolutionary explanations. However, this theory did not provide an empirical approach to study evolution in such a broadened context. Here, we show that analyzing songs and singers, using patterns of interaction networks as a common ontology for both, offers a novel, actionable, inclusive and mathematical way to analyze not only the re‐production but also the evolution and fitness of biological and ecosystemic interconnected processes. (shrink)

In this article I will argue first that if ignorance poses a problem for valid consent in medical contexts then framing effects do too, and second that the problem posed by framing effects can be solved by eliminating those effects. My position is thus a mean between two mistaken extremes. At one mistaken extreme, framing effects are so trivial that they never impinge on the moral force of consent. This is as mistaken as thinking that ignorance is so trivial that (...) it never impinges on the moral force of consent. At the other mistaken extreme, framing effects are so serious that their existence shows that consent has no independent moral force. This is as mistaken as the idea that ignorance is so serious that its existence shows that consent has no independent moral force. I will argue that, instead of endorsing either of these mistaken extreme views, we should instead endorse a moderate view according to which framing effects sometimes pose a serious challenge for the validity of consent, just as ignorance does, but one which we can solve by eliminating the effect, just as we can solve the problem of ignorance by eliminating it. (shrink)

This paper presents and discusses a range of counterexamples to the common view that quantifiers cannot take scope over epistemic modals. Some of the counterexamples raise problems for ‘force modifier’ theories of epistemic modals. Some of the counterexamples raise problems for Robert Stalnaker’s theory of counterfactuals, according to which a special kind of epistemic modal must be able to scope over a whole counterfactual. Finally, some of the counterexamples suggest that David Lewis must countenance ‘would’ counterfactuals in which a covert (...) ‘would’ scopes over the whole consequent of the counterfactual, including an overt ‘might.’. (shrink)

To date, emotion research has primarily focused on the experience and display of the emoter. However, of equal, if not more, importance is how such displays impact and guide the behavior of an observer. We incorporate a functionalist framework of emotion to examine the development of differential responding to discrete emotion, theorize on what may facilitate its development, and hypothesize the functions that may underlie such behavioral responses. Although our review is focused primarily on development, the theoretical and methodological ideas (...) laid out are relevant for researchers of emotion at all ages. (shrink)

The U.S. Code of Federal Regulations governing federally funded research on human subjects assumes that harmful research is sometimes morally justifiable because the beneficiaries of that research share a particular vulnerability with its subjects. In this article, I argue against this assumption, which occurs in every subpart of the Code of Federal Regulations that deals with specific vulnerable populations . I argue that shared vulnerability is no exception to the general principle that harming one person in order to benefit another (...) is no more justifiable if the two people have traits in common. Further, shared vulnerability is not a reasonable proxy for any morally relevant desideratum of research, in particular the desire to benefit the worst off, the desire to avoid exploitation, and the desire to use vulnerable populations in research only when necessary. (shrink)

The main task for philosophers is introducing, clarifying, articulating, or simply redirecting concepts as—to echo Quine’s poetic formulation— “devices for working a manageable structure into the flux of experience.” I sometimes use “coining concepts” as shorthand for this task. When the concepts are quantitative they are part of a possible science ; when the concepts are qualitative they can be part of a possible philosophy. Of course, in practice, concepts are oft en stillborn, while others have multiple functions in fi (...) elds of inquiry that may straddle philosophy and science. In this chapter I argue that historians of philosophy must, among other things, coin concepts that disclose the near or distant past and create a shared horizon for our philosophical future. In virtue of our expertise we can often do so by drawing on previously orphaned concepts. The more narrow aim of this paper is to introduce two concepts, “Newton’s challenge to philosophy” and, especially, “philosophic prophecy,” that are suitable to philosophers who engage with texts in a scholarly fashion. I do so by re-telling the story of early analytical philosophy and its connection to the reception of Spinoza. By “Newton’s challenge to philosophy,” I mean the following: from about 1700 onward, “natural science” is increasingly taken to be authoritative in settling debates within philosophy; it is a concept that focuses attention on the authority of science and its various manifestations within philosophy. By “philosophic prophecy,” I mean the structured ways in which concept formation by philosophers can shape possible futures, including that of philosophy. In what follows, I first develop and characterize philosophic prophecy more precisely. In order to illuminate the concept, I contrast it with several related, more familiar concepts. Second, I offer brief critical comments on two alternative approaches to the history of philosophy promoted by Quentin Skinner and Michael Kremer in order to make more precise the approach favored here. Third, I offer a fresh narrative about the prehistory and origin of analytical philosophy. My story focuses on Ernest Nagel, who, I claim, is the philosophic prophet of analytical philosophy. Along the way, I explore the shared origins of analytical philosophy and analytical history of philosophy in the anti-Spinozistic writings of George Boole and Bertrand Russell. I oppose Nagel’s and Russell’s narratives in light of Moritz Schlick, the founder of the Vienna Circle. I adopt Schlick’s bold and unappreciated vision of the task of philosophy in scientific age. I focus on his identification of philosophical legislation with qualitative concepts. (shrink)

The orthodox reading of Sententia Vaticana (SV) 23 emends the sentence and attributes to Epicurus the view that every friendship is choiceworthy for its own sake. I argue that this reading should be rejected, because it singularly contradicts all our evidence about Epicurus' view, according to which only pleasure is choiceworthy for its own sake. I defend the manuscript reading, that every friendship is in itself a virtue, and I argue that anyone who rejects the manuscript reading should attribute the (...) emended sentence not to Epicurus but to one of his followers who altered the Epicurean account of the value of friendship in response to Academic criticism. (shrink)

A chronological approach that examines the progression of Levinas's deliberations on time over six decades, thus providing new insights about aspects of Levinasian thought that have consistently troubled readers, including the differences between Levinas's early and later writings, his controversial invocation of the feminine, and the blurry line between philosophy and religion in his work"--Provided by publisher.

The fundamental reason that the genetics of behavior has remained so controversial for so long is that the layer of theory between data and their interpretation is thicker and more opaque than in more established areas of science. The finding that variations in tiny snippets of DNA have small but detectable relations to variation in behavior surprises no one, at least no one who was paying attention to the twin studies. How such snippets of DNA are related to differences in (...) behavior—known as the gene‐to‐behavior pathway—is the great theoretical problem of modern behavioral genetics.Given that intentional human breeding is a horrific prospect, what kind of technology might we want (or fear) out of human behavioral genetics? One possibility is a technology that could predict important behavioral characteristics of humans based on their genomes alone. A moment's thought suggests significant benefits and risks that might be associated with such a possibility, but for the moment, just consider how convincing it would be if on the day of a baby's birth we could make meaningful predictions about whether he or she would become a concert pianist or an alcoholic. This article will consider where we are right now as regards that possibility, using human height and intelligence as the primary examples. (shrink)

Subsequent consent can be morally efficacious. First, it licenses nostalgia and dismissiveness no more than its prior cousin does. Second, it's coherent because linked to the mental state of not minding. Third, it's just as vulnerable to bilking as prior consent is, as is clear once we distinguish between basing moral assessments on expectations versus on actual outcomes. Fourth, mind control is illegitimate because it short circuits the subject's will, not because its consent is subsequent. Finally, our intuitions about rape (...) show that dissent sometimes outweighs consent in matters of sex, not that subsequent consent is always inefficacious. (shrink)

The mechanistic approach in philosophy of science contributes to our understanding of experimental design. Applying the mechanistic approach to experimentation in computing is beneficial for two reasons. It connects the methodology of experimentation in computing with the methodology of experimentation in established sciences, thereby strengthening the scientific reputability of computing and the quality of experimental design therein. Furthermore, it pinpoints the idiosyncrasies of experimentation in computing: computing deals closely with both natural and engineered mechanisms. Better understanding of the idiosyncrasies, which (...) manifest in terms of a nonstandard role for experimentation, are interesting both for computer scientists and for philosophers of science. Computer scientists can think more clearly about their experimental choices. The role of experimentation elucidated by computer science merits further study from philosophers of science generally, as it highlights a role for experimentation hitherto unrecognized by philosophers: demonstration that activities exist. (shrink)

Taking as the focus of enquiry the engagements of Félix Guattari with Marcel Duchamp, namely, those rare passages in Schizoanalytic Cartographies and Chaosmosis, the question of the encounter is posed in the field of the sign, but of a sign ‘destructured’ (as Duchamp du signe), in the sense also that Guattari started by destructuring Lacan (from Psychoanalysis and Transversality to Anti-Oedipus). Introduced by the relationships between Guattari and Foucault to better play in between the early and the late Guattari, Guattari’s (...) key insight into the Bottle Rack readymade as an existential function is critically discussed from a reopening to enunciation through the ‘Duchamp effect’. If the latter seems to privilege language contrary to Guattari’s own semiotics, it is to derail it as a machinic unconscious. Duchamp’s writings on his readymades and other machinations are analysed, with the role of Raymond Roussel for Duchamp (and Deleuze-Guattari via Foucault), as well as the implications of a trans-Duchamp, his alter-ego Rrose Sélavy, as an opening to a machinic alterity undoing and queering gender binarity and phallic centricity, recovering the singularity of the bachelor machine and its rupture of subjectivation. The article shows how it could be transversally returned to the very middle of the Guattarian trajectory. (shrink)

In this paper I interpret Newton’s speculative treatment of gravity as a relational, accidental property of matter that arises through what Newton calls “the shared action” of two bodies of matter. In doing so, I expand and extend on a hint by Howard Stein. However, in developing the details of my interpretation I end up disagreeing with Stein’s claim that for Newton a single body can generate a gravity/force field. I argue that when Newton drafted the first edition of the (...) Principia in the mid 1680s, he thought that (at least a part of) the cause of gravity is the disposition inherent in any individual body, but that the force of gravity is the actualization of that disposition; a necessary condition for the actualization of the disposition is the actual obtaining of a relation between two bodies having the disposition. The cause of gravity is not essential to matter because God could have created matter without that disposition. Nevertheless, at least a part of the cause of gravity inheres in individual bodies and were there one body in the universe it would inhere in that body. On the other hand, the force of gravity is neither essential to matter nor inherent in matter, because (to repeat) it is the actualization of a shared disposition. A lone part-less particle would, thus, not generate a gravity field. Seeing this allows us to helpfully distinguish among a) accepting gravity as causally real; b) the cause(s) (e.g. the qualities of matter) of the properties of gravity; c) making claims about the mechanism or medium by which gravity is transmitted. This will help clarify what Newton could have meant when he insisted that gravity is a real force. I present my argument in opposition to Andrew Janiak’s influential and fine 2007 paper. Along the way, I call attention to my disagreement with Janiak on a number of secondary issues (e.g. Janiak’s attribution to Newton of a distinction between ‘local’ and ‘distant’ action; Janiak’s reading of the “Letter to Bentley,” etc). (shrink)

An integrated representation of large‐scale space, or cognitive map, colled PLAN, is presented that attempts to address a broader spectrum of issues than has been previously attempted in a single model. Rather than examining way‐finding as a process separate from the rest of cognition, one or the fundamental goals of this work is to examine how the wayfinding process is integrated into general cognition. One result of this approach is that the model is “heads‐up,” or scene‐based, because it takes advantage (...) of the properties of the human visual system and, particularly, the visual system's split into two pathways. The emphasis on the human location or “where” system is new to cognitive mapping and is port of an attempt to synthesize prototype theory, associative networks and location together in a connectionist system. Not all of PLAN is new, however. Many of its parts have analogues in one or another preexisting theory. What makes PLAN unique is integrating the various components into a coherent whole, and the capacity of this resulting system to speak to a wide range of constraints. Our approach emphasizes adaptiveness; thus, our focus on such issues as ease of use and efficiency of learning. The result is a model that has a stronger relationship both to the environment, and to the ways that humans interact with it, compared with previous models. The resulting model is examined in some detail and compared to other systems. (shrink)

Can we use technology in the pursuit of a good life, or are we doomed to having our lives organized and our priorities set by the demands of machines and systems? How can philosophy help us to make technology a servant rather than a master? Technology and the Good Life? uses a careful collective analysis of Albert Borgmann's controversial and influential ideas as a jumping-off point from which to address questions such as these about the role and significance of technology (...) in our lives. Contributors both sympathetic and critical examine Borgmann's work, especially his "device paradigm" apply his theories to new areas such as film, agriculture, design, and ecological restoration and consider the place of his thought within philosophy and technology studies more generally. Because this collection carefully investigates the issues at the heart of how we can take charge of life with technology, it will be a landmark work not just for philosophers of technology but for students and scholars in the many disciplines concerned with science and technology studies. (shrink)

Several approaches to implementing symbol-like representations in neurally plausible models have been proposed. These approaches include binding through synchrony, “mesh” binding, and conjunctive binding. Recent theoretical work has suggested that most of these methods will not scale well, that is, that they cannot encode structured representations using any of the tens of thousands of terms in the adult lexicon without making implausible resource assumptions. Here, we empirically demonstrate that the biologically plausible structured representations employed in the Semantic Pointer Architecture approach (...) to modeling cognition do scale appropriately. Specifically, we construct a spiking neural network of about 2.5 million neurons that employs semantic pointers to successfully encode and decode the main lexical relations in WordNet, which has over 100,000 terms. In addition, we show that the same representations can be employed to construct recursively structured sentences consisting of arbitrary WordNet concepts, while preserving the original lexical structure. We argue that these results suggest that semantic pointers are uniquely well-suited to providing a biologically plausible account of the structured representations that underwrite human cognition. (shrink)

Un examen de la division quasi officielle du monde philosophique en deux blocs : phénoménologique et analytique. Bilan de ses prolongements en France ces vingt dernières années.

Kai Wehmeier’s Wittgensteinian Predicate Logic is a formulation of first-order logic under the exclusive interpretation of the quantifiers. W-logic has a distinguished relation constant for co-reference but no sign for objectual identity. Wehmeier denies that objectual identity exists on the grounds that it cannot be a genuine binary relation. Fortunately W-logic is equi-expressive with standard first-order logic with identity and it appears that objectual identity is dispensable across the broader logical enterprise. This paper challenges the latter claim as objectual identity (...) seems to be needed in the exclusive interpretation of quantified modal logic, specifically, for implementing certain kinds of de re quantification. (shrink)

Armed reprisals are the limited use of military force in response to unlawful actions perpetrated against states. Historically, reprisals provided a military remedy for states that had been wronged by another state without having to resort to all-out war in order to counter or deter such wrongful actions. While reprisals are broadly believed to have been outlawed by the UN Charter, states continue to routinely undertake such self-help measures. As part of the roundtable, “The Ethics of Limited Strikes,” this essay (...) examines the doctrine of armed reprisals in light of recent instances of states using force “short of war” in this manner. We argue that the ban on reprisals has been largely ignored by states, and that recent attempts to apply the laws of armed conflict to the cyber domain are further weakening this prohibition. We conclude that this is a potentially dangerous development that lowers the bar for resorting to military force, risking escalation and thereby further destabilizing the international system. (shrink)

In 1987, George Soros introduced his concepts of reflexivity and fallibility and has further developed and applied these concepts over subsequent decades. This paper attempts to build on Soros's framework, provide his concepts with a more precise definition, and put them in the context of recent thinking on complex adaptive systems. The paper proposes that systems can be classified along a ‘spectrum of complexity’ and that under specific conditions not only social systems but also natural and artificial systems can be (...) considered ‘complex reflexive.’ The epistemological challenges associated with scientifically understanding a phenomenon stem not from whether its domain is social, natural, or artificial, but where it falls along this spectrum. Reflexive systems present particular challenges; however, evolutionary model-dependent realism provides a bridge between Soros and Popper and a potential path forward for economics. (shrink)

The factors which have brought society to its present pass and impasse contain forces which, when released and constructively utilized, form the positive basis of an educational philosophy and practice that will recover and will develop our original national ideals. The basic principle in that philosophy and practice is that we should use that method of experimental action called natural science to form a disposition which puts a supreme faith in the experimental use of intelligence in all situations of life.In (...) the past, ethical theories have been presented as self-sufficient and holistic. Philosophers have historically been either deontologists, consequentialists, virtue ethicists, divine command theorists, or .. (shrink)

The importance of _naturalization_—the establishment of species introduced into foreign places—to the early development of Darwin’s theory of evolution deserves historical attention. Introduced and invasive European species presented Darwin with interpretive challenges during his service as naturalist on the HMS _Beagle_. Species naturalization and invasive species strained the geologist Charles Lyell’s creationist view of the organic world, a view which Darwin adopted during the voyage of the _Beagle_ but came to question afterward. I suggest that these phenomena primed Darwin to (...) question the “stability of species.” I then examine the role of introduced and invasive species in Darwin’s early theorizing and negotiation with Lyell’s ideas, recorded in his post-voyage “transmutation notebooks.” Therein, the subject was an inflection point in his contention with Lyell’s views and moreover, his theorizing on invasive species occasioned some of his earliest inklings of natural selection. Finally, I examine how naturalization was crucial to Lyell’s own eventual conversion to evolutionism. I conclude with brief reflections on the implications of this narrative for our understanding of Darwin’s reasoning, his intellectual relationship to Lyell, and the historical context that shaped his theory. (shrink)

Territory and population, migration, division of territories and their globalised populations… Re-presenting in this paper Wars and Capital (written with Maurizio Lazzarato, first published 2016), we’ll argue that Deleuze and Guattari’s view on this complex of relations must be reconstructed from their understanding of war’s constitutive relationship with capitalism by taking up the confrontation with Clausewitz to reverse the famous formula that war is/is only the continuation of politics by other means. Except that, as with Foucault, albeit differently, it is (...) not so much a question of reversal but an interweaving of war in politics and politics in war that adopts the movements of capitalism in the twentieth century’s world economy. Politics is not, as in Clausewitz, the politics of the state but the war machine of the financialised economy interwoven in the multiplicity of wars that move and hold together the war of destruction in action with wars of class, race and sex under the auspices of a ‘war amongst the people’ that provide the fractal environment of all the others when war and peace become indistinguishable in a neoliberalism of combat. A transversal and global civil war that is also a war of subjectivity fractures all territories in the North(s) and South(s) since internal and external colonisations are no longer distributed only geographically. As proof, if needed, more than forty years after the publication of A Thousand Plateaus – it is not enough to state that micropolitics has to pass into macropolitics to transform it: both micro- and macropolitics have to be part of the multiplicity of wars that take place, without which both micro- and macropolitics collapse in the ‘becoming-minor’ of the ‘missing people’. (shrink)

t. 1. Récits de la conquête du temps -- t. 2. La capitale du temps. 1. L'état des choses.

"The problem with you, Dewey, is that you think philosophy is done with the hands rather than with the eyes.""Thank you for the compliment."1A child's curious hand: like the budding of a plant seeking nourishment from sun and soil, the hand expresses into the world so that it may give, receive, and reproduce itself: the newborn grasping for mama's breast or papa's nose, instinctually squeezing a finger that may be placed in its palm; the toddler negotiating the traumatic development of (...) its identity by seizing toys and declaring "Mine!"; the painful learning that fire is hot through the necessary experience of placing fingers in flame despite previous verbal warnings; holding hands with grandpa while crossing the .. (shrink)

In the 1680s, Gottfried Leibniz and Antoine Arnauld engaged in a philosophically rich correspondence. One issue they discuss is modal metaphysics – questions concerning necessity, possibility, and essence. While Arnauld's contributions to the correspondence are considered generally astute, his contributions on this issue have not always received a warm treatment. I argue that Arnauld's criticisms of Leibniz are sophisticated and that Arnauld offers his own Cartesian account in its place. In particular, I argue that Arnauld offers an account of possibility (...) that is actualist, modal actualist and essence-based. (shrink)

This discussion paper critically assesses the American Nurses Association’s stated arguments against nurse participation in assisted suicide, as found in its current (2013) position statement. Seven distinct arguments can be gleaned from the American Nurses Association’s statement, based on (1) the American Nurses Association’s Code of Ethics with Interpretive Statements and its injunction against nurses acting with the sole intent to end life, (2) the risks of abuse and misuse of assisted suicide, (3) nursing’s social contract or covenant with society, (...) (4) the contention that nurses must not harm their patients, (5) the sanctity of life, (6) the traditions of nursing, and (7) the fundamental goals of nursing. Each of these arguments is evaluated, and none are found to be convincing. This is crucial because the American Nurses Association’s official stance on nurse participation in assisted suicide can have significant consequences for the well-being of nurses who care for patients in jurisdictions in which assisted suicide is legally available. The American Nurses Association should therefore have a strong and convincing justification for opposing the practice, if it is to take such a position. That it fails to evince such a justification in its official statement on the matter places a burden on the American Nurses Association to more strongly justify its position, or else abandon its stance against nurse participation in assisted suicide. (shrink)

This paper distinguishes two conceptions of representation at work in the philosophical literature. On the first, "contentive" conception (found, for example, in Searle and Fodor), something is a representation, roughly, if it has "propositional content". On the second, "indicative" conception (found, for example, in Dretske), representations must not only have content but also have the function of indicating something about the world. Desire is representational on the first view but not on the second. This paper argues that philosophers and psychologists (...) have sometimes conflated these two conceptions, and it examines the consequences of this conflation for the developmental literature on the child's understanding of mind. Specifically, recent research by Gopnik and Perner on the child's understanding of desire is motivated by an argument that equivocates between the two conceptions of representation. Finally, the paper suggests that an examination of when the child understands the possibility of misrepresentation in art would be helpful in charting the child's understanding of indicative representation. (shrink)

This article first summarizes research regarding the relationship between sports that intentionally structure multiple types of brain trauma into their practice, such as rugby and boxing, and the range of negative health outcomes that flow from participation in such sports. The resultant brain injuries are described as ‘now’ and ‘later’ diseases, being those that affect the child immediately and then across their lifetime. After highlighting how these sports can permanently injure children, it examines this harm in relation to existing British (...) laws and policies concerning child abuse. The conclusion drawn is that neither children nor adults on their behalf are legally able to give informed consent for participation, and that impact sport organisations effectively groom children into sustaining and accepting brain trauma. Adults providing brain-traumatizing versions of these sports are thus described as being complicit in a form of child abuse that we term brain abuse. The contradictions in existing sports policy are highlighted, where policy describes that children are to be protected from harm, and yet the very practice of such sports creates harm by design. Implications of the argument are that children should be prohibited from partaking in impact sports. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this article, the author take cues from Gilles Deleuze’s later works, specifically What Is Philosophy?, reading his and Félix Guattari’s concept of infinite speed through a Spinozist lens. The argument is twofold. First, the author demonstrates that the concept of infinite speed serves as an indispensable condition of possibility for Deleuzian epistemology as a whole. He does so by situating the function of infinite speed in Deleuze’s work alongside the function of eternity in Spinoza’s work, arguing that the (...) former picks up where the latter leaves off—that is, by serving as an epistemological ground. Thus, second, the author argues that despite Deleuze’s critique of and departure from key aspects of Spinozist thought—namely, the category of eternity and desirability of substance metaphysics—the notion of infinite speed, alongside other terms, allows one to read Deleuzian philosophy as a continuation of, rather than a significant departure from, Spinozist thought. Thus, by demonstrating the precise role that infinite speed plays in Deleuze’s later work, the author both illuminates the metaphysical axiom that grounds Deleuzian epistemology and, via this illumination, shows how that epistemology is consistent with and adherent to specific Spinozist philosophical commitments. (shrink)