An edition of the letters of Erasmus, regarded as one of the greatest humanist writers. All 12 volumes of this work have been reissued, complete with their scholarly apparatus of commentary and notes, as well as plates.

John Evelyn (1620-1706) is best remembered for Sylva - his magnum opus - and his Diary . Alongside Pepys' diary, Evelyn's is as well known now as anything else written in their time. A connoisseur of architecture, painting, music, coins, and sermons, Evelyn was renowned for his practical knowledge on horticulture and arboriculture, and he was one of the original Fellows of the Royal Society. His Diary begins with an account of his early life and travels in (...) Europe. In addition to his own jottings of events, Evelyn drew on contemporary newspapers and pamphlets. (shrink)

A translation of a dialogue between Evelyne Grossman and Jacob Rogozinski on Artaud, Deleuze, and the status of the ego.

The essays included here represent Fox Keller's attempts to integrate the insights of feminist theory with those of her contemporaries in the history and philosophy of science.

The recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI), particularly in light of the impressive capabilities of transformer-based Large Language Models (LLMs), have reignited the discussion in cognitive science regarding whether computational devices could possess semantic understanding or whether they are merely mimicking human intelligence. Recent research has highlighted limitations in LLMs’ reasoning, suggesting that the gap between mere symbol manipulation (syntax) and deeper understanding (semantics) remains wide open. While LLMs overcome certain aspects of the symbol grounding problem through human feedback, they (...) still lack true semantic understanding, struggling with common-sense reasoning and abstract thinking. This paper argues that while adding sensory inputs and embodying AI through sensorimotor integration with the environment might enhance its ability to connect symbols to real-world meaning, this alone would not close the gap between syntax and semantics. True meaning-making also requires a connection to subjective experience, which current AI lacks. The path to AGI must address the fundamental relationship between symbol manipulation, data processing, pattern matching, and probabilistic best guesses with true knowledge that requires conscious experience. A transition from AI to AGI can occur only if it possesses conscious experience, which is closely tied to semantic understanding. Recognition of this connection could furnish new philosophical insights into longstanding practical and philosophical questions for theories in biology and cognitive science and provide more meaningful tests of intelligence than the Turing test. (shrink)

"-Barbara Ehrenreich, Mother Jones "This book represents the expression of a particular feminist perspective made all the more compelling by Keller's evident commitment to and understanding of science.

The paper delves into the nature and origin of ideas, words, meanings, and language from the perspective of Indian mystics and philosophers Abhinavagupta and Sri Aurobindo. We begin with the Eastern viewpoint, commencing with the Vedic interpretation, in which the origin of all speech lies in the transcendent sound, known as the ‘Word’. Abhinavagupta delineates the genesis of words as a four-level process within consciousness, where mystic sounds gradually acquire concreteness in the form of human language. Sri Aurobindo extends this (...) insight by recognizing that all words stem from mind-impressions elicited by seed-sounds bearing psychological qualities. Moreover, according to Sri Aurobindo, the universe and its natural phenomena represent the expression of a creative transcendental Real-Idea, which serves as the foundation for all meanings, signs, words, and human language and Nature itself. Language, therefore, becomes an instrument for the expression of divine consciousness in manifestation. This comprehensive perspective transcends the confines of language philosophy, expanding into a universal spiritual outlook. Finally, it is shown how the integration of Western and Eastern philosophies reconciles many apparent inconsistencies within modern philosophy and science (especially in the philosophy of language, cognitive sciences, neuroscience, and AI.) This integral perspective surpasses a naturalistic viewpoint, providing a synthetic framework that unifies the diverse East-West philosophical positions. (shrink)

The “consequence argument”, together with the “luck objection”, which are summed up by the “standard argument against free will”, state that if our volition were dependent on physical causally indeterministic processes, our actions would lack control and, thereby, result in random behavior that would be a mere matter of luck and chance. In particular, quantum indeterminacy is supposed to be of no use in support of libertarian agent-causation theories because any volitional act interfering with the probability distributions de fining quantum (...) laws would lead to its violation. Building upon recent conjectural work questioning this assumption (Clarke 2010, Kastner 2016, Masi 2023), it is shown, with a concrete example involving quantum indeterminacy, how a hypothetical agent with access to the temporal ordering of events can pre-determine the result of a process taking place in time without modifying the probability laws defining it. This conclusion is then taken as a basis for a libertarian panpsychist interpretative model. (shrink)

A view that emancipates free will by means of quantum indeterminism is frequently rejected based on arguments pointing out its incompatibility with what we know about quantum physics. However, if one carefully examines what classical physical causal determinism and quantum indeterminism are according to physics, it becomes clear what they really imply–and, especially, what they do not imply–for agent-causation theories. Here, we will make necessary conceptual clarifications on some aspects of physical determinism and indeterminism, review some of the major objections (...) against libertarian conjectures, and show that there is no conceptual incompatibility preventing us from taking a ‘quantum-libertarian’ approach to the problem of free will. In particular, we will illustrate the possible role of self-causation (causa sui) as a potential solution to otherwise apparently incompatible or even paradoxical statements concerning free will and quantum indeterminism. (shrink)

In this powerful critique, the esteemed historian and philosopher of science Evelyn Fox Keller addresses the nature-nurture debates, including the persistent disputes regarding the roles played by genes and the environment in determining individual traits and behavior. Keller is interested in both how an oppositional “versus” came to be inserted between nature and nurture, and how the distinction on which that opposition depends, the idea that nature and nurture are separable, came to be taken for granted. How, she asks, (...) did the illusion of a space between nature and nurture become entrenched in our thinking, and why is it so tenacious? Keller reveals that the assumption that the influences of nature and nurture can be separated is neither timeless nor universal, but rather a notion that emerged in Anglo-American culture in the late nineteenth century. She shows that the seemingly clear-cut nature-nurture debate is riddled with incoherence. It encompasses many disparate questions knitted together into an indissoluble tangle, and it is marked by a chronic ambiguity in language. There is little consensus about the meanings of terms such as nature, nurture, gene, and environment. Keller suggests that contemporary genetics can provide a more appropriate, precise, and useful vocabulary, one that might help put an end to the confusion surrounding the nature-nurture controversy. (shrink)

Business Ethics, the Environment &Responsibility, Volume 31, Issue 4, Page 981-998, October 2022.

Much has been written about data politics in the last decade, which has generated myriad concepts such as ‘surveillance capitalism’, ‘gig economy’, ‘quantified self’, ‘algorithmic governmentality’, ‘data colonialism’, ‘data subjects’ and ‘digital citizens’. Yet, it has been difficult to plot these concepts into an historical series to discern specific continuities and discontinuities since the origins of modern power in its three major forms: sovereign, disciplinary and regulatory. This article argues that the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 brought these three forms of (...) power into sharp relief but made particularly visible a fourth form of power that we name ‘sensory power’, which has been emerging since the 1980s. The article draws on early studies of power by Michel Foucault, subsequent studies on biopower and biopolitics that expanded on them, and studies in the past decade that focused on data produced from apps, devices and platforms. Yet, despite its ambition, the article is inevitably an outline of a much larger project. (shrink)

In the contemporary philosophy of mind and consciousness studies, views such as panpsychism or theories of universal consciousness, have enjoyed a recent renaissance of metaphysical speculations in Western philosophy. Its similarities with Eastern philosophical traditions went not unnoticed. However, the potential contribution that the evolutionary cosmology of the Indian poet, mystic and philosopher Sri Aurobindo can offer to these ontologies, remains largely unknown or unexplored. Here, consciousness, mind, life, matter and evolution are interpreted in an extended metaphysical framework, uniting Western (...) and Eastern traditions inside a modern philosophical system where materialism, panpsychism, cosmopsychism and philosophical idealism are not seen as irreconcilable exclusives, but different points of view that can be reconciled in a synthesis of knowledge, as envisioned from higher states of consciousness. This integral view of reality offers a conceptual platform that can complement and incorporate current theoretical approaches in modern philosophy, where their present internal inconsistencies do not emerge, and can be suggestive for scientists as well, especially in the fields of biology and physical sciences. (shrink)

In the philosophy of mind, neuroscience, and psychology, the causal relationship between phenomenal consciousness, mentation, and brain states has always been a matter of debate. On the one hand, material monism posits consciousness and mind as pure brain epiphenomena. One of its most stringent lines of reasoning relies on a ‘loss-of-function lesion premise,’ according to which, since brain lesions and neurochemical modifications lead to cognitive impairment and/or altered states of consciousness, there is no reason to doubt the mind-brain identity. On (...) the other hand, dualism or idealism (in one form or another) regard consciousness and mind as something other than the sole product of cerebral activity pointing at the ineffable, undefinable, and seemingly unphysical nature of our subjective qualitative experiences and its related mental dimension. Here, several neuroscientific findings are reviewed that question the idea that posits phenomenal experience as an emergent property of brain activity, and argue that the premise of material monism is based on a logical correlation-causation fallacy. While these (mostly ignored) findings, if considered separately from each other, could, in principle, be recast into a physicalist paradigm, once viewed from an integral perspective, they substantiate equally well an ontology that posits mind and consciousness as a primal phenomenon. (shrink)

What do biologists want? If, unlike their counterparts in physics, biologists are generally wary of a grand, overarching theory, at what kinds of explanation do biologists aim? A history of the diverse and changing nature of biological explanation in a particularly charged field, "Making Sense of Life" draws our attention to the temporal, disciplinary, and cultural components of what biologists mean, and what they understand, when they propose to explain life.

Assistive technology has great potential to contribute to health, functioning, and quality of life. To date, as exemplified in the Canadian context, variations and inequities in access to assistive technology are evident; the development of legislation, policies, and programs has not kept up with the increasing use of assistive technology. In this article, we apply ;Daniels’s (2008) theory of just health to argue that equitable access to assistive technology funding and services is necessary for justice. In doing so, we offer (...) theoretical guidance for the development of legislation, policies, and programs to guide such access in health and social services. (shrink)

Two decades of critique have sensitized historians and philosophers of science to the inadequacies of conventional dichotomies between theory and practice, thereby prompting the search for new ways of writing about science that are less beholden than the old ways to the epistemological mores of theoretical physics, and more faithful to the actual practices not only of physics but of all the natural sciences. The need for alternative descriptions seems particularly urgent if one is to understand the place of theory (...) (and, in parallel, the role of modeling) in contemporary molecular biology, a science where, until now, no division between theory and experiment has obtained, and where distinctions between representing and intervening, and more generally, between basic and applied science, are daily becoming more blurred. Indeed, the very division between theory and experiment threatens to slight the extensive and sophisticated theoretical analyses (and even modeling) on which experimental work in contemporary molecular biology so often depends. My aim in this paper is to find a way of talking about theoretical practices in biology that is directly rooted in the mix of conceptual and material work that biologists do. As an example of such theoretical practices, I choose for the focus of my analysis the development of a model for gene regulation out of the experimental work of Eric Davidson and his colleagues at Cal Tech. (shrink)

L'analyse des statistiques du baccalauréat de l'académie de Rennes pour la période 1931-1939 atteste la progression constante des candidates dans l'entre deux guerres, alors qu'a été décrétée en 1925 l'identité des programmes et du baccalauréat pour les enseignements secondaires féminin et masculin. Mais la ventilation entre les sections est significative des écarts de scolarisation qui subsistent entre garçons et filles. En effet, si, chez quelques rares professeurs, l'idée affleure que les différences de sexe sont socialement construites, les préjugés les plus (...) vivaces sur la nature féminine continuent de prévaloir, même parmi ceux et celles pour qui le baccalauréat féminin est une conquête. Dans le contexte de crise de la fin des années 30, le thème du nécessaire retour des femmes instruites au foyer en est l'expression la plus banale. (shrink)

The political integration of the European Union is fragile for many reasons, not least the reassertion of nationalism. That said, if we examine specific practices and infrastructures, a more complicated story emerges. We juxtapose the political fragility of the EU in relation to the ongoing formation of data infrastructures in official statistics that take part in postnational enactments of Europe’s populations and territories. We develop this argument by analyzing transformations in how European populations are enacted through new technological infrastructures that (...) seek to integrate national census data in “cubes” of cross-tabulated social topics and spatial “grids” of maps. In doing so, these infrastructures give meaning to what “is” Europe in ways that are both old and new. Through standardization and harmonization of social and geographical spaces, “old” geometries of organizing and mapping populations are deployed along with “new” topological arrangements that mix and fold categories of population. Furthermore, we consider how grids and cubes are generative of methodological topologies by closing the distances or differences between methods and making their data equivalent. By paying attention to these practices and infrastructures, we examine how they enable reconfiguring what is known and imagined as Europe and how it is governed. (shrink)

Cette méditation indissociablement philosophique, esthétique, anthropologique, poétique et photographique essaie de décentrer nos manières de voir. Qu’y a-t-il à voir dans ce qui s’offre au regard? Comment certaines attitudes et pratiques observées chez les populations amérindiennes Wai-wai peuvent-elles inspirer une autre poétique du regard? Comment quelques photographies peuvent-elles documenter cette poétique? Comment les mots, et parmi eux surtout les intraduisibles, peuvent-ils nourrir une écriture de cette poétique? Cette méditation pose plus de questions qu’elle ne vise à en résoudre.

A recent commentary argued for arbitration to resolve authorship disputes within academic research settings explaining that current mechanisms to resolve conflicts result in unclear outcomes and institutional power vested in senior investigators could compromise fairness. We argue here that arbitration is not a suitable means to resolve disputes among researchers in academia because it remains unclear who will assume the costs of arbitration, the rules of evidence do not apply to arbitration, and decisions are binding and very difficult to appeal. (...) Instead of arbitration, we advocate for peer-based approaches involving a peer review committee and research ethics consultation to help resolve authorship disagreements. We describe the composition of an institutional peer review committee to address authorship disputes. Both of these mechanisms are found, or can be formed, within academic institutions and offer several advantages to researchers who are likely to shy away from legalistic processes and gravitate towards those handled by their peers. Peer-based approaches are cheaper than arbitration and the experts involved have knowledge about academic publishing and the culture of research in the specific field. Decisions by knowledgeable and neutral experts could reduce bias, have greater authority, and could be appealed. Not only can peer-based approaches be leveraged to resolve authorship disagreements, but they may also enhance collegiality and promote a healthy team environment. (shrink)

This is a technical treatise for the scientific-minded readers trying to expand their intellectual horizon beyond the straitjacket of materialism. It is dedicated to those scientists and philosophers who feel there is something more, but struggle with connecting the dots into a more coherent picture supported by a way of seeing that allows us to overcome the present paradigm and yet maintains a scientific and conceptual rigor, without falling into oversimplifications. Most of the topics discussed are unknown even to neuroscientists, (...) biologists, philosophers, and yet are based on the findings published in their own mainstream peer reviewed literature or on deep insights of the scientific, philosophical and spiritual giants of the past. -/- A scientific, philosophical, and spiritual overview of the relationship between science and spirituality, neuroscience and the mystery of consciousness, mind and the nature of reality, evolution and life. A plaidoyer for a science that goes beyond the curve of reason and embraces a new synthesis of knowledge. The overcoming of the limitations of the intellect into an extended vision of ourselves and Nature. A critique of physicalism, the still-dominant doctrine that believes that all reality can be reduced to matter and the laws of physics alone. A review and reassessment of the old and new philosophical and metaphysical ideas which attempts to bring closer Western and Eastern traditions where science, philosophy, consciousness, Spirit and Nature are united in a grand vision that transcends the limited conventional scientific and philosophical paradigm. A possible answer to the questions of purpose and meaning and the future evolution of humankind beyond a conception that posits a priori a purposeless and meaningless universe. A report of the new scientific discoveries of a basal intelligence in cells and plants, on the question if mind is computational, the issue of free will, the mind-body problem, and the so called ‘hard problem of consciousness’. An essay on ancient as modern philosophical conceptions, from the One of Plotinus, the God of Spinoza until the recent revival of panpsychism or the universal consciousness. A journey into quantum physics from the perspective of philosophical idealism and an invitation to adopt new ways of seeing that might help us to transform our present understanding, expanding it into an integral cosmology, with a special emphasis on the spiritual and evolutionary cosmology of the Indian seer Sri Aurobindo. -/- Not just a philosophical and metaphysical meditation but, rather, an appeal to work towards a change of consciousness, a widening of our perspective towards a new way of seeing beyond a purely mechanistic worldview to avoid a social, environmental and economic collapse. Humans are transitional beings that will have to make a choice: relapse into a pre-rational state or evolve towards a new trans-rational species supported by an ideal of human unity in diversity as the expression of a spiritual evolutionary process, the call of the Spirit on Nature. (shrink)

With the breakdown of traditional racial boundaries in many areas of the world, the widespread and growing consumption of skin-lightening products testifies to the increasing significance of colorism—social hierarchy based on gradations of skin tone within and between racial/ethnic groups. Light skin operates as a form of symbolic capital, one that is especially critical for women because of the connection between skin tone and attractiveness and desirability. Far from being an outmoded practice or legacy of past colonialism, the use of (...) skin lighteners is growing fastest among young, urban, educated women in the global South. Although global in scope, the skin-lightening market is highly segmented by nation, culture, race, and class. This article examines the “yearning for lightness” and skin-lightening practices in various societies and communities and the role of transnational pharmaceutical and cosmetic corporations in fueling the desire for lighter skin through print, Internet, and television ads that link light skin with modernity, social mobility, and youth. (shrink)

In business and government, databases contain large quantities of digital transactional data (purchases made, services used, finances transferred, benefits received, licences acquired, borders crossed, tickets purchased). The data can be understood as ongoing and dynamic measurements of the activities and doings of people. In government, numerous database devices have been developed to connect such data across services to discover patterns and identify and evaluate the performance of individuals and populations. Under the UK’s New Labour government, the development of such devices (...) was part of a broader policy known as ‘joined-up thinking and government’. Analyses of this policy have typically understood joining up as an operation of adding together distributed data about subjects, which can then be used in the service of government surveillance, the database state or informational capitalism. But rather than such technical or managerialist analytics, I argue that topological analytics capture what these database devices enact and do: they materialize the ‘individuality’ of subjects in intensified, distributed and fluctuating ways and materialize and intensify a logic of what Deleuze describes as modulating controls. Through examples of UK New Labour social policy initiatives over the past decade, I argue that topological analytics can account for these as immanent rather than exceptional properties of database devices and, as such, part and parcel of a governmental logic and ontology of subjects. (shrink)

Aristote estime qu’une vie consacrée à gagner de l’argent ne mérite pas d’être vécue, dans la mesure où elle est sujette à des contraintes et fondée sur une conception pervertie de la richesse. Cependant, il assigne à l’argent une valeur instrumentale en tant qu’il est indispensable au bonheur, et il reconnaît qu’il y a des tendances naturelles à la richesse en tout agent. Cet article se propose de clarifier les thèses d’Aristote concernant la fonction de la richesse dans son rapport (...) à une vie bonne, concernant ce qui garantit l’usage correct des biens et comment il est possible de promouvoir la pratique de la chrématistique naturelle face à l’extension des formes perverties de recherche du profit. L’article entend ensuite montrer quelles vertus sont liées à la richesse – générosité, magnificence et justice ou équité – et comment elles se rattachent aux vices opposés – c’est-à-dire : prodigalité et avarice, tendance dépensière et pingrerie, et injustice ou inéquité. L’intention de cette étude est d’expliquer pourquoi l’enquête aristotélicienne sur les bonnes et mauvaises habitudes liées à l’usage de la richesse est complémentaire de l’enquête sur la genèse des phénomènes économiques, et pourquoi elle vise à garantir dans la pratique une chrématistique parfaitement intégrée à l’éthique et à la politique. (shrink)

In _Beyond Prejudice_, Evelyn B. Pluhar defends the view that any sentient conative being—one capable of caring about what happens to him or herself—is morally significant, a view that supports the moral status and rights of many nonhuman animals. Confronting traditional and contemporary philosophical arguments, she offers in clear and accessible fashion a thorough examination of theories of moral significance while decisively demonstrating the flaws in the arguments of those who would avoid attributing moral rights to nonhumans. Exposing the (...) traditional view—which restricts the moral realm to autonomous, fully fledged "persons"—as having horrific implications for the treatment of many humans, Pluhar goes on to argue positively that sentient individuals of any species are no less morally significant than the most automomous human. Her position provides the ultimate justification that is missing from previous defenses of the moral status of nonhuman animals. In the process of advancing her position, Pluhar discusses the implications of determining moral significance for children and "abnormal" humans as well as its relevance to population policies, the raising of animals for food or product testing, decisions on hunting and euthanasia, and the treatment of companion animals. In addition, the author scrutinizes recent assertions by environmental ethicists that all living things or that natural objects and ecosystems be considered highly morally significant. This powerful book of moral theory challenges all defenders of the moral status quo—which decrees that animals decidedly do not count—to reevaluate their convictions. (shrink)

The essay aims to examine some contributions of A. Schutz to general epistemological questions, starting from his view of the scientific theories and concepts formation, of type and model, of relevance, of proof and degree of belief. Great attention is paid to the resumption of Carneades’ mechanism, in which each operation of confirmation is linked to a level of credibility. The focus on these issues allows not only to understand Schutz’s context, but also to establish a comparison with Chisholm’s reading (...) of Carneades. (shrink)