1. As John Hawthorne and Maria Lasonen-Aarnio appreciate, some of the central issues raised in their ‘Knowledge and Objective Chance’ arise for all but the most extreme theories of knowledge. In a wide range of cases, according to very plausible everyday judgments, we know something about the future, even though, according to quantum mechanics, our belief has a small but nonzero chance (objective probability) of being untrue. In easily constructed examples, we are in that position simultaneously with respect to many (...) different propositions about the future that are equiprobable and probabilistically independent of each other, at least to a reasonable approximation. (shrink)

Garfinkel's dissertation, "The Perception of the Other," was completed and defended 15 years prior to the publication of Studies in Ethnomethodology. This essay seeks hints of the familiar ethnomethodological themes (indexicality, reflexivity, accountability) within his thesis. It begins by examining the contributions of earlier social theorists, particularly Talcott Parsons and Alfred Schütz, to Garfinkel's thought. It then examines the dissertation itself seeking evidence to support the claim that Garfinkel was already moving in the direction of an 'incommensurable, asymmetric, and alternate' (...) program of sociological inquiry well before the term 'ethnomethodology' had even been coined. (shrink)

According to ontological perspectivism, there can be, in principle, multiple and alternative perspectives on the world that can be sliced, systematized, and conceptualized in different ways. Surely, such an ontological position has many categorial implications, which may vary depending on different disciplinary contexts. This paper explores parts of these implications in the realm of geography. In particular, it aims at discussing the ontological categories that one might use to describe the geographical world in an overarching perspective – that is, the (...) perspective that puts toether all the partial views coming from the different branches of the geographical investigation. We will see that if the overarching perspective is expected to include all the views on the geographical world, then such a perspective should be all-embracing in terms of contents and categories. This means that the overarching perspective might also comprehend inconsistencies that derive from how the various partial perspectives conceptualize differently the geographical world. (shrink)

First, some reminiscences. In the years 1973-80, when I was an undergraduate and then graduate student at Oxford, Michael Dummett’s formidable and creative philosophical presence made his arguments impossible to ignore. In consequence, one pole of discussion was always a form of anti-realism. It endorsed something like the replacement of truth-conditional semantics by verification-conditional semantics and of classical logic by intuitionistic logic, and the principle that all truths are knowable. It did not endorse the principle that all truths are known. (...) Nor did it mention the now celebrated argument, first published by Frederic Fitch (1963), that if all truths are knowable then all truths are known. (shrink)

Some commentators have criticized bioethics as failing to engage religion both as a matter of theory and practice. Bioethics should work toward understanding the influence of religion as it represents people's beliefs and practices, but bioethics should nevertheless observe limits in regard to religion as it does its normative work. Irreligious skepticism toward religious views about health, healthcare practices and institutions, and responses to biomedical innovations can yield important benefits to the field. Irreligious skepticism makes it possible to raise questions (...) that otherwise go unasked and to protect against the overreach of religion. In this sense, bioethics needs a vigorous irreligious outlook every bit as much as it needs descriptive understandings of religion. (shrink)

0. Platitudinously, cognitive science is the science of cognition. Cognition is usually defined as something like the process of acquiring, retaining and applying knowledge. To a first approximation, therefore, cognitive science is the science of knowing. Knowing is a relation between the knower and the known. Typically, although not always, what is known involves the environment external to the knower. Thus knowing typically involves a relation between the agent and the external environment. It is not internal to the agent, for (...) the internal may be the same whether or not it is related to the external in a way that constitutes knowing. Cognition enables agents to achieve their goals by adjusting their actions appropriately to the environment. Such adjustment requires what is internal to the agent to be in some sense in line with what is external; that matching depends on both internal and external sides. Thus if cognitive science were restricted to what is internal to the agent, it would lose sight of its primary object of study. Although cognition depends on both the internal and the external, one can try to analyse it into internal and external factors. Call a state S narrow if and only if whether an agent is in S at a time t depends only on the total internal qualitative state of S at t, so that if one agent in one possible situation is internally an exact duplicate of another agent.. (shrink)

Examining a fragment of interaction that occurred during a surgery at a teaching hospital, we explore how particular instructed experiences are produced for two trainees, a surgeon in the residency program and a medical student in a surgical clerkship. We are concerned with what is produced as learnable in each case. Stated slightly differently, we are interested in the ways in which the attending surgeon uses demonstrations as instruction and the ways in which recipients of that instruction, in this case (...) the resident and the clerk, respond with enactments of those demonstrated actions. The recipients of this kind of instruction participate in a form of experiential learning in which they enact their own versions of the instructor’s demonstrated actions to be observed and assessed by the instructor. These enactments provide learners with experiential access to the instructor’s demonstrated actions. They are designed to be experiences that learners may draw upon to make experientially warranted claims at some later time. (shrink)

While the clinical promise of much stem cell research remains largely theoretical, patients are nonetheless pursuing unproven stem cell therapies in jurisdictions around the world—a phenomenon referred to as “stem cell tourism.” These treatments are generally advertised on a direct-to-consumer basis via the Internet. Research shows portrayals of stem cell medicine on such websites are overly optimistic and the claims made are unsubstantiated by published evidence. However, anecdotal evidence suggests that parents are pursing these “treatments” for their children, despite potential (...) physical and financial risk. Physicians are in a unique position as they can be expected to be involved in, or privy to, such decisions. In this paper, we consider what duties physicians may have toward minor patients whose parents/guardians wish to engage in stem cell tourism on their behalf. We use the Canadian perspective to address the broadly relevant issues raised by this trend. (shrink)

In the few years since the advent of ‘Big Data’ research, social media analytics has begun to accumulate studies drawing on social media as a resource and tool for research work. Yet, there has been relatively little attention paid to the development of methodologies for handling this kind of data. The few works that exist in this area often reflect upon the implications of ‘grand’ social science methodological concepts for new social media research. By contrast, we advance an abductively oriented (...) methodological suite designed to explore the construction of phenomena played out through social media. To do this, we use a software tool – Chorus – to illustrate a visual analytic approach to data. Informed by visual analytic principles, we posit a two-by-two methodological model of social media analytics, combining two data collection strategies with two analytic modes. We go on to demonstrate each of these four approaches ‘in action’, to help clarify how and why they might be used to address various research questions. (shrink)

The de‐repression of transposable elements (TEs) in mammalian genomes is thought to contribute to genome instability, inflammation, and ageing, yet is viewed as a cell‐autonomous event. In contrast to mammalian cells, prokaryotes constantly exchange genetic material through TEs, crossing both cell and species barriers, contributing to rapid microbial evolution and diversity in complex communities such as the mammalian gut. Here, it is proposed that TEs released from prokaryotes in the microbiome or from pathogenic infections regularly cross the kingdom barrier to (...) the somatic cells of their eukaryotic hosts. It is proposed this horizontal transfer of TEs from microbe to host is a stochastic, ongoing catalyst of genome destabilization, resulting in structural and epigenetic variations, and activation of well‐evolved host defense mechanisms contributing to inflammation, senescence, and biological ageing. It is proposed that innate immunity pathways defend against the horizontal acquisition of microbial TEs, and that activation of this pathway during horizontal transposon transfer promotes chronic inflammation during ageing. Finally, it is suggested that horizontal acquisition of prokaryotic TEs into mammalian genomes has been masked and subsequently under‐reported due to flaws in current sequencing pipelines, and new strategies to uncover these events are proposed. (shrink)

The core of Tony Brueckner’s critique in ‘Knowledge, Evidence, and Skepticism according to Williamson’ is his claim in section 5 that my account of perceptual knowledge has an unacceptable consequence. My reply will concentrate on that claim and largely ignore the rest of Brueckner’s interesting discussion, for it is easy to check that the claim is essential to Brueckner’s argument against my analysis of skepticism and evidence. The alleged consequence at issue concerns a case in which Brueckner knows by seeing (...) that his cup is red. According to Brueckner, I am committed to the implausible view that ‘[his] belief of the proposition that [his] cup is red is justified in virtue of [his] belief of the proposition that [his] cup is red!’ Why does he take my account of.. (shrink)

Blend classically beautiful illustrations with the wisdom of the ages to awaken your inner being as never before. Read this collection from cover to cover, and then concentrate on applying the different thoughts on your daily life. Start with first light, going with the flow, detachment, and harmony. Turn to a quote each day as a focus for meditations like these: Being a good listener spares one the burden of giving advice. Peace and knowledge will be yours!

This article argues against privileging the expectations of settlers over those of dispossessed peoples. I assume in this article that historical rights to occupancy do not persist through all changes in circumstances, but a theory of justice should reduce perverse incentives to unjustly settle on land in hopes of legitimating occupancy. Margaret Moore, in her 2015 book, A Political Theory of Territory, tries to balance these intuitions through an argument based on legitimate expectations. I argue that Moore’s attempt to reduce (...) perverse incentives (through expectation-altering institutional design) fails. Moore unduly privileges settler expectations, especially over those of indigenous peoples. I criticize United States court decisions resurrecting the expectations of past settlers in the allotment era (which share structural features with Moore’s arguments). Lastly, distinguishing between ‘final’ supersession of historical injustice through changing circumstances, and ‘dormant’ supersession, shows how indigenous claims to land and jurisdiction may revive. (shrink)

Aristotle's use of the phrase τὰ καλούμενα στοιχεȋα is usually taken as evidence that he does not really think that the things to which this phrase refers, namely, fire, air, water, and earth, are genuine elements. In this paper I question the linguistic and textual grounds for taking the phrase τὰ καλούμενα στοιχεȋα in this way. I offer a detailed examination of the significance of the phrase, and in particular I compare Aristotle's general use of the Greek participle καλούμενος (-η, (...) -ον) in other contexts. I conclude that his use of the phrase τὰ καλούμενα στοιχεȋα does not carry ironical or sceptical connotations, and that it ought to be understood as a neutral report of a contemporary opinion that the elements of bodies are fire, air, water, and earth. I leave aside the question as to whether or not Aristotle himself endorses this opinion. (shrink)

The empirical literature on phenomenal causality (the notion that causality can be perceived) is reviewed. Different potential types of phenomenal causality and variables that influence phenomenal causality were considered in Part I (Hubbard 2012b) of this two-part series. In Part II, broader questions regarding properties of phenomenal causality and connections of phenomenal causality to other perceptual or cognitive phenomena (different types of phenomenal causality, effects of spatial and temporal variance, phenomenal causality in infancy, effects of object properties, naïve physics, spatial (...) localization, other illusions, amodal completion, Gestalt principles of perceptual grouping, effects of context, differences between physical and social causality, effects of learning and experience, individual differences, effects of predictability, asymmetry in phenomenal causality, differences between perceived causality and perceived force, phenomenal causality in nonhuman animals) are considered. Potential mechanisms of phenomenal causality (inference from contiguity, a priori understanding, ampliation, perceptual learning, stimulus activity, beliefs regarding kinematics, haptic experience, beliefs regarding impetus, postdiction, innateness, modularity, specific neural structures) are also considered. (shrink)

This article examines the reception of Roy Bhaskar amongst some contemporary Deleuzians. It proceeds by rejecting the all too often predilection of opposing realism to ‘postmodernism’ or ‘post-structuralism’ arguing instead for the need to bring one into dialogue with the other. To this end, the paper explores the resonances and points of departure between the work of Gilles Deleuze and Roy Bhaskar. In particular, it examines the language of causation, object-oriented versus process-oriented ontologies, as well as the charge by Deleuzians (...) that Bhaskar is an essentialist. Through this engagement it attempts to develop and rethink explanation and causation in terms of a more chaotic ontology of machines, centered around the concept of structure, process, and production in an open, heterogeneous, and dynamic world. The end result is a more chaotic concept of realism. (shrink)

Section 1 introduces the category of objective modality, closely related to linguists’ category of circumstantial or dynamic modals, and explains metaphysical modality as its maximal element. Section 2 discusses various kinds of skepticism about modality, as in Hume and recent authors, and argues that it is illmotivated to apply such skepticism to metaphysical modality but not to more restricted objective modalities, including nomic modality. Section 3 suggests that the role of counterfactual conditionals in applications of scientific theories involves an objective (...) modal dimension. Section 4 briefly discusses the role of objective probabilities in scientific theories as exemplifying the scientific study of objective modality. Section 5 summarizes a case study of dynamical systems theory, widely used in natural science, as a mathematical theory whose intended applications are objectively modal, as perspicuously articulated in a language with modal and temporal operators and propositional quantification. State spaces in natural science characterize objective possibilities. Section 6 argues that, although those possibilities are usually more restricted than metaphysical possibility, their scientific study is a partial study of metaphysical possibility too. (shrink)

Jürgen Habermas has argued against prenatal genetic interventions used to influence traits on the grounds that only biogenetic contingency in the conception of children preserves the conditions that make the presumption of moral equality possible. This argument fails for a number of reasons. The contingency that Habermas points to as the condition of moral equality is an artifact of evolutionary contingency and not inviolable in itself. Moreover, as a precedent for genetic interventions, parents and society already affect children's traits, which (...) is to say there is moral precedent for influencing the traits of descendants. A veil-of-ignorance methodology can also be used to justify prenatal interventions through its method of advance consent and its preservation of the contingency of human identities in a moral sense. In any case, the selection of children's traits does not undermine the prospects of authoring a life since their future remains just as contingent morally as if no trait had been selected. Ironically, the prospect of preserving human beings as they are – to counteract genetic drift – might even require interventions to preserve the ability to author a life in a moral sense. In light of these analyses, Habermas' concerns about prenatal genetic interventions cannot succeed as objections to their practice as a matter of principle; the merits of these interventions must be evaluated individually. (shrink)

Most advocates of biogenetic modification hope to amplify existing human traits in humans in order to increase the value of such traits as intelligence and resistance to disease. These advocates defend such enhancements as beneficial for the affected parties. By contrast, some commentators recommend certain biogenetic modifications to serve social goals. As Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu see things, human moral psychology is deficient relative to the most important risks facing humanity as a whole, including the prospect of Ultimate Harm, (...) the point at which worthwhile life is forever impossible on the planet. These risks can be mitigated, they say, by enhancing moral psychology in novel ways. Persson and Savulescu argue that some parents should modify the underlying biogenetics of their children's moral psychology, if such measures were safe and effective, but they admit these interventions may not decouple humanity from Ultimate Harm. Neither are these modifications the only options, they concede, for addressing risks to humanity. Even with these concessions, saving humanity from itself is a fairly poor reason to modify the moral psychology of children. In most ways, adults would be better candidates, morally speaking, for modifications of psychology. Even then, there is no direct link between morally enhanced human beings and the hoped-for effect of better protection from Ultimate Harm. Asserting a general duty of all to contribute to the avoidance of Ultimate Harm is a better moral strategy than intervening in the moral psychology of some, even though meeting that duty may involve substantial interference with the free exercise of one's interests. (shrink)

Antinatalist commentators recommend that humanity bring itself to a close, on the theory that pain and suffering override the value of any possible life. Other commentators do not require the voluntary extinction of human beings, but they defend that outcome if people were to choose against having children. Against such views, Richard Kraut has defended a general moral obligation to people the future with human beings until the workings of the universe render such efforts impossible. Kraut advances this view on (...) the grounds that we are obliged to exercise beneficence toward others and on the grounds that the goods available in human lives are morally compelling. This account ultimately succeeds in making no more than a prima facie defense of human perpetuation because considerations of beneficence could override – in some cases probably should – override any duty to perpetuate human beings. While the goods of human life may be distinctive, they cannot serve as reason-giving in regard to their own perpetuation. Ironically, the exercise of beneficence may authorize the extinction of human beings, if it becomes possible to enhance the goods available to human descendants in a way that moves them away from human nature as now given. The defense of a morally obligatory and strictly human future remains elusive, even as it becomes morally desirable to work against Fateful Catastrophes, those human-caused events that threaten to extinguish existing lives already good and enriching for their bearers. (shrink)

This article considers the contribution that Hegel’s concept of “alienation” (Entfremdung) makes to his theory of reciprocal intersubjective recognition in the Phenomenology of Spirit. I show that Hegel presents a powerful criticism of what I call the “automatic” model of recognition—I treat Stephen Darwall’s conception of reciprocal recognition as exemplary—where individuals merit recognition from others in virtue of some generic self-standing trait, and recognition requires responding appropriately to that feature. This model of recognition is alienating since it entails understanding the (...) self in a way that excludes the individual’s particularity. Overcoming alienation requires rejecting this automatic model in favor of an “achievement” model of recognition, where the individual’s particularity is understood to be essential to the achievement of self-imposed and socially-realized ends. (shrink)

The primary transcripts, pre‐mRNAs, of almost all protein‐coding genes in higher eukaryotes contain multiple non‐coding intervening sequences, introns, which must be precisely removed to yield translatable mRNAs. The process of intron excision, splicing, takes place in a massive ribonucleoprotein complex known as the spliceosome. Extensive studies, both genetic and biochemical, in a variety of systems have revealed that essential components of the spliceosome include five small RNAs–U1, U2, U4, U5 and U6, each of which functions as a RNA, protein complex (...) called an snRNP (small nuclear ribonucleoprotein). In addition to snRNPs, splicing requires many non‐snRNP protein factors, the exact nature and number of which has been unclear. Technical advances, including new affinity purification methods and improved mass spectrometry techniques, coupled with the completion of many genome sequences, have now permitted a number of proteomic analyses of purified spliceosomes. These studies, recently reviewed by Jurica and Moore,1 reveal that the spliceosome is composed of as many as 300 distinct proteins and five RNAs, making it among the most complex macromolecular machines known. BioEssays 25:1147–1149, 2003. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Since its publication in 1985, Elaine Scarry's The Body in Pain has become a seminal text in the study of embodiment. In its foregrounding of the body in war and torture, it critiques the minimising of the body in questions of politics, offering a compelling account of the structure and phenomenology of violent domination. However, at the same time the text can be seen to shore up a mind/body dualism that has been associated with oppressive forms of gendering, racialisation and (...) disablement. Divisive, powerful and elegant, the text has been central in the shaping of approaches to embodiment over the past 30 years. This special issue revisits Scarry's text in the light of 30 years of scholarship on embodiment and the body. Its legacies and limits are exemplified through a series of articles that mobilise the arguments of The Body in Pain even as they push at the limits of the text. (shrink)

Bioconservative commentators argue that parents should not take steps to modify the genetics of their children even in the name of enhancement because of the damage they predict for values, identities and relationships. Some commentators have even said that adults should not modify themselves through genetic interventions. One commentator worries that genetic modifications chosen by adults for themselves will undermine moral agency, lead to less valuable experiences and fracture people's sense of self. These worries are not justified, however, since the (...) effects of modification will not undo moral agency as such. Adults can still have valuable experiences, even if some prior choices no longer seem meaningful. Changes at the genetic level will not always, either, alienate people from their own sense of self. On the contrary, genetic modifications can help amplify choice, enrich lives and consolidate identities. Ultimately, there is no moral requirement that people value their contingent genetic endowment to the exclusion of changes important to them in their future genetic identities. Through weighing risks and benefits, adults also have the power to consent to—and assume the risks of—genetic modifications for themselves in a way not possible in prenatal genetic interventions. (shrink)

Experiences of qualia, subjective sensory-like aspects of stimuli, are central to imagistic representation. Following Raffman , qualia are considered to reflect experiential knowledge distinct from descriptive, abstract, and propositional knowledge; following Jackendoff , objective neural activity is distinguished from subjective experience. It is argued that descriptive physical knowledge does not provide an adequate accounting of qualia, and philosophical scenarios such as the Turing test and the Chinese Room are adapted to demonstrate inadequacies of accounts of cognition that ignore subjective experience. (...) Arguments by Dennett and others that qualia do not exist or that qualia do not provide additional explanatory power are addressed, and it is suggested that consideration of qualia is necessary in order to explain objective behavior. The hypotheses of functional equivalence, second-order isomorphism, and psychophysical complementarity between imagery and perception are discussed, and the ability of analog and schematic models of imagery to account for qualia is examined. (shrink)

I consider in this essay three possible interpretations of the infinitely rich story of Abraham and Isaac found in Genesis 22. Against the background of what I call "the traditional reading," I compare the views of William Blake, Johannes de Silentio, and Søren Kierkegaard. Blake's poetry and painting suggest a striking alternative to our usual understanding of the story, but they finally require too radical a departure from the Biblical text. The pseudonym de Silentio's views on obedience to God, presented (...) in Fear and Trembling, are even more problematic, however. They are at odds with Kierkegaard's powerful account of love of neighbor, related under his own name in Works of Love, for instance. The God who is Love would not literally require murderous intent toward a neighbor, I conclude, but that same God might issue an "ironic" command designed to lift us out of an abominable ritual. (shrink)

This paper examines Plutarch's treatment of education in the Parallel Lives. Beginning with a close reading of Them. 2, it identifies two distinct ways in which Plutarch exploits the education of his subjects: in the first, a subject's attitude to education is used to illustrate a character presented as basically static (a 'static/illustrative' model); in the second, a subject's education is looked at in order to explain his adult character, and education is assumed to affect character (a 'developmental' model). These (...) two models are often associated with two different forms of discourse: anecdotal for the static/illustrative model and analytical for the developmental. The developmental model, furthermore, is closer to Plutarch's thinking in theoretical discussions of character in the Moralia; the static/illustrative model to Plutarch's treatment of character in the Lives more generally, where anecdotal treatments predominate. The coexistence of these two models is probably to be seen as the result of a tension between Plutarch's philosophical thinking and his biographical practice: those few passages in the Lives which assume a developmental model occur in contexts where either Platonic texts or the activity of philosophers are being discussed. (shrink)

Some critics of same-sex marriage allege that this kind of union not only betrays the nature of marriage but that it also opens children to various kinds of harm. Same-sex marriage is objectionable, on this view, in its nature and in its effects. A view of marriage as requiring an unassisted capacity to conceive children may be respect as one idea of marriage, but this view need not be understood as marriage itself. It is not clear, in any case, why (...) government should prefer this one idealized view of marriage over other others, so long as recognition of other kinds of marriage do not stand in the way of government carrying out its core interests, such as the protection of children. The idea that children are necessarily harmed when conceived by and for same-sex couples cannot be sustained as a matter of psychological evidence or moral argument. No research shows that such children are routinely harmed or rarely-but-catastrophically. Comparative accounts of the welfare of children of same-sex couples cannot show either that children must be brought into existence only under ideal circumstances. (shrink)

In this article, I critically engage Adriana Cavarero’s account of uniqueness via an analysis of her work on narrativity and violence. I suggest there is an ambivalence in Cavarero’s account of uniqueness: Cavarero argues both that uniqueness is susceptible to destruction, and that it cannot finally be annihilated. To make this clear I use Cavarero’s account to read a narrative offered by Miklós Nyiszli, of a woman who survived an Auschwitz gas chamber. I contrast this to Cavarero’s reading of Eurydice (...) and Orpheus, arguing that the ambivalence in Cavarero’s account can be resolved by thinking an excess proper to uniqueness. (shrink)

This essay examines Hume’s treatment of money in light of his view of the imagination. It begins with his claim that money is distinct from wealth, the latter arising, according to vulgar reasoning, from the power of acquisition that it represents, or, understood philosophically, from the labor that produces it. The salient features that Hume identifies with the imagination are then put forth, namely its power to combine ideas creatively and the principle of easy transition that characterizes its movement among (...) them. Two issues that these features explain are then discussed: first, why people take value to lie in the material of which money is made, and, second, why they assign value to what they take money to represent, namely, wealth. In both cases, the imagination creates a new relation, an illusion or fiction, that cannot be traced directly to experience. In the case of money, the faculty conjoins what is intangible (the power of acquisition) with the physical qualities of specie; in the case of property it produces a causal relation that connects persons with objects to constitute stable possession that constitutes ownership. Hume also appeals to the imagination to explain the rules of property that subsequently develop (present possession, occupation, prescription, and transference). The essay concludes by emphasizing that being based on the imagination is not in itself indicative of any instability in either money or property and the practices they enshrine, a feature they share with other phenomena (such as the self and continued existence) that Hume also traces to the same faculty. (shrink)

The article considers how the field of moral welfare and social work empowered religious women, and how these women met the challenge posed by Yeo, ‘to find ways of breaking the material, representational and psychic chains of subordination without reassembling them at the same time in a different form’. Based on an examination of the archival records and reports of these moral welfare organizations the article argues that the spiritual dimension of moral welfare work provided particular resources that empowered women (...) and mitigated the subordinating operation of power in client relationships. These resources were, however, dependent on mutual subscription of religious doctrines, a condition that did not remain stable into the 1960s. (shrink)

This paper examines the concept of equilibrium in the work of Michel Serres. It starts with analysis of Serres’s philosophy of nature and, in particular, of the Lucretian cosmology he adumbrates in his 1977 text The Birth of Physics. By beginning here, we can see that his fundamental account of the material world is framed in terms of equilibrium or, rather, as a series of different equilibria that are dynamic, internally nested and reactive to each other in complex ways. In (...) this respect, Serres’s philosophy of nature resonates with work in contemporary Earth System Science that models the planet as a complex, adaptive system trending towards homeostatic regulation. But crucially, Serres goes further by extracting from this modelling important insights into human values. That is to say, he suggests that necessary and urgent questions about what sort of people we must be and what sort of social order we must pursue can be addressed through the prism of the concept of equilibrium. At the time of the Anthropocene, when planetary stability itself seems to be at stake, with potentially catastrophic implications for present and future life on earth, Serres’s work thus shows itself to be timely and apposite across a range of disciplinary applications. (shrink)