The deceptive strangeness of prescience in Dune is typical of Herbert's ideas. The ancient Babylonians were able to systematically predict astronomical events, but contemporary astrophysicists can forecast distant events beyond the Babylonians’ wildest dreams. Herbert describes the prescience of characters like Paul as a hyperawareness of possibilities and probabilities given certain choices, rather than being able to examine a fixed future. Common sense suggests that prescience should help us live together better. The Prisoner's Dilemma can be interpreted in (...) different ways, but the basic logic is always the same. The Prisoner's Dilemma is an imaginary interaction between “prisoners,” but it actually might make more sense with prescient characters from the Duniverse. Stuart Hampshire argued that self‐knowledge tends to have the opposite effect – that it makes us freer. Prescience is a vastly expanded understanding of possible and probable consequences given information and choices, not the observation of a fixed future. (shrink)

The contemporary astrophysicist today deals with questions that bear on the area known to traditional philosophy as “metaphysics.” Consequently, it is tempting to cross the threshold. One can allow oneself to be tempted by the idea that science is in a position to provide solutions to ancient and venerable metaphysical quests. One can even imagine, according to the wish expressed two thousand years ago by Epicurus, that it can calm our “metaphysical anxieties.”.

Recent developments in astrophysical cosmology have revived support for the design argument among a growing clique of astrophysicists. I show that the scientific/mathematical evidence cited in support of intelligent design of the universe is infected with a mathematical sharp practice: the concepts of two numbers being of the same order of magnitude, and of being within an order of each other, have been stretched from their proper meanings so as to doctor the numbers evidentially. This practice started with A. (...) S. Eddington and P. A. M. Dirac in the 1920s and 1930s, but it is still very much alive today. 1 Introduction 2 The birth of a sharp practice 3 High tide for the anthropic principle 4 How not to do things with numbers 5 The recalcitrant sloppiness of crud 6 How excited can excited carbon-12 be? 7 Is a pile of doubts a doubtful pile? 8 Conclusion. (shrink)

The first two thirds or so of this book is a thorough, severe, and at times somewhat difficult, philosophical analysis and critique of atheistic naturalistic answers to “What caused the Big Bang?” Most contemporary astrophysicists accept one of the following non-theistic accounts of the origin of the Big Bang: Steady State, Plasma, Oscillationist, Big Fizz, Big Divide, Quantum Observership, Big Accident, Atheistic Anthropic, and Plenitude cosmologies. The last third or so of the book develops a highly plausible theistic (...) process cosmology which includes creation ex nihilo. This book critically explores answers to the big question, What produced our universe around fifteen billion years ago in a Big Bang? It defends and revises Process Theology and develops contemporary arguments for God's existence based on the universe's life-supporting order and contingent existence. (shrink)

Our contemporary challenge, according to Jean-Luc Nancy and Aurelien Barrau, is that a new world has stolen up on us. We no longer live in a world, but in worlds. We do not live in a universe anymore, but rather in a multiverse. We no longer create; we appropriate and montage. And we no longer build sovereign, hierarchical political institutions; we form local assemblies and networks of cross-national assemblages— and we do this at the same time as we form (...) multinational corporations that no longer pay taxes to the state. In such a time, one of the world’s most eminent philosophers and an emerging astrophysicist return to the ancient art of cosmology. Nancy and Barrau’s work is a study of life, plural worlds, and what the authors call the struction or rebuilding of these worlds. Nancy and Barrau invite us on an uncharted walk into barely known worlds when an everyday French idiom, “What’s this world coming to?,” is used to question our conventional thinking about the world. We soon find ourselves living among heaps of odd bits and pieces that are amassing without any unifying force or center, living not only in a time of ruin and fragmentation but in one of rebuilding. Astrophysicist Aurelien Barrau articulates a major shift in the paradigm of contemporary physics from a universe to a multiverse. Meanwhile, Jean-Luc Nancy’s essay “Of Struction” is a contemporary comment on the project of deconstruction and French poststructuralist thought. Together Barrau and Nancy argue that contemporary thought has shifted from deconstruction to what they carefully call the struction of dis-order. (shrink)

The book by Max Tegmark draws attention to the dangers and benefits that await humanity as a result of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies development. Cosmologist and astrophysicist Tegmark, realizing the impossibility to predict the AI development, offers exciting scenarios of civilization development options for tens, thousands, millions and billions of years. The analysis of the opposite scenarios is aimed at the idea formation that the consequences of creating a general AI, superior to the human level, will be more significant (...) than from all other achievements of civilization. Tegmark is one of the founders and leaders of the “Beneficial AGI” movement, he presents the results of the discussion of the issues he raises with leading experts in the field of AI. Tegmark concludes his book with a call to optimism: “My book urge you to think about what future you would like, and not what future scares you, this way we can find goals for which it’s worth working”. (shrink)

This paper analyses the methodological ideas of Sergei Vsekhsvyatskii’s Studies on Philosophical Issues of Cosmology and Cosmogony. The article examines the background and history of the development of astronomy and cosmology in Ukraine and its gradual transition from a descriptive method to mathematical analysis. The authors have studied the influence of Ukrainian scholars and philosophers on studies in cosmology, astronomy, philosophical issues in cosmology, and computational cosmology. The philosophical understanding of cosmology and cosmogony is always a search for alternative views (...) on generally accepted ideas, not intending to deny the merits of other sciences but to critically analyse the conclusions of the natural sciences, made based on empirical data and mathematical calculations. The contribution to global knowledge by Ukrainian astronomers, astrophysicists, cosmologists, and other scientists who work on questions about the Universe has been studied. It is indicated in which modern research areas the main contributions were made (dark matter, dark energy, gravitational lensing). These contemporary problems of cosmology go beyond the usual field of understanding of the natural sciences, which actualises the possibility of an interdisciplinary dialogue between physicists and philosophers on the problems of cosmology and cosmogony. Using the example of Sergei Vsekhsvyatskii’s works, the authors showed how philosophical analysis can reveal the weaknesses of the methodology and ask key questions to understand the essence of the processes of space. In the 1960s, he investigated the density of space objects to find new ways to solve the cosmogonic processes of the past. However, even today, the density of the Universe raises major questions. Even though science has made a huge leap in half a century, the essence of scientific and philosophical search remains the same. (shrink)

My goal in this paper is to consider two separate but connected topics, one historical, the other philosophical. The first topic concerns the forms of reasoning contemporary experimental astrophysicists use to investigate the existence of WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles). These forms of reasoning take two forms, one model-dependent and the other model-independent, and we examine the arguments one WIMP research group (DAMA) uses to support the latter. The second topic concerns recent support Kent Staley has offered for (...) a form of scientific reasoning called ‘robustness’, and I argue that the model-independent strategy propounded by DAMA improves on robustness. (shrink)

SUMMARYFaced with various anomalies related to nuclear physics in particular, in 1929 Niels Bohr suggested that energy might not be conserved in the atomic nucleus and the processes involving it. By this radical proposal he hoped not only to get rid of the anomalies but also saw a possibility to explain a puzzle in astrophysics, namely the energy generated by stars. Bohr repeated his suggestion of stellar energy arising ex nihilo on several occasions but without ever going into detail. In (...) fact, it is not very clear what he meant or how seriously he took the stellar energy hypothesis. This paper relates Bohr's comments to the period's attempts to find a mechanism for stellar energy and also to the role played by astrophysics at the Copenhagen institute. Moreover, it looks at how Bohr's hypothesis was received not only by physicists but also by astronomers. In this regard the disciplinary status of astrophysics and its contemporary relation to the new quantum mechanics is of relevance. It turns out that, with very few exceptions, the hypothesis was met with silence by astronomers and astrophysicists concerned with the problem of stellar energy production. And yet, for a brief period of time it did have an impact on how physicists thought about the interior of the stars. (shrink)

The ArgumentGravitational redshift of spectral lines as one of the three early-known experimental implications of Einstein's general theory of relativity and gravitation was intensively searched for by researchers all over the world, but around 1920 most of the contemporary evidence in the sun's Fraunhofer-spectrum conflicted with the predictions of relativity theory.In 1923 the American astrophysicist Charles Edward St. John announced that his own solar spectroscopic data would force him to retreat from his former skepticism concerning the existence of gravitational (...) redshift. This statement was at the time widely interpreted by scientists and journalists alike as the open confession of a rapid conversion of one of the few remaining serious scientific opponents of Einstein's theory.This paper demonstrates that this illusion of a sudden “Gestalt switch” in St. John's evaluation of data can be dissolved by a careful step-by-step account of St. John's research practice between 1917 and 1923. After a fine-grained diachronic report of the development of St. John's interpretation of his and others' data, the second part of the paper consists in a systematic analysis of the heuristics and arguments used by St. John pro and contra gravitational redshift. (shrink)

Dark matter in astrophysics offers a rare treat for philosophers of science. When they look at the contemporary science of dark matter, they see reports of a widely accepted theoretical posit indispensable to our best theories and models but without an accepted experimental confirmation of its existence. Nearly all astrophysicists and cosmologists believe that dark matter exists and makes up approximately a quarter of the mass-energy content of the universe. However, they seem to know almost nothing about its (...) nature, cannot directly observe it, and have been unable to detect the products of any interactions with any of the candidate dark matter particles. This project addresses the apparent tension between the impressive knowledge taken to have been obtained in contemporary sciences of the cosmos and the methodological and theoretical limitations in obtaining such knowledge. To do so, this dissertation investigates the ways in which astronomers and astrophysicists are making progress by looking more closely at their experimental practices and actual theoretical commitments. More specifically, the goal is to determine how this bears on longstanding philosophical questions of scientific realism and the nature of scientific experimentation. Ultimately, I argue that astronomers do conduct traditional, interventionist experiments and that we can be realists about dark matter. These two views offer a way of thinking differently about how scientists can and do obtain knowledge about inaccessible and unobservable targets systems. -/- . (shrink)

This collection of specially commissioned essays puts top scholars head to head to debate the central issues in the lively and fast growing field of philosophy ...

Contemporary global justice theories could be introduced and reduced to three kinds: the deontological approach, the theory of obligation, and the theory of self-interest. Our analysis finds that only the theory of obligation and the theory of self-interest provide strong enough justifications for developed states and their people to assist underdeveloped states and their people. However, the theory of obligation requires some special preconditions, and the theory of self-interest cannot proceed in the name of justice, so we conclude that (...) contemporary global justice theories are not tenable. (shrink)

In this book, first published in 1991, the author Dr Robin Barrow adopts the view that utilitarianism is the most coherent and persuasive ethical theory we have and argues in favour of a specific form of rule-utilitarianism. This book will be of interest to students of philosophy.

Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Mind showcases the leading contributors to the field, debating the major questions in philosophy of mind today. Comprises 20 newly commissioned essays on hotly debated issues in the philosophy of mind Written by a cast of leading experts in their fields, essays take opposing views on 10 central contemporary debates A thorough introduction provides a comprehensive background to the issues explored Organized into three sections which explore the ontology of the mental, nature of (...) the mental content, and the nature of consciousness. (shrink)

This collection of new essays on sensory individuals in unimodal and multimodal perception features contributions by outstanding researchers in the fields of philosophy of perception, experimental psychology, and cognitive neuroscience. The topics investigated include conceptual, developmental, and methodological aspects of object perception, and especially how various sense modalities construct their objects from sensory features and feature bearers. The interdisciplinary approach offered has enabled new directions in research on this subject. As ordered in this volume, the topics of the contributions progress (...) from treating neural sensory processes as primarily unisensory towards approaches that take perceptual processing to be modality-independent, meta-modal, and multimodal. Even within these latter approaches, sensory stimuli, sensory properties, brain activations, and corresponding perceptual phenomenology have often been characterized in a modality-specific way. Thus, it is timely to explore the relation between those processes that are unisensory and those that are multisensory. One of the primary themes of this collection is examining whether the basic building blocks of human perception are best understood as modality-dependent units of different forms or in terms of multimodal perceptual objects. Another theme is the relation between low-level object processing (segmentation and perceptual grouping processes) and high-level object knowledge embracing object concept and object-related expectations. A final theme is the role that perceptual objects play as loci of unification in unimodal and multimodal perception, namely that they enable binding and integration of sensory properties to individual entities or events. (shrink)

Contemporary Materialism brings together the best recent work on materialism from many of our leading contemporary philosophers. This is the first comprehensive reader on the subject. The majority of philosophers and scientists today hold the view that all phenomena are physical, as a result materialism or 'physicalism' is now the dominant ontology in a wide range of fields. Surprisingly no single book, until now, has collected the key investigations into materialism, to reflect the impact it has had on (...) current thinking in metaphysics, philosophy of mind and the theory of value. The classic papers in this collection chart contemporary problems, positions and themes in materialism. At the invitation of the editors, many of the papers have been specially up-dated for this collection: follow-on pieces written by the contributors enable them to appraise the original paper and assess developments since the work was first published. The book's selections are largely non-technical and accessible to advanced undergraduates. The editors have provided a useful general introduction, outlining and contextualising this central system of thought, as well as a topical bibliography. Contemporary Materialism will be vital reading for anyone concerned to discover the ideas underlying contemporary philosophy. David Armstrong, University of Sydney; Jerry Fodor, Rutgers University, New Jersey; Tim Crane, University College, London; D. H. Mellor, Univeristy of Cambridge; J.J.C. (shrink)

Deleuze's relationship to Kant is intricate and fundamental, given that Deleuze develops his transcendental philosophy of difference in large part out of Kant's work. In doing so he utilises the moment of the sublime from the third Critique as the genetic model for the irruption of the faculties beyond their capture within common sense. In this sense, the sublime offers the model not only for transcendental genesis but also for aesthetic experience unleashed from any conditions of possibility. As a result, (...) sensation in both its wider and more specifically artistic senses (senses that become increasingly entwined in Deleuze's work) will explode the clichéés of human perception, and continually reinvent the history of art without recourse to representation. In tracing Deleuze's ‘‘aesthetics’’ from Kant we are therefore returned to the viciously anti-human (and Nietzschean) trajectory of Deleuze's work, while simultaneously being forced to address the extent of its remaining Idealism. Both of these elements play an important part in relation to Deleuze's ‘‘modernism’’, and to the discussion of his possible relevance to contemporary artistic practices. (shrink)

To explore the development of contemporary Chinese philosophy, fundamentally, is to explore the development of Marxist philosophy in contemporary China. The disputes over philosophical views in Chinese academic circles during the first half of the twentieth century have been focused on understanding Marxist philosophy from such aspects as "what kind of philosophy Chinese society needs," "the relation of philosophy to science," and "philosophy as an idea to reflect on one's life." These explorations have provided us a significant ideological (...) insight into the development of Marxist philosophy and contemporary Chinese philosophy; that is, in contemporary China, Marxist philosophy, as a doctrine of the liberation and all-round development of human beings, exists not only as a kind of"doctrine" or "academy" but also as a kind of widely accepted "xueyuan (academic cultivations)" among people. (shrink)

In _Contemporary Philosophical Theology_, Charles Taliaferro and Chad Meister focus on key topics in contemporary philosophical theology within Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, as well as Hinduism and Buddhism. The volume begins with a discussion of key methodological tools available to the philosophical theologian, such as faith and reason, science and religion, revelation and sacred scripture, and authority and tradition. The authors use these tools to explore subjects including language, ineffability, miracles, evil, and the afterlife. They also grapple with applied (...) philosophical theology, including environmental concerns, interreligious dialogue, and the nature and significance of political values. A concluding discussion proposes that philosophical theology can contribute to important reflections and action concerning climate change. (shrink)

A detailed examination of post-Marxist political theory, focusing especially on the work of Laclau, Habermas, and Derrida. Devenney identifies common concerns between these theorists and demostrates how the respective strenghts of each compliment the weaknesses of the other.

Every work on Jewish thought and law since the twelfth century bears the imprint of Maimonides. A.N. Whitehead's famous dictum that the entire European philosophical tradition 'consists of a series of footnotes to Plato' could equally characterize Maimonides' place in the Jewish tradition. The critical studies in this volume explore how Orthodox rabbis of different orientations--Shlomo Aviner, Naftali Zvi Yehudah Berlin (Netziv), Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, Joseph Kafih, Abraham Isaac Kook, Aaron Kotler, Joseph Soloveitchik, and Elhanan Wasserman--have read and provided footnotes (...) to Maimonides in the long twentieth century. How well did they really understand Maimonides? And where do their arguments fit in the mainstream debates about him and his works? Each of the seven core chapters examines a particular approach. Some rabbis have tried to liberate themselves from the influence of his ideas. Others have sought to build on those ideas or expand them in ways which Maimonides himself did not pursue, and which he may well not have agreed with. Still others advance patently non-Maimonidean positions, while attributing them to none other than Maimonides. Above all, the essays published here demonstrate that his legacy remains vibrantly alive today. (shrink)