In this paper we seek to draw attention to some striking and heretofore unnoticed textual connections between Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments and David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature. We find significant textual parallels between the parable of the poor man's son of TMS 4.1 and the famous conclusion to Book 1 of Hume's Treatise. These passages are often regarded as especially intense and moving parts of their respective works. We explore the nature and substance of these connections (...) and comment on their larger significance. The nature of the connections suggests that Smith consciously engaged Hume in his work through philosophical conversation. We suggest that these related passages show both Hume and Smith exploring and developing a particular dialectic between contemplation and action in human life. Both move to invert the classical relationship between contemplation and action through what we call the elevated imagination. (shrink)

OVERVIEWWe ambitiously reexamine Smith’s moral theory in relation to Hume’s. We regard Smith's developments as glorious and important. We also see them as quite fully agreeable to Hume, as enhancement, not departure. But Smith represents matters otherwise! Why would Smith overstate disagreement with his best friend?One aspect of Smith’s enhancement, an aspect he makes very conspicuous, is that between moral approval and beneficialness there is another phase, namely, the moral judge's sense of propriety. With that phase now finding formulation, Smith, (...) if only implicitly, generates a spiral of beneficialness and propriety, a spiral shown in Figure 7 in the present paper. We consider Figure 7, illustrating the spiral, to be the most important arrival point in the present paper; it highlights the non-foundationalism of Smith's ethics. But to arrive at the spiral, we must engage in extensive exegesis.In Part IV of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith presents a foil against which he develops his own theory, a foil supposedly representing Hume. According to the foil, moral approval derives from ‘utility.’ But, in multiple ways, the foil is misleading. We provide an interpretation of Hume, notably his four-factor account of moral approval, before examining Smith's representation of Hume.One twist is that Smith used the words utility and useful differently than Hume did – Smith quietly stretched them to include species of agreeableness, thereby obscuring the importance of agreeableness in Hume’s theory.Another, more significant problem is that Smith allows the impression that in Hume moral approval derives quite determinately from beneficialness. In fact Hume conveys the interpretive and sentimental spaciousness of the operations that generate moral approval; here, Hume even speaks repeatedly of ‘proper sentiments’, thus almost using the term propriety himself.But the propriety phase in Smith opens up to a key facet of Smith’s development on Hume: He poeticizes a locus of sympathy not emphasized in Hume – namely, that between the moral judge and her own man within the breast; that locus enters the theory in addition to the sympathies emphasized in Hume, not in lieu of them. We distinguish lateral sympathy, which is important in Hume’s thought, and vertical sympathy, which is especially characteristic of Smith’s more inner-directed and allegorical thought. Smith embraces Hume’s lateral sympathy and enhances moral theory by adding formulations that elaborate vertical sympathy.Next, we come to something of a twist in the whole matter: We show that – as Smith well knew all along! – propriety is a species of agreeableness! Smith’s propriety phase represents another dimension within which such agreeableness lives: Smith’s vertical dimension thus gives rise to a spiral representing the diachronic development of the judge herself. It is a spiral of beneficialness and propriety: Each propriety phase in the next loop of the spiral engenders a species of agreeableness now as a part of beneficialness.Smith's developments on Hume, then, involve the following three facets: formulation of the propriety phase; the poetic elaboration of vertical sympathy; the diachronic spiral of propriety and beneficialness.The three facets come together, especially in Ed. 6 of The Theory of Moral Sentiments. The whole development goes beyond Hume, but, really, is agreeable to Hume – though Smith himself portrays his developments as disagreeing with features of Hume's moral theory.We speculate that Smith was more or less aware of all that that we say, including the absense of any really substantive disagreement. Why, in that case, would Smith have proceeded as he did? We address that question at the end of the piece. Our speculations suggest a method in the madness. (shrink)

ABSTRACTAdam Smith infused the expression ‘impartial spectator’ with a plexus of related meanings, one of which is a super-being, which bears parallels to monotheistic ideas of God. As for any genuine, identified, human spectator, he can be deemed impartial only presumptively. Such presumptive impartiality as regards the incident does not of itself carry extensive implications about his intelligence, nor about his being aligned with benevolence towards any larger whole. We may posit, however, a being who is impartial and who holds (...) higher levels of intelligence and of benevolence, and then converse over what her sentiments would be about the matter under discussion. It is natural to conceive of a being who is unsurpassable in such qualities, who is morally supreme, and who naturally takes the definite article the without having been definitized by the writer. Signal passages, new to edition 6, suggest that Smith formulates the man within the breast as a representative of the always present and everywhere morally supreme impartial spectator. When Smith speaks of the man within the breast as ‘the supposed impartial spectator’, we interpret ‘supposed’ as sup-pos-ed, not sup-pos’d. (shrink)

Religion and the Rebel, Colin Wilson's second volume from his internationally acclaimed Outsider Cycle, is a casebook about and for rebels. With inspirational wisdom and engaging clarity, Wilson shows us that the purpose of religion, of our personal relationship with the sacred and the all-pervading mystery of existence, is to expand our consciousness and intensify our sense of life. Wilson heroically claims that the power to create meaning resides in our mental and spiritual discipline. Examining the lives and works (...) of Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Rilke, Shaw, Pascal, Swedenborg, Rimbaud and Scott Fitzgerald, among others, Wilson explores the main existential questions and shows how these remarkable writers, scientists, philosophers and poets faced their need for transcendence. Like many of us, they were driven by a need to become more than men. Religion and the Rebel is an outstanding and enjoyable book that combines philosophical analysis, historical interest, and religious insight. (shrink)

The levelling-down objection rejects the egalitarian view that it is intrinsically good to eliminate the inequality of an outcome by lowering the relevant good of those better off to the level of those worse off. Larry Temkin suggests that the position underlying this objection is an exclusionary version of the person-affecting view, in which an outcome can be better or worse only if persons are affected for better or worse. Temkin then defends egalitarianism by rejecting this position. In this essay, (...) I avoid Temkin's conclusion by arguing that the levelling-down objection is best understood as resting on an alternative position, which involves a distinction between those non-person-affecting ideals that posit value as tied to individuals in a particular manner and those that do not. Taken as the basis of the levelling-down objection, this position allows us consistently to reject egalitarianism while accepting many plausible non-person-affecting ideals. (shrink)

Prolonged survival after the declaration of death by neurologic criteria creates ambiguity regarding the validity of this methodology. This ambiguity has perpetuated the debate among secular and nondissenting Catholic authors who question whether the neurologic standards are sufficient for the declaration of death of organ donors. Cardiopulmonary criteria are being increasingly used for organ donors who do not meet brain death standards. However, cardiopulmonary criteria are plagued by conflict of interest issues, arbitrary standards for candidacy, and the lack of standardized (...) protocols for organ procurement. Combining the neurological and cardiopulmonary standards into a single protocol would mitigate the weaknesses of both and provide greater biologic and moral certainty that a donor of unpaired vital organs is indeed dead. (shrink)

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- List of Figures -- List of Tables -- Acknowledgements -- 1 Physics, Knowledge and Semiosis -- 2 Language, Knowledge and Description -- 3 Mathematical Statements and Expressions -- 4 Mathematical Symbols and the Architecture of the Grammar of Mathematics -- 5 Genres of Language and Mathematics -- 6 Images and the Knowledge of Physics -- 7 Physics and Semiotics -- Appendix A System Network Conventions -- Appendix B Full System Networks (...) for Mathematics -- Appendix C Details of Corpus -- Index. (shrink)

When are morally good actions beautiful, when indeed they are? In this paper, it is argued that morally good actions are beautiful when they appear to express the deep or true self, and in turn tend to give rise to an emotion which is characterised by feelings of being moved, unity, inspiration, and meaningfulness, inter alia. In advancing the case for this claim, it is revealed that there are additional sources of well-formedness in play in the context of moral beauty (...) in addition to those that have tended to be focused on to date: one which is connected to imagining a deep location for the goodness concerned, and another which is connected to imagining that the goodness stems from capacities which are essential to the person. (shrink)

Shelly Kagan argues in his ‘What's Wrong with Speciesism?’ for four provocative claims: 1. speciesism is not necessarily a mere prejudice; 2. most people are not speciesists; 3. ‘modal personism’ more closely reflects what most people believe, and 4. modal personism might be true. In this article, I object to Kagan's account of what constitutes a ‘mere prejudice’, and I object to the sort of argument he uses to show that most people are not speciesist. I then attempt to motivate, (...) and defend what I take to be the best version of modal personism; answer several problems for the view; and raise other problems that I think are harder to answer. (shrink)

What is the nature of the concept BEAUTY? Does it differ fundamentally from nearby concepts such as PRETTINESS? It is argued that BEAUTY, but not PRETTINESS, is a dual-character concept. Across a number of contexts, it is proposed that BEAUTY has a descriptive sense that is characterised by, inter alia, having intrinsically pleasing appearances; and a normative sense associated with deeply-held values. This account is supported across two, pre-registered, studies (N=500), and by drawing on analysis of corpus data. It is (...) suggested that this can help to explain why beauty, unlike prettiness, is thought to be deep in both the sense of being important, and in the sense of being less closely tied to sensory surfaces. (shrink)

According to the most important objection to the existence of moral beauty, true judgements of moral beauty are not possible as moral judgements require being motivated to act in line with the moral judgement made, and judgements of beauty require not being motivated to act in any way. Here, I clarify the argument underlying the objection, and show that it does not show that moral beauty does not exist. I present two responses: namely, that the beauty of moral beauty does (...) not lie in the moral goodness per se (the “adjacent properties” response); and that only a dispositional motivation to act is required for the moral judgements that are typically made as part of judgements of moral beauty, whereas aesthetic judgements only rule out state motivations to act (the “equivocation of motivation required” response). In addressing the objection, I show how moral beauty is consistent with disinterestedness, and so should be accepted more widely; and also clarify where the beauty in moral beauty resides, and how the moral-aesthetic distinction should be drawn. (shrink)

Why are moral actions beautiful, when indeed they are? This paper assesses the view, found most notably in Schiller, that moral actions are beautiful just when they present the appearance of freedom by appearing to be the result of internal harmony (the Schillerian Internal Harmony Thesis). I argue that while this thesis can accommodate some of the beauty involved in contrasts of the ‘continent’ and the ‘fully’ virtuous, it cannot account for all of the beauty in such contrasts, and so (...) needs to be weakened considerably (to the Internal Harmony Thesis). To account for the remaining beauty that cannot be fully accommodated even by this revised thesis, as well as the beauty contained in contrasts that involve agents who experience internal conflict as a result of being sensitive to different sources of moral value to an appropriate extent, a number of further theses need to be posited: namely, that the beauty of some moral actions is to be accommodated in terms of internal disharmony (the Internal Disharmony Thesis), and in terms of a felt harmony between the appreciator of the action and the executor of the action (the Affective Harmony Thesis). As such, in contrast to Schiller, I suggest that we need to take a pluralist and context-sensitive approach to accommodating the beauty of moral actions. (shrink)

This article is an attempt to deepen our understanding of trust. To this end, several elements frequently present in trust-relationships are first identified, and then three underappreciated puzzles about trust are described. Next, it is argued that certain leading analyses of trust are unsatisfactory, in part, because they are unable to solve these puzzles succesfully. Finally, an alternative way of thinking about trust is proposed. It is argued that this new way of thinking about trust is bothindependently plausible and better (...) able to solve these puzzles about trust. (shrink)

Humane farming can be defined as the practice of raising animals for food in an environment that is good for them and where they are killed in a manner that is relatively painless. Many people who oppose factory farming think that humane farming is morally permissible, even morally laudable. In what follows, I focus on one argument in support of humane farming that emphasizes its good consequences, not only for producers, and consumers, but for the animals themselves. I discuss problems (...) for this argument and explain how it can be revised to overcome those problems. In the end, I explain why even the strongest version of the good‐consequences argument fails to show that most cases of humane farming are morally permissible. However, my objections to this argument suggest that humane farming may be morally permissible in rare cases. (shrink)

The commentary argues that we cannot be sure that human consciousness has survival value and that in order to understand the origins and, perhaps, the function of consciousness, we should examine the behavioural and neural precursors to consciousness in nonhumans. An example is given of research on the role of context in decisions regarding fleeing from probable predators in the Mongolian gerbil.

In What the Body Commands, Colin Klein proposes and defends a novel theory of pain. Klein argues that pains are imperative; they are sensations with a content, and that content is a command to protect the injured part of the body. He terms this view "imperativism about pain," and argues that imperativism can account for two puzzling features of pain: its strong motivating power and its uninformative nature. Klein argues that the biological purpose of pain is homeostatic; like hunger (...) and thirst, pain helps solve a challenge to bodily integrity. It does so by motivating you to act in ways that help the body recover. If you obey pain's command, you get better. He develops his account to handle a variety of pain phenomena and applies it to solve a number of historically puzzling cases. Klein's intent is to defend the imperativist view in a pure form -- without requiring pain to represent facts about the world.Klein presents a model of imperative content showing that intrinsically motivating sensations are best understood as imperatives, and argues that pain belongs to this class. He considers the distinction between pain and suffering; explains how pain motivates; addresses variations among pains; and offers an imperativist account of maladaptive pains, pains that don't appear to hurt, masochism, and why pain feels bad. (shrink)

Computers are already approving financial transactions, controlling electrical supplies, and driving trains. Soon, service robots will be taking care of the elderly in their homes, and military robots will have their own targeting and firing protocols. Colin Allen and Wendell Wallach argue that as robots take on more and more responsibility, they must be programmed with moral decision-making abilities, for our own safety. Taking a fast paced tour through the latest thinking about philosophical ethics and artificial intelligence, the authors (...) argue that even if full moral agency for machines is a long way off, it is already necessary to start building a kind of functional morality, in which artificial moral agents have some basic ethical sensitivity. But the standard ethical theories don't seem adequate, and more socially engaged and engaging robots will be needed. As the authors show, the quest to build machines that are capable of telling right from wrong has begun. -/- Moral Machines is the first book to examine the challenge of building artificial moral agents, probing deeply into the nature of human decision making and ethics. (shrink)

Colin Morris traces the origin of the concept of the individual, not to the Renaissance where it is popularly assumed to have been invented, but farther back, ...

The heart of this book is the reciprocal relationship between philosophical theories of mind and empirical studies of animal cognition.

Wittgenstein famously ended his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Wittgenstein 1922) by writing: "Whereof one cannot speak, one must pass over in silence." (Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen.) In that earliest work, Wittgenstein gives no clue about whether this aphorism applied to animal minds, or whether he would have included philosophical discussions about animal minds as among those displaying "the most fundamental confusions (of which the whole of philosophy is full)" (1922, TLP 3.324), but given his later writings on (...) language and thought, it seems a plausible hypothesis. Years later he wrote in the Philosophical Investigations (1968, p. 223) another aphoristic statement: "If a lion could speak, we would not understand him." (Wenn der Löwe sprechen könnte, wir könnten ihn nicht verstehen.) Decades of philosophical discussion about what Wittgenstein meant by these remarks illustrate another point: when philosophers speak, we do not fully understand them. (shrink)

This volume provides a guide to the discussion among biologists and philosophersabout the role of concepts such as function and design in an evolutionary understanding oflife.

Unraveling the molecular detail of insulin receptor activation has proved challenging, but a major advance is the recent determination of crystallographic structures of insulin in complex with its primary binding site on the receptor. The current model for insulin receptor activation is that two distinct surfaces of insulin monomer engage sequentially with two distinct binding sites on the extracellular surface of the insulin receptor, which is itself a disulfide‐linked (αβ)2 homodimer. In the process, conformational changes occur both within the hormone (...) and the receptor, the latter resulting in the disruption of the intracellular interactions that hold the kinase domains in their basal state and in the initiation of the phosphorylation events that drive insulin signaling. The purpose of this paper is to summarize the extant structural data relating to hormone binding and how it effects receptor activation, as well as to discuss the issues that remain unresolved. (shrink)

Many, including Marx, Rawls, and the contemporary 'Black Lives Matter' movement, embrace the ambition to secure terms of co-existence in which the worth of people's lives becomes a lived reality rather than an empty boast. This book asks whether, as some believe, the philosophical idea of human dignity can help achieve that ambition. Offering a new fourfold typology of dignity concepts, Colin Bird argues that human dignity can perform this role only if certain traditional ways of conceiving it are (...) abandoned. Accordingly, Bird rejects the idea that human dignity refers to the inherent worth or status of individuals, and instead reinterprets it as a social relation, constituted by affects of respect and the modes of mutual attention which they generate. What emerges is a new vision of human dignity as a vital political value, and an arresting vindication of its role as an agent of critical reflection on politics. (shrink)

In this book, Robert Doran offers the first in-depth treatment of the major theories of the sublime, from the ancient Greek treatise On the Sublime and its reception in early modern literary theory to the philosophical accounts of Burke and Kant. Doran explains how and why the sublime became a key concept of modern thought and shows how the various theories of sublimity are united by a common structure - the paradoxical experience of being at once overwhelmed and (...) exalted - and a common concern: the preservation of a notion of transcendence in the face of the secularization of modern culture. Combining intellectual history with literary theory and philosophical analysis, his book provides a new, searching and multilayered account of a concept that continues to stimulate thought about our responses to art, nature and human events. (shrink)

The food supply is complicated and consumers are increasingly calling for labeling on food to be more informative. In particular, consumers are asking for the labeling of food derived from genetically modified organisms based on health, safety, and environmental concerns. At issue is whether the labels that are sought would accurately provide the information desired. The present study examined consumer perceptions of health, safety and the environment for foods labeled organic, natural, fat free or low fat, GMO, or non-GMO. Findings (...) indicated that respondents consistently believed that foods labeled GMO are less healthy, safe and environmentally-friendly compared to all other labels. These results suggest that labels mean something to consumers, but that a disconnect may exist between the meaning associated with the label and the scientific consensus for GMO food. These findings may provide insight for the development of labels that provide information that consumers seek. (shrink)

This note motivates a logic for a theory that can express its own notion of logical consequence—a ‘syntactically closed’ theory of naive validity. The main issue for such a logic is Curry’s paradox, which is averted by the failure of contraction. The logic features two related, but different, implication connectives. A Hilbert system is proposed that is complete and non-trivial.

As arti® cial intelligence moves ever closer to the goal of producing fully autonomous agents, the question of how to design and implement an arti® cial moral agent (AMA) becomes increasingly pressing. Robots possessing autonomous capacities to do things that are useful to humans will also have the capacity to do things that are harmful to humans and other sentient beings. Theoretical challenges to developing arti® cial moral agents result both from controversies among ethicists about moral theory itself, and from (...) computational limits to the implementation of such theories. In this paper the ethical disputes are surveyed, the possibility of a `moral Turing Test ’ is considered and the computational di culties accompanying the diŒerent types of approach are assessed. Human-like performance, which is prone to include immoral actions, may not be acceptable in machines, but moral perfection may be computationally unattainable. The risks posed by autonomous machines ignorantly or deliberately harming people and other sentient beings are great. The development of machines with enough intelligence to assess the eŒects of their actions on sentient beings and act accordingly may ultimately be the most important task faced by the designers of arti® cially intelligent automata. (shrink)

It seems clear that a fortunate life for a human being is very different from a fortunate life for a dog. But it is not clear what the appropriate measure is for determining whether a life is fortunate or not. Jeff McMahan rejects the Species Norm Account and defends the Intrinsic Potential Account of overall lifelong fortune. In this article, I argue that the Intrinsic Potential Account fails. More specifically, I will argue that it is vulnerable to numerous counterexamples; fails (...) for the same basic reason that McMahan rejects the Species Norm Account; and is insensitive to a consideration that is morally significant. (shrink)

It seems clear that a fortunate life for a human being is very different from a fortunate life for a dog. But it is not clear what the appropriate measure is for determining whether a life is fortunate or not. Jeff McMahan rejects the Species Norm Account and defends the Intrinsic Potential Account of overall lifelong fortune. In this article, I argue that the Intrinsic Potential Account fails. More specifically, I will argue that it is vulnerable to numerous counterexamples; fails (...) for the same basic reason that McMahan rejects the Species Norm Account; and is insensitive to a consideration that is morally significant. (shrink)

Logical consequence is the relation that obtains between premises and conclusion(s) in a valid argument. Orthodoxy has it that valid arguments are necessarily truth-preserving, but this platitude only raises a number of further questions, such as: how does the truth of premises guarantee the truth of a conclusion, and what constraints does validity impose on rational belief? This volume presents thirteen essays by some of the most important scholars in the field of philosophical logic. The essays offer ground-breaking new insights (...) into the nature of logical consequence; the relation between logic and inference; how the semantics and pragmatics of natural language bear on logic; the relativity of logic; and the structural properties of the consequence relation. (shrink)

Political philosophers have recently begun to take seriously methodological questions concerning what a theoretical examination of political ideals is suppose to accomplish and how effective theorising in ideal theory is in securing those aims. Andrew Mason and G.A. Cohen, for example, believe that the fundamental principles of justice are logically independent of issues of feasibility and questions about human nature. Their position contrasts sharply with political theorists like John Dunn and Joseph Carens who believe that normative theorising must be integrated (...) with an appreciation of the empirical realities of one’s society. Rather than bracket questions of feasibility and human nature, empirically-oriented political theorists believe that real, non- ideal considerations must be taken seriously when deriving normative theories of justice.1 And some justice-theorists, most notably John Rawls, attempt to. (shrink)

This paper explores the public perception of energy transition pathways, that is, individual behaviors, political strategies, and technologies that aim to foster a shift towards a low-carbon and sustainable society. We employed affective image analysis, a structured method based on free associations to explore positive and negative connotations and affective meanings. Affective image analysis allows to tap into affective meanings and to compare these meanings across individuals, groups, and cultures. Data were collected among university students in Norway (n = 106) (...) and Germany (n = 125), two countries that differ with respect to their socio-political contexts and histories concerning energy and energy systems. A total of 25 energy transition pathway components were presented to the participants who generated one free association to each component by indicating the first that came to mind when thinking of the component. Participants evaluated their associations by indicating whether they considered each association to be positive, negative, or neutral. These associations were coded by two research assistants, which resulted in 2650 coded responses in the Norwegian sample and 2846 coded responses in the German sample. Results for the two samples are remarkably similar. The most frequent type of association is a general evaluation of the component, for example concerning its valence or its importance. The second most frequent types of association are requirements needed to implement the component (e.g., national policies) and consequences of the component (e.g., personal or environmental consequences). Individual behaviors (e.g., walking) elicited thoughts about consequences and requirements, but also about the prevalence of such behaviors. Associations in response to technologies (e.g., carbon capture and storage) mainly referred to some descriptive aspect of the technology. Evaluations of the free responses were predominantly positive, but some components also elicited negative associations, especially nuclear power. The free associations that people generate suggest that they have vague and unspecific knowledge about energy transition pathways, that they process them in an automatic and intuitive rather than deliberative manner, and that they have clear affective evaluations of the presented components. (shrink)

Viewing Foucault in the light of work by Continental and American philosophers, most notably Nietzsche, Habermas, Deleuze, Richard Rorty, Bernard Williams, and Ian Hacking, Genealogy as Critique shows that philosophical genealogy involves not only the critique of modernity but also its transformation. Colin Koopman engages genealogy as a philosophical tradition and a method for understanding the complex histories of our present social and cultural conditions. He explains how our understanding of Foucault can benefit from productive dialogue with philosophical allies (...) to push Foucaultian genealogy a step further and elaborate a means of addressing our most intractable contemporary problems. (shrink)

This paper contains a tutorial introduction to the ideas of geometric algebra, concentrating on its physical applications. We show how the definition of a “geometric product” of vectors in 2-and 3-dimensional space provides precise geometrical interpretations of the imaginary numbers often used in conventional methods. Reflections and rotations are analyzed in terms of bilinear spinor transformations, and are then related to the theory of analytic functions and their natural extension in more than two dimensions (monogenics), Physics is greatly facilitated by (...) the use of Hestenes' spacetime algebra, which automatically incorporates the geometric structure of spacetime. This is demonstrated by examples from electromagnetism. In the course of this purely classical exposition many surprising results are obtained—results which are usually thought to belong to the preserve of quantum theory. We conclude that geometric algebra is the most powerful and general language available for the development of mathematical physics. (shrink)

Recent work in philosophical logic has taken interesting and unexpected turns. It has seen not only a proliferation of logical systems, but new applications of a wide range of different formal theories to philosophical questions. As a result, philosophers have been forced to revisit the nature and foundation of core logical concepts, chief amongst which is the concept of logical consequence. This essay sets the contributions of the volume in context and identifies how they advance important debates within the philosophy (...) of logic. (shrink)

We are now acutely aware, as if all of the sudden, that data matters enormously to how we live. How did information come to be so integral to what we can do? How did we become people who effortlessly present our lives in social media profiles and who are meticulously recorded in state surveillance dossiers and online marketing databases? What is the story behind data coming to matter so much to who we are? -/- In How We Became Our Data, (...) Colin Koopman excavates early moments of our rapidly accelerating data-tracking technologies and their consequences for how we think of and express our selfhood today. Koopman explores the emergence of mass-scale record keeping systems like birth certificates and social security numbers, as well as new data techniques for categorizing personality traits, measuring intelligence, and even racializing subjects. This all culminates in what Koopman calls the “informational person” and the “informational power” we are now subject to. The recent explosion of digital technologies that are turning us into a series of algorithmic data points is shown to have a deeper and more turbulent past than we commonly think. Blending philosophy, history, political theory, and media theory in conversation with thinkers like Michel Foucault, Jürgen Habermas, and Friedrich Kittler, Koopman presents an illuminating perspective on how we have come to think of our personhood—and how we can resist its erosion. (shrink)

This paper employs the ideas of geometric algebra to investigate the physical content of Dirac's electron theory. The basis is Hestenes' discovery of the geometric significance of the Dirac spinor, which now represents a Lorentz transformation in spacetime. This transformation specifies a definite velocity, which might be interpreted as that of a real electron. Taken literally, this velocity yields predictions of tunnelling times through potential barriers, and defines streamlines in spacetime that would correspond to electron paths. We also present a (...) general, first-order diffraction theory for electromagnetic and Dirac waves. We conclude with a critical appraisal of the Dirac theory. (shrink)

In recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in the work of Emmanuel Levinas, widely recognized as one of the most important yet difficult philosophers of the 20th century. In this much-needed introduction, Davis unpacks the concepts at the centre of Levinas's thought - alterity, the Other, the Face, infinity - concepts which have previously presented readers with major problems of interpretation. Davis traces the development of Levinas's thought over six decades, describing the context in which he worked, (...) and the impact of his writings. He argues that Levinas's work remains tied to the ontological tradition with which he wants to break, and demonstrates how his later writing tries to overcome this dependency by its increasingly disruptive, sometimes opaque, textual practice. He discusses Levinas's theological writings and his relationship to Judaism, as well as the reception of his work by contemporary thinkers, arguing that the influence of his work has led to a growing interest in ethical issues among poststructuralist and postmodernist thinkers in recent years. Comprehensive and clearly written, this book will be essential reading for students and researchers in continental philosophy, French studies, literary theory and theology. (shrink)