This book aims to show that recent developments in neuroscience permit a defense of free will. Through language, human beings can escape strict biological determinism.

This book aims to show that recent developments in neuroscience permit a defense of free will. Through language, human beings can escape strict biological determinism.

Compared to approach motivation, avoidance motivation evokes vigilance, attention to detail, systematic information processing, and the recruitment of cognitive resources. From a conservation of energy perspective it follows that people would be reluctant to engage in the kind of effortful cognitive processing evoked by avoidance motivation, unless the benefits of expending this energy outweigh the costs. We put forward three empirically testable propositions concerning approach and avoidance motivation, investment of energy, and the consequences of such investments. Specifically, we propose that (...) compared to approach-motivated people, avoidance-motivated people (a) carefully select situations in which they exert such cognitive effort, (b) only perform well in the absence of distracters that occupy cognitive resources, and (c) become depleted after exerting such cognitive effort. (shrink)

Do activist trade and industrial policies offer developing countries a viable alternative to either neoliberal or mercantilist development regimes? We hope to answer the question by, first, distinguishing the “open economy industrial policies” in vogue today from either their “closed economy” predecessors—i.e., import-substituting industrialization—or more orthodox approaches to development policy making; second, tracing the growth of nontraditional exports from Latin America and the Caribbean to the diffusion of more active approaches in the 1990s; and, third, accounting for activism’s apparent success (...) in an otherwise inauspicious spatial and temporal context by identifying three distinct limits to rent-seeking in the open economy: infant exporter maturation; the costs of government support; and the reactions of foreign rivals. (shrink)

In this paper we describe a few interrelated issues for validating theories that posit levels of consciousness. First, validating levels of consciousness requires consensus about the ordering of conscious states, which cannot be easily achieved. This problem is particularly severe if we believe conscious states can be irreducibly smeared over time. Second, the relationship between conscious states is probably sometimes intransitive, which means levels of consciousness will not be amenable to a single continuous measure. Finally, even if a multidimensional approach (...) to levels of consciousness is adopted, we argue that there are further problems for its validation. (shrink)

This study examines how heightened expectations of board responsibility and accountability affect the socio-cognitive decision-making of boards and their collective task performance. Using data from the directors of 60 boards who served before and after the enactment of Sarbanes–Oxley, this study provides insight into the potential negative impact that this tightened accountability environment can have on a board’s task performance. Examining several socio-cognitive elements of board decision-making, board authority is found to have a positive main effect on board task performance, (...) while relative CEO power and affective conflict have curvilinear relationships with board task performance. Cohesiveness also moderates the relationship between a board’s perceived uncertainty and affective conflict with board task performance. In sum, the model shows how a new era of director accountability can affect the social cognitions of board decision-making that underlie board task performance. (shrink)

It deals with the problems of the Latin text (taking account of Michael Winterbottom's new edition), it delineates the work's structure and sometimes elusive train of thought, clarifies the underlying Greek and Latin concepts, and provides starting points for approaching the philosophical and historical problems that De Officiis raises.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Commentary on “Spiritual Experience and Psychopathology”Andrew Sims (bio)In examining this interesting paper, we need first of all to understand what the authors are doing. They are not taking the conceptual vehicles of “spiritual experience” (SE) and “psychotic phenomena” (PP) for a gentle outing, but exposing both of them to the hardest road test they can devise. From 1,000 accounts of “spiritual experiences” that were already so dramatic (...) that those involved were prepared to describe them, the authors selected three which most successfully blurred the boundaries between SE and PP. So we are not exploring whether these concepts have general practical validity, but whether their mutual frontiers are discrete or overlapping. The authors’ task is legitimate, but it needs to be recognized for what it is.Unusual spiritual experiences are interpreted by the authors as psychotic symptoms, and the definitions of the Present State Examination (PSE) descriptions are cited to justify this. However, we have known for a long time that using instruments for purposes for which they were not designed can produce unexpected results; it is rather like washing socks in a dishwasher and being surprised that it does little good to the socks. The PSE was devised for categorizing and quantifying existing psychiatric disorders in epidemiological studies. The further one gets from this, its true purpose, the less satisfactory it becomes as an instrument. A better way of evaluating symptomatology in an individual case is a skilled and painstaking interview by a well-trained descriptive psychopathologist. One can only conclude from the authors’ use of the PSE in distinguishing SE from PP, that the instrument itself is not capable of doing this, which is not really very surprising. One can form no views on the concepts of SE and PP themselves, except that in some circumstances they may be difficult to tell apart.It would be easy to dispute whether Simon’s beliefs were delusions. Believers from many religious backgrounds “know” that God gives them thoughts or ideas, and it requires detailed psychopathological examination, and not the application of a questionnaire, to distinguish this from the much more concrete experience as described in PSE of “inserted thoughts.”Rating scales, be they assessments of the quality of teaching in primary schools or quantification of established psychotic symptoms, are necessarily only a pale reflection and an over-simplification of the skilled work that professionals undertake. To imply that because a score could be given on the PSE to an otherwise healthy woman who describes the frequent experience of hearing God’s voice, denies the validity of her experience, but also affronts the professional skills of a trained psychopathologist. When psychiatrists, or even [End Page 79] untrained research workers, use the PSE they are presumably doing so as part of an epidemiological research study, and the validity of their individual result is evened out by results from a number of other subjects. If a psychiatrist is trying to decide whether Sara had “true” hallucinations, he or she will carry out a psychopathological interview in which the criteria for establishing true hallucinations are much more sophisticated than is possible in a questionnaire, and the interview will be individualized. Sara’s significant statement, “but God doesn’t take your free will away,” immediately distinguishes her diagnosis from schizophrenia. It was good that Sara’s priest did not need detailed knowledge of psychopathology to come to a common-sense evaluation of her experience.It was with some feelings of disappointment that I realized that when the authors use the word “psychotic” they merely mean that a tick could be placed in an appropriate box for the PSE. If one were to carry out an investigation of serum electrolytes on a fit athlete on completion of a marathon, one would get bizarre and probably abnormal results. For a quantified investigation to be meaningful, one must always take account of the context.When I read these three cases as a psychopathologist, I find no convincing psychotic phenomena, and the three human beings were undoubtedly not psychotic at the time of expression of their religious experiences. The word psychosis is not helpful in psychopathology: if one looks more specifically in these cases for the phenomena... (shrink)

Historical aspects of the issue are also broached. Intuitions relative to self-organization can be found in the works of such key Western philosophical figures as Aristotle, Leibniz and Kant. Interacting with more recent authors and cybernetics, self-organization represents a notion in keeping with the modern world’s discovery of radical complexity. The themes of teleology and emergence are analyzed by philosophers of sciences with regards to the issues of modelization and scientific explanation. (publisher, edited).

In the early months of 2020, the deadly Covid-19 disease spread rapidly around the world. In response, national and regional governments implemented a range of emergency lockdown measures, curtailing citizens’ movements and greatly limiting economic activity. More recently, as restrictions begin to be loosened or lifted entirely, the use of so-called contact tracing apps has figured prominently in many jurisdictions’ plans to reopen society. Critics have questioned the utility of such technologies on a number of fronts, both practical and ethical. (...) However, little has been said about the ways in which the normative design choices of app developers, and the products that result therefrom, might contribute to ethical reflection and wider political debate. Drawing from scholarship in critical design and human–computer interaction, this paper examines the development of a QR code-based tracking app called Zwaai (‘Wave’ in Dutch), where its designers explicitly positioned the app as an alternative to the predominant Bluetooth and GPS-based approaches. Through analyzing these designers’ choices, this paper argues that QR code infrastructures can work to surface a set ofethical–political seams, two of which are discussed here—responsibilizationandnetworked (im)permanence—that more ‘seamless’ protocols like Bluetooth actively aim to bypass, and which may go otherwise unnoticed by existing ethical frameworks. (shrink)

Those who endorse the free energy principle as a theory of cognition are committed to three propositions that are jointly incompatible but which will cohere if one of them is denied. The first of these is that the free energy principle gives us a self-sufficient explanation of what all cognitive systems consist in: a specific computational architecture. The second is that all adaptive behavior is driven by the free energy principle and the process of model-based inference it entails. The third (...) is that cognition is not ubiquitous. These three incompatible propositions together comprise a problem of scope for the free energy principle as a theory of cognition. The prospects for rejecting each of these propositions are considered. To drop either the first or the second would limit the explanatory success of the principle. However, there are plausible ways to bite the bullet on denial of the third proposition. In particular, I argue that it is possible f... (shrink)

Reductionism in biology concerns the relations between biology and physico-chemic sciences. It is both historically and epistemologically analysed. Two historical moments are studied: the origins of the cell theory and the contact between cell theory and mendellian genetic. Epistemological analysis concerns first the peculiarity of functional explanation. Logical analysis is complemented by a tentative reduction of the function of hemoglobin to his biochemical structure. Second, reduction between theories will be analysed. Finally, the convergence between historical and epistemological analysis will be (...) emphasized. (shrink)

Gallagher poses a phenomenologically-inspired challenge to a classical metaphysics of nature which is associated with contemporary natural sciences. This metaphysics can be reconstructed in terms of two distinct commitments: reductionism and individualism. This comment on Gallagher’s [2019] article attempts to show how a revision of the classical metaphysics can be made intelligible in light of those two commitments. It requires a strong interpretation of the ecological framework for understanding cognition. Such a revision would give agency a central place in the (...) revised metaphysics of nature. (shrink)

In this paper I give a novel argument for this view that the AGENT concept has an externalist semantics. The argument argues the conclusion from two premises: first, that our first relationships to agents is through a subpersonal mechanism which requires for its function an agential proto-concept which refers directly; and second, that there is a continuity of reference between this proto-concept and the mature concept AGENT. I argue the first on the basis of results in the developmental psychology of (...) social cognition. I argue the second on the basis of a process of elimination, by considering three possibilities for the relationship between the two concepts. On the basis of these two premises the conclusion is drawn that AGENT is a concept that refers directly. That has the following consequences for the philosophy of action: first, that “action” is not an appropriate term for reductive analysis, as the causal theory of action assumes; and second, that we should be looking to the appropriate empirical disciplines for an elucidation of the concept. (shrink)

:Behavioural public policy has come under fire by critics who claim that it is illiberal. Some authors recently suggest that there is a type of BPP – boosting – that is not as vulnerable to this normative critique. Our paper challenges this claim: there's no non-circular way to draw the distinction between nudge and boost that would make the normative difference required to infer the permissibility of a policy intervention from its type-membership. We consider two strategies: paradigmatic examples and causal (...) mechanisms. We conclude by sketching some suggestions about the right way to approach the normative issues. (shrink)

There is an argument for incompatibilism that is based on the experience of agency. Authors who endorse this argument place pro tanto evidential weight on one or more of two putative aspects of the experience of being an agent: i) the experience of being the causal source of our actions; ii) the experience of having robust alternative possibilities available to one. With some exceptions, these authors and their critics alike neglect a third significant aspect of the experience of agency: iii) (...) the experience of the future as being modally open. This aspect is either neglected or conflated with or. In this paper I rehabilitate as a notable aspect in its own right, and demonstrate that it is a good candidate for having the same pro tanto evidential weight in the experiential argument for incompatibilism. Then, I go on to assess the prospects of this revised argument in the face of central compatibilist objections that are central to the literature. I find that it fares just as well, if not better, than the original argument. (shrink)

Libertarians about free will sometimes argue for their position on the grounds that our phenomenology of action is such that determinism would need to be false for it to be veridical. Many, however, have thought that it would be impossible for us to have an experience that is in contradiction with determinism, since this would require us to have perceptual experience of metaphysical facts. In this paper I show how the libertarian claim is possible. In particular, if experience depicts the (...) world such that there is more than one physically possible future, then determinism would need to be false for that experience to be veridical. I show that we have experiences, or perceptual episodes, of this kind on the basis of recent work in the study of perception. Theorists in this area have argued that we have vision-for-action, and that what we visually perceive are not just objects but also possibilities for action. If we experience that it is possible that we ϕ, then we also experience that it is possible that we not ϕ. Furthermore, we probably experience more than one possibility for action at any one moment. I argue that these are physical possibilities, and therefore that we experience the world such that there is more than one physically possible future. So the libertarian claim about the semantics of agential phenomenology is highly plausible, even if this does not entail libertarianism. (shrink)

In the maximal form of indirect development found in many taxa of marine invertebrates, embryonic cell lineages of fixed fate and limited division capacity give rise to the larval structures. The adult arises from set‐aside cells in the larva that are held out from the early embryonic specification processes, and that retain extensive proliferative capacity. We review the locations and fates of set‐aside cells in two protostomes, a lophophorate and a deuterostome. The distinct adult body plans of many phyla develop (...) from homologous set‐aside cells within homologous larvae. We argue that the stocks from which these phyla arose utilized these respective larvae, and the diversity of their adult body plans reflects diverse pattern formation processes executed in their set‐aside cell populations. Chordates and arthropods develop directly, but share adult characters with indirectly developing phyla. Thus the deuterostome and protostome stocks that were ancestral to chordates and arthropods, respectively, also utilized maximal indirect development. (shrink)

Anosognosia for hemiplegia is the denial of neurologically-caused paralysis, and it often co-occurs with a number of distortions of belief and emotion such as somatoparaphrenia and an exaggeration of negative affect towards minor health complaints. The salience of these latter symptoms led early investigators to propose explanations of AHP which construed it as a process of motivated self-deception against the overwhelming anxiety and depression that knowledge of deficit would otherwise cause, and which was observed in hemiplegic patients without the anosognosia. (...) Since some influential critiques of this approach, however, theories of this kind have largely been rejected on the grounds that they are inappropriately “psychogenic.” What has replaced them are a class of theories which explain the lack of awareness in terms of neurocognitive deficit, with the deficit in question variously described by researchers as involving spatial awareness, motor control, and other capacities. In this paper I argue – contra claims in the literature – that the patterns of explanation which are characteristic of the psychodynamic theory are not incompatible in principle with the notion that the illness involves neurocognitive deficit. That means that these patterns of explanation can be preserved where they make good sense of the obscure attitudinal and emotional symptoms that occur in AHP – symptoms that are otherwise difficult to explain. I suggest some ways in which this fact could be accommodated by deficit theories of the illness which are based on motor deficit. (shrink)

In this brief, we argue that there is a diversity of ways in which humans (Homo sapiens) are ‘persons’ and there are no non-arbitrary conceptions of ‘personhood’ that can include all humans and exclude all nonhuman animals. To do so we describe and assess the four most prominent conceptions of ‘personhood’ that can be found in the rulings concerning Kiko and Tommy, with particular focus on the most recent decision, Nonhuman Rights Project, Inc v Lavery.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been devastating for people living with dementia (PLWD) and their caregivers. While prior research has documented these effects, it has not delved into their specific causes or how they are modified by contextual variation in caregiving circumstances.

A research project by the Schools of Theology and Psychology of Australia’s Charles Sturt University surveyed a large sample of Salvation Army officers. This article considers survey responses to two questions relating to end-of-life care: the use of pain medications that may shorten life, and the cessation of fluid and food intake. The results of the analyses are evaluated in terms of Michael Banner’s proposal that moral theology should more assiduously converse with ‘patient ethnographic study’, which the survey instantiates to (...) some extent. Banner’s proposal and the results of the survey are contrasted to Peter Singer’s analytical moral philosophical dictums on end-of-life care. The results are also compared to a metastudy by Andrea Rodríguez-Prat and Evert van Leeuwen of 14 ethnographic studies of those who wish to hasten death at the end of life. We conclude that respondents exemplify a form of moral reasoning that is embedded within Christian spirituality; counters the assumptions of Singer’s approach; contrasts the diminishment of ‘meaning’ at the end of life, as seen in Rodríguez-Prat and van Leeuwen; and deserves further respectful ethnographic study. (shrink)

In order to improve our understanding of the components that reflect functionally important processes during reward anticipation and consumption, we used principle components analyses (PCA) to separate and quantify averaged ERP data obtained from each stage of a modified monetary incentive delay (MID) task. Although a small number of recent ERP studies have reported that reward and loss cues potentiate ERPs during anticipation, action preparation, and consummatory stages of reward processing, these findings are inconsistent due to temporal and spatial overlap (...) between the relevant electrophysiological components. Our results show three components following cue presentation are sensitive to incentive cues (N1, P3a, P3b). In contrast to previous research, reward‐related enhancement occurred only in the P3b, with earlier components more sensitive to break‐even and loss cues. During feedback anticipation, we observed a lateralized centroparietal negativity that was sensitive to response hand but not cue type. We also show that use of PCA on ERPs reflecting reward consumption successfully separates the reward positivity from the independently modulated feedback‐P3. Last, we observe for the first time a new reward consumption component: a late negativity distributed over the left frontal pole. This component appears to be sensitive to response hand, especially in the context of monetary gain. These results illustrate that the time course and sensitivities of electrophysiological activity that follows incentive cues do not follow a simple heuristic in which reward incentive cues produce enhanced activity at all stages and substages. (shrink)

Biological evolution provides a creative fount of complex and subtle adaptations, often surprising the scientists who discover them. However, because evolution is an algorithmic process that transcends the substrate in which it occurs, evolution’s creativity is not limited to nature. Indeed, many researchers in the field of digital evolution have observed their evolving algorithms and organisms subverting their intentions, exposing unrecognized bugs in their code, producing unexpected adaptations, or exhibiting outcomes uncannily convergent with ones in nature. Such stories routinely reveal (...) creativity by evolution in these digital worlds, but they rarely fit into the standard scientific narrative. Instead they are often treated as mere obstacles to be overcome, rather than results that warrant study in their own right. The stories themselves are traded among researchers through oral tradition, but that mode of information transmission is inefficient and prone to error and outright loss. Moreover, the fact that these stories tend to be shared only among practitioners means that many natural scientists do not realize how interesting and lifelike digital organisms are and how natural their evolution can be. To our knowledge, no collection of such anecdotes has been published before. This paper is the crowd-sourced product of researchers in the fields of artificial life and evolutionary computation who have provided first-hand accounts of such cases. It thus serves as a written, fact-checked collection of scientifically important and even entertaining stories. In doing so we also present here substantial evidence that the existence and importance of evolutionary surprises extends beyond the natural world, and may indeed be a universal property of all complex evolving systems. (shrink)

The Routledge Companion to Metaphysics is an outstanding, comprehensive and accessible guide to the major themes, thinkers, and issues in metaphysics. The Companion features over fifty specially commissioned chapters from international scholars which are organized into three clear parts: History of Metaphysics Ontology Metaphysics and Science. Each section features an introduction which places the range of essays in context, while an extensive glossary allows easy reference to key terms and definitions. The Routledge Companion to Metaphysics is essential reading for students (...) of philosophy and anyone interested in surveying the central topics and problems in metaphysics from causation to vagueness and from Plato and Aristotle to the present-day. (shrink)

First published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Strangers to Nature brings together many of the leading scholars who are working to redefine and expand the discourse on animal ethics. This volume will engage both scholars and lay-people by revealing the breadth of theorizing about the human/non-human animal relationship that is currently taking place.

We submit this brief in support of the Nonhuman Rights Project’s efforts to secure habeas corpus relief for the elephant named Happy. We reject arbitrary distinctions that deny adequate protections to other animals who share with protected humans relevantly similar vulnerabilities to harms and relevantly similar interests in avoiding such harms. We strongly urge this Court, in keeping with the best philosophical standards of rational judgment and ethical standards of justice, to recognize that, as a nonhuman person, Happy should be (...) released from her current confinement and transferred to an appropriate elephant sanctuary, pursuant to habeas corpus. (shrink)

We submit this brief in support of the Nonhuman Rights Project’s efforts to secure habeas corpus relief for the elephant named Happy. The Supreme Court, Bronx County, declined to grant habeas corpus relief and order Happy’s transfer to an elephant sanctuary, relying, in part, on previous decisions that denied habeas relief for the NhRP’s chimpanzee clients, Kiko and Tommy. Those decisions use incompatible conceptions of ‘person’ which, when properly understood, are either philosophically inadequate or, in fact, compatible with Happy’s personhood.

This volume presents twenty of the most important interviews the journal, Cogito conducted between 1987 and 1996. Covering a wide spectrum of intellectual inquiry, from logic to metaphysics to philosophy of mind, the interviews provide an excellent introduction to philosophy in the English speaking world at the end of the century. Interviews with: Michael Dummett Peter Strawson Alasdair MacIntyre David Gauthier Nancy Cartwright Mary Warnock Hilary Putnam Daniel Dennett Bernard Williams John Cottingham Willard Quine Stephen Korner Hugh Mellor Adam (...) Morton Jean Hampton Roger Scruton Richard Dawkins Richard Sorabji Derek Parfit Martha Nussbaum. (shrink)

First published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Herbert Marcuse examined the subjective and material conditions of radical social change and developed the "Great Refusal," a radical concept of "the protest against that which is." The editors and contributors to the exciting new volume The Great Refusal provide an analysis of contemporary social movements around the world with particular reference to Marcuse's revolutionary concept. The book also engages-and puts Marcuse in critical dialogue with-major theorists including Slavoj Žižek and Michel Foucault, among others. The chapters in this book analyze (...) different elements and locations of the contemporary wave of struggle, drawing on the work and vision of Marcuse in order to reveal, with a historical perspective, the present moment of resistance. Essays seek to understand recent uprisings-such as the Zapatistas in Mexico, the Arab Spring, and the Occupy movement-in the context of Marcuse's powerful conceptual apparatus. The Great Refusal also charts contemporary social movements against global warming, mass incarceration, police brutality, white supremacy, militarization, technological development, and more, to provide insights that advance our understanding of resistance today. Contributors include: Kevin B. Anderson, Stanley Aronowitz, Joan Braune, Jenny Chan, Angela Y. Davis, Arnold L. Farr, Andrew Feenberg, Michael Forman, Christian Fuchs, Stefan Gandler, Christian Garland, Toorjo Ghose, Imaculada Kangussu, George Katsiaficas, Douglas Kellner, Sarah Lynn Kleeb, Filip Kovacevic, Lauren Langman, Heather Love, Peter Marcuse, Martin J. Beck Matuštík, Russell Rockwell, AK Thompson, Marcelo Vieta, and the editors. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Trois récits utopiques classiques: Gabriel de Foigny, La Terre Australe connue; Denis Veiras, Histoire des Sévarambes; Bernard de Fontenelle, Histoire des Ajaoïens ed. by Jean-Michel RacaultAndrew CremerJean-Michel Racault, ed. Trois récits utopiques classiques: Gabriel de Foigny, La Terre Australe connue; Denis Veiras, Histoire des Sévarambes; Bernard de Fontenelle, Histoire des Ajaoïens. Saint-Denis (La Réunion): Presses Universitaires Indianocéaniques. 2020. 539 pp., illus. Paperback, €16. ISBN: 978 2 (...) 490596 24 9.M. Jean-Michel Racault, Emeritus Professor of the University of La Réunion and general editor of the Œuvres complètes of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre in progress under the Classiques Garnier imprint, is an acknowledged expert in utopian studies, and works edited and presented by him in this field will be justly welcomed with keen interest and appreciation. It inspires confidence [End Page 168] that this edition should be the fruit of many years’ study and find its origins in his two theses of 1981 and 1987 and articles of 1991, 2003, and 2010 (21 n. 21). The blurb announces this volume as bringing together “three major works of political thought of the end of the seventeenth century representative of ‘Louis XIV utopias,’” a label that could be supposed to imply an anti-absolutist outlook in the three writers. But Racault argues that the idea, as put forward by the late Myriam Yardeni in her 1980 study Utopie et révolte sous Louis XIV, that these classical utopias express revolt against the monarchy of Louis XIV should be treated in a nuanced way, even with serious reservations (7, 217–18).Racault writes with impressive depth and clarity and makes a superb guide, yet it by no means follows that these works are easy to interpret. Indeed, part of his achievement is to show they may not be so and to offer evidence to suggest that they may invite “multiple possible readings.” The blurb gives fair warning of irony, ambiguity, and contradictoriness, and states that the utopia of these experimental fictions can be inverted to become an “anti-utopia.” As Racault observes with admirable honesty in his preface, “Ambivalence, uncertainty, and a sense of complexity are in fact characteristics of these utopias, in which one sometimes has the impression that the author develops lines of thought that are ideologically incompatible and does not know himself on which side he stands” (19). Racault exemplifies this paradox by reference to Foigny’s hero, “a Pascalian libertin as well as a Christian deist” (19–20). One might be allowed to object that this is to offer the reader who seeks it no clear utopian vision, and that such ambiguity leads to confusion worse confounded; indeed, I am tempted to wonder if ambiguity here reveals subtlety of thought less than a mere lack of perspicuity. Racault makes the highly important point that a similar duality “penetrates the accounts of Veiras and Fontenelle and prevents one from seeing them as simple preludes to Enlightenment thought” (20). Two more vigorous quotations may suffice to convey the flavor of this argument of duality: “the deism of La Terre Australe connue can also be read as a critique of deism, the [...] democratic humanism of the Histoire des Ajaoïens includes a utilitarian system of colonial domination” (21). Again, “the ‘heliocratic’ Sevarambian system inspired by the empire of the Incas after Garcilaso de la Vega [?1501–36] is essentially a theocratic absolutism in the end not much different from the monarchy of Louis XIV. Ajao, on the other hand, has no monarchy, and no ministers” (460). As to this variety between the texts, another indication is that Foigny’s land is anarchical (but [End Page 169] well ordered!), whereas Veiras’s can be understood as embracing certain policies of Colbert (236 and n. 14, 292 and n. 46), to whose protégé Pierre-Paul Riquet, baron de Bonrepos (1609–80), Veiras’s account is dedicated (231–34, 306–7).This substantial but not overlong volume is tastefully adorned with attractive covers and five splendid and richly annotated plates of maps illustrating the subject of the “Imaginary Voyage” or “Extraordinary Voyage,” a term used in a... (shrink)

Explains Marcuse's philosophy, especially his critique of science and technology.