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17895 results in Philosophy: general interest

Page 5 of 895

  • 8 - Free-floating explicitness: thinking about thinking

  • Raymond Tallis
  • Book:
    Circling Round Explicitness
    Published by:
    Agenda Publishing
    Published online:
    22 May 2026, pp 301-334

  • Summary

    8.1 INTRODUCING THE THINKING ANIMAL

    Our creatures are our thoughts, creatures that are born Giants: that reach from East to West, from Earth to Heaven, that do not only bestride all the sea and land, but span the sun and firmament at once: my thoughts reach all, comprehend all.

    John Donne

    We might say that thought is to human beings what flight is to eagles and swimming is to dolphins.

    Tim Bayne

    That-it-is encompasses many modes of consciousness from the most passive sensory reception – things we can't help seeing or hearing – to facts that are discovered as a result of active scrutiny and investigation and, beyond this, to the products of the most intense, brow-furrowing thought. Thought may propose not only things that exist but also others that don’t. It may entertain the fact that something didn't happen, that such and such is not the case or does not exist, or reflect on the fact that it did happen or did exist. It is this that makes thought – pure that-it-is – seem a disembodied manifestation of the embodied subject. It is a mode of that-it-is that seems only loosely tied to what-is.

  • 5 - Ambodiment: the marriage between (that) it is and (that) I am

  • Raymond Tallis
  • Book:
    Circling Round Explicitness
    Published by:
    Agenda Publishing
    Published online:
    22 May 2026, pp 195-222

  • Summary

    5.1 MY BODY AND I: THE NECESSITY FOR EMBODIMENT

    The more closely we inspect brains, or ionic currents in nervous tissue, the less we understand what role, if any, they play in the generation of consciousness. They fail to account for the distinctive nature of conscious subjects – entities to whom a subset of what-is is present to them as a world or as a situation that is their situation, a reality they must engage and cope with, exploit, enjoy, or suffer. In short, nothing in the brain explains how certain portions of matter come to matter to themselves and, as a consequence, other portions of matter come to matter to them.

    The body beyond the brain seems even less likely to deliver this transition. While the extra-cerebral body is essential to ensure ongoing brain function, what happens in and under the skin, the function of organs such as the kidney, or of circulating fluids such as blood and lymph, acting either singly or in concert, does not seem to account for the transition from an “It” to an “I”, from the realm of what-is to that of that-it-is and thence to “that-I-am”. Indeed, those elements remain stubbornly “it”.

    Granted that some of them, by means that remain utterly mysterious, may move closer towards the status of “I” when they are sore or give pleasure. Nevertheless, they still fall short of fully-fledged first-person being.

Spinoza on Free Will

Spinoza on Free Will
  • Matthew J. Kisner
  • Published online:
    21 May 2026
    Print publication:
    11 June 2026
  • In recent writings on popular science, there has been much handwringing about the apparently deterministic picture of human decision making suggested by the latest scientific research. Robert Sapolsky's bestselling Determined boldly argues that morality must be reformed because free will has been effectively refuted. But the question of whether free will and morality can be reconciled with a causally determined world is nothing new, nor is it the sort of question that can be answered by scientists. This Element examines how these questions were answered by Spinoza, history's most forceful defender of the claim that all things are necessarily determined, who also was keenly interested in the prospects for morality in a determined world. The Element aims to show that this figure from the past offers a timely and insightful explanation of how we can be free and responsible even if our actions are inevitable.
Heidegger on Sociality

Heidegger on Sociality
  • Noam Cohen
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    May 2026
    Print publication:
    30 June 2026
  • What does it mean to be in the world with others? To what degree is sociality a dimension of our experience? This Element explores the social aspects of our experience as shared and common, focusing on Heidegger's thought on this theme in the period surrounding the publication of Being and Time. It begins by situating Heidegger's position in contrast to alternative phenomenological conceptions of the relations between self and others. From there, it continues to address a key challenge to Heidegger's approach: the problem of Dasein's individuation. Finally, in response to this challenge, the work reframes Heidegger's conception of sociality through the prism of part-whole relations. As social, Dasein emerges as a dependent part of an unfolding shared whole, yet as part of a complex social context, it retains its relative wholeness.
Computability and Computational Explanation

Computability and Computational Explanation
  • André Curtis-Trudel
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    May 2026
    Print publication:
    30 June 2026
  • This Element is an introduction to classical computability theory and scientific efforts to use computability-theoretic notions to explain empirical phenomena. It is written for advanced undergraduates and graduate students in philosophy, assuming no prior exposure to computability theory. Its goals are threefold: (1) to introduce some important theoretical tools and results from classical computability theory; (2) to survey some of the ways these have been used to support explanatory projects in computer and cognitive science; and (3) to outline a few of the more prominent philosophical debates surrounding these projects.
Small Probabilities and High Stakes

Small Probabilities and High Stakes
  • Christian Tarsney
  • Published online:
    15 May 2026
    Print publication:
    11 June 2026
    • Element
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  • What price should you be willing to pay for a tiny probability of an astronomically large gain, or to avoid a tiny probability of an astronomically large loss? Should you be willing to pay any finite price, if the potential gains or losses are large enough? Fanaticism says you should, while anti-fanaticism says you should not. Focusing on morally motivated decision-making, this Element explores arguments for and against both positions, ultimately defending the intermediate view that rationality permits a range of dispositions toward extreme risks, while ruling out the most comprehensive forms of both fanaticism and anti-fanaticism. The final section considers practical implications, arguing that under real-world circumstances any view satisfying a minimal principle of rationality must very often rank options by expected value, and thus sometimes give great weight to intuitively small probabilities, but that we nonetheless retain rational flexibility in sufficiently extreme cases.
Sikh Ethics

Sikh Ethics
  • Keshav Singh
  • Published online:
    15 May 2026
    Print publication:
    11 June 2026
    • Element
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      • Open access
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  • Like many other world religious and spiritual traditions, the Sikh tradition is philosophically rich. However, its contributions have been wholly unrepresented in Western analytic philosophy. The goal of this Element is to present a central aspect of Sikh philosophy, its ethics, by using the tools and methods of analytic philosophy to reconstruct it in a form that is understandable to Western audiences, while still accurately capturing its unique and autochthonous features. On the interpretation of Sikh ethics this Element presents, the Sikh ethical theory understands ethics in terms of truthful living – in particular, living in a way that is true to the fundamental Oneness of all existence. Features of the Sikh ethical theory discussed include its account of vice and virtue, its account of right conduct, and the philosophical relationship between ethical theory and practice. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Contemporary Worldviews
  • A Comparative Study
  • Mikael Stenmark
  • Published online:
    14 May 2026
    Print publication:
    04 June 2026
  • In this book, Mikael Stenmark identifies and explores several prominent religious and secular worldviews that people in contemporary society hold. Three nonreligious worldviews are highlighted: scientism, secular humanism, and transhumanism. These are contrasted with four religious worldviews: Abrahamic theism, Buddhism, the new spirituality (the so-called 'spiritual but not religious' individuals, SBNR), and religious naturalism. Some challenges facing each of these worldviews are discussed toward the end of each chapter. The book offers a unique study of several key secular outlooks on life that go far beyond previous studies of atheism, nonreligion, and religious 'nones.' It also provides a rare insight into the beliefs, values, and attitudes that secular and religious thinkers consider essential to our identity and place in the world, as well as what we should deeply care about in life.
Emerging Questions in AI Welfare

Emerging Questions in AI Welfare
  • Geoff Keeling, Winnie Street
  • Published online:
    12 May 2026
    Print publication:
    11 June 2026
    • Element
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      • Open access
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  • This Element investigates whether artificial intelligence (AI) systems could ever be welfare subjects. Some people argue that AIs could plausibly have or soon have features such as consciousness, agency and the capacity for social relationships, which could provide a basis for AI welfare. These arguments have massive significance for the societal conversation on AI, raising profound ethical and political questions about what if anything we owe to these new technologies. The authors here provide the philosophical groundwork for a scientific, philosophical and ultimately democratic inquiry into the potential for AI welfare, addressing key questions that cut across different arguments: what welfare is, how to interpret behavioural evidence of AI welfare, what kinds of entities might qualify as candidate AI welfare subjects, the potential grounds for welfare in AI and the practical ethical challenges that arise from our uncertainty. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.
Divine Simplicity

Divine Simplicity
  • Thomas H. McCall
  • Published online:
    05 May 2026
    Print publication:
    28 May 2026
  • The doctrine of divine simplicity is an important element of major monotheistic religions; not only Islamic and Jewish but also Christian theologians have affirmed and defended the doctrine. However, the historic doctrine is the subject of intense debate within these traditions. Historic expressions of the doctrine are surveyed, important objections are considered, and arguments in favor of the doctrine are summarized.
Agency

Agency
  • Elisabeth Pacherie
  • Published online:
    27 April 2026
    Print publication:
    21 May 2026
  • In trying to spell out the distinction between activity and passivity and what is special about agency, philosophers have tended to focus on human intentional action as their paradigm case. Yet taking intentional agency as a starting point makes it difficult to offer positive accounts of more elementary forms of agency. I first present this classical approach and discuss some of its limitations. I then consider simpler forms of behavior and the minimal conditions they must meet to be considered genuine forms of agency. I then turn to conscious agency, examining the nature and sources of our conscious agentive states, their reliability and the causal role they may play in shaping our actions. Finally, I discuss joint agency, the different forms of coordination among agents on which the success of joint action depends, and the sense of agency in joint action.
Civil and Uncivil Disobedience

Civil and Uncivil Disobedience
  • Candice Delmas
  • Published online:
    22 April 2026
    Print publication:
    11 June 2026
  • What is wrong with disobedience? What makes an act of disobedience civil or uncivil? Under what conditions can an act of civil or uncivil disobedience be justified? Can a liberal democratic regime tolerate (un)civil disobedience? This Element book presents the main answers that philosophers and activist-thinkers have offered to these questions. It is organized in 3 parts: Part I presents the main philosophical accounts of civil disobedience that liberal political philosophers and democratic theorists have developed and then conceptualizes uncivil disobedience. Part II examines the origins of disobedience in the praxis of activist-thinkers: Henry David Thoreau on civil resistance, anarchists on direct action, and Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. on nonviolence. Part III takes up the question of violence in defensive action, the requirement that disobedients accept legal sanctions, and the question of whether uncivil disobedience is counterproductive and undermines civic bonds.
Sincerity and Insincerity

Sincerity and Insincerity
  • Neri Marsili
  • Published online:
    21 April 2026
    Print publication:
    21 May 2026
  • Sincerity is essential to communication: without a norm of sincerity, we could hardly trust what other people tell us. But what does it take to be sincere, exactly? And why is sincerity so important? Sincerity and Insincerity offers a comprehensive review of existing philosophical work on the nature of sincerity and its epistemic value. It puts forward a novel, fine-grained account of what sincerity and insincerity are, and dives into the grey area between the two, identifying various ways in which speakers can be partially sincere. Integrating ideas from different philosophical subfields and traditions, it offers an updated perspective on what makes sincerity epistemically valuable, giving serious consideration to the idea that sincerity is the norm of assertion. Overall, this Element provides a novel, informed perspective on what sincerity is, how it works, and why it matters.
Wittgenstein and Relativism

Wittgenstein and Relativism
  • Martin Kusch
  • Published online:
    21 April 2026
    Print publication:
    14 May 2026
  • When scholars discuss the question whether Wittgenstein was a relativist, they invariably draw their criteria from recent definitions of relativism. This study tries a different route: it identifies conceptions of relativism that were influential in the early twentieth century, and uses them as foils for interpreting Wittgenstein's philosophy. Section 1 investigates what Wittgenstein meant in speaking of his 'ethnological perspective,' and how this perspective relates to 'cultural relativism' in anthropology around 1900. Section 2 focuses on Wittgenstein's reflections on logic and mathematics as 'ethnological phenomena.' In this context, the ethnological perspective brought Wittgenstein close to positions that many of his contemporaries denounced as 'psychologism' and 'sociologism.' Section 3 highlights the role of the ethnological perspective in Wittgenstein's remarks on 'certainties.' Many of these remarks would have been counted as relativistic by leading members of the 'Vienna Circle.'
Heidegger’s Phenomenology

Heidegger’s Phenomenology
  • James Kinkaid
  • Published online:
    11 April 2026
    Print publication:
    14 May 2026
  • This Element is an opinionated introduction to Heidegger's phenomenology in Being and Time and surrounding works, framed in terms of Heidegger's debts to and divergence from Husserl's phenomenology. Section 1 situates Heidegger's and Husserl's phenomenology with respect to the 'identity-crisis of philosophy,' in particular the debate over whether philosophy is a science or a mere cataloguing of worldviews. Section 2 critically evaluates Heidegger's claims that various forms of conscious intentionality central to Husserl's phenomenology are 'derivative' or 'founded.' Section 3 turns to method, exploring whether Heidegger adopts Husserl's reductions, platonism, and method of essential seeing and imaginative variation. Section 4 explores Heidegger's hermeneutical turn in phenomenology and explains the uses to which he puts religious sources, mythology, and ordinary language.
Problems of God in Descartes

Problems of God in Descartes
  • C. P. Ragland
  • Published online:
    09 April 2026
    Print publication:
    14 May 2026
  • This Element discusses the roles played by the idea of God in René Descartes' epistemology, physics, and metaphysics, and problems arising from those roles. Section 1 gives an overview of Descartes' life, works, and reception, focusing on the extent to which he is a religious or a secular thinker. Section 2 focuses on the problem of the Cartesian circle generated by his claim that all human knowledge depends on knowledge of God. Section 3 explains the role of God in Descartes' physics and addresses problems concerning how God's causal activity relates to that of creatures, including how divine providence fits with human freedom and how voluntary bodily actions are consistent with the laws of nature. Section 4 explores Descartes' claim that God freely created the eternal truths, noting its implications for his theory of modality.
The Problem of God in Alvin Plantinga

The Problem of God in Alvin Plantinga
  • James Beilby
  • Published online:
    08 April 2026
    Print publication:
    14 May 2026
  • Alvin Plantinga is a noted American analytic philosopher who has written in the areas of philosophy of religion, metaphysics, epistemology, and apologetics. Plantinga's Christian commitments are a crucial part of his philosophical work since nearly all of Plantinga's writings have focused on explaining and defending Christian beliefs. He argues that there is no objection or set of objections that shows that Christianity is epistemically lacking, and as such, Christians can be fully rational, justified, and warranted in their religious beliefs. This Element discusses his work as a whole, and focuses on his contributions on the problem of evil, religious knowledge, science and religion, and Christian philosophy.

Heidegger and Aristotle
  • Francisco J. Gonzalez
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    April 2026
    Print publication:
    30 June 2026
  • Since Heidegger's reading of Aristotle covered three decades and presented itself in many courses, seminars, and essays, some still unpublished, one objective here is to provide a much needed and currently unavailable overview of this material. This Element seeks to determine what Heidegger's reading can tell us not only about Aristotle but also about Heidegger whose own thought was in many ways a 'repetition' of Aristotle. However, the ultimate aim is to identify the philosophical questions raised by 'Heidegger and Aristotle' and show how this can help us grapple with them. These questions include the distinctive way of being that defines life, the nature of time and specifically lived time, the nature of being itself and whether it is to be understood as static presence or as something more active, the nature of human action and its relation to production, and the relation between nature and technology.

Critical theory and feeling
  • The affective politics of the early Frankfurt School
  • Simon Mussell
  • Published by:
    Manchester University Press
    Published online:
    31 March 2026
  • This book offers a unique and timely reading of the early Frankfurt School in response to the recent 'affective turn' within the arts and humanities. It revisits some of the founding tenets of critical theory in the context of the establishment of the Institute for Social Research in the early twentieth century. The book focuses on the work of Walter Benjamin, whose varied engagements with the subject of melancholia prove to be far more mobile and complex than traditional accounts. It also looks at how an affective politics underpins critical theory's engagement with the world of objects, exploring the affective politics of hope. Situating the affective turn and the new materialisms within a wider context of the 'post-critical', it explains how critical theory, in its originary form, is primarily associated with the work of the Frankfurt School. The book presents an analysis of Theodor Adorno's form of social critique and 'conscious unhappiness', that is, a wilful rejection of any privatized or individualized notion of happiness in favour of a militant and political discontent. A note on the timely reconstruction of early critical theory's own engagements with the object world via aesthetics and mimesis follows. The post-Cold War triumphalism of many on the right, accompanied by claims of the 'end of history', created a sense of fearlessness, righteousness, and unfettered optimism. The book notes how political realism has become the dominant paradigm, banishing utopian impulses and diminishing political hopes to the most myopic of visions.

Page 5 of 895