34 research outputs found
The universe without us: a history of the science and ethics of human extinction
This dissertation consists of two parts. Part I is an intellectual history of thinking about human extinction (mostly) within the Western tradition. When did our forebears first imagine humanity ceasing to exist? Have people always believed that human extinction is a real possibility, or were some convinced that this could never happen? How has our thinking about extinction evolved over time? Why do so many notable figures today believe that the probability of extinction this century is higher than ever before in our 300,000-year history on Earth? Exploring these questions takes readers from the ancient Greeks, Persians, and Egyptians, through the 18th-century Enlightenment, past scientific breakthroughs of the 19th century like thermodynamics and evolutionary theory, up to the Atomic Age, the rise of modern environmentalism in the 1970s, and contemporary fears about climate change, global pandemics, and artificial general intelligence (AGI).
Part II is a history of Western thinking about the ethical and evaluative implications of human extinction. Would causing or allowing our extinction be morally right or wrong? Would our extinction be good or bad, better or worse compared to continuing to exist? For what reasons? Under which conditions? Do we have a moral obligation to create future people? Would past âprogressâ be rendered meaningless if humanity were to die out? Does the fact that we might be unique in the universeâthe only ârationalâ and âmoralâ creaturesâgive us extra reason to ensure our survival? I place these questions under the umbrella of Existential Ethics, tracing the development of this field from the early 1700s through Mary Shelleyâs 1826 novel The Last Man, the gloomy German pessimists of the latter 19th century, and post-World War II reflections on nuclear âomnicide,â up to current-day thinkers associated with âlongtermismâ and âantinatalism.â In the dissertation, I call the first history âHistory #1â and the second âHistory #2.â
A main thesis of Part I is that Western thinking about human extinction can be segmented into five distinction periods, each of which corresponds to a unique âexistential mood.â An existential mood arises from a particular set of answers to fundamental questions about the possibility, probability, etiology, and so on, of human extinction. I claim that the idea of human extinction first appeared among the ancient Greeks, but was eclipsed for roughly 1,500 years with the rise of Christianity. A central contention of Part II is that philosophers have thus far conflated six distinct types of âhuman extinction,â each of which has its own unique ethical and evaluative implications. I further contend that it is crucial to distinguish between the process or event of Going Extinct and the state or condition of Being Extinct, which one should see as orthogonal to the six types of extinction that I delineate. My aim with the second part of the book is to not only trace the history of Western thinking about the ethics of annihilation, but lay the theoretical groundwork for future research on the topic. I then outline my own views within âExistential Ethics,â which combine ideas and positions to yield a novel account of the conditions under which our extinction would be bad, and why there is a sense in which Being Extinct might be better than Being Extant, or continuing to exist
Proof-theoretic Semantics for Intuitionistic Multiplicative Linear Logic
This work is the first exploration of proof-theoretic semantics for a substructural logic. It focuses on the base-extension semantics (B-eS) for intuitionistic multiplicative linear logic (IMLL). The starting point is a review of Sandqvistâs B-eS for intuitionistic propositional logic (IPL), for which we propose an alternative treatment of conjunction that takes the form of the generalized elimination rule for the connective. The resulting semantics is shown to be sound and complete. This motivates our main contribution, a B-eS for IMLL
, in which the definitions of the logical constants all take the form of their elimination rule and for which soundness and completeness are established
Structure Phenomenology
This is the first English translation of Herbert Witzenmannâs seminal work,StrukturphĂ€nomenologie, which departs from the traditional phenomenological methods of Husserl, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty to introduce a fresh approach to the nexus of consciousness and reality. In Structure Phenomenology, published open access, Witzenmann argues for the active mental, yet mostly pre-reflective, participation of humans in the emergence of individual consciousness of all kinds and the basic structure that determines it. While Witzenmann ascribes a derivative or memorative status to habitual states of phenomenal consciousness, even if they seem to refer to present objectivity, he proposes that the underlying formative processes be unveiled and explored through systematic first-person observation. Through his logically grounded and experience-based approach, he contends that it is not neural processes that produce consciousness, but rather oneâs own preconscious rootedness in reality which can be made conscious. Influenced by the writings of Rudolf Steiner and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Witzenmannâs innovative approach casts new light on a number of philosophical, psychological, and scientific issues: from being and becoming to temporality and presence, and from remembering to mind and body. Even freedom takes on a new meaning when reality is not pre-given to human consciousness, but is rather a result of human participation in the basic process. This annotated translation makes Witzenmannâs text accessible to an English audience for the first time and, with a comprehensive editorial introduction by Johannes Wagemann, situates his ground-breaking insights within the development of phenomenology, as well as in current philosophical and psychological debates. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com
An Unexplored Aspect of Following a Rule
Though Wittgenstein has been most often identified as opposing Platonism in his writings about mathematics, I argue that Wittgensteinâs radical contextualism about mathematics finds its most natural opponent not in Platonism, but in a variety of formalism. One of Wittgensteinâs obvious formalist targets is his colleague the mathematician G. H. Hardy. If we discard thisâstill influentialâpicture of mathematics and replace it with a more nuanced account of mathematical activity as exemplified in the metamathematical thinking of the nineteenth century mathematician Augustus De Morgan, the example of the wayward pupil takes on a different significance. Against a more complex background, the wayward pupil can be reinterpreted as representing an exemplar of mathematical discovery. I consider the example of the nineteenth century engineer Oliver Heaviside whose unconventional approach in mathematics, driven by a need to efficiently elicit results from complex formulae for the purposes of aiding his research in electrical engineering, resulted in extraordinary mathematical advances. Yet, his approach to algebraic manipulation has the aspect of a wayward pupil. The wayward pupil, who may be making an error according to our ordinary criteria of rule-following, may be initiating new and fruitful paths. This possibility is largely unexamined in the larger discussion of Wittgensteinâs remarks on following a rule, and it explains Wittgensteinâs hesitation to label the wayward pupilâs actions straightforwardly incorrect
Astrology and truth: a context in contemporary epistemology
This thesis discusses and gives philosophical context to claims regarding the truth-status of astrology â specifically, horoscopic astrology. These truth-claims, and reasons for them, are sourced from advocates and critics of astrology and are taken from extant literature and interviews recorded for the thesis.
The three major theories of truth from contemporary Western epistemology are the primary structure used to establish philosophical context. These are: the correspondence, coherence, and pragmatic theories. Some alternatives are discussed in the process of evaluating the adequacy of the three theories. No estimation of astrologyâs truth-status was found which could not be articulated by reference to the three. From this follows the working assumption that the three theories of truth suffice as a system of analysis with which to define and elucidate the issues that have arisen when astrologyâs truth-status has been considered.
A feature of recent discourse regarding astrology has been the argument that it should be considered a form of divination rather than as a potential science. The two accounts that embody these approaches â astrology-as-divination, and astrology-as-science â are central throughout the thesis. William Jamesâs philosophy is discussed as a congenial context for astrology-as-divination. This includes his understanding of the pragmatic theory of truth and other elements, such as radical empiricism, which comprise his pluralist pantheistic philosophy.
Compelling reasons from numerous commentators are presented according to which astrology should be judged not true. These generally presuppose that contemporary scientific modes of analysis suffice for such an evaluation. A case could be built upon Jamesâs philosophy under which the individual would have a right to believe in astrology as a source of truth â albeit, this would not be the intersubjective or scientifically-validated truth which critics typically insist upon
Representations of Mind
After defending the view that we can read off the metaphysics of the things we talk about from the form and interpretation of the language we use to talk about things, I develop and defend an account of the form and interpretation of propositional attitude reports (and some closely related constructions) and then read off the metaphysics of propositional attitudes. Views on the metaphysics of speech acts, propositions, and propositionally articulated thoughts also fall out of the account. The result is a tightly knit sets of views which I think together solve a number of outstanding philosophical problems. Given the centrality and importance of the attitudes and reports thereof to our making sense of ourselves and others as minded beings, not to mention their centrality to many domains of philosophy, the hope is that this makes a contribution to our self-understanding. It should also be a contribution to cognitive science
The Significance of Evidence-based Reasoning in Mathematics, Mathematics Education, Philosophy, and the Natural Sciences
In this multi-disciplinary investigation we show how an evidence-based perspective of quantification---in terms of algorithmic verifiability and algorithmic computability---admits evidence-based definitions of well-definedness and effective computability, which yield two unarguably constructive interpretations of the first-order Peano Arithmetic PA---over the structure N of the natural numbers---that are complementary, not contradictory. The first yields the weak, standard, interpretation of PA over N, which is well-defined with respect to assignments of algorithmically verifiable Tarskian truth values to the formulas of PA under the interpretation. The second yields a strong, finitary, interpretation of PA over N, which is well-defined with respect to assignments of algorithmically computable Tarskian truth values to the formulas of PA under the interpretation. We situate our investigation within a broad analysis of quantification vis a vis: * Hilbert's epsilon-calculus * Goedel's omega-consistency * The Law of the Excluded Middle * Hilbert's omega-Rule * An Algorithmic omega-Rule * Gentzen's Rule of Infinite Induction * Rosser's Rule C * Markov's Principle * The Church-Turing Thesis * Aristotle's particularisation * Wittgenstein's perspective of constructive mathematics * An evidence-based perspective of quantification. By showing how these are formally inter-related, we highlight the fragility of both the persisting, theistic, classical/Platonic interpretation of quantification grounded in Hilbert's epsilon-calculus; and the persisting, atheistic, constructive/Intuitionistic interpretation of quantification rooted in Brouwer's belief that the Law of the Excluded Middle is non-finitary. We then consider some consequences for mathematics, mathematics education, philosophy, and the natural sciences, of an agnostic, evidence-based, finitary interpretation of quantification that challenges classical paradigms in all these disciplines