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Cosmos and History : The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy
Journal Prestige (SJR): 0.211  Number of Followers: 6  Open Access journalISSN (Print) 1832-9101 Published by Open Humanities Press  [5 journals]
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- The Idea of Nature as a Structure
Authors: Terrence Thomson
Pages: 1 - 21
Abstract: In this essay I provide a reading of Schelling’s idea of nature, exploring how it points to a common structure iterated in both the organic and inorganic world. I explore the meaning and constitution of this structure through its reorientation of the subject/object divide and its logic of symbiotic “involution.” I then reflect on one of the popular images of this structure in Naturphilosophie, the whirlpool. I explore how the whirlpool expresses the dynamic at the core of Schelling’s idea of nature and explore some of its potential shared ground with some more contemporary views.
PubDate: 2022-12-28
Issue No: Vol. 18, No. 2 (2022)
- Integrating Biosemiotics and Biohermeneutics in the Quest for Ecological
Civilization as a Practical Utopia
Authors: Arran Gare
Pages: 22 - 47
Abstract: ‘Ecological civilization’ has been put forward as a utopia, as this notion has been defended by Ernst Bloch and Paul Ricoeur. It is a vision of the future that puts into question that which presently exists, revealing its contingency while offering an inspiring image of the future that can mobilize people to create this future. Ecological civilization is a vision based on ecological thinking, seeing all life as interdependent communities of communities. Humanity’s place in nature is redefined as participating in communities, both human and non-human, including the global ecosystem. From this perspective, the end of life in both ethics and politics should be to augment life through augmenting the conditions for life, that is, through ‘ecopoiesis’ or ‘home-making’. What is involved in this has been clarified by work in biosemiotics and biohermeneutics where life is identified with semiosis, the production and interpretation of signs. Advancing biosemiotics and biohermeneutics, I will argue that living processes can be understood as proto-narratives organizing living processes to advance the conditions for life. They are inchoate in Ricoeur’s sense because they are not reflectively formulated as such but are being lived out. Developing our understanding of the world involves understanding these inter-related proto-narratives, including the proto-narrative that has operated in the creation of the biosphere and semiosphere, and recognizing the potential of human culture as part of this semiosphere to make explicit and re-emplot these proto-narratives. Most importantly, it is to make explicit and further develop the proto-narrative of the global ecosystem to augment the conditions for life. This will involve articulating a new grand narrative of not only humanity but of terrestrial life, orienting human communities at all levels to create and sustain a global ecological civilization.
PubDate: 2022-12-28
Issue No: Vol. 18, No. 2 (2022)
- On Debt, Death, and Darwin
Authors: Adam Scarfe
Pages: 48 - 111
Abstract: Central to the operation of the global economic system today is the normative leeway that private banks have to create money ex nihilo on the basis of a person’s “taking out of a loan” and their making a pledge to “repay” it.[1] However, especially in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, the inflationary concerns emerging out of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as in view of increasing awareness of the onset of global climate change, questions have been raised as regard to the fairness, the sustainability, and the ecological impact of the current global monetary system. This is given the overarching capacity of financial systems to drive the trajectory of human development as well as to shape the structure of societies and the general way that people live. Starting with a stipulative definition of money as a “social debt-credit relation,” this essay carries out a critical analysis pertaining to the meaning of money, money creation, and the use of money, doing so from a biophilosophical perspective, and specifically, from a holistic organicist lens. It examines Aristotle’s outline of the properties belonging (putatively) to “sound” money and the enduring debate between Metallism and Chartalism. It unpacks John McMurtry’s critique of the value program of the global economy that, as he expresses, is grounded in the “money-code of value” rather than in the “life-code of value.” And it examines Nietzsche’s critique of Darwin’s account of the origin of morality in group / community / social / kin selection, pointing to the liberation of life from rigid conformity to value programs that are based in (largely) arbitrary metaphysical credit-debt tallies. Overall, in light of the contemporary need to address the global ecological crisis, here, I argue for the cultivation of “ecological-” and/or “biological-” wisdom[2] in relation to money, money creation, money systems, and banking, as well as by the average person orienting themselves toward money and using it as a medium of exchange. [1] See Tobin 1963; Nichols and Gonczy 1994; Grignon 2009; McLeay, Radia, and Thomas 2014; Werner 2014a, 2014b, and 2016; Kumhof and Jakab 2016; Etzrodt 2018; Carney 2019; and Hook 2022. [2] See Devall and Sessions 1985 and Waddington 1960, respectively.
PubDate: 2022-12-28
Issue No: Vol. 18, No. 2 (2022)
- The Indifference of Objectivity to Difference and Identity
Authors: Rafael Holmberg
Pages: 112 - 128
Abstract: Schelling and Deleuze are polarised respectively as philosopher of identity and philosopher of difference par excellence. Schelling grounds reason in his early Naturphilosophie in the a priori identity deduced from the abstraction of the proposition A=A. Deleuze, however, reworks the Platonic Idea and Nietzsche’s Eternal Return in the service of an a priori ‘problematic being’, an ontological difference-in-itself, which precedes metaphysical identity. Despite their apparently polarised metaphysical groundwork, they stumble across a similar consequence: the distinction between subject and object, and any problematic derived thereof, is in consequence of the ontological constitution of the object itself. The paradox of objectivity as indifference to an a priori difference or identity is presented, and preliminarily suggested to be due to the Deleuze-Schelling opposition not being a difference-identity opposition, but an opposition between difference and a ‘blind act’ which retroactively precedes the making-identical to itself of the one as distinguished from the many.
PubDate: 2022-12-28
Issue No: Vol. 18, No. 2 (2022)
- Eugen Fink: Ethics is Rooted in Physics
Authors: Eva Dědečková
Pages: 129 - 149
Abstract: In addition to stimulating disparate scientific debates, the Anthropocene era has influenced philosophy itself in a fundamental way. It is here that we return to the question of understanding man and his relationship with the world. Is humanism and its ethics and morals adequate for the situation in which we find ourselves' The devastation of the environment, the evident decomposition of traditional values, increasing injustice, and inequalities mutilating the interpersonal sphere are all testimony to the fact that our current philosophy of education is inadequate. What if we look at this problem from a cosmological perspective' Eugen Fink’s philosophy, which creatively follows Friedrich Nietzsche, presented the surprising fact that ethics is rooted in physics. In this essay, I will try to introduce this aspect of Fink’s philosophy and create a preliminary outline of what possible philosophical (and social) consequences this concept opens up.
PubDate: 2022-12-28
Issue No: Vol. 18, No. 2 (2022)
- ‘Deep Yellow and Hot Red’
Authors: M.Kemal Isik
Pages: 150 - 174
Abstract: This essay aims to illuminate Nietzsche’s geographical method. By following Nietzsche’s allusions to natural landscapes and illustrating their engagement with time, the following work will attempt to demonstrate the tragic nature of space and time on the one hand and the peculiar entanglement of time and space on the other. Discussing Nietzsche’s references to desert and jungle landscapes, in particular, I wish to shed light on Nietzsche’s engagement with critical spacetime. While desert landscapes embody recollection and redemption for him, the jungle and the tropics come forward as the loci of renunciation and repetition. Ultimately, the sighting of the great noon and the rebirth of tragedy can be conceived as the necessary unity of both parties and mark the culmination of critical spacetime.
PubDate: 2022-12-28
Issue No: Vol. 18, No. 2 (2022)
- Evolution as Nature's Trajectory from Computation to Narration
Authors: Ted Dace
Pages: 175 - 227
Abstract: Because the basis of physical order is temporal, evolution and narrative are naturally emergent and not inexplicable anomalies in a universe predetermined by timeless mathematical principles. The temporal world of life and consciousness has no place in classical physics but is perfectly at home in a quantum context. In and of itself an atom is the continuous computation of outcomes of potential interactions. The central mystery of quantum mechanics is cleared up by replacing measurement with temporal instantiation as the mechanism by which nature coughs up the determinate world of the senses. In contrast to the continuous time of natural computation – whether atomic, biological or symbolic – the time of classical physics is a succession of discrete instants. As Bergson noted, theorists tend to spatialize this succession into a static sequence. No such operation is possible with unbroken flux and the memory and purpose implicit in it.
PubDate: 2022-12-28
Issue No: Vol. 18, No. 2 (2022)
- Josiah Royce's "Flat Absolutism"
Authors: Christian Frigerio
Pages: 228 - 250
Abstract: Josiah Royce is remembered mainly as an absolute idealist. Through his confrontation with “Bradley’s regress”, this paper will show that he was actually trying to combine a bold form of monism with a pluralism of real, discrete individuals. His commitment to the actual infinite is used both to turn Bradley’s regress into the generative mechanism of individuality within the Absolute, and to abolish the ontological difference between the Absolute itself and the individuals it contains. The “flat absolutism” resulting from this operation will be compared to the contemporary “flat ontologies” of Manuel DeLanda and Graham Harman, whose pluralism and commitment to “external” relations are shown to be just some of the ways in which a robust sense of individuality can be defended.
PubDate: 2022-12-28
Issue No: Vol. 18, No. 2 (2022)
- The Aesthetics of Meaning
Authors: Nat Trimarchi
Pages: 251 - 304
Abstract: Following C. S. Peirce’s claim that aesthetics precedes ethics and logic, I argue for reconceiving aesthetics as a normative science. The deteriorated relations between these links in the ‘modern mythology’ is associated with art’s decline and apparent indistinguishability from the ‘general aesthetic’ (aided by ‘aesthetics as theory’). ‘Naturalizing’ art, according to F. W. Schelling’s system, is proposed to ameliorate this. Bringing together Peircian semiotics with Schelling’s ‘process metaphysics’ suggests how to restore the historicized split between Art ‘as principle’ and the Person (two ‘perfect signs’) by attending to the ‘ethical phenomenology’ of artworks. An argument is then made for how modern ethics and ‘morals’ may be reconnected.
PubDate: 2022-12-28
Issue No: Vol. 18, No. 2 (2022)
- On the Meaning of 'Reality'
Authors: Murray Code
Pages: 305 - 326
Abstract: Modern physics has revealed the intractability of the problem of interpretation in so-called `exact' science, thus vindicating, at least in part, A. N. Whitehead's highly unorthodox non-modern naturalism. For his attempt to rescue life from modern self-styled naturalists points to the need for a would-be naturalist to `let the dialectic go,' as Victor Lowe put it. That is, to enlist the `method’ of `imaginative generalization' as the proper way to do speculative metaphysics. Whitehead’s reasonings thus in effect illustrate a `living' (or `artful’) reason that renders otiose his elaborate attempt in Process and Reality to construct a systematic, comprehensive theory of actuality based upon a formal categoreal scheme. For his writings actually show how to frame a vitalistic metaphysics based upon a metaphysical imaginary that revolves about the most salient characteristics of a wisely ensouled human self.
PubDate: 2022-12-28
Issue No: Vol. 18, No. 2 (2022)
- The World of Wetiko: An Investigation
Authors: rachael vaughan
Pages: 327 - 352
Abstract: This paper explores the Algonquin concept of wetiko, or windigo—a ruthless cannibal spirit—to explain the state of America today. Native American scholars such as Jack Forbes and Basil Johnston suggest wetikos really exist, and that their insatiable hunger and psychopathic lack of regard for others is at the root of globalization, neo-liberal economics, the destruction of the environment, and the widescale oppression of the world’s people. This paper investigates the relationship between modernism and wetiko, and proposes an origin to the wetiko mindset, asking whether it is archetypal, and therefore potentially present in all of us, though more actualized in some. Finally it asks how indigenous societies have historically guarded against wetiko and how we can learn from them to resist wetikos now, since if we fail to confront them, they will eat us all alive.
PubDate: 2022-12-28
Issue No: Vol. 18, No. 2 (2022)
- Immanence–Transcendence and the Godly in a Secular Age
Authors: Traill Dowie, Julien Tempone-Wiltshire
Pages: 353 - 368
Abstract: The terms immanence and transcendence have played a significant role in philosophical thought since its inception. Implicit in the notions of immanence and transcendence, as typified within the history of ideas, is often a separation and division between the human and the godly. This division has served to generate ontologies of isolation and set up epistemologies that can be both binary and divided. The terms immanence and transcendence thus sit at the heart of contemporary onto-epistemic accounts of the world. As such, in seeking to examine the nature of what is, this paper traces a line through the history of ideas in an attempt to clarify the connections and dissonances in the notions of immanence and transcendence. This is done for the purpose of demonstrating what philosophical and religious accounts may offer in attempting to create a sound account of the godly and thus the world in a secular age.
PubDate: 2022-12-28
Issue No: Vol. 18, No. 2 (2022)
- Are There Problems with Panentheism' A Critical Analysis of Philip
Clayton’s Response to Current Challenges
Authors: Brian Macallan
Pages: 369 - 379
Abstract: Panentheism suggests that the God-World relationship is one of mutual indwelling. Pantheism, Theism, and Atheism are seen as alternate options to Panentheism in their description of the God-World relationship. Philosophers of science and religion, who engage in these debates, have different perspectives regarding Panentheism and its metaphysical value. There are also different ways of conceiving Panentheism itself. Philip Clayton had staked out a specific version of Panentheism which is called Emergent Panentheism. Several critiques of Clayton’s position will be noted to help situate Clayton’s position more specifically. It will be argued that Clayton’s position is robust in its affirmation of science and its value when conceiving a Panentheistic perspective.
PubDate: 2022-12-28
Issue No: Vol. 18, No. 2 (2022)
- Reported Phenomena, Unexplainable Phenomena
Authors: Jeremy Butman
Pages: 380 - 412
Abstract: This paper analyzes the U.S. Navy’s report that an unidentified aerial phenomenon was observed by pilots dispatched from the Nimitz aircraft carrier in 2004, a report published by the New York Times in 2017. I argue that an unidentified phenomenon is an unexplainable phenomenon, meaning a one with unknown causality. In this case, unknown causality involves the apparent negation of gravity. Exploring how a phenomenon might appear within spacetime yet simultaneously appear independent of the causality of spacetime, I review the concept of causation as it is developed by Descartes and Kant, highlighting their contemplation of beings that might exist outside spatiotemporal causation. Using concepts from quantum mechanics and information theory, I explore various ways such a being might be compatible with mathematics and logic. Finally, I consider what conclusions might be drawn if one embraces the phenomenon simply as an appearance of the unexplainable. I observe that any understanding of the phenomenon is possible only on the condition one elects to entertain a report of it. This opens avenues for analysis of reportative speech and belief. Finally, I consider the implications of a determinate experience of a being with no apparent causality for historiography and theology.
PubDate: 2022-12-28
Issue No: Vol. 18, No. 2 (2022)
- The Pumkin Hour in Science
Authors: Armen Petrosyan
Pages: 413 - 444
Abstract: By scrutinizing Theodore Richards’ thirty years career success almost entirely due to the determination of the atomic weights, the author casts light on a very important phenomenon in science that slips the minds of philosophers and scientists up to now. The Pumpkin Hour comes when an all-embracing transformation of the conceptual background of a subject field that brings to a revision of its basic tenets turns the fine carriage of some - not only theoretical but even experimental - results raised to the rank of outstanding contribution into a pumpkin of minor improvements with no crucial role in knowledge. The paper shows the mechanism governing the reappraisal of “pieces” of knowledge and reveals the link preventing the scientific community from proper assessment of new ideas and facts: a discovery is valued the higher the more the value it adds (by consolidating, unfolding, and supporting) to the conceptual background through the lens of which it itself is looked at.
PubDate: 2022-12-28
Issue No: Vol. 18, No. 2 (2022)
- Ordinary Objects and the Overdetermination Argument
Authors: Martin Orensanz
Pages: 445 - 456
Abstract: If an ordinary object causes an event, and if its atoms acting in concert cause the same event, then the event in question is overdetermined by two independent causes. The overdetermination argument aims to show that effects are never overdetermined in this way, and that we should only admit that the atoms acting in concert are the cause of the event in question. This means that the object constituted by those atoms does not cause anything, and if this is so, then the object does not exist. I submit that it is possible to resist the overdetermination argument by claiming that causation is strictly an event-event relation. However, the argument can be reformulated in a way that blocks this objection. I explain how the reformulated version of the argument can be resisted by claiming that there is only one causal event that is undergone by both the object and its atoms acting in concert. Additionally, I show how the epistemic argument that can be formulated in support of the overdetermination argument can be resisted as well.
PubDate: 2022-12-28
Issue No: Vol. 18, No. 2 (2022)
- Matter-Information Equivalence
Authors: George Litchfield
Pages: 457 - 466
Abstract: Information and matter are commonly viewed to be two seperate entities, the former being abstract and the later corresponding to something concrete and physical. However, since the beginning of the twentyfirst century, a paradigm shift has brought about a closer assosciation between the two. While information can describe matter, matter carries and creates information. This essay attempts to show through two new paradigms, Bit from Bit and Bit recognize Bit, that in order for a description or measurement to apply to matter, that matter itself must be a description, or peice of information. Ultimately, it is information which composes objects of experience. In particular, the amount of information contained by an object is highly related to its surface area.
PubDate: 2022-12-28
Issue No: Vol. 18, No. 2 (2022)
- Thinking Dark Anew
Authors: Reza Tavakol
Pages: 467 - 484
Abstract: Dark(ness) is Our blindness To other lights Light by its gradations always speaks of its other, the dark. But as opposed to light which we assume we know the nature of, the nature of dark remains elusive. A key reason for this is that dark is often defined in terms of (absence of) light, and light in turn in relation to the sensibilities of our vision, which makes the demarcation line between light and dark rather arbitrary and difficult to define. I explore the nature of dark by considering a set of thresholds of dark and ask what the limit of such thresholds may be. Starting with the limitations of the human vision, and those of other species – as well as the physical properties of the electromagnetic waves of which the visible part, light, constitutes a very small part - I define the notion of relative darkness, in relation to any limited vision. The observer-dependence of this definition raises the interesting question of possibility of absolute darkness - i.e., dark(ness) for all possible visions, whether biological or artificial, terrestrial, or extra-terrestrial - defined as the absence of electromagnetic waves across their entire range of wavelengths. I argue that as opposed to relative darkness that does exist in the natural world, at least within the limits of the sensitivity of our (or any other limited) vision, absolute darkness does not naturally occur in the Universe at present. Furthermore, strictly speaking, it cannot be constructed artificially through any physical process which involves a finite number of steps. I explore the possibility of absolute darkness occurring in the very far future of the Universe and argue that only asymptotically in time (assuming the Universe is future eternal), can the Universe possibly tend towards such a state. But long before such epochs the Universe is likely to be devoid of any observers, with its physics becoming more and more uncertain given our present knowledge. I also briefly discuss the colour black and ask whether absolute black can exist in the Universe. I argue that this is similarly unlikely. Despite the observer-independent nature of the discussion here, dark (and black) carry deep psychological and metaphoric meanings for us. The conceptual realisation of the impossibility of absolute dark in our Universe, where all possible visions would fail, can have great symbolic significance, as well as reminding us of the vast vistas open to other possible visions, that forever remain closed to our eyes
PubDate: 2022-12-28
Issue No: Vol. 18, No. 2 (2022)
- The Most Radical Philosopher
Authors: Vincent Lê
Pages: 485 - 508
Abstract: This article provides the first critical introduction to or close reading of British philosopher Sadie Plant’s original formulation of cyberfeminism. I begin by showing how Plant’s earliest work seeks a form of critique—or what she also calls ‘the most radical gesture’—that could never be recuperated by the power structures it seeks to contest as has happened to so much critical thought before. I then argue that her cyberfeminist turn is motivated by the discovery that evermore autonomous machines are carving out a space outside the human spectacle from whence our anthropocentric misconceptions can be eliminated. If Plant characterizes this machinic critique as a feminism, it is because she sees increasingly intelligent machines as harbouring the same attributes often associated with women inasmuch as they have both been traditionally treated as a means to the ends of man without any rational agency, fixed identity or humanity of their own. As we shall see, Plant’s cyberfeminism is not so much about emancipating women as it is about emancipating feminine structures like irrationality, fluid identity, general intelligence, and even inhumanity, which she finds incarnated in emerging technologies as they spiral outside of man’s control in a purely formal feminism, or even a feminism without women.
PubDate: 2022-12-28
Issue No: Vol. 18, No. 2 (2022)
