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The Prophets of Doom explores eleven thinkers who not only dared to contradict the dominant linear and progressive view of history, but also predicted many of the political and social maladies through which we are living.

A key paradigm in The Tango of Ethics is the conflict and interplay between two fundamentally different ways of seeing and being in the world -- that of the intuitive human being who wants to lead a meaningful life and thrive, and that of the detached, rational agent who wants to prevent unbearable suffering from occurring.

Unknowable Minds delves into the unsettling reality of entrusting our safety to an artificial intelligence that lacks human essence.

What should you do when you have decided to use the drawing of lots in a procedure? What practical questions arise? What options are available? What are the details? What advantages and disadvantages should we expect from each option? What are the risks to be aware of and the precautions to take?The literature on sortition consists of three main genres: monographs, arguments for and against, and the history of the procedure in one or more dimensions. This book stands a little apart from this framework. Its method is largely deductive and theoretical in reasoning. It has a practical purpose which is aimed at specialists as well as naïve users and interested parties: precise enough to satisfy an informed public and simple enough to be accessible to citizens and practitioners.Gil Delannoi begins with a general theory of political procedures and its relations with the typology of political regimes. Sortitive democracy is also studied as a third option distinct from the familiar representative and direct types. Sortition is analysed through its main uses, effects, and objectives. Several detailed potential uses are proposed for political actors at the end of the book.Treating procedures like delicate flowers or rare birds is far from superfluous. To forget this aspect is to stick to generalities, and to ignore crucial details.

Ancient Evenings is a study of consciousness presented as a series of fictional philosophical dialogues - on good and evil, truth and falsehood, life and death - set at the height of the Roman Empire.

The papers in this volume invite us to reflect on Humberto Maturana's contributions to our ways of being in the world, and of constituting and living in the worlds we create.

These essays bring forth and build upon the many themes from Mary Catherine Bateson's work, such as interdependence, reflexivity, continuity/discontinuity, and cybernetics as a living process.

What is ''the meaning of life''? This book aims to summarise and discuss 3,500 years of philosophy on the topic in order to make these ideas accessible to the layperson. It aims to cover the most important thinkers who addressed the meaning of and in life in their work, and from their ideas emerges a possible model of a ''Best Self''.

In this distillation of a lifetime's thinking about democracy, Maurice Pope presents a new model of governance that replaces elected politicians with assemblies selected by lot. The re-introduction of sortition, he believes, offers a way out of gridlock, apathy, alienation and polarisation by giving citizens back their voice.

Rupert Robson argues that we are now just two conceptual hurdles away from developing artificial superintelligence. The first of the two hurdles is to embed consciousness in AI, thereby giving us the sentient robot. The second is about the developmental step needed in AI design so as to achieve human-level flexibility in thought.

Using artist statements, theoretical writings, statistical data, historical analysis and insider testimony, British art critic Alexander Adams examines the origins, aims and spread of artivism (activism through art). His findings suggest the perception of artivism as a grassroots humanitarian movement could not be more misleading.

Everyone, as the French philosopher René Descartes pointed out long ago, thinks. That's the easy bit. The harder part, and what this book is really about, is how to make your thinking original and effective. The focus here is on practical suggestions about ways to think better.

From the storming of the Capitol and the rise of authoritarian rhetoric and politicians to the challenge of global warming, liberal democracy faces a twin crisis of legitimacy and efficacy. Democracy in Crisis points to long neglected resources from the world's first democracy - Ancient Athens - prompting us to think beyond our current practices.

2021 marks Dylan's 80th birthday and his 60th year in the music world. It invites us to look back on his career and the multitudes that it contains. Is he a song and dance man? A political hero? A protest singer? A self-portrait artist who has yet to paint his masterpiece? Is he Shakespeare in the alley? The greatest living exponent of American music? An ironsmith? Internet radio DJ? Poet (who knows it)? Is he a spiritual and religious parking meter? Judas? The voice of a generation or a false prophet, jokerman, and thief? Dylan is all these and none.The essays in this book explore the Nobel laureate's masks, collectively reflecting upon their meaning through time, change, movement, and age. They are written by wonderful and diverse set of contributors, all here for his 80th birthday bash: celebrated Dylanologists like Michael Gray and Laura Tenschert; recording artists such as Robyn Hitchcock, Barb Jungr, Amy Rigby, and Emma Swift; and 'the professors' who all like his looks: David Boucher, Anne Margaret Daniel, Ray Monk, Galen Strawson, and more. Read it on your toaster!

The Covid-19 pandemic has shown the need for a fresh look at health and health care. This book offers a philosophical critique of medicine as applied science, but more positively it stresses the social causes of disease and argues for greater equity in the distribution of resources and the benefits of a wider evidence-base for medical treatments.

"Guido de Ruggiero (1888-1948) was perhaps the greatest Italian intellectual historian in the twentieth century. He was a fierce champion of liberalism, an ardent opponent of Fascism, an insightful critic and interpreter of his contemporaries, and a formidable philosopher in his own right. Idealism & Experience: The Philosophy of Guido de Ruggiero comprises eight new critical essays, as well as English translations of five of de Ruggiero's most important shorter writings, which chart the development of his thought between 1914 and 1946. Taken together, these essays reveal the range, richness and philosophical sophistication of de Ruggiero's ideas, enabling Anglophone readers to appreciate their enduring relevance in our own troubled times"--

This book surveys the origins, uses and manifestations of iconoclasm in history, art and public culture. It is one of the first books to examine the outbreak of iconoclasm in Europe and North America in the summer of 2020 in the context of previous outbreaks.

The Psychology of the Bible explores how the Old Testament provides perspective into the tumultuous transition from an earlier mentality to a new paradigm of interiorized psychology and introspective religiosity that came to characterize the first millennium BCE.

Becoming Artificial is a collection of essays about the nature of humanity, technology, artifice, and the irreducible connections between them. Is there something fundamental to being human or are humans simply biological computers?

This Special Issue of Cybernetics and Human Knowing contains rare material related to G. Spencer-Brown's book Laws of Form and its contents. In 1973 there was a conference at Big Sur at which Spencer-Brown discussed his calculus with a group of scientists. In this issue we print Walter Barney's transcripts of the conference.

In After #MeToo, Gerard Casey provides a critical assessment of the #MeToo movement, situating it in the context of the radical feminism of which it is just the latest manifestation. He argues that if there is such a thing as the patriarchy, it is singularly and spectacularly ineffectual.

Jordan Peterson has attracted a high level of attention. Focusing on Peterson's ideas rather than controversies, this book explores his answers to perennial questions. Champagne unites the different strands of Peterson's thinking in a handy summary and then articulates his main critical concerns.

This book discloses the errors and lies that misled you into believing things about so-called alternative medicine (SCAM) that are untrue. It analyses the many falsehoods used in the promotion of SCAM, explains the erroneous thinking behind them, and presents the scientific evidence in easily understandable terms.

In ZAP, Gerard Casey presents a critical and unified approach to both free speech and tolerance based on the Zero Aggression Principle, keeping the critical discussion topical and grounded by reference to current events.