The world is changing at such speed that it's hard to know how to think about the new kinds of dilemma that are springing up: Can robots be held responsible for their actions? Can science predict crime - and prevent it? Is the future gender-fluid? David Edmonds has put together a philosophical task force to get to grips with challenges like these.
If we want a science of consciousness, we will have to rethink what 'science' is. In Galileo's Error, Professor Philip Goff proposes a third way, arguing both approaches are wrongheaded: we struggle to explain consciousness because physical science, as we currently conceive it, is not designed to deal with the issue.
One of America's leading public intellectuals presents a fascinating portrait of Machiavelli, his most infamous work, The Prince, and the world in which it was written.
This book presents an innovative reading of Daoist philosophy that highlights the critical and therapeutic functions of satire and humor. Moeller and D'Ambrosio show how the Zhuangzi expounds the Daoist art of "genuine pretending": the paradoxical skill of enacting social roles without submitting to them or letting them define one's identity.
The companion volume to Keith Ansell Pearson's hugely successful Viroid Life.Taking its orientation from the though of Gilles Deleuze, Germinal Life embarks on a fascinating tour of ethology, biology, ethics, literature and cyborgs.
Godel, Escher, Bach is a Pulitzer Prize--winning treatise exploring patterns and symbols in the thinking of mathematician Kurt Godel, artist M. C. Escher and composer Johann Sebastian Bach. A groundbreaking book that has set the standard for interdisciplinary writing. A book every thinking reader must have.
Jan Westerhoff unfolds the story of one of the richest episodes in the history of Indian thought, the development of Buddhist philosophy during the first millennium CE. He aims to offer the reader a systematic grasp of key Buddhist concepts such as non-self, suffering, reincarnation, karma, and nirvana.
Presents an exchange between a writer with a longstanding interest in moral psychology and a psychotherapist with a training in literary studies. In this book, they consider psychotherapy and its wider social context from different perspectives, but at the heart of both their approaches is a concern with stories.
Are high moral standards essential or should we give our preference to the pragmatist who gets things done or negotiates successfully? Taking the form of a dialogue between Socrates, Gorgias, Polus and Callicles, this title debates perennial questions about the nature of government and those who aspire to public office.
Avoiding the technical jargon and complex logic associated with most books on philosophy, Law brings the thoughts of these great thinkers, from Confucius and Buddha to Wittgenstein and Sartre, to life.
A unique selection of the greatest thinkers from the fields of philosophy, political theory, sociology, art, architecture and literature, with enjoyable profiles of what they have to teach to us today.
Immanuel Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals ranks alongside Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics as one of the most profound and influential works in moral philosophy ever written
Adam Sandel revives one of the oldest philosophical questions: What constitutes a good life? Drawing on thinkers ancient and modern, as well as his own experience as a record-setting athlete, he argues that fulfillment lies not in achieving goals but in forging a life journey that enables us to see our struggles and triumphs as an integrated whole.
A new study of the ethical thought of one of this century's greatest and most influential theologians, Karl Barth. The book relates Barth's ideas to contemporary ideas in religious ethics - including the problem of war, the ethical roles of the Bible and the Church, human freedom, and individual and corporate morality.