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Driving from Toronto to Paris in their lunch break, Spike and Jane pick up a hitchhiker, X. X is from a planet where chocolate is a major food group and testosterone is a prohibited substance. Together they drive to Boston, NASA and CalTech to find an expert who knows the space-time coordinates for Earth, so that X can get home.
When an independent activist and her office-temp-with-a-doctorate buddy embark on a quest for a chocolate bar (a bar that serves not alcohol, but chocolate – in all its deliciously decadent forms), they pick up a hitchhiking extraterrestrial who’s stopped on Earth to ask for directions. (I know, right?) They do their damnedest to help 'X' find the information she needs to get back home, all the while confronting everyday sexism (rather like bashing your head against a jellyfish) and committing assorted outrageous acts and everyday rebellions ...
The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, or SETI, has attracted both praise and sharp criticism from the mainstream scientific community over the years. Extraterrestrials: A Philosophical Perspective explores the important philosophical issues that are at play in this discussion. AndrZ Kukla closely examines several of the prominent ideas surrounding the possibility of extraterrestrial life such as the vastness of the universe argument, the argument from mediocrity and the one world, one science argument while offering innovative theories of his own. Among other things, Kukla show uses Chomsky's account of language acquisition to explain why humans will never be able to communicate with extraterrestrials. Extraterrestrials offers a close and thorough treatment of extraterrestrial life that will intrigue a wide audience, especially those who are interested in the philosophy of science.
"We sometimes feel disgusted by-even alienated from-our desires. Suppose I feel alienated from my persistent desire to smoke, and disgusted that the thought of dying while my children are still young isn't enough to extinguish that desire. I could talk to my friends about my predicament, confident that they would sympathize at least to some extent. If I were so inclined, I could also consult work from many distinct philosophical traditions, written in many different centuries, to learn what philosophers have thought was the best way to characterize someone in my condition; what they have thought someone in my condition ought to do; and what philosophical problems they thought could be illuminated by considering conditions like mine. I might learn that reflection on such cases could help in developing accounts of self-deception, wishful thinking, moral motivation, the nature of agency, and the boundaries of the authentic self. We also sometimes feel disgusted by-even alienated from-our experiences. More specifically, we sometimes feel alienated from a perceptual or sensory experience of ours because we are troubled by its evaluative shading. Many people, if you press them and they trust that you won't immediately turn and berate them, will acknowledge that they have experiences like the one I am about to confess. A woman walks by, and my visual perception of her includes the content fragility, and on reflection I realize that this content is positively valenced in my experience. And I don't just perceive her as fragile in the sense of floaty or graceful, but fragile in the sense of breakable, or erotically consumable. I am disgusted with myself because no one is breakable in that sense. How could I be such that a fellow human looks that way to me? Yet if I look again, my moment of anguished self-castigation doesn't shake the way she looks to me. She still looks fragile, and in a pleasing way. Such experiences-and alienation from them-are, I contend, disturbingly common. Yet if I were to try and read some philosophy to help me understand this predicament, as I might have done in the case of my alienated desire, I would find almost nothing. Philosophers in many different centuries, and in many different traditions, construe sensation and perception as passive. They talk about experiences in ways that would lead us to conclude that someone's feeling alienated from a particular experience, unlike her feeling alienated from a particular desire, is an odd neuroticism-not a phenomenon deserving of serious philosophical reflection. Within contemporary analytic philosophy, philosophers frequently argue for views of mind, self, and action on which many aspects of a human life can be understood as expressive of agency. And yet even in these approaches, we do not see experience treated in a way that would enable us to make sense of this common human response to it. We certainly don't see philosophers set it up, as a condition of adequacy for an account of experience, that it make room for the phenomenon of alienation from experience. (In contrast, a philosopher might treat the ability to account for akrasia as a condition of adequacy for accounts of belief and desire, or of practical reasoning generally.) And so of course no one goes on to ask what progress on other philosophical problems-like the nature of self-control; or the functions of ascriptions and avowals of experience; or the status of folk-psychology-might be made if we were starting from an account of experience that made room for alienation from particular experiences"--
Is the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence a genuine scientific research programme? David Lamb evaluates claims and counter-claims, and examines recent attempts to establish contact with other intelligent life forms. He considers the benefits and drawbacks of this communication, how we should communicate and whether we actually can. He also assesses competing theories on the origin of life on Earth, discoveries of former solar planets, proposals for space colonies and the consequent technical and ethical issues.
This book brings together a collection of essays written by scholars inspired by Eugene Gendlin’s work, particularly those interested in thinking with and beyond Gendlin for the sake of a global community facing significant crises. The contributors take inspiration from Gendlin’s philosophy of the implicit, and his theoretical approach to psychology. The essays engage with Gendlin’s ideas for our era, including critiques and corrections as well as extrapolations of his work. Gendlin himself worried that knowing about a problem is too often conflated with actions that might lead to change; the essays in this book point to a form of understanding that is activated, an embodied and immediate way of thinking about today’s problems. Throughout the volume, the contributors creatively engage with Gendlin’s work and its applicability to the complex, pressing crises of our time: the Covid-19 pandemic, environmental/climate issues, racism, sexism, economic inequality, and other factors threatening human persons and communities. Gendlin’s theoretical approach to psychology is naturally interdisciplinary, making this book an essential read for anyone interested in moving to the boundaries where psychology meets philosophy, theology, art, environmental studies, science, technology, and much more.
Alien and Philosophy: I Infest, Therefore I Am presents a philosophical exploration of the world of Alien, the simultaneously horrifying and thought-provoking sci-fi horror masterpiece, and the film franchise it spawned. The first book dedicated to exploring the philosophy raised by one of the most successful and influential sci-fi franchises of modern times Features contributions from an acclaimed team of scholars of philosophy and pop culture, led by highly experienced volume editors Explores a huge range of topics that include the philosophy of fear, Just Wars, bio-weaponry, feminism and matriarchs, perfect killers, contagion, violation, employee rights and Artificial Intelligence Includes coverage of H.R. Giger’s aesthetics, the literary influences of H.P. Lovecraft, sci-fi and the legacy of Vietnam, and much more!
Extraterrestrial Altruism examines a basic assumption of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI): that extraterrestrials will be transmitting messages to us for our benefit. This question of whether extraterrestrials will be altruistic has become increasingly important in recent years as SETI scientists have begun contemplating transmissions from Earth to make contact. Technological civilizations that transmit signals for the benefit of others, but with no immediate gain for themselves, certainly seem to be altruistic. But does this make biological sense? Should we expect altruism to evolve throughout the cosmos, or is this only wishful thinking? Is it dangerous to send messages to other worlds, as Stephen Hawking has suggested, or might humankind benefit from an exchange with intelligence elsewhere in the galaxy? Would extraterrestrial societies be based on different ethical principles, or would we see commonalities with Earthly notions of morality? Extraterrestrial Altruism explores these and related questions about the motivations of civilizations beyond Earth, providing new insights that are critical for SETI. Chapters are authored by leading scholars from diverse disciplines—anthropology, astronomy, biology, chemistry, computer science, cosmology, engineering, history of science, law, philosophy, psychology, public policy, and sociology. The book is carefully edited by Douglas Vakoch, Director of Interstellar Message Composition at the SETI Institute and professor of clinical psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies. The Foreword is by Frank Drake. This interdisciplinary book will benefit everybody trying to understand whether evolution and ethics are unique to Earth, or whether they are built into the fabric of the universe.