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Item (Post-)pandemic somatechnics, neoliberalism, and the return to (academic) normalcy: Digital conversations(Edinburgh University Press, 2024-11) Rahbari, Ladan; Geerts, EvelienThis essay consists of a set of digital (post-)pandemic email correspondence held between a political sociologist and an interdisciplinary philosopher working at western European universities while the COVID-19 pandemic rapidly unfolded itself. Starting from an unsettling point in time in 2021, during which vaccination strategies and numerous eugenic pandemic containment measures were being discussed, the authors touch upon issues as diverse as the importance of embodied feminist theorising in pandemic crisis times; neoliberal extractive capitalism’s influence on society, pandemic (mis)management, and higher education; the problematic (post-)pandemic business-as-usual-narrative; grief, mourning, and trauma; the power of anger and protesting; and the forced return to normal(cy). These conversations are held together by an irruptions-based methodology based on Deleuze and Guattari (2000) . This methodology tries to make sense of the (post-)pandemic as a disruptive event while forming the backdrop for conversational and critical theoretical snippets, self-designed memes, and critical race, queer, disability, and feminist theoretical perspectives that all conceptualise (post-)pandemic somatechnics as a ‘form of ethico-political critical practice’ (Sullivan and Murray 2011 : vii).Item Laozian metaethics(Springer Nature, 2024-10-07) Dockstader, JasonThis paper contributes to the emerging field of comparative metaethics by offering a reconstruction of the metaethical views implicit to the Daoist classic, the Laozi 老子 or Daodejing 道德經. It offers two novel views developed out of the Laozi: one-all value monism and moral trivialism. The paper proceeds by discussing Brook Ziporyn’s reading of the Laozi in terms of omnipresence and irony, and then applies his reading to moral properties like values and names (ming 名). The paper emboldens Ziporyn’s monistic tendencies in order to claim that the Laozi not only treats the Dao as an omnipresent value, but also as the one value that is all values. I call this view one-all value monism. I then argue that, in terms of moral epistemology, one-all value monism entails moral trivialism, the view that all moral judgments are true. I conclude by emphasizing the therapeutic motivation for holding such apparently outrageous metaethical views. The paper thus defends the basic claim that there is a point at which Ziporyn’s omnipresence and irony become monism and true contradiction, and that further exploring the consequences of these inevitable transitions leads to the discovery of novel metaethical views.Item Comparative cognitive science and convergent evolution: Humans and elephants(Sciendo, 2022) Ross, Don; Georgia State UniversityComparative cognitive science of humans has tended to overwhelmingly emphasize similarities and differences between humans and other living hominids, particularly chimpanzees and bonobos. In thus under-emphasizing convergent evolution, this skew systematically misidentifies several crucial explanatory targets, particularly where cultural evolution is concerned. While concentration within the hominid and wider primate lines can tell us much about genetic constraints on human culture and cognition, at least as much attention should be paid to species in which patterns of evolved social cognition respond to problems faced by ancestral hominins. Elephants furnish a first and closest example.Item Moral uncertainty over policy evaluation(Erasmus University Rotterdam, 2018-10-24) Mintz-Woo, KianWhen performing intertemporal cost-benefit analyses of policies, both in terms of climate change and other long-term problems, the discounting problem becomes critical. The question is how to weight intertemporal costs and benefits to generate present value equivalents. This thesis argues that those best placed to answer the discounting problem are domain experts, not moral philosophers or the public at large. It does this by arguing that the discounting problem is a special case of an interesting class of problems, those which are both what I call morally complex and quantitative.Item Mimetic resentment's violent somatechnics in permacrisis times: Critical cartographical contours and coordinates(Edinburgh University Press, 2024-08) Geerts, Evelien; Carstens, DelphiOur current era of crisis and neo-fascist revanches (see Lawtoo 2019 ) is rife with desires-driven mimesis, and more specifically, mimetic resentment or conflictual copycat behaviour. Traditionally conceptualised in relation to ressentiment, mimetic resentment (see Nietzsche [1887]2006; Girard [1961]1965 , [1977]1992 , and [1978]1987) is seldom analysed as a somatechnical phenomenon that meshes the corporeal and the technological ( Sullivan 2005 ; Pugliese and Stryker 2009 ; Sullivan and Murray 2011 ), involving pre-personal and affective micropolitics, as well as social and environmental macropolitical characteristics. This article therefore seeks to map out resentment's contemporary somatechnics by attending to its violence-engendering micropolitics in addition to the macrolevels of the permacrisis times it is said to be operating in. The burgeoning environmental crisis that is currently unfolding against the backdrop of these permacrisis times furthermore indicates that such a mapping exercise must consider both the micro- and macropolitical nuances of how zoē/ bios classifications and resultant gaps between non/human actors are created and sustained. Finding such a nuanced eco-focused framework in Deleuzoguattarian philosophy (see Deleuze [1969]1990 ; Deleuze and Guattari [1980]2005 ; Guattari [1989]2000 and [1992]2002) , as well as contemporary critical new materialist thought (see Cooper 2008 ; Braidotti 2013 ; Haraway 2016 ; and Yusoff 2018 ), we first examine these permacrisis times before presenting a critical cartography ( Braidotti [1994]2011 ; Deleuze and Guattari [1980]2005) of the contours of mimetic resentment's violent micro- and macropolitical somatechnics, to then explore several eco-focused Deleuzoguattarian and critical new materialist pathways that could lead us out of the spiralling vortex of violence that characterises this time of planetary trouble.