Download or read book Ignorance Explosion written by Julius Lukasiewicz and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 1994 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marshall McLuhan once noted that We do not know who discovered water, (but) it was almost certainly not a fish. Anybody's total surround, or environment, creates a condition of non-perception. This statement has become a metaphor for what has happened in Western societies, caught as they are between states of civilization created by the industrial revolution and emerging post-industrial technology. This unveiling of our cultural condition and the seeming inability of our social sciences to recognize or influence current or future trends, presents forceful challenges to those who believe they are planning for the future of humanity. Lukasiewicz proposes that there are limits beyond which the human mind cannot comprehend its increasingly artificial, unnatural, and, in the end, dehumanized environment. Despite the grim probabilities he sees in the future, Lukasiewicz's work is, nonetheless, undergirded by a sense of optimism, and good humor informs this evocative analysis of our time.A readable, comprehensive and stimulating examination of the changing dilemmas of the human condition. Zbigniew Brzezinski Assistant to the President of the United States for National Security Affairs, 1977-1981.
Download or read book The Ignorance Explosion written by J. Lukasiewicz and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 1994 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author reveals the darker side of Western society's adoption of, and adaptation to, modern technology. Despite his portrayal of an increasingly complex, artificial and dehumanized technological environment, Lukasiewicz writes with humour and humanism and makes an enlightening contribution to the habitually grim literature on this subject.
Download or read book Routledge International Handbook of Ignorance Studies written by Matthias Gross and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-06-27 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Once treated as the absence of knowledge, ignorance has now become a highly influential and rapidly growing topic in its own right. This new edition of the seminal text in the field is fully revised and includes new and expanded chapters on religion; domestic law and jurisprudence; sexuality and gender studies; memory studies; international relations; psychology; decision-theory; and colonial history. The study of ignorance has attracted growing attention across the natural and social sciences where a wide range of scholars explore the social life and political issues involved in the distribution and strategic use of not knowing. This handbook reflects the interdisciplinary field of ignorance studies by drawing contributions from economics, sociology, history, philosophy, cultural studies, anthropology, feminist studies, and related fields to serve as a path-breaking guide to the political, legal and social uses of ignorance in social and political life. This book will be indispensable for anyone seeking to understand the important role played by ignorance in contemporary society, culture and politics.
Download or read book Ignorance written by Andrew Bennett and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2013-07-19 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Andrew Bennett argues in this fascinating book that ignorance is part of the narrative and poetic force of literature and is an important aspect of its thematic focus: ignorance is what literary texts are about. He sees that the dominant conception of literature since the Romantic period involves an often unacknowledged engagement with the experience of not knowing. From Wordsworth and Keats to George Eliot and Charles Dickens, from Henry James to Joseph Conrad, from Elizabeth Bowen to Philip Roth and Seamus Heaney, writers have been fascinated and compelled by the question of ignorance, including their own. Bennett argues that there is a politics and ethics as well as a poetics of ignorance: literature’s agnoiology, its acknowledgement of the limits of what we know both of ourselves and of others, engages with the possibility of democracy and the ethical, and allows us to begin to conceive of what it might mean to be human. This exciting approach to literary theory will be of interest to lecturers and students of literary theory and criticism.
Download or read book Ignorance written by Rik Peels and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "a brief history of the study of ignorance. There is a lack of serious investigation into ignorance: apart from the apophatic tradition in the ancient world and the Middle Ages and the more recent fields of agnotology, philosophy of race, and feminist philosophy, ignorance itself has received little philosophical attention. It is then laid out how the field that one would expect to have studied ignorance in detail, namely, epistemology, has failed to do so. The chapter also explores why this could be the case. Subsequently, it is explained what is new about this book and how this fills the important gap in the study of ignorance: it develops and applies an epistemology of ignorance. Finally, it gives a brief overview of the chapters ahead"--
Download or read book Perspectives on Ignorance from Moral and Social Philosophy written by Rik Peels and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-06-23 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited collection focuses on the moral and social dimensions of ignorance—an undertheorized category in analytic philosophy. Contributors address such issues as the relation between ignorance and deception, ignorance as a moral excuse, ignorance as a legal excuse, and the relation between ignorance and moral character. In the moral realm, ignorance is sometimes considered as an excuse; some specific kind of ignorance seems to be implied by a moral character; and ignorance is closely related to moral risk. Ignorance has certain social dimensions as well: it has been claimed to be the engine of science; it seems to be entailed by privacy and secrecy; and it is widely thought to constitute a legal excuse in certain circumstances. Together, these contributions provide a sustained inquiry into the nature of ignorance and the pivotal role it plays in the moral and social domains.
Download or read book The Virtues of Ignorance written by Bill Vitek and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2008-05-01 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Human dependence on technology has increased exponentially over the past several centuries, and so too has the notion that we can fix environmental problems with scientific applications. The Virtues of Ignorance: Complexity, Sustainability, and the Limits of Knowledge proposes an alternative to this hubristic, shortsighted, and dangerous worldview. The contributors argue that uncritical faith in scientific knowledge has created many of the problems now threatening the planet and that our wholesale reliance on scientific progress is both untenable and myopic. Bill Vitek, Wes Jackson, and a diverse group of thinkers, including Wendell Berry, Anna Peterson, and Robert Root-Bernstein, offer profound arguments for the advantages of an ignorance-based worldview. Their essays explore this philosophy from numerous perspectives, including its origins, its essence, and how its implementation can preserve vital natural resources for posterity. All conclude that we must simply accept the proposition that our ignorance far exceeds our knowledge and always will. Rejecting the belief that science and technology are benignly at the service of society, the authors argue that recognizing ignorance might be the only path to reliable knowledge. They also uncover an interesting paradox: knowledge and insight accumulate fastest in the minds of those who hold an ignorance-based worldview, for by examining the alternatives to a technology-based culture, they expand their imaginations. Demonstrating that knowledge-based worldviews are more dangerous than useful, The Virtues of Ignorance looks closely at the relationship between the land and the future generations who will depend on it. The authors argue that we can never improve upon nature but that we can, by putting this new perspective to work in our professional and personal lives, live sustainably on Earth.
Download or read book Democracy and Political Ignorance written by Ilya Somin and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-02 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the biggest problems with modern democracy is that most of the public is usually ignorant of politics and government. Often, many people understand that their votes are unlikely to change the outcome of an election and don't see the point in learning much about politics. This may be rational, but it creates a nation of people with little political knowledge and little ability to objectively evaluate what they do know. In Democracy and Political Ignorance, Ilya Somin mines the depths of ignorance in America and reveals the extent to which it is a major problem for democracy. Somin weighs various options for solving this problem, arguing that political ignorance is best mitigated and its effects lessened by decentralizing and limiting government. Somin provocatively argues that people make better decisions when they choose what to purchase in the market or which state or local government to live under, than when they vote at the ballot box, because they have stronger incentives to acquire relevant information and to use it wisely.
Download or read book The Philosophy and Practice of Science written by David B. Teplow and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-08-31 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a novel synthesis of the philosophy and practice of science, covering its diverse theoretical, metaphysical, logical, philosophical, and practical elements. The process of science is generally taught in its empirical form: what science is, how it works, what it has achieved, and what it might achieve in the future. What is often absent is how to think deeply about science and how to apply its lessons in the pursuit of truth, in other words, knowing how to know. In this volume, David Teplow presents illustrative examples of science practice, history and philosophy of science, and sociological aspects of the scientific community, to address commonalities among these disciplines. In doing so, he challenges cherished beliefs and suggests to students, philosophers, and practicing scientists new, epistemically superior, ways of thinking about and doing science.
Download or read book Critical Terms in Futures Studies written by Heike Paul and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-12-02 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume provides the essential vocabulary currently employed in discourses on the future in 50 contributions by renowned scholars in their respective fields, which examine future imaginaries across cultures and time. Not situated in the field of “futurology” proper, it comes at future studies ‘sideways’ and offers a multidisciplinary treatment of a critical futures’ vocabulary. The contributors have their disciplinary homes in a wide range of subjects – history, cultural studies, literary studies, sociology, media studies, American studies, Japanese studies, Chinese studies, and philosophy – and critically illuminate numerous discourses about the future (or futures), past and present. In compiling such a critical vocabulary, this book seeks to foster conversations about futures in study programs and research forums and offers a toolbox for discussing them with an adequate degree of complexity.
Download or read book Man and Natural Resources written by Cedric Stanton Hicks and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-07-26 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1975, yet prophetic in its wisdom this book deals with major aspects of man’s ecological destruction in an industrial framework. As well as discussing the destruction of forests by early civilizations the book examines the rate and extension of environmental deterioration in more recent times and the importance of the integrated ‘feed-back’ controls which maintain stability in the ecosphere of which humankind forms a part. Examining the role of entropy, energy quanta and indeterminacy in overthrowing both science and economic theory, the book provides examples from the 20th Century of the uncontrolled demands for energy and material resources, as well as of increasing toxic hazard in the biosphere.
Download or read book International Perspectives on Teaching about Hazards and Disasters written by John Lidstone and published by Multilingual Matters. This book was released on 1996 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discussing international perspectives on teaching about hazards and disasters, this volume features examples from Germany, France, South Africa, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Nigeria.
Download or read book Responsibility written by Jan Willem Wieland and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philosophers have long agreed that moral responsibility might not only have a freedom condition, but also an epistemic condition. Moral responsibility and knowledge interact, but the question is exactly how. Ignorance might constitute an excuse, but the question is exactly when. Surprisingly enough, the epistemic condition has only recently attracted the attention of scholars. This volume sets the agenda. Sixteen new essays address the following central questions: Does the epistemic condition require akrasia? Why does blameless ignorance excuse? Does moral ignorance sustained by one's culture excuse? Does the epistemic condition involve knowledge of the wrongness or wrongmaking features of one's action? Is the epistemic condition an independent condition, or is it derivative from one's quality of will or intentions? Is the epistemic condition sensitive to degrees of difficulty? Are there different kinds of moral responsibility and thus multiple epistemic conditions? Is the epistemic condition revisionary? What is the basic structure of the epistemic condition?
Download or read book Fire and Water Engineering written by and published by . This book was released on 1922 with total page 766 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book AI written by Roman V. Yampolskiy and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2024-02-23 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Delving into the deeply enigmatic nature of Artificial Intelligence (AI), AI: Unexplainable, Unpredictable, Uncontrollable explores the various reasons why the field is so challenging. Written by one of the founders of the field of AI safety, this book addresses some of the most fascinating questions facing humanity, including the nature of intelligence, consciousness, values and knowledge. Moving from a broad introduction to the core problems, such as the unpredictability of AI outcomes or the difficulty in explaining AI decisions, this book arrives at more complex questions of ownership and control, conducting an in-depth analysis of potential hazards and unintentional consequences. The book then concludes with philosophical and existential considerations, probing into questions of AI personhood, consciousness, and the distinction between human intelligence and artificial general intelligence (AGI). Bridging the gap between technical intricacies and philosophical musings, AI: Unexplainable, Unpredictable, Uncontrollable appeals to both AI experts and enthusiasts looking for a comprehensive understanding of the field, whilst also being written for a general audience with minimal technical jargon.
Download or read book Powermatics written by Marike Finlay - de Monchy and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-10-23 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1987. This critical work is an exploration of new communications technology in its social context, as a social discourse determined by other forms of inter-play. The author refers to Weber, Innis, Habermas and Foucault to develop her argument.
Download or read book Realizing The University written by Barnett, Ronald and published by McGraw-Hill Education (UK). This book was released on 1999-12-01 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The University has lost its way. The world needs the university more than ever but for new reasons. If we are to clarify its new role in the world, we need to find a new vocabulary and a new sense of purpose. This book offers nothing less than a fundamental reworking of the way in which we understand the modern university.
