O presente texto tem como objetivo adjuntar à máxima délfica gnothi seauton como auxílio para a educação contemporânea. Este preceito foi apresentado por Michel Foucault em um de seus cursos no Collège de France no ano de 1981-1982 intitulado como A hermenêutica do sujeito. Foucault utilizará como eixo de seu curso o diálogo socrático O primeiro Alcibíades para demonstrar a relação entre mestre e discípulo em uma ótica do cuidado de si.A educação nos dias atuais tem passado por momentos de (...) incertezas, das quais professores e alunos se distanciam cada vez mais, este distanciamento por incrível que pareça, interfere no desenvolvimento dos alunos em sala de aula, sobretudo no ensino médio em que os adolescentes estão em momento de reconhecimento e busca pela própria identidade, a proposta é trazer este preceito para a contemporaneidade afim de reaproximar professores de alunos.O conhece-te a ti mesmo será, portanto, o fio condutor para encontrar o caminho dessa aproximação entre ambos, será por esta relação do cuidado de si que o reencontro consigo mesmo será possível dentro e fora da sala de aula. Para que isso seja possível, percorreremos tais caminhos; entender o conceito de gnothi seauton e o cuidado de si como estratégia para a educação nos dias atuais. (shrink)

Stories are linguistic, cognitive, and cultural products, whether in the context of oral traditions, classical epics, and tragedies, or more contemporary forms of fiction, such as novels. Starting with recent cognitive theories of the evolutionary sources of culture, language, and art (primarily through the work of Merlin Donald, Terrence Deacon, and Michael Tomasello), this chapter discusses some of the mechanisms of the emergence of meaning in literary texts. Relying on theories of meaning originating in the study of cognitive underpinnings (...) of language, primarily frame theory and blending, it shows how language mediates between cognitive constructs on the one hand and evolving narrative forms of symbolic expression on the other. Crucially, the emergent culture-specific forms of storytelling is shown to be immersed both in human culture's reliance on symbolic representation and in more and more complex linguistic forms. Using the linguistic and literary representations of the workings of the human mind as an example, it is argued that the evolution of literary forms is driven in the same degree by our cultural expectations, cognitive underpinnings of creative thought, and the emergence of appropriate linguistic constructions. (shrink)

This bold and brilliant book asks the ultimate question of the life sciences: How did the human mind acquire its incomparable power? In seeking the answer, Merlin Donald traces the evolution of human culture and cognition from primitive apes to the era of artificial intelligence, and presents an original theory of how the human mind evolved from its presymbolic form. In the emergence of modern human culture, Donald proposes, there were three radical transitions. During the first, our bipedal but (...) still apelike ancestors acquired "mimetic" skill—the ability to represent knowledge through voluntary motor acts—which made Homo erectus successful for over a million years. The second transition—to "mythic" culture —coincided with the development of spoken language. Speech allowed the large-brained Homo sapiens to evolve a complex preliterate culture that survives in many parts of the world today. In the third transition, when humans constructed elaborate symbolic systems ranging from cuneiforms, hieroglyphics, and ideograms to alphabetic languages and mathematics, human biological memory became an inadequate vehicle for storing and processing our collective knowledge. The modern mind is thus a hybrid structure built from vestiges of earlier biological stages as well as new external symbolic memory devices that have radically altered its organization. According to Donald, we are symbol-using creatures, more complex than any that went before us, and we may have not yet witnessed the final modular arrangement of the human mind. (shrink)

Presenting the cultural and neuronal forces that power our distinctively human modes of awareness, the author proposes that the human mind is a hybrid product of interweaving a super-complex form of matter (the brain) with an invisible symbolic web (culture) to form a cognitive network. Reprint. 11,500 first printing.

Recently, the term ‘aphantasia’ has become current in scientific and public discourse to denote the absence of mental imagery. However, new terms for aphantasia or its subgroups have recently been proposed, e.g. ‘dysikonesia’ or ‘anauralia’, which complicates the literature, research communication and understanding for the general public. Before further terms emerge, we advocate the consistent use of the term ‘aphantasia’ as it can be used flexibly and precisely, and is already widely known in the scientific community and among the general (...) public. (shrink)

The frame concept from linguistics, cognitive science and artificial intelligence is a theoretical tool to model how explicitly given information is combined with expectations deriving from background knowledge. In this paper, we show how the frame concept can be fruitfully applied to analyze the notion of mathematical understanding. Our analysis additionally integrates insights from the hermeneutic tradition of philosophy as well as Schmid’s ideal genetic model of narrative constitution. We illustrate the practical applicability of our theoretical analysis through a case (...) study on extremal proofs. Based on this case study, we compare our analysis of proof understanding to Avigad’s ability-based analysis of proof understanding. (shrink)

One central tenet of the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis , and the consensus view among biologists until now, is that all genetic mutations occur by “chance” or at “random” with respect to adaptation. However, the discovery of some molecular mechanisms enhancing mutation rate in response to environmental conditions has given rise to discussions among biologists, historians and philosophers of biology about the “chance” vs “directed” character of mutations . In fact, some argue that mutations due to a particular kind of mutator (...) mechanisms challenge the Modern Synthesis because they are produced when and where needed by the organisms concerned. This paper provides a defense of the Modern Synthesis’ consensus view about the chance nature of all genetic mutations by reacting to Jablonka and Lamb’s analysis of genetic mutations and the explicit Lamarckian flavor of their arguments. I argue that biologists can continue to talk about chance mutations according to what I call and define as the notion of “evolutionary chance,” which I claim is the Modern Synthesis’ consensus view and a reformulation of Darwin’s most influential idea of “chance” variation. Advances in molecular genetics are therefore significant but not revolutionary with respect to the Modern Synthesis’ paradigm. (shrink)

Ordinal Computability discusses models of computation obtained by generalizing classical models, such as Turing machines or register machines, to transfinite working time and space. In particular, recognizability, randomness, and applications to other areas of mathematics, including set theory and model theory, are covered.

The great riddle—of archaeology, cognitive science, neuroscience, anthropology, sociology, political science, linguistics, religious studies, and the humanities from literature and music to dance and art—is how we became human, how we acquired modern minds. To have a cognitively modern human mind is to be robustly artful. This equivalence provides the inevitable starting point for a research program aimed at answering obvious some very difficult questions: What is the evolutionary path from our remoter ancestors, who somehow lacked artful minds, to the (...) existence of cognitively modern human beings, who cannot fail to be artful? How did the artful mind emerge? Did the artful mind emerge in a leap, or through slow development? What are the basic mental operations that make art possible for us now, and how do they operate? What neurobiology subtends these abilities? What is the interplay, in the phenomena of artfulness, between biological dispositions, individual experience, and cultural history? This book is addressed to the next generation of scientists and scholars who seek to explain the wonders and mysteries of the artful mind. (shrink)

In this section, we apply the notions obtained above to a famous historical example of a false proof. Our goal is to demonstrate that this proof shows a sufficient degree of distinctiveness for a formalization in a Naproche-like system and hence that automatic checking could indeed have contributed in this case to the development of mathematics. This example further demonstrates that even incomplete distinctivication can be sufficient for automatic checking and that actual mistakes may occur already in the margin between (...) the degree of distinctiveness necessary for formalization and complete distinctiveness. (shrink)

Der philosophische Bildungsweg in Platons Politeia enthält eine zehnjährige Mathematikausbildung, die Logik, Arithmetik, Flächen- und Raumgeometrie, Astronomie und Harmonielehre umfasst. Insofern dieser Bildungsweg von der alltäglichen Befangenheit im Sinnlichen zur Erkenntnis des Guten führen soll, stellt sich die Frage nach der Rolle der Mathematik und der Auswahl gerade dieser Gebiete in gerade dieser Reihenfolge. Unsere Textrekonstruktion schlägt eine Unterteilung in drei Blöcke mit jeweils zwei Gebieten vor, wobei jeder Block einer Stufe im Aufstieg zugeordnet ist: Die Arithmetik macht auf das (...) begriffliche Fundament hinter dem Sinnlichen aufmerksam; die Geometrie leitet dazu hin, sinnliche Figuren lediglich als Abbilder idealer Begriffe aufzufassen; Astronomie und Musiklehre schließlich, die Platon beide mit dem Begriff des Schönen in Verbindung bringt, führen an die Befassung mit rein geistigen Begriffen heran, die jedoch keine Sache mehr der Mathematik, sondern der Dialektik ist. (shrink)

Infinite time register machines (ITRMs) are register machines which act on natural numbers and which are allowed to run for arbitrarily many ordinal steps. Successor steps are determined by standard register machine commands. At limit times register contents are defined by appropriate limit operations. In this paper, we examine the ITRMs introduced by the third and fourth author (Koepke and Miller in Logic and Theory of Algorithms LNCS, pp. 306–315, 2008), where a register content at a limit time is set (...) to the lim inf of previous register contents if that limit is finite; otherwise the register is reset to 0. The theory of these machines has several similarities to the infinite time Turing machines (ITTMs) of Hamkins and Lewis. The machines can decide all ${\Pi^1_1}$ sets, yet are strictly weaker than ITTMs. As in the ITTM situation, we introduce a notion of ITRM-clockable ordinals corresponding to the running times of computations. These form a transitive initial segment of the ordinals. Furthermore we prove a Lost Melody theorem: there is a real r such that there is a program P that halts on the empty input for all oracle contents and outputs 1 iff the oracle number is r, but no program can decide for every natural number n whether or not ${n \in r}$ with the empty oracle. In an earlier paper, the third author considered another type of machines where registers were not reset at infinite lim inf’s and he called them infinite time register machines. Because the resetting machines correspond much better to ITTMs we hold that in future the resetting register machines should be called ITRMs. (shrink)

Que serait la littérature sans l'apprentissage premier des histoires que les parents lisent aux enfants, avant que ceux-ci ne deviennent capables de lire seuls à leur tour? La littérature est d'abord une histoire de transmission et de réception qui, tel un objet transitionnel, permet à chacun d'apprendre où passe la frontière entre l'univers intime et le monde réel et extérieur. Parler de la littérature, c'est défendre une zone mise en danger : celle de sa transmission. Au diagnostic, aujourd'hui banal, d'une (...) crise de la littérature dans les sociétés démocratiques, alors qu'elle constituait le coeur de leur culture jusqu'à une époque récente, on ne peut plus répondre par l'aporie de sa définition (si la littérature a vraiment jamais existé dans l'histoire), voire de la discipline dont elle est l'objet (histoire littéraire? sociologie des institutions littéraires? théorie critique? rhétorique? poétique? stylistique? etc.). Nous faisant changer de pied, Hélène Merlin-Kajman s'interroge sur sa transmission, donc son avenir : quel usage, quel partage de la littérature est-il important non seulement de défendre mais de promouvoir, sinon d'inventer dans des sociétés démocratiques, c'est-à-dire fondées sur le respect de l'individu, la valorisation de son autonomie et de sa liberté (de conscience, de sentiment), non moins que sur les valeurs de la solidarité sociale et de la citoyenneté? Quel rôle la littérature tient-elle dans cette affaire? Pour quelles valeurs non seulement cognitives, mais aussi esthétiques voire thérapeutiques requises par le citoyens en démocratie faut-il restaurer le partage transitionnel de la littérature - afin que les textes littéraires, aujourd'hui observés par les sciences humaines ou tenus à distance par l'univers des images comme s'ils n'existaient qu'en dehors, tissent à nouveau des liens pour nous? (shrink)

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) as investigational intervention for symptomatic relief from Alzheimer disease (AD) has generated big expectations. Our aim is to discuss the ethical justification of this research agenda by examining the underlying research rationale as well as potential methodological pitfalls. The shortcomings we address are of high ethical importance because only scientifically valid research has the potential to be ethical. We performed a systematic search on MEDLINE and EMBASE. We included 166 publications about DBS for AD into the (...) analysis of research rationale, risks and ethical aspects. Fifty-eight patients were reported in peer-reviewed journals with very mixed results. A grey literature search revealed hints for 75 yet to be published, potentially enrolled patients. The results of our systematic review indicate methodological shortcomings in the literature that are both scientific and ethical in nature. According to our analysis, research with human subjects was performed before decisive preclinical research was published examining the specific research question at stake. We also raise the concern that conclusions on the potential safety and efficacy have been reported in the literature that seem premature given the design of the feasibility studies from which they were drawn. In addition, some publications report that DBS for AD was performed without written informed consent from some patients, but from surrogates only. Furthermore, registered ongoing trials plan to enroll severely demented patients. We provide reasons that this would violate Art. 28 of the Declaration of Helsinki, because DBS for AD involves more than minimal risks and burdens, and because its efficacy and safety are not yet empirically established to be likely. Based on our empirical analysis, we argue that clinical research on interventions of risk class III (Food and Drug Administration and European Medicines Agency) should not be exploratory but grounded on sound, preclinically tested, and disease-specific a posteriori hypotheses. This also applies to DBS for dementia as long as therapeutic benefits are uncertain, and especially when research subjects with cognitive deficits are involved, who may foreseeably progress to full incapacity to provide informed consent during the required follow-up period. (shrink)

This chapter addresses the question of the extension of biological inheritance in the light of the fact that organisms inherit much more than DNA. Starting from recent proposals to reconceive the concept of biological inheritance, the chapter shows that one of the main assumptions in the literature is simply taken for granted without providing any evidence or argument to support it. The chapter first analyzes four distinctions—and the lessons drawn from them—and then proposes a redefinition of inheritance, which brings to (...) the fore its privileged link with reproduction and the specific theoretical role of this concept in evolutionary biology. (shrink)

In this paper, we adopt a physiological perspective in order to produce an intelligible overview of biological transmission in all its diversity. This allows us to put forward the analysis of transmission mechanisms, with the aim of complementing the usual focus on transmitted factors. We underline the importance of the structural, dynamical, and functional features of transmission mechanisms throughout organisms’ life cycles in order to answer to the question of what is passed on across generations, how and why. On this (...) basis, we propose a vision of biological transmission as networks of heterogeneous physiological mechanisms, not restricted to transmission mechanisms stricto sensu. They prove to be themselves suited candidates for evolutionary explanations. They are processes both necessary for evolution to happen and resulting themselves from evolution. This leads us to call for a strategy of endogenization to account for transmission, and more specifically inheritance, as evolved and evolving physiological mechanisms. (shrink)

Kurt Gödel is mainly known for his contributions to mathematical logic and set theory; of his contributions to philosophy, only his work in the philosophy of mathematics has so far found a considerable reception, which is for the most part critical, promoting the picture that Gödel was a naïve mathematical realist ignorant of the issues connected to this position, i.e. “a philosophical fool” (quoted in Holt (Time Bandits, 2005)). His philosophical notebooks, however, reveal an entirely new side of Gödel’s philosophical (...) reflections: To a significant extent, these are part of a project and practice of individual ethics in the tradition of stoicism, with both general and detailed considerations on purpose, duties and the good conduct of life (see, in particular, Engelen (Philosophical notebooks, vol. 2. Time management (maxims) I and II 282–319, 2020)). These thoughts do not constitute a separate aspect of Gödel’s intellectual endeavors, but are rather explicitly and intimately connected to his mathematical work. In this paper, we will try to reconstruct Gödel’s individual ethics with its relation to mathematics and logic and situate it in the wider context of his philosophical views. (shrink)

The work done so far on the understanding of mathematical (proof) texts focuses mostly on logical and heuristical aspects; a proof text is considered to be understood when the reader is able to justify inferential steps occurring in it, to defend it against objections, to give an account of the “main ideas”, to transfer the proof idea to other contexts etc. (see, e.g., Avigad in The philosophy of mathematical practice, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008). In contrast, there is a rich (...) philosophical tradition dealing with the concept of understanding and interpreting texts, namely philosophical hermeneutics, represented, e.g., by Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger or Gadamer. In this tradition, “understanding” generally refers to the integration in a comprehensive (historical, existential, life-worldly,...) context. In this article, we take some first steps towards exploring the question how the ideas from philosophical hermeneutics presented in Gadamer’s “Truth and Method” apply to mathematical texts and what (if anything) can be learned from these for the didactics and presentation of mathematics. (shrink)

We consider the following problem for various infinite-time machines. If a real is computable relative to a large set of oracles such as a set of full measure or just of positive measure, a comeager set, or a nonmeager Borel set, is it already computable? We show that the answer is independent of ZFC for ordinal Turing machines with and without ordinal parameters and give a positive answer for most other machines. For instance, we consider infinite-time Turing machines, unresetting and (...) resetting infinite-time register machines, and α-Turing machines for countable admissible ordinals α. (shrink)

The problem with authenticity—the idea of being “true to one’s self”—is that its somewhat checkered reputation garners a complete range of favorable and unfavorable reactions. In educational settings, authenticity is lauded as one of the top two traits students desire in their teachers. Yet, authenticity is criticized for its tendency towards narcissism and self-entitlement. So, is authenticity a good or a bad thing? The purpose of this article is to develop an intimate understanding of authenticity by investigating its current interpretation (...) and criticisms, its struggle with narcissism and relation to freedom. Examining authenticity as multilayered self-exploration reveals a composite of understanding, care, and acceptance. While a side current of acceptable tension shifts our understanding of authenticity from the security of self-determination to the messy interplay involved in being “true to one’s self” and being “in-the-world”. (shrink)

Since the completion of the Human Genome Project (HGP), biomedical sciences have moved away from a gene-centred view and towards a multi-factorial one in which environment, broadly speaking, plays a central role in the determination of human health and disease. Environmental exposures have been shown to be highly prevalent in disease causation. They are considered as complementary to genetic factors in the etiology of diseases, hence the introduction of the concept of the “exposome” as encompassing the totality of human environmental (...) exposures, from conception onwards (Wild in Cancer Epidemiol Biomark Prev 14:1847–1850, 2005), and the launch of the Human Exposome Project (HEP) which aims to complement the HGP. At first sight, and seen as complementary to the genome, the exposome could thus appear as contributing to the rise of novel postgenomic deterministic narratives which place the environment at their core. Is this really the case? If so, what sort of determinism is at work in exposomics research? Is it a case of environmental determinism, and if so, in what sense? Or is it a new sort of deterministic view? In this paper, we first show that causal narratives in exposomics are still very similar to gene-centred deterministic narratives. They correspond to a form of Laplacian determinism and, above all, to what Claude Bernard called the “determinism of a phenomenon”. Second, we introduce the notion of “reversed heuristic determinism” to characterize the specific deterministic narratives present in exposomics. Indeed, the accepted sorts of external environmental exposures conceived as being at the origins of diseases are determined, methodologically speaking, by their identifiable internal and biological markers. We conclude by highlighting the most relevant implications of the presence of this heuristic determinism in exposomics research. (shrink)

According to a widely held view, mathematical proofs are essentially (indications of) formal derivations, and thus in principle mechanically checkable (this view is defended, for example, by Azzouni [3]). This should in particular hold for the kind of simple proof exercises typically given to students of mathematics learning to write proofs. If that is so, then automated proof checking should be an attractive option for math education at the undergraduate level. An opposing view would be that mathematical proofs are social (...) objects and that what constitutes a mathematical proof can thus not be separated from the social context in which it arises. In particular, such “sociomathematical norms” play a role in teaching situations, see, for example, Stephan [37]. There thus seems to be a tension between the inherent social nature of “natural” mathematical proofs and attempts at their automated verification. In this paper, we explore this tension both theoretically and on the basis of our experiences with developing the Diproche system, a program for the automated verification of natural language proofs in college-level introduction to proof classes (modelled after the example of the Naproche system by Cramer, Koepke et al. [14]) and its use at the Europa-Universität Flensburg during the winter term 2020/2021. (shrink)

The beneficiary statement refers to a passage in the Introduction of The Virtue of Selfishness. It concerns who the beneficiary of an action should be and any breach between actor and beneficiary. This article critiques said passage and shows how rational self-interest extends beyond the actor's self-interest more narrowly conceived. It critiques the Trader Principle and shows further how trade extends rational self-interest beyond the actor's self-interest more narrowly conceived. It shows how the virtue of independence does not imply that (...) all dependence is a vice. Dependence in collaborative action even extends to the virtue of productiveness. (shrink)

Infinite Time Register Machines are a well-established machine model for infinitary computations. Their computational strength relative to oracles is understood, see e.g., and. We consider the notion of recognizability, which was first formulated for Infinite Time Turing Machines in [6] and applied to ITRM 's in [3]. A real x is ITRM -recognizable iff there is an ITRM -program P such that PyPy stops with output 1 iff y=xy=x, and otherwise stops with output 0. In [3], it is shown that (...) the recognizable reals are not contained in the ITRM -computable reals. Here, we investigate in detail how the ITRM -recognizable reals are distributed along the canonical well-ordering shrink)

Resumen Slavoj Zizek, afirmó que el coronavirus implicó la irrupción de lo real lacaniano en tanto imposible al saber y a lo simbólico, agujereó a la ciencia, la ideología y conmovió los cimientos del sistema global. El virus destrozó certezas ideológicas e identificaciones, cambió la escena del mundo y produjo en la subjetividad una desestabilización fantasmática de las fijaciones neoliberales sedimentadas en la cultura. Arriesgamos la hipótesis de que el coronavirus está llamado a funcionar como el significante que marca un (...) límite y nombra el fin de la época neoliberal. Palabras clave Coronavirus – neoliberalismo – real - ideología.Slavoj Zizek stated that the coronavirus involves the irruption of the Lacanian real as the impossible to know and into the symbolic. The coronavirus has pierced through science and ideology and has broken the foundations of the global system. The virus has destroyed ideological certainties and identifications, changed the world scene and produced a fantasmatic destabilization of a fixated neoliberal subjectivity sedimented in culture. We support the hypothesis that the coronavirus has come to work as a signifier which marks a limit and names the end of the neoliberal era. Keywords Coronavirus - neoliberalism - the real - ideology. (shrink)

Developmental Systems Theory is a theoretical reinterpretation of biological phenomena that challenges the conventional gene-centered account of development and evolution. In this article, I focus on Griffiths and Gray’s version of DST and particularly analyze their reconceptualization of inheritance. First, I present their concept of expanded and diffused inheritance; then, I examine and criticize their rejection of the multiple inheritance system model; finally, I present and oppose Griffiths and Gray’s extension of what they call the “causal parity thesis” from development (...) to evolution. I argue that their proposal is an interesting and programmatic philosophical perspective on biological phenomena but fails to provide either additional heuristic tools for empirical investigation in biology or a more realistic representation of the biological world. (shrink)

Ayn Rand's use of “selfishness” and “altruism” was polarizing and contrary to common usage. With the help of Venn diagrams, this essay compares and even reconciles the divergent meanings of egoism and altruism. It cites Rand's usage of “traditional egoism,” a term she used in correspondence but in none of her books or periodicals. This term helps to understand Rand's meaning of egoism. It also comments on earlier essays in this periodical about egoism.

We introduce and study some variants of a notion of canonical set theoretical truth. By this, we mean truth in a transitive proper class model M of ZFC that is uniquely characterized by some $$\in$$ ∈ -formula. We show that there are interesting statements that hold in all such models, but do not follow from ZFC, such as the ground model axiom and the nonexistence of measurable cardinals. We also study a related concept in which we only require M to (...) be fixed up to elementary equivalence. We show that this theory-canonicity also goes beyond provability in ZFC, but it does not rule out measurable cardinals and it does not fix the size of the continuum. (shrink)

Ayn Rand's controversial use of “selfish” and “selfishness” has arguably done as much or more to supply “grist” to her critics and drive people away from her philosophy than to persuade people to adopt it. This article is about her meaning of “selfish” and the common, popular meaning. Succinctly, the former is a high-level abstraction, philosophical, and mainly a way of thinking, whereas the latter is a low-level abstraction, not philosophical, and mainly a way of acting. They also have different (...) contrast terms. (shrink)

We study randomness beyond${\rm{\Pi }}_1^1$-randomness and its Martin-Löf type variant, which was introduced in [16] and further studied in [3]. Here we focus on a class strictly between${\rm{\Pi }}_1^1$and${\rm{\Sigma }}_2^1$that is given by the infinite time Turing machines introduced by Hamkins and Kidder. The main results show that the randomness notions associated with this class have several desirable properties, which resemble those of classical random notions such as Martin-Löf randomness and randomness notions defined via effective descriptive set theory such as${\rm{\Pi (...) }}_1^1$-randomness. For instance, mutual randoms do not share information and a version of van Lambalgen’s theorem holds.Towards these results, we prove the following analogue to a theorem of Sacks. If a real is infinite time Turing computable relative to all reals in some given set of reals with positive Lebesgue measure, then it is already infinite time Turing computable. As a technical tool towards this result, we prove facts of independent interest about random forcing over increasing unions of admissible sets, which allow efficient proofs of some classical results about hyperarithmetic sets. (shrink)

Qualia Extinction argues that certain experiences depend on social structures for their very possibility — and that when those structures are destroyed, the experiences don’t just become rare. They become impossible. Gone the way a species goes extinct: not elsewhere, not dormant, not awaiting rediscovery, but permanently foreclosed. The book calls this qualia extinction, and it argues that the process conceals itself from those it affects, because the very capacities you would need to recognise the loss are among the capacities (...) that have been lost. This is a work of philosophy. It builds on Habermas, Taylor, MacIntyre, Rorty and Rosa. It develops philosophical concepts — the formatted self, recursive self-occlusion, affective topology — with the precision that philosophical argument demands. It does not offer life hacks or screen time advice. It does not romanticise the past. What it does is name something that has no name. The feeling that something is missing but you cannot say what. The rage that has no adequate object. The grief you cannot mourn because you do not know what you are grieving. The book passes through that grief. It does not end there. It ends with play: the possibility that even within a formatted world, there remain ways of being that are not yet fully captured — absorbed, responsive, alive to what optimisation cannot reach. (shrink)

The abstract of this chapter was initially published with error. The chapter has been updated with the corrected abstract as given below.