Bergson, Pan(en)theism, and ‘Being-in-Life’

The Socratic Bergson

Autonomy: Life and Being

This paper uses robot experience to explore key concepts of autonomy, life and being. Unfortunately, there are no widely accepted definitions of autonomy, life or being. Using a new cognitive agent architecture we argue that autonomy is a key ingredient for both life and being, and set about exploring autonomy as a concept and a capability. Some schools of thought regard autonomy as the key cha...

Joint Causation, Emergence Theory and Panentheism

In this paper I will discuss how joint causation as suggested by Arthur Peacocke can on the one hand serve us in the defense of downward causation within emergence theory and on the other hand lead to a deeper understanding of divine action and interaction in panentheism. The question of downward causation lies at the heart of emergence theory and is of great significance for the question wheth...

Chronic Conditions: Beckett, Bergson and Samuel Johnson

This article analyses the work of the twentieth-century late modernist Samuel Beckett, in light of the turn-of-the-century anti-rationalist Henri Bergson (1859-1941) and the eighteenth-century neoclassicist Samuel Johnson (1709-1784). What unites these three very different thinkers is a concern over habitual, automatic and involuntary behavior, which in all three cases has a distinctly neurolog...

Life Goals and Well-Being:

Past research has revealed that relative importance a person places on extrinsic life goals as oposed to intrinsic ones is related to lower well-being. But sometimes it is more important why a goal is being pursued than the content of the goal. Materialistic aspirations will not decrease people's well-being if they help them to achieve basic financial security or some intrinsic goals. On the ot...