Ius sive potentia: Paul and Spinoza

Technoscientia est Potentia?

Within the realm of nano-, bio-, info- and cogno- (or NBIC) technosciences, the 'power to change the world' is often invoked. One could dismiss such formulations as 'purely rhetorical', interpret them as rhetorical and self-fulfilling or view them as an adequate depiction of one of the fundamental characteristics of technoscience. In the latter case, a very specific nexus between science and te...

Stardrives and Spinoza

There are several senses in which one may speak of limits in relation to Physics. For the purposes of this essay, it is most useful to begin with the technological limitations of practical human activity. In this context, Physics both provides positive and negative information. Physical laws tell us how to achieve some goals, and informs us that others are forever out of reach. An excellent his...

Scientia potentia est

In epistemic logic, Kripke structures are used to model the distribution of information in a multi-agent system. In this paper, we present an approach to quantifying how much information each particular agent in a system has, or how important the agent is, with respect to some fact represented as a goal formula. It is typically the case that the goal formula is distributed knowledge in the syst...

Spinoza Today: The Current State of Spinoza Scholarship

Spinoza and Kant on Suicide

In this paper I’m going to argue that both, Spinoza and Kant, construct the argument “for the impossibility of self-destruction” and examine how the concept of suicide relates to the concept of humanity in both philosophers. I will argue that Kant’s and Spinoza’s argument for the impossibility of self-destruction follows from the “external cause” premise and not from “the same subject” premise....