Descartes' metaphysics lays the foundation for the special sciences, and the notion of consciousness ("conscientia") belongs to metaphysics rather than to psychology. I argue that as a metaphysical notion, "consciousness" refers to an epistemic version of moral conscience. As a consequence, the activity on which science is based turns out to be conscientious thought. The consciousness that make...

An environment is in first approximation a volume of space; it is a specific habitat, location, or site that is suitable or adequate for given purposes (of foraging, resting, hunting, breeding, nesting, grooming) in the life of an organism or group of organisms. This spatial notion of environment can be drawn closer to biological and ecological science by taking account of the pertinent physica...

The fundamental question of metaphysics is what exists, not in any particular structure, but in general. To answer this question requires determination of the nature of existence, or more concretely, what it means for something to exist. Thus a worthwhile metaphysics should provide an explicit criterion for existence. A wide variety of such criteria have been proposed, and these can be divided ...

Strawson (1959) described ‘descriptive metaphysics’, Bach (1986a) described ‘natural language metaphysics’, Sapir (1929) and Whorf (1940a,b, 1941) describe, well, SapirWhorfianism. And there are other views concerning the relation between correct semantic analysis of linguistic phenomena and the “reality” that is supposed to be thereby described. I think some considerations from the analyses of...

After describing Heidegger's critique of metaphysics as ontotheology, I unpack the metaphysical assumptions of several transhumanist philosophers. I claim that they deploy an ontology of power and that they also deploy a kind of theology, as Heidegger meant it. I also describe the way in which this metaphysics begets its own politics and ethics. In order to transcend the human condition, they m...