Michael J. Ardoline

This monograph synthesizes Deleuze and Confucianism for a novel account of the good life at the dawn of a new epoch of power: control. It engages in both a broad survey of work on the current techno-political situation, while providing a response through an in depth analysis of Deleuze and Xunzi. It builds on and enters into debates in the secondary literature on both figures as well as on Foucault, Levinas, Wynter, Li, and Mozi, along with contemporary scholars of philosophy of technology, such as Shannon Vallor, Shoshana Zuboff, Bernard Stiegler, and Patrick Gamez. It appeals to students and researchers working with these thinkers as well as on the ethics and politics of technology, Confucianism, Mohism, and comparative philosophy generally.

Provides new solutions to the central problems of the philosophy of mathematics by reconstructing Deleuze's metaphysics Michael Ardoline argues that mathematical truth is grounded in the necessity of difference itself. Mathematical truth then does not require us to posit the reality of transcendent entities or possible worlds because difference is entirely this-worldly. In doing so, Ardoline not only builds a new metaphysics of mathematics, but also explains mathematics' usefulness for science and why mathematical truth appears to have such otherworldly properties in the first place. Michael J. Ardoline is the Post-Doctoral Researcher for the LSU Ethics Institute's 'Embedded Ethics in STEM @LSU' project.

That the order of explanation tracks the relative scale of objects involved and that the smaller objects must explain the larger is a common, often unchallenged assumption in the metaphysics of science. Following the work of Robert Wilson, Sam Coleman, and Graham Harman, we may call this assumption “smallism.” I will first diagnose smallism as an unargued for presupposition held by most major positions in the debate between reductionists and emergentists. I will then argue that there is good reason to reject smallism, using assembly theory as evidence. Assembly theory provides a framework for understanding cases where larger scale objects explain smaller scale ones as well as reasons to believe such cases take place in the realm of the natural sciences. If this is so, then smallism is false.

Platform decay is the phenomenon of major internet platforms, such as Google search, Facebook, and Amazon, systematically declining in quality in recent years. This decline in quality is attributed to the particular business model of these platforms and its harms are usually understood to be violations of principles of economic fairness and of inconveniencing users. In this article, we argue that the scope and nature of these harms are underappreciated. In particular, we establish that platform decay constitutes both a cognitive and moral harm to its users. We make this case by arguing that platforms function as cognitive scaffolds or extensions, as understood by the extended mind approach to cognition. It is then a straightforward implication that platform decay constitutes cognitive damage to a platform’s users. This cognitive damage is a harm on its own; however, it can also undermine cognitive capacities that virtue ethicists argue are necessary for developing a virtuous character. We will focus on this claim in regards to the capacity to pay attention, a capacity that platform decay targets specifically. Platform decay therefore also constitutes both cognitive and moral harm, which simultaneously affects billions of people.

In What is Philosophy?, Deleuze and Guattari critique the relationship between formal logic and philosophy. They argue that since philosophy is the creation of concepts that are intensional, and formal logic reduces concepts to their extension, formal logic then has no special providence to decide philosophical questions. This may strike the logic-inclined philosopher as outdated given that there are now formal intensional logics designed to model meaning rather than reference. However, it will be shown that these logics too fail to express the concept in a way that preserves its philosophical import. Doing so requires contrasting Deleuze and Guattari's account of the concept with Frege's to show how the latter persists even in intensional logics in the form of mathematical functions that are ultimately referential. This then results in support for Deleuze and Guattari's claim that formal logic is a useful tool, but that it is incapable of adjudicating philosophical disputes.

The question of the metaphysical status of the laws of physics has received increased attention in recent years. Perhaps most well-known among this work are David Lewis’s Humean supervenience and Nancy Cartwright’s dispositionalism, both of which reject the classical conception of the laws of physics as necessary and real independent of the objects they govern, arguing instead that what we call laws are shorthand for the regularities of local states of affairs (on Lewis’s account) or the dispositions of objects (on Cartwright’s). The properties of necessity and reality are generally taken to go hand-in-hand when physical laws are concerned; however, this leaves aside the possibility that the laws of physics are independently real (i.e. not just a description of regularities of objects) yet contingent. This paper will explore this third option which is found in the work of Quentin Meillassoux. We will ask: if laws both exist independent of their objects and are contingent, what happens when laws change? Specifically, the possibility of metaphysical retro-causation becomes a live option. This raises both questions of the ontological status of the past as well as our epistemic access to the past after a change in physical laws. Meillassoux’s ontology of hyper-chaos weathers this challenge with its consistency intact; however, it is an open question of whether or not saving the reality of physical laws by sacrificing their necessity is worth the epistemic limits and metaphysical strangeness that it implies.

While Continental thought has no shortage of criticism and diagnosis of social, political, and ethical issues, it tends to avoid offering guidance on what to do about such issues. In Reconsidering the Life of Power, Garrison argues for a radical new alternative for the Continental tradition: it ought to stage an encounter with the Confucian tradition. This is because, he argues, both traditions have at the center of their political thought a focus on the social formation of subjects, that is, the process of subjectivation. While Continental thought often takes this process to empty the subject of all but nominal forms of autonomy, the Confucian tradition sees subjectivation as the very source of real human autonomy. This paper explores one such possible encounter by synthesizing Deleuze’s account of individuation with the constructivist reading of Xunzi’s view that artifice is the source of human autonomy and virtue. Ultimately, I argue that coupling Deleuze’s defense of the possibility of the New with Xunzi’s transformational account of human nature provides an understanding of subjectivation that is optimistic about the shaping of human autonomy as well as practical guidance for how to do so.