What role for philosophy in front of science?

Abstract: Of the two directions of thought, complexification and decomplexification, only one is necessary for the everyday use of science, while both are imperative for the more difficult exercise of philosophy. A matter subject to reductionism There are two directions of thinking: complexification and decomplexification, also called reductionism. These two directions are present in philosophy … Read more

Lowe’s ontology vs Surimposium

Lowe is famous author of an ontology with 4 categories: substantial universals (kinds), non-substantial universals (properties), individual substances (objects), instantiations of properties (modes). This classification is not satisfactory, leading to dualism and insoluble questions —why these 4 categories? Surimposium approaches ontology much more simply by placing it in the complex dimension. In summary: Properties are … Read more

Publication of ‘Societarium’

Societarium is published today, in paper and epub format. This book brings together sociology and politics articles published on this blog, organized around the two main ones: A universal political system and Can we do without hierarchy? The whole is a manifesto argued against a blind participatory democracy and for an inclusive social re-hierarchization, which … Read more

How do you really assess animal suffering?

Abstract: Between the sterile positions of the denigration of animal suffering and the human-animal analogism, the truth is that the experience of suffering is strictly individual and connoted “atrocious” according to moral rather than physical criteria. Exacerbated animal suffering is our neglected human suffering. Pain sensors are universal, not what feels them How do you … Read more

It is top-down causation that is fundamental

Abstract: The errors of top-down/teleological causality make one think that only the bottom-up/ontological has fundamental value. It is however the first which is entirely creative of our mental scenes, including by lending to reality per se its models, without having direct access to it. Bottom-up causality is fundamentally constitutive of our reality, which hovers over … Read more

HIERARCHY summary

Abstract: Hierarchy is one of the main threads of this blog. It allows to walk through the complex dimension. All the subjects are delimited and linked to the others. The hierarchy here founds both a general theory of reality (Surimposium) and a general philosophical method inspired by it (UniPhiM). A first article, ‘Complexity explodes in … Read more

Tintin as an explanation of nothingness

Philippe Ratte explains in ‘Tintin or access to the self’ that Hergé’s comics hero appeared out of nowhere, suddenly, in 1929, in ‘Tintin in the Land of the Soviets’. No past, no family, not even from an egg. Hergé is his father but has not put a single sperm in it. Tintin is the epitome … Read more

∑meta-answers

‘Nothing’ is an oxymoron Let us return to the metaphysical questions mentioned at the beginning of the previous article. What is the relationship between the real per se and the mental image we construct of it? Why is there something rather than nothing? Do we have free will? Are mathematical objects invented or discovered? These … Read more

Is metaphysics accessible to us?

Abstract: Starting from physical, mental and abstract objects, categories of classical metaphysics, I show that they all have in common to be form/substance fusions, which opens the way to a monistic reality. Not giving in to eliminative reductionism, however, requires reintegrating all these objects into a single dimension: complexity. I briefly explain what is Surimposium, … Read more