Books by "Philip E. Margolis"
3 books found
Popular science writer Philip Ball explores a range of sciences to map our answers to a huge, philosophically rich question: How do we even begin to think about minds that are not human? Sciences from zoology to astrobiology, computer science to neuroscience, are seeking to understand minds in their own distinct disciplinary realms. Taking a uniquely broad view of minds and where to find them—including in plants, aliens, and God—Philip Ball pulls the pieces together to explore what sorts of minds we might expect to find in the universe. In so doing, he offers for the first time a unified way of thinking about what minds are and what they can do, by locating them in what he calls the “space of possible minds.” By identifying and mapping out properties of mind without prioritizing the human, Ball sheds new light on a host of fascinating questions: What moral rights should we afford animals, and can we understand their thoughts? Should we worry that AI is going to take over society? If there are intelligent aliens out there, how could we communicate with them? Should we? Understanding the space of possible minds also reveals ways of making advances in understanding some of the most challenging questions in contemporary science: What is thought? What is consciousness? And what (if anything) is free will? Informed by conversations with leading researchers, Ball’s brilliant survey of current views about the nature and existence of minds is more mind-expanding than we could imagine. In this fascinating panorama of other minds, we come to better know our own.
This second edition provides an excellent overview of the field by covering the traditional themes and current trends in image centred photographic visual inquiry but extends this by demonstrating the rich possibilities available through the analysis of everyday objects, places and interactions. The book includes chapters on researching 2D and 3D visual data, along with lived and living visual data, and also features a brand new chapter on researching the virtual world of the internet. Drawing on theoretical traditions as diverse as semiotics, ethnomethodology, symbolic interactionism and material culture studies, the second edition provides an invaluable guide for researchers interested in conducting innovative visual inquiry. Packed with exercises and projects, the book makes it easy for students to undertake their own research with limited resources and budget. The new edition also features helpful icons alerting researchers to important ethical considerations that are vital in the field of visual research. Generously illustrated with images and diagrams, this new edition is the perfect companion to those doing projects, dissertations or theses involving visual research.
Priceless Markets
by Philip T. Hoffman, Gilles Postel-Vinay, Jean-Laurent Rosenthal
2000 · University of Chicago Press
This pathbreaking book shows how credit markets functioned in Paris, through the agency of notaries, during a critical period of French history. Its authors challenge the usual assumption that organized financial markets—and hence the opportunity for economic growth—did not emerge outside of England and the Netherlands until the nineteenth century. Drawing on innovative research, the authors show that as early as the Old Regime, financial intermediaries in France were mobilizing a great tide of capital and arranging thousands of loans between borrowers and lenders. The implications for historians and economists are substantial. The role of notaries operating in Paris that Priceless Markets uncovers has never before been recognized. In the wake of this pathbreaking new study, historians will also have to rethink the origins of the French Revolution. As the authors show, the crisis of 1787-88 did not simply ignite revolt; it was intimately bound up in an economic struggle that reached far back into the eighteenth century, and continued well into the 1800s.