Framed by the story of a son finding his late father's journal, a meditation on love, meaning, and morality by the author of The Philosopher and the Wolf.Myshkin was born on a certain day and died on a certain day—and some things happened to him in between. These things presented him with ethical questions, and this book is a record of his attempt to answer those questions.Discovered in 2054 by his son after Myshkin's death in the Florida Keys,

A fresh view of animals and what we owe them.Do animals have moral standing? Do they count, morally speaking? In Animal Rights, Mark Rowlands argues that they do and explores the implications of this idea. He identifies three different waves in animal rights writing. The first wave was defined by a traditional dispute between utilitarianism (represented by Peter Singer) and rights-based approaches (represented by Tom Regan) to ethics. The second wave was d...

'The book of you is dominated by night-black seas, sprinkled with shining island sentences: tiny islets of remembrance, glimmering in the night.'Memory isn't all that we think it is. Each time we revisit even our most deeply ingrained memories, they can soften and consolidate, distorted. Yet they also carry within them the blueprint of each person's unique style. From episodic memories like shining islands in dark water, and forgotten memories that underpin our personaliti...

If a dog could write a book of philosophy, what would it contain?If you have spent part of your life with a dog, you may find certain questions popping, unbidden, into your mind. Is my dog living a fulfilled life? Is my dog a good dog? Does my dog love me? This, however only scratches the surface of a canine philosophy.Drawing on his life lived with dogs (two German shepherds, the amiable Hugo and his dark twin Shadow; Brenin, a wolf hybrid, and Tess his wo...

Are humans really different at all?Animal Rights is a big deal. From animal testing to vegetarianism, and hunting to preservation of fish stocks, it's a topic that's always in the news.Mark Rowlands, author of The Philosopher and the Wolf, is the world's best known philosopher of animal rights. In this introduction to the topic, he starts by asking whether there is anything about humans that makes us psychologically or physiologically distinctive - ...

Mark Rowlands presents a novel analysis of three epoch-defining environmental problems: climate, extinction, and pestilence. Our climate is changing at a rate that is unprecedented and, if unchecked, disastrous. Species are disappearing hundreds or thousands of times faster than normal. COVID-19 has wreaked social and economic havoc but is merely the latest off a blossoming production line of emerging infectious diseases, many of which have the potential to be fa...

An investigation into the conceptual foundations of a new way of thinking about the mind that does not locate all cognition "in the head."There is a new way of thinking about the mind that does not locate mental processes exclusively "in the head." Some think that this expanded conception of the mind will be the basis of a new science of the mind. In this book, leading philosopher Mark Rowlands investigates the conceptual foundations of this new science of the mind...

One of the most distinctive cultural phenomena of recent years has been the rise and rise of fame. In this book, Mark Rowlands argues that our obsession with fame has transformed it. Fame was once associated with excellence or achievement in some or other field of endeavour. But today we are obsessed with something that is, in effect, quite different: fame unconnected with any discernible distinction, fame that allows a person to be famous simply for being famous. This book shows why this ...

The first comprehensive guide to distributional reinforcement learning, providing a new mathematical formalism for thinking about decisions from a probabilistic perspective.Distributional reinforcement learning is a new mathematical formalism for thinking about decisions. Going beyond the common approach to reinforcement learning and expected values, it focuses on the total reward or return obtained as a consequence of an agent's choices—specifically, how this retu...

Can animals be persons? To this question, scientific and philosophical consensus has taken the form of a resounding, 'No!' In this book, Mark Rowlands disagrees. Not only can animals be persons, many of them probably are. Taking, as his starting point, John Locke's classic definition of a person, as "a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself the same thinking thing, in different times and places," Rowlands argues that many animals can satisfy all...

Myshkin was born on a certain day and died on a certain day - and some things happened to him in between. These things presented him with ethical questions and this book is a record of his attempt to answer those questions. Discovered by his son after Myshkin's death, A Good Life is one man's reckoning with the life he has led and the choices he made. It is at once a philosophical handbook for living and a page-turning narrative.A Good Life is one man's life (birt...

The idea that our memories, in some sense, make us who we are, is a common one-and not at all implausible. After all, what could make us who we are if not the things we have experienced, thought, felt and desired on these idiosyncratic pathways through space and time that we call lives? And how can we retain these experiences, thoughts, feelings and desires if not through memory? On the other hand, most of what we have experienced has been forgotten. And there is now a considerable body of...