Abstract
With analytic philosophers unable to account for the key elements of human existence: consciousness, language, happiness (laughter), etc.—as well as their ignoring of history/time—the fear of error need not concern us in contemplating such metaphysical concepts as justice and authenticity. Put differently, analytic philosophers’ profound fear of error has not yielded any significant insights into human existence, nor into the existence of humans. Hence, we are free to speculate about the movement of history and how justice as well as authenticity shape that history.
In this volume I have relied on the broadcast iterations of the Star Trek franchise to speculate about values and practices embedded in the absolute and how embracing these values and practices leads to authentic (fulfilling) lives and a stable thriving society. My argument is that the huge, enduring popularity of Star Trek allows us conclude that this franchise conveys actual knowledge of the absolute. In other words, the franchise serves as a guide. This guide tells us to live an authentic/happy life and to achieve a just/sustainable society individuals must be totally committed to social justice, truth, and scientific/intellectual discovery.
On the one hand, Star Trek effectively lays out how to live an authentic life and how to establish a stable, thriving society. The Star Trek text, on the other hand, also warns us against bad infinities and false infinities.
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- 1.
Stephen P. Schwartz, A Brief History of Analytic Philosophy: From Russell to Rawls (West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 27–29, 38 (Schwartz 2012).
- 2.
Hans-Johann Glock, What is Analytic Philosophy? (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 30–34 (Glock 2008).
- 3.
Nicholas Capaldi, The Enlightenment Project in the Analytic Conversation (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998) (Capaldi 1998).
- 4.
Josh Weisberg, Consciousness (Cambridge, MA: Polity, 2014) (Weisberg 2014).
- 5.
Schwartz, A Brief History of Analytic Philosophy, 192 (Schwartz 2012).
- 6.
Perhaps because a materialist conception of the mind is unrealistic, artistically uninteresting, or both, later, we learn that Data’s android “brother,” Lore, does have emotions (“Datalore” 1988—Next Generation), and Data ultimately comes to have emotions through an “emotion chip” (“Brothers” 1990—Next Generation; Star Trek: Generations 1994). I note in Chapters 2 and 3 that the Data character was always written with emotions—at a minimum desire and loyalty.
- 7.
- 8.
Schwartz, A Brief History of Analytic Philosophy, 182 (Schwartz 2012).
- 9.
- 10.
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Gonzalez, G.A. (2017). Conclusion: The Inviability of Analytic Philosophy, as well as Bad and False Infinities. In: The Absolute and Star Trek. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47794-7_10
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