Some time in the near future your cat Tybalt, while sunning himself on the lawn, suffers a hair-raising experience which scars him for life. The first you know about it are the catcalls that alert you to a standoff between feline and machine, just before you glimpse Tybalt haring it for the catflap. Examining your poor moggy you realise that next door’s automated lawnmower, after forcing its way through a gap in the fence, has mistaken your cat for an unruly patch of couch grass, giving him the fade cut he never wanted.
You decide to sue. Poor Tybalt! His coat will never be the same; and there’s the PTSD to think about. The case seems cut and dried. Your lawyer, though, face like a prune, sighs and tells it straight. Things have changed, he says. The problem is not whether to sue, but who to sue. In the past you might have claimed that the manufacturer had overlooked a dangerous flaw in the lawnmower, or worse, seen one and ignored it. Tybalt would be rolling in catnip. Alternatively, your neighbour might be at fault if they had used the mower inappropriately, just like if they set off a firework and burned your shed down, or drove their car into your 4x4 while intoxicated. Tua culpa. But neither of those situations applies anymore. You see, he explains, your machine is a snowflake. Not the atmosphere-susceptible delinquent of teenage parlance, he qualifies. He means an actual snowflake.
Esta historia es de la edición August/September 2020 de Philosophy Now.
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Esta historia es de la edición August/September 2020 de Philosophy Now.
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The Two Dennises
Hannah Mortimer observes a close encounter of the same kind.
Heraclitus (c.500 BC)
Harry Keith lets flow a stream of ideas about permanence and change.
Does the Cosmos Have a Purpose?
Raymond Tallis argues intently against universal intention.
Is Driving Fossil-Fuelled Cars Immoral?
Rufus Duits asks when we can justify driving our carbon contributors.
Abelard & Carneades Yes & No
Frank Breslin says 'yes and no' to presenting both sides of an argument.
Frankl & Sartre in Search of Meaning
Georgia Arkell compares logotherapy and atheistic existentialism.
Luce Irigaray
Luce Irigaray, now ninety-two years old, was, among many other things, one of the most impactful feminists of the 1970s liberation movements - before she was marginalised, then ostracised, from the francophone intellectual sphere.
Significance
Ruben David Azevedo tells us why, in a limitless universe, we’re not insignificant.
The Present Is Not All There Is To Happiness
Rob Glacier says don’t just live in the now.
Philosophers Exploring The Good Life
Jim Mepham quests with philosophers to discover what makes a life good.