How does anything exist

Can zero exist in isolation — completely alone from other numbers? Or do relationships between numbers make them inseparable? And each of these numbers carries its own set of properties and relations to the other numbers.

Are the properties of one any less real than the properties of zero? In a reality containing nothing, there are no things as such — at least no material things. But in such a nothing, there is an abstract thing: zero.

Zero reflects the number of material things to count. But how many abstract things are there to count? There is at least one. The one number that exists to define the number of material things is zero. But if we have one number and it is one thing to count, now another number exists: one. We then have zero and one together as the only numbers.

But now we have two numbers. Now two exists…. This is how numbers are defined in set theory. Within set theory, each number is formed as the set of all previous sets. It seems once a single abstract number is admitted, each next number comes to life as the count of the abstract numbers that preceded it.

Is there any way to stop the proliferation of infinite abstract entities? The existence of any number, in virtue of its properties, entails the existence of all the others i. Set theory and building up numbers from the empty set are modern ideas — they appeared around the turn of the 20 th century.

Yet the idea of numbers giving rise to themselves goes back much farther. The Tao gives birth to One. One gives birth to Two. Two gives birth to Three. Three gives birth to all things. Whenever we specify or define nothing, we invoke theories and concepts which, in turn, lead to properties and abstract entities.

But what if we forgo even specifying nothing? Might this be a path to achieve absolute nothingness? A true nothing, having:. Avoiding all this we have no theories of any kind. We are left with a plain and simple, pure, unadulterated nothing at all.

But again this leads to trouble. We note that the collection of all possible descriptions has zero complexity, or information content. This is a consequence of algorithmic information theory, the fundamental theory of computer science. There is a mathematical equivalence between the Everything, as represented by this collection of all possible descriptions and Nothing, a state of no information. At first this sounds counter-intuitive, if not outright wrong.

Yet this consequence is something we intuitively understand in other contexts. Each demonstrates an equivalence between the nothing of no specification, and the everything of all possibilities. It was there with all the other figures. There is a beautiful angel in that block of marble, and I am going to find it? All I have to do is to knock off the outside pieces of marble, and be very careful not to cut into the angel with my chisel. In a month or so you will see how beautiful it is.

This specification requires adding information to the block, by way of chisel marks. It is only in the absence of this information — in the absence of any chisel marks — that all possible figures remain. In this sense, information is subtractive rather than additive. When information specifies, it eliminates from the preexisting infinite set of possibilities.

Absent such information, all possibilities remain. Before this message arrives you know nothing about the contents of this e-mail — you are in a state of having no information. But there is one thing you know before the e-mail arrives: the e-mail will be one message from among the infinite set of possible e-mails. Only after the e-mail arrives in your inbox do you learn which from among the infinite set of messages the boss chose to send you.

But consider the case where instead of sending a single e-mail, the boss sent you every possible e-mail. Would you be able to learn anything from these infinite messages about what your boss wants?

The lack of specification in the infinite set of messages is equal to the lack of specification that existed prior to receiving anything. Both states are equivalently unspecified. Therefore, both represent states of complete ignorance and a state of having zero information.

The universe which others call the Library is composed of an indefinite and perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries, with vast air shafts between, surrounded by very low railings.

From any of the hexagons one can see, interminably, the upper and lower floors. He also alleged a fact which travelers have confirmed: In the vast Library there are no two identical books.

From these two incontrovertible premises he deduced that the Library is total and that its shelves register all the possible combinations of the twenty-odd orthographical symbols. From the provided information, we can calculate the number of books in this library. This total library contains every possible page book, representing every possible arrangement of 25 characters.

Each page, with 40 lines and 80 characters, contains 3, characters. This number is 25 multiplied by itself over a million times. This library is a great treasure. For in this library we can find every book, article, poem, and novel ever written, or that could be written.

This library possesses the greatest works of literature: the complete works of Shakespeare, Dickens, and Tolstoy. It also has every work yet to be written: the completed Game of Thrones series, as well as the unfinished works of Tolkien, Hemingway, and Twain. The library has the untold histories of every civilization, including civilizations now lost to time.

It has the contents of every scroll burned in the fire of Alexandria. What could be more valuable than this boundless trove of information, with its complete knowledge, its answers to every mystery, and its articulated solutions to every problem?

This is where the equivalence between all information and no information rears its ugly head. It renders the library worthless. There are issues with this library. To start, for every valid theory, technology, history, and biography in the library, there are countless others that are subtly wrong, inaccurate, or utterly bogus.

Worse, finding any book with more than a few grammatically sensible words is next to impossible. Most books are pure gibberish or babble — indistinguishable from random sequences of characters.

Perhaps all hope is not lost. Since this library contains every possible book, surely this library contains books that serve as indexes to find all the other meaningful and sensible books in the library. Thus it takes all pages to reference a specific book in this library. What if we organize the books somehow, such as by sorting them in alphabetical order? Then finding any particular book would be easy. While this makes it easy to find any particular book, the difficulty shifts from finding the book to deciding which book we want to find.

This is a consequence of the library having every possible book. As one seeks a book of interest, one is faced with 25 choices: to choose which of the 25 characters is next in the content of the book we seek. During the search, the seeker must choose each next letter, and must do this for all 1,, characters in the book. Thus, finding a book in this library is as difficult as writing the book in the first place! Thus, this library provides no new knowledge or information.

Its set of all books is as helpful to us as if it had no books. And so a total library offers nothing. You can explore this frustrating enigma of the Library of Babel. Jonathan Basile created an online version at libraryofbabel. Information theory reveals the equivalence between the totality of all information and the nothingness of zero information. Both lack any specification. Both are completely uninformative. Both contain within them the complete and infinite set of every possibility. We saw it in the unsculpted block of marble, in the unsent e-mail, and in the Library of Babel.

To determine this, we need only consider what is the shortest description that can generate the content of the library. A library containing one of each possible page book with 3, characters per page and a fixed alphabet of 25 characters.

The preceding description for the library is characters long. There could be shorter descriptions, but this sets an upper-bound for the information content of the Library of Babel. It takes next to no information to describe the vast Library of Babel. How could this be? How can there be less information in the library as a whole than there is in a single book or page from the library? This is a consequence of algorithmic information theory , which includes the science of data compression.

It reveals that it is simpler in terms of needing a shorter description to generate every book in the library than it is to generate only a single book, or a single page of a book in the library. The Library of Babel, though vast, was still finite. To describe one universe like ours requires a vast amount of information. It requires specifying not only the physical laws, but also the position, direction, and speed of every particle in the universe.

Yet to specify every possible universe of our kind — a multiverse of every possible arrangement of particles ruled by our laws of physics — needs much less information. Such a multiverse requires only the information to define the physical laws , particle types , fundamental forces and constants of nature. Describing our specific universe is like describing a specific book from the Library of Babel.

It needs more information than the library itself. In theories such as the string theory landscape , the constants of nature are not specified by the theory, leading to an even greater multiverse consisting of every possible universe having every set of possible values for the constants of nature e. There are reasons to suspect this, or something like it is true. For one, it explains why laws of physics and constants of nature appear fine-tuned for the emergence of life.

It might save a page by not having to include the 30 some odd constants of nature. And yet, it describes a vastly larger multiverse. This would leave the equations themselves unspecified — implying an even greater multiverse. This multiverse includes universes not just of every arrangement of matter, nor universes of every set of constants, but universes ruled by every kind of physical equations. If all possible string vacua, space-time geometries, masses of elementary particles and interaction strengths, and by laws of physics are realized, then all possible descriptions are satisfied.

This is equivalent to zero information. Thus, to specify all possible physical laws, all possible physical constants, for all possible universes, needs no information at all. Standish believes our universe, with its seemingly vast quantity of information, is something like a book in the Library of Babel. We would then be denizens of nothing, occupying a place within a total reality which altogether amounts to zero information. Such a reality — one of zero information — is the simplest state of existence.

When we tried to specify a nothing, whether as a vacuum, a point, or an empty set, we inevitably invoke properties, abstract entities, the number zero and the infinitude of numbers and their relationships. Furthermore, this specification is not an absolute nothing as it requires reality to have a nonzero amount of information to specify it. Alternatively, if we attempt a nothing of zero information and zero specification we get a total reality containing all possibility.

Neither approach succeeds in bringing about absolute nothingness. Moreover, these approaches rely upon and assume the validity of logical principles and consistency. No reality, not even a nothing, appears possible without laws and principles of logic. If a true and absolute nothing is impossible or unstable, does this mean there must be self-creating or self-existent things? Can a thing exist out of logical necessity, because its absence is impossible?

It is extraordinary that there should exist anything at all. Surely the most natural state of affairs is simply nothing: no universe, no God, nothing. But there is something. Given that something exists, it either came from nothing or else something has existed from the beginning. The existence of this thing is somehow necessary. It existed without any preceding cause. This, we also find contrary to intuition. Manufactured things are made by people, or by machines that were made by people.

Life comes from other life. Things not created by humans or other life, like rivers and mountains are created by natural forces acting on matter. It seems to defy reason for a thing to exist without a cause. And yet, we know the universe exists. The universe either came from some preceding cause, or else the universe has always existed, is self-existent, or self-creating. There is no third option. If the universe is not the end of this causal chain, then something else is.

Therefore we must accept some things are self-creating come out of nothing or are self-existent. Given that this thing exists, there are two possibilities: either that thing was caused or it was not caused.

If a thing has no cause, then it is causeless. Otherwise, the thing has a cause and its existence is owed to some other thing.

If we follow the chain of causality back towards an ultimate root cause, there are three possibilities:. These represent all possibilities. The trace either ends a first cause or it continues forever. In all three cases we find something that has always existed: either the first cause, the infinite chain itself, or the causal loop itself.

This thing, which has always existed, we can describe as causeless. If when tracing back through the series of causes we happen upon something causeless, then our existence results from a first cause.

Leading cosmological theories, such as the big bang and cosmic inflation posit that the universe is not infinitely old, but rather underwent an abrupt event where it came into existence.

That our universe has a point that may be marked as a beginning leaves open the possibility that there is a preceding cause for our universe. Another possibility is that the universe is its own cause, emerging as a random quantum fluctuation allowed by laws of physics.

Many religions speak of the first cause as a divine act of creation. In such a case God would be the first cause. Yet some other non-theistic object could as well be responsible for our existence. If the universe is not eternal, we should look for some reason for the sudden appearance of the universe: to explain how it could arise by itself, be self-existent, or be the product of some prior cause. If our universe has an eternal history, or if it belongs to a reality having an eternal history, then we exist due to an infinite regression.

Prior to wide acceptance of the big bang, the steady-state model was popular. It proposed that the universe is eternally expanding with new matter perpetually created to fill the void in the newly made space. Since the acceptance of the big bang, various new models suppose that the big bang is itself part of an eternal succession of big bangs.

Lee Smolin proposed cosmological natural selection wherein a new universe spawns every time a black hole forms. Sean Carroll notes that the equations of quantum mechanics , unlike those of general relativity , permit physicists to calculate eternally into the past or future. With a theory of quantum gravity , we could in principle predict backwards to times preceding the big bang.

Unlike classical models such as spacetime in general relativity, which can hit singularities beyond which evolution cannot be extended, quantum evolution is very simple. If an infinite regression is true, there is no ultimate cause.

However, we might still look for an ultimate explanation for the chain of causes. It might be that our existence is part of an infinite series, but one that repeats forever. If true, we are stuck in a never ending causal loop.

He found that for certain values of the density of the universe and the cosmological constant , the universe will expand for a period of time, slow down, and eventually recollapse. The process could repeat forever. We can now ask ourselves two important questions: why was our universe in such a highly compressed state, and why did it start expanding?

Cyclical cosmologies can be found in many religions. For example, there is the concept of the Wheel of Time in the Dharmic religions. The most elegant and sublime of these is a representation of the creation of the universe at the beginning of each cosmic cycle, a motif known as the cosmic dance of Shiva. The god, called in this manifestation Nataraja , the Dance King, has four hands.

In the upper right hand is a drum whose sound is the sound of creation. In the upper left hand is a tongue of flame, a reminder that the universe, now newly created, will billions of years from now be utterly destroyed. But cyclic models, lacking observational evidence and theoretical support, remained on the periphery of cosmology. In , observations revealed the expansion of the universe was not slowing, but accelerating. This seems to rule out a future collapse. The driver of this acceleration, dark energy , remains little understood.

If it is constant , the expansion will continue forever. But in some theories , it varies with time and so a later collapse may be possible. Cyclic models have seen a revival. This idea marries string theory and cosmology to give a model where periodic brane collisions trigger cycles of Big Bangs and Big Crunches. If our universe is part of a causal loop, no beginning or end is identifiable. But what got it started? Did one of the succession of states spring forth out of nothing, or might the loop have always existed?

Given that reality exists, we know there must be an entity that is causeless. What is it about causeless entities that makes them existent? If a first cause, how did it bring itself into existence? If an infinite regression or causal loop, how did it come into being? Might it exist out of logical necessity? Or is it a result of chance? Or might it exist simply because it can exist, and nothing forbids it?

Some believe that, if all events were caused by earlier events, everything would be explained. That, however, is not so. Even an infinite series of events cannot explain itself. We could ask why this series occurred, rather than some other series, or no series. For in the cases of the loops or infinite regression, we can always find an earlier cause, but may never reach a satisfactory reason. It must be something that exists necessarily, carrying the reason for its existence within itself; only that can give us a sufficient reason at which we can stop, having no further Why?

Not only must this thing exist, but we must also show how this thing can account for the reality we experience — only then will we have succeeded in our quest. Throughout history, philosophers, scientists and religions have suggested candidates for self-existence. Afterwards, we will consider whether that entity could further serve as an ultimate explanation : a self-existent starting point from which the rest of reality emerges as a direct consequence of that thing.

Some suppose rational principles, like the laws of logic , are self-existent. Unlike physical laws, logical laws have an air of inevitability to them.

If logical laws apply in all universes and all possible realities, they represent universal laws, applying everywhere and to everything. If we can say laws of physics exist because all matter in our universe adheres to physical laws, then could we say laws of logic exist, because all things in all possible realities adhere to these logical laws?

If so, then laws of logic are self-existent. This idea, that logical law and rational principles have eternally existed predates modern philosophers. There was something formless and perfect before the universe was born. It is serene. Eternally present. It is the mother of the universe.

For lack of a better name, I call it the Tao. A similar sentiment is expressed in Christianity. The Gospel of John begins:. Logos has a deep and rich meaning. Logos is the root from which we get the word logic. It is also the origin of the suffix -logy as in biology, geology and psychology.

Where it means the principles, explanation, and story thereof. If however he be admitted to exist apart from Matter in virtue of his character as a principle and a rational law [logos], God will be bodiless, the Creative Power bodiless. In Chinese bibles, Logos has been translated as Tao. Did anything make it so?

When did this statement become true? Did it require a human mind to conceive of it as being true, or has it always been true? Might this property of truth have an independent and necessary existence?

If logical laws apply universally, then any well-formed statement is either true or false. The law of excluded middle says a statement must be either true or false — there is no middle ground. It would be true before it was first spoken. When we imagine how things would have been if nothing had ever existed, what we should imagine away are such things as living beings, stars and atoms.

There would still have been various truths, such as the truth that there were no stars or atoms, or that 9 is divisible by 3. We can ask why these things would have been true. And such questions may have answers. Thus we can explain why, even if nothing had ever existed, 9 would still have been divisible by 3. There is no conceivable alternative. Ultimately, nothing is responsible for creating this truth.

Truth exists out of its own necessity. It has always existed and could never not exist. The idea of the primacy of truth is very old. It can be found in many religions, some of which draw an equivalence between God and Truth. In the 3, year old religion of Zoroastrianism , it is said that Asha meaning truth and order is the divine law behind all things. Similar ideas are found in Dharmic religions.

If it is possible for the human tongue to give the fullest description of God, I have come to the conclusion that God is Truth. If truth has an independent existence, this truth includes the infinite truths describing all true relationships between the numbers.

Might this infinite truth, provide a scaffolding and structure to all the numbers? And if there is nothing more to numbers than their properties and relations, then might numbers — in some sense — really exist?

It is an idea that many mathematicians are comfortable with. So even with no things , an infinite number of arithmetical relations are needed to avoid contradiction and preserve a nothing of zero things. If all things were absent, would Two And Two Make Four be a non-reality , remaining like that until at least four things had come to exist? Presumably the answer must be No.

This idea that numbers have an independent existence is ancient. It can be traced to some of the earliest records of human thought. It was taught by ancient philosophers and is found in the oldest religious texts. Pythagoreans applied themselves to mathematics, and were the first to develop this science; and through studying it they came to believe that its principles are the principles of everything.

Pythagoras was the first to propose that the motions of the planets are governed by mathematical equations, which he called the harmony of the spheres. When Newton discovered his law of universal gravitation some 2, years later, he credited Pythagoras for the discovery.

Across times, mathematicians have described a seemingly divine connection between mathematics and reality:. Geometry, which before the origin of things was coeternal with the divine mind and is God himself for what could there be in God which would not be God himself?

From these considerations it is now wonderfully evident how a certain divine mathematics or metaphysical mechanics is employed in the very origination of things.

To all of us who hold the Christian belief that God is truth, anything that is true is a fact about God, and mathematics is a branch of theology. The simplest and therefore the most scientific way of describing this, is that they have discovered, not created, a geometry that exists by itself eternally, the same for all, the same for teacher as for taught, the same for man as for God. The truth that is the same for man as for God is pure mathematics.

Some speculate that simply not being impossible , is sufficient for being actual. If true, then every possible object, structure, and entity exists. At a minimum, we can say self-contradictory things. For example: square circles, married bachelors, triangles with five sides, and so on.

We might also include things proven to not exist: odd numbers evenly divisible by two, a largest prime number, a sixth platonic solid. If consistency and provability are the requirements for possibility, then possible existence is mathematical existence. In , Arthur Lovejoy dubbed it the principle of plenitude. In , Robert Nozick named it the principle of fecundity. David Lewis , in , developed it as a theory he called modal realism.

Most recently, in , Derek Parfit coined the all worlds hypothesis. If all possible objects are actual, then our universe is just one such possible structure among an infinite, and total, set of all possible structures. Anything that could happen, happens somewhere. There are so many other worlds, in fact, that absolutely every way that a world could possibly be is a way that some world is.

And as with worlds, so it is with parts of worlds. There are ever so many ways that a part of a world could be; and so many and so varied are the other worlds that absolutely every way that a part of a world could possibly be is a way that some part of some world is. If the universe is inherently mathematical, then why was only one of the many mathematical structures singled out to describe a universe? A fundamental asymmetry appears to be built into the heart of reality.

As a way out of this conundrum, I have suggested that complete mathematical symmetry holds: that all mathematical structures exist physically as well. Every mathematical structure corresponds to a parallel universe. Arthur Lovejoy, who wrote about the history of this idea, traced it to B.

Plato hypothesized a realm containing all possible forms eternal, perfect, idealizations. The One is all things and not a single one of them. But to explain more distinctly how from eternal or essential metaphysical truths there arise temporal, contingent or physical truths, we must first observe that, from the very fact that there exists something rather than nothing, it follows that in possible things, or in possibility or essence itself, there is a certain need of existence, or so to speak, a claim to exist, in a word, that essence of itself tends to existence.

Know thou of a truth that the worlds of God are countless in their number, and infinite in their range. It makes sense that an infinitely creative deity would create other universes, not just our own. Some say that the universe , or the physical law that enabled it to come into existence, has always existed and so is self-existent.

The reasoning is simple. If we know at least one thing is causeless, why not just presume this causeless thing is the universe itself? Given the universe exists, we know the universe is possible.

Perhaps it exists because it is possible, and nothing forbade it from existing. But there are other tracks to follow. Perhaps we can demonstrate that the universe is self-creating. Or that it exists due to some higher law. The theory of cosmic inflation uses general relativity to explain how a tiny quantum fluctuation can inflate into the huge universe we now see. If inflation is right, the universe can properly be called the ultimate free lunch.

According to the laws of quantum mechanics , the quantum fluctuation that seeded our universe appeared because it was possible, emerging out of nothing but the physical laws themselves.

Is there any bound to how small the initial universe could be? I also noticed that my calculations were greatly simplified when I allowed the initial radius of the universe to vanish. This was really crazy: what I had was a mathematical description of a universe tunneling from a zero size — from nothing!

The laws of physics must have existed, even though there was no universe. General relativity and quantum mechanics are the two cornerstone theories of modern physics. From them alone we can explain a self-emerging universe. Quantum mechanics shows how possible fluctuations spontaneously pop into existence. General relativity explains how such a fluctuation could expand exponentially to reach an unfathomable size. But we must wonder, why these laws? What, if anything, is special about them?

Who or what anointed these equations with existence? What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?

The idea that the universe is uncreated, or exists due to some laws, predates the successes of modern physics and cosmology. The ancient Greeks and Romans believed that the material of the universe has always existed, since nothing comes from nothing. The first principle is that nothing can be created from the non-existent: for otherwise anything would be formed from anything without the need of seed. Before the ocean and the earth appeared — before the skies had overspread them all — the face of Nature in a vast expanse was naught but Chaos uniformly waste.

It was not until a divine craftsman imposed mathematical order on this chaos that the ordered universe — the kosmos — appeared.

In religions with past-eternal cosmologies, the universe is believed to be causeless. Jainism explicitly says the universe was not created.

The doctrine that the world was created is ill advised and should be rejected. If God created the world, where was he before the creation? If you say he was transcendent then and needed no support, where is he now? How could God have made this world without any raw material? Illingworth, D. Magee, and P. THERE is plenty to recommend the standard model, our best description of particles and their interactions. But it has the odd awkward lapse. It says that in the big bang, matter and antimatter should have been created in equal measure.

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Why Propaganda Matters. Unconditional Love. When Democracies Torture. The Bone that Changed China. A new multi-level hierarchy of ethics and morality. The Nature of Wilderness. The McDonalds-ification of Education. Democracy in Crisis. Forbidden Words. Ethical Relativism. Disorders of the Mind - The Philosophy of Psychiatry.

The More Good the Better? Camus and Absurdity. The Evolution of Storytelling. Political Activism in the Digital Age. The Psychology of Climate Change Denial. Regulating Bodies. Food Justice. Could Race be in Your Genes? Categorizing Humans. December The Sex Trade. Violating the Humanity of Others. Gut Feelings. Immortality: Hume and Boswell. The Moral Costs of Climate Change. Transformative Experiences. Identities Lost and Found in a Global Age. Intuitions Are a Guide to…Look Here! The Fairness Fixation.

Philosophy as Therapy. Freedom, Blame, and Resentment. Corporations and the Future of Democracy. Second-Guessing Ourselves. Babies and the Birth of Morality. Neuroscience and the Law. Is Intuition a Guide to Truth? Remixing Reality: Art and Literature for the 21st Century. The Race Delusion. Privacy and The New Surveillance Society. Tainted by the Sins of Our Fathers? Anatomy of a Terrorist. The Problem of Other Minds.

Being Human is Like Being Here. The Reality of Time. The Metaphysics of Color. Risk and Rationality. Conspiracy Theories. Weapons of Mass Destruction. Acting Together. Science and Gender. Inspiration for Evil. The Legacy of Freud.

Memory and the Self. Moral Luck. An Anti-Determinist Argument. Confessions of a Conflicted Carnivore. The Ethics of Soda. Tennis as a Way of Knowing. A New Wrinkle on an Old Problem. The Dark Side of Science. Latin-American Philosophy. Diogenes the Cynic. Richard Fletcher, Historian. My Discovery of the X-Files. Science, Philosophy, and Theology. The George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum. Teaching Philosophy. What is philosophy? The Psychology of Partisan Politics.

The Self. The Linguistics of Name Calling. December Turbo-charging the Mind. How Fiction Shapes Us. Economics: Cult or Science? Mind Reading. Poetry As a Way of Knowing. Epicurus and the Good Life.

On Being Normal. The Dionysus Awards. Black Solidarity. The Right to Privacy. Philosophy in Fiction. Is Democracy a Universal Value? The Examined Year: December Nihilism and Meaning. What would Jesus do? A Blog for Christmas. Is it wrong to wreck the earth? To Forgive and Forget. The Military: What is it Good for? Is Nothing Sacred Anymore? Thinking Inside the Box. Cooperation and Conflict. From the Minds of Babies.

Morality and the Self. War, Sacrifice, and the Media. Deconstructing the College Admissions Rat Race. Schizophrenia and the mind. Health Care — is it a right or a privilege. Time, Space, and Quantum Mechanics.

The State of Public Philosophy. Philosophy and Everyday Life. What Are Words Worth? Atheism and the Well-Lived Life. Lincoln as a Philosopher. The Language of Responsibility.

Gay Pride and Prejudice. Summer Reading The Prison System. Beliefs Gone Wild. Cities, Gentrification, and Inequality. Should Marriage Be Abolished? The Extended Mind. What is an adult? Social Networking. Is it All Just Relative?