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Purpose – To develop an alternate metaethical framework based upon a specific modality of difference.

Methodology/approach – A radicalisation of Moore's naturalistic fallacy and the application of the open question argument within the broader context of the continental tradition allow one to direct the ethical question away from non-naturalism and towards a speculative ethics.

Findings – Suggesting an ethical modality irreducible to ontological description or political prescription, the chapter argues for a metaethics of ‘exhortation’.

Originality/value of chapter – The chapter opens a new space for thinking ethics, and further encourages the continuing rapprochement between continental and analytical traditions in philosophy.

Practical implications – Questions of practical ethics will find new modes of engagement and expression in the context of a hortative metaethics.

In this conversation, renowned critical posthuman scholar Rosi Braidotti offers insights regarding what the posthuman turn means for intimate scholarship and broader questions of subjectivity. She discusses the methodological challenge of post-anthropocentrism for the humanities and stresses the need to move to a process ontology, which entails a non-essentialistic understanding of subjects as in process and connected up to networks of human and non-human elements, yet simultaneously situated and accountable. While acknowledging the possibilities of “auto” forms of research for keeping subjects politically located, she emphasizes the importance of practicing an outward-facing intimate scholarship – one not focused on one’s own pain and ego, but rather, one connected up and out, an affirmative becoming-intimate with the world, with otherness and diversity. To do so, she suggests we must think differently by experimenting with non-linearity, associative thinking, and transdisciplinarity. We must nurture intergenerational connections both for continuity of important knowledge and to create alternatives, all while using theory as a tool for counter-knowledge production.

Set theory provides a foundational approach to mathematics, and mathematics provides an abstract way of looking at social reality. The first section presents some of the elementary concepts of set theory. The second section presents a variety of examples of social reality and shows how the abstract features of reality can be modelled by set theory. The third section shows how set theory can provide a way of looking at the accounts of social reality presented in humanities disciplines such as history and literature. The fourth section briefly indicates how set theory and the concept of a structure provide a foundational approach to mathematics. The fifth section looks at the debates surrounding realism and, albeit warily, espouses mathematical social science realism.

Purpose – Using Whitehead's notion of prehension in a critical reappraisal of phenomenology, a different kind of understanding of subjectification and objectification is being proposed in which subjectification is that which enables action as a multiplicity or virtuality, and objectification enables actuality.

Approach – A critical engagement with literature on objects, including Gabriel de Tarde, Alfred North Whitehead, Martin Heidegger and Graham Harman, is used to develop an original conception of objectification and subjectification. This is applied to debates about objectification in pornography.

Findings – This approach enables us to better understand the theoretical underpinnings of empirical philosophies such as Actor Network Theory in support of the argument that objects are capable of action. While subjectification is folded within the process of prehension as the opening of the virtual, it is logically possible to argue that objects are a matter of concern for ethics. This also means that in terms of the pornography debate, the pornographic object as such can be held accountable. We do not have to accept the instrumentalist argument that ‘what you do with it defines its ethics’.

Originality/value – The argument that objects are capable of action has thus far not been pursued in relation to questions of ethics as opposed to politics.

Ambridge has a population of around 700. Of these around 60 have voices heard by around 5 million people per week, a few are named but have no direct voice, and the rest are anonymous and unvoiced. This study explores the perceptions of this anonymous group and their ontological status. Purposive sampling recruited 16 representatives from a variety of demographic groups. Focus groups were used to gather data. A phenomenological approach within an interpretative paradigm was used, with an analytical lens of speculative ontology. Three main themes were identified from the data: the participants perceived an existential co-dependence with the voiced group; most resented their repression and aspired to having a voice, though they perceived this to involve a serious risk of adverse life events and concomitant psychological trauma; all expressed empathy towards the named but unvoiced group, perceiving that group to have an unfairly high risk of adverse life events without the opportunity to vocalise for themselves. The participants appeared to see three distinct classes within the society of the village (based on namedness and voicedness) which transcended the more generally accepted class divisions in UK society which are based on occupation. The unnamed population of Ambridge exists in a state of ontological tension, which is likely to have a negative impact on their psychological wellbeing. This study raises a question about the creator's moral responsibility for this group.

The relationship between ontology, realism, and normativity is complex and contentious. While naturalist and realist stances have tended to ground questions of normativity in ontology and accounts of human nature, critical theories have been critical of the relationship between ontological and normative projects. Queer theory in particular has been critical of ontological endeavors. Exploring the problem of normativity and ontology, this paper will make the case that the critical realist ontology of open systems and complex, contingent, conjunctural causation deeply resonates with queer theory, generating a queer ontology that both allows for and undermines ontological and normative projects.