A review of Personhood, Ethics, and Animal Cognition: Situating Animals in Hare’s Two-Level Utilitarianism, by Gary E. Varner. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2012. Pp. xv + 336. H/b £40.23. and The Philosophy of Animal Minds, edited by Robert W. Lurz. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Pp. 320. P/b £20.21.

In December 2013, the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) filed a petition for a common law writ of habeas corpus in the New York State Supreme Court on behalf of Tommy, a chimpanzee living alone in a cage in a shed in rural New York (Barlow, 2017). Under animal welfare laws, Tommy’s owners, the Laverys, were doing nothing illegal by keeping him in those conditions. Nonetheless, the NhRP argued that given the cognitive, social, and emotional capacities of chimpanzees, Tommy’s confinement constituted (...) a profound wrong that demanded remedy by the courts. Soon thereafter, the NhRP filed habeas corpus petitions on behalf of Kiko, another chimpanzee housed alone in Niagara Falls, and Hercules and Leo, two chimpanzees held in research facilities at Stony Brook University. Thus began the legal struggle to move these chimpanzees from captivity to a sanctuary, an effort that has led the NhRP to argue in multiple courts before multiple judges. The central point of contention has been whether Tommy, Kiko, Hercules, and Leo have legal rights. To date, no judge has been willing to issue a writ of habeas corpus on their behalf. Such a ruling would mean that these chimpanzees have rights that confinement might violate. Instead, the judges have argued that chimpanzees cannot be bearers of legal rights because they are not, and cannot be persons. In this book we argue that chimpanzees are persons because they are autonomous. (shrink)

“Doğal din” terimi, bazen doğanın kendisinin ilahi olduğu bir panteistik doktrine atıfta bulunur. “Doğal teoloji” terimi ise aksine, başlangıçta gözlemlenen doğal gerçekler temelinde (ve bazen) Tanrı’nın varlığını savunmaya yönelik projeye atıfta bulunur. Bununla birlikte çağdaş felsefede, hem “doğal din” hem de “doğal teoloji” genel olarak, dinî veya teolojik konuları araştırmak için insana, “doğal” olan bilişsel yetilerini – akıl, algı, içgözlem- kullanma projesini ifade eder. Doğal din veya teoloji, mevcut anlayış üzerine, doğayla ilgili ampirik araştırmalarla sınırlı olmamakla birlikte ayrıca panteistik bir (...) sonuçla da bağlantılı değildir. Bununla birlikte o, özel doğal olmayan yetilere (ESP, telepati, mistik deneyim) veya doğaüstü bilgi kaynaklarına (kutsal metinler, vahiy teolojisi, inanç otoriteleri, doğrudan doğaüstü iletişim) hitap etmekten kaçınır. Genel olarak, doğal din veya teoloji (bundan böyle “doğal teoloji” olarak anılacaktır), diğer felsefi ve bilimsel girişimlerle aynı rasyonel inceleme standartlarına uymayı amaçlamaktadır ve aynı değerlendirme ve eleştiri yöntemlerine tabidir. (shrink)

An action-oriented perspective changes the role of an individual from a passive observer to an actively engaged agent interacting in a closed loop with the world as well as with others. Cognition exists to serve action within a landscape that contains both. This chapter surveys this landscape and addresses the status of the pragmatic turn. Its potential influence on science and the study of cognition are considered (including perception, social cognition, social interaction, sensorimotor entrainment, and language acquisition) and its impact (...) on how neuroscience is studied is also investigated (with the notion that brains do not passively build models, but instead support the guidance of action). A review of its implications in robotics and engineering includes a discussion of the application of enactive control principles to couple action and perception in robotics as well as the conceptualization of system design in a more holistic, less modular manner. Practical applications that can impact the human condition are reviewed (e.g., educational applications, treatment possibilities for developmental and psychopathological disorders, the development of neural prostheses). All of this foreshadows the potential societal implications of the pragmatic turn. The chapter concludes that an action-oriented approach emphasizes a continuum of interaction between technical aspects of cognitive systems and robotics, biology, psychology, the social sciences, and the humanities, where the individual is part of a grounded cultural system. (shrink)

In a number of recent publications Thomasson has defended a deflationary approach to ontological disputes, according to which ontological disputes are relatively easy to settle, by either conceptual analysis, or conceptual analysis in conjunction with empirical investigation. Thomasson’s “easy” approach to ontology is intended to derail many prominent ontological disputes. In this paper I present an objection to Thomasson’s approach to ontology. Thomasson’s approach to existence assertions means that she is committed to the view that application conditions associated with any (...) term “K” with non-trivial application conditions must refer to the existence of things other than Ks. Given other components of her meta-ontological scheme, this leads to either an infinite regress or circularity of application conditions, both of which seem objectionable. Accordingly, some part of Thomasson’s meta-ontological scheme should be modified or abandoned. (shrink)

The Schwarzschild solution (Schwarzschild, 1915/16) to Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity (GTR) is accepted in theoretical physics as the unique solution to GTR for a central-mass system. In this paper I propose an alternative solution to GTR, and argue it is both logically consistent and empirically realistic as a theory of gravity. This solution is here called K-gravity. The introduction explains the basic concept. The central sections go through the technical detail, defining the basic solution for the geometric tensor, the (...) Christoffel symbols, Ricci tensor, Ricci scalar, Einstein tensor, stress-energy tensor and density-pressure for the system. The density is integrated, and some consistency properties are demonstrated. A notable feature is the disappearance of the event horizon singularity, i.e. there are no black holes. So far this is for a single central mass. A generalization of the solution for multiple masses is then proposed. This is required to support K-gravity as a viable general interpretation of gravity. Then the question of empirical tests is discussed. It is argued that current observational data is almost but not quite sufficient to verify or falsify K-gravity. The Pioneer spacecraft trajectory data is of particular interest, as this is capable of providing a test; but the data (which originally showed anomalies that match K-gravity) is now uncertain. A new and very practical experiment is proposed to settle the matter. This would provide a novel test of GTR, and a novel test of the cause of the Pioneer anomalies. In conclusion, K-gravity has extensive ramifications for gravitational physics and for the philosophy of GTR and space-time. (shrink)

Architecture and Deconstruction Case of Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi -/- Introduction Towards deconstruction in architecture Intensive relations between philosophical deconstruction and architecture, which were present in the late 1980s and early 1990s, belong to the past and therefore may be described from a greater than before distance. Within these relations three basic variations can be distinguished: the first one, in which philosophy of deconstruction deals with architectural terms but does not interfere with real architecture, the second one, in which (...) a collaboration between Jacques Derrida and a group of architects interested in his concepts is commenced, and the third one, in which completed or only designed objects or new concepts of deconstruction created by architects gain their supremacy over philosophy. The following book analyses these three possible ways, first of all with the reference to Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi. -/- Peter Eisenman -/- Misreading… and Other Errors -/- The issue of relations between Peter Eisenman’s work and philosophy of deconstruction may be referred to his activity more than ten years preceding his direct collaboration with Jacques Derrida (in 1985) and organisation of the exhibition Deconstructivist Architecture at Museum of Modern Art in New York (in 1988). As soon as at the stage of designing the first houses (House I-III, 1967-1970), which almost entirely inscribed in formalistic aesthetics of Modernism, the architect analysed the problem of architecture dependence on its assumptions. All his later designs may be treated as consequence of this initial interest in relations between practice and theory, and at the same time as an introduction to manipulations later on led at the level of metaphysics of architecture. Beginning with the issue of presence, considered in comments to House VI (1972), the number of ideas having their analogies in philosophy of deconstruction increased. The text entitled The End of the Classical: The End of the Beginning, The End of the End (1984), in which Eisenman criticised questions of representation in architecture, its delusive strive for truth and comparably unattainable attempts at ultimate definition of elementary rules, should be acclaimed the breaking point. This attitude was extended by numerous strategies disturbing architecture rules defined at metaphysical level in an essay Moving Arrows, Eros, and Other Errors: an Architecture of Absence (1986). The issue of Eisenman’s passage from formalism to deconstruction has already been much discussed in the literature (Rosalind Krauss, Thomas Patin among others), still it should be mentioned that the threads similar to Derrida’s concept included in Eisenman’s writing reveal untranslatability of architecture and philosophy. -/- Choral Works or Separate tricks -/- In 1985-1986 a series of seven disputes between Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman took place. The pretext for them were designs concerning Parc de la Villette in Paris. The situation of many months of collaboration between a notable philosopher of the second half of the 20th c. and an architect that already had a huge theoretical oeuvre, ended up with a publication of a large volume entitled Chora L Works and it became at the same time a vast study area for historians of contemporary architecture and philosophers. Derrida’s contribution to concept works were his considerations over the idea of chôra, the properties related to this concept were about to be reflected in shapes of the park. Therefore, Chora L Works became an example of the abilities of contemporary art, both in its capability of translation from philosophical ideas to artistic forms and its resistance to tradition of representing in architecture some phenomena and values originating outside this discipline. In the final period of their collaboration both interlocutors started to polemicise with each other more decidedly, what became a separate part of their thought exchange. The exchange of letters between Derrida and Eisenman at the turn of 1989 ended up the period of their direct contacts, nevertheless, at this time precisely a large group of experts in issues of deconstruction joined the discussion and extended the revealed in the former dispute problems into more than ten years of further considerations and publications. Except for a long text by Jeffrey Kipnis, who had participated in the meetings of the philosopher and the architect, there appeared also comments of researchers of artistic theories (K. Michael Hays, Thomas Patin), philosophers (Andrew Benjamin), and even experts in Greek literature (Maria Theodorou or Ann Bergren). Following these debates a contemporary reflection on architecture has saturated with indeed numerous concepts originating in philosophy of deconstruction. -/- Architecture which imitates mute philosophy -/- The series of Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman meetings, which took place in the period of 1985-1987, induced many authors to make comments. Some of them (Jeffrey Kipnis, Ann Bergren, Maria Theodorou) developed the subject of chôra which was introduced to the discussion by Derrida. The problem that was about to be solved was the question of tying up the concept of chôra with architecture, including Eisenman’s architecture and the series of meetings within frames of Chora L Works project. Kipnis on this occasion paid attention to chôra and its character of anachronia which infects any being created within chôra. In other words any event has its counterpart (analogon) in another, earlier event. He demonstrated the similarity of structure of many events and statements from the times of Derrida and Eisenman’s meetings to the almost identical behaviour of figures in Plato’s dialogue Timaeus. The loss of beginning present in this phenomenon was appropriate to both features of chôra and the effects of typical analyses of philosophy of deconstruction. Bergren’s analyses focused on accentuating gender of chôra, which, according to this author, had been neglected hitherto in discussions. She collated chôra descriptions with characteristics of women in myths, early Greek epic and philosophy and she arrived at a conclusion that chôra has features of a single woman and a married one at the same time. And yet Theodorou’s studies showed that in the Homeric epics chôra is not treated as an idea but is related with single things and events. The other part of the comments (represented by Andrew Benjamin and K. Michael Hays’ utterances) concerns Eisenman’s attitude to tradition which was treated as a variety of iteration understood philosophically. Benjamin commenced his considerations at the point of closeness between a definition of tradition and a concept of chôra understood as perpetuation (placement). A problematic issue was for him Eisenman’s complex relation to tradition based on its contest and affirmation at the same time. Overcoming the simple subordination to tradition – according to Benjamin – was based on awareness of the role of repetition in culture not known before. Hays made an attempt to explain the pleasure and torment of repetition with the support of Sigmund Freud and Roland Barthes’ concepts. According to Hays repetitions are attempts of a single being to a certain primal state perceived as free of any tension. In a similar way Rosalind Krauss explained a motif of a grate present in Modernistic art and also exceptionally frequent in Eisenman’s work. -/- Annex Architecture is still writing Balzac novels. Peter Eisenman and literature -/- Architecture’s approach to writing, script or literature, present within Peter Eisenman’s work, is an exceptional phenomenon, furthermore a complex one. The article considers four possible relations. The first one relates to Eisenman’s characteristics as a person extremely gifted with the ability to wordplay, which very ‘play’ reveals skills to create architectural images. In the second approach the attention has been paid to Eisenman’s interests – in the first period of his oeuvre – in linguistic works by Noam Chomsky and his transformational-generative grammar. The third kind of relations applied to overcoming the need for autonomy of architecture (and of modernist aesthetics at the same time) and renew interests in questions of meaning in architecture. The fourth sort of relations occurred when Eisenman started to create reflections of historic or literary narrations in architecture – ‘stone stories’ and architectural fictions of their kind. -/- Bernard Tschumi -/- From perversion to deconstruction In Bernard Tschumi’s writings from the 1970s and 1980s we can find a transposition of important threads of post-structuralist ideas deriving from Georges Bataille, Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida’s works. The analysis of the architect’s writings also shows roots in Phillippe Sollers, Michel Foucault and Denis Hollier’s works. The analysis of borrowed elements from the beginnings of Tschumi’s theoretical activity may be helpful in explaining the contents of his later writings motre inspired by philosophy of deconstruction. The set of his earliest views was inspired by Marxism, Neo Marxism and French Structuralism, mainly by the writings of Henri Levebre and Guy Debord. From the thought of Levebre Tschumi took interest for city as not only a question of urbanistics but also a political issue. From Debord’s concepts he borrowed a conviction about the role of situational violation for changes in the society structure. Some of these beliefs were preserved in his own concepts of architecture as an event. From this period derived also his will to change conservative elements of social structure not by means of political revolution but of theoretical and creative activity. Tschumi acknowledged that the effective way of the proceedings towards achieving his aims would be accepting the role of both a critical intellectualist and architecture expert who would not hide away his left-wing orientation. The speculations defined by the architect as ‘revolting analyses’ were about to characterise contradictions which tear the society apart, penetrate architecture and constitute the basis of culture. Spreading away of the conscience of false assumptions hidden away in various disciplines could have weakened cohesion of a conservative society and influence the will to change among the elites. This way the beginnings of political revolution were rooted in philosophy of architecture. In 1977 Tschumi published his text entitled The Pleasure of Architecture inspired by Roland Barthes’s The Pleasure of the Text, it also included some concepts derived from Georges Bataille and Jacques Derrida. First of all the author used Barthes’s concept which made an assumption that literary activity is pervaded by the spirit of resistance towards social rules, and Tschudi transferred this remark onto architecture. From the ideas of Bataille, acquainted via Holier’s work, he derived his belief that two concepts of space, a conceptual one (defined as Pyramid) and a sensual one (defined as Labirynth), not losing their distinct features, they join in the concept of experienced space which exceeds contradictions. The exceeding itself was defined as the basic rule of architecture and it was referred to situations in which architecture not only negates social needs, but also disavows its own tradition. Crossing the borders applies not only to political issues or permanent rules of the very discipline but also interfering with other fields (especially literature and film). The fact that architecture is associated with organising events turned Tschumi’s attention to questions of violence that result from upsetting architectural order of a given building by its users and the one hand, and on the other from forcing the users to specific acts imposed by this very order. The analysis of the concepts used by Tschumi in his early writings indicates that they are close to definitions that would occur in his reflection in the following years influenced by philosophy of deconstruction. -/- Approaching deconstruction Tschumi in his theories developed in the 1980s presumed that the current social world had undergone a deep process of decay, and the reaction against which ought to be based on ordering-up actions, and also preserving the main outline of disintegration of the whole and its elements in the state of conflict. The statements concerning the nature of the contemporary to Tschumi social relations were applied by him to the world of architecture, this led him to coming up with designing strategies that took into consideration the destabilised character of conditions in which works of architecture were created. New ways of conduct invented by Tschumi drew their inspiration from literature and research on literature, psychoanalysis, structural linguistics, structuralism and post structuralism, and eventually also deconstruction philosophy. The proposed methods were opposed by their author both to functionalism continuity trends and postmodern architecture. Tschumi’s proposals contradicted any forms of conservatism or traditionalism in political sphere as well as in reference to tendencies in architecture. They were not simple contradictions of social or architectural rules, they intrude them from the inside, weaken or escalate the already existing incongruities, they move the boundaries between the areas. Revolutionary illusions about the possibility of radical changes were replaced with strategies which completed, tainted or test former rules in the series of formal games of permutation and combination. Quite different from avant-garde formalism Tschumi’s games were not about maintaining the autonomy of a given area, but on the contrary – polluting it with other areas’ influences. Tschumi enjoyed demonstrating illusions of architecture concerning simple relations between form and function, or between form and meaning. Making use of Freud, Lacan and Foucault’s research he introduced a category of “madness” into architecture allowing an observation that the recognised norms are nothing but merely ones of many possible principles of behaviour, and their recognised status resulted from unjustified hindering innovativeness which is crucial for architecture. To reborn architecture’s capability of changing Tschumi also made use of Barthes’s discoveries concerning rules of narration and works by writers who applied in their writing knowledge on linguistics. Making a work’s author unclear by various mechanical transformations of its elements was however apparent only, and formal rigours imposed on the process of designing liberated possibilities difficult to obtain in more traditional creative action. Another mode of acting introduced by Tschumi was combining his work of elements deriving from outside architecture; joining space records with notation of motion and events accompanying architectural objects among others. These architectural and extra-architectural elements were not unified, on the contrary their heterogenous and conflictual character was stressed. This is how shock, anxiety and instability, typical for live in great metropolises, infiltrated architecture. Taking some ideas of deconstruction philosophy as a pattern Tschumi also took into critical consideration in his essays traditional in architecture oppositions between form and figuration, or theory and practice. By combining various inspirations he eventually worked out an idea of architectural event, which he understood as a series of actions contesting its own field, redefining its sources, principles and elements. An event, understood in this way, was not so much producing works as rather creating conditions of their production and at the same time designing the society different from a hierarchic one. -/- Park of deconstruction Among numerous philosophical strategies of deconstruction most frequently used was questioning the practice of strong opposition of two reasons. In many cases Bernard Tschumi’s writings just consider functioning of the conflict juxtaposition of the ideas of structure and ornament or theory and practice in history of architecture. Violation of traditional relations between terms of this kind, both old and modern, raised Jacques Derrida’s objections, when he was induced for the first time to co-operate with architects’ milieu. During this long lasting thought exchange the philosopher eventually acknowledged Bernard Tschumi’s arguments for reasoning the encroachment of architecture’s fundamental rules. Deconstruction applied in architecture was not a simple transposition or analogy of practices that had been applied by philosophy of deconstruction. We may even say that considering architectural terms became an important formula of deconstruction. Architecture understood in philosophical way became something beyond the practice and theory of its own discipline, a sort of metaphysics of both philosophy and architecture. The deliberate encroachment of simplicity of dividing architecture into theory and practice, for the first time became a clear aim for Tschumi in his drawings and texts entitled The Manhattan Transcripts. The contents of this series of works was a record of characteristic features of this New York district in such a way that not only objects were the subject of the record but also relations between objects, people and events. The record was about to take into consideration a conflict character of elements of this representation and at the same time to avoid applying to them the rule of mimetism. The record became a form of reflection over the very record by an increased control over the ways of representation. Architecture which was considered in the The Manhattan Transcripts was not directed to fulfill the needs of inhabitation or production, it was rather related with hitherto usually marginalised liminal situations: building ostentatiously big monuments, religious cult, war etc. Architecture operating in these relations focused also the attention on the included in it continuous tendency to overpass its own restrictions, the role of violence as its not recognised factor, or the meaning of excess and shock in its operation. Architecture moving from reason towards madness became even more visible in the design of Parisian Parc de la Villette, whose pavilions were defined as folies (in French it means both small park buildings and follies). The park was supposed to be on the one hand a reflection of traditional society disintegration while on the other it questioned basic rules of producing a work of architecture. The traditional rules of designing, based on ordering up, were replaced with the strategies of dysfunction and dissociation. In Tschumi’s opinion methods of this kind may be equivalent of what Derrida named différance. Instead of aiming at mergence, any diversity, plays or variations were strengthen. Tschumi’s texts, in which he explained his attitude, were completed by Derrida’s extent statement entitled Point de folie – Maintenant l’architecture. Derrida’s article is the most significant of all his statements on architecture as a form of thinking and activity. According to the philosopher, architecture should divide space (in French defined as espacement), what enables both thinking and action – it arranges the space of an event. Tschumi’s buildings, defined as folies, in an essential way destabilise any created order, and at the same time they refresh it. Derrida’s statement suggests that architecture may become both metaphor of an order merging a language or a society but also of inner forces which deconstruct and reconstruct it. Therefore architecture is at the same time a construction, a deconstruction and a reconstruction. Parc de la Villette stands out in this system with its attempt to step beyond the scheme of an easy repetition and its heading for chances of achieving more radical otherness. -/- Conclusion Destruction as construction. Paradoxes of deconstruction in architecture -/- Scepticism about persistence and common importance of fundamental values of human culture evinced in philosophers and writers’ works as early as in Greek antiquity, nevertheless it was not expressed so strongly as in the second half of the 20th century. Especially in Heidegger’s work Being and Time (although originated in 1927, still influential in all later philosophy) the following states were characterised: the state of losing the ground (Abgrund), of being out of sight (Unheimlichkeit) and of being out of dwelling (Un-zuhause-sein) – as the basis of self-confidence of conscious being there (Dasein). The entire criticism of philosophy of home and dwelling draws the inspiration from this early writing of the German philosopher, it combines crisis of basic terms of metaphysics with social conditions which are dictated by living in large metropolis. The crisis of both metaphysical foundation and home appears to be similar to the situation of weakening the relations between a man and his dwelling in extensively expanding cities. Whereas philosophy, as well as many disciplines of social sciences, have diagnosed for a long time the destabilisation of fundamental ideas of Western culture and crucial changes in the ways of dwelling, architecture itself occurred to be “the last fortress of metaphysics” (J. Derrida). Among contemporary architects, Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi were the ones who engaged most decidedly in the issues of critical analysis of architecture foundation and its social role. Both the architects noticed new formulas of contemporary social and individual existence, tremendously different from the entire history, and at the same time they affirmed lack of adequacy of architecture concepts to new situations. Both Eisenman and Tschumi used to describe the existing architecture as a tool for consolidation of highly integrated and hierarchised societies, and also as a discipline extremely uncoincidental with the current character of social life based on ideas of freedom and diversity. The means to transform architecture and make a factor of further social changes out of it, was a concept that accentuated revealing the inner contradictions of this discipline, and considering them in designing strategies. Eisenman’s activity, in regard of what has just been noticed, was focused on questioning the basic rules of traditionally comprehended architecture, especially the rule of purpose. The American architect noticed that the concept of architecture as fulfilment the need of location, hides away the fact that the location has to be constantly reconsidered, and hence it is overtaken by change (dislocation). Therefore new concept of architecture propounded architectural activity to translocate the concept of location – more than before – but also to change its status perpetually. Such comprehended architecture should claim, as its main purpose, the constant revision of this purpose and create itself anew permanently. Even Eisenman’s earliest designs of houses nos. I-IV broke with such values as the sense of safety, closeness and familiarity, and just on the contrary they accentuated senses of strangeness, homelessness and loss of confidence. The contradictions within architecture noticed by Tschumi referred to combination of intellectual and sensual values in architecture, when their non-appropriation was defeated by an additional condition, namely the way of experience based on pleasure of excess, marked by insanity. The features of folly were especially visible in his designs of gardens, where the order of planning was mixed with sensual experience introduced by particular elements (both the ones created by nature, and the buildings defined as folies). Parc de la Villette designed by the French architect in Paris put in question not only the common understanding of purpose in architecture but also the ideas of order and integrity, as its plan was based on the combination of independent layers with records of grids of points, various lines and planes. The architecture that collides inadequate elements with each other was supposed to be a kind of an event with no beginning and no end. The architecture treated as an event became a form of a space weakened articulation that maintains its diversity and lack of accordance of the elements building it up. The analyses of Eisenman and Tschumi’s theoretical writings indicate how much the aims of architecture have actually changed; instead of supporting social persistence, the architecture is rather intensifying contradictions, and instead of providing people with the sense of safety, it sublimes danger. From simple acts of defamiliarisation, increasing the distance to itself and enhancing the role of theory, through discomfort, anxiety, not feeling someone at home, weirdness, excess, shock and violence, architecture reached the edge of stability and uncertainty, only to make an attempt at penetrating what is impossible and unutterable, and recording what cannot become the subject of any records. -/- . (shrink)

COTENT -/- (April 2019) Why so many people (from so many countries/domains/on so many topics) have already plagiarized my ideas? (Gabriel Vacariu) -/- Some preliminary comments Introduction: The EDWs perspective in my article from 2005 and my book from 2008 -/- I. PHYSICS, COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE, PHILOSOPHY (‘REBORN DINOSAURS’) • (2016) Sean Carroll (California Institute of Technology, USA) • (2016) Frank Wilczek (Nobel Prize in Physics) • (2017-2019 - NEW March 2019) Carlo Rovelli in three books (2015, 2017) to my ideas (...) (2002-2008) + commentary February 2018! • (2016) Kastner + (2017) R. E. Kastner, Stuart Kauffman, Michael Epperson • (2017) Lee Smolin (2017) • (May 2018) ‘Thus spoke Zarathustra!’ - A fairy-tale with Eugen Ionesco and the Idiot about Nothingness -/- II. PHYSICS • (2011) Radu Ionicioiu (Physics, University of Bucharest, Romania) and Daniel R. Terno’s ideas (Physics, Macquarie University, Sydney • (2013) Côté B. Gilbert (Oontario, Canada) • (2015) Pikovski Igor, Zych Magdalena, Costa Fabio, and Brukner Časlav • (2015) Elisabetta Caffau (Center for Astronomy at the University of Heidelberg and the Paris Observatory) • (2015) Wolfram Schommers • (2015) Some astrophysicists • (2016) Dylan H. Mahler, Lee Rozema, Kent Fisher, Lydia Vermeyden, Kevin J. Resch, Howard M. Wiseman, and Aephraim Steinberg • (2016) Bill Poirier • (2016 or 2017) Adam Frank • (2017, 2017) Sebastian de Haro • (2017) Laura Condiotto • (2016) Hugo F. Alrøe and Egon Noe • (2017) Federico Zalamea • (2018) Unbelievable similarities between Peter J. Lewis’s ideas (2018) and my ideas (2002-2008) • (2018) Timothy Hollowood, ‘Classical from Quantum’ • (2018) Mario Hubert and Davide Romano, ‘The Wave-Function as a Multi-Field’ -/- III. COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF MIND • (2011-2014) Did Georg Northoff (Psychoanalysis, Institute of Mental Health) plagiarize my ideas (2002-2008)? • (2011) Kalina Diego Cosmelli, Legrand Dorothée and Thompson Evan’s ideas (USA) • (2015) David Ludwig (Philosophy, University of Amsterdam) • (2016) Neil D. Theise (Department of Pathology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, USA) and Kafatos C. Menas • David Bourget (2018) (or University of Western Ontario) + Chalmers • (2016) Dan Siegel (Mindsight Institute, USA) -/- IV. Philosophy (of science) • (2010) Alexey Alyushin (Moscow, Russia) • (2013 + 2017) Markus Gabriel (Bonn University) • (2013) Andrew Newman’s ideas (University of Nebraska, at Omaha, USA) • (2016) Tahko E. Tuomas (University of Helsinki, Finland) + Tahko E. Tuomas • (2017) Jani Hakkarainen (University of Tampere, Finland) + (2017) Markku Keinänen, Antti Keskinen & Jani Hakkarainen • (2017) Dean Rickles (HPS, Univ. of Sydney) • (2017) Did Dirk K. F. Meijer and Hans J. H. Geesink (University of Groningen, Netherlands) • (2018) Jason Winning’s ideas (2018) • (2018) David Mark Kovacs (Lecturer of philosophy at Tel Aviv University) -/- July 2018 • Oreste M. Fiocco • Baptiste Le Bihan (University of Geneva, forthcoming) • Antonella Mallozzi (The Graduate Center – CUNY, forthcoming in Synthese, penultimate draft) • Erik C. Banks (Wright State University, 2014) • Sami Pihlström (2009) • Katherin Koslicki’s ideas (2008) The Structure of Objects, Oxford University Press) and my ideas (2002-2005-2006) -/- November 2018 • Maurizio Ferraris (2014/2012) Manifesto of New Realism • Graham Harman (2017) : Object-Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything (Penguin Books) -/- January 2019 • Philip Ball (2018) • Gerhard Grössing • Anne Sophie Meincke (November 2018) • Baptiste Le Bihana (University of Geneva) and James Read (Oxford Univ.) • Baptiste Le Bihan (University of Geneva) • Alexander Alexandrovich Antonov (2016) (Research Center of Information Technologies “TELAN Electronics”, Kiev, Ukraine): -/- February 2019 • James Barham (2019) • Giorgio Lando (2017) • (2018) Albrecht von M¨uller • Elias Zafiris • (2019) Flaminia Giacomini, Esteban Castro-Ruiz, & Časlav • (2019) Valia Allori, OUP (2019) • (2018) Paulo De Jesus Phenom Cogn Sci • (2016) TIMOTHY MORTON, For a Logic of Future Coexistence • (2017) Andrew Cooper, Two directions for teleology: naturalism and idealism, Synthese -/- March 2019 • (2019) Massimiliano Proietti,1 Alexander Pickston,1 Francesco Graffitti,1 Peter Barrow,1 Dmytro Kundys,1 Cyril Branciard,2 Martin Ringbauer,1, 3 and Alessandro Fedrizzi1: (2019) • (2015) Cˇaslav Brukner On the quantum measurement problem, at arXiv:1507.05255v1 [quant-ph] 19 Jul 2015 • (2015) Mateus Araújo, Cyril Branciard, Fabio Costa, Adrien Feix, Christina Giarmatzi, Časlav Brukner, Witnessing causal nonseparability, • (2008 + 2013) Giulio Chiribella,∗ Giacomo Mauro D’Ariano,† and Paolo Perinotti‡ QUIT Group, Dipartimento di Fisica “A. Volta” and INFM, via Bassi 6, 27100 Pavia, Italy§ (Dated: October 22, 2018): Transforming quantum operations: quantum supermaps arXiv:0804.0180v2 [quant-ph] (22 Oct 2008) + Giulio Chiribella,1, ∗ Giacomo Mauro D’Ariano,2, † Paolo Perinotti,2, ‡ and Benoit Valiron3, § (2013), Quantum computations without definite causal structure, at • (2013) Ognyan Oreshkov1;2, Fabio Costa1, Cˇ aslav Brukner1;3, Quantum correlations with no causal order, • (2018) Marcus Schmieke, Kränzlin, 17 July 2018 These articles are in this book: Reality and its Structure - Essays in Fundamentality, Ricki Bliss and Graham Priest (2018), -/- Gabriel Oak Rabin (2018) Grounding Orthodoxy and the Layered Conception Daniel Nolan (2018) Cosmic Loops Naomi Thompson (2018) Metaphysical Interdependence, Epistemic Coherentism, and Tuomas E. Tahko (2018) Holistic Explanation Fundamentality and Ontological Minimality Matteo Morganti (2018) The Structure of Physical Reality Beyond Foundationalism Nathan Wildman (2018) On Shaky Ground? Exploring the Contingent Fundamentality Thesis -/- April 2019 (2015) M. Ringbauer1;2, B. Du_us1;2, C. Branciard1;3, E. G. Cavalcanti4, A. G. White1;2 & A. Fedrizzi: “Measurements on the reality of the wavefunction” -/- June 2019 Timothy Morton (2013), Realist Magic: Objects, Ontology, Causality (2013) Open Humanities Press Ian Bogost, Alien Phenomenology or, What It’s Like to Be a Thing (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012), 1–34 “Ian Bogost thinks objects as units”: Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2008) in Timothy Morton 2013, Realist Magic: Objects, Ontology, Causality (2013) OPEN HUMANITIES PRESS (I have not read Bogost yet, but in Morton’s book, I found UNBELIEVABLE similarity between Bogost’s main ideas and my EDWs ideas!!) -/- [Obviously, there are other “specialists” that published UNBELIEVABLE similar ideas to my ideas but I have not discovered them yet…] -/- . (shrink)

COTENT -/- (April 2019) Why so many people (from so many countries/domains/on so many topics) have already plagiarized my ideas? (Gabriel Vacariu) -/- Some preliminary comments Introduction: The EDWs perspective in my article from 2005 and my book from 2008 -/- I. PHYSICS, COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE, PHILOSOPHY (‘REBORN DINOSAURS’) • (2016) Sean Carroll (California Institute of Technology, USA) • (2016) Frank Wilczek (Nobel Prize in Physics) • (2017-2019 - NEW March 2019) Carlo Rovelli in three books (2015, 2017) to my ideas (...) (2002-2008) + commentary February 2018! • (2016) Kastner + (2017) R. E. Kastner, Stuart Kauffman, Michael Epperson • (2017) Lee Smolin (2017) • (May 2018) ‘Thus spoke Zarathustra!’ - A fairy-tale with Eugen Ionesco and the Idiot about Nothingness -/- II. PHYSICS • (2011) Radu Ionicioiu (Physics, University of Bucharest, Romania) and Daniel R. Terno’s ideas (Physics, Macquarie University, Sydney • (2013) Côté B. Gilbert (Oontario, Canada) • (2015) Pikovski Igor, Zych Magdalena, Costa Fabio, and Brukner Časlav • (2015) Elisabetta Caffau (Center for Astronomy at the University of Heidelberg and the Paris Observatory) • (2015) Wolfram Schommers • (2015) Some astrophysicists • (2016) Dylan H. Mahler, Lee Rozema, Kent Fisher, Lydia Vermeyden, Kevin J. Resch, Howard M. Wiseman, and Aephraim Steinberg • (2016) Bill Poirier • (2016 or 2017) Adam Frank • (2017, 2017) Sebastian de Haro • (2017) Laura Condiotto • (2016) Hugo F. Alrøe and Egon Noe • (2017) Federico Zalamea • (2018) Unbelievable similarities between Peter J. Lewis’s ideas (2018) and my ideas (2002-2008) • (2018) Timothy Hollowood, ‘Classical from Quantum’ • (2018) Mario Hubert and Davide Romano, ‘The Wave-Function as a Multi-Field’ -/- III. COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF MIND • (2011-2014) Did Georg Northoff (Psychoanalysis, Institute of Mental Health) plagiarize my ideas (2002-2008)? • (2011) Kalina Diego Cosmelli, Legrand Dorothée and Thompson Evan’s ideas (USA) • (2015) David Ludwig (Philosophy, University of Amsterdam) • (2016) Neil D. Theise (Department of Pathology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, USA) and Kafatos C. Menas • David Bourget (2018) (or University of Western Ontario) + Chalmers • (2016) Dan Siegel (Mindsight Institute, USA) -/- IV. Philosophy (of science) • (2010) Alexey Alyushin (Moscow, Russia) • (2013 + 2017) Markus Gabriel (Bonn University) • (2013) Andrew Newman’s ideas (University of Nebraska, at Omaha, USA) • (2016) Tahko E. Tuomas (University of Helsinki, Finland) + Tahko E. Tuomas • (2017) Jani Hakkarainen (University of Tampere, Finland) + (2017) Markku Keinänen, Antti Keskinen & Jani Hakkarainen • (2017) Dean Rickles (HPS, Univ. of Sydney) • (2017) Did Dirk K. F. Meijer and Hans J. H. Geesink (University of Groningen, Netherlands) • (2018) Jason Winning’s ideas (2018) • (2018) David Mark Kovacs (Lecturer of philosophy at Tel Aviv University) -/- July 2018 • Oreste M. Fiocco • Baptiste Le Bihan (University of Geneva, forthcoming) • Antonella Mallozzi (The Graduate Center – CUNY, forthcoming in Synthese, penultimate draft) • Erik C. Banks (Wright State University, 2014) • Sami Pihlström (2009) • Katherin Koslicki’s ideas (2008) The Structure of Objects, Oxford University Press) and my ideas (2002-2005-2006) -/- November 2018 • Maurizio Ferraris (2014/2012) Manifesto of New Realism • Graham Harman (2017) : Object-Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything (Penguin Books) -/- January 2019 • Philip Ball (2018) • Gerhard Grössing • Anne Sophie Meincke (November 2018) • Baptiste Le Bihana (University of Geneva) and James Read (Oxford Univ.) • Baptiste Le Bihan (University of Geneva) • Alexander Alexandrovich Antonov (2016) (Research Center of Information Technologies “TELAN Electronics”, Kiev, Ukraine): -/- February 2019 • James Barham (2019) • Giorgio Lando (2017) • (2018) Albrecht von M¨uller • Elias Zafiris • (2019) Flaminia Giacomini, Esteban Castro-Ruiz, & Časlav • (2019) Valia Allori, OUP (2019) • (2018) Paulo De Jesus Phenom Cogn Sci • (2016) TIMOTHY MORTON, For a Logic of Future Coexistence • (2017) Andrew Cooper, Two directions for teleology: naturalism and idealism, Synthese -/- March 2019 • (2019) Massimiliano Proietti,1 Alexander Pickston,1 Francesco Graffitti,1 Peter Barrow,1 Dmytro Kundys,1 Cyril Branciard,2 Martin Ringbauer,1, 3 and Alessandro Fedrizzi1: (2019) • (2015) Cˇaslav Brukner On the quantum measurement problem, at arXiv:1507.05255v1 [quant-ph] 19 Jul 2015 • (2015) Mateus Araújo, Cyril Branciard, Fabio Costa, Adrien Feix, Christina Giarmatzi, Časlav Brukner, Witnessing causal nonseparability, • (2008 + 2013) Giulio Chiribella,∗ Giacomo Mauro D’Ariano,† and Paolo Perinotti‡ QUIT Group, Dipartimento di Fisica “A. Volta” and INFM, via Bassi 6, 27100 Pavia, Italy§ (Dated: October 22, 2018): Transforming quantum operations: quantum supermaps arXiv:0804.0180v2 [quant-ph] (22 Oct 2008) + Giulio Chiribella,1, ∗ Giacomo Mauro D’Ariano,2, † Paolo Perinotti,2, ‡ and Benoit Valiron3, § (2013), Quantum computations without definite causal structure, at • (2013) Ognyan Oreshkov1;2, Fabio Costa1, Cˇ aslav Brukner1;3, Quantum correlations with no causal order, • (2018) Marcus Schmieke, Kränzlin, 17 July 2018 These articles are in this book: Reality and its Structure - Essays in Fundamentality, Ricki Bliss and Graham Priest (2018), -/- Gabriel Oak Rabin (2018) Grounding Orthodoxy and the Layered Conception Daniel Nolan (2018) Cosmic Loops Naomi Thompson (2018) Metaphysical Interdependence, Epistemic Coherentism, and Tuomas E. Tahko (2018) Holistic Explanation Fundamentality and Ontological Minimality Matteo Morganti (2018) The Structure of Physical Reality Beyond Foundationalism Nathan Wildman (2018) On Shaky Ground? Exploring the Contingent Fundamentality Thesis -/- April 2019 (2015) M. Ringbauer1;2, B. Du_us1;2, C. Branciard1;3, E. G. Cavalcanti4, A. G. White1;2 & A. Fedrizzi: “Measurements on the reality of the wavefunction” -/- June 2019 Timothy Morton (2013), Realist Magic: Objects, Ontology, Causality (2013) Open Humanities Press Ian Bogost, Alien Phenomenology or, What It’s Like to Be a Thing (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012), 1–34 “Ian Bogost thinks objects as units”: Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2008) in Timothy Morton 2013, Realist Magic: Objects, Ontology, Causality (2013) OPEN HUMANITIES PRESS (I have not read Bogost yet, but in Morton’s book, I found UNBELIEVABLE similarity between Bogost’s main ideas and my EDWs ideas!!) -/- [Obviously, there are other “specialists” that published UNBELIEVABLE similar ideas to my ideas but I have not discovered them yet…] -/- . (shrink)

ABSTRACT: Abilify MyCite was granted regulatory approval in 2017, becoming the world’s first “smart pill” that could digitally track whether patients had taken their medication. The new technology was introduced as one that had gained the support of patients and ethicists alike, and could contribute to solving the widespread and costly problem of patient nonadherence. Here, we offer an in-depth exploration of this narrative, through an examination of the origins and development of Abilify, the drug that would later become MyCite. (...) This history illuminates how an antipsychotic can become a top-selling drug and maintain its blockbuster status for more than a decade. It also provides a detailed case study for how knowledge is constructed within the logic of biomedical capitalism, providing impetus to reexamine claims regarding how MyCite addresses patient nonadherence, engenders patient support, and is ethicist-approved. (shrink)

Many of those memorialized around us in statues are wrongdoers, and so we are often called to consider whether we should take down those statues. Some of those statutes are memorialized for reasons now taken to be wrong; others are memorialized not for but rather despite their wrongdoing. How should we consider those latter cases? One tempting analysis suggests that we need only consider whether the wrongdoing was sufficiently transgressive. In this article, however, I reject that constrained focus. Instead, these (...) cases have as much to do with us, our priorities, and what those priorities should be as they have to do with the particulars of the lives of the subjects of the statues. Recognizing the central role that our priorities play in blame and condemnation better captures the contours of the debate about statue removal than any categorical rule about types of wrongs. (shrink)

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, shortages of scarce healthcare resources consistently presented significant moral and practical challenges. While the importance of vaccines as a key pharmaceutical intervention to stem pandemic scarcity was widely publicized, a sizable proportion of the population chose not to vaccinate. In response, some have defended the use of vaccination status as a criterion for the allocation of scarce medical resources. In this paper, we critically interpret this burgeoning literature, and describe a framework for thinking about vaccine-sensitive resource (...) allocation using the values of responsibility, reciprocity, and justice. Although our aim here is not to defend a single view of vaccine-sensitive resource allocation, we believe that attending critically with the diversity of arguments in favor (and against) vaccine-sensitivity reveals a number of questions that a vaccine-sensitive approach to allocation should answer in future pandemics. (shrink)

This chapter provides an introduction to higher-order metaphysics as well as to the contributions to this volume. We discuss five topics, corresponding to the five parts of this volume, and summarize the contributions to each part. First, we motivate the usefulness of higher-order quantification in metaphysics using a number of examples, and discuss the question of how such quantifiers should be interpreted. We provide a brief introduction to the most common forms of higher-order logics used in metaphysics, and indicate a (...) number of questions which can be raised in such systems using logical vocabulary alone. Using a further example, we return to applications of higher-order logics in metaphysics. We also mention key developments in the history of higher-order logic as it pertains to metaphysics. Finally, we mention certain arguments which have been raised against the use of higher-order logic, and some ways of responding to them. (shrink)

In “On the Teachings of Gotama Buddha” (1925) and “Socrates-Buddha” (1926), Edmund Husserl claims that the Buddha achieves a transcendental view of consciousness by performing the epoché. Yet, states Husserl, the Buddha fails to develop a purely theoretical and universal science of consciousness, i.e., phenomenology, because his purely practical goal of Nibbāna limits knowledge of consciousness. I evaluate Husserl’s claims by examining the Buddha’s Majjhima Nikāya. I argue that Husserl correctly identifies an epoché and transcendental viewpoint in the Buddha’s teachings. (...) However, I contend that Husserl’s distinction between pure theory and pure praxis leads him to misconstrue the function of the Buddha’s epoché, the extent of knowledge that the Buddha gains from the transcendental viewpoint, and the nature of Nibbāna. I finally suggest that the Buddha presents a way of studying consciousness that is a way of life, meaning that any distinction between pure theory and pure praxis is dissolved. (shrink)

The general concept of a trope – that of a non-shareable character-grounder – admits of a distinction between modifier tropes and module tropes. Roughly, a module trope is self-exemplifying whereas a modifier trope is not. This distinction has wide-ranging implications. Modifier tropes are uniquely eligible to be powers and fundamental determinables, whereas module tropes are uniquely eligible to play a direct role in perception and causation. Moreover, each type of trope theory faces unique challenges concerning character- grounding. Modifier trope theory (...) faces challenges concerning the inscrutability of predication and the incompatibility with bundle theory, whereas module trope theory faces challenges concerning character overdetermination and a collapse into austere nominalism. These differences indicate that the modifier/module distinction divides the advantages of general trope theory and thus presents the trope theorist with a pivotal choice. (shrink)

Nepal has a diverse ethnic population, some of whom have indigenous knowledge. Their sociocultural knowledge has largely influenced their daily environmental sustainability practices as they highly respect Mother Nature. However, these days, in the name of modernization, people have slowly embraced Western culture and values by adding a disastrous footprint on the earth. They started to ignore the uniqueness of their indigenous knowledge, which prioritizes sustainability. Hence, this paper focuses on viewing indigenous knowledge as ecopreneurship and developing ecopreneurship as an (...) innovative pedagogy for sustainable development. This paper applies action research to intervene in the current pedagogical practice to introduce ecopreneurship as an innovative pedagogy. The participants of this research are the teachers of grade eight of a private school from Lalitpur. This paper concludes that when students explore their indigenous knowledge, it creates an attachment to their indigenous know-how. They learn to value their ancestors’ knowledge for their contribution to ecology, sustainability, and self-dependence. Furthermore, ecopreneurship enables their learning to be authentic and meaningful through their active involvement in producing eco-friendly material, which they showcased at the fair and motivated them to think and act as ecopreneurs for sustainable development. (shrink)

Public reason liberals expect individuals to have justificatory reasons for their views of certain political issues. This paper considers how groups can, and whether they should, give collective public reasons for their political decisions. A problem is that aggregating individuals’ consistent judgments on reasons and a decision can produce inconsistent collective judgments. The group will then fail to give a reason for its decision. The paper considers various solutions to this problem and defends a deliberative procedure by showing how it (...) incentivizes information sharing and leads to outcomes most acceptable to the group members. (shrink)

Various philosophers authors have argued—on the basis of powerful examples—that we can have compelling moral or practical reasons to believe, even when the evidence suggests otherwise. This paper explores an alternative story, which still aims to respect widely shared intuitions about the motivating examples. Specifically, the paper proposes that what is at stake in these cases is not belief, but rather acceptance—an attitude classically characterized as taking a proposition as a premise in practical deliberation and action. I suggest that acceptance’s (...) theoretical usefulness in the ethics of belief has been hidden by its psychological obscurity. I thus aim to develop an empirically adequate and mechanistically specific psychological profile of acceptance. I characterize acceptance as centrally involving a cognitive gating function, in which we prevent a target belief state from having its characteristic downstream effects on reasoning, cognition, and action, and restructure those downstream processes. I then argue that there is substantial empirical support for the existence of the cognitive mechanisms needed to instantiate this view, coming from the science of emotion regulation. I argue that acceptance involves deploying the same mechanisms used in emotional response modulation to belief states: acceptance is doxastic response modulation. I then propose that having a better understanding of the psychological profile of acceptance leaves us better positioned to appreciate its potential usefulness for making progress on various puzzles within the ethics of belief. (shrink)

In deciding whether to forgive, we often focus on the wrongdoer, looking for an apology or a change of ways. However, to fully consider whether to forgive, we need to expand our focus from the wrongdoer and their wrongdoing, and we need to consider who we are, what we care about, and what we want to care about. The difference between blame and forgiveness is, at bottom, a difference in priorities. When we blame, we prioritize the wrong, and when we (...) forgive, we shift our priorities away from the wrong. Recognizing this essential role for priorities in forgiveness allows us to address a thorny puzzle in thinking about forgiveness: how is it that forgiveness can be both principled and elective? If there is sufficient reason to forgive, as will sometimes be the case because forgiveness is principled, how can it be reasonable to withhold forgiveness? Recognizing that forgiveness is a shift in our priorities dissolves this apparent tension between forgiveness being principled and forgiveness being elective. (shrink)

Bu [makalede], nihai olarak kesin bir sonucu olduğunu iddia etmemekle birlikte, ateizm için geliştirebileceğim en iyi argümanı öne sürmeye çalışacağım ve ortaya koyacağım şeyin, Tanrı’nın varlığına dair yürütülen tartışmaların herhangi bir kısmındaki, en iyi argüman olduğunu iddia edeceğim.

Can groups really be agents or is group agency just a fiction? Christian List and Philip Pettit argue influentially for group-agent realism by showing how certain groups form and act on attitudes in ways they take to be unexplainable at the level of the individual agents constituting them. Group agency is therefore considered not a fiction or a metaphor but a reality we must account for in explanations of certain social phenomena. In this paper, I challenge this defence of group-agent (...) realism by showing how it is undermined by individual-level analysis of how individuals interact within groups. While group agency can be a useful fiction, real agents are at the individual level, not the collective level. (shrink)

Digital phenotyping will potentially enable earlier detection and prediction of mental illness by monitoring human interaction with and through digital devices. Notwithstanding its promises, it is certain that a person’s digital phenotype will at times be at odds with their first-person testimony of their psychological states. In this paper, we argue that there are features of digital phenotyping in the context of psychiatry which have the potential to exacerbate the tendency to dismiss patients’ testimony and treatment preferences, which can be (...) instances of epistemic injustice. We first explain what epistemic injustice is, and why it is argued to be an extensive problem in health and disability settings. We then explain why epistemic injustice is more likely to apply with even greater force in psychiatric contexts, and especially where digital phenotyping may be involved. Finally, we offer some tentative suggestions of how epistemic injustice can be minimised in digital psychiatry. (shrink)

After briefly outlining the fine-tuning argument (FTA), I explain how it relies crucially on the claim that it is not improbable that God would design a fine-tuned universe. Against this premise stands the divine psychology objection: the contention that the probability that God would design a fine-tuned universe is inscrutable. I explore three strategies for meeting this objection: (i) denying that the FTA requires any claims about divine psychology in the first place, (ii) defining the motivation and intention to design (...) a fine-tuned universe into the theistic hypothesis, and (iii) providing arguments that the relevant probability is not terribly low. While I reject the first two, I conclude, in line with the third, that considerations about life's objective value establish that it is not absurdly improbable that God would design a fine-tuned universe, whether one regards the FTA as an inference merely to a cosmic designer, or to theism proper. Accordingly, the divine psychology objection fails. (shrink)

This volume offers a collection of in-depth explorations of pragmatism as a framework for discussions in philosophy of science and metaphysics. Each chapter involves explicit reflection on what it means to be pragmatist, and how to use pragmatism as a guiding framework in addressing topics such as realism, unification, fundamentality, truth, laws, reduction, and more. -/- .

There is a global shortage of organs for transplantation and despite many governments making significant changes to their organ donation systems, there are not enough kidneys available to meet the demand. This has led scientists and clinicians to explore alternative means of meeting this organ shortfall. One of the alternatives to human organ transplantation is xenotransplantation, which is the transplantation of organs, tissues, or cells between different species. The resurgence of interest in xenotransplantation and recent scientific breakthroughs suggest that genetically-engineered (...) pigs may soon present a realistic alternative as sources of kidneys for clinical transplantation. It is therefore important for nurses and allied health professionals to understand what is involved in xenotransplantation and its future implications for their clinical practices. First, we explore the insufficiency of different organ donation systems to meet the kidney shortage. Second, we provide a background and a summary of the progress made so far in xenotransplantation research. Third, we discuss some of the scientific, technological, ethical, and economic issues associated with xenotransplantation. Finally, we summarise the literature on the attitudes of healthcare professionals toward xenotransplantation. (shrink)

COTENT -/- (second April 2019) Why so many people (from so many countries/domains/on so many topics) have already plagiarized my ideas? (Gabriel Vacariu) -/- Some preliminary comments Introduction: The EDWs perspective in my article from 2005 and my book from 2008 -/- I. PHYSICS, COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE, PHILOSOPHY (‘REBORN DINOSAURS’ ) • (2016) Did Sean Carroll’s ideas (California Institute of Technology, USA) plagiarize my ideas (2002-2010) (within the EDWs framework)? • (2016) Frank Wilczek’s ideas (Nobel Prize in Physics) (Philosophy of Mind (...) and Quantum Mechanics) • (2017-2019 - NEW March 2019) Carlo Rovelli’s ideas (Italy) in three books (2015, 2017) to my ideas (2002-2008) + commentary February 2018! • (2016) Kastner + (2017) R. E. Kastner, Stuart Kauffman, Michael Epperson • (2017) A trick: Lee Smolin’s ideas (2017) and my ideas (2002-2008) • (May 2018) ‘Thus spoke Zarathustra!’ - A fairy-tale with Eugen Ionesco and the Idiot about Nothingness -/- II. PHYSICS • (2011) Radu Ionicioiu (Physics, University of Bucharest, Romania) and Daniel R. Terno (Physics, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia) • (2013) Côté B. Gilbert (Oontario, Canada) • (2015) Pikovski Igor, Zych Magdalena, Costa Fabio, and Brukner Časlav’s ideas and my ideas (2006-2008) (Quantum Mechanics) • (2015) Elisabetta Caffau’s ideas (Center for Astronomy at the University of Heidelberg and the Paris Observatory) and my ideas (2011, 2014) • (2015) Did Wolfram Schommers (University of Texas at Arlington, USA & Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany) (Physics) • (2015) "Dark Matter May be 'Another Dimension' - Or Even a Major Galactic Transport System" January 22, 2015 • (2016) Dylan H. Mahler, Lee Rozema, Kent Fisher, Lydia Vermeyden, Kevin J. Resch, Howard M. Wiseman, and Aephraim Steinberg’s ideas (USA) • (2016) Bill Poirier’s ‘Many Interacting Worlds’ (Quantum Mechanics) • (2016 or Adam Frank’s ideas (University of Rochester in New York , USA) • (2017, 2017) Did Sebastian de Haro (HPS, Cambridge, UK) plagiarize my ideas (2002-2008) • (2017) Laura Condiotto’s ideas and my ideas (2002-2008) • (2016) Hugo F. Alrøe and Egon Noe’s (Department of Agroecology, Aarhus University, Denmark) ideas (USA) • (2017) Federico Zalamea’s ideas and my ideas • (2018) Peter J. Lewis’s ideas (2018) and my ideas (2002-2008) • (2018) Timothy Hollowood, ‘Classical from Quantum’, [arXiv:1803.04700v1 [quant-ph] 13 March 2018] • (2018) Mario Hubert and Davide Romano, ‘The Wave-Function as a Multi-Field’ -/- III. COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF MIND • (2011-2014) Did Georg Northoff (Psychoanalysis, Institute of Mental Health) plagiarize my ideas (2002-2008)? • (2011) Kalina Diego Cosmelli, Legrand Dorothée and Thompson Evan’s ideas (USA) and my ideas (Cognitive Neuroscience) • (2015) Did David Ludwig (Philosophy, University of Amsterdam) plagiarize many of my ideas? (Philosophy (of Mind) • (2016) Neil D. Theise (Department of Pathology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, USA) and Kafatos C. Menas (Department of Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, USA) • David Bourget (2018) (Director, Centre for Digital Philosophy, Western University (or University of Western Ontario) + Chalmers • (2016) Dan Siegel’s ideas (Mindsight Institute, USA) -/- IV. Philosophy (of science) • (2010) Alexey Alyushin (Moscow, Russia) • (2013 + 2017) Did Markus Gabriel (Bonn University) • (2013) Andrew Newman’s ideas (University of Nebraska, at Omaha, USA) • (2016) Did Tahko E. Tuomas (University of Helsinki, Finland) plagiarize my ideas? + Tahko E. Tuomas (‘The Epistemology of Essence’) • (2017) Jani Hakkarainen (University of Tampere, Finland) + (2017) Markku Keinänen, Antti Keskinen & Jani Hakkarainen • (2017) Dean Rickles’s ideas (HPS, Univ. of Sydney) • (2017) Did Dirk K. F. Meijer and Hans J. H. Geesink (University of Groningen, Netherlands • (2018) Jason Winning’s ideas (2018) • (2018) David Mark Kovacs (Lecturer of philosophy at Tel Aviv University) -/- Conclusion Bibliography -/- July 2018 • Oreste M. Fiocco • Baptiste Le Bihan (University of Geneva, forthcoming) • Antonella Mallozzi (The Graduate Center – CUNY, forthcoming in Synthese, penultimate draft) • Erik C. Banks (Wright State University, 2014) • Sami Pihlström (2009) • Katherin Koslicki’s ideas (2008) -/- November 2018 • Maurizio Ferraris (2014/2012) Manifesto of New Realism • Graham Harman (2017) : Object-Oriented Ontology: -/- January 2019 • Philip Ball (2018): “Why everything you thought you knew about quantum physics is different” • Gerhard Grössing “Vacuum landscaping: cause of nonlocal influences without signaling” • Anne Sophie Meincke (November 2018) The Disappearance of Change (IJPS) • Baptiste Le Bihana (University of Geneva) and James Read (Oxford Univ.) “Duality and Ontology” • Baptiste Le Bihan (University of Geneva): “Space Emergence in Contemporary Physics: • Alexander Alexandrovich Antonov (2016) -/- February 2019 • James Barham (2019): “The Reality of Purpose and the Reform of Naturalism” • Giorgio Lando (2017) Mereology - A Philosophical Introduction, Bloomsbury Academic • (2018) Albrecht von M¨uller • Elias Zafiris, Concept and Formalization of Constellatory Self-Unfolding • (2019) Flaminia Giacomini, Esteban Castro-Ruiz, & Časlav Brukner • (2019) Valia Allori, “Scientific Realism without the Wave-Function: An Example of Naturalized Quantum Metaphysics” • (2018) Paulo De Jesus “Thinking through enactive agency: • (2016) TIMOTHY MORTON, For a Logic of Future Coexistence, (Columbia University Press) • (2017) Andrew Cooper, Two directions for teleology: -/- March 2019 • (2019) Massimiliano Proietti,1 Alexander Pickston,1 Francesco Graffitti,1 Peter Barrow,1 Dmytro Kundys,1 Cyril Branciard,2 Martin Ringbauer,1, 3 and Alessandro Fedrizzi1: (2019) “Experimental rejection of observer-independence in the quantum world” • (2015) Cˇaslav Brukner On the quantum measurement problem, • (2015) Mateus Araújo, Cyril Branciard, Fabio Costa, Adrien Feix, Christina Giarmatzi, Časlav Brukner, Witnessing causal nonseparability, • (2008 + 2013) Giulio Chiribella,∗ Giacomo Mauro D’Ariano,† and Paolo Perinotti‡ QUIT Group, Dipartimento di Fisica “A. Volta” and INFM, via Bassi 6, 27100 Pavia, Italy§ (Dated: October 22, 2018): Transforming quantum operations: quantum supermaps (22 Oct 2008) + Giulio Chiribella,1, ∗ Giacomo Mauro D’Ariano,2, † Paolo Perinotti,2, ‡ and Benoit Valiron3, § (2013), Quantum computations without definite causal structure, • (2013) Ognyan Oreshkov1;2, Fabio Costa1, Cˇ aslav Brukner1;3, Quantum correlations • (2018) Marcus Schmieke, Kränzlin, 17 July 2018, “Orthogonal Complementarity -/- April 2019 These articles are in this book: Reality and its Structure - Essays in Fundamentality, Ricki Bliss and Graham Priest (2018), Oxford Univ Press -/- Gabriel Oak Rabin (2018) Grounding Orthodoxy and the Layered Conception Daniel Nolan (2018) Cosmic Loops Naomi Thompson (2018) Metaphysical Interdependence, Epistemic Coherentism, and Tuomas E. Tahko (2018) Holistic Explanation Fundamentality and Ontological Minimality Matteo Morganti (2018) The Structure of Physical Reality Beyond Foundationalism Nathan Wildman (2018) On Shaky Ground? Exploring the Contingent Fundamentality Thesis -/- (2015) M. Ringbauer, B. Duffus, C. Branciard1;3, E. G. Cavalcanti4, A. G. White1;2 & A. Fedrizzi: “Measurements on the reality of the wavefunction” . (shrink)

Francis Ysidro Edgeworth’s unduly neglected monograph New and Old Methods of Ethics (1877) advances a highly sophisticated and mathematized account of social well-being in the utilitarian tradition of his 19th-century contemporaries. This article illustrates how his usage of the ‘calculus of variations’ was combined with findings from empirical psychology and economic theory to construct a consequentialist axiological framework. A conclusion is drawn that Edgeworth is a methodological predecessor to several important methods, ideas, and issues that continue to be discussed in (...) contemporary social well-being studies. (shrink)

Kant’s commitment to universalism has been called into question since increasing attention has been paid to his work on race in the last 20 years. This worry can easily be applied to Kant’s work on education: when Kant describes education as allowing humanity to fulfill its Bestimmung (vocation), scholars might reasonably conclude that such a claim only applies certain racial groups. Yet Salomo Friedlaender claims that if Kant’s moral theory is taught to children, “Every person is valued according to her (...) morality and no longer, as in our crude days, according to ‘race’ or national and religious affiliation.” This interpretation of Kant might strike some contemporary Kant scholars as naïvely optimistic, but neo-Kantians were well aware of Kant’s racial claims. By examining how neo-Kantians read Kant’s work on race, I argue that Friedlaender’s interpretation provides a way of reading an unracialized Bestimmung in the pedagogy. (shrink)

Marine ecosystems are under increasing pressure from human activity, yet successful management relies on knowledge. The evidence-based policy (EBP) approach has been promoted on the grounds that it provides greater transparency and consistency by relying on ‘high quality’ information. However, EBP also creates epistemic responsibilities. Decision-making where limited or no empirical evidence exists, such as is often the case in marine systems, creates epistemic obligations for new information acquisition. We argue that philosophical approaches can inform the science-policy interface. Using marine (...) biosecurity examples, we specifically examine the epistemic challenges in the acquisition and acceptance of evidence to inform policy, discussing epistemic due care and biases in consideration of evidence. (shrink)

The idea of natural law has a long history. It has had different meanings for different people and continues to occupy intellectual engagements as to the connotations of the expression ‘natural law’ in diverse and different contexts. This requires delving deep into the hoarypast and analyzing the gradual development of the idea of natural law through the ages. Understanding natural law necessitates exploring its relation with positive law, its application, and, notably, the import of the word ‘natural’ in the expression (...) ‘natural law’. Be that as it may, there is no denying the fact that there is an element of exclusivity in natural law that has kept it alive and going across generations. Even some of the jurists who adhered to the principles and tenets of legal positivism have shown an inclination towards the principles of natural law, especially as regards the relation between law and morality. It has survived the tests of time. The present paper seeks to explicate the various dimensions of natural law and explore its growth application. (shrink)

By the lights of a central logical positivist thesis in modal epistemology, for every necessary truth that we know, we know it a priori and for every contingent truth that we know, we know it a posteriori. Kripke attacks on both flanks, arguing that we know necessary a posteriori truths and that we probably know contingent a priori truths. In a reflection of Kripke's confidence in his own arguments, the first of these Kripkean claims is far more widely accepted than (...) the second. Contrary to received opinion, the paper argues, the considerations Kripke adduces concerning truths purported to be necessary a posteriori do not disprove the logical positivist thesis that necessary truth and a priori truth are co-extensive. (shrink)

Current methods of operationalizing concepts of misinformation in machine learning are often problematic given idiosyncrasies in their success conditions compared to other models employed in the natural and social sciences. The intrinsic value-ladenness of misinformation and the dynamic relationship between citizens' and social scientists' concepts of misinformation jointly suggest that both the construct legitimacy and the construct validity of these models needs to be assessed via more democratic criteria than has previously been recognized.

Recent philosophy has seen a resurgence of the realist view of sensible qualities such as colour. The view holds that experienced qualities are properties of the objects in the physical environment, not mentally instantiated properties like qualia or merely intentional, illusory ones. Some suggest that this move rids us of the explanatory gap between physical properties and the qualitative features of consciousness. Others say it just relocates the problem of qualities to physical objects in the environment, given that such qualities (...) cannot be derived from the non-qualitative properties of objects, and it does not resolve the problem of consciousness either. I argue that such an outcome is welcome: if the physical world is full of explanatory gaps, then the mind–body explanatory gap is not so special. Moreover, the explanatory gaps regarding qualities of objects are less puzzling than the brain-qualia gap. In order to counter the usual worries concerning realism about objective qualities, I introduce ‘imperfect realism’ as an alternative to colour pluralism and complex reductionism, which accommodates realism in the face of widespread perceptual error. I conclude with a discussion of how this ‘multiple-gaps view’ sits better with a naturalistic framework compared to the Galilean-Cartesian account of qualities. (shrink)

The objective of the paper is to implement and validate diagnosis in the medical field via refined neutrosophic fuzzy logic (RNFL). As such, we have proposed a Max-Min composition (MMC) method in RNFL. This method deals with the diagnosis under certain constraints like uncertainty and indeterminacy. Further, we have considered the diagnosis problems to validate the sensitivity analysis of the novel multi attribute decision-making technique. Finally, we gave the graphical representations and compared the obtained results with other existing measures in (...) refined neutrosophic fuzzy sets. (shrink)

This article introduces the notion of duplex elements of the finite rings and corresponding neutrosophic rings. The authors establish duplex ring Dup(R) and neutrosophic duplex ring Dup(R)I)) by way of various illustrations. The tables of different duplicities are constructed to reveal the comparison between rings Dup(Zn), Dup(Dup(Zn)) and Dup(Dup(Dup(Zn ))) for the cyclic ring Zn . The proposed duplicity structures have several algebraic systems with dissimilar consequences. Author’s characterize finite rings with R + R is different from the duplex ring (...) Dup(R). However, this characterization supports that R + R = Dup(R) for some well known rings, namely zero rings and finite fields. (shrink)

The article argues against attempts to combine ontological realism about modality with the rejection of modal rationalism and it suggests that modal realism requires modal rationalism. /// El artículo da argumentos en contra de que se intente combinar el realismo ontológico sobre la modalidad con el rechazo del racionalismo modal y sugiere que el realismo modal exige racionalismo modal.

This chapter discusses ontological commitment to properties, understood as ontological correlates of predicates. We examine the issue in four metaontological settings, beginning with an influential Quinean paradigm on which ontology concerns what there is. We argue that this naturally but not inevitably avoids ontological commitment to properties. Our remaining three settings correspond to the most prominent departures from the Quinean paradigm. Firstly, we enrich the Quinean paradigm with a primitive, non-quantificational notion of existence. Ontology then concerns what exists. We argue (...) that this strengthens the Quinean case against ontological commitment to properties while also newly distinguishing between stronger and weaker forms of nominalism. Secondly, we enrich the Quinean paradigm with the ideology of fundamentality. Ontology then centrally concerns what’s fundamental. We argue that this leaves ontological commitment to properties wide open although Bradleyan regress threatens. Thirdly, we enrich the Quinean paradigm with primitive higher-order quantifiers. Ontology then expands to concern what there higher-order is and what there first-order is. We argue that this naturally but not inevitably incurs ontological commitment to properties. (shrink)

This review essay assesses Michael Jackson’s ongoing project of staging an encounter between anthropology and philosophy in two books: Lifeworlds (2013) and As Wide as the World Is Wise (2016). Considering his philosophical enrichment of ethnographic theory and method, this essay addresses foundational questions about the prospects and practices of interdisciplinary engagement. It also suggests future avenues for continued dialogue between philosophy and anthropology.

The main objective of my dissertation is twofold: (i) to investigate how the problem of moral motivation occurs in Kant’s texts, and (ii) to examine how Kant’s account of moral feeling serves as an appropriate solution to it. First, I argue that the problem of moral motivation occurs in Kant’s texts as a skeptical problem concerning the motivational efficacy of practical reason. My view that this problem is integral to Kant’s main ethical project goes against a scholarly trend that dismisses (...) the philosophical significance of motivational skepticism in Kant’s moral theory. Second, I argue that Kant develops a peculiar notion of moral feeling in his Critique of Practical Reason primarily to resolve the problem of motivational skepticism about pure practical reason. In doing so, I regard the notion of moral feeling as an essential component of both Kant’s moral motivational structure and his justification of the moral law. This inclusion of moral feeling makes my interpretation a better alternative not only to standard transcendental interpretations of Kant’s account of moral motivation, but also to other kinds of interpretations proposed in the recent literature. (shrink)

Attention is a finite, morally significant good. Attention is a precondition for healthy human relationships, and its absence can wrong others by cutting them off from vital human goods. At the same time, human persons have limited powers of attention. And so the question arises, when does someone legitimately command my attention? In Conversational Pressure, Sanford Goldberg argues that the competent speaker has a default entitlement to normatively expect the addressee to attend, even if only for a short while. If (...) the addressee fails to attend, the speaker is wronged. I argue that the conditions under which attention is owed to another are more restricted than Goldberg allows, and are sensitive to context and standing. (shrink)

This article explores the philosophical concept of akrasia, also known as weakness of will, and demonstrates its relevance to clinical practice. In particular, it challenges an implicit notion of control over one’s actions that might impede recovery from substance misuse. Reflecting on three fictional case vignettes, we show how philosophical work on akrasia helps avoid this potentially harmful notion of control by supporting a holistic engagement with people for whom substance misuse is a problem. We argue that such engagement enhances (...) their prospects of recovery by focusing on agency over time, as opposed to individual lapses. (shrink)

The following proposes an interpretation of Husserl's sustained exegetical commentary on Leibniz's metaphysics from 1922 (Hua XIV 298300), with reference to textual and historical resources. The leading historical index for the following interpretation is a minor contribution to Leibniz scholarship from 1917 by Dietrich Mahnke, a work with which Husserl was intimately familiar. Textual references are to works by Husserl which would have been available to Mahnke- i.e., the Logische Untersuchungen and Ideen—I as well as relevant notes and lectures from (...) the period ni question. Husserl's brief manuscript from 1922, I claim, can be read as a critique of the Mahnke interpretation that attempts to provide a more expansive and thorough-going phenomenological explication of Leibniz' doctrine of universal harmony. Thereby, Husserl offers some important clues as to how he himself understands his own uses of the terms "monad" and "monadology." The phenomenological reformation of Leibnizian Monadology must be understood as a methodological reconception with internal reference to Husserl's own theory of intersubjectivity. (shrink)

Apology is arguably the central act of the reparative work required after wrongdoing. Claudia Card’s (1940-2015) analysis of complicity in collectively perpetrated evils moves one to ask whether apology ought to be requested of persons culpably complicit in institutional evils. To better appreciate the benefits of and barriers to apologies offered by culpably complicit wrongdoers, this article examines doctors’ complicity in a practice that meets Card’s definition of an evil, namely, the non-medically necessary, nonconsensual “normalizing” interventions performed on babies born (...) with intersex anatomies. It argues that in this instance, the complicity of doctors is culpable on Card’s terms, and that their culpable complicity grounds rightful demands for them to apologize. (shrink)

Human-wildlife interactions frequently lead to conflicts – about the fair use of natural resources, for example. Various principled accounts have been proposed to resolve such interspecies conflicts. However, the existing frameworks are often inadequate to the complexities of real-life scenarios. In particular, they frequently fail because they do not adequately take account of the qualitative importance of individual interests, their relative importance, and the number of individuals affected. This article presents a limited aggregation account designed to overcome these shortcomings and (...) thus to facilitate decision-making in real-world human-wildlife conflicts. (shrink)

Human and animal interests are often in conflict. In many situations, however, it is unclear how to evaluate and weigh competing human and animal interests, as the satisfaction of the interests of one group often inevitably occurs at the expense of those of the other group. Human-animal conflicts of this kind give rise to ethical questions. If animals count morally for their own sake, then we must ask in which cases the satisfaction or frustration of the interests of humans and (...) animals in conflict situations is justified or unjustified from an ethical perspective. In this article, we argue that limited aggregation accounts represent a promising means for resolving interspecies conflicts. The reason for this is that they can appropriately consider the qualitative relevance of interests, their relative importance to each other, and the number of individuals affected. For our argument, we start from the premise that animals count morally for their own sake, albeit to a lesser extent than humans. That is, we accept the view that animals may be used, for example, as a source of food or in animal research. However, as we will show, many basic interests of animals are sufficiently similar to human interests and can thus be compared to them. Hence, they ought to be aggregated in cases of conflict with human interests. We illustrate our account and its practical implications with the real-world example of a human-animal conflict during the outbreak of a zoonotic disease among farmed animals. We conclude that, in many cases, animal interests ought to be given more importance than they currently receive, which includes distributing the burdens and risks of farming practices more fairly. (shrink)