There has been a growing concern over establishing norms that ensure the ethically acceptable and scientifically sound conduct of clinical trials. Among the leading norms internationally are the World Medical Association's Declaration of Helsinki, guidelines by the Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences, the International Conference on Harmonization's standards for industry, and the CONSORT group's reporting norms, in addition to the influential U.S. Federal Common Rule, Food and Drug Administration's body of regulations, and information sheets by the Department of (...) Health and Human Services. There are also many norms published at more local levels by official agencies and professional groups.Any account of international standards should cover both scientific and ethical norms at once – the two are conceptually intertwined. Recent sources recognize that “[s]cientifically unsound research on human subjects is unethical in that it exposes research subjects to risks without possible benefit.”. (shrink)

Guided by Hegel’s claim that rights are actualized only in the ethical life of the modern state, and that the “abstract spirit of Kant’s cosmopolitanism” is pervasive in Carol Gould’s Globalizing Democracy and Human Rights, Schaff raises a variety of moral, political, and ontological objections to her account of rights. He argues that if we embrace with Gould the idea that people have rights in abstraction, in political communities where they are not practically realized, we unwittingly play into the (...) hands of imperialism cloaked in human rights language—as exemplified by the rhetoric justifying recent U.S. interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. (shrink)

This is the first in a series of papers developing a theory of quantum gravity that is consistent with the PF interpretation of quantum mechanics. "Key Features: Reconciles quantum theory, general relativity, and the PF interpretation in a common framework...".

If the sun were to suddenly go out we wouldn't know it for 8 minutes. But if Alice is sitting in the middle of the sun and measures one of a pair of entangled particles and we measure the other one, what direction she measures her particle in has instantaneous effects on the one we measure. This is resolved in the Presentist Fragmentalist interpretation of QM.

It is often thought the relativity of simultaneity is inconsistent with presentism. This would be troubling as it conflicts with common sense and—arguably—the empirical data. This note gives a novel fragmentalist-presentist theory that allows for the (non-trivial) relativity of simultaneity. A detailed account of the canonical moving train argument is considered. Alice, standing at the train station, forms her own ontological fragment, in which Bob’s frame of reference, given by the moving train, is modified by the Lorentz transformations. On the (...) other hand, Bob, in the train, forms his own ontological fragment from which Alice’s space and time are modified by the corresponding Lorentz transformations. Each fragment accommodates a unique present moment but does not contain information about the unique present moment of another fragment. This allows for a ‘universal’ present moment that extends throughout space, but only from the perspective of each fragment. The relativity of simultaneity is, as it were, ‘relativised’ to each fragment. This is related to the idea that, roughly speaking, the time of relativity is McTaggart’s (1908) B-series (earlier times to later times) and the time of quantum mechanics is a (fragmentalist) A-series (future/present/past), where these two related series characterize one dimension of time. (shrink)

1. First section notes: subtraction -/- Evidently -/- (1) black – black = empty-set -/- because anything minus itself is the empty set, but -/- (2) █ – █ = █ + █ -/- because there are two instances of black on the left and two instances of black on the right...

The motivation comes from the analogy (equivalence?) of the A-series to ontologically private qualia in Dualism. This leads to the proposal that two quantum systems, no matter how small, mutually observe each other when and only when they come to share the same A-series. McTaggart's A-series and B-series can be varied independently so they cannot be the same temporal variable.

I suggest time flows at 1 B-series second per A-series second.

1. Schrodinger Equation, fragmentalism, total time T, Euclidean space 2. Does the A-series have the properties of qualia?

All the cards seem to be stacked against belief in immortality. Nonetheless, the resources of particular religious traditions may avail where generic philosophical solutions fall short. With attention to the boredom and narcissism critiques, intimations of deathlessness in Śāntideva's radical altruism, and recent Christian debates on the soul and the intermediate state, I propose two criteria for a coherent religion-specific belief in immortality: (1) the belief is supported by a fully realized religious tradition, (2) the belief satisfies the demand for (...) self-transcendence as well as for self-preservation. Where self-transcendence and self-preservation are kept in balance, and where the whole idea rests upon the lattice-work of a fully realized religious tradition, immortality is a fitting object of belief. Moreover, such belief is compatible with considerable speculative freedom concerning matter and spirit, body and soul, and personal identity over time. (shrink)

General Introduction: In [1] a Calculus of Qualia (CQ) was proposed. The key idea is that, for example, blackness is radically different than █. The former term, “blackness” refers to or is about a quale, whereas the latter term, “█” instantiates a quale in the reader’s mind and is non-referential; it does not even refer to itself. The meaning and behavior of these terms is radically different. All of philosophy, from Plato through Descartes through Chalmers, including hieroglyphics and emojis, used (...) referential terms up until CQ. This paper in this series of papers includes a relatively short but comprehensive discussion with the AI Claude 3.5 Sonnet on how the CQ impacts various theories of consciousness, including Materialism, Dualism, Idealism, and 14 others. (shrink)

General Introduction: In [1] a Calculus of Qualia (CQ) was proposed. The key idea is that, for example, blackness is radically different than █. The former term, “blackness” refers to or is about a quale, whereas the latter term, “█” instantiates a quale in the reader’s mind and is non-referential; it does not even refer to itself. The meaning and behavior of these terms is radically different. All of philosophy, from Plato through Descartes through Chalmers, including hieroglyphics and emojis, used (...) referential terms up until CQ. This paper in this series of papers addresses the question of why is there something rather than nothing, at length, and gives a radical new answer. It has to do with the fact in CQ that, while blackness is contingently possible, █ is necessarily actual, as it was in this sentence. (shrink)

Many researchers suppose that the forward direction of time as a consequence of increasing entropy. But the human brain, including the human brain with memories, and life in general, are regarded as pockets of decreasing entropy, so as to accommodate the continual addition of memories and abilities. But then humans and life in general should see time going ‘backward’ in some sense. But we do not. Therefore, time is not entropic in origin. -/- The purpose of this note is to (...) bring attention to this idea. (shrink)

There are extensive discussions of the 5D AdS metric that arises naturally from a metric that accounts for the A-series, the B-series, and x^a; black holes, including their information, entropy, temperature, energy, and energy density; the Big Bang; the finitude of singularities here; inflation; AdS/CFT and dS; symmetry groups of this theory of gravity not including and including those of the standard model, with evaluations of how integrated and how plausible they are; how the theory of quantum gravity here gives (...) general relativity in one limit and quantum mechanics in another limit; and much more. -/- Of particular interest is the physics based argument for the continuation of awareness after death, which starts on about page 196 and spans several pages. (shrink)

Some not quite random thoughts on the logic of qualia.

We start by asking the question of ‘why there is something rather than nothing’ and change this to the question of ‘what are the weakest assumptions for existence’ Eagle [1]. Then we give a kind of Fragmental Perspectivalism. Within this Fragmentalist interpretation of quantum mechanics (each quantum mechanical system forms a fragment) Merriam [2], it turns out McTaggart’s [3] A-series of time (the A-series is future to the present to the past) has a kind of perspectivalism. We then use (...) McTaggart’s A-series and the B-series (the B-series is earlier times to later times) of time to differentiate between how far in the past the big bang was vs. how much earlier than now the big bang was. In one example model, the former goes infinitely far into the past while the latter stays finitely earlier-than. In this model the number of quantum interactions per unit 4-volume goes up to infinity as the big bang is approached from the present epoch. (shrink)

We indicate how to construct a logic of qualia.

Application 1. The case against Materialism and Illusionism Application 2. Ineffability Application 3. Hard Problems Application 4. Knowledge Argument questions Application 5. Argument for A-theories of time Application 6. Possible qualia are necessary.

The first purpose of this series of articles is to introduce case studies on how current AI models can be used in the development of a possible theory of quantum gravity, their limitations, and the role the researcher has in steering the development in the right direction, even highlighting the errors, weaknesses and strengths of the whole process. The second is to introduce the new Presentist Fragmentalist ontology as a framework and use it for developing theories of quantum gravity and (...) speculate on achieving a TOE. We emphasize it is necessary for the researcher to check everything in these articles for themselves. While there are many good ideas in this series of papers, the AI is known to make even arithmetic and algebraic mistakes. To select just five apparently good ideas, there is a causal interaction tensor Cαβγδ(F1, F2) that encodes the causal relationship and the strength of the (possibly non-local) interaction between two fragments of reality (formed by each quantum system). There is a quantitative prediction for a testable table-top experiment. There is an explanation of how spacetime emerges from the fragments and their interactions. There is an explicit account of the double-slit experiment. And there is an explanation how this theory accommodates dark matter and dark energy simultaneously. We explore ideas, equations they lead to, concrete calculations, and give corrections along the way. While these are generally morally right within this framework they must be checked by the researcher. Given this caveat, we believe we have made significant progress with the PF interpretation in developing a theory of quantum gravity and pointing out a possible path to a TOE. (shrink)

Big Bang and the actual state of the universe; not information; entropic time is wrong; not discrete computation; 1-d topologies; QBism reconsidered; not Boltzmann brains; A-theories; the Big Bang and A-theories; not Boltzmann brains again.

The only processes that could correlate to awareness thatgo on after brain-death are quantum processes. These processes contain information. But in quantum mechanics information is never lost. Therefore this information goes on after death and the awareness will still be correlated to it. Therefore awareness goes on after death.

What's wrong with Copenhagen, GRW, Superdeterminism, QBism, Many-worlds, Bohmianism, and Retrocausality, and how theses differ from Presentist Fragmentalism.

This note gives 9 Temporal Knowledge Arguments and, also, makes a few observations about presentism.

I give three brief scientifically informed arguments that free will is causally efficacious over-and-above the efficaciousness of its physical substrate. (This is a second attempt at putting it up on PhilPapers--there seems to have been some problem with downloading the previous version.).

A mechanism for life after death is given.

Postscripts to McTaggart meets Schrodinger's Cat.

This brief note gives a modest argument that there may be states-of-affairs that require fewer (weaker) assumptions than the assumption or 'default state' of Nothingness. It is meant as an add-on to the paper "Existence and the Big Bang" and to work in concert with several other papers on PhilPapers. This is meant to modestly help the idea that the Big Bang could have happened in the first place.

Jackson (1982) introduced the Knowledge Argument to elucidate the phenomenal, interior aspects of experience. In 1908 McTaggart defined two series that characterize one dimension of time, the A-series and the B-series. The A-series is usually thought to be phenomenal Farr (2019), SEP (2018). Thus there is the possibility of giving a Knowledge Argument for time. One (informal) statement of the classical Knowledge Argument might be “Mary knows all the facts about color qualia but lives in a black-and-white room. Upon being (...) released into a colorful world, it would seem she learns something new.” The analogous Knowledge Argument for Time (KAT) would be “Nathan knows all the facts about time but lives in a B-series room. Upon being released into a world with both an A-series and a B-series it would seem he learns something new.” I give variations of the KAT based on various distinctions. I don’t give any particular proposed solutions to the Knowledge Arguments for Time. Rather, the point is to state the Arguments (or indicate how they may be stated). It may be hoped that these will help clarify some issues in the philosophy of time and lead to a cross-fertilization between the philosophy of time and the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

I give a reason we are almost certainly *not* in a simulation. I also consider what happens if two simulators simulate each other.

We motivate and develop a new theory of time and apply it to a few thought experiments in physics.

We give an argument for temporal A-theories based on the calculus of qualia.

More on McTaggart's AB-series in physics, with integrals.

"This self-consistent evolution of the fragments, their causal relationships, and their quantum properties is at the heart of the FCQG-SM framework, providing a unified description of quantum mechanics, general relativity, and the Standard Model.".

We give the derivation, as opposed to justification, of the Presentist Fragmentalist interpretation of quantum mechanics in perhaps its most basic form, and then several other considerations.

Abstract to Equations, Qualia, and Qualations -/- With regard to consciousness, we could write an equation B = black. But it is possible to rewrite this using a quale, namely, B = █. This latter equation might be called a ‘qualation’. It has the same meaning regardless of the physiology that apprehends it. This article argues a whole theory of qualations could be developed. Further, to a Dualist, it could be that a materialist is convinced by materialist arguments involving the (...) first equation, but it is unimaginable how this could ever be for a qualation. In view of the strong association of qualia with McTaggart’s A-series (future/present/past) a few notes on time are included. (shrink)

The moving spotlight theory of presentism is well-known (Emery et al. 2020). In this article I will give an unmoving spotlight theory of presentism. It has several components and, I will argue, is more satisfactory than a moving spotlight theory.

I give more notes about time and quantum mechanics, including notes about entropic time, superdeterminism, retro-causality, Spotlight Presentism, QFT, empirical outcomes of experiments in the present only, and Schrodinger's equation.

In this paper I argue that, in addition to having an obligation to resist the oppression of others, people have an obligation to themselves to resist their own oppression. This obligation to oneself, I argue, is grounded in a Kantian duty of self-respect.

The line that reads “But this leaves open the question of why the Big Bang did not happen a billion years before now, such that we are also a billion years before now.5” should instead read “But this leaves open the question of why the Big Bang did not happen a billion years before it did, such that we are also a billion years before now.5” -/- Merriam, P. A Theory of the Big Bang in McTaggart’s Time. Axiomathes 32 (...) (Suppl 3), 685–696 (2022). doi 10.1007/s10516-022-09623-5. (shrink)

We define and develop a notion of spacetime that incorporates both McTaggart's A-series and his B-series that is consistent with special relativity. This 'McTaggartian spacetime' or 'AB-spacetime' requires *five* not *4* variables. The interface of two AB-spacetimes from different *ontological perspectives* is quantum mechanical. This note concentrates on the physics and not the philosophy. This is an invitation to contribute to a theory that is a work in progress.

77 observations on qualia, quantum mechanics, time, mechanism for life after death, incompleteness, perspectivalism, Anthropic principle, two-dimensional semantics, materialism, God, the Hard Problem, Bach, entropy, string theory, qualations, etc.

How can McTaggart's A-series notion of time be incorporated into physics while retaining the B-series notion? It may be the A-series 'now' can be construed as ontologically private. How is that modeled? Could a definition of a combined AB-series entropy help with the Past Hypothesis problem? What if the increase in entropy as a system goes from earlier times to later times is canceled by the decrease in entropy as a system goes from future, to present, to past?

Presentist Fragmentalism is a novel interpretation of quantum mechanics. This paper develops the resulting theory of Quantum Gravity.

This paper proposes an interpretation of time that is an 'A-theory' in that it incorporates both McTaggart's A-series and his B-series. The A-series characteristics are supposed to be 'ontologically private' analogous to qualia in the problem of other minds and is given a definition. The main idea is that the experimenter and the cat do not share the same A-series characteristics, e.g the same 'now'. So there is no single time at which the cat gets ascribed different states. It is (...) proposed one may define a 'unit of becoming' that coordinatizes the future/present/past 'private' spectrum as well as allowing one to calculate the rates of becoming. Relativity is briefly considered. (shrink)

This paper continues and extensive exploration of the QG and TOE resulting from the PF interpretation of QM. Some highlights are an exploration of symmetries of the Standard Model, outlines of testable predictions of implications for QG, that this theory can simultaneously give an account of dark matter and dark energy, probabilities and statevector collapse vs. gravity, applications of the causal interaction tensor Cαβγδ(Fi, Fj). Note the first section mentions qualia but this is not a psychological theory this is an (...) ontic theory. (shrink)

The purpose of this yet-another version of this note is to make another attempt to show how an 'AB-series' interpretation of time, given in a companion paper, leads, surprisingly, apparently, to the signature of the physicists' important AdS^5 geometry. This is not a theory of 2 time dimensions. Rather, it is a theory of 1 time dimension that has both A-series and B-series characteristics.

The purpose of this note is to show how an 'AB-series' interpretation of time leads, surprisingly, apparently, to AdS_5 geometry. This is not a theory of 2 time dimensions. Rather, it is a theory of 1 time dimension that has both A-series and B-series characteristics. To summarize the result, a spacetime in terms of (1) the earlier-to-later aspect of time, and (2) the (related) future-present-past aspect of time, and (3) 3-d space, it would seem, gives us the AdS_5 geometry.

A *qualation* does not contain merely references to qualia, but contains actual qualia. There are many differences to equations. Qualations are irreducibly 1st-person and are required for the statement of a hard problem.

In her 2004 book Carol Gould addresses the fundamental issue of democratizing globalization, that is to say of finding ways to open transnational institutions and communities to democratic participation by those widely affected by their decisions. The book develops a framework for expanding participation in crossborder decisions, arguing for a broader understanding of human rights and introducing a new role for the ideas of care and solidarity at a distance. Reinterpreting the idea of universality to accommodate a multiplicity of (...) cultural perspectives, the author takes up a number of applied issues, including the persistence of racism, cultural rights, women's human rights, the democratic management of firms, the use of the Internet to enhance political participation, and the importance of empathy and genuine democracy in understanding terrorism and responding to it. Accessibly written with a minimum of technical jargon this is a major contribution to political philosophy. (shrink)

Why is there something rather than nothing? I don’t know. But ‘nothing’ may not be the correct default state. It may be that the existence of possibilities requires fewer (weaker) assumptions. In this case, arguably, we should start with the existence of possibilities and not ‘nothing’. In this case, there exists the possibility of (for example) red qualia. But the possible existence of a red quale does not delineate what it is the possibility of if the possibility contains only a (...) reference to red. Instead, the possibility must contain an actual instance of red to delineate what it is the possibility of. But, if possibilities are the weakest and (therefore) starting assumption, and the possibility of a red quale must itself contain an instance of red, then red exists necessarily. This argument would work for all qualia. Further, it could be that physical things and physical laws are (in some sense) instances of qualia. Incidentally, this would solve the problem of evil: pain, too, is made of qualia. These considerations align with some suggestions by Leibniz. (shrink)