Core-periphery imbalances and regional disparities figure prominently on the agenda of several disciplines, which result from their enormous impact on economic and social development around the world. In sociology, international relations, and economics, this concept is crucial in explanations of economic exchange. There are few countries that play a dominant role in world trade, while most countries have a secondary or even a tertiary position in world trade. Moreover, when we are discussing global, continental, regional, and national economies, we can (...) present regions and even smaller territorial units which have higher wages than some underdeveloped areas within the same larger area in focus. Such regional inequalities and injustices are the main themes of the core-periphery model, which focuses on tendencies of economic activities to concentrate around some pivotal points. It seeks to explain the spatial inequalities or imbalances observable on all levels or scales by highlighting the role of horizontal and vertical relations between various entities from the level of towns and cities to the global scale. The existence of a core-periphery structure implies that in the spatial dimension, the socioeconomic development is usually uneven. From such a geographical perspective, the regions known as the "core" are advanced in various areas, while other regions described as the "periphery" serve as a social, economic, and political backstages, backyards, and supply sources or - in some cases - are even subject to degradation and decline. Furthermore, the level of development has a negative correlation with distance from the core. The economies of the states that have gone through various stages of development at the earliest and with the fastest pace have become wealthy core regions and growth poles. Those countries and regions where these processes have been slower become or remain the poor periphery. (shrink)

Orson Scott Card and his Ender Series have had a profound impact on the genre of contemporary science fiction, meriting an academic analysis of some of his more theoretical ideas. I have chosen to analyze his concept of “Center” and “Edge” nations found in Xenocide and Children of the Mind through the lens of international relations, sociological, and political theory, in order to bring nuance to an underdeveloped theory that many non-academics may be familiar with. Ultimately, we must conclude that (...) Card’s concept of “Center” and “Edge” nations is too stagnant and does not account for social and hegemonic change, which influences the justifications of why these “nations” may be considered “Center” in the first place. (shrink)

Introduction Conatus is a specific concept within Descartes’s physics. In particular, it assumes a crucial importance in the purely mechanistic description of the nature of light – an issue that Des- cartes considered one of the most crucial challenges, and major achievements, of his natural phil- osophy. According to Descartes’s cosmology, the universe – understood as a material continuum in which there is no vacuum – is composed of a number of separate yet interconnected vortices. Each of these vortices consists (...) in a set of bands rotating around their centres. The bands are com- posed of corpuscles of the three elements, each distinguished on the basis of their different shapes and sizes. The small globules of the second element, although impeded by the other parts of heaven, strive to move away from the centre of the vortex around which they revolve, thus exerting a certain force against the surrounding bodies. This striving or conatus, though a mere force rather than a genuine motion, is transmitted instan- taneously and along straight lines from body to body. According to Descartes, then, the nature of light consists in this striving alone. This account must be understood as strictly connected to the fundamental laws that regulate the Cartesian world. It is particularly important to recall that for Descartes the centrifugal force exerted by a rotating body is understood to be a consequence of the intrinsic rectilinearity of every motion. As the second of the three Laws of Nature set forth in Book II of the Principles of Philosophy establishes, “all motion is in itself rectilinear; and hence any body moving in a circle tends to move away from the centre of the circle which it describes as proved by the fact that a stone rotating in a sling tends to move centrifugally along the tangent of each point described by a circle.1 Similarly, each of the globules of the second element “strives to recede with a great force from the centre of the vortex in which it rotates; it is in fact prevented by the other globules placed all around, not differently than a stone in a sling”. Within this framework, as I show later, conatus occurs when a body’s intrinsic tendency to rectilinear motion is impeded by an external constraint. As Stephen Gaukroger notes, the use of the term conatus in the Principles – like “vis” and “ action ” – shows that Descartes “cannot avoid dynamic terminology”, despite his declared intent “to construe motion in a purely kinematic way”. Indeed, Gaukroger observes that the notions of force action and striving are systematically employed in the Principles – appearing 290, 59 and 8 times, respectively. Also noteworthy, conatus was – together with the more familiar concepts of actio and vis – a significant element of the conceptual apparatus of Scholastic natural philosophy. As will be seen later – and this is the first goal of this paper – here the concept of conatus had a very specific function. Indeed, it was a central part of the Aristotelian- Scholastic account of gravitation. Conatus was used to refer to the striving of a body to move towards its natural place – especially in cases where its natural motion was hindered or impeded by an external mover. This specific use of the concept of conatus can be found in texts on natural philosophy from the end of the sixteenth through the late seventeenth century. Notably, it occurs in some of the late -Scho- lastic texts which held special significance for Descartes’s thought. Therefore, Descartes introduces conatus in a context in which this concept already had a very specific meaning, and one of which he was very probably aware. The possible relations between these two apparently very different con- cepts have therefore to be scrutinized. I thereby propose to undertake a comparison between the Scho- lastic and the Cartesian conceptions of conatus. I hope to show that certain traits of the former are indeed echoed by the latter, although adapted to the much changed physical paradigm of Cartesian physics. In fact, Descartes’s conatus, though sharing some important similarities with the old one, underwent significant transformations in terms of both its meaning and its application. However, I hope to show that these concepts are both used to describe the behaviour of bodies in relation to their intrinsic motive tendency, and in particular when this tendency is impeded or prevented. Such a reconstruction offers two main areas of interest. On an immediate level, it furthers the general efforts of scholars over the past decades to reconstruct the full extent of the relations between Descartes’s thought and Scholastic philosophy. However, there is another significant reason for taking an interest in the ties between the Scholastic and the Cartesian conceptions of conatus. Indeed, the Cartesian conatus must be seen as crucial to a proper understanding of the broader, diverse conceptualization that this idea enjoyed in the thought of many of the most important philosophers of the early modern period, namely Spinoza, Hobbes and Leibniz. In particular, Spinoza, were directly influenced by Descartes in their unique formulations of conatus. Thus a reconstruction of the context in which Descartes formulated his conatus and of its relations to a pre-existing Scholastic conception will enable us to better reconstruct the history of this idea in the early modern period. The paper is structured as follows: in the first part, I provide a thorough review of the Scho- lastic employment of the concept conatus – both its meaning and the extent of its usage. I then show that it occurs in some of the most prominent Cartesian sources. Finally, I shall provide an account of Descartes’s theory of circular motion and conatus with the specific aim of empha- sizing the elements of both continuity and discontinuity that justify the claim that Descartes’s con- ception of conatus is reminiscent of the Scholastic one. (shrink)

Anglo-American general jurisprudence remains preoccupied with the relationship of legality to morality. This has especially been so in the re-reading of Lon Fuller’s theory of an implied morality in any law. More often than not, Fuller has been said to distinguish between the identity of a discrete rule and something called ‘morality’. In this reading of Fuller, however, insufficient attention to what is signified by ‘morality’. Such an implied morality has been understood in terms of deontological duties, the Good life, (...) naturalism, and subjectively posited values. Each of these interpretations has a shared common denominator: namely, the distinction between ‘is’ and ‘ought’, ‘facts’ and ‘values’. Legality is said to be nested in an ‘is’ world. An ‘is’ cannot be derived from an ‘ought’. This essay aims to press this distinction further. Fuller, I intend to argue, does indeed accept the is/ought distinction as have his commentators. The associations of the ‘oughts’ with deontological duties, the Good life, naturalism and subjective values, however, have been misdirected. This has been so because Fuller presupposed that legality was a matter of a spatial structure. Non-law was situated outside the structure. If a legislator or judge considered matters outside the structure as if they were binding upon jurists and, for that matter, upon members of the legal structure, the law was not binding. The crucial incident of the structure was the boundary of the structure. Fuller’s structuralist theory of law offers the opportunity to better understand what he signified by ‘the internal morality of law’. I shall privilege several elements of his theory: the relation of legal units to a structure, the nature of a structure, the constituents of a structure (territorial space, its pillars and its matter); the forms of the legal structure; the centrifugal and centripetal structures, the structure and traditional theories of morality, the role of the legal official in a structure, and why the internal knowledge in the structure is binding. Fuller especially privileged two features of a legal structure. The one was the boundary of the structure. The second concerned the exteriority of the boundary. Both features presupposed a territorial sense view of legal knowledge. The legal mind analysed any social problem through the map of such a sense of legal space. By concentrating upon the discrete rule in isolation of the implied structural boundary to which the rule referred, commentators have attributed been misdirected in their analyses of Fuller’s theory of law and morality. My argument in this respect will proceed as follows. In order to clarify Fuller’s senses of the morality of law, I shall first outline what he means by a ‘structure’. Second, how is the structure related to legal knowledge? Third, what are the various forms of the structure? Fourth, is the structure centrifugal or centripetal? And finally, why is the structure binding? (shrink)

In this article, the author analyzes the term "power-sharing" in the context of power exercised within a state. He first examines the term in the very general sense, in which it can be applied to all types and dimensions of sharing of power between various groups and institutional entities. Second, the author examines the meaning of the term in the narrow sense, that is, the phenomenon of systemic sharing of power by groups (segments) whose membership is based on ascribed criteria (...) such as common ancestors, relatives, or racial background, and/or cultural ones such as a common language, religion, or celebrations. The basic segmental units in this sense are nations (understood in the sociological sense), ethnic groups, or religious and denominational communities that form part of divided societies. Third, the article shows the differences between the principal models (types) of power-sharing in the narrow sense: consociationalism, centripetalism, and hybrid power-sharing. (shrink)

This paper argues that satire constitutes a particularly effective strategy for feminist philosophy through an analysis of Simone de Beauvoir’s account of motherhood. Feminists have grappled at length with how to interpret Beauvoir’s focus on the unpleasantness of pregnancy and challenges of motherhood. In this paper, I suggest a new interpretive strategy. My view is that Beauvoir’s disparaging depiction of motherhood cannot be read by the letter; rather, it is an exercise in satire. By overemphasizing its strangeness and difficulty, Beauvoir (...) dethrones motherhood as the pinnacle of feminine existence, transforming it from women’s only possible destiny into a contingent feature of existence. My underlying contention here is that such feminist satirizing speaks to the aims of feminist philosophy more generally: the satirical subversion of our buried assumptions opens the possibility of imagining the world anew. (shrink)

This article analyzes the view of evolutionary theory as a theory of forces. The analogy with Newtonian mechanics has been challenged due to the alleged mismatch between drift and the other evolutionary forces. Since genetic drift has no direction several authors tried to protect its status as a force: denying its lack of directionality, extending the notion of force and looking for a force in physics which also lacks of direction. I analyse these approaches, and although this strategy (...) finally succeeds, this discussion overlooks the crucial point on the debate between causalists and statisticalists: the causal status of evolutionary theory. (shrink)

This article reviews the ancient Buddhist doctrine of consciousness and its concordance with the psychological heritage of modern science. Firstly, it introduces the nine consciousnesses of Buddhist philosophy, namely, five sensory consciousnesses, plus Mano, Manas, Alaya, and Amala consciousnesses. Secondly, it summarizes the development of the four psychological forces, i.e., Watson’s behaviorism, Freudian psychoanalysis, Jung’s unconscious, and Grof’s transpersonal psychology. Finally, it suggests that the last four consciousnesses are equivalent to the four forces, respectively.

Contra both phenomenalists and anti-phenomenalists, I defend the following thesis in this paper: the epistemic power of perceptual experience is grounded in its presentational property that is (i) uniquely possessed by the experience in the good case and (ii) essentially a phenomenal property. In §2, I set the ground for my argument by elaborating on the phenomenalist account of presentational phenomenology. In §3, I argue (against phenomenalism) for the first part of the phenomenal presentation thesis: (i) perceptual experience’s epistemic power (...) is grounded in instances of a presentational property possessed by perceptual experience in the good, but not in the bad case. In §4, I argue (against anti-phenomenalists) for the second part of the phenomenal presentation thesis: (ii) presentational property is essentially a phenomenal property. In §5, I address some potential objections to the phenomenal presentation thesis. §6 concludes. (shrink)

If $U$ is a normal ultrafilter on a measurable cardinal $\kappa$, then the intersection of the $\omega$ first iterated ultrapowers of the universe by $U$ is a Prikry generic extension of the $\omega$th iterated ultrapower.

This paper presents a novel perspective on the force-content distinction making use of truthmaker semantics and an ontology of attitudinal objects, things that are neither acts (or states) nor propositions. It gives a novel norm-based definition of the notion of direction of fit, strictly linking truth and (non-action-guiding) correctness.

This paper commences from the critical observation that the Turing Test (TT) might not be best read as providing a definition or a genuine test of intelligence by proxy of a simulation of conversational behaviour. Firstly, the idea of a machine producing likenesses of this kind served a different purpose in Turing, namely providing a demonstrative simulation to elucidate the force and scope of his computational method, whose primary theoretical import lies within the realm of mathematics rather than cognitive modelling. (...) Secondly, it is argued that a certain bias in Turing’s computational reasoning towards formalism and methodological individualism contributed to systematically unwarranted interpretations of the role of the TT as a simulation of cognitive processes. On the basis of the conceptual distinction in biology between structural homology vs. functional analogy, a view towards alternate versions of the TT is presented that could function as investigative simulations into the emergence of communicative patterns oriented towards shared goals. Unlike the original TT, the purpose of these alternate versions would be co-ordinative rather than deceptive. On this level, genuine functional analogies between human and machine behaviour could arise in quasi-evolutionary fashion. (shrink)

Stoic analysis of the characters of Yoda and the Emperor reveals the opposing logics of the Force. Yoda initially appears to be a jester, but shares with the Stoic wise man the virtues of timely action, patience, commitment, seriousness, calmness, peacefulness, caution, benevolence, joyful mirth, passivity, and wisdom. The logic of the Dark Side is: Anger leads to hatred. Hatred leads to aggressive mastery of others, which is true power, which is irresistibly desirable. The Emperor uses terror and cruelty to (...) oppress others. Instead of wisely pursuing Stoic self-control, the arrogant Emperor serves his vices and dies suffering. (shrink)

In this paper I propose three steps to overcome the force-content dichotomy and dispel the Frege point. First, we should ascribe content to force indicators. Through basic assertoric and directive force indicators such as intonation, word order and mood, a subject presents its position of theoretical or practical knowledge of a state of affairs as a fact, as something that is the case, or as a goal, as something to do. Force indicators do not operate on truth- or satisfaction evaluable (...) entities as on the traditional view, but complete and unify them. Second, higher-level acts such as interrogative, logical and fictional acts create higher-level unities that may suspend commitment to the assertions and directions they operate on. But they do not cancel their force, but transfer the meaning of force indicators into the new unities they create. For example, in the context of asking a theoretical or practical question, the assertoric or directive force indicator now presents the kind of knowledge the subject is seeking. Third, the Frege point conflates different varieties of force. We neither need Frege’s assertion sign, nor Hare’s neustic, nor Hanks’s cancellation sign, but only ordinary force indicators and interrogative, logical and fictional markers. Propositions are not forceless contents to which a subject commits by forceful acts, but forceful acts put forward by higher-level acts which may suspend commitment to them. (shrink)

Not only the direct physical experiences of deployment can severely harm soldiers’ mental health. Witnessing violations of their moral principles by the enemy, or by their fellow soldiers and superiors, can also have a devastating impact. It can cause soldiers’ moral disorientation, increasing feelings of shame, guilt, or hate, and the need for general answers on questions of right and wrong. Various attempts have been made to keep soldiers mentally sane. One is to provide convincing causes for their deployment, which (...) risks an “end justifies the means” way of thinking. The good cause can provide a moral justification for horrible atrocities. Another method, introduced in the USA, Canada, and Australia, aims to strengthen military personnel’s resistance by promoting and maintaining a happy, optimistic state of mind through the use of positive psychology. Alongside making soldiers “morally fit” for all kinds of situations, the focus could also be on moral recovery and forgiveness. Such a care-based military ethics approach, aimed at mutual understanding and interdependence, could help soldiers handle the emotional impact of moral conflicts. This demands that military units reflect on their organizational culture and rethink oaths and codes of conduct that focus mainly on efficiency and readiness, as well as the soldierly self-image with its seemingly still deeply rooted warrior ethos. Today, resilience and positive psychology in the military is apparently mainly geared to assuring its soldiers’ readiness. An appropriate set of virtues and understanding of virtue ethics that are less centered on self-perfection and autonomy could point to a different form of character-building and lead to a better understanding of others. (shrink)

The Frege point to the effect that e.g. the clauses of conditionals are not asserted and therefore cannot be assertions is often taken to establish a dichotomy between the content of a speech act, which is propositional and belongs to logic and semantics, and its force, which belongs to pragmatics. Recently this dichotomy has been questioned by philosophers such as Peter Hanks and Francois Recanati, who propose act-theoretic accounts of propositions, argue that we can’t account for propositional unity independently of (...) the forceful acts of speakers, and respond to the Frege point by appealing to a notion of force cancellation. I argue that the notion of force cancellation is faced with a dilemma and offer an alternative response to the Frege point, which extends the act-theoretic account to logical acts such as conditionalizing or disjoining. Such higher-level acts allow us to present forceful acts while suspending commitment to them. In connecting them, a subject rather commits to an affirmation function of such acts. In contrast, the Frege point confuses a lack of commitment to what is put forward with a lack of commitment or force in what is put forward. (shrink)

This paper argues that to account for group speech acts, we should adopt a representationalist account of mode / force. Individual and collective subjects do not only represent what they e.g. assert or order. By asserting or ordering they also indicate their theoretical or practical positions towards what they assert or order. The ‘Frege point’ cannot establish the received dichotomy of force and propositional content. On the contrary, only the representationalist account allows a satisfactory response to it. It also allows (...) us to give a more satisfactory analysis of the speech act of inviting a joint commitment and to answer two important questions Bernhard Schmid has raised about group speech acts, namely whether there are 1st person plural forms of Moore’s paradox and of 1st person authority. (shrink)

The principal aim of this article is to explain the specificity of the requirement for the spatial distribution of votes in presidential elections – an institution that has existed in Nigeria since 1979 and in Indonesia since 2001. It also seeks to describe the political conditions which contributed to that institution’s introduction and functioning in those two countries. The article will end with a comparison between the two cases, including a discussion of the present differences between them. The article will (...) also contain a preliminary appraisal of whether the existence of the requirement in question is helping to reduce the level of conflictive behavior in relations between ethnic groups in the multi-ethnic societies of Nigeria and Indonesia. This article has been published in "Acta Asiatica Varsoviensia" 2017, Vol. 30, Issue 1, pp. 89-107. (shrink)

Field’s challenge to platonists is the challenge to explain the reliable match between mathematical truth and belief. The challenge grounds an objection claiming that platonists cannot provide such an explanation. This objection is often taken to be both neutral with respect to controversial epistemological assumptions, and a comparatively forceful objection against platonists. I argue that these two characteristics are in tension: no construal of the objection in the current literature realises both, and there are strong reasons to think that no (...) version of Field’s epistemological objection which has both Neutrality and Force can be construed. (shrink)

Philosophers often characterize discourse in general as aiming at some sort of convergence (in beliefs, plans, dispositions, feelings, etc.), and many views about aesthetic discourse in particular affirm this thought. I argue that a convergence norm does not govern aesthetic discourse. The conversational dynamics of aesthetic discourse suggest that typical aesthetic claims have directive force. I distinguish between dynamic and illocutionary force and develop related theories of each for aesthetic discourse. I argue that the illocutionary force of aesthetic utterances is (...) typically invitational because its dynamic force is influenced by a ‘communal’ norm. I draw on dynamic pragmatics to develop a formal account of this dynamic force that explains why invitation has pride of place in aesthetic conversation. It turns out that the end of aesthetic discourse is not convergence but a distinctive form of community, a kind of harmony of individuality, that is compatible with aesthetic disagreement. If this is right, then convergence theories of aesthetic and normative discourse, and of conversation in general, need to be revised. (shrink)

In addition to the Frege point, Frege also argued for the force-content distinction from the fact that an affirmative answer to a yes-no question constitutes an assertion. I argue that this fact more readily supports the view that questions operate on and present assertions and other forceful acts themselves. Force is neither added to propositions as on the traditional view, nor is it cancelled as has recently been proposed. Rather higher level acts such as questioning, but also e.g. conditionalizing, embed (...) assertive or directive acts that are forceful and committal, while suspending commitment to them. The Frege point confounds different varieties of force and the question whether something is merely presented for consideration with the question what is so presented. Force is representational: through assertoric and directive force indicators subjects non-conceptually present positions of theoretical or practical knowledge, while interrogative acts indicate positions of wondering which strive for such knowledge. (shrink)

In this paper, the stability control of the inverted pendulum on a cart with a disturbance forces has been done using observer based and full state feedback H2 controllers. The Lagrangian equation has been used to model the system equation of motions and linearized the system to the unstable upward position. Comparison of the system stability has been simulated by comparing the proposed controllers using Matlab/Scripts and a promising results has been analyzed successfully.

When and why do socially constructed norms—including the laws of the land, norms of etiquette, and informal customs—generate moral obligations? I argue that the answer lies in the duty to respect others, specifically to give them what I call “agency respect.” This is the kind of respect that people are owed in light of how they exercise their agency. My central thesis is this: To the extent that (i) existing norms are underpinned by people’s commitments as agents and (ii) they (...) do not conflict with morality, they place moral demands on us on agency-respect grounds. This view of the moral force of socially constructed norms, I suggest, is superior to views that deny the moral force of such norms, and it elegantly explains certain instances of wrongdoing that would otherwise remain unaccounted for. (shrink)

According to Robert Sleigh Jr., “The opening remarks of DM.18 make it clear that Leibniz took the results of DM.17 as either establishing, or at least going a long way toward establishing, that force is not identifiable with any mode characterizable terms of size, shape, and motion.” Sleigh finds this puzzling and suggests that other commentators have generally been insufficiently perplexed by the bearing that the DM.17 has on the metaphysical issue. In this brief paper, I examine the solution that (...) Sleigh offers to his puzzle, and present an alternative way of understanding the relationship between these two sections of the Discourse. (shrink)

Anti-war pacifism eschews modern war as a means of attaining peace. It holds war to be not only evil and supremely harmful, but also, on balance, morally wrong. But what about force short of war? The aim of this paper is to analyse targeted killing, a specific form of force short of war, from an anti-war pacifist perspective, or, more specifically, from two related but distinct pacifist perspectives: conditional and contingent. Conditional pacifism deems war to be unjustified if the condition (...) that innocent persons are killed in war is satisfied. Since this condition is always fulfilled, conditional pacifism implies the impermissibility of modern war. Contingent pacifism concedes that war would be morally acceptable if its harms were sufficiently outweighed by its benefits, but maintains that no (or very few) wars meet this criterion. The empirical reality of war is such that it cannot be justified, because it harms too many innocents in proportion to the harm it prevents. Pacifists’ treatment of targeted killing short of war should thus concentrate on the harm it does to innocents. Conditional pacifists should focus on whether targeted killing kills innocents, while contingent pacifists should focus on whether the harm it does to innocents is disproportionate to its benefits. (shrink)

In this paper I consider fairness of blaming a wrongdoer. In particular, I consider the claim that blaming a wrongdoer can be unfair because blame has a certain characteristic force, a force which is not fairly imposed upon the wrongdoer unless certain conditions are met--unless, e.g., the wrongdoer could have done otherwise, or unless she is someone capable of having done right, or unless she is able to control her behavior by the light of moral reasons. While agreeing that blame (...) has a characteristic force, I am skeptical of this charge of unfairness. My skepticism concerns itself less with the particular conditions of fairness proposed than with the idea that blame can be rendered unfair by its characteristic force. If to blame a person were simply to perform certain intentional actions, then, as we will see, blame could be rendered unfair by its force. But to blame a person is not just to act in certain ways. It is, at least in large part, to make certain judgments or adopt certain attitudes. However, it is unclear how these attitudes or judgments carry "force"? and also unclear whether they can be rendered unfair by their force. Examining these issues, I will suggest that much of the force of blame is found in a set of judgments--most centrally, the judgment that one person failed to show proper regard for others. But, I will argue, once it is granted that such judgments are true, their characteristic force cannot render them unfair. (shrink)

Slurs are derogatory, and theories of slurs aim at explaining their “derogatory force”. This paper draws a distinction between the type derogatory force and the token derogatory force of slurs. To explain the type derogatory force is to explain why a slur is a derogatory word. By contrast, to explain the token derogatory force is to explain why an utterance of a slur is derogatory. This distinction will be defended by examples in which the type and the token derogatory force (...) come apart. Because of the distinction, an adequate theory of slurs must be plausible for both the type and the token derogatory force. However, I will argue that many theories fail to be plausible for both. In particular, Hom’s combinatorial externalism and the conventional implicature theory offer implausible accounts of the token derogatory force, whereas the prohibitionist theory is insufficient to explain the type derogatory force. (shrink)

In contrast to the Nietzschean conception of Übermensch as signifying, hitherto, a supermanhood in moral terms alone, the principle of the latter lies in its being antithetical to the present human status, and in its thus proving altogether superior both ontologically and physically. With this premise the notions of Sixth Force and Photonic Frame are now associated. Set forth after a qualitative fashion, while the former is related to the thus far known elemental constituents of matter, as well as to (...) forces and interactions between matter particles, and under this form deemed to intangibly account for all the chaos, indeterminacy and otherwise imperfection or limit found so peculiar to man, the latter refers to an ultimate trait in the actual Overman touching a most luminous and unparalleled corporeality. An original conception of geometry in photonic terms is also propounded. Illustrations meeting at length with a semiotic process and literary hints add to the suggestion. (shrink)

When do we judge that someone was forced to do what they did? One relatively well-established finding is that subjects tend to judge that agents were not forced to do actions when those actions violate norms. A surprising discovery of Young & Phillips 2011 is that this effect seems to disappear when we frame the relevant ‘force’-claim in the active rather than passive voice ('X forced Y to φ ' vs. 'Y was forced to φ by X'). Young and Phillips (...) found a similar contrast when the scenario itself shifts attention from Y (the forcee) to X (the forcer). We propose that these effects can be (at least partly) explained by way of the role of attention in the setting of quantifier domains which in turn play a role in the evaluation of ‘force’- claims. We argue for this hypothesis by way of an experiment which shows that sequences of active vs. passive ‘force’-claims display the characteristic “stickiness” of quantifier domain expansion, using a paradigm which we argue provides a useful general paradigm for testing quantifier domain hypotheses. Finally, we sketch a semantics for ‘force’ which we argue is suitable for capturing these effects. (shrink)

Frege’s distinction between force and sense is a central pillar of modern thinking about meaning. This is the idea that a self-standing utterance of a sentence S can be divided into two components. One is the proposition P that S’s linguistic meaning and context associates with it. The other is S’s illocutionary force. The force/sense distinction is associated with another thesis, the embedding principle, that implies that the only content that embeds in compound sentences is propositional content. We argue that (...) both the Force/Sense distinction and the principle of embedding are seriously challenged by figurative language, and irony in particular. We conclude that theorists need to go back to the drawing board about the nature of illocutionary acts. (shrink)

The distinction between the force/mode of speech acts and intentional states and their propositional content has been a central feature of analytic philosophy since Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell. In this introduction we present the distinction and its motivation and review some recent challenges to it that appeal to the problem of the unity of the proposition, in order to give the reader a sense of the current state of debate to which the contributions of this volume respond.

Can a basic sensory property like a bare colour or tone be beautiful? Some, like Kant, say no. But Heidegger suggests, plausibly, that colours ‘glow’ and tones ‘sing’ in artworks. These claims can be productively synthesized: ‘glowing’ colours are not beautiful; but they are sensory forces—not mere ‘matter’, contra Kant—with real aesthetic impact. To the extent that it inheres in sensible properties, beauty is plausibly restricted to structures of sensory force. Kant correspondingly misrepresents the relation of beautiful wholes to (...) their parts. Beautiful form is not extrinsic to sensory force. Sensible beauty is just the holistic impact of agonistically-interacting sensory forces. When sensory forces interact hierarchically, their collective impact is closer to the sublime, in quality if not degree. The simplest sensory experience of sublimity is just the impact of radically intensified sensory forces, similar in kind if not degree to the individual ‘singing’ tones in a beautiful melody. (shrink)

The paper continues my earlier Chat with OpenAI’s ChatGPT with a Focused LLM Experiment (FLEX). The idea is to conduct Large Language Model (LLM) based explorations of certain areas or concepts. The approach is based on crafting initial guiding prompts and then follow up with user prompts based on the LLMs’ responses. The goals include improving understanding of LLM capabilities and their limitations culminating in optimized prompts. The specific subjects explored as research subject matter include a) diagonalization techniques as practiced (...) by Cantor, Turing, Gödel, and the advances, such as the Forcing techniques introduced by Paul Cohen and later investigators, b) Knowledge Hierarchies & Mapping Exercises, c) Discussions of IJ Good’s Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine, AGI, and Super- intelligence. Results suggest variability between major models like ChatGPT-4, Llama-3, Cohere, Sonnet and Opus. Results also point to strong dependence on users’ preexisting knowledge and skill bases. The paper should be viewed as ’raw data’ rather than a polished authoritative reference. (shrink)

Centripetalism is often perceived as a type of a political system for a multi-segmental, especially multi-ethnic, country in order to create among the members of the political elite of moderate, accomodative, and integrative political behavior cross-cutting segmental divisions which, reaching beyond group interests, depoliticize the segmental separateness and, in this manner, reduce their significance. One of the central institutions of centripetalism is decentralization leading to a division of large segments into smaller parts that inhabit different, ideally multi-segmental regions, thus inclining (...) regional political elites of different segments to collaborate. Although both Nigeria and Indonesia have similar centripetal territorial structures, only Nigeria is a federation. This paper focuses on Nigerian centripetal federalism and its link to the so-called federal character principle that is mostly consociational in substance. Krzysztof Trzcinski, Centripetal Federalism, in: 50 Shades of Federalism, ed. by Soeren Keil & Paul Anderson, Canterbury: Canterbury Christ Church University & Montréal: CRÉQC, 2020. (shrink)

Rohingya refugee children in Bangladesh are forced into labour both inside and outside the camps for a wide range of reasons. This article examines this situation in relation to the access to education for those children living in the camps in Cox’s Bazar. Being informed by several perspectives concerning child labour and access to schooling in developing country contexts, this research work has adopted a qualitative approach to study various factors working behind this pressing issue. After collecting data by means (...) of qualitative methods, including non-participant observations and semi-structured interviews, the researcher has analyzed the findings with these informed perspectives. Results show that lack of formal identity, limited access to the formal labour market, absence of social sanctions against child employment, lack of aspirations, household composition, and substandard living conditions are some of the key factors that drive children to engage in various forms of labour, especially outside the camps. They often work in small workshops as labourers and in the host community households as domestic workers. Undocumented children are also reported to become victims of bonded labour, sex trade, and trafficking in the region. The author argues that a lack of formal education has compounded this issue into a severe humanitarian crisis which calls for immediate support and actions from local and international agencies. (shrink)

A standing presumption in the literature is that devil’s advocacy is an inherently beneficial argumentative move; and that those who take on this role in conversation are paradigms of argumentative virtue. Outside academic circles, however, devil’s advocacy has acquired something of a notorious reputation: real-world conversations are rife with self-proclaimed devil’s advocates who are anything but virtuous. Motivated by this observation, in this paper we offer the first in-depth exploration of non-ideal devil’s advocacy. We draw on recent analyses of two (...) better known discursive practices—mansplaining and trolling—to illuminate some of the signature traits of vicious devil’s advocacy. Building on this comparative examination, we show that all three practices trade on a manipulation of illocutionary force; and we evaluate their respective options for securing plausible deniability. (shrink)

A central area of current philosophical debate in the foundations of mathematics concerns whether or not there is a single, maximal, universe of set theory. Universists maintain that there is such a universe, while Multiversists argue that there are many universes, no one of which is ontologically privileged. Often forcing constructions that add subsets to models are cited as evidence in favour of the latter. This paper informs this debate by analysing ways the Universist might interpret this discourse that seems (...) to necessitate the addition of subsets to V. We argue that despite the prima facie incoherence of such talk for the Universist, she nonetheless has reason to try and provide interpretation of this discourse. We analyse extant interpretations of such talk, and analyse various tradeoffs in naturality that might be made. We conclude that the Universist has promising options for interpreting different forcing constructions. (shrink)

Wilson [Dialectica 63:525–554, 2009], Moore [Int Stud Philos Sci 26:359–380, 2012], and Massin [Br J Philos Sci 68:805–846, 2017] identify an overdetermination problem arising from the principle of composition in Newtonian physics. I argue that the principle of composition is a red herring: what’s really at issue are contrasting metaphysical views about how to interpret the science. One of these views—that real forces are to be tied to physical interactions like pushes and pulls—is a superior guide to real (...) class='Hi'>forces than the alternative, which demands that real forces are tied to “realized” accelerations. Not only is the former view employed in the actual construction of Newtonian models, the latter is both unmotivated and inconsistent with the foundations and testing of the science. (shrink)

The aim of this chapter is therefore to critically analyse Kelsen's position on the relationship between law and coercion. Here I will show that the connection between law and coercion in Kelsen's legal theory goes deeper than the first definition of ‘law as a coercive order’ suggests: the connection has to do not only with the specific content of legal norms, but also with the existence of the legal order itself. In Section II, I will show that for Kelsen coercion (...) is an essential element of law as the criterion that allows to distinguish law qua normative and social order from other kinds of social and normative orders (such as religion and morality), i.e., coercion of a certain kind. In Sec-tion III I will further develop the argument and show that coercion is also the criterion that allows to distinguish legal norms from other norms (like moral norms), i.e., coercion as a specific object of norms which are hypothetical formulations with sanction as consequence. In Section IV I will show that, in Kelsen’s framework, coercion is also to be regarded as an essential element for the effectiveness of a legal order, thus for its very existence. I will further argue that in this view the most important effect of coercion is not the direct one – the effective application of sanctions or the effective exercise of force – but the indirect one – the psychological pressure that the mere existence of organised violence and sanctions exerts on the individual. Finally, in Section V I will offer a brief concluding remark. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is explore what demands living in liberty places on citizens in Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws. In contrast to the ideas of liberty from many of the thinkers that were to follow him, Montesquieu’s notion of liberty requires that citizens subject themselves to the regulative relationships required by his normative conception of the law. For Montesquieu, living in liberty is not just a situation in which one avoids what the law forbids and is otherwise (...) left ’free’ without interference and coercion. For Montesquieu, liberty is a positively elaborated ideal with normative demands and a set of “necessary relations” that citizens must form. The result is that a life of liberty is defined in a significant way by the laws that bind a citizen because liberty is not the freedom to construct different ways of life, but the freedom to live securely within a particular way of life. I highlight this overlooked feature of The Spirit of the Laws by mobilizing Aron, Althusser and Durkheim’s work on the law in Montesquieu to draw out the implications of Montesquieu’s notion of law for liberty. (shrink)

This paper argues that liberal states are wrong to forcibly separate through deportation the unauthorized immigrant parents of member children and that states must therefore regularize such unauthorized immigrants. While most arguments for regularization focus on how deportation wrongs the unauthorized immigrants themselves, I ground my argument in how deportation wrongs the state’s members, namely the unauthorized immigrants’ member children. Specifically, forced separation through deportation wrongs affected children by violating a basic right to sustain the intimate relationships with their parents (...) on which they rely for their development into fully autonomous agents. (shrink)

Although Newton carefully eschews questions about gravity’s causal basis in the published Principia, the original version of his masterwork’s third book contains some intriguing causal language. “These forces,” he writes, “arise from the universal nature of matter.” Such remarks seem to assert knowledge of gravity’s cause, even that matter is capable of robust and distant action. Some commentators defend that interpretation of the text—a text whose proper interpretation is important since Newton’s reasons for suppressing it strongly suggest that he (...) continued to endorse its ideas. This article argues that the surface appearance of Newton’s causal language is deceptive. What does New- ton intend with his causal language if not a full causal hypothesis? His remarks actually indicate a way of considering the force mathematically, something he contrasts to the structure of the force as it really is in nature. In explaining that, he identifies a significant disjunction between the physical force itself and mathematical ways of considering it, and the text’s significance lies in its view of the force’s structure and in the questions raised about the relationship between mathematical representations and the physical world. (shrink)

Our examination explicates not only how Leibniz’s emphasis on force or power squares well with (and most probably largely stems from) his endorsement of certain central Aristotelian tenets, but also how the concept of force is incorporated into his mature idealist metaphysics. That metaphysics, in turn, generates some thorny problems with regard to the concept of passivity; and so we shall also ask whether and how Leibniz’s monadology, emphasizing the activity as much as it does, is able to encompass the (...) passivity of created substances. (shrink)

This essay proposes a new interpretation of a central, and yet overlooked, argument Leibniz offers against Descartes’s power-free ontology of the corporeal world. Appealing to considerations about the successiveness of motion, Leibniz attempts to show that the reality of motion requires force. It is often assumed that the argument is driven by concerns inspired by Zeno. Against such a reading, this essay contends that Leibniz’s argument is instead best understood against the background of an Aristotelian view of the priority of (...) real being over time. The essay also shows how this alternative interpretation can help to shed new light on the difference between Leibnizian forces and Aristotelian powers, as well as on Leibniz’s famous claim that accounting for force leads us beyond the mechanistic corporeal realm. (shrink)

In recent work, Williamson has defended a suggestive account of assertion. Williamson claims that the following norm or rule (the knowledge rule) is constitutive of assertion, and individuates it: (KR) One must ((assert p) only if one knows p) Williamson is not directly concerned with the semantics of assertion-markers, although he assumes that his view has implications for such an undertaking; he says: “in natural languages, the default use of declarative sentences is to make assertions” (op. cit., 258). In this (...) paper I will explore Williamson’s view from this perspective, i.e., in the light of issues regarding the semantics of assertion-markers. I will end up propounding a slightly different account, on which, rather than KR, what is constitutive and individuating of assertion is an audience-involving transmission of knowledge rule: (TKR) One must ((assert p) only if one’s audience comes thereby to be in a position to know p) I will argue that TKR, of which KR is an illocutionary consequence (but not the other way around), has all the virtues that Williamson claims for his account and no new defect. (shrink)

Ideally, should liberals in a pluralistic society be able to agree to abide by a common legal system such that all their disputes are resolved without resort to illegal force? Rawls believes the answer is “yes.” I explain and defend his answer, but I also conclude, focusing on the example of abortion, that the truth is “not necessarily, not always.” Rawls’s conceptions of reasonable citizens and public reason help explain why there is a strong prima facie duty to forswear illegal (...) force. It is based on the duty to respect others, which requires that one be able to justify one's actions to them insofar as they are reasonable and matters of basic justice are at issue. One cannot justify using illegal force to those who reasonably think a law is just; to them it is a form of disrespect. Nonetheless, if one reasonably thinks that a fundamental injustice is tolerated or even established by the law, then one may be no less reasonable than one has reason to be if one uses illegal force, sacrificing this form of respect to right a greater wrong. (shrink)

Laws of nature seem to take two forms. Fundamental physics discovers laws that hold without exception, ‘strict laws’, as they are sometimes called; even if some laws of fundamental physics are irreducibly probabilistic, the probabilistic relation is thought not to waver. In the nonfundamental, or special, sciences, matters differ. Laws of such sciences as psychology and economics hold only ceteris paribus – that is, when other things are equal. Sometimes events accord with these ceteris paribus laws (c.p. laws, hereafter), but (...) sometimes the laws are not manifest, as if they have somehow been placed in abeyance: the regular relation indicative of natural law can fail in circumstances where an analogous outcome would effectively refute the assertion of strict law. Many authors have questioned the supposed distinction between strict laws and c.p. laws. The brief against it comprises various considerations: from the complaint that c.p. clauses are void of meaning to the claim that, although understood well enough, they should appear in all law-statements. These two concerns, among others, are addressed in due course, but first, I venture a positive proposal. I contend that there is an important contrast between strict laws and c.p. laws, one that rests on an independent distinction between combinatorial and noncombinatorial nomic principles.2 Instantiations of certain properties, e.g., mass and charge, nomically produce individual forces, or more generally, causal influences,3 in accordance with noncombinatorial.. (shrink)

[Open Access.] Perceptual experiences have presentational phenomenology: we seem to encounter real situations in the course of visual experiences, for instance. The current paper articulates and defends the claim that the contents of at least some perceptual experiences are inherently presentational. On this view, perceptual contents are not always forceless in the way that, say, the propositional content that 2 + 2 = 4 is generally taken to be, as a content that may be asserted or denied or merely supposed; (...) rather, there are perceptual contents such that any mental state or episode which has the relevant content must be one in which things seem to the given subject to be a certain way. Intuitive motivation for the view is presented and an explanatory line of argument in support of it is developed: it is argued that the recognition of inherently presentational perceptual contents allows us to explain certain representational limitations to which ordinary visualizations and other forms of perceptual mental imagery are subject. Some potential objections to the position are explored, leading to further elaboration of it. (shrink)