After a brief introduction and orientation (section I), this dialogue between Levinasian and Beckerian thought is approached along the lines of two major themes concerning consciousness which emerge in very different contexts and registers in their work (sections II and III), and one tantalizing question that is raised with great force by the dialogue (section IV). The two themes revolve around the subtle dialectical interplay that runs throughout the thought of both Levinas and Becker – the switching between internality (...) and externality, non-rational and rational; otherness and sameness; life and death – an interplay that is summed up in the dialectic between non-reflexive and reflexive consciousness. The Beckerian and Levinasian notions of the non-reflexive consciousness (section II) relate to their respective and in many ways convergent claims about a non-rational primal human state characterized by global vulnerability, awe and guilt, especially before the face of the other. Their analyses of reflexive consciousness (section III) relate to their interpretations of the problematic ideal of the free, self-constituting and self-mastering individual, and the impetus located therein towards the repression of what is Other to the self. Finally (section IV), the question is raised as to whether (and to what extent), following Levinas, sources of compelling ethical value might be legitimately understood as emerging out of Becker’s conception of primordial human vulnerability. (shrink)

The theories of cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker arise from an existential and psychological analysis of the death terror/anxiety deep in the unconscious of every human. Becker details how this anxiety governs the ideologies and behaviors of our species—something now confirmed by thousands of experiments performed by psychologists engaged in contemporary terror management theory (TMT). Humans manage their anxiety through what Becker terms “hero systems”—concepts, beliefs, and myths we create to give us a sense of significance and (...) meaning during, and even beyond our mortal lives. Today, many dominant economic, technological, and religious hero systems seek to confirm our significance by denying that we are—like all other species—animals who must exist in a decaying, mortal body. Becker shows how this attempt to deny our “creatureliness” (basic biological nature) causes humans to stand against the natural world we are embedded in, leading to an assault on the planet and nonhuman animals. As a result, Becker believed pacifism was the only hero system capable of keeping humankind from destroying itself and the earth. Pacifism is the precursor to the more encompassing ethical concept of “reverence for life,” advocated by Dr. Albert Schweitzer. By respecting the will-to-live in all sentient beings, reverence for life transcends concern for humans alone and extends moral and physical safeguards to life as such. Confronting the fact that humans are increasingly alienated from their commodified world and their own being, reverence for life stands as a vital solution to many of our modern problems. And following contemporary TMT research, reverencing life can also expand one’s self-esteem, which research shows lowers death anxiety, reduces aggression, and offers authentic meaning to life itself. (shrink)

This chapter reviews the major contributions of Donald Davidson to philosophy in the 20th century.

This paper considers the place of reasons in the metaphysics of epistemic normativity and defends a middle ground between two popular extremes in the literature. Against members of the ‘reasons first’ movement, we argue that reasons are not the sole fundamental constituents of epistemic normativity. We suggest instead that the virtue-theoretic property of competence is the key building block. To support this approach, we note that reasons must be possessed to play a role in the analysis of central epistemically normative (...) properties, and argue that the relation of possession must be analyzed in terms of competence. But while we diverge with reasons-firsters on this score, we also distance ourselves from those who deny reasons any important role in epistemology. For we maintain that possessed reasons do help to ground deontic facts in the epistemic domain (e.g., facts about what one epistemically ought to believe, may believe, or is justified in believing). Indeed, we present an argument that the possession of sufficient epistemic reasons is necessary and sufficient for propositional justification, and that proper basing on such reasons yields doxastic justification. But since possession and proper basing are themselves grounded in competence, reasons are not the end of the explanatory road: competence enables them to do their work, putting them—and us—in the middle. (shrink)

Complex demonstratives, expressions of the form 'That F', 'These Fs', etc., have traditionally been taken to be referring terms. Yet they exhibit many of the features of quantified noun phrases. This has led some philosophers to suggest that demonstrative determiners are a special kind of quantifier, which can be paraphrased using a context sensitive definite description. Both these views contain elements of the truth, though each is mistaken. We advance a novel account of the semantic form of complex demonstratives that (...) shows how to reconcile the view that they function like quantified noun phrases with the view that simple demonstratives function as context sensitive referring terms wherever they occur. If we are right, previous accounts of complex demonstratives have misconceived their semantic role; and philosophers relying on the majority view in employing complex demonstratives in analysis have proceeded on a false assumption. (shrink)

We articulate a distinction between ontology, understood as involving existence questions, and metaphysics, understood as either providing for metaphysical profiles of entities or else as dealing with fundamentality and/or grounding and dependence questions. The distinction, we argue, allows a better understanding of the roles of metaontology and metametaphysics when it comes to discussing the relations between ontology and science on the one hand, and metaphysics and science on the other. We argue that while ontology, as understood in this paper, may (...) have reasonable perspectives for naturalization, given its relation to science, the same cannot be said for metaphysics, given that it is typically understood as an additional theoretical layer over science, not participating in the scientific investigation. That may result either in skepticism over metaphysics, or else on accepting that metaphysics is an autonomous branch of investigation, depending on one’s concern for metaphysics. (shrink)

This chapter reviews the work and influence of Donald Davidson across all the areas to which he contributed.

Our aim in the present paper is to investigate, from the standpoint of truth-theoretic semantics, English tense, temporal designators and quantifiers, and other expressions we use to relate ourselves and other things to the temporal order. Truth-theoretic semantics provides a particularly illuminating standpoint from which to discuss issues about the semantics of tense, and their relation to thoughts at, and about, times. Tense, and temporal modifiers, contribute systematically to conditions under which sentences we utter are true or false. A Tarski-style (...) truth-theoretic semantics, by requiring explicitly represented truth conditions, helps to sharpen questions about the function of tense, and to deepen our insight into the contribution the tenses and temporal modifiers make to what we say by using them. (shrink)

This paper responds to a critical review of our 2005 book Donald Davidson: Meaning, Truth, Language and Reality, by Frederick Stoutland. It identifies a number of serious misreadings of both Davidson and the book.

Bertrand Russell, in the second of his 1914 Lowell lectures, Our Knowledge of the External World, asserted famously that ‘every philosophical problem, when it is subjected to the necessary analysis and purification, is found either to be not really philosophical at all, or else to be, in the sense in which we are using the word, logical’ (Russell 1993, p. 42). He went on to characterize that portion of logic that concerned the study of forms of propositions, or, as he (...) called them, ‘logical forms’. This portion of logic he called ‘philosophical logic’. Russell asserted that ... some kind of knowledge of logical forms, though with most people it is not explicit, is involved in all understanding of discourse. It is the business of philosophical logic to extract this knowledge from its concrete integuments, and to render it explicit and pure. (p. 53) Perhaps no one still endorses quite this grand a view of the role of logic and the investigation of logical form in philosophy. But talk of logical form retains a central role in analytic philosophy. Given its widespread use in philosophy and linguistics, it is rather surprising that the concept of logical form has not received more attention by philosophers than it has. The concern of this paper is to say something about what talk of logical form comes to, in a tradition that stretches back to (and arguably beyond) Russell’s use of that expression. This will not be exactly Russell’s conception. For we do not endorse Russell’s view that propositions are the bearers of logical form, or that appeal to propositions adds anything to our understanding of what talk of logical form comes to. But we will be concerned to provide an account responsive to the interests expressed by Russell in the above quotations, though one clarified of extraneous elements, and expressed precisely. For this purpose, it is important to note that the concern expressed by Russell in the above passages, as the surrounding text makes clear, is a concern not just with logic conceived narrowly as the study of logical terms, but with propositional form more generally, which includes, e.g., such features as those that correspond to the number of argument places in a propositional function, and the categories of objects which propositional.... (shrink)

Ever since Plato it has been thought that one knows only if one's belief hits the mark of truth and does so with adequate justification. The issues debated by Laurence BonJour and Ernest Sosa concern mostly the nature and conditions of such epistemic justification, and its place in our understanding of human knowledge. Presents central issues pertaining to internalism vs. externalism and foundationalism vs. virtue epistemology in the form of a philosophical debate. Introduces students to fundamental questions within epistemology (...) while engaging in contemporary debates. Written by two of today’s foremost epistemologists. Includes an extensive bibliography. (shrink)

We discuss some methodological aspects of the relation between physics and metaphysics by dealing specifically with the case of non-relativistic quantum mechanics. Our main claim is that current attempts to productively integrate quantum mechanics and metaphysics are best seen as approaches of what should be called ‘the metaphysics of science’, which is developed by applying already existing metaphysical concepts to scientific theories. We argue that, in this perspective, metaphysics must be understood as an autonomous discipline. It results that this metaphysics (...) cannot hope to derive any kind of justification from science. Thus, one of the main motivations of such project, which is the obtaining of a scientifically respectable justification for the attribution of a single true metaphysical profile to the posits of a scientific theory, is doomed because of the emergence of metaphysical underdetermination from the outset. If metaphysics floats free from physics, which is a premise of such project of integration between these two areas, then it is always possible to attribute more than one metaphysical profile to dress physical entities. (shrink)

This paper advances a general argument, inspired by some remarks of Davidson, to show that appeal to meanings as entities in the theory of meaning is neither necessary nor sufficient for carrying out the tasks of the theory of meaning. The crucial point is that appeal to meaning as entities fails to provide us with an understanding of any expression of a language except insofar as we pick it out with an expression we understand which we tacitly recognize to be (...) a translation of the term whose meaning we want to illuminate by the appeal to assigning to it a meaning. The meaning drops out as irrelevant: the work is done, and can only be done, by matching terms already understood with terms they translate. (shrink)

(2022) A meditation in regards to Ernest Becker's "Denial of Death," with immortality projects. What does it mean to "leave our mark on the world?".

Scientific realism is typically associated with metaphysics. One current incarnation of such an association concerns the requirement of a metaphysical characterization of the entities one is being a realist about. This is sometimes called “Chakravartty’s Challenge”, and codifies the claim that without a metaphysical characterization, one does not have a clear picture of the realistic commitments one is engaged with. The required connection between metaphysics and science naturally raises the question of whether such a demand is appropriately fulfilled, and how (...) metaphysics engages with science in order to produce what is called “scientific metaphysics”. Here, we map some of the options available in the literature, generating a conceptual spectrum according to how each view approximates science and metaphysics. This is done with the purpose of enlightening the current debate on the possibility of epistemic warrant that science could grant to such a metaphysics, and how different positions differently address the thorny issue concerning such a warrant. (shrink)

In this paper we present a new proposal for defining actual causation, i.e., the problem of deciding if one event caused another. We do so within the popular counterfactual tradition initiated by Lewis, which is characterised by attributing a fundamental role to counterfactual dependence. Unlike the currently prominent definitions, our approach proceeds from the ground up: we start from basic principles, and construct a definition of causation that satisfies them. We define the concepts of counterfactual dependence and production, and put (...) forward principles such that dependence is an unnecessary but sufficient condition for causation, whereas production is an insufficient but necessary condition. The resulting definition of causation is a suitable compromise between dependence and production. Every principle is introduced by means of a paradigmatic example of causation. We illustrate some of the benefits of our approach with two examples that have spelled trouble for other accounts. We make all of this formally precise using structural equations, which we extend with a timing over all events. (shrink)

Davidson’s epistemology, like Kant’s, features a transcendental argument as its centerpiece. Both philosophers reject any priority, whether epistemological or conceptual, of the subjective over the objective, attempting thus to solve the problem of the external world. For Davidson, three varieties of knowledge are coordinate—knowledge of the self, of other minds, and of the external world. None has priority. Despite the epistemologically coordinate status of the mind and the world, however, the content of the mind can be shown to entail how (...) it is out in the world. More exactly, Davidson argues, we could not possibly have the beliefs we have, with their contents, unless the world around us was pretty much the way we take it to be, at least in its general outline. We are thus offered a way to argue, to all appearances a priori, from how it is in our minds to how it is in the world. The argument is a priori at least in being free of premises or assumptions about contingent particularities concerning the world around us or our relation to it. From premises about the contents of our propositional attitudes, the argument wends its way to a conclusion about the general lines of how the world around us is structured and populated. Before presenting his own account, Davidson rejects received views of meaning and knowledge. What follows will combine themes from his critique of alternatives with his more positive account and how it deals with the skeptic. (shrink)

This chapter identifies the central issue between Michael Dummett and Donald Davidson on the role of convention in language and argues they are not as far apart in the end as they take themselves to be.

The counterfactual tradition to defining actual causation has come a long way since Lewis started it off. However there are still important open problems that need to be solved. One of them is the (in)transitivity of causation. Endorsing transitivity was a major source of trouble for the approach taken by Lewis, which is why currently most approaches reject it. But transitivity has never lost its appeal, and there is a large literature devoted to understanding why this is so. Starting from (...) a survey of this work, we will develop a formal analysis of transitivity and the problems it poses for causation. This analysis provides us with a sufficient condition for causation to be transitive, a sufficient condition for dependence to be necessary for causation, and several characterisations of the transitivity of dependence. Finally, we show how this analysis leads naturally to several conditions a definition of causation should satisfy, and use those to suggest a new definition of causation. (shrink)

Physical phenomena emerge from the quantum fields everywhere in space. However, not only the phenomena emerge from the quantum fields, the law of the conservation of energy must have its origin from the same spatial structure. This paper describes the relations between the main law of physics, the universal constants and the mathematical structure of the “aggregated” quantum fields.

The main concept of quantum field theory is the conviction that all the phenomena in the universe are created by the underlying structure of the quantum fields. Fields represent dynamical spatial properties that can be described with the help of geometrical concepts. Therefore it is possible to describe the mathematical origin of the structure of the creating fields and show the mathematical origin of the law of conservation of energy, Planck’s constant and the constant speed of light within a non-local (...) universe. (shrink)

Andreas & Günther have recently proposed a difference-making definition of actual causation. In this paper I show that there exist conclusive counterexamples to their definition, by which I mean examples that are unacceptable to everyone, including AG. Concretely, I show that their definition allows c to cause e even when c is not a causal ancestor of e. I then proceed to identify their non-standard definition of causal models as the source of the problem, and argue that there is no (...) viable strategy open to AG to fixing it. I conclude that their definition of causation is damaged beyond repair. (shrink)

Twenty-first century science faces a dilemma. Two of its well-verified foundation stones - relativity and quantum theory - have proven inconsistent. Resolution of the conflict has resisted improvements in experimental precision leaving some to believe that some fundamental understanding in our world-view may need modification or even radical reform. Employment of the wave-front model of electrodynamics, as a propagation process with a Markov property, may offer just such a clarification.

The ethical concerns regarding the successful development of an Artificial Intelligence have received a lot of attention lately. The idea is that even if we have good reason to believe that it is very unlikely, the mere possibility of an AI causing extreme human suffering is important enough to warrant serious consideration. Others look at this problem from the opposite perspective, namely that of the AI itself. Here the idea is that even if we have good reason to believe that (...) it is very unlikely, the mere possibility of humanity causing extreme suffering to an AI is important enough to warrant serious consideration. This paper starts from the observation that both concerns rely on problematic philosophical assumptions. Rather than tackling these assumptions directly, it proceeds to present an argument that if one takes these assumptions seriously, then one has a moral obligation to advocate for a ban on the development of a conscious AI. (shrink)

Our universe shows to be local and non-local. The concept is confusing because in daily live we are not aware of the non-locality of our universe. Actually, in daily live local reality seems to be quite orderly and understandable. But we don’t know why everything is in motion and all our theories in physics are still approximations of physical reality. At least that is what they supposed to be.

Recently there is some new interest in understanding the physical reality behind the formalism of quantum mechanics. This paper relates the known “quantum mysteries” of QM with the properties of the underlying structure of discrete space. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.5236617.

The proposed existence of relative time and the curvature of space – both combined into the concept of spacetime – influences the search for an adequate theoretical model that can describe the structure of space in an accurate way. The aim of building space is to develop a quantum theory of gravitation. This paper investigate the theoretical problems that have their origin in the concepts that are at the basis of phenomenological physics.

The paper is about the basic properties of the structure of space and time. I wrote the very short paper to show that logic and mathematics are enough to determine the basic properties of the field structure of our universe.

In physics there are different opinions about the conceptual interpretation of Einstein’s famous equation that describes the equivalence between mass and energy. It is understandable that the equation has different interpretations because of the different points of view to interpret phenomenological reality. This paper is about the meaning of the equation in relation to the general concept of quantum field theory. In other words, reality is created by the underlying structure of the basic quantum fields.

Climate change, pollution, and deforestation have a negative impact on global mental health. There is an environmental justice dimension to this challenge as wealthy people and high-income countries are major contributors to climate change and pollution, while poor people and low-income countries are heavily affected by the consequences. Using state-of-the art data mining, we analyzed and visualized the global research landscape on mental health, climate change, pollution and deforestation over a 15-year period. Metadata of papers were exported from PubMed®, and (...) both relevance and relatedness of terms in different time frames were computed using VOSviewer. Co-occurrence graphs were used to visualize results. The development of exemplary terms over time was plotted separately. The number of research papers on mental health and environmental challenges is growing in a linear fashion. Major topics are climate change, chemical pollution, including psychiatric medication in wastewater, and neurobiological effects. Research on specific psychiatric syndromes and diseases, particularly on their ethical and social aspects is less prominent. There is a growing body of research literature on links between mental health, climate change, pollution, and deforestation. This research provides a graphic overview to mental healthcare professionals and political stakeholders. Social and ethical aspects of the climate change-mental health link have been neglected, and more research is needed. (shrink)

The paper describes the wav-particle duality with the help of the concept of discrete space (also termed "quantized space").

Paper about the origin of the wave-particle duality.

Modern physics describes the observable – and proposed – relations between the phenomena in the microcosm and macrocosm. Unfortunately we cannot observe non-local space itself. Therefore we can only determine the dynamics of the mathematical structure of space with the help of the universal properties of phenomenological reality. It has consequences too.

As far as we know the scientific search for the nature of reality in Europe started about 2500 years ago in ancient Greek. It was the ancient Greek philosopher Parmenides who reasoned that observable reality is created by an underlying reality. There are indications that the ancient Greek concept of the atom was (also) related to the proposed units of the structure of the underlying creating reality of Parmenides. However, an invisible underlying creating reality suggests that we cannot determine its (...) existence with the help of experimental physics. This paper describes an experiment that will show that Parmenides concept about an underlying reality is correct. (shrink)

Changes within observable reality at the lowest level of reality seem to occur in accordance with the probabil­ity theory in mathematics. It is quite remarkable that nature itself has chosen the probability theory to ar­range all the changes within the structure of the basic quantum fields. This rises a question about the distri­bution of properties in space and time. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.5515861.

The ancient Greek philosopher Parmenides reasoned that observable reality is created by an underlying reality. However, an invisible underlying creating reality suggests that we cannot determine its existence with the help of experimental physics. This paper describes an experiment to measure absolute motion that will show that Parmenides concept about an underlying reality is correct. This in spite of Albert Einstein’s theory of special relativity that is founded on the assumption that it is impossible to detect the absolute motion of (...) objects. (shrink)

The concept of discrete space can be termed as “the ex­ternal mathematical reality hypothesis”. The concept was already known among the ancient Greek philosophers (≈ 500 BC). Unfortunately the phenomenological point of view has dominated science during more than 2000 years and it is only recently that the concept of discrete space gets “tangible” attention again in philosophy and theoretical physics. Although the model de­scribes the existence of the universal conservation laws, constants and principles in a convincing way, the re­lation (...) between phenomenological reality and the geo­metrical description of discrete space is difficult to ima­gine for everyone who is only familiar with phenomeno­logical reality. The purpose of this paper is to describe some easy to imagine properties of discrete space. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.5498120. (shrink)

During the 20th century there were a couple of scientists who announced the observation of exceptional heat during the electrolysis of water with the help of Palladium electrodes. In spite of the opinion of the community of nuclear physicists that low energy generated nuclear fusion is a hoax there is a lot of research to understand and create the observed emission of exceptional electromagnetic radiation. This paper explains with the help of the concept of quantized space the simple mechanism that (...) is responsible for the decrease of the Coulomb force of Hydrogen nuclei, established by Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons. (shrink)

Quantized space creates phenomenological reality but quantized space isn’t comparable with our phenomenological related concepts. To understand quantized space we must change our phenomenological point of view for the all-inclusive point of view. The latter shows that tessellation and concentration are geometrical based mechanism that are responsible for the creation of observable reality in our universe.

The force of gravity is the result of the creation of matter within vacuum space by the structure of the basic quantum fields. The scalar vectors of the flat Higgs field lost their symmetry and the result are scalar vectors from everywhere around in vacuum space that point in the direction of the created matter. Gravity shows to be a push force and is equal to Newtonian gravity (except the concept of a pull force).

Changes within observable reality at the lowest level of reality seem to occur in accordance with the probability theory in mathematics. It is quite remarkable that nature itself has chosen the probability theory to arrange all the changes within the structure of the basic quantum fields. This rises a question about the distribution of properties in space and time.

Albert Einstein’s theory of General Relativity was once the leading theory in theoretical physics. Unfortunately the theory describes macroscopic reality without a clear link with the the microcosm in respect to the properties of spacetime. However the theory of General Relativity has proved to predict macroscopic phenomena in a very accurate way. Nowadays most theoretical physicists use the conceptual framework of quantum theory. So it is not surprisingly that the question about the “true nature” of spacetime becomes very intrigue.

The ancient Greek philosophers – like Parmenides – reasoned that observable reality cannot exist by itself. It has to be a creation of an underlying reality. An all-in­clusive existence that has a structure because observable reality shows structure at every scale size. Although observable reality is involved in a continuous transformation too. If our concept about the relation between phenomenological reality and the creating underlying reality is correct, the unification of the properties of phenomenological reality is part of an enveloping (...) mathematical model. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.5457368. (shrink)

In the past the particle-wave duality of electromagnetic waves dominated the discussions about the nature of light. No consensus had been reached amongst physicists and philosophers of physics concerning which interpretation represents reality best. However, two different concepts for the same phenomenon doesn’t really convince about the reliability of the conceptual framework. So what is wrong?

Phenomenological reality seems to be a never ending transformation of observable events. A sequence of successive observable alterations that is called “time”. Actually phenomenological reality exists only “at the front” of the evolving transformations. A state of reality we have termed “now”. However, what is the physical reality of the concept “now”? Does it depends on the properties of the human consciousness or is the state of reality “now” existent everywhere in the universe, even in vacuum space?

The paper questioned the empiric method if the aim is to unify all the conflicting concepts in physics.

Phenomenological reality is created by the underlying structure of the basis quantum fields and not the opposite. In cosmology this isn’t the leading concept. Cosmologists share a different concept, the Standard cosmological model. Unfortunately, the general concept of quantum field theory doesn’t predict the expansion of space and the concentration of all the energy of the universe in one little spot. The paper describes the consequences.

Observations are restricted to the mutual relations between observable phenomena. That is why modern physics is founded on phenomenological physics. Nevertheless, the theoretical framework of phenomenological physics – the description of the basic components and the underlying structure like laws, universal constants and principles – is essential to determine the implications of the basic properties and structure of quantized space.