Background: Exposomics, the study of the exposome, is flourishing, but the field is not well defined. The term “exposome” refers to all environmental influences and associated biological responses throughout the lifespan. However, this definition is very similar to that of the term “environment”—the external elements and conditions that surround and affect the life and development of an organism. Consequently, the exposome seems to be nothing more than a synonym for the environment, and exposomics a synonym for environmental research. As a (...) result, some have rebranded their “standard” environmental health research with the neologistic exposome term, whereas others ignore or seek to abandon the seemingly redundant concept of the exposome. -/- Objectives: We argue that exposomics needs to sharpen its mission focus to counteract this apparent redundancy. Exposomics should be defined as a research program in environmental health aimed at enabling a comprehensive and discovery-driven approach to identifying environmental determinants of human health. Similar to the aim of the Human Genome Project, exposomics aims to analyze the complete complexity of exposures and their corresponding biological responses. Exposomics’ primary premise is that the existence of undiscovered, potentially interconnected, nongenetic (environmental) risk factors for health necessitates a comprehensive discovery-driven analysis approach. -/- Discussion: We argue that exposomics researchers should adopt our reconceptualization of exposomics and focus on the productiveness and integrity of their research program: its purpose and principles. We suggest that exposomics researchers should coordinate the writing of reviews that assess the program’s productiveness and integrity, as well as provide a platform for exposomics researchers to define their vision for the field. (shrink)

In recent years, exposome research has been put forward as the next frontier for the study of human health and disease. Exposome research entails the analysis of the totality of environmental exposures and their corresponding biological responses within the human body. Increasingly, this is operationalized by big-data approaches to map the effects of internal as well as external exposures using smart sensors and multiomics technologies. However, the ethical implications of exposome research are still only rarely discussed in the literature. Therefore, (...) we conducted a systematic review of the academic literature regarding both the exposome and underlying research fields and approaches, to map the ethical aspects that are relevant to exposome research. We identify five ethical themes that are prominent in ethics discussions: the goals of exposome research, its standards, its tools, how it relates to study participants, and the consequences of its products. Furthermore, we provide a number of general principles for how future ethics research can best make use of our comprehensive overview of the ethical aspects of exposome research. Lastly, we highlight three aspects of exposome research that are most in need of ethical reflection: the actionability of its findings, the epidemiological or clinical norms applicable to exposome research, and the meaning and action–implications of bias. (shrink)

Exposome research is put forward as a major tool for solving the nature-versus-nurture debate because the exposome is said to represent “the nature of nurture.” Against this influential idea, we argue that the adoption of the nature-versus-nurture debate into the exposome research program is a mistake that needs to be undone to allow for a proper bioethical assessment of exposome research. We first argue that this adoption is originally based on an equivocation between the traditional nature-versus-nurture debate and a debate (...) about disease prediction/etiology. Second, due to this mistake, exposome research is pushed to adopt a limited conception of agential control that is harmful to one's thinking about the good that exposome research can do for human health and wellbeing. To fully excise the nature-versus-nurture debate from exposome research, we argue that exposome researchers and bioethicists need to think about the exposome afresh from the perspective of actionability. We define the concept of actionability and related concepts and show how these can be used to analyze the ethical aspects of the exposome. In particular, we focus on refuting the popular “gun analogy” in exposome research, returning results to study participants and risk-taking in the context of a well-lived life. (shrink)

In this paper, we give a flavour of how, against the odds, Reggio-Emilia-inspired pedagogical documentation can work in reconceptualizing environmental education, reconfiguring child subjectivity and provoking an ontological shift from autopoiesis to sympoiesis in teacher education. Working posthuman(e)ly and transdisciplinarily across three foundation phase teacher education courses at a university in South Africa, we situate our teaching within current environmental precarities. We show how we stirred up trouble in and outside our university classroom and provoked our students to “make kin” (...) with children, each other, other animals, and the more-than-human, but also to stay with the trouble, that is, to learn to be truly present in colonized spaces. (shrink)

We investigate the structure common to causal theories that attempt to explain a (part of) the world. Causality implies conservation of identity, itself a far from simple notion. It imposes strong demands on the universalizing power of the theories concerned. These demands are often met by the introduction of a metalevel which encompasses the notions of 'system' and 'lawful behaviour'. In classical mechanics, the division between universal and particular leaves its traces in the separate treatment of cinematics and dynamics. This (...) analysis is applied to the mechanical theories of Newton and Leibniz, with some surprising results. (shrink)

Scholarly debates on the Critique of Pure Reason have largely been shaped by epistemological questions. Challenging this prevailing trend, Kant's Reform of Metaphysics is the first book-length study to interpret Kant's Critique in view of his efforts to turn Christian Wolff's highly influential metaphysics into a science. Karin de Boer situates Kant's pivotal work in the context of eighteenth-century German philosophy, traces the development of Kant's conception of critique, and offers fresh and in-depth analyses of key parts of the (...) Critique of Pure Reason, including the Transcendental Deduction, the Schematism Chapter, the Appendix to the Transcendental Analytic, and the Architectonic. The book not only brings out the coherence of Kant's project, but also reconstructs the outline of the 'system of pure reason' for which the Critique was to pave the way, but that never saw the light. (shrink)

Because we tend to study fight books in isolation, we often forget how difficult it is to understand the precise place they occupy in the sociocultural and historical fabric of their time, and spill the many clues they inevitably contain on their owner, their local society, their precise purpose. In order to unlock that information, we need to study them in their broader sociocultural and historical context. This requires a background and research skills that are not always easily accessible to (...) everyone. To illustrate the point, in this paper I show in some detail what is required to make sense of the claim that Aristotelian philosophy and science influenced the medieval fight books in relevant ways, and that understanding this influence helps us to better understand the fight books per se. I give an outline of the general historical framework, and apply it to a testcase: Talhoffer’s Thott 290 2° Ms., with some interesting results. My hope is that this framework may be of some use to other researchers in HEMA Studies who want to dig deeper in sources of interest to them. (shrink)

It will be shown in this article that an ontological approach for some problems related to the interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (QM) could emerge from a re-evaluation of the main paradox of early Greek thought: the paradox of Being and non-Being, and the solutions presented to it by Plato and Aristotle. More well known are the derivative paradoxes of Zeno: the paradox of motion and the paradox of the One and the Many. They stem from what was perceived by classical (...) philosophy to be the fundamental enigma for thinking about the world: the seemingly contradictory results that followed from the co-incidence of being and non-being in the world of change and motion as we experience it, and the experience of absolute existence here and now. The most clear expression of both stances can be found, again following classical thought, in the thinking of Heraclitus of Ephesus and Parmenides of Elea. The problem put forward by these paradoxes reduces for both Plato and Aristotle to the possibility of the existence of stable objects as a necessary condition for knowledge. Hence the primarily ontological nature of the solutions they proposed: Plato’s Theory of Forms and Aristotle’s metaphysics and logic. Plato’s and Aristotle’s systems are argued here to do on the ontological level essentially the same: to introduce stability in the world by introducing the notion of a separable, stable object, for which a ‘principle of contradiction’ is valid: an object cannot be and not-be at the same place at the same time. So it becomes possible to forbid contradiction on an epistemological level, and thus to guarantee the certainty of knowledge that seemed to be threatened before. After leaving Aristotelian metaphysics, early modern science had to cope with these problems: it did so by introducing “space” as the seat of stability, and “time” as the theater of motion. But the ontological structure present in this solution remained the same. Therefore the fundamental notion ‘separable system’, related to the notions observation and measurement, themselves related to the modern concepts of space and time, appears to be intrinsically problematic, because it is inextricably connected to classical logic on the ontological level. We see therefore the problems dealt with by quantum logic not as merely formal, and the problem of ‘non-locality’ as related to it, indicating the need to re-think the notions system, entity, as well as the implications of the operation ‘measurement’, which is seen here as an application of classical logic (including its ontological consequences) on the material world. (shrink)

Our concern in the following pages will be the ontology of the relation between living beings (especially, but not exclusively, humans) and the technological artefacts of our late-industrial society. The theme is not new, but important in the context of the emergence and globalisation of so called “post- modern” society. The eventual originality of the present contribution is to be situated in its interpretative framework, i.e., a specific conception of reality's deep ontology, overlooked in general exactly because of the “technological” (...) structure impressed since centuries upon our ways of perceiving of and reasoning about the world. I refer to this neglected but fundamental characteristic of reality as its ontological paradoxicality. (shrink)

In this essay I propose a new measure of social welfare. It captures the intuitive idea that quantity, quality, and equality of individual welfare all matter for social welfare. More precisely, it satisfies six conditions: Equivalence, Dominance, Quality, Strict Monotonicity, Equality and Asymmetry. These state that i) populations equivalent in individual welfare are equal in social welfare; ii) a population that dominates another in individual welfare is better; iii) a population that has a higher average welfare than another population is (...) better, other things being equal; iv) the addition of a well-faring individual makes a population better, whereas the addition of an ill-faring individual makes a population worse; v) a population that has a higher degree of equality than another population is better, other things being equal; and vi) individual illfare matters more for social welfare than individual welfare. By satisfying the six conditions, the measure improves on previously proposed measures, such as the utilitarian Total and Average measures, as well as different kinds of Prioritarian measures. (shrink)

Isaac Newton, in popular imagination the Ur-scientist, was an outstanding humanist scholar. His researches on, among others, ancient philosophy, are thorough and appear to be connected to and fit within his larger philosophical and theological agenda. It is therefore relevant to take a closer look at Newton’s intellectual choices, at how and why precisely he would occupy himself with specific text-sources, and how this interest fits into the larger picture of his scientific and intellectual endeavours. In what follows, we shall (...) follow Newton into his study and look over his shoulder while reading compendia and original source-texts in his personal library at Cambridge, meticulously investigating and comparing fragments and commentaries, and carefully keeping track in private notes of how they support his own developing ideas. Indeed, Newton was convinced that precursors to his own insights and discoveries were present already in Antiquity, even before the Greeks, in ancient Egypt, and he puts a lot of time and effort into making the point, especially, and not incidentially, in the period between the first and the second edition of the Principia. A clear understanding of his reading of the classic sources therefore matters to our understanding of its content and gestation process. In what follows we will confine ourselves to the classical legacy, and investigate Newton’s intellectual intercourse with it. (shrink)

In de hiernavolgende bijdrage zal het erom gaan te pogen een ander licht te werpen op de globalisering der wereldeconomie die onze planeet sinds enkele decennia teistert. In de theoretische aandacht die deze historische ontwikkeling te beurt viel gedurende de tweede helft van de voorbije eeuw, werd het verband met zowel de ‘economisering’ als de ‘technologisering’ van onze leefwereld zoals geduid in de marxistische en techniekphilosophische critiek centraal gesteld; zij werd tevens gesitueerd in de context van “de postmoderne conditie” in (...) den zin van Lyotard2. Ook de rationaliteitscrisis tout court die hiermee samenhangt beschouw ik als een uitgangspunt, hoewel men over haar aard en oorzaken van mening kan verschillen. De oorspronkelijkheid van deze bijdrage zal dan ook niet te vinden zijn in de bespreking van een der bovenvermelde punten, maar in een ander begrip van de betrekkingen tussen de totaliteit van dit proces en de in onze gewaarwordingen gegeven, ‘natuurlijke’ werkelijkheid. (shrink)

The article summarises in an accessible way the (lack of) debate in France between different economic schools — the hegemonic neoclassical school with its positivist pretenses versus more historical schools of a Marxist or Keynesian orientation.

"Thinking about thinking", the topic of this section of our volume, leads us into an Escherian web of self-referential interconnections — which nevertheless make sense, at least if we do not shy away at once in the face of paradox, for fear of inconsistency. How do our critical faculties enter the picture? Adding a few conceptual dimensions to the merely linearly causal one may help us to shed light on the issue, and may help us also to understand some of (...) the basic strategies "Western" thought has developed throughout its historical pathway in its conscious dealings with the 'real'. Of course, in a few pages it is impossible to do justice to this complicated subject. But I'll try to give the reader an as clear as possible description of the, in my view, crucial issues, pointing out the ways they resonate into the many fields of interest represented in the intended readership, and leave it to the reader to dig deeper through the given references. (shrink)

Book review: Emmanuel Todd, "Où en sommes-nous? Une esquisse de l'histoire humaine" (Seuil, 2017).

In their recent work, L. Graham and J.-M. Kantor discuss a remarkable connection between diverging conceptions of the mathematical infinite in Russia and France at the beginning of the twentieth century and the religious convictions of their respective authors. They expand much more on the Russian side of the cultural equation they propose; I do believe, however, that the French (or rather ‘West European’) side is more complex than it seems, and that digging deeper into it is worthwhile. In this (...) paper I shall therefore broaden the path laid out in Graham and Kantor’s work, by connecting two different strands of research concerning the origin of what I loosely call ‘formal’ ideas: firstly, the rich but complex relation between logic and rhetoric throughout European cultural history, and secondly, the impact of religious convictions on the formation of certain mathematical and scientific ideas during Renaissance and Early Modernity, especially but not exclusively in France. (shrink)

A concise introduction (in Dutch) to the work of Giorgio Agamben, from the perspective of the central question in his philosophy under what conditions community or society today are possible, not based on in the end always artbitrary principles of exclusion — be they historical, biological, ...

This article challenges the prevailing interpretations of Hegel's account of the concept "contradiction" in the Science of Logic by arguing that it is concerned with the principle of Hegel's method rather than with the classical law of non-contradiction. I first consider Hegel's Doctrine of Essence in view of Kant's discussion of the concepts of reflection in the first Critique. On this basis, I examine Hegel's account of the logical principles based on the concepts "identity," "opposition," and "contradiction." Finally, I point (...) out how the principle Hegel derives from the concept of contradiction actually informs his own method. (shrink)

Since the dawn of philosophy, the paradoxical interconnection between the continuous and the discrete plays a central rôle in attempts to understand the ontology of the world, while defying all attempts at consistent formulation. I investigate the relation between (classical) logic and concepts of “space” and “time” in physical and metaphysical theories, starting with the Greeks. An important part of my research consists in exploring the strong connections between paradoxes as they appear and are dealt with in ancient philosophy, and (...) their re-appearance in early modern natural philosophy, as well as in the foundations of contemporary science and mathematics. The way paradoxes are dealt with sheds light on a theory’s hidden metaphysical assumptions, especially with respect to matter, space, time and causation, it defines its ontological signature. This conclusion led me to the in-depth study of early modern natural philosophy, the origin of natural science, especially the influences ancient thinkers had on the new conceptions of space, time and causation developed by Newton, Huygens and Leibniz. (shrink)

The present paper aims to trace back Kant’s account of the schematism of the pure understanding in the Critique of Pure Reason to the Dissertation. I do so by discussing Kant’s understanding of sensible cognition in view of his assessment of metaphysics. I argue, first, that Kant in both texts aims to defend metaphysics against skeptical attacks by discarding those of its elements he considers unwarranted and, second, that this undertaking hinges on his account of concepts that function as the (...) sensible condition of cognition. Yet whereas Kant argues in 1770 that metaphysics must be purely intellectual, he in 1781 draws on his earlier account of sensible concepts to argue, against the Wolffians, that determining intelligible objects by purely intellectual means does not amount to cognition proper. (shrink)

The amount of realist positions put forward by philosophers of religion and theologians is impressive. one can certainly doubt whether there is a need for yet another alternative. However, most realist positions employed in studies on religion fall prey to Hilary Putnam’s criticism against metaphysical realism. This gives rise to a dilemma that I aim at solving by introducing yet another realist position, namely non-metaphysical realism.

In the Critique of Pure Reason and elsewhere, Kant uses the term ‘object’ in various ways and often without clearly signaling its different meanings. As a result, it is hard to gauge the extent to which Kant’s account of the object of cognition breaks new ground. In this article, I take the Critique to establish what is required to generate an object of cognition per se soleley by examining the various ways in which the human mind can objectify the content (...) of its representations. To clarify this endeavor, I distinguish four different ways in which the term ‘object’ is used in the Critique, namely, to refer to (1) material things, (2) the content of any type of thought, (3) the mind-immanent correlate of a cognition in the broad sense of the term, and (4) the mind-immanent correlate of a cognition in the strict sense of the term. On my reading, the fourth meaning of the term ‘object’ is key to the Transcendental Deduction and completes Kant’s unprecedented conception of the cognitive acts by means of which the human mind produces objects of cognition out of a manifold of representations. (shrink)

This chapter examines Hegel’s conception of philosophical critique in order to shed light on the force and limits of the method that has become known as immanent critique. At least in modern philosophy, it was Kant who first conceived of critique as a form of reflection that draws its criterion from reason itself. As I argue, Hegel is deeply indebted to Kant in this respect. The chapter begins with an analysis of Hegel's seminal essay ‘On the Essence of Philosophical Criticism (...) Generally, and its Relationship to the Present State of Philosophy in Particular’, published in 1802. After a brief discussion of the Phenomenology, I turn to his Philosophy of Right. These texts make clear, I argue, that the criterion from which immanent critique takes its bearings is necessarily tainted with a particularity that it cannot affirm without losing its force. According to this account, immanent critique comes to refer to a form of reflection that is more complicated and more precarious than Kant and Hegel seem to have assumed. (shrink)

Cho and Martinez-Martin provide a wide-ranging analysis of what they label “digital simulacra”—which are in essence data-driven AI-based simulation models such as digital twins or models used for i...

Purpose This paper aims to formalize long-term trajectories of human civilization as a scientific and ethical field of study. The long-term trajectory of human civilization can be defined as the path that human civilization takes during the entire future time period in which human civilization could continue to exist. -/- Design/methodology/approach This paper focuses on four types of trajectories: status quo trajectories, in which human civilization persists in a state broadly similar to its current state into the distant future; catastrophe (...) trajectories, in which one or more events cause significant harm to human civilization; technological transformation trajectories, in which radical technological breakthroughs put human civilization on a fundamentally different course; and astronomical trajectories, in which human civilization expands beyond its home planet and into the accessible portions of the cosmos. -/- Findings Status quo trajectories appear unlikely to persist into the distant future, especially in light of long-term astronomical processes. Several catastrophe, technological transformation and astronomical trajectories appear possible. -/- Originality/value Some current actions may be able to affect the long-term trajectory. Whether these actions should be pursued depends on a mix of empirical and ethical factors. For some ethical frameworks, these actions may be especially important to pursue. (shrink)

This record describes the occurrence of conflicts between stingless bees of an active colony of Scaptotrigona bipunctata (Lepeletier) and individuals of Melipona quadrifasciata (Lepeletier), and discusses possible hypotheses that motivated the attack. Behaviors were observed in an active colony of S. bipunctata. The active nest guards detained individuals of M. quadrifasciata who invaded the colony. The chances of misidentification of the colony entrance and error in the species possible aggregation were discarded, however, the hypothesis of the real invasion recorded in (...) this study demonstrates a behavioral strategy by M. quadrifasciata suggests that there is an energy savings if successful in looting. (shrink)

To explore the extent of embeddability of Leibnizian infinitesimal calculus in first-order logic (FOL) and modern frameworks, we propose to set aside ontological issues and focus on pro- cedural questions. This would enable an account of Leibnizian procedures in a framework limited to FOL with a small number of additional ingredients such as the relation of infinite proximity. If, as we argue here, first order logic is indeed suitable for developing modern proxies for the inferential moves found in Leibnizian infinitesimal (...) calculus, then modern infinitesimal frameworks are more appropriate to interpreting Leibnizian infinitesimal calculus than modern Weierstrassian ones. (shrink)

Using placebos in day-to-day practice is an ethical problem. This paper summarises the available epidemiological evidence to support this difficult decision. Based on these data we propose to differentiate between placebo and “knowledge framing”. While the use of placebo should be confined to experimental settings in clinical trials, knowledge framing — which is only conceptually different from placebo — is a desired, expected and necessary component of any doctor-patient encounter. Examples from daily practice demonstrate both, the need to investigate the (...) effects of knowledge framing and its impact on ethical, medical, economical and legal decisions. (shrink)

This paper analyses how Vision Zero (VZ) efforts in New York City (NYC) account for equity and social justice implications of road safety work. VZ policy documents, research literature, popular science and opinion articles on road safety work in the city were studied with a prime focus on equity and social justice. Twelve semi-structured interviews with stakeholders involved in road safety and transport planning in the city and at national level were conducted to gain an in-depth understanding of policy design, (...) the adoption process, and the role of equity considerations in the city's road safety work. The results show that major equity and social justice issues arise in the adoption and implementation of VZ. These issues are primarily related to equity and fairness in the distribution of life saving interventions, the socio-economic impacts of road safety strategies, and the nature of community engagement in policy design and implementation. The findings point to a need for VZ practitioners to give due considerations to equity and social justice implications of VZ policies and strategies. Among others, it supports the need for understanding the nature of past equity and social justice problems in road safety and transport planning in the VZ policy design process. Moreover, the findings suggest the need for empirical studies on the socio-economic implications of VZ strategies and interventions. (shrink)

Review of: Karin de Boer. Kant’s Reform of Metaphysics: The Critique of Pure Reason Reconsidered. Cambridge University Press, 2020.

What is reality? It is postmodern or poststructuralist philosophers like Roland Barthes, who realized that it only seems that the media present reality in the form of facts, because they actually spread myths. Accordingly, Jacques Derrida made it clear that communication via media is not based on logic, but is characterized by a significant “différance” between a “marque” (trace) of the past and the expectations of the future. Both agreed, that the initial misunderstanding of the concept of reality must be (...) uncovered or "deconstructed". This is more than necessary for them, because media, be it pictures or language, in truth convey values that are culturally and socially significant. They ‘iterate’ these values subliminally, because what shows up are only placeholders and thus mere forms (“structures of graphematic”) that are superficially realised as facts (“stereotypes”). In this way, according to Barthes, we all accept without question the values hidden behind them, so that they can gain a normative power that unconsciously guides our thinking, our decisions and our actions. Afterwards, it is Judith Butler who critically asked: How can we ever escape from this? Given the power of the subliminal dominant discourses, she saw the only effective solution “im Umdeuten” (in reinterpretation) of their subliminal values. In order to finally escape this “parasitic existence at the ritual”, the media philosopher Walter Benjamin already suggested to trigger "Chockwirkungen” (shock effects) in the viewer. It is the German painter Karin Kneffel, so it shall be shown, who has realized this with her series Fruits and Interiors in the most beautiful photorealistic strategy. (shrink)

During the first quarter of the twentieth century, the French philosopher Henri Bergson became an international celebrity, profoundly influencing contemporary intellectual and artistic currents. While Bergsonism was fashionable, L. Susan Stebbing, Bertrand Russell, Moritz Schlick, and Rudolf Carnap launched different critical attacks against some of Bergson’s views. This book examines this series of critical responses to Bergsonism early in the history of analytic philosophy. Analytic criticisms of Bergsonism were influenced by William James, who saw Bergson as an ‘anti-intellectualist’ ally of (...) American Pragmatism, and Max Scheler, who saw him as a prophet of Lebensphilosophie. Some of the main analytic objections to Bergson are answered in the work of Karin Costelloe-Stephen. Analytic anti-Bergsonism accompanied the earlier refutations of idealism by Russell and Moore, and later influenced the Vienna Circle’s critique of metaphysics. It eventually contributed to the formation of the view that ‘analytic’ philosophy is divided from its ‘continental’ counterpart. (shrink)

This chapter examines Bertrand Russell’s various confrontations with Bergson’s work. Russell’s meetings with Bergson during 1911 would be followed in 1912 by the publication of Russell’s earliest polemical pieces. His 1912 review of Bergson’s Laughter ridicules the effort to develop a philosophical account of humour on the basis of some formula. In his 1912 “The Philosophy of Bergson”, Russell develops a series of objections against Bergson’s accounts of number, space, and duration. Bergson’s position is defended against Russell’s onslaught by H. (...) W. Carr (1913) and Karin Costelloe-Stephen (1914), though Russell only replies to the former. By contrast to Bergson’s silence in the face of Russell’s criticisms, Russell would continue responding to Bergson’s views in multiple works during the 1910s and 1920s. As this chapter shows, Russell not only develops further objections against specific theses upheld by Bergson, but also comments upon the political implications of Bergson’s philosophy, as well as its positioning within the history of French philosophy. (shrink)

Equality and identity. Bulletin of Symbolic Logic. 19 (2013) 255-6. (Coauthor: Anthony Ramnauth) Also see https://www.academia.edu/s/a6bf02aaab This article uses ‘equals’ [‘is equal to’] and ‘is’ [‘is identical to’, ‘is one and the same as’] as they are used in ordinary exact English. In a logically perfect language the oxymoron ‘the numbers 3 and 2+1 are the same number’ could not be said. Likewise, ‘the number 3 and the number 2+1 are one number’ is just as bad from a logical point (...) of view. In normal English these two sentences are idiomatically taken to express the true proposition that ‘the number 3 is the number 2+1’. Another idiomatic convention that interferes with clarity about equality and identity occurs in discussion of numbers: it is usual to write ‘3 equals 2+1’ when “3 is 2+1” is meant. When ‘3 equals 2+1’ is written there is a suggestion that 3 is not exactly the same number as 2+1 but that they merely have the same value. This becomes clear when we say that two of the sides of a triangle are equal if the two angles they subtend are equal or have the same measure. -/- Acknowledgements: Robert Barnes, Mark Brown, Jack Foran, Ivor Grattan-Guinness, Forest Hansen, David Hitchcock, Spaulding Hoffman, Calvin Jongsma, Justin Legault, Joaquin Miller, Tania Miller, and Wyman Park. -/- ► JOHN CORCORAN AND ANTHONY RAMNAUTH, Equality and identity. Philosophy, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260-4150, USA E-mail: [email protected] The two halves of one line are equal but not identical [one and the same]. Otherwise the line would have only one half! Every line equals infinitely many other lines, but no line is [identical to] any other line—taking ‘identical’ strictly here and below. Knowing that two lines equaling a third are equal is useful; the condition “two lines equaling a third” often holds. In fact any two sides of an equilateral triangle is equal to the remaining side! But could knowing that two lines being [identical to] a third are identical be useful? The antecedent condition “two things identical to a third” never holds, nor does the consequent condition “two things being identical”. If two things were identical to a third, they would be the third and thus not be two things but only one. The plural predicate ‘are equal’ as in ‘All diameters of a given circle are equal’ is useful and natural. ‘Are identical’ as in ‘All centers of a given circle are identical’ is awkward or worse; it suggests that a circle has multiple centers. Substituting equals for equals [replacing one of two equals by the other] makes sense. Substituting identicals for identicals is empty—a thing is identical only to itself; substituting one thing for itself leaves that thing alone, does nothing. There are as many types of equality as magnitudes: angles, lines, planes, solids, times, etc. Each admits unit magnitudes. And each such equality analyzes as identity of magnitude: two lines are equal [in length] if the one’s length is identical to the other’s. Tarski [1] hardly mentioned equality-identity distinctions (pp. 54-63). His discussion begins: -/- Among the logical concepts […], the concept of IDENTITY or EQUALITY […] has the greatest importance. -/- Not until page 62 is there an equality-identity distinction. His only “notion of equality”, if such it is, is geometrical congruence—having the same size and shape—an equivalence relation not admitting any unit. Does anyone but Tarski ever say ‘this triangle is equal to that’ to mean that the first is congruent to that? What would motivate him to say such a thing? This lecture treats the history and philosophy of equality-identity distinctions. [1] ALFRED TARSKI, Introduction to Logic, Dover, New York, 1995. [This is expanded from the printed abstract.] . (shrink)

Fears of black-box algorithms are multiplying. Black-box algorithms are said to prevent accountability, make it harder to detect bias and so on. Some fears concern the epistemology of black-box algorithms in medicine and the ethical implications of that epistemology. Durán and Jongsma (2021) have recently sought to allay such fears. While some of their arguments are compelling, we still see reasons for fear.

I respond to Karin de Boer, Thomas Land, and Claudio La Rocca’s comments on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and the Method of Metaphysics (CUP 2023). I first provide a quick outline of some of the main claims I make in the book. I then directly address their criticisms, which I group into three categories. The first group of comments raises doubts concerning my characterization of the central tasks of the critique of pure reason. The second targets the fact (...) that I downplay faculty analysis as an essential characteristic of the critique. The third has to do with my claim that the Critique of Pure Reason aims to show that metaphysics is capable of architectonic unity, where this unity is only achievable when we construe metaphysics according to the worldly concept of philosophy. (shrink)

A collection of essays, mostly original, on the actual and possible positions on free will available to Buddhist philosophers, by Christopher Gowans, Rick Repetti, Jay Garfield, Owen Flanagan, Charles Goodman, Galen Strawson, Susan Blackmore, Martin T. Adam, Christian Coseru, Marie Friquegnon, Mark Siderits, Ben Abelson, B. Alan Wallace, Peter Harvey, Emily McRae, and Karin Meyers, and a Foreword by Daniel Cozort.

We live in the age of postmodernism. What does that mean? With a call for essays, we asked for proposals for a better understanding. At the same time, we were looking for posts that show how the arts have processed and are still processing the change from the modern to the postmodern selfconception of man, which has been described by philosophy since the 1950s to today. This special issue thus demonstrates how architects, designers and artists have reacted to the new (...) socio-politically relevant concepts of postmodernism. -/- With contributions of Simone Kraft on architecture, Arianna Fantuzzi on self-portraits, Stephan Schmidt-Wulffen on visual arts in the 1980s, Anna Kristensson on design, Iris Laner on postmodern theory and the work of Jeff Wall, Christiane Wagner on postmodern avatars and finally, I contributed with a text on the deconstruction of the familiar in postmodern theory and the work of Karin Kneffel. (shrink)

This out-of-print collection on animal rights, applied ethics, and continental philosophy includes readings by Martin Heidegger, Karin De Boer, Martha Nussbaum, David De Grazia, Giorgio Agamben, Peter Singer, Tom Regan, David Morris, Michael Thompson, Stephen Jay Gould, Sue Donaldson, Carolyn Merchant, and Jacques Derrida.

Preliminary Material /Reto Rössler, Tim Sparenberg and Philipp Weber -- Kosmos & Kontingenz /Reto Rössler, Tim Sparenberg and Philipp Weber -- "De la théorie à la pratique“ /Eva Marie Noller -- Mittelalterliche Kosmologie und Kontingenz /Cornelia Selent -- Kontingenz der Stimmen im Kosmos der Lettern -,Atomologie', Technologie und William Baldwins Beware the Cat /Ronja Bodola -- Hypothese, Abweichung und Traum Keplers Ellipsen /Reto Rössler -- "Nur leerer Raum und Schatten“ /Hartmut Böhme -- Gewissheit als sentiment /Christian Reidenbach -- Poiesis im (...) "Gegenhalt“ der anderen Welten: Epistemische und kosmologische Kontingenz bei Breitinger und Brockes /Johannes Wankhammer -- Ungereimtheit - Poesie und Prosa um 1755 /Wolfgang Hottner -- "Es giebt freylich unzähliche Welten“ /Tim Sparenberg -- Kontingenz, Ordnung und realer Grund bei Kant /Thijs Menting -- Im Grunde das Regellose /Philipp Weber -- Kontingenz und Latenz /Helmut Müller-Sievers -- Revolution in Permanenz: Auguste Blanquis Ewigkeit durch die Sterne /Alexandra Heimes -- "Kosmische Gesetze“? /Elisa Ronzheimer -- Vom unendlichen Universum zur Dialektik der Kontingenz /Thomas Ebke -- Stetigkeit im kosmischen Diskontinuum /Timothy Attanucci -- Versuch einer Kosmologie des Performativen in der Kunst /Maximilian Haas -- Kosmopolitismus und Internationalismus: Zwei Modelle, zwei Erbschaften /Étienne Balibar -- Vom kontingenten Kosmos zur Kosmopolitik /Karin Harrasser -- Auswahlbibliographie /Reto Rössler, Tim Sparenberg and Philipp Weber -- Begriffsregister /Reto Rössler, Tim Sparenberg and Philipp Weber -- Autorinnen und Autoren /Reto Rössler, Tim Sparenberg and Philipp Weber. (shrink)