How does microbiota research impact our understanding of biological individuality? We summarize the interdisciplinary summer school on "Microbiota, Symbiosis and Individuality: Conceptual and Philosophical Issues" (July 2019), which was supported by a European Research Council starting grant project "Immunity, DEvelopment, and the Microbiota" (IDEM). The summer school centered around interdisciplinary group work on four facets of microbiota research: holobionts, individuality, causation, and human health. The conceptual discussion of cutting-edge empirical research provided new insights into microbiota and highlights the value of (...) incorporating into meetings experts from other disciplines, such as philosophy and history of science. (shrink)

The Adverse Outcome Pathway (AOP) concept is a knowledge assembly and communication tool to facilitate the transparent translation of mechanistic information into outcomes meaningful to the regulatory assessment of chemicals. The AOP framework and associated knowledgebases (KBs) have received significant attention and use in the regulatory toxicology community. However, it is increasingly apparent that the potential stakeholder community for the AOP concept and AOP KBs is broader than scientists and regulators directly involved in chemical safety assessment. In this paper we (...) identify and describe those stakeholders who currently—or in the future—could benefit from the application of the AOP framework and knowledge to specific problems. We also summarize the challenges faced in implementing pathway-based approaches such as the AOP framework in biological sciences, and provide a series of recommendations to meet critical needs to ensure further progression of the framework as a useful, sustainable and dependable tool supporting assessments of both human health and the environment. Although the AOP concept has the potential to significantly impact the organization and interpretation of biological information in a variety of disciplines/applications, this promise can only be fully realized through the active engagement of, and input from multiple stakeholders, requiring multi-pronged substantive long-term planning and strategies. (shrink)

Human produce discourses on the world: mythologies, religions, mysticisms, philosophies, science. The majority of those discourses are transcendent in nature. Following a conceptual clarification based on the notions of reflection and general discourse, philosophy appears as a transcendent general discourse among others; hence the failure of the latter to account for the world and science; hence the need for a non-transcendent general discourse, a properly scientific general discourse, a metascience. In light of these redefined boundaries, it will be proposed to (...) base metascience on an interpretation of Mario Bunge’s work. This interpretation is based on a set of general postulates that Mario Bunge adheres to and taken for granted by scientists. It is proposed that supporting such a set of postulates without problematizing them in the manner of the philosophers, makes Bunge’s thinking no longer philosophical. (shrink)

L’humain produit des discours sur le monde : mythologies, religions, mysticismes, philosophies, science. La majorité de ses discours sont de nature transcendante. À la suite d’un clarification conceptuelle fondée sur les notions de réflexion et de discours général, la philosophie apparaît comme un dis- cours général transcendant parmi d’autres ; d’où l’échec de celle-ci à rendre compte du monde et de la science ; d’où la nécessité de disposer d’un discours général non transcendant, un discours général proprement scientifique, une métascience. (...) À la lumière des frontières ainsi redéfinies, il sera proposé de fonder la métascience sur une interprétation de l’oeuvre de Mario Bunge. Cette interprétation se fonde sur un ensemble de postulats généraux aux- quels Mario Bunge adhère et tenus pour acquis par les scientifiques. Il est proposé que soutenir un tel ensemble de postulats sans les problématiser à la manière des philosophes, fait en sorte que la pensée de Bunge ne relève plus de la philosophie. (shrink)

En 1982, John Wettersten, dans un texte à propos du malaise et de la frustration qu’on peut ressentir à la lecture de l’oeuvre de Bunge, tentait de comprendre pourquoi son oeuvre n’est pas consi- dérée comme une alternative aux travaux d’autres philosophes. La réponse proposée par Wettersten a trait au problème d’acquisition de la connaissance. Si la connaissance est contextuelle, relative à un cadre de pensée, comment pouvons- nous alors évaluer rationnellement ce cadre de pensée lui-même ? Wettersten identifie deux (...) tendances : ou bien on soutient que les cadres de pensée sont choisis arbitrairement, ce qui mène au rela- tivisme, ou bien on soutient qu’il n’existe qu’un seul cadre de pensée immuable, ce qui mène au dogmatisme. (shrink)

[[THIS IS THE COMPLETE SECOND ISSUE OF MΕTASCIENCE]] -/- This second issue of the journal Mεtascience continues the char acterization of this new branch of knowledge that is metasci ence. If it is new, it is not in a radical sense since Mario Bunge practiced it in an exemplary way, since logical positivists were accused of practicing only a mere metascience, since scientists have always practiced it implicitly, and since some philosophers no longer practice philosophy but rather metascience, but without (...) characterizing it or theorizing it, that is, without realizing that they have abandoned one general discourse for another. The novelty therefore lies in this aware ness that a general discourse without philosophy is possible: a scien tific general discourse. The twelve contributions gathered in this volume illustrate the metascientific approach to knowledge of the world as well as to knowledge of knowledge of the world, that is, science. And like Bunge’s project, they are neither part of the analytical movement nor the continental movement in philosophy. We will read here studies about the Bungean system, some applications of Bungean thought, some metascientific contributions, and some reflections around meta science. Among metascientific disciplines, ontology occupies a prominent place in this issue of Mεtascience. Metascience differs from philoso phy in its rejection of the fundamental philosophical distinction be tween appearance and reality. Metascientific ontology therefore does not postulate the existence of any metaphysical reality. But metasci entific ontology, no more than philosophical ontology, is a factual sci ence. The first, because it studies scientific constructs and not concrete objects, the second, because it is interested in transcendent or meta physical objects. (shrink)

[[THIS IS THE COMPLETE FIRST ISSUE OF MΕTASCIENCE]] -/- This inaugural issue of the journal Mεtascience is also a special issue since it pays tribute to Mario Bunge (1919-2020) to high light his contribution to knowledge and our filiation with his thought. Mario Bunge's project is part of the humanist and scientific tradition of the Enlightenment. At the end of his intellectual journey, he wrote more than 150 books and 540 articles or chapters, including translations into several languages. The work (...) covers almost all branches of philosophy, from ontology to ethics, semantics, episte mology, methodology, praxeology and axiology, as well as a large number of scientific disciplines, ranging from physics to sociology, chemistry, biology and psychology. Without a doubt, Bunge's mag num opus is the Treatise on Basic Philosophy in nine volumes (1974- 1989). The six contributions gathered here come from authors from differ ent backgrounds. Like Bunge's project, they are neither part of the an alytic or continental movement in philosophy. The reader will find studies on the Bungean system, applications of Bungean thought, re flections and testimonies, and metascientific contributions. From the point of view of metascience as theorized in these pages, Bunge is the last of the philosophers and the first metascientific. He kept from philosophy the idea of a complete system that would inte grate semantics, ontology, epistemology, ethics, axiology and praxe ology, but he refused to problematize scientific knowledge in a tradi tional way. The result is surprising: even by accepting science as it is, he finds room for questioning. May Mεtascience be a place of questioning and deployment of the approach designed by Mario Bunge. (shrink)

This is the presentation of issue 1 of Mɛtascience. -/- More than any other philosopher, Mario Bunge is unclassifiable. In 1982 John Wettersten wrote about the discomfort and frustration that one might feel when reading Bunge’s work. He was trying to understand why his work was not seen as an alternative to the work of other philosophers. Wettersten’s answer relates to the problem of knowledge acquisition. If knowledge is contextual, relative to a frame of thought, how can we then rationally (...) evaluate this frame of thought itself? Wettersten identifies two tendencies: either one maintains that frames of thought are chosen arbi- trarily, which leads to relativism, or one maintains that there is only one immutable frame of thought, which leads to dogmatism. (shrink)

Debates about the links between science and ontology are very active in contemporary philosophy, and, in fact, they have always been present. Despite the various philosophical positions on the subject, they all admit the existence of a metaphysical reality. In contrast, metascience holds that such a reality does not exist. This second issue of Mɛtascience presents seven out of twelve articles that have as a common thread either the metascientific ontology or the Bungean ontology.

Les débats sur les liens qui uniraient la science à l’ontologie sont très actifs en philosophie contemporaine, et, en fait, ils ont toujours été présents. Malgré les diverses positions philosophiques sur le sujet, elles admettent toutes l’existence d’une réalité métaphysique. À l’opposé, la métascience soutient qu’une telle réalité n’existe pas. Ce second numéro de Mɛtascience présente sept articles sur douze qui ont comme fil conducteur soit l’ontologie métascientifique soit l’ontologie bungéenne.

Metascientific ontology differs from philosophical ontologies in its objectives, objects and methods. By an examination of the ontological theories of Mario Bunge, we will show their main objective is a unified representation of the world as known through the sciences, that their objects of study are scientific concepts, and that their methods do not differ from those that one expects to find in any rational activity. Metascientific ontology is therefore not transcendent because it does not seek to represent non-concrete objects (...) alien to the world we inhabit and to the sciences that study it, and therefore does not need special faculties and methods to carry out its research. Metascientific ontology is a general scientific discourse on the world because it was designed by and for the sciences. (shrink)

Ce premier numéro de Mεtascience rend un hommage posthume à Mario Bunge, décédé en février 2020. Ce n’est pas la première fois, et certainement pas la dernière, que des penseurs rendent hommage à Mario Bunge ou que son oeuvre fait l’objet d’une étude, à juste titre d’ailleurs, car l’homme est un humaniste et l’oeuvre digne héritière des Lumières. Bunge a contribué de façon significative à un très grand nombre de disciplines : physique, philosophie, sociologie, psychologie, sciences cognitives. Ce numéro est (...) aussi une façon de faire connaître sa pensée à un lectorat francophone. (shrink)

We examine the idea that there is a sub-discipline in philosophy of science, phi-losophy in science, whose researchers use philosophical tools to advance solu-tions to scientific problems. Rather, we propose that these tools are standard epistemic, cognitive, or intellectual tools at work in all rational activity, and therefore these researchers engage in scientific or metascientific research.

We will explain why the Treatise on Basic Philosophy is a metascientific work and not a philosophical one. We will then argue that this meta-science is part of a long process of naturalization of thought that begins at the end of the Middle Ages to give birth to the scientific thought of the study of the world. For Bunge, naturalization takes the form of the naturalization of the general thought which makes it possible to replace philosophical general discourse with scientific (...) gen-eral discourse. Finally, this naturalization of general discourse should not be con-fused with the projects of naturalization of philosophy, in particular one of many projects of scientific or naturalized metaphysics known as ontic structural real-ism. (shrink)

L’ontologie métascientifique se distingue des ontologies philosophiques par ses objectifs, ses objets et ses méthodes. Par un examen des théories ontologiques de Mario Bunge, nous montrerons que leur principal objectif est l’élaboration d’une représentation unifiée du monde tel que connu via les sciences, que leurs objets d’étude sont les concepts scientifiques, et que leurs méthodes ne diffèrent pas de celles qu’on s’attend à trouver dans toute activité rationnelle. L’ontologie métascientifique n’est donc pas transcendante parce qu’elle ne cherche pas à représenter (...) des objets étrangers au monde que nous habitons et aux sciences qui l’étudient, et par conséquent elle n’a pas besoin de facultés ni de méthodes spéciales pour mener à bien ses recherches. L’ontologie métascientifique est un discours général scientifique sur le monde parce que conçue par et pour les sciences. (shrink)

Nous examinons l’idée selon laquelle il existerait une sous-discipline en phi-losophie des sciences, la philosophie dans les sciences, dont les chercheurs utili-seraient des outils philosophiques pour avancer des solutions à des problèmes scientifiques. Nous proposons plutôt l’idée que ces outils sont des outils épisté-miques, cognitifs ou intellectuels standards, à l’œuvre dans toute activité ration-nelle, et, par conséquent, ces chercheurs se consacrent à la recherche scienti-fique ou métascientifique.

Nous expliquerons pourquoi le Treatise on Basic Philosophy est une œuvre mé-tascientifique et non pas philosophique. On soutiendra ensuite que cette métas-cience s’inscrit dans un long processus de naturalisation de la pensée qui débute à la fin du Moyen Âge pour donner naissance à la pensée scientifique de l’étude du monde. La naturalisation prend la forme chez Bunge d’une naturalisation de la pensée générale qui permet de remplacer le discours général philosophique par le discours général scientifique. Finalement, cette naturalisation du (...) discours général ne doit pas être confondue avec les projets de naturalisation de la philo-sophie, notamment un des projets de la métaphysique scientifique ou naturali-sée connu sous le nom de réalisme structurel ontique. (shrink)

This is the introduction of issue 1 of Mɛtascience. -/- This first issue of Mεtascience is a posthumous tribute to Mario Bunge, who died in February 2020. This is not the first time, and certainly not the last, that thinkers pay homage to Mario Bunge or that his work is the subject of study, and rightly so, because the man is a humanist and the work worthy heiress of the Enlightenment. Bunge has made a significant contribution to a wide range (...) of disciplines: physics, philosophy, sociology, psychology, cognitive sciences. This issue is also a way to make his thoughts known to a French-speaking readership. (shrink)

Our thesis is that proprioception is not a sixth sense distinct from the sense of touch, but a part of that tactile (or haptic) sense. The tactile sense is defined as the sense whose direct intentional objects are macroscopic mechanical properties. We first argue (against D. Armstrong, 1962; B. O'Shaughnessy 1989, 1995, 1998 and M. Martin, 1992, 1993,1995) that the two following claims are incompatible : (i) proprioception is a sense distinct from touch; (ii) touch is a bipolar modality, that (...) intrinsically has both a subjective-bodily pole and objective pole. We then argue that the bipolarity of touch should be preferred over the introduction of a sui generis sense of the body. We try to revive Aristotle suggestion according to which the body is the tactile medium (like the air for sight). Since this medium is constantly changing its shape, we need some specific channel of information about its state : proprioception, functionally defined, is that part of touch which informs us about the state of this changing tactile medium. Though muscular and articular receptors are usually dedicated to inform us about the mechanical properties of the tactile media, and the skin receptors about the mechanical properties of the tactile objects, this is not essentially so. In weighting or wielding experiments we access the weight of external objects even when skin sensitivity is absent; in prosthetic touch, the skin receptors play the role usually assigned to muscle and articular receptors, namely to inform us about the mechanical state of the tactile medium. So proprioception, anatomically defined, can play both the role of informing us about the tactile medium, or about the tactile objects. That other sensory modalities also rely on proprioceptive information should be understood in terms of cross-modal dependencies: of sight, hearing, smell, taste...on touch. (shrink)

This paper takes as its point of departure recent research into the possibility that human beings can perceive single photons. In order to appreciate what quantum perception may entail, we first explore several of the leading interpretations of quantum mechanics, then consider an alternative view based on the ontological phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Martin Heidegger. Next, the philosophical analysis is brought into sharper focus by employing a perceptual model, the Necker cube, augmented by the topology of the Klein (...) bottle. This paves the way for addressing in greater depth the paper’s central question: Just what would it take to observe the quantum reality of the photon? In formulating an answer, we examine the nature of scientific objectivity itself, along with the paradoxical properties of light. The conclusion reached is that quantum perception requires a new kind of observation, one in which the observer of the photon adopts a concretely self-reflexive observational posture that brings her into close ontological relationship with the observed. (shrink)

Recursion or self-reference is a key feature of contemporary research and writing in semiotics. The paper begins by focusing on the role of recursion in poststructuralism. It is suggested that much of what passes for recursion in this field is in fact not recursive all the way down. After the paradoxical meaning of radical recursion is adumbrated, topology is employed to provide some examples. The properties of the Moebius strip prove helpful in bringing out the dialectical nature of radical recursion. (...) The Moebius is employed to explore the recursive interplay of terms that are classically regarded as binary opposites: identity and difference, object and subject, continuity and discontinuity, etc. To realize radical recursion in an even more concrete manner, a higher-dimensional counterpart of the Moebius strip is utilized, namely, the Klein bottle. The presentation concludes by enlisting phenomenological philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s concept of depth to interpret the Klein bottle’s extra dimension. (shrink)

While the French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty remained engaged with artistic creation throughout his entire work, which continues to inspire artists today in manifold ways, no systematic and artistically inclusive study of this dimension of his thought has existed so far. Du sensible à l’œuvre fills this gap by offering not only an in-depth study of Merleau-Ponty’s aesthesiology and aesthetics by international Merleau-Ponty scholars spanning three generations, but also a rich selection of essays by art critics and theorists who assess (...) the impact of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy on their own artistic fields, including cinema, music, literature, film, dance, and installation art. (shrink)

This is a review (in French) of the French translation and edition of D.M. Armstrong's Universals: An Opiniated Introduction.

In much of the current academic and public discussion, conspiracy theories are portrayed as a negative phenomenon, linked to misinformation, mistrust in experts and institutions, and political propaganda. Rather surprisingly, however, philosophers working on this topic have been reluctant to incorporate a negatively evaluative aspect when either analyzing or engineering the concept conspiracy theory. In this paper, we present empirical data on the nature of the concept conspiracy theory from five studies designed to test the existence, prevalence and exact form (...) of an evaluative dimension to the ordinary concept conspiracy theory. These results reveal that, while there is a descriptive concept of conspiracy theory, the predominant use of conspiracy theory is deeply evaluative, encoding information about epistemic deficiency and often also derogatory and disparaging information. On the basis of these results, we present a new strategy for engineering conspiracy theory to promote theoretical investigations and institutional discussions of this phenomenon. We argue for engineering conspiracy theory to encode an epistemic evaluation, and to introduce a descriptive expression—such as ‘conspiratorial explanation’—to refer to the purely descriptive concept conspiracy theory. (shrink)

Contingency is the presence of non-actualized possibility in the world. Fatalism is a view of reality on which there is no contingency. Since it is contingency that permits agency, there has traditionally been much interest in contingency. This interest has long been embarrassed by the contention that simple and plausible assumptions about the world lead to fatalism. I begin with an Aristotelian argument as presented by Richard Taylor. Appreciation of this argument has been stultified by a question pertaining to the (...) source of necessity and possibility and a closely related one regarding the nature of metaphysics itself. Answering these questions reveals the crucial issue here, to wit, necessity and possibility in a temporal world. This issue is investigated through an important later criticism of Taylor by David Foster Wallace. Wallace’s critique is significant because it brings to the fore the pivotal notion for understanding contingency in a temporal world, that of synchronic possibility, the idea that incompatible states of affairs are possible at a single moment. This notion provides the basis of distinguishing two systematic accounts of truth, modality and time: two metaphysics of contingency. On one account, Taylor’s Aristotelian argument is straightforwardly valid and compelling; on the other, it is fallacious. In closing, I present reasons why the former account, supporting the Aristotelian views of time and truth, is correct and make some comments to ameliorate this conclusion. (shrink)

For the theorists of crisis, the revolutionary state comes into existence through violence, and due to its inability to provide an authoritative katechon (restrainer) against internal and external violence, it perpetuates violence until it self-destructs. Writing during extreme economic depression and growing social and political violence, the crisis theorists––Joseph de Maistre, Juan Donoso Cortés, and Carl Schmitt––each sought to blame the chaos of their time upon the Janus-faced postrevolutionary ideals of liberalism and socialism by urging a return to pre-revolutionary moral (...) and religious values. They are united by three counterrevolutionary principles, all of which are purported to remedy revolutionary violence: traditional constitutional fidelity, the philosophy of the decision, and opposition to bourgeois liberalism. This essay is followed by the first complete English translation and publication of Donoso’s letter of October 24, 1851, which contains Donoso’s only reference to the “discussing class,” a political entity later popularized by Schmitt in his 1922 work Political Theology. (shrink)

Early in his Essays on Intellectual Powers, Reid draws a distinction between mental power, mental operation, and mental capacity (EIP 21). To the untrained eye, these terms could probably be used interchangeably, and Reid believes this is correct, up to a point. He argues that, if we are interested in understanding exactly how the human mind works, we must use these terms with more precise meanings. This is part of his more general strategy of trying to always use the words (...) with their common meanings, as much as possible, but also pointing out that certain philosophical distinctions are needed to carry out the project of laying out the foundations of the science of the mind. This paper explains what the distinction between power, operation, and capacity is, according to Reid, with the goal of understanding why it is important to draw such a distinction, not only for the Reidian project, but for action theory, more generally. (shrink)

Every idealist believes himself to have rational grounds for the faith that somewhere, and in some world, and at some time, the ideal will triumph, so that a survey, a divine synopsis of all time, somehow reveals the lesson of all sorrow, the meaning of all tragedy, the triumph of the spirit. But it is not ours to say, in the world in which we at present have to live from one day to another, and to follow the fortunes of (...) man from one newspaper to another,--when and how the true revelation of the world's meaning is faced and[ found. The Basic Writings of Josiah Royce, Vol. II, p. 1146.]. (shrink)

This volume discusses the ideas of six leading thinkers of the French Enlightenment: Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, Holbach, and Condorcet. A general introduction surveys the political theories of the Enlightenment, setting them in the context of the political realities of 18th-century France. The first book of its kind on the subject, Philosophers and Pamphleteers brings a welcome, new perspective to the study of French political thought during a fascinating historical era.

In this paper I argue that both defence and criticism of the claim that humans act ‘under the guise of the good’ neglects the metaphysical roots of the theory. I begin with an overview of the theory and its modern commentators, with critics noting the apparent possibility of acting against the good, and supporters claiming that such actions are instances of error. These debates reduce the ‘guise of the good’ to a claim about intention and moral action, and in so (...) doing have become divorced from the theory's roots in classical and medieval philosophy. Aristotle and Aquinas’ ‘guise of the good’ is primarily a metaphysical claim resting on the equivalence between actuality and goodness, from which conclusions about moral action are derived. I show the reasoning behind their theory and how it forms the basis for the claims about intention and action at the centre of the modern debate. Finally, I argue that the absence of its original foundation is apparent in recent attacks on the ‘guise of the good’. It is unsurprising that modern action theory and ethics have not always been able to comfortably accommodate the ‘guise of the good’; they are only telling half of the story. (shrink)

Much discussion about experimental philosophy and philosophical methodology has been framed in terms of the reliability of intuitions, and even when it has not been about reliability per se, it has been focused on whether intuitions meet whatever conditions they need to meet to be trustworthy as evidence. But really that question cannot be answered independently from the questions, evidence for what theories arrived at by what sorts of inferences? I will contend here that not just philosophy's sources of evidence, (...) but also its inferential resources, are in great need of closer examination. (shrink)

THE PRINCIPLE OF SUPERPOSITION. The need for a quantum theory Classical mechanics has been developed continuously from the time of Newton and applied to an ...

By transcendental aesthetic, Kant means “the science of all principles of a priori sensibility” (A 21/B 35). These, he argues, are the laws that properly direct our judgments of taste (B 35 – 36 fn.), i.e. our aesthetic judgments as we ordinarily understand that notion in the context of contemporary art. Thus the first part of the Critique of Pure Reason, entitled the Transcendental Aesthetic, enumerates the necessary presuppositions of, among other things, our ability to make empirical judgments about particular (...) works of art. These presuppositions are sensible rather than intellectual because on Kant's view, all intellection that considers objects of any kind, whether abstract or concrete, must at base connect to actual, material objects with which we come into direct contact; and this we can do only through sensibility (A 19/B 33). Thus the following discussion explores what Kant claims must be true of us in order to make the sorts of aesthetic judgments we make, rather than any particular class or quality of aesthetic judgments itself. On Kant's view, what must be true of us in order to make aesthetic judgments is not different from what must be true of us in order to make any other kind of judgment about empirical objects. This last point is worth emphasizing, in order to correct an interpretation of Kant's account of aesthetic judgment in the Critique of Judgment that wrongly reads Kant as claiming that aesthetic judgments do not have to satisfy the same basic requirements of judgment that any other kind of judgment also must satisfy, such as the synthetic subsumption of such objects under certain necessary and hard-wired concepts of understanding, the internal coherence of such judgments with other, non-aesthetic ones of a more abstract and comprehensive character, the unified consciousness within which such judgments are intelligibly made, and the like. Of course Kant recognizes the special character of aesthetic judgments and unpacks it in the... (shrink)

In a 1995 interview, contemporary American composer John Zorn stated: ‘I got involved in music because of fi lm […] There’s a lot of fi lm elements in my music’ (Duckworth, 1995, p. 451). Scholars and critics have since widely noted these cinematic elements, with emphasis being placed on Zorn’s genre of so-called ‘fi le card compositions’. Whilst these studies have primarily concentrated on how the arrangement of sound blocks – the disjointed segments of Zorn’s compositions – can be compared (...) to cinematic montage, this article instead focusses on how sound blocks suggest the visual aspects of cinema. To delve deeper into the visuo-cinematic qualities of Zorn’s fi le card compositions, an idealised cinematic listener will be constructed, aided by various psychological, semiotic, philosophical and fi lm theories. I will suggest that a listener occupying a hypnogogic state projects moving images, akin to those of cinema, onto what Bernard Lewin fi rst called a ‘dream screen’. These projections occur due to intertextual associations made between fi le card compositions and the artistic fi gures to whom they are dedicated. These images combine with the sounds that brought them into being to form an audio-visual diegesis, which can be considered a type of half-imagined fi lm. The cinematic listener then actively draws out of this diegesis a narrative, via the semi-conscious process Boris Eikhenbaum called ‘inner speech’. I will conclude by giving some broader justifi cation for the methodology that brought this cinematic listener into being and suggest how the cinematic listener may be further utilised to provide musical analyses for fi le card works. (shrink)

While the consequences of mathematically-based software, algorithms and strategies have become ever wider and better appreciated, ethical reflection on mathematics has remained primitive. We review the somewhat disconnected suggestions of commentators in recent decades with a view to piecing together a coherent approach to ethics in mathematics. Calls for a Hippocratic Oath for mathematicians are examined and it is concluded that while lessons can be learned from the medical profession, the relation of mathematicians to those affected by their work is (...) significantly different. There is something to be learned also from the codes of conduct of cognate but professionalised quantitative disciplines such as engineering and accountancy, as well as from legal principles bearing on professional work. We conclude with recommendations that professional societies in mathematics should sponsor an (international) code of ethics, institutional mission statements for mathematicians and syllabuses of ethics courses for incorporation into mathematics degrees. (shrink)

Son dönemde yapılan araştırmalarda en mutlu şehir olarak seçilen Sinop’un yüzyıllar öncesinde bir sakini vardı ki insanlık için mutlu olmanın doğru yolunu bulmayı kendine dert edinmişti. Öğretileri Roma İmparatorluğu’nun resmi dini gibi benimsenecek, Marcus Aurelius gibi Roma Krallarının filozofu olmaktan gurur duyacağı Stoa Okulunun ve Dünya Hükümdarı Büyük İskender’in büyük övgüsüne mazhar olmuş, Sinoplu Diogenes.

On 4th of August 2020, the Lebanese capital and port city, Beirut, was rocked by a massive explosion that has killed hundreds and injured thousands more, ravaging the heart of the city’s nearby downtown business district and neighbouring housing areas, where more than 750,000 people live. The waterfront neighbourhood and a number of dense residential neighbourhoods in the city’s eastern part were essentially flattened. Lebanese Government officials believe that the blast was caused by around 2,700 tonnes of ammonium nitrate stored (...) near the city’s cargo port without proper control for six years. -/- The disaster devastating Beirut’s port and city shows the latent danger of safe storage of potentially dangerous goods in modern ports, particularly ones located close to the heart of the city. The huge blast tore through major grain silos, stoking fears of shortages in a nation that imports nearly all its food and is already reeling from economic crisis. As the WFP (World Food Programme) said in a statement: the blast will “exacerbate the grim economic and food-security situation.” The Beirut blast also reminds us of the importance of ports in the contemporary globalized world. It calls our attention to safety and security, of governance and collaboration between port and city or region and of accessibility to the hinterland. What do local governments and port cities need to do to enhance the safety and security issues in port terminals? Or, to put it differently, how do we reconcile this challenge between the ports we need to feed us, serve us, provide us with medicines, equipment, etc. and the ports that threatens us? (shrink)

Several variants of Lewis's Best System Account of Lawhood have been proposed that avoid its commitment to perfectly natural properties. There has been little discussion of the relative merits of these proposals, and little discussion of how one might extend this strategy to provide natural property-free variants of Lewis's other accounts, such as his accounts of duplication, intrinsicality, causation, counterfactuals, and reference. We undertake these projects in this paper. We begin by providing a framework for classifying and assessing the variants (...) of the Best System Account. We then evaluate these proposals, and identify the most promising candidates. We go on to develop a proposal for systematically modifying Lewis's other accounts so that they, too, avoid commitment to perfectly natural properties. We conclude by briefly considering a different route one might take to developing natural property-free versions of Lewis's other accounts, drawing on recent work by Williams. (shrink)

Since the publication of David Lewis's ''New Work for a Theory of Universals,'' the distinction between properties that are fundamental – or perfectly natural – and those that are not has become a staple of mainstream metaphysics. Plausible candidates for perfect naturalness include the quantitative properties posited by fundamental physics. This paper argues for two claims: (1) the most satisfying account of quantitative properties employs higher-order relations, and (2) these relations must be perfectly natural, for otherwise the perfectly natural properties (...) cannot play the roles in metaphysical theorizing as envisaged by Lewis. (shrink)

Two grams mass, three coulombs charge, five inches long – these are examples of quantitative properties. Quantitative properties have certain structural features that other sorts of properties lack. What are the metaphysical underpinnings of quantitative structure? This paper considers several accounts of quantity and assesses the merits of each.

El presente texto de Maurice Blanchot (1907-2003) apareció por primera vez en una traducción al italiano de Guido Neri bajo el título “II nome Berlino” [El nombre Berlín], publicado en 1964 en la revista literaria dirigida por Elio Vittorini e Italo Calvino Il menabó 7, año 6, pp. 121-25. El texto original en francés se extravió y, con la autorización del propio Blanchot, Hélène Jelen y Jean-Luc Nancy tradujeron la versión italiana al francés para publicarla en 1983 como “Le (...) Nom de Berlin” en una edición bilingüe. Desde entonces, la versión francesa ha sido reimpresa múltiples veces: en Cafe 3 (1983), 43-6; Berlin, collection Libération, 4 (1989); y Po&sie 52 (1990), 6-8. El texto fue finalmente republicado con su nombre original en francés, es decir, “Berlin” para la publicación de la traducción cuatrilingüe francés, inglés, ruso y alemán) aparecida en 1994 en MLN, Vol. 109, No. 3, German Issue (Apr.), The Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 345-355. Se ha decidido traducir este texto también en lengua hispana por su innegable actualidad y peculiar claridad. En él no se trata exclusivamente sobre la realidad política, económica y lingüística de Berlín (o de Alemania) durante la Guerra Fría. Las reflexiones de Blanchot permanecen tan vigentes como el fenómeno que aquí decide enfrentar en sus múltiples aspectos: los fundamentos mismos de la política y el Estado en la modernidad. Para esta primera traducción al castellano del texto se ha tomado como referencia la versión de Jelen y Nancy antes mencionada. (shrink)

El presente texto de Maurice Blanchot (1907-2003) apareció por primera vez en una traducción al italiano de Guido Neri bajo el título “II nome Berlino” [El nombre Berlín], publicado en 1964 en la revista literaria dirigida por Elio Vittorini e Italo Calvino Il menabó 7, año 6, pp. 121-25. El texto original en francés se extravió y, con la autorización del propio Blanchot, Hélène Jelen y Jean-Luc Nancy tradujeron la versión italiana al francés para publicarla en 1983 como “Le (...) Nom de Berlin” en una edición bilingüe. Desde entonces, la versión francesa ha sido reimpresa múltiples veces: en Cafe 3 (1983), 43-6; Berlin, collection Libération, 4 (1989); y Po&sie 52 (1990), 6-8. El texto fue finalmente republicado con su nombre original en francés, es decir, “Berlin” para la publicación de la traducción cuatrilingüe francés, inglés, ruso y alemán) aparecida en 1994 en MLN, Vol. 109, No. 3, German Issue (Apr.), The Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 345-355. Se ha decidido traducir este texto también en lengua hispana por su innegable actualidad y peculiar claridad. En él no se trata exclusivamente sobre la realidad política, económica y lingüística de Berlín (o de Alemania) durante la Guerra Fría. Las reflexiones de Blanchot permanecen tan vigentes como el fenómeno que aquí decide enfrentar en sus múltiples aspectos: los fundamentos mismos de la política y el Estado en la modernidad. Para esta primera traducción al castellano del texto se ha tomado como referencia la versión de Jelen y Nancy antes mencionada. (shrink)

What are conspiracy theories? And what, if anything, is epistemically wrong with them? I offer an account on which conspiracy theories are a unique way of holding a belief in a conspiracy. Specifically, I take conspiracy theories to be self-insulating beliefs in conspiracies. On this view, conspiracy theorists have their conspiratorial beliefs in a way that is immune to revision by counter-evidence. I argue that conspiracy theories are always irrational. Although conspiracy theories involve an expectation to encounter some seemingly disconfirming (...) evidence (allegedly planted by the conspirators), resistance to all counter- evidence cannot be justified on these grounds. (shrink)

In recent literature, panpsychism has been defended by appeal to two main arguments: first, an argument from philosophy of mind, according to which panpsychism is the only view which successfully integrates consciousness into the physical world (Strawson 2006; Chalmers 2013); second, an argument from categorical properties, according to which panpsychism offers the only positive account of the categorical or intrinsic nature of physical reality (Seager 2006; Adams 2007; Alter and Nagasawa 2012). Historically, however, panpsychism has also been defended by appeal (...) to a third argument based on considerations about the nature and observability of causation. This argument has not been much discussed in recent times. Here is a concise version from William James: "… the concrete perceptual flux, taken just as it comes, offers in our own activity-situations perfectly comprehensible instances of causal agency … If we took these experiences as the type of what actual causation is, we should have to ascribe to cases of causation outside of our life, to physical cases also, an inwardly experiential nature. In other words, we should have to espouse a so-called “pan-psychic” philosophy" (James 1911: 218). James here suggests that we have direct experience of causation in our own agency. He thereby directly contradicts David Hume, who famously denied that we have any experience of causation. James goes on to claim that if this experience is representative of causation in general, it follows that all causation is mental, and that panpsychism is true. This kind of argument for panpsychism can be called the argument from (experience of) causation. This chapter offers, first, a history of this argument and arguments closely related to it, and second, an analysis of the argument – is it valid, are its premises in any way defensible, and how does it relate to the other, more popular arguments for panpsychism from philosophy of mind and categorical properties? (shrink)

Article 8 of the African Aspirations for 2063 stipulates that the African people are confident that their countries have the ability and competence to realize or accomplish their full potential in development, culture, and peace. The vast majority of countries in Africa have worked toward establishing flourishing, inclusive, successful and prosperous societies by eradicating any forms of violation of children’s rights (African Union Commission, 2015). Nevertheless, violation of children’s rights remains present in most developing countries including the country of Cameroon. (...) This research aims to explore the forms of violation of children’s rights having a dramatic incident in school attendance in the Kadey Division of Cameroon, East Region of Cameroon. This research work is inductive, values bias and uses the grounded theory of the qualitative method approach. 15 participants have been selected from 3 major focused groups of different stakeholders in the Kadey Division, East Region of Cameroon. The theoretical saturation code was used to explain the relevance of the sample size. Data were examined using the open, axial, and selective coding processes. The results were tested for internal and external validity based on credibility, dependability, conformability, and transferability consideration. The philosophical focused on subjectivism ontology and interpretivism perspective. The study is an investigative case study model. The study showed that the forms of violation of children’s rights in the Kadey division include the recruitment and use of children, the denial of humanitarian access, the sexual violence against children and the killing and hurting of children. This study encourages school leaders in the Kadey Division to acknowledge that schools are not meant to function apart from the local community. Promoting strong collaborative work ethics between the major educational stakeholders may help prevent and reduce violence against children within and outside the school milieu and therefore duplicate school attendance. (UNICEF Regional Office for South Asia, 2016). (shrink)

Naturalist views of persons, such as those of the philosophers Annette Baier and Marjorie Grene, emphasize that human persons are cultural animals: We are living, embodied, organic beings, embedded in nature, the product of Darwinian evolution, but dependent on culture. Such naturalist views of persons typically eschew science fiction and look askance at the philosophical fantasies and thought experiments that often populate philosophical treatments of personal identity. Marge Piercy’s dystopian, cyberpunk, science fiction novel He, She and It weaves a complex (...) tale around the debate over the status of its central character Yod, a cyborg created in a lab but humanized through the efforts of two women, Malkah Shipman and her granddaughter Shira Shipman. Is Yod a person, despite having been engineered in a lab for a specific purpose? Piercy’s tale both challenges and ultimately supports a naturalist view of persons while simultaneously forewarning us of possible new styles of persons to come. (shrink)

Looking at the recent spate of claims about “fake news” which appear to be a new feature of political discourse, I argue that fake news presents an interesting problem in epistemology. Te phenomena of fake news trades upon tolerating a certain indiference towards truth, which is sometimes expressed insincerely by political actors. Tis indiference and insincerity, I argue, has been allowed to fourish due to the way in which we have set the terms of the “public” epistemology that maintains what (...) is considered “rational” public discourse. I argue one potential salve to the problem of fake news is to challenge this public epistemology by injecting a certain ethical consideration back into the discourse. (shrink)