In this paper we have defined neutrosophic ideals, neutrosophic interior ideals, netrosophic quasi-ideals and neutrosophic bi-ideals (neutrosophic generalized bi-ideals) and proved some results related to them. Furthermore, we have done some characterization of a neutrosophic LA-semigroup by the properties of its neutrosophic ideals. It has been proved that in a neutrosophic intra-regular LA-semigroup neutrosophic left, right, two-sided, interior, bi-ideal, generalized bi-ideal and quasi-ideals coincide and we have also proved that the set (...) of neutrosophic ideals of a neutrosophic intra-regular LA-semigroup forms a semilattice structure. (shrink)

Suppose Molinism is true and God placed Adam in the garden because God knew Adam would freely eat of the fruit. Suppose further that, had it not been true that Adam would freely eat of the fruit, were he placed in the garden, God would have placed someone else there instead. When Adam freely eats of the fruit, is he free to do otherwise? This paper argues that there is a strong case for both a positive and a negative answer. (...) Assuming such cases are possible under Molinism, we are left with a puzzling question: if Molinism is true, what can you do? (shrink)

In this paper we extend the theory of neutrosophy to study left almost semigroup shortly LAsemigroup. We generalize the concepts of LA-semigroup to form that for neutrosophic LA-semigroup. We also extend the ideal theory of LA-semigroup to neutrosophy and discuss different kinds of neutrosophic ideals. We also find some new type of neutrosophic ideal which is related to the strong or pure part of neutrosophy. We have given many examples to illustrate the theory of neutrosophic (...) LA-semigroup and display many properties of neutrosophic LA-semigroup in this paper. (shrink)

In this paper, we introduce for the first time the neutrosophic quadruple numbers (of the form a + bT + cI + dF) and the refined neutrosophic quadruple numbers. Then we define an absorbance law, based on a prevalence order, both of them in order to multiply the neutrosophic components T, I, F, or their sub-components tJ, Ik, Fl and thus to construct the multiplication of neutrosophic quadruple numbers.

In this paper we define neutrosophic bi-LAsemigroup and neutrosophic N-LA-semigroup. Infact this paper is an extension of our previous paper neutrosophic left almost semigroup shortly neutrosophic LAsemigroup. We also extend the neutrosophic ideal to neutrosophic biideal and neutrosophic N-ideal. We also find some new type of neutrosophic ideal which is related to the strong or pure part of neutrosophy. We have given sufficient amount of examples to illustrate the theory of (...) class='Hi'>neutrosophic bi-LA-semigroup, neutrosophic N-LAsemigroup and display many properties of them this paper. (shrink)

An important method for finding the optimal solution for linear and nonlinear models is the graphical method, which is used if the linear or nonlinear mathematical model contains one, two, or three variables. The models that contain only two variables are among the most models for which the optimal solution has been obtained graphically, whether these models are linear or non-linear in references and research that are concerned with the science of operations research, when the data of the issue under (...) study is classical data. In this research, we will present a study through, which we present the graphical method for solving Neutrosophical nonlinear models in the following case: A nonlinear programming issue, the objective function is a nonlinear function, and the constraints are linear functions. Note that we can use the same method if (i) the objective function follower is a linear follower and the constraints are nonlinear; (ii) the objective function is a non-linear follower and the constraints are non-linear. In the three cases, the nonlinear models are neutrosophic, and as we know, the mathematical model is a nonlinear model if any of the components of the objective function or the constraints are nonlinear expressions, and the nonlinear expressions may be in both. At the left end of the constraints are neutrosophic values, at least one or all of them. Then, the possible solutions to the neutrosophic nonlinear programming problem are the set of rays that fulfills all the constraints. As for the region of possible solutions, it is the region that contains all the rays that fulfill the constraints. The optimal solution is the beam that fulfills all constraints and at which the function reaches a maximum or minimum value, depending on the nature of the issue under study (noting that it is not necessary to be alone). (shrink)

This paper argues that the ‘scientific dispute’ between Hermann Cohen and Rudolf Stammler is symptomatic of a philosophical movement of left-wing Kant interpretations at the turn of the twentieth century. By outlining influential predecessors that shaped Cohen’s and Stammler’s thinking, I show that their Kantian justifications of socialism differ regarding their conception of law, history, and the political implications that follow from their practical philosophies. Against scholars who suggest that the Marburg School’s view on socialism was a coherent school (...) of thought, I introduce the concept of ‘left-Kantianism’ as an open term that includes a wide variety of novel socialist approaches to Kant at the time. (shrink)

The objective of this paper is to study algebraic properties of neutrosophic matrices, where a necessary and sufficient condition for the invertibility of a square neutrosophic matrix is presented by defining the neutrosophic determinant. On the other hand, this work introduces the concept of neutrosophic Eigen values and vectors with an easy algorithm to compute them. Also, this article finds a necessary and sufficient condition for the diagonalization of a neutrosophic matrix.

In the fifth version of our response-paper [26] to Imamura’s criticism, we recall that NonStandard Neutrosophic Logic was never used by neutrosophic community in no application, that the quarter of century old neutrosophic operators (1995-1998) criticized by Imamura were never utilized since they were improved shortly after but he omits to tell their development, and that in real world applications we need to convert/approximate the NonStandard Analysis hyperreals, monads and binads to tiny intervals with the desired accuracy (...) – otherwise they would be inapplicable. We point out several errors and false statements by Imamura [21] with respect to the inf/sup of nonstandard subsets, also Imamura’s “rigorous definition of neutrosophic logic” is wrong and the same for his definition of nonstandard unit interval, and we prove that there is not a total order on the set of hyperreals (because of the newly introduced Neutrosophic Hyperreals that are indeterminate), whence the Transfer Principle from R to R* is questionable. After his criticism, several response publications on theoretical nonstandard neutrosophics followed in the period 2018-2022. As such, I extended the NonStandard Analysis by adding the left monad closed to the right, right monad closed to the left, pierced binad (we introduced in 1998), and unpierced binad - all these in order to close the newly extended nonstandard space (R*) under nonstandard addition, nonstandard subtraction, nonstandard multiplication, nonstandard division, and nonstandard power operations [23, 24]. Improved definitions of NonStandard Unit Interval and NonStandard Neutrosophic Logic, together with NonStandard Neutrosophic Operators are presented. (shrink)

Operations research science is defined as the science that is concerned with applying scientific methods to complex problems in managing and directing large systems of people, including resources and tools in various fields, private and governmental work, peace and war, politics, administration, economics, planning and implementation in various domains. It uses scientific methods that take the language of mathematics as a basis for it and uses computer, without which it would not have been possible to achieve numerical solutions to the (...) raised problems, those that need correct solutions, when the solutions abound and the options are multiple, so we need a decision based on correct scientific foundations and takes into account all the circumstances and changes that you can encounter the decision-maker during the course of work, and nothing is left to chance or luck, but rather everything that enters into the account and plays its role in decision-making, and we get that when we use the concepts of neutrosophic science to reformulate what the science of operations research presented in terms of methods and methods to solve many practical problems, so we will present in this research a study aimed at shedding light on the most important methods used to solve nonlinear models, which is the Lagrangian multiplier method for nonlinear models constrained by equality and then reformulated using the concepts of neutrosophic science. (shrink)

Imagine your mirror‐inverted counterpart on Mirror Earth, a perfect mirror image of Earth. Would her experiences be the same as yours, or would they be phenomenally mirror‐inverted? I argue, first, that her experiences would be phenomenally the same as yours. I then show that this conclusion gives rise to a puzzle, one that I believe pushes us toward some surprising and philosophically significant conclusions about the nature of perception. When you have a typical visual experience as of something to your (...) left, the following three claims seem very plausible: (1) No one could have an experience phenomenally just like yours without thereby having an experience as of something to her left. (2) Your experience is veridical. (3) Your experience doesn't differ from that of your mirror‐inverted counterpart with respect to veridicality. But (1)‐(3) jointly contradict the claim that you and your mirror‐inverted counterpart would have the same experiences. I argue that any viable response to this puzzle will embrace the following disjunction: either there is a degree of independence between perceptual phenomenology and representational content, contrary to popular intentionalist views of perception, or spatial subjectivism is true, where spatial subjectivism is the view that the spatial properties presented in perception are either mind‐dependent or illusory. (shrink)

In the fifth version of our reply article [26] to Imamura's critique, we recall that Neutrosophic Non-Standard Logic was never used by the neutrosophic community in any application, that the quarter-century old (1995-1998) neutrosophic operators criticized by Imamura were never used as they were improved soon after, but omits to talk about their development, and that in real-world applications we need to convert/approximate the hyperreals, monads and bi-nads of Non-Standard Analysis to tiny intervals with the desired precision; (...) otherwise they would be inapplicable. We pointed out several errors and false statements by Imamura [21] regarding the inf/sup of nonstandard subsets, also Imamura's "rigorous definition of neutrosophic logic" is incorrect, as is his definition of nonstandard unit interval, and we showed that there is no total order in Neutrosophic Computing and Machine Learning , Vol. 23, 2022 Florentin Smarandache, Definición mejorada de la lógica neutrosófica no estándar e introducción a los hiperreales neutrosóficos (Quinta versión) 2 the set of hyperreals (due to the recently introduced Neutrosophic Hyperreals which are indeterminate), so the Transfer Principle from R to R* is questionable. After his critique, several reply posts on non-standard theoretical neutrosophy followed in 2018-2022. As such, I extended the Nonstandard Analysis by adding the right-closed left monad, the left-closed right monad, the punctured binad (which we introduced in 1998), and the nonpunctured binad - all in order to close the newly extended nonstandard space (R*) under nonstandard addition, nonstandard subtraction, nonstandard multiplication, nonstandard division, and nonstandard power operations [23, 24]. Improved definitions of the Nonstandard Unitary Interval and Nonstandard Neutrosophic Logic are presented, along with Nonstandard Neutrosophic Operators. (shrink)

Joseph Raz argues that legal authority includes a claim by the law to replace subjects’ contrary reasons. I reply that this cannot be squared with the existence of choice-of-evils defenses to criminal prosecutions, nor with the view that the law has gaps (which Raz shares). If the function of authority is to get individuals to comply better with reason than they would do if left to their own devices, it would not make sense for law to claim both to (...) pre-empt our contrary reasons and to leave open spaces or catch-all exceptions which we must use our own devices to fill. (shrink)

Karl Pearson is the leading figure of XX century statistics. He and his co-workers crafted the core of the theory, methods and language of frequentist or classical statistics – the prevalent inductive logic of contemporary science. However, before working in statistics, K. Pearson had other interests in life, namely, in this order, philosophy, physics, and biological heredity. Key concepts of his philosophical and epistemological system of anti-Spinozism (a form of transcendental idealism) are carried over to his subsequent works on the (...) logic of scientific discovery. This article’s main goal is to analyze K. Pearson early philosophical and theological ideas and to investigate how the same ideas came to influence contemporary science, either directly or indirectly – by the use of variant theories, methods and dialects of statistics, corresponding to variant statistical inference procedures and their specific belief calculi. (shrink)

In this article, I explore two neglected works by the twentieth-century Jewish German Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch, Avicenna and the Aristotelian Left and Natural Law and Human Dignity. Drawing on previous analyses of leftist Aristotelians and natural law, I blend Bloch’s two texts’ concepts of pregnant matter and maternal law into “pregnant materialist natural law.” More precisely, Aristotelian Left articulates a concept of matter as a dynamic, impersonal agential force, ever pregnant with possible forms delivered by artist-midwives, building (...) Bloch’s messianic utopia. And Natural Law resurrects the Stoics’ concept of natural law as drawing on a prehistoric matriarchal utopia, later channeled by earth goddess cults misconstrued by the nineteenth-century German anthropologist Johann Jakob Bachofen as political matriarchy. I then conclude by linking this pregnant materialist natural law to Dionysus as son of the Great Mother Goddess. Though stigmatized throughout homophobic Western history for his queerness and maternal dependence, Dionysus is also the patron god of Bloch’s hero, the slave revolutionary Spartacus, paramour of a priestess of Dionysus who prophesied his divine mission of liberation. (shrink)

Although there is an ongoing controversy in philosophy of science about so called ceteris paribus laws that is, roughly, about laws with exceptionsóa fundamental question about those laws has been neglected (ß2). This is due to the fact that this question becomes apparent only if two different readings of ceteris paribus clauses in laws have been separated. The first reading of ceteris paribus clauses, which I will call the epistemic reading, covers applications of laws: predictions, for example, might go wrong (...) because we do not know all the relevant factors which are causally effective in relevant situation. The second reading, which I will call the metaphysical reading, is concerned with the laws themselves and their possible exceptions (ß3). It is this latter readingóand the funda- mental question associated with itówhich has been neglected due to the confusion of the two readings (ß4): if we leave epistemic issues aside is there at all conceptual space left for a notion of laws of nature which allows the laws themselves to have exceptions? I call a law with exceptions in this sense, if such there is, a real ceteris paribus law. To tackle this question, I distinguish grounded laws from non-grounded laws (ß5). A grounded law is, roughly, a law about structured entities where the properties of the parts of that structure figure themselves in laws of nature (ß6). I will claim that, since the substructure of such an entity can be damaged, grounded laws themselves can face exceptions. Hence, they are candidates to be real (metaphysical) ceteris paribus laws in the sense of my central question. I will discuss grounded laws and their exceptions in detail (ß7, ß8, ß9). For reasons of space, the further question whether we can even have a notion of fun- damental (non-grounded) laws that allows for exceptions cannot be discussed here. I will, however, give a positive answer and also outline how I have argued for that claim elsewhere (ß10). (shrink)

In this paper, we make a short history about: the neutrosophic set, neutrosophic numerical components and neutrosophic literal components, neutrosophic numbers, neutrosophic intervals, neutrosophic hypercomplex numbers of dimension n, and elementary neutrosophic algebraic structures. Afterwards, their generalizations to refined neutrosophic set, respectively refined neutrosophic numerical and literal components, then refined neutrosophic numbers and refined neutrosophic algebraic structures.

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

Any foreign manufacturer desiring to market its products in Jordan has several courses open to it. The foreign manufacturer could establish a branch or wholly-owned subsidiary in Jordan or enter into a licensing or joint venture agreement with a company doing business in Jordan. If it wants a less significant presence, however, it is left with the alternative of having a local commercial agent market and sells its products. -/- The purpose of this article is to study certain aspects-exclusivity (...) and termination- of commercial agency according to the Jordanian law. The article is divided into four sections. Section two explains the general rules governing commercial agency in Jordan. Section three analyzes exclusivity of commercial agents. This section introduces the WTO's General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), the basic instrument covering trade in services, and analyses the current commercial agencies regulation in Jordan and its relation to articles VIII and IX of GATS. Also, section two explores Jordan schedule of specific commitments under the GATS in order to shed light on the extent and limit of its obligations with regard to commercial agents. Section four discusses agency termination. Finally, the article concludes by summarizing the main. (shrink)

There is an old and powerful argument for the claim that divine foreknowledge is incompatible with the freedom to do otherwise. A recent response to this argument, sometimes called the “dependence response,” centers around the claim that God’s relevant past beliefs depend on the relevant agent’s current or future behavior in a certain way. This paper offers a new argument for the dependence response, one that revolves around different cases of time travel. Somewhat serendipitously, the argument also paves the way (...) for a new reply to a compelling objection to the dependence response, the challenge from prepunishment. But perhaps not so serendipitously, the argument also renders the dependence response incompatible with certain views of providence. (shrink)

Most abortions occur early in pregnancy. I argue that these abortions, and so most abortions, are not morally wrong and that the best arguments given to think that these abortions are wrong are weak. I also argue that these abortions, and probably all abortions, should be legal. -/- I begin by observing that people sometimes respond to the issue by describing the circumstances of abortion, not offering reasons for their views about those circumstances; I then dismiss “question-begging” arguments about abortion (...) that merely assume the conclusions they are given to support; most importantly, I evaluate many arguments: both common, often-heard arguments and arguments developed by philosophers. -/- My defense of abortion is based on facts about early fetuses’ not yet possessing consciousness or any mental life, awareness or feeling, as well as concerns about rights to one’s own body. (shrink)

Let (leeway) incompatibilism be the thesis that causal determinism is incompatible with the freedom to do otherwise. Several prominent authors have claimed that incompatibilism alone can capture, or at least best captures, the intuitive appeal behind Jorge Luis Borges's famous “Garden of Forking Paths” metaphor. The thought, briefly, is this: the “single path” leading up to one's present decision represents the past; the forking paths that one must decide between represent those possible futures consistent with the past and the laws (...) of nature. But if determinism is true, there is only one possible future consistent with the past and the laws and, hence, only one path to choose from. That is, if determinism is true, then we are not free to do otherwise. In this paper, I argue that this understanding of the Garden of Forking Paths faces a number of problems and ought to be rejected even by incompatibilists. I then present an alternative understanding that not only avoids these problems but still supports incompatibilism. Finally, I consider how various versions of (leeway) compatibilism fit with the Garden of Forking Paths as well as the broader question of whether metaphors, however intuitive, have any dialectical force in the debates over freedom. (shrink)

Recently, several authors have utilized the notion of dependence to respond to the traditional argument for the incompatibility of freedom and divine foreknowledge. However, proponents of this response have not always been so clear in specifying where the incompatibility argument goes wrong, which has led to some unfounded objections to the response. We remedy this dialectical confusion by clarifying both the dependence response itself and its interaction with the standard incompatibility argument. Once these clarifications are made, it becomes clear both (...) (1.) that the dependence response does not beg the question against the proponent of the incompatibility argument and (2.) that the dependence response advances the dialectic whether it is developed as a version of Ockhamism or as a version of multiple-pasts compatibilism. (shrink)

Is the virtue of the good citizen the same as the virtue of the good man? Aristotle addresses this in Politics 3.4. His answer is twofold. On the one hand, (the account for Difference) they are not the same both because what the citizen’s virtue is depends on the constitution, on what preserves it, and on the role the citizen plays in it, and because the good citizens in the best constitution cannot all be good men, whereas the good man’s (...) virtue is uniform. On the other hand, (the account for Identity) the two virtues are identical in the good men in the best constitution, in which all are good citizens, each possessing the ability for ruling and for being ruled. This nuanced answer can be seen as Aristotle’s synthesis of a Periclean view (contribution to state blots out personal wrongs) and a Socratic view (no good citizen is without justice). Its nuances reflect the extent to which Aristotle’s conceptions of good citizenship and the best constitution accommodate deviations of what is probable from the human ideal set out in his ethical writings. In the present chapter, I will first address three puzzles regarding the nuances of Aristotle’s answer. Second, I will consider one question about its implication: Does Aristotle’s account for Difference turn out to entail something ultra-Periclean: that no one can simultaneously be a good man and a good citizen in any constitution other than the best? I shall argue the negative. (shrink)

Libertarian views of freedom claim that, although determinism would rule out our freedom, we are nevertheless free on some occasions. An odd implication of such views (to put it mildly) seems to be that indeterminism somehow enhances or contributes to our agency. But how could that be? What does indeterminism have to offer agency? This paper develops a novel answer, one that is centred around the notion of explanation. In short, it is argued that, if indeterminism holds in the right (...) places, then the best explanation of the history of the world necessarily cites facts about our agency. Along the way, alternative proposals regarding the significance of indeterminism are considered and, ultimately, rejected in favour of the one developed in this paper. (shrink)

Review of Causation and Free Will by Carolina Sartorio, Oxford University Press, 2016. viii + 188 pp. £35.00.

In the TACITUS project for using commonsense knowledge in the understanding of texts about mechanical devices and their failures, we have been developing various commonsense theories that are needed to mediate between the way we talk about the behavior of such devices and causal models of their operation. Of central importance in this effort is the axiomatization of what might be called commonsense metaphysics. This includes a number of areas that figure in virtually every domain of discourse, such as granularity, (...) scales, time, space, material, physical objects, shape, causality, functionality, and force. Our effort has been to construct core theories of each of these areas, and then to define, or at least characterize, a large number of lexical items in terms provided by the core theories. In this paper we discuss our methodological principles and describe the key ideas in the various domains we are investigating. (shrink)

In this paper, we recall and study the new type of algebraic structures called Symbolic Plithogenic Algebraic Structures. Their operations are given under the Absorbance Law and the Prevalence Order.

Within a liberal, ‘law of things’ understanding of property, the donative trust is seen as a species of gift. Control over trust property passes from the hands of settlors to beneficiaries, from owners to owners. Trust property, like all other property, is silent and passive, its fate determined by its owners. This article questions this understanding of the trust by showing how beneath the facade of ownership, the trust inverts the relation between owner and owned, person and thing. It analyses (...) the relation that trustees, beneficiaries and settlors have to the trust property and argues that the role of each of these parties can be shown to consist in furthering the interests of the trust property rather than their own. It claims that this protects things from their owners at the same time as it ensures these owners’ ongoing care towards the things they own. This raises questions about the trust’s status within the institution of private property, justified as it is by the human autonomy it is said to enable. (shrink)

We show that true colors as defined by Chevreul (1839) produce unsuspected simultaneous brightness induction effects on their immediate grey backgrounds when these are placed on a darker (black) general background surrounding two spatially separated configurations. Assimilation and apparent contrast may occur in one and the same stimulus display. We examined the possible link between these effects and the perceived depth of the color patterns which induce them as a function of their luminance contrast. Patterns of square-shaped inducers of a (...) single color (red, green, blue, yellow, or grey) were placed on background fields of a lighter and a darker grey, presented on a darker screen. Inducers were always darker on one side of the display and brighter on the other in a given trial. The intensity of the grey backgrounds varied between trials only. This permitted generating four inducer luminance contrasts, presented in random order, for each color. Background fields were either spatially separated or consisted of a single grey field on the black screen. Experiments were run under three environmental conditions: dark-adaptation, daylight, and rod-saturation after exposure to bright light. In a first task, we measured probabilities of contrast, assimilation, and no effect in a three-alternative forced-choice procedure (background appears brighter on the ‘left’, on the ‘right’ or the ‘same’). Visual adaptation and inducer contrast had no significant influence on the induction effects produced by colored inducers. Achromatic inducers produced significantly stronger contrast effects after dark-adaptation, and significantly stronger assimilation in daylight conditions. Grouping two backgrounds into a single one was found to significantly decrease probabilities of apparent contrast. Under the same conditions, we measured probabilities of the inducers to be perceived as nearer to the observer inducers. These, as predicted by Chevreul’s law of contrast, were determined by the luminance contrast of the inducers only, with significantly higher probabilities of brighter inducers to be seen as nearer, and a marked asymmetry between effects produced by inducers of opposite sign. Implications of these findings for theories which attempt to link simultaneous induction effects to the relative depth of object surfaces in the visual field are discussed. (shrink)

The trial took place at Bristol Crown Court, England, United Kingdom for the murder of Joanna Yeates, and Dr Vincent Tabak was the Defendant. The author attended at court for this trial and this paper notes many of the obvious and unsatisfactory legal and procedural points in this trial. Dr Vincent Tabak was convicted of the murder at this trial. Of course the jury were not to know the finer points of law as the lower court judge did not advise (...) the jury of any such points before they adjourned to make their decision. All but one concluded that Dr Tabak was guilty as charged, although even the charge was vague and all-encompassing as he was charged with ‘murder between Friday 17 December 2010 and Sunday 19 December 2010’. Defence counsel, very eminent barrister-at-law, appeared to be cowed by the other side and let them walk all over this case procedurally. For example, prosecution counsel handed him 1200 pages of evidence on the first day of the trial, as if to FULFIL disclosure obligations. E was stunned and asked the court for time off. But this was never again discussed. -/- The lower court judge appeared as if he had already decided on the case. When Defence Counsel asked him if he had before him a copy of a certain document, he flippantly say he had it but had left it on his desk in his room. When Defence Counsel, of international renown, was ready to present his opening speech and cross-examination of his client, Dr Vincent Tabak, this lower court judge dismissed the jury to their lunch break knowing that counsel was going to speak. Court had to be adjourned and the members of the jury quickly assembles by the court porters as they were leaving the court, which must have hampered their interest in what counsel’s statement said. A photograph of a dead body by a roadside, allegedly, Miss Yeates, was shown by projector slide a dozen irrelevant times during the trial period, thus embedding that photograph in the jury’s mind. The computer evidence leaves much to be desired and could, some suggested, easily have been concocted by the prosecution team, abusing the law of metadata evidence. Te lady who presented it did not give the court her qualifications and her expertise if any- and much more that beggars belief and loses trust in the British Criminal Justice System, such as it is, following ‘form over substance’. -/- . (shrink)

In all classical algebraic structures, the Laws of Compositions on a given set are well-defined. But this is a restrictive case, because there are many more situations in science and in any domain of knowledge when a law of composition defined on a set may be only partially-defined (or partially true) and partially-undefined (or partially false), that we call NeutroDefined, or totally undefined (totally false) that we call AntiDefined.

In all classical algebraic structures, the Laws of Compositions on a given set are well-defined. But this is a restrictive case, because there are many more situations in science and in any domain of knowledge when a law of composition defined on a set may be only partially-defined (or partially true) and partially-undefined (or partially false), that we call NeutroDefined, or totally undefined (totally false) that we call AntiDefined.

ABSTRACT In recent years, debates on same-sex marriage and the recognition of transwomen as women have been raging. These debates often seem to revolve around the meaning of, respectively, the word ‘marriage’ and ‘woman’. That such debates should take place might be puzzling. It seems that if debates on gay and transgender rights revolve around the meaning of these words, then those in favor of same-sex marriage and of the recognition of transwomen as women have no room left to (...) maneuver. However, prima facie, the pro – and anti-, in both cases, have genuine disagreements over the meaning of these words: though the analyses of revisionary theorists are revisionary, they are analyses. Sally Haslanger and other philosophers in her wake have appealed to an anti-descriptivist externalist view of meaning to provide the conceptual foundations of this practice of revisionary theorizing: revisionary analyses bring to light what, unbeknownst to us, these words mean. In this paper, I argue that a descriptivist externalist view should be preferred instead. My argument rests on the thesis that what is contested in these debates is the meaning of the words ‘marriage’ and ‘women’ as used in the law. (shrink)

I develop a nontheistic (quasi-)Berkeleyan idealism. The basic strategy is to peel away the attributes of God that aren't essential for role he plays in idealist metaphysics. God's omnibenevolence, his desires, intentions, beliefs, his very status as an agent ... aren't relevant to the work he does. When we peel all these things away, we're left with a view on which reality is a vast unity of consciousness, weaving together sensory experiences of colors, shapes, sounds, sizes, etc. into the (...) trees, electrons, black holes, and central nervous systems that fill the world around us. This phenomenal unity is governed by laws analogous to those posited by materialists, governing the unfolding of reality. I argue that if reality is fundamentally phenomenal in this way, we can give a unique account of perception that robustly captures direct realist intuitions of reality forming the "constituents" of our experiences: In perception, our finite unities of consciousness come to literally overlap with the unity of consciousness that is reality. I assess the unique virtues and challenges such a view faces, paying particular attention to the question of whether idealism entails a profligacy of physical laws. (shrink)

In information societies, operations, decisions and choices previously left to humans are increasingly delegated to algorithms, which may advise, if not decide, about how data should be interpreted and what actions should be taken as a result. More and more often, algorithms mediate social processes, business transactions, governmental decisions, and how we perceive, understand, and interact among ourselves and with the environment. Gaps between the design and operation of algorithms and our understanding of their ethical implications can have severe (...) consequences affecting individuals as well as groups and whole societies. This paper makes three contributions to clarify the ethical importance of algorithmic mediation. It provides a prescriptive map to organise the debate. It reviews the current discussion of ethical aspects of algorithms. And it assesses the available literature in order to identify areas requiring further work to develop the ethics of algorithms. (shrink)

Among the millions of pages of print and web pages and incessant chat and chatter on TV and blogs and speeches, there is a notable absence of a short clear honest, accurate, sane, intelligent summary of the catastrophe that is destroying America and the world. This is partly due to a lack of understanding and partly to the suppression of free speech by the leftist/liberal/progressive/democratic/socialist/multicultural/diverse/social democratic/communist/third world supremacist coalition. I attempt to fill that gap here. -/- An integral part of (...) modern democracy is The One Big Happy Family Delusion, i.e., that we are selected for cooperation with everyone, and that the euphonious ideals of Democracy, Diversity and Equality will lead us into utopia, if we just manage things correctly (the possibility of politics). The No Free Lunch Principle ought to warn us it cannot be true, and we see throughout history and all over the contemporary world, that without strict controls, selfishness and stupidity gain the upper hand and soon destroy any nation that embraces these delusions. In addition, the monkey mind steeply discounts the future, and so we cooperate in selling our descendant’s heritage for temporary comforts, greatly exacerbating the problems. -/- I describe the great tragedy playing out in America and the world, which can be seen as a direct result of our evolved psychology, which, though eminently adaptive and eugenic on the plains of Africa ca. 6 million years ago, when we split from chimpanzees, to ca. 50,000 to 150,000 years ago, when many of our ancestors left Africa (i.e., in the EEA or Environment of Evolutionary Adaptation), is now maladaptive and dysgenic and the source of our Suicidal Utopian Delusions. So, like all discussions of behavior (philosophy, psychology, sociology, biology, anthropology, politics, law, literature, history, economics, soccer strategies, business meetings, etc.), this book is ultimately about evolutionary strategies, selfish genes and inclusive fitness (kin selection, i.e., natural selection). -/- One might take this to imply that a just, democratic and enduring society for any kind of entity on any planet in any universe is only a dream, and that no being or power could make it otherwise. It is not only ‘the laws’ of physics that are universal and inescapable, or perhaps we should say that inclusive fitness is a law of physics. -/- The great mystic Osho said that the separation of God and Heaven from Earth and Humankind was the most evil idea that ever entered the human mind. In recent times an even more evil notion arose, that humans are born with rights, rather than having to earn privileges. The idea of human rights, as now commonly promulgated, is an evil fantasy created by leftists to draw attention away from the merciless destruction of the earth by unrestrained 3rd world motherhood. Thus, every day the population increases by 200,000, who must be provided with resources to grow and space to live, and who soon produce another 200,000 etc. And one almost never hears it noted that what they receive must be taken from those already alive, and their descendants. Their lives diminish those already here in both major obvious and countless subtle ways. Every new baby destroys the earth from the moment of conception. In a horrifically overcrowded world with vanishing resources, there cannot be human rights without destroying the earth and our descendant’s futures. It could not be more obvious, but it is rarely mentioned in a clear and direct way, and one will never see the streets full of protesters against motherhood. -/- The most basic fact, almost never mentioned, is that there are not enough resources in America or the world to lift a significant percentage of the poor out of poverty and keep them there. The attempt to do this is bankrupting America and destroying the world. The earth’s capacity to produce food decreases daily, as does our genetic quality. And now, as always, by far the greatest enemy of the poor is other poor and not the rich. -/- America and the world are in the process of collapse from excessive population growth, most of it for the last century, and now all of it, due to 3rd world people. Consumption of resources, and the addition of some 3 billion more ca. 2100, will collapse industrial civilization and bring about starvation, disease, violence and war on a staggering scale. The earth loses at least 1% of its topsoil every year, so as it nears 2100, most of its food growing capacity will be gone. Billions will die and nuclear war is all but certain. In America, this is being hugely accelerated by massive immigration and immigrant reproduction, combined with abuses made possible by democracy. Depraved human nature inexorably turns the dream of democracy and diversity into a nightmare of crime and poverty. China will continue to overwhelm America and the world, as long as it maintains the dictatorship which limits selfishness and enables long term planning. -/- The root cause of collapse is the inability of our innate psychology to adapt to the modern world, which leads people to treat unrelated persons as though they had common interests (which I suggest may be regarded as an unrecognized -- but the commonest and most serious-- psychological problem -- Inclusive Fitness Disorder). This, plus ignorance of basic biology and psychology, leads to the social engineering delusions of the partially educated who control democratic societies. Few understand that if you help one person you harm someone else—there is no free lunch and every single item anyone consumes destroys the earth beyond repair. Consequently, social policies everywhere are unsustainable and one by one all societies without stringent controls on selfishness will collapse into anarchy or dictatorship. Without dramatic and immediate changes, there is no hope for preventing the collapse of America, or any country that follows a democratic system. This is happening even without climate change or the evil designs of Seven Senile Sociopaths who rule China, but they make it happen much faster. The only major change from the first edition of this essay is the addition of a brief discussion of China, which represents by far the greatest threat to peace and freedom worldwide. The policy of appeasing them, which all countries and most businesses pursue, is the worst of the suicidal utopian delusions. -/- Those wishing to read my other writings may see Talking Monkeys 2nd ed (2019), The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle 2nd ed (2019), Suicide by Democracy 3rd ed (2019), The Logical Stucture of Human Behavior (2019) and Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2019) . (shrink)

This essay examines one of the most obscure and controversial tenets of Kant’s critical philosophy, his claim in the Critique of Practical Reason that the moral law is immediately and unquestionably valid as an a priori fact of reason (Factum der Vernunft). This argument curiously inverts Kant’s earlier stance in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, in which he justifies the reality of the categorical imperative through a much more cautious and qualified authentication of transcendental freedom. Against constructivist readings (...) which tend to downplay the justificatory burden of the Factum, I claim that Kant’s position is best understood as a transcendental argument. In other words, he argues from a given or assured conditioned, consciousness of binding moral obligation, to the sole condition of its possibility in transcendental freedom. In order to rebut the standard objections prompted by this line of interpretation, I emphasize the technical function of Kant’s Factum as both a deed (Tat) and product (Tatsache) of practical reason. (shrink)

In the wake of high profile and recent events of blatant privacy violations, which also raise issues of democratic accountability as well as, at least potentially, undermining the legitimacy of current local and international governance arrangements, a rethinking of the justification of the right to privacy is proposed. In this paper, the case of the violation of the privacy of a bullied autistic youngster and the consequent prosecution of 3 Google executives will be discussed first. We will then analyse the (...) arguments made by both academic experts and pundits who agree with Google’s claim that if the first sentence had been left unchallenged, it would have opened the floodgates to several other jurisdictions that would as a consequence have used it as a pretext to increase control on the internet, jeopardising in such a way free speech, which has been seen so far as an inalienable right which should not be censored. Finally, by going beyond the sentences and their immediate contexts, we will propose a theoretical justification of our analysis. Our main claim is that the value of the right to privacy is based on the argument that its violation would undermine citizens’ capacity to participate effectively in democratic politics. (shrink)

The lexical priority of fair equality of opportunity in John Rawls’s justice as fairness, which has been sharply criticized by Larry Alexander and Richard Arneson among others, is left almost entirely undefended in Rawls’s works. I argue here that this priority rule can be successfully defended against its critics despite Rawls’s own doubts about it. Using the few textual clues he provides, I speculatively reconstruct his defense of this rule, showing that it can be grounded on our interest in (...) self-realization through work. This reconstructed defense makes liberal use of concepts already present in A Theory of Justice , including the Aristotelian Principle (which motivates the achievement of increasing virtuosity) and the Humboldtian concept of social union (which provides the context for the development of such virtuosity). I also show that this commitment to self-realization, far from violating the priority of right in Rawls’s theory, stems directly from his underlying commitment to autonomy, which is the very foundation of the moral law in his doctrine of right. The reconstituted defense of this priority rule not only strengthens the case for justice as fairness but also has important and controversial implications for public policy. (shrink)

Most of the free will debate operates under the assumption that classic determinism and indeterminism are the only metaphysical options available. Through an analysis of Dennett’s view of free will as gradually evolving this article attempts to point to emergentist, interactivist and temporal metaphysical options, which have been left largely unexplored by contemporary theorists. Whereas, Dennett himself holds that “the kind of free will worth wanting” is compatible with classic determinism, I propose that his models of determinism fit poorly (...) with his evolutionary theory and naturalist commitments. In particular, his so-called “intuition pumps” seem to rely on the assumption that reality will have a compositional bottom layer where appearance and reality coincide. I argue that instead of positing this and other “unexplained explainers” we should allow for the heretical possibility that there might not be any absolute bottom, smallest substances or universal laws, but relational interactions all the way down. Through the details of Dennett’s own account of the importance of horizontal transmission in evolution and the causal efficacy of epistemically limited but complex layered “selves,” it is argued that our autonomy is linked to the ability to affect reality by controlling appearances. (shrink)

Civil disobedience, despite its illegal nature, can sometimes be justified vis-à-vis the duty to obey the law, and, arguably, is thereby not liable to legal punishment. However, adhering to the demands of justice and refraining from punishing justified civil disobedience may lead to a highly problematic theoretical consequence: the debilitation of civil disobedience. This is because, according to the novel analysis I propose, civil disobedience primarily functions as a costly social signal. It is effective by being reliable, reliable by being (...) costly, and costly primarily by being punished. My analysis will highlight a distinctive feature of civil disobedience: civil disobedients leverage the punitive injustice they suffer to amplify their communicative force. This will lead to two paradoxical implications. First, the instability of the moral status of both civil disobedience and its punishment to the extent where the state may be left with no permissible course of action with regard to punishing civil disobedience. Second, by refraining from punishing justified civil disobedience, the state may render uncivil disobedience—illegal political activities that fall short of the standards of civil disobedience—potentially permissible. (shrink)

The indirect argument (IA) for incompatibilism is based on the principle that an action to which there is no alternative is unfree, which we shall call ‘PA’. According to PA, to freely perform an action A, it must not be the case that one has ‘no choice’ but to perform A. The libertarian and hard determinist advocates of PA must deny that free will would exist in a deterministic world, since no agent in such a world would perform an action (...) to which there were alternatives: an action there being the necessary consequence of preceding events and the laws of nature, it would not be possible for a person to perform actions besides those he actually performs. Determinism is seen here as “indirectly” ruling out free will by making the satisfaction of a necessary condition of free agency impossible, the former requiring, according to the leading proponent of libertarianism, Robert Kane, the performance of free actions. To have a free will, on his view, is to have committed “self-forming” actions, that is, to have done things to which there were alternatives the doing of which led to the development of the desires, preferences, and beliefs that make up one’s character. -/- The range of phenomena obeying probabilistic laws has yet to be ascertained. Under certain assumptions, both STR and GTR entail an indeterministic mechanics. But, contrary what is often claimed, quanta do not behave indeterministicly: the wave function/probabilistic laws being necessary only insofar as we wish to macroscopicly describe their behavior. It is far less clear, however, that the macro-events involved in human decision making and behavior, such as the releasing of neurotransmitters and the contracting of muscles, occur indeterministically. The ontological status of these events-whether or not they are the necessary effects of prior occurrences-is, of course, what matters in the free will debate. For present purposes, however, this question will be put aside. Instead, I will concentrate on buttressing the existing case against PA, aiming to show that even if deterministic laws hold at the level of macro-phenomena, free will remains a possibility. That is to say, I shall defend the thesis that so-called “Frankfurt cases” demonstrate that alternatives are not required to perform an action that is free in the sense of being something for which its agent is responsible. -/- My defense will be carried out in three stages. First, I must respond to those who maintain that a Frankfurt case is not a counterexample to PA because it is not an example of someone acting without alternatives. Here, I confront the question of how “robust” an alternative must bein order to provide an agent with a way of avoiding praise or blame for the action that she actually commits. Secondly, I must show that an agent may be praiseworthy or blameworthy despite lacking alternatives at the time at which she acts, i.e., an appropriate object of one of a Strawsonian “reactive attitude” sans what I shall call “local” alternatives. At this point, I must attend to David Widerker’s recent critique of the use of Frankfurt cases as counterexamples to PA. Finally, I set for myself what I take to be the most difficult task of a compatibilist: demonstrating that not even an “historical” alternative-the possibility of having chosen a different path in life than the one that one has actually taken-is needed to have a free will. In this connection, it will be incumbent upon me to explain why it would be fair to hold someone accountable for behavior issuing from a self she did not create, dispositions originating from natural conditions she did not establish. That is to say, in denying that a free will entails the ability to transcend oneself, I shall be faced with what Kane calls the “ultimacy” problem: how to explain away the incompatibilist’s intuition that it is senseless to adopt a reactive attitude towards someone incapable of self-transcendence, even if such a reaction is itself unavoidable. By showing that the desire for self-transcendence is itself irrational, I intend to solve this problem. I will, thus, be left defending a version of compatibilism according to which a free will is to be understood as a healthy faculty-the will-being exercised in an environment conducive to self-realization, which is its purpose. (shrink)

Kant famously insists that free will is a condition of morality. The difficulty of providing a demonstration of freedom has left him vulnerable to devastating criticism: critics charge that Kant's post-Groundwork justification of morality amounts to a dogmatic assertion of morality's authority. My paper rebuts this objection, showing that Kant offers a cogent demonstration of freedom. My central claim is that the demonstration must be understood in practical rather than theoretical terms. A practical demonstration of x works by bringing (...) x into existence, and what the demonstration of freedom brings into existence is a moral will, a will regulated by the moral law and capable of acting in accordance with it. Since to act morally is to act freely, bringing a moral will into existence actualizes our capacity for freedom and demonstrates that we possess it. To confirm the viability of such a demonstration, Kant must establish that agents can regulate their wills by practical principles, and that practical judgments are efficacious of themselves (i.e., that non-Humean motivational internalism is true). Kant, I argue, is successful on both counts. (shrink)

Popper's account of science is an endeavour in establishing the relationship between universality and truth. The idea is that the more an empirical law is universal, by precluding certain realities from obtaining in an evidentially falsifiable way, the more the law is supported by instances of its predictions being evidentially verified. The logical structure of this dynamic is captured by Popper's notion of 'corroboration'. However, this notion is suspect, for, depending on one's interpretation of evidential givenness, the relation between a (...) law's degree of universality and evidential corroborability could instead invert, thereby contradicting Popper. This paper also explores how a conceptualization of universality in terms of necessary simplicity-i.e., a measure of simplicity that is also sensitive to the evidence at hand-can better recontextualize evidential givenness to be about evidential support for a theory's predictive truth conduciveness, against Popper's understanding of evidential support for a theory's veracity concerning the evidence at hand. However, it is argued that employing necessary simplicity to attain truth conduciveness in a theory's predictions must appeal to specific background assumptions concerning the state of affairs the evidence is supposed to be about. When these background assumptions are denied as being necessarily instantiated, then a relation between necessary simplicity and truth conduciveness becomes contingently uncertain. (shrink)

One of the driving questions in philosophy of mind is whether a person can be understood in purely physical terms. In this presentation, I wish to continue the project initiated by Donald Davidson, whose subtle position on this question has left many more perplexed than enlightened. The main reason for this perplexity is Davidson’s rather obscure pronouncements about the normativity of intentionality and its role in supporting psychophysical anomalism – the claim that there are no laws bridging our intentional (...) states with states of our brain. Insofar as Davidson’s thesis is an ontological one – about the existence of laws or otherwise modally significant connections between the mental and the physical – I think his critics are correct: Davidson has not provided us with a successful argument for psychophysical anomalism. There is, however, a different argument, also based upon considerations about the normativity of intentionality that lead to an equally important conclusion. The conclusion is not ontological but rather epistemic: if thoughts do indeed display normativity, it is hard to understand how they would arise out of mere mechanical occurrences in the brain. To borrow a well-worn phrase, there is an “explanatory gap” between the mental and the physical. Originally coined to capture the epistemic darkness we confront in our attempt to understand phenomenal experiences in purely physical terms, the idea has yet to be explored in the area of contentful mental states or intentionality in general. My argument shall be this: considerations about the normativity of intentionality demonstrate that there is an explanatory gap between the intentional and the physical. In fact, if there were laws of the kind Davidson denies, then the world be more mysterious than if no such laws existed. The presence of an explanatory gap explains why this is so. (shrink)

Georg Cantor was the genuine discoverer of the Mathematical Infinity, and whatever he claimed, suggested, or even surmised should be taken seriously -- albeit not necessary at its face value. Because alongside his exquisite in beauty ordinal construction and his fundamental powerset description of the continuum, Cantor has also left to us his obsessive presumption that the universe of sets should be subjected to laws similar to those governing the set of natural numbers, including the universal principles of cardinal (...) comparability and well-ordering -- and implying an ordinal re-creation of the continuum. During the last hundred years, the mainstream set-theoretical research -- all insights and adjustments due to Kurt G\"odel's revolutionary insights and discoveries notwithstanding -- has compliantly centered its efforts on ad hoc axiomatizations of Cantor's intuitive transfinite design. We demonstrate here that the ontological and epistemic sustainability} of this design has been irremediably compromised by the underlying peremptory, Reductionist mindset of the XIXth century's ideology of science. (shrink)