This article argues for an unconventional interpretation of Arthur O. Lovejoy’s distinctive approach to method in the history of ideas. It is maintained that the value of the central concept of the ‘unit-idea’ has been misunderstood by friends and foes alike. The commonality of unit-ideas at different times and places is often defined in terms of familial resemblance. But such an approach must necessarily define unit-ideas as being something other than the smallest conceptual (...) class='Hi'>unit. It is therefore in tension with Lovejoy’s methodological prescription and, more importantly, disregards a potentially important aspect of intellectual history – the smaller conceptual units themselves. In response to this, an alternative interpretation of unit-ideas as ‘elemental’ – as the smallest identifiable conceptual components – is put forward. Unlike the familial resemblance approach, the elemental approach can provide a plausible explanation for changes in ideas. These are construed as being either the creation of new unit-ideas, the disappearance of existing ones, or alterations in the groups of unit-ideas that compose idea-complexes. The focus on the movement of unit-ideas and idea-complexes through history can also be sensitive to contextual issues, carefully distinguishing the different meanings that single words may have, in much the way that both Lovejoy and his influential critic Quentin Skinner suggest. (shrink)

The unit of selection is the concept of that ‘something’ to which biologists refer when they speak of an adaptation as being ‘for the good of’ something. Darwin identified the organism as the unit of selection because for him the ‘struggle for existence’ was an issue among individuals. Later on it was suggested that, in order to understand the evolution of social behavior, it is necessary to argue that groups, and not individuals, are the units of selection. The (...) last addition to this debate was the formulation by Dawkins, in 1976, that the genes themselves are the units of selection while organisms are merely the temporary receptacles and vehicles for such genes. Thus, the preposterous dissolution of the organism into genes and the proteins coded by such genes has been introduced in the evolutionary discourse by neglecting that the explanations for biological phenomena can be either synchronic or diachronic, depending on the phenomenon to be explained. Therefore explanations in molecular biology are synchronic while evolutionary biology needs diachronic explanations. Nevertheless, for ultra-Darwinians such as Dawkins, efficient replication is all that biology is about. Here I develop an argument in order to show that there is nothing in molecular and cell biology that might support such a contention and that the idea of the gene as the unit of selection is incompatible with the evident evolution of biological complexity. (shrink)

This paper examines the idea of an extended unit of action, which is the idea that the reasons for or against an individual action can depend on the qualities of a larger pattern of action of which it is a part. One concept of joint action is that the unit of action can be extended in this sense. But the idea of an extended unit of action is surprisingly minimal in its commitments. The paper argues for this (...) conclusion by examining uses of the idea of an extended unit of action in four theoretical contexts. It also explains why the idea of an extended unit of action need not involve magical thinking, and discusses possible replies to an objection based on a worry about recklessness. (shrink)

The idea the New Zealand Māori once counted by elevens has been viewed as a cultural misunderstanding originating with a mid-nineteenth-century dictionary of their language. Yet this “remarkable singularity” had an earlier, Continental origin, the details of which have been lost over a century of transmission in the literature. The affair is traced to a pair of scientific explorers, René-Primevère Lesson and Jules Poret de Blosseville, as reconstructed through their publications on the 1822–1825 circumnavigational voyage of the Coquille, a French (...) corvette. Possible explanations for the affair are briefly examined, including whether it might have been a prank by the Polynesians or a misunderstanding or hoax on the part of the Europeans. Reasons why the idea of counting by elevens remains topical are discussed. First, its very oddity has obscured the counting method actually used—setting aside every tenth item as a tally. This “ephemeral abacus” is examined for its physical and mental efficiencies and its potential to explain aspects of numerical structure and vocabulary (e.g., Mangarevan binary counting; the Hawaiian number word for twenty, iwakalua), matters suggesting material forms have a critical if underappreciated role in realising concepts like exponential value. Second, it provides insight into why it can be difficult to appreciate highly elaborated but unwritten numbers like those found throughout Polynesia. Finally, the affair illuminates the difficulty of categorising number systems that use multiple units as the basis of enumeration, like Polynesian pair-counting; potential solutions are offered. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 61.3 (2000) 453-471 [Access article in PDF] Liberty, Authority, and Trust in Burke's Idea of Empire Richard Bourke When Edmund Burke first embarked upon a parliamentary career, British political life was in the process of adapting to a series of critical reorientations in both the dynamics of party affiliation and the direction of imperial policy. During the period of the Seven Years' (...) War, a reconstituted militia became a focus for patriotic enthusiasm, uniting national sentiment against France and effectively eradicating the remnants of Jacobite rhetoric and aspiration. Traditional opposition between Tory and Whig became irrelevant, while Court and Country jointly came to the support of the Pitt-Newcastle ministry. However, in due course the Old Corps disintegrated as George III succeeded to the throne with the promise of an end to factional strife and the beginning of a patriotic alliance in government. But while competing ideologies and interests on the domestic political scene were undergoing comprehensive realignment, the pursuit of a blue-water policy in tandem with strategic continental campaigns brought Britain's struggle against France into North America, the Caribbean, and India. Trade continued to expand into Asia and West Africa, but the principles of commercial advantage were continually brought into open conflict with the exigencies of war. The division of power in Europe became embroiled in a substantial redivision of empire, and by 1763 British territorial expansion had reached its zenith.When Burke was appointed private secretary to the Marquis of Rockingham, with the national debt standing at an all time high and the demands of imperial defense unlikely to diminish, the politics of empire called for urgent attention from all sections of the political establishment. In particular the Rockinghamites, adopting a posture of aloofness from venality and petty interest, were obliged to advance policies for imperial government on the solid basis of political principle. 1 Coming into parliament as a member for Wendover in the wake of [End Page 453] Grenville's Stamp Act, at a time when the East India Company was assuming control of the revenue in Bengal, Burke set about formulating a doctrine of imperial sovereignty which would be serviceable to the party either in power or in opposition and which would be adequate to the complex reality of detached and extensive empire. The immediate reception of that inquiry, both in Britain and on the Continent, into the fraught world of post-Revolutionary political debate has had the long-term effect of distorting the order of emphasis in terms of which his career as a whole ought properly to be understood.The vigorous elaboration, in opposition to the Jacobin experiment in France, of the conditions under which moderate government could be exercised within the context of an absolute sovereignty was expressed in terms which had originally been invoked as part of a sustained attempt to reconcile civility with empire. As we shall see, that attempt involved a process of delicate coordination by means of which the interests of freedom would be brought into harmony with the demands of public power. In that sense the effort to make liberty and authority mutually responsible can be said to constitute the core ambition of Burke's political rhetoric. In this context responsibility defines the optimally beneficial relation between government and people on the one hand and national sovereignty and the extended empire on the other. This article outlines the practical and theoretical exploration of those relations within the frame of Burke's intervention in the world of eighteenth-century political discourse.Burke was of course well placed in 1765 to evolve a theory of imperial government that was at once ideologically compelling and politically viable. In his capacity as secretary to William Gerard Hamilton in the early 1760s he had already examined the corruption of legitimate empire as represented by the introduction of penal legislation into Ireland after 1694. The Tracts Relating to Popery Laws set out to convict the Irish Parliament in Dublin of flagrant misrule. A subordinate legislature within the empire is charged with having employed... (shrink)

Jordan Peterson has attracted a high level of attention. Controversies may bring people into contact with Peterson's work, but ideas are arguably what keep them there. Focusing on those ideas, this book explores Peterson’s answers to perennial questions. What is common to all humans, regardless of their background? Is complete knowledge ever possible? What would constitute a meaningful life? Why have humans evolved the capacity for intelligence? Should one treat others as individuals or as members of a group? (...) Is a single person powerless in the face of evil? What is the relation between speech, thought, and action? Why have religious myths and narratives figured so prominently in human history? Are the hierarchies we find in society good or bad? After devoting a chapter to each of these questions, Champagne unites the different strands of Peterson’s thinking in a handy summary. Champagne then spends the remaining third of the book articulating his main critical concerns. He argues that while building on tradition is inevitable and indeed desirable, Peterson’s individualist project is hindered by the non-revisable character and self-sacrificial content of religious belief. This engaging multidisciplinary study is ideal for those who know little about Peterson’s views, or for those who are familiar but want to see more clearly how Peterson’s views hang together. The debates spearheaded by Peterson are in full swing, so Myth, Meaning, and Antifragile Individualism should become a reference point for any serious engagement with Peterson’s ideas. (shrink)

General Relativity says gravity is a push caused by space-time's curvature. Combining General Relativity with E=mc2 results in distances being totally deleted from space-time/gravity by future technology, and in expansion or contraction of the universe as a whole being eliminated. The road to these conclusions has branches shining light on supersymmetry and superconductivity. This push of gravitational waves may be directed from intergalactic space towards galaxy centres, helping to hold galaxies together and also creating supermassive black holes. Together with the (...) waves' possible production of "dark" matter in higher dimensions, there's ample reason to believe knowledge of gravitational waves has barely begun. Advanced waves are usually discarded by scientists because they're thought to violate the causality principle. Just as advanced waves are usually discarded, very few physicists or mathematicians will venture to ascribe a physical meaning to Wick rotation and "imaginary" time. Here, that maths (when joined with Mobius-strip and Klein-bottle topology) unifies space and time into one space-time, and allows construction of what may be called "imaginary computers". This research idea you're reading is not intended to be a formal theory presenting scientific jargon and mathematical formalism. (shrink)

Andrew Chignell and Omri Boehm have recently argued that Kant’s pre-Critical proof for the existence of God entails a Spinozistic conception of God and hence substance monism. The basis for this reading is the assumption common in the literature that God grounds possibilities by exemplifying them. In this article I take issue with this assumption and argue for an alternative Leibnizian reading, according to which possibilities are grounded in essences united in God’s mind (later also described as Platonic ideas (...) intuited by God). I show that this view about the distinction between God’s cognition of essences as the ground of possibility and the actual world is not only explicitly stated by Kant, but is also consistent with his metaphysical picture of teleology in nature and causality during the pre-Critical period. Finally, I suggest that the distinction between the conceptual order of essences embodied in the idea of God and the order of the objects of experience plays a role in the transition into the Critical system, where it is transformed into the distinction between the intelligible and the sensible worlds. (shrink)

The idea about this special issue came from a paper published as an updated and upridged version of an older memorial lecture given by Brian D. Josephson and Michael Conrad at the Gujarat Vidyapith University in Ahmedabad, India on March 2, 1984. The title of this paper was “Uniting Eastern Philosophy and Western Science” (1992). We thought that this topic deserves to be revisited after 25 years to demonstrate to the scientific community which new insights and achievements were attained in (...) this fairly broad field during this period. (shrink)

The main idea consists in researching the existence of certain characteristics of nature similar to human reasonability and purposeful actions, originating and rigorously inferable from the postulates of quantum mechanics as well as from those of special and general relativity. The pathway of the “free-will theorems” proved by Conway and Kochen in 2006 and 2009 is followed and pioneered further. Those natural reasonability and teleology are identified as a special subject called “God” and studyable by “quantum theology”, a scientific counterpart (...) of classical theology as far as the latter endeavors to justify rationally God (without quotation marks) postulated by religion, but meaning in the present study, first of all, Christianity. The suggested “quantum theology” is situated in the historical opposition and conflict of science and religion in Modernity and its reflection in Heidegger’s conception of “ontotheology”. The conception of “ontomathematics” introduced in previous papers to unite and unify physics, mathematics, and philosophy is reinterpreted in the present context to be conservatively generalized in a way to include “quantum theology”. Two conceptions, “locality” and “nonlocality”, originating initially from physics and especially, from theory of entanglement and quantum information, are also generalized ontomathematically, and thus in relation to the newly introduced “quantum theology”. The “quantum theology” subject of “God” is juxtaposed with God of religion and billions of believers all over the world. Husserl’s conception of “philosophy as a rigorous science” is considered to be generalized now to theology as quantum theology, particularly by the phenomenon (in the sense of his “phenomenology”) of “God”, or by an “epoché” to whether God exists or not. The research of the phenomenon of “God” is extended to the conception of the “totality” being inherent for philosophy, especially for classical German philosophy preceding Husserl’s phenomenology. Those sequences for philosophy implied by the introduction of quantum theology are investigated further, on the pathway of ontomathematics, also in relation to what “God” should mean for today’s physics and mathematics. The option and research field of “experimental quantum theology” is discussed as a direct corollary from quantum theology though being sacrilegious as for classical theology. The concluding section reflects in a more loose way on the relation of “God” for quantum theology to God for religion and billions of believers all over the world. (shrink)

Margulis’ evolutionary theory entails a revision of certain core concepts of traditional biology. One of these changes is related to the hot debate about units of selection. This paper considers Margulis’ proposal as a new research tradition (RT) and evaluates its consequences to the mentioned issue. Three ideas are suggested here: firstly, that her theory represents the revision of many classical biological concepts; secondly, that her position implies a reappraisal of many traditional issues in philosophy of biology; and thirdly, (...) that studying it from Lakatos and Laudan’s ideas about RT allows us to enlighten the richness of her theory. (shrink)

The idea of permit trading in the United States can be traced as far back as the 1970s, but emissions trading has really only became a popular and exportable idea with the more recent demands that environmental protection acknowledge economic pressures through such ideas as sustainable development. Now the idea of emissions trading has caught on in South America, China and Europe as well. Yet in the eagerness of governments and industry to work out the technical details and legal (...) mechanics of the emissions trading tool, insufficient attention has been paid to its underlying legal and ethical assumptions. In this article, it is emphasized that emissions trading is a part of compliance with environmental law, not a market alternative to compliance. The difference between the two greatly effects and is affected by theories of rights. As part of the scheme of rights and accompanying duties, the author questions whether an implicit right to pollute has been created through emissions trading, as exemplified by the comparison of the systems in the U.S., China and Europe. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop two philosophically suggestive arguments that the late Justice Stevens made in Citizens United against the idea that business corporations have free speech rights. First, (1) while business corporations conceived as real entities are capable of a thin agency conceptually sufficient for moral rights, I argue that they fail to clear important justificatory hurdles imposed by interest or choice theories of rights. Business corporations conceived as real entities lack an interest in their personal security; moreover, they (...) are incapable of exercising innate powers of choice. Second, (2) I argue that the structure and functionally individualized purpose of a business corporation—to increase value for its shareholders—undermines the implicit joint commitment necessary to derive corporate rights of free speech from non-operative shareholder-member rights. Since one cannot transfer innate moral rights such as free speech, any exercise of this right on behalf of another must be limited in scope. (shrink)

Do traits evolve because they are good for the group, or do they evolve because they are good for the individual organisms that have them? The question is whether groups, rather than individual organisms, are ever “units of selection.” My exposition begins with the 1960’s, when the idea that traits evolve because they are good for the group was criticized, not just for being factually mistaken, but for embodying a kind of confused thinking that is fundamentally at odds with the (...) logic that Darwin’s theory requires. A counter-movement has arisen since the 1960’s, called multi-level selection theory, according to which selection acts at multiple levels, including the level of the group. After discussing the 1960’s attack on group selection and the concept’s subsequent revival, I examine Darwin’s views on the subject. I discuss what Darwin says about four examples: human morality, the barbed stinger of the honeybee, neuter workers in species of social insect, and the sterility of many interspecies hybrids. I argue that Darwin defended hypotheses of group selection in the first three problems, but rejected it in the fourth. I also discuss Darwin’s general views about the role of group selection in evolution. (shrink)

The democratic surprises of 2016—Brexit and the Trump phenomenon—fueled by “fake news”, both real and imagined, have come to constitute a centrifugal, nationalistic, even tribal moment in politics. Running counter to the shared postwar narrative of increasing internationalism, these events reignited embers of cultural and moral relativism in academia and public discourse dormant since the culture wars of the 1990s and ‘60s. This counternarrative casts doubt on the value of belief in universal human rights, which many in the humanities and (...) social sciences argue have of late been used as instruments of postcolonial oppression. This book essay introduces three texts written before the dawn of the latest “post-truth” era—The Sociology of Human Rights by Mark Frezzo, The Political Sociology of Human Rights by Kate Nash, and Keeping Faith with Human Rights by Linda Hogan—that address moral skepticism of human rights. Along with these authors, the essay briefly treats human rights’ past and prospects, analogizing it to the waves of feminist thought: in international politics, developing nations first desired a seat at the table and repeal of discriminatory laws and practices; when one-nation-one-vote did not result in equal treatment, the persistence of hierarchy helped developing nations awaken to their own evolving national identities and they wished to be recognized as not only equal, but different and unique. The essay recapitulates and amplifies these authors’ argument that the contemporary challenge for all nations, their citizens, and for the human rights community is to deliberatively decide what values unite these identities beyond simple self-determination and extend them toward the goal of a just global whole. The essay also makes an original contribution in summarizing the initial post-war debate in the United Nations that birthed the 1948 Declaration of Human Rights, which has been subject to revisionism and perspectivism typical of cultural and moral relativism. It provides some social scientific, historical, and philosophic grounding for serious conversation of the ideas of truths in politics, and universal, transcultural goods and rights that underpin the authority of the international human rights regime in theory and practice. It does so while recognizing the serious epistemological challenges to this universalist conception, chiefly: how a social construct can be both time-bound human creation and continue to be morally binding across space, time, and the accelerated change global citizens of all corners are experiencing, simultaneously yet in their own way. (shrink)

In the United States, the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues has proposed deliberative democracy as an approach for dealing with ethical issues surrounding synthetic biology. Deliberative democracy might similarly help us as we update the regulation of human subjects research. This paper considers how the values that deliberative democratic engagement aims to realize can be realized in a human subjects research context. Deliberative democracy is characterized by an ongoing exchange of ideas between participants, and an effort (...) to justify decisions that bind participants by appeal to reasons that the participants can understand and share. Even when unanimous agreement is not reached, the active participation of everyone along with the requirement that reasons be made accessible enhances the legitimacy of the ultimate outcome. Importantly, deliberative democratic structures avoid strict hierarchies and place participants, as much as possible, in the position of equals. Human subjects research has some features that may make deliberative democratic principles seem initially unappealing. For one, there are asymmetries in knowledge between expert researchers conducting the research and participants in the research process. For another, statistical validity is made easiest by research paradigms that produce standardized, quantitative data, which can be difficult to achieve if research participants are given the power to deliberatively reshape the research design as it progresses. These and other problems have tended to produce a human subjects research process where subjects do not actively participate in shaping research, but rather consent to a predefined set of interventions designed by expert researchers and vetted by Institutional Review Boards (IRBs). In this paper, I suggest some ways in which human subjects research could do more to realize deliberative democratic values, and, in particular, how a revised Common Rule might help to realize these values. First, research participants could be treated not as passive subjects but instead involved in research design, ethical review, and the ongoing conduct and dissemination of research. Such participation might involve, for instance, including people who have served as research subjects on IRBs, or replacing IRB oversight for certain forms of research exempted from IRB oversight under a revised Common Rule with oversight by a body of community members or research subjects. It might also involve having the oversight of research that uses more participatory models be more participatory and less hierarchical in nature. I also raise questions about the exemption of research on public benefit programs from any research-level oversight and from consent requirements. While IRBs are likely not the correct overseers, there may be good reason to view such research with a critical eye, because of its potential for long-range impacts on the lives of participants. By giving research subjects a greater voice in research that aims at fine-tuning public benefit programs on which subjects rely, a deliberative oversight process has the potential to recast research participation as a form of active democratic participation and to address a “democratic deficit” in public health. Numerous proposals regarding health care have called for greater participation by laypeople and a more nonhierarchical approach to setting health priorities. Involving lay research subjects in the conduct of public benefits research and other forms of public health research may help to further these goals. (shrink)

Norbert Wiener’s idea of “cybernetics” is linked to temporality as in a physical as in a philosophical sense. “Time orders” can be the slogan of that natural cybernetics of time: time orders by itself in its “screen” in virtue of being a well-ordering valid until the present moment and dividing any totality into two parts: the well-ordered of the past and the yet unordered of the future therefore sharing the common boundary of the present between them when the ordering is (...) taking place by choices. Thus, the quantity of information defined by units of choices, whether bits or qubits, describes that process of ordering happening in the present moment. The totality (which can be considered also as a particular or “regional” totality) turns out to be divided into two parts: the internality of the past and the externality of the future by the course of time, but identifiable to each other in virtue of scientific transcendentalism (e.g. mathematical, physical, and historical transcendentalism). A properly mathematical approach to the “totality and time” is introduced by the abstract concept of “evolutionary tree” (i.e. regardless of the specific nature of that to which refers: such as biological evolution, Feynman trajectories, social and historical development, etc.), Then, the other half of the future can be represented as a deformed mirror image of the evolutionary tree taken place already in the past: therefore the past and future part are seen to be unifiable as a mirrorly doubled evolutionary tree and thus representable as generalized Feynman trajectories. The formalism of the separable complex Hilbert space (respectively, the qubit Hilbert space) applied and further elaborated in quantum mechanics in order to uniform temporal and reversible, discrete and continuous processes is relevant. Then, the past and future parts of evolutionary tree would constitute a wave function (or even only a single qubit once the concept of actual infinity be involved to real processes). Each of both parts of it, i.e. either the future evolutionary tree or its deformed mirror image, would represented a “half of the whole”. The two halves can be considered as the two disjunctive states of any bit as two fundamentally inseparable (in virtue of quantum correlation) “halves” of any qubit. A few important corollaries exemplify that natural cybernetics of time. (shrink)

In the United States, Protestant Christian identity is the dominant religious identity. Protestant Christian identity confers status privileges, yet also creates objectionable status inequalities. Historical and contemporary evidence includes the unfair treatment of Mormons, Native Americans, Muslims, and other religious minorities. Protestant Christian supremacy also plays a significant role in bolstering anti LGBTQ prejudice, xenophobia, and white supremacy. Ways that Protestant Christian identity correlates with objectionable status inequalities are often neglected in contemporary political philosophy. This paper aims to make a (...) modest contribution towards filling that gap. Some forms of inequality linked to Protestant Christian supremacy can be characterized as domination and oppression. Other instances include barriers to fair equality of opportunity for self-determination. Adapting ideas from egalitarian political philosophy I propose an analysis of objectionable status inequality rooted in Protestant Christian supremacy. Alan Patten’s defense of an egalitarian principle for assessing the effects of law and policy is helpful for this task. (shrink)

In the United States, all military personnel swear to obey “the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me.” Military personnel must obey orders promptly in order to facilitate effective military functioning. Yet, obedience to orders has been associated with the commission of war crimes. Military personnel of all ranks have committed torture, rape, genocide, and murder under orders. “I was just following orders” (respondaet superior) is no longer accepted as a (...) complete defense to a charge of war crimes. In the words of the Nuremberg court: “The obedience of a soldier is not the obedience of an automaton. A soldier is a reasoning agent”. This means that military personnel cannot evade responsibility for their actions under orders. But when and under what conditions should military personnel disobey orders? If obedience is sometimes morally wrong, how can obedience be a military virtue? In this chapter I argue that the only plausible conception of military obedience as a virtue is reflective obedience: obedience governed and constrained by the ends of the military profession serving a legitimate state and by the laws of armed conflict. Section 1 explains the concept of obedience and outlines the idea of virtuous obedience. Section 2 explores when the military has legitimate authority to compel obedience. Section 3 concludes by exploring the limits on obedience that derive from the military’s status as a profession and the legitimacy of the military’s authority to issue orders. (shrink)

Development of ideas on UN reform presented in the essay "United Humanity: from "UN 2.0" to "UN 3.0" The conceptual model of the United Nations for the XXI century" (2017).

Development of ideas on UN reform presented in the essay "United Humanity: from "UN 2.0" to "UN 3.0" The conceptual model of the United Nations for the XXI century" (2017).

There has been much criticism of the idea that Friston's free-energy principle can unite the life and mind sciences. Here, we argue that perhaps the greatest problem for the totalizing ambitions of its proponents is a failure to recognize the importance of evolutionary dynamics and to provide a convincing adaptive story relating free-energy minimization to organismal fitness.

In this essay, we discuss Simona Ginsburg and Eva Jablonka’s The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul from an interdisciplinary perspective. Constituting perhaps the longest treatise on the evolution of consciousness, Ginsburg and Jablonka unite their expertise in neuroscience and biology to develop a beautifully Darwinian account of the dawning of subjective experience. Though it would be impossible to cover all its content in a short book review, here we provide a critical evaluation of their two key ideas—the role of (...) Unlimited Associative Learning in the evolution of, and detection of, consciousness and a metaphysical claim about consciousness as a mode of being—in a manner that will hopefully overcome some of the initial resistance of potential readers to tackle a book of this length. (shrink)

As George Boole saw it, the laws of logic are the laws of thought, and by this he meant, not that human thought is actually governed by the laws of logic, but, rather, that it should be. Boole’s view that the laws of logic have normative implications for how we ought to think is anything but an outlier. The idea that violating the laws of logic involves epistemic impropriety has seemed to many to be just obvious. It has seemed especially (...) obvious to those who see propositional justification as more fundamental than doxastic justification. Whatever other principles are required for defining propositional justification, the laws of logic seem indispensable. The idea that violation of the laws of logic involves some sort of epistemic impropriety—whatever the peculiarities of our psychology may be—has served as a fixed point around which defenders of the fundamentality of propositional justification are united, whatever their other differences. This paper challenges that common thread in defenses of the fundamentality of propositional justification. It is argued that the laws of logic have no bearing whatever on epistemic justification. Once we see why this should be so, the way is paved for seeing why it is that doxastic justification is more fundamental than propositional justification. (shrink)

The central motivating idea behind the development of this work is the concept of prespace, a hypothetical structure that is postulated by some physicists to underlie the fabric of space or space-time. I consider how such a structure could relate to space and space-time, and the rest of reality as we know it, and the implications of the existence of this structure for quantum theory. Understanding how this structure could relate to space and to the rest of reality requires, I (...) believe, that we consider how space itself relates to reality, and how other so-called "spaces" used in physics relate to reality. In chapter 2, I compare space and space-time to other spaces used in physics, such as configuration space, phase space and Hilbert space. I support what is known as the "property view" of space, opposing both the traditional views of space and space-time, substantivalism and relationism. I argue that all these spaces are property spaces. After examining the relationships of these spaces to causality, I argue that configuration space has, due to its role in quantum mechanics, a special status in the microscopic world similar to the status of position space in the macroscopic world. In chapter 3, prespace itself is considered. One way of approaching this structure is through the comparison of the prespace structure with a computational system, in particular to a cellular automaton, in which space or space-time and all other physical quantities are broken down into discrete units. I suggest that one way open for a prespace metaphysics can be found if physics is made fully discrete in this way. I suggest as a heuristic principle that the physical laws of our world are such that the computational cost of implementing those laws on an arbitrary computational system is minimized, adapting a heuristic principle of this type proposed by Feynman. In chapter 4, some of the ideas of the previous chapters are applied in an examination of the physics and metaphysics of quantum theory. I first discuss the "measurement problem" of quantum mechanics: this problem and its proposed solution are the primary subjects of chapter 4. It turns out that considering how quantum theory could be made fully discrete leads naturally to a suggestion of how standard linear quantum mechanics could be modified to give rise to a solution to the measurement problem. The computational heuristic principle reinforces the same solution. I call the modified quantum mechanics Critical Complexity Quantum Mechanics (CCQM). I compare CCQM with some of the other proposed solutions to the measurement problem, in particular the spontaneous localization model of Ghirardi, Rimini and Weber. Finally, in chapters 5 and 6, I argue that the measure of complexity of quantum mechanical states I introduce in CCQM also provides a new definition of entropy for quantum mechanics, and suggests a solution to the problem of providing an objective foundation for statistical mechanics, thermodynamics, and the arrow of time. (shrink)

In this article, the results of conceptualization of the definition of mind as an object of interdisciplinary applied research are described. The purpose of the theoretical analysis is to generate a methodological discourse suitable for a functional understanding of the mind in the context of the problem of natural language processing as one of the components of developments in the field of artificial intelligence. The conceptual discourse was realized with the help of the author's method of structural-ontological analysis, and developed (...) in the mainstream of the system-methodological tradition of the school of G.P. Shchedrovitsky and intended for descriptive research of subject areas of interdisciplinary objects of scientific study. As a result of the structural and ontological analysis of the super-system, the relevant place and role of the directly studied system (mind) are determined, and its primary process and material are localized and structural and functional connections are described. At the basic level, the mind is conceptualized as an energy process unfolding in a spatio-temporal environment and accompanied by archetypal structuring of neural impulses into images. The genesis of the system is separately analyzed by constructing a structural-ontological matrix that reflects the initial stage of the development of the mind. The primary process is concretized with the help of hetero- and homeostatic dichotomy, and also the most significant features of the consistent transformation of the material of the system and its ascent to verbal morphology are described. The structural-ontological comparison of the functioning of the verbal intelligence with the preverbal level has been carried out. The transformation of neural impulses of needs into words, as verbal units fixing semiotic values is analyzed. Structural-ontological connections that determine the reactive and prospective characteristics of the functioning of the system are disclosed. The position of the chronological primacy of "semiotic readiness" for language with respect to the debut of the latter as an information-sign model of the environment is argued. The hypothesis of domination at the initial stage of the development of the mind of exopsychic functions over endopsychic ones is formulated. The theoretical substantiation of the hypothesis of the inevitability of the ontology of language in the functional understanding of the mind is given, corresponding structural and ontological arguments are given, including those based on the ideas about the information relationship between affects and needs, according to the views of P.V. Simonov. The arguments are presented in favor of the non-alternative methodology of A. Turing in studies of artificial intelligence. (shrink)

Let us start by some general definitions of the concept of complexity. We take a complex system to be one composed by a large number of parts, and whose properties are not fully explained by an understanding of its components parts. Studies of complex systems recognized the importance of “wholeness”, defined as problems of organization (and of regulation), phenomena non resolvable into local events, dynamics interactions in the difference of behaviour of parts when isolated or in higher configuration, etc., in (...) short, systems of various orders (or levels) not understandable by investigation of their respective parts in isolation. In a complex system it is essential to distinguish between ‘global’ and ‘local’ properties. Theoretical physicists in the last two decades have discovered that the collective behaviour of a macro-system, i.e. a system composed of many objects, does not change qualitatively when the behaviour of single components are modified slightly. Conversely, it has been also found that the behaviour of single components does change when the overall behaviour of the system is modified. There are many universal classes which describe the collective behaviour of the system, and each class has its own characteristics; the universal classes do not change when we perturb the system. The most interesting and rewarding work consists in finding these universal classes and in spelling out their properties. This conception has been followed in studies done in the last twenty years on second order phase transitions. The objective, which has been mostly achieved, was to classify all possible types of phase transitions in different universality classes and to compute the parameters that control the behaviour of the system near the transition (or critical or bifurcation) point as a function of the universality class. This point of view is not very different from the one expressed by Thom in the introduction of Structural Stability and Morphogenesis (1975). It differs from Thom’s program because there is no a priori idea of the mathematical framework which should be used. Indeed Thom considers only a restricted class of models (ordinary differential equations in low dimensional spaces) while we do not have any prejudice regarding which models should be accepted. One of the most interesting and surprising results obtained by studying complex systems is the possibility of classifying the configurations of the system taxonomically. It is well-known that a well founded taxonomy is possible only if the objects we want to classify have some unique properties, i.e. species may be introduced in an objective way only if it is impossible to go continuously from one specie to another; in a more mathematical language, we say that objects must have the property of ultrametricity. More precisely, it was discovered that there are conditions under which a class of complex systems may only exist in configurations that have the ultrametricity property and consequently they can be classified in a hierarchical way. Indeed, it has been found that only this ultrametricity property is shared by the near-optimal solutions of many optimization problems of complex functions, i.e. corrugated landscapes in Kauffman’s language. These results are derived from the study of spin glass model, but they have wider implications. It is possible that the kind of structures that arise in these cases is present in many other apparently unrelated problems. Before to go on with our considerations, we have to pick in mind two main complementary ideas about complexity. (i) According to the prevalent and usual point of view, the essence of complex systems lies in the emergence of complex structures from the non-linear interaction of many simple elements that obey simple rules. Typically, these rules consist of 0–1 alternatives selected in response to the input received, as in many prototypes like cellular automata, Boolean networks, spin systems, etc. Quite intricate patterns and structures can occur in such systems. However, what can be also said is that these are toy systems, and the systems occurring in reality rather consist of elements that individually are quite complex themselves. (ii) So, this bring a new aspect that seems essential and indispensable to the emergence and functioning of complex systems, namely the coordination of individual agents or elements that themselves are complex at their own scale of operation. This coordination dramatically reduces the degree of freedom of those participating agents. Even the constituents of molecules, i.e. the atoms, are rather complicated conglomerations of subatomic particles, perhaps ultimately excitations of patterns of superstrings. Genes, the elementary biochemical coding units, are very complex macromolecular strings, as are the metabolic units, the proteins. Neurons, the basic elements of cognitive networks, themselves are cells. In those mentioned and in other complex systems, it is an important feature that the potential complexity of the behaviour of the individual agents gets dramatically simplified through the global interactions within the system. The individual degrees of freedom are drastically reduced, or, in a more formal terminology, the factual space of the system is much smaller than the product of the state space of the individual elements. That is one key aspect. The other one is that on this basis, that is utilizing the coordination between the activities of its members, the system then becomes able to develop and express a coherent structure at a higher level, that is, an emergent behaviour (and emergent properties) that transcends what each element is individually capable of. (shrink)

Matthew Adler's Measuring Social Welfare is an introduction to the social welfare function (SWF) methodology. This essay questions some ideas at the core of the SWF methodology having to do with the relation between the SWF and the measure of well-being. The facts about individual well-being do not single out a particular scale on which well-being must be measured. As with physical quantities, there are multiple scales that can be used to represent the same information about well-being; no one (...) scale is special. Like physical laws, the SWF and its ranking of distributions cannot depend on exactly which of these scales we use. Adler and other theorists in the SWF tradition have used this idea to derive highly restrictive constraints on the shape of the SWF. These constraints rule out seemingly plausible views about distributive justice and population ethics. I argue, however, that these constraints stem from a simple but instructive mistake. The SWF should not be applied to vectors of numbers such as 1 and 2, but rather to vectors of dimensioned quantities such as 1 util and 2 utils. This seemingly pedantic suggestion turns out to have far-reaching consequences. Unlike the orthodox SWF approach, treating welfare levels as dimensioned quantities lets us distinguish between real changes in well-being and mere changes in the unit of measurement. It does this without making the SWF depend on the scale on which welfare is measured, and in a way that avoids the restrictive constraints on the shape of the SWF. (shrink)

This article explores the main similarities and differences between Derek Parfit’s notion of imprecise comparability and a related notion I have proposed of parity. I argue that the main difference between imprecise comparability and parity can be understood by reference to ‘the standard view’. The standard view claims that 1) differences between cardinally ranked items can always be measured by a scale of units of the relevant value, and 2) all rankings proceed in terms of the trichotomy of ‘better than’, (...) ‘worse than’, and ‘equally good’. Imprecise comparability, which can be understood in terms of the more familiar notions of cardinality and incommensurability, rejects only the first claim while parity rejects both claims of the standard view. -/- I then argue that insofar as those attracted to imprecise comparability assume that all rankings are trichotomous, as Parfit appears to, the view should be rejected. This is because imprecise equality is not a form of equality but is a sui generis ‘fourth’ basic way in which items can be ranked. We should, I argue, understand imprecise equality as parity, and imprecise comparability as entailing ‘tetrachotomy’ – that if two items are comparable, one must better than, worse than, equal to, or on a par with the other. Thus those attracted to the idea that cardinality can be imprecise should abandon trichotomy and accept parity and tetrachotomy instead. -/- Finally, I illustrate the difference between Parfit’s trichotomous notion of imprecise comparability and parity by examining how each notion might be employed in different solutions to the problem posed by the Repugnant Conclusion in population ethics. I suggest that parity provides the arguably more ecumenical solution to the problem. (shrink)

In this article, we present a new conception of internal relations between quantity tropes falling under determinates and determinables. We begin by providing a novel characterization of the necessary relations between these tropes as basic internal relations. The core ideas here are that the existence of the relata is sufficient for their being internally related, and that their being related does not require the existence of any specific entities distinct from the relata. We argue that quantity tropes are, as (...) determinate particular natures, internally related by certain relations of proportion and order. By being determined by the nature of tropes, the relations of proportion and order remain invariant in conventional choice of unit for any quantity and give rise to natural divisions among tropes. As a consequence, tropes fall under distinct determinables and determinates. Our conception provides an accurate account of quantitative distances between tropes but avoids commitment to determinable universals. In this important respect, it compares favorably with the standard conception taking exact similarity and quantitative distances as primitive internal relations. Moreover, we argue for the superiority of our approach in comparison with two additional recent accounts of the similarity of quantity tropes. (shrink)

The paper continues the consideration of Hilbert mathematics to mathematics itself as an additional “dimension” allowing for the most difficult and fundamental problems to be attacked in a new general and universal way shareable between all of them. That dimension consists in the parameter of the “distance between finiteness and infinity”, particularly able to interpret standard mathematics as a particular case, the basis of which are arithmetic, set theory and propositional logic: that is as a special “flat” case of Hilbert (...) mathematics. The following four essential problems are considered for the idea to be elucidated: Fermat’s last theorem proved by Andrew Wiles; Poincaré’s conjecture proved by Grigori Perelman and the only resolved from the seven Millennium problems offered by the Clay Mathematics Institute (CMI); the four-color theorem proved “machine-likely” by enumerating all cases and the crucial software assistance; the Yang-Mills existence and mass gap problem also suggested by CMI and yet unresolved. They are intentionally chosen to belong to quite different mathematical areas (number theory, topology, mathematical physics) just to demonstrate the power of the approach able to unite and even unify them from the viewpoint of Hilbert mathematics. Also, specific ideas relevant to each of them are considered. Fermat’s last theorem is shown as a Gödel insoluble statement by means of Yablo’s paradox. Thus, Wiles’s proof as a corollary from the modularity theorem and thus needing both arithmetic and set theory involves necessarily an inverse Grothendieck universe. On the contrary, its proof in “Fermat arithmetic” introduced by “epoché to infinity” (following the pattern of Husserl’s original “epoché to reality”) can be suggested by Hilbert arithmetic relevant to Hilbert mathematics, the mediation of which can be removed in the final analysis as a “Wittgenstein ladder”. Poincaré’s conjecture can be reinterpreted physically by Minkowski space and thus reduced to the “nonstandard homeomorphism” of a bit of information mathematically. Perelman’s proof can be accordingly reinterpreted. However, it is valid in Gödel (or Gödelian) mathematics, but not in Hilbert mathematics in general, where the question of whether it holds remains open. The four-color theorem can be also deduced from the nonstandard homeomorphism at issue, but the available proof by enumerating a finite set of all possible cases is more general and relevant to Hilbert mathematics as well, therefore being an indirect argument in favor of the validity of Poincaré’s conjecture in Hilbert mathematics. The Yang-Mills existence and mass gap problem furthermore suggests the most general viewpoint to the relation of Hilbert and Gödel mathematics justifying the qubit Hilbert space as the dual counterpart of Hilbert arithmetic in a narrow sense, in turn being inferable from Hilbert arithmetic in a wide sense. The conjecture that many if not almost all great problems in contemporary mathematics rely on (or at least relate to) the Gödel incompleteness is suggested. It implies that Hilbert mathematics is the natural medium for their discussion or eventual solutions. (shrink)

Mereological entities often seem to violate ‘ordinary’ ideas of what a concrete object can be like, behaving more like sets than like Aristotelian substances. However, the mereological notions of ‘part’, ‘composition’, and ‘sum’ or ‘fusion’ appear to find concrete realisation in the actual semantics of mass nouns. Quine notes that ‘any sum of parts which are water is water’; and the wine from a single barrel can be distributed around the globe without affecting its identity. Is there here, as (...) some have claimed, a ‘natural’ or ‘innocent’ form of mereology? The claim rests on the assumption that what a mass noun such as ‘wine’ denotes — the wine from a single barrel, for example — is indeed a unit of a special type, the sum or fusion of its many ‘parts’. The assumption is, however, open to question on semantic grounds. (shrink)

Like American politics, the academic debate over justice is polarized, with almost all theories of justice falling within one of two traditions: egalitarianism and libertarianism. This book provides an alternative to the partisan standoff by focusing not on equality or liberty, but on the idea that we should give people the things that they deserve. Mulligan argues that a just society is a meritocracy, in which equal opportunity prevails and social goods are distributed strictly on the basis of merit. That (...) gives citizens their just deserts. In addition to its novel conceptual approach, meritocracy is distinctive from existing work in two ways. First, it is grounded in research on how people actually think about justice. Empirical research reveals that people don't think that social goods should be distributed equally. Nor do they dismiss the idea of social justice. Across ideological and cultural lines, people want rewards to reflect merit. Second, the book discusses hot-button political issues and makes concrete policy recommendations. These issues include anti-meritocratic bias against women and racial minorities and the United States’ widening economic inequality. Justice and the Meritocratic State offers a new theory of justice and provides solutions to our most vexing social and economic problems. It will be of keen interest to philosophers, economists, and political theorists. (shrink)

Griffiths and Russell D. Gray (1994, 1997, 2001) have argued that the fundamental unit of analysis in developmental systems theory should be a process – the life cycle – and not a set of developmental resources and interactions between those resources. The key concepts of developmental systems theory, epigenesis and developmental dynamics, both also suggest a process view of the units of development. This chapter explores in more depth the features of developmental systems theory that favour treating processes as (...) fundamental in biology and examines the continuity between developmental systems theory and ideas about process in the work of several major figures in early 20th century biology, most notable C.H Waddington. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt's rich and varied political thought is more influential today than ever before, due in part to the collapse of communism and the need for ideas that move beyond the old ideologies of the Cold War. As Dana Villa shows, however, Arendt's thought is often poorly understood, both because of its complexity and because her fame has made it easy for critics to write about what she is reputed to have said rather than what she actually wrote. Villa (...) sets out to change that here, explaining clearly, carefully, and forcefully Arendt's major contributions to our understanding of politics, modernity, and the nature of political evil in our century.Villa begins by focusing on some of the most controversial aspects of Arendt's political thought. He shows that Arendt's famous idea of the banality of evil--inspired by the trial of Adolf Eichmann--does not, as some have maintained, lessen the guilt of war criminals by suggesting that they are mere cogs in a bureaucratic machine. He examines what she meant when she wrote that terror was the essence of totalitarianism, explaining that she believed Nazi and Soviet terror served above all to reinforce the totalitarian idea that humans are expendable units, subordinate to the all-determining laws of Nature or History. Villa clarifies the personal and philosophical relationship between Arendt and Heidegger, showing how her work drew on his thought while providing a firm repudiation of Heidegger's political idiocy under the Nazis. Less controversially, but as importantly, Villa also engages with Arendt's ideas about the relationship between political thought and political action. He explores her views about the roles of theatricality, philosophical reflection, and public-spiritedness in political life. And he explores what relationship, if any, Arendt saw between totalitarianism and the "great tradition" of Western political thought. Throughout, Villa shows how Arendt's ideas illuminate contemporary debates about the nature of modernity and democracy and how they deepen our understanding of philosophers ranging from Socrates and Plato to Habermas and Leo Strauss.Direct, lucid, and powerfully argued, this is a much-needed analysis of the central ideas of one of the most influential political theorists of the twentieth century. (shrink)

In this article, we describe the notion of dialogue move intended as the minimal unit for the analysis of dialogues. We propose an approach to discourse analysis based on the pragmatic idea that the joint dialogical intentions are also co-constructed through the individual moves and the higher-order communicative intentions that the interlocutors pursue. In this view, our goal is to bring to light the pragmatic structure of a dialogue as a complex net of dialogical goals, which represent the communicative (...) purposes that the interlocutors intend to achieve through their utterances. Dialogue moves are shown to represent the necessary interpretive link between the general description of the dialogical context or type and the syntactical analysis of the sentences expressed by the individual utterances. In the concluding part of this article, we show how this method can be used and further developed for analyzing various types of real-life dialogues, outlining possible uses and lines of empirical research based thereon. (shrink)

This essay accomplishes two goals. First, I explore Husserl’s study of “tension” from his 1893 manuscript, “Notes Towards a Theory of Attention and Interest,” to reveal that it comprises his de facto first analysis of instinct. Husserl there describes tension as the innate pull to execute ever new objectifications. He clarifies this pull of objectification by contrasting it to affective and volitional experiences. This analysis surprisingly prefigures a theory of drive-feelings and anticipates the idea that consciousness is both teleological and (...) autotelic. Second, I show how Husserl’s de facto account of instincts from 1893 inspires his robust philosophy of instincts from Studies concerning the Structures of Consciousness and other late manuscripts. While Husserl maintains many 1893 insights, he now claims that the instinct towards objectification comprises affective and volitional moments. Finally, I demonstrate that Husserl’s analyses of instincts throughout his life are united by the idea that consciousness possesses an essential structural lack. (shrink)

What kind of technology is the piano? It was once a distinctly everyday technology. In the bourgeois home of the nineteenth century it became an emblematic figure of gendered social life, its role shifting between visually pleasing piece of furniture, source of light entertainment, and expression of cultured upbringing. It performed this role unobtrusively, acting as a transparent mediator of social relations. To the composer of concert music it was, and sometimes still is, says Samuel Wilson, like the philosopher’s table: (...) “an assumed background on which one writes.” Like other instruments standard to Western art music, the piano was designed to facilitate the production of a consistent and refined timbre. More than most other such instruments, the piano also facilitated a kind of sonic neutrality. With its wide pitch range and smoothing of the percussive attack of its predecessor instruments, the piano presented composers with a technological means of approaching composition from a seemingly objective vantage point. It exemplified, in Heideggerian terms, the instrumentality of the instrument, serving as a mediator between idea and expression that apparently adds no character of its own. -/- This notion of the invisibility, or transparency, of the mediations that musical technologies such as the piano enact is one of my areas of concern here. So too is its inverse: when these mediations become visible or opaque. Transparency has been a topic of significant recent theoretical attention. Stefanos Geroulanos, for example, has detailed how the supposed transparency of intersubjective, epistemological, and social relations was a major point of critique in postwar French thought, where the supposition of transparency was taken to suppress how the world was “complex, layered, structured, filled with heterogeneity” – and, as I will stress here, contingency. The thinkers Geroulanos considers, from Jean-Paul Sartre through to Jean-François Lyotard, can be said to be united in their refusal to invisibilise mediatedness. From a starting point of conceiving of the piano as a technological artifact, and in particular from John Cage’s ‘prepared piano,’ I will explore how a similar concern has appeared in musical contexts, albeit not without the risk of reversion back into a logic of transparency. (shrink)

In this collection of essays, the author develops a new philosophy of life, which has in fact a long tradition. It goes back to some ancient Western thinkers, such as the Milesians, Heraclitus, Empedocles and Plato, for whom philosophy presupposes an affective engagement with the world and not merely its theoretical description or explanation. This classical tradition has been challenged by ideas of modernity, particularly by the idea that modern scientific knowledge is the highest form of human knowledge. However, (...) as the author argues, this idea is questionable. In his view, scientific knowledge represents merely a partial knowledge. Science looks at the world indifferently as if it were an object, an “It”, but in fact the world is not that. Love, an affective engagement, and not indifference, is the way to full knowledge. Furthermore, it is lov e that fosters life and brings all things into unity. Love and life are thus closely connected. Life is the central concept around which humanity can unite, forming a unity in diversity. The author claims that global solidarity among human beings can be achieved if there is the growing common understanding of what is right for life. (shrink)

A number of the men who would become the 9/11 hijackers were stopped for minor traffic violations. They were pulled over by police officers for speeding or caught by random inspection without a driver’s license. For United States government commissions and the press, these brushes with the law were missed opportunities. For some police officers though, they were of personal and professional significance. These officers replayed the incidents of contact with the 19 men, which lay bare the uncertainty of every (...) encounter, whether a traffic stop, or with someone taking photos of a landmark. Representatives from law enforcement began to design policies to include local police in national intelligence, with the idea of capitalizing on what patrol officers already do in dealing with the general public. Several initiatives were launched, among these, the Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative. Routine reporting of suspicious activity was developed into steps for gathering, assessing and sharing terrorism-related information with a larger law enforcement and intelligence network. Through empirical analysis of counterterrorism efforts and recent scholarship on it, this chapter discusses prevention, preemption, and anticipation as three technologies of security, focusing on how each deals with uncertainty. The Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative, this analysis suggests, is an anticipatory technology which constitutes police officers and intelligence analysts as subjects who work in a mode of uncertainty. (shrink)

The world is occupied by many and varied things. What constitutes their thingness? In the Essay, Locke addresses this question in Book II, Chapter xxiii, titled ‘Of our Complex Ideas of Substance’, wherein the much-contested definition of ‘substratum’ appears—‘a supposed but unknown support of the Qualities’. Most significant in this definition are the dual qualifiers that Locke uses: ‘supposed’ and ‘unknown’. This paper examines this two-qualifier definition, illuminating the historical and philosophical significance it may have. There have been two (...) rival readings. The first takes Locke’s substratum to be a bare substratum; and the second identifies it with what Locke terms as ‘real essence’—i.e. ‘a real Constitution of the insensible Parts’. Critically reviewing these two major interpretations, I attribute to Locke a type of functionalism, according to which the status of a substratum is determined by its functional role of ‘uniting’ a bundle of qualities into an individual substance. (shrink)

My objective is a better comprehension of two theoretically fundamental concepts. One, the concept of a substance in an ordinary (non-Aristotelian) sense, ranging over such things as salt, carbon, copper, iron, water, and methane – kinds of stuff that now count as (chemical) elements and compounds. The other I’ll call the object-concept in the abstract sense of Russell, Wittgenstein, and Frege in their logico-semantical enquiries. The material object-concept constitutes the heart of our received logico / ontic system, still massively influenced (...) by Aristotle after almost 2.5 millennia. On such an account, the fundamentality of material objects and their attributes are the metaphysical basis of the cosmos, as reflected in our received logic, Quine’s ‘canonical notation’ – derived via the empiricism of Russell from Frege’s function-based Begriffschrifft, and consisting of concrete singular terms and variables, quantifiers and predicate-expressions. The inadequacy of Frege’s approach to understanding concepts is reflected in his initial question. Frege enquires of ‘what it is that we are calling an object’, remarking that he regards a regular definition as impossible: “we have here something too simple to admit of logical analysis”. The imagined ultimacy or simplicity of the idea of a single object (arithmetically, just a unit – one as against two, three, four, etc.) as foundational to the calculus is just that – imagined. It is also guaranteed to block the comprehension of the substance-concept. (shrink)

Memetic Science is the name of a new field that deals with the quantitativeanalysis of cultural transfer.The units of cultural transfer are entities called "memes". In a nutshell, memes are to cultural and mental constructs as genesare to biological organisms. Examplesof memesare ideas,tunes, fashions, and virtuallyany culturaland behavioral unit that gets copiedwitha certaindegree of fidelity. It is arguedthat the under standing of memes is of similar importance and consequence as the understanding of processes involving DNA and RNA in (...) molecular biology.Thispaperpresentsa rigorousfoundation fordiscussion ofmemes and approaches to quantifying relevantaspects of memegenesis, inter action, mutation, growth,deathand spreadingprocesses. It is also argued inthispaper that recombinant memetics is possible incomplete analogy to recombinant DNA/ genetic engineering. Special attention is paid to memes in written modern English. (shrink)

Recent work in the philosophy of emotion focuses on challenging dualistic conceptualizations. Three of the most obvious dualisms are the following: 1. emotion opposes reason; 2. emotion is subjective, while reason is objective; 3. emotion lies internal to the subject, while reason is external. With challenges to these dualisms, one of the more interesting questions that has surfaced is the idea of emotional appropriateness in a particular context. Here, consider a widely held belief in the United States associates racialized groups (...) with specific emotions—most notably African American women with anger. Clearly these emotional attributions are essentialistic--and hence racist. But this response is too easy. The acknowledgement that emotion lies both internally in the subject and externally in the world opens the possibility of attributing an emotional temperament to a population group. Yet if an identity group has an emotional temperament, can they be accountable for emotionally appropriate behavior? (shrink)

When we think about ethics, we normally focus on a particular sort of agent: the individual person. Some philosophers have argued that we should rethink the limits of what counts as an ethically relevant unit of agency by expanding outward, and claiming that groups of people can have normative reasons for action. In this paper, I explore whether we can go in the other direction. Are there sub‐personal beings who count as agents with their own reasons for action? In (...) particular, might the temporal parts of persons, beings like “me‐in‐my‐twenties,” be thought of as normative agents? This idea, I argue, has deep attractions, and deep, but surmountable, challenges. And if we do accept this idea, I argue, this can indirectly help to support the case for thinking that groups can have reasons for action. (shrink)

It would be unwise to dismiss the possibility of human brain organoids developing sentience. However, scepticism about this idea is appropriate when considering current organoids. It is a point of consensus that a brain-dead human is not sentient, and current organoids lack a functioning brainstem. There are nonetheless troubling early warning signs, suggesting organoid research may create forms of sentience in the near future. To err on the side of caution, researchers with very different views about the neural basis of (...) sentience should unite behind the “brainstem rule”: if a neural organoid develops or innervates a functioning brainstem that regulates arousal and leads to sleep-wake cycles, then it is a sentience candidate. If organoid research leads to the creation of sentience candidates, a moratorium or indefinite ban on the creation of the relevant type of organoid may be appropriate. A different way forward, more consistent with existing approaches to animal research, would be to require ethical review and harm-benefit analysis for all research on sentience candidates. (shrink)

CONFERENCE PAPER: In the early 20th century, John Dewey helped revolutionize the way education was thought of in the United States. Nearly fifty years after his death, however, much of his vision is still yet to be realized. Perhaps one explanation for this would be that educators have not yet embraced the most important feature of Dewey’s thinking on education, viz. that education as a cumulative process is a interwoven with the continuous developments in social and ethical life, indeed culture (...) itself. As he put it, “Education is a social process; education is growth; education is not preparation for life but is life itself.” When such a view is taken seriously, education becomes coextensive to the values and traditions that we call culture. This is the way that the ancients in Greece through the concept of paideia (perfectly reflected in the gnomic expression, “As I grow old I continue being educated.”) and in China (through the idea of xué) viewed education. This essay will explore how Dewey’s ideas reflected these earlier philosophies of education and the ways in which thinking about education as growth, a là Dewey, can supplement them. (shrink)

Some theorists—including Elizabeth Anderson, Gerald Gaus, and Amartya Sen—endorse versions of 'public reason' as the appropriate way to justify political decisions while rejecting 'ideal theory'. This chapter proposes that these ideas are not easily separated. The idea of public reason expresses a form of mutual 'civic' respect for citizens. Public reason justifications for political proposals are addressed to citizens who would find acceptable those justifications, and consequently would comply freely with those proposals should they become law. Hence public reasoning (...) involves 'local ideal theorizing': the justification of political proposals includes their consideration and evaluation under conditions of compliance with them by the citizens to whom those justifications are addressed. Local ideal theorizing, moreover, can lead to 'full ideal theorizing', wherein citizens outline and evaluate an amended version of their society’s 'basic structure'. This argument is illustrated by some recent empirical work on inequality within the United States. (shrink)

Sayyid Sadr al-din Mohammad Dashtaki Shirazi is the inventor of the division of composition into unified composition and composition by join. With this division, Dashtaki has expressed a new theory about the composition of the material object from first matter and form, as well as the composition of man from soul and body, and considers these compositions as an alliance and unification, not simply the parts joining to each other. In this paper, we will present Dashtaki’s arguments on the theory (...) of unified composition. We will also examine three objections to this theory and responses to them. Finally, we will examine the background of this theory in Bahmanyar's phrases. Dashtaki believes that when the components in the compound have a real plurality, i.e. each one exists separately from the other, a composition by join is created, such as the composition of a house from numerous clays. But if the components in the compound are united and none of them are separate from the others and exists actually, the resulting composition will be an alliance and union. He believes that in the unified composition, every component is identical to any other component and is identical to the whole. Accordingly, Reza is a unique being, both human and writer. In order to achieve a composition, a plurality is needed and in order to form a single composition, there must be plural components related to each other. An important question is that, principally how is a composition possible, if unified composition comes to existence only when the components are made united with each other and with the whole? In other words, unified composition is not possible, because the first condition of the acquisition of the composition, i.e., the plurality of the constituent components, is not satisfied. Dashtaki strives to express a difference between the components in the union compound. He believes that the conditions of the realization and the survival of the components are different, and that is enough for them to be different. In Dashtaki's point of view, in the unified composition the components are analytical, not being separate and plural, in reality. In other words, the components do not have actual and "in-the-world" plurality, which means that it is our intellect that separates them and looks at them as independent objects. Therefore, unity and identity are in-the-world and plurality and discernibility are analytical and in the mind. Dashtaki's first argument for his theory in general is as follows: the three major material objects (solid, plant and animal) are undoubtedly real compounds. But in these compositions, components exist potentially, and in a unified composition, components do not exist actually. Therefore, these objects are unified compounds. The second argument is that the accuracy of predication implies unity. In the unified composition, the components are identical with the whole, and therefore, the components can be predicated to the composition. In Dashtaki's view, if A is predicated to B, then it could be concluded that they are identical and unified. The first objection to this theory is that the unity is incompatible with causality. From the perspective of the Peripatetics, form is the cause of the matter, and this is incompatible with the union of the two. Dashtaki states that in case of causality, there is no need for cause and effect to be two different and discernible entities, but a single entity may be from one aspect the cause and, from another, the effect. In other words, the foresaid causality is analytical causality. When mind analyses something, and then finds analytical components, it can see between those analytical and intellectual components, causality, and find some of them as the cause of the others. The second objection is the incorrectness of the unity in compounds with components not being similar. only in the compounds having similar parts, one can accept the unity of matter and form. For example, in compounds such as horses, it is not possible to accept the union of matter and form, because in horses, there are components with different natures, such as bones, flesh and nerves. Unity of These parts with each other and with the whole is not plausible. Dashtaki’s respond is that the horse is also a natural unit and has no actual plurality. Components having similar or different natures does not make any difference. According to the theory of unified composition, the horse's components are united with the horse's form and have only analytical plurality. Horse’s components are just analytical components, not actual, independent ones. The third objection is the incompatibility of the actual existence of components with their unity. But Dashtaki maintains that a unique actual personal entity cannot have actual plural components. He states that compounds such as horses exist objectively, but objective and real existing is divided into two kinds: dependent existence, and independent existence as a single real thing. Therefore, the two characteristics of "being a component" and "being independent" are incompatible and do not come together in a real being. Dashtaki has also quoted phrases from Bahmanyar to confirm his point of view. Bahmanyar says that the properties of an animal belong to the whole and compound, not to each component. For example, it is a horse that feels, not its bone or brain, as the eye is also a compound, but seeing is the work of the eye, not the work of any of its components. Therefore, the animal, which is something compound, has characteristics that none of its components have. So the animal is something over and above its components. Bahmanyar thinks the components in the animal are potential. Then he states a general rule: any compound in which unity is real, its components do potentially exist. Therefore, Bahmanyar considers the body parts of the living organism as a potential being and generally believes that the components of any compound that have true unity are potential. The potentiality of the components in a real compound does not that mean that the components are destroyed and a new thing is produced. The components are also available, but they do not have the effects they had separately before the composition comes into existence. In other words, the components have found a unique identity together and therefore have a new effect.. It seems that Bahmanyar has expressed the same idea that Dashtaki is looking for in the theory of unified composition. Therefore, it can be said that before Dashtaki, Bahmanyar has come up with the thought of a unity. Of course, Bahmanyar has not explained much about this, and Dashtaki is the first who has organized and completed this idea as a philosophical theory. (shrink)