ABSTRACT This article addresses shortcomings in the way that philosophers and cultural critics have considered propaganda by offering a new genealogical account. Looking at figures such as Marx, Adorno, Marcuse, Habermas, Bourdieu, and Stanley, this article finds that their consideration of propaganda has not necessarily been wrong but has missed some of the most significant and important functions of propaganda. This text draws on archival and published materials from propagandists, most notably Edward Bernays, to elaborate a new governmentality of propaganda (...) and public relations. Through focusing on the concept of public opinion, I argue that propaganda is best thought of as an apparatus whose function it is to construct, modify, counter, and destroy relations of force within public opinion in order to produce the subjectivities and conduct that propagandists and their clients desire. (shrink)

The standard interpretation of quantum physics (QP) and some recent generalizations of this theory rest on the adoption of a rerificationist theory of truth and meaning, while most proposals for modifying and interpreting QP in a “realistic” way attribute an ontological status to theoretical physical entities (ontological realism). Both terms of this dichotomy are criticizable, and many quantum paradoxes can be attributed to it. We discuss a new viewpoint in this paper (semantic realism, or briefly SR), which applies both to (...) classical physics (CP) and to QP. and is characterized by the attempt of giving up verificationism without adopting ontological realism. As a first step, we construct a formalized observative language L endowed with a correspondence truth theory. Then, we state a set of axioms by means of L which hold both in CP and in QP. and construct a further language Lv which can express bothtestable andtheoretical properties of a given physical system. The concepts ofmeaning andtestability do not collapse in L and Le hence we can distinguish between semantic and pragmatic compatibility of physical properties and define the concepts of testability and conjoint testability of statements of L and Le. In this context a new metatheoretical principle (MGP) is stated, which limits the validity of empirical physical laws. By applying SR (in particular. MGP) to QP, one can interpret quantum logic as a theory of testability in QP, show that QP is semantically incomplete, and invalidate the widespread claim that contextuality is unavoidable in QP. Furthermore. SR introduces some changes in the conventional interpretation of ideal measurements and Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. (shrink)

In 2002 Coecke and Martin (Research Report PRG-RR-02-07, Oxford University Computing Laboratory, 2002) created a model for the finite classical and quantum states in physics. This model is based on a type of ordered set which is standard in the study of information systems. It allows the information content of its elements to be compared and measured. Their work is extended to a model for the infinite classical states. These are the states which result when an observable is applied to (...) a quantum system. When this extended order is restricted to a finite number of coordinates, the model of Coecke and Martin is obtained. The infinite model retains many desirable aspects of the finite model, such as pure states as maximal elements and expected behavior of thermodynamic entropy. But it looses some of the important domain theoretic aspects, such as having a least element and exactness. Shannon entropy is no longer defined over the entire model and both it and thermodynamic entropy cease to be a measurements in the sense of Martin. (shrink)

A hallmark of intelligent behavior is rationality – the disposition and ability to think analytically to make decisions that maximize expected utility or follow the laws of probability. However, the question remains as to whether rationality and intelligence are empirically distinct, as does the question of what cognitive mechanisms underlie individual differences in rationality. In a sample of 331 participants, we assessed the relationship between rationality and intelligence. There was a common ability underpinning performance on some, but not all, rationality (...) tests. Latent factors representing rationality and general intelligence were strongly correlated (r =.54), but their correlation fell well short of unity. Rationality correlated significantly with fluid intelligence (r =.56), working memory capacity (r =.44), and attention control (r =.49). Attention control fully accounted for the relationship between working memory capacity and rationality, and partially accounted for the relationship between fluid intelligence and rationality. We conclude by speculating about factors rationality tests may tap that other cognitive ability tests miss, and outline directions for further research. (shrink)

A modified Beltrametti-Cassinelli-Lahti model of the measurement apparatus that satisfies both the probability reproducibility condition and the objectification requirement is constructed. Only measurements on microsystems are considered. The cluster separability forms a basis for the first working hypothesis: the current version of quantum mechanics leaves open what happens to systems when they change their separation status. New rules that close this gap can therefore be added without disturbing the logic of quantum mechanics. The second working hypothesis is that (...) registration apparatuses for microsystems must contain detectors and that their readings are signals from detectors. This implies that the separation status of a microsystem changes during both preparation and registration. A new rule that specifies what happens when these changes occur and that guarantees the objectification is formulated and discussed. A part of our result has certain similarities with ‘collapse of the wave function’. (shrink)

The small ubiquitin‐like modifier SUMO regulates many aspects of cellular physiology to maintain cell homeostasis, both under normal conditions and during cell stress. Components of the transcriptional apparatus and chromatin are among the most prominent SUMO substrates. The prevailing view is that SUMO serves to repress transcription. However, as we will discuss in this review, this model needs to be refined, because recent studies have revealed that SUMO can also have profound positive effects on transcription.

Caring for Liberalism brings together chapters that explore how liberal political theory, in its many guises, might be modified or transformed to take the fact of dependency on board. In addressing the place of care in liberalism, this collection advances the idea that care ethics can help respond to legitimate criticisms from feminists who argue that liberalism ignores issues of race, class, and ethnicity. The chapters do not simply add care to existing liberal political frameworks; rather, they explore how (...) integrating dependency might leave core components of the traditional liberal philosophical apparatus intact, while transforming other aspects of it. Additionally, the contributors address the design of social and political institutions through which care is given and received, with special attention paid to non-Western care practices. This book will appeal to scholars working on liberalism in philosophy, political science, law, and public policy, and it is a must-read for feminist political philosophers. (shrink)

ArgumentThis essay considers the metaphors of projection in Hugo Münsterberg's theory of cinema spectatorship. Münsterberg (1863–1916), a German born and educated professor of psychology at Harvard University, turned his attention to cinema only a few years before his untimely death at the age of fifty-three. But he brought to the new medium certain lasting preoccupations. This account begins with the contention that Münsterberg's intervention in the cinema discussion pursued his well-established strategy of pitting a laboratory model against a clinical one, (...) in this case the “master-trope” of early cinema a spectatorship drawn from hysteria, hypnosis, and related phenomena like double-consciousness. Münsterberg's laboratory-oriented account also flowed from his account of cinema technology as an outgrowth of the apparatus of his own discipline of experimental psycho-physiology, which entailed a model of cinema spectatorship continuous with the epistemological setting of laboratory relations. I argue that inThe Photoplayand related writings projection functioned in three registers: material, psychological, and philosophical. Münsterberg's primary concern was with psychological projection, where he drew upon his own work in experimental aesthetics to articulate an account of how the basic automatisms of cinema produce a state of oscillation between immersion and distraction. I show how Münsterberg's experimental aesthetics drew upon German doctrines of aesthetic empathy, orEinfühlung, which Münsterberg sought to modify in accordance with the dynamic and temporal characteristics of psycho-physiological experiment. Finally, I argue that Münsterberg's cinema theory was enfolded in his action or double-standpoint theory, in which the transcendental self posits the material, objective conditions of laboratory experience as a means to know itself. This philosophical projection explained cinema's uncanny ability to suspend ordinary perceptions of space, time, and causality. It also made cinema uniquely suited for the philosophical emancipation of a popular mass audience. (shrink)

A distinction is made between superpositional and non-superpositional quantum computers. The notion of quantum learning systems - quantum computers that modify themselves in order to improve their performance - is introduced. A particular non-superpositional quantum learning system, a quantum neurocomputer, is described: a conventional neural network implemented in a system which is a variation on the familiar two-slit apparatus from quantum physics. This is followed by a discussion of the advantages that quantum computers in general, and quantum neurocomputers in (...) particular, might bring, not only to our search for more powerful computational systems, but also to our search for greater understanding of the brain, the mind, and quantum physics itself. (shrink)

We further develop a recent new proof (by Greenberger, Horne, and Zeilinger—GHZ) that local deterministic hidden-variable theories are inconsistent with certain strict correlations predicted by quantum mechanics. First, we generalize GHZ's proof so that it applies to factorable stochastic theories, theories in which apparatus hidden variables are causally relevant to measurement results, and theories in which the hidden variables evolve indeterministically prior to the particle-apparatus interactions. Then we adopt a more general measure-theoretic approach which requires that GHZ's argument (...) be modified in order to produce a valid proof. Finally, we motivate our more general proof's assumptions in a somewhat different way from previous authors in order to strengthen the implications of our proof as much as possible. After developing GHZ's proof along these lines, we then consider the analogue, for our proof, of Bohr's reply to the EPR argument, and conclude (pace GHZ) that in at least one respect (viz. that of most concern to Bohr) the proof is no more powerful than Bell's. Nevertheless, we point out some new advantages of our proof over Bell's, and over other algebraic proofs of nonlocality. And we conclude by giving a modified version of our proof that, like Bell's, does not rely on experimentally unrealizable strict correlations, but still leads to a testable “quasi-algebraic” locality inequality.“... to admit things not visible to the gross creatures that we are is, in my opinion, to show a decent humility, and not just a lamentable addiction to metaphysics.”J. S. Bell. (shrink)

The extended semantic realism (ESR) model proposes a new theoretical perspective which embodies the mathematical formalism of standard (Hilbert space) quantum mechanics (QM) into a noncontextual framework, reinterpreting quantum probabilities as conditional instead of absolute. We provide in this review an overall view on the present status of our research on this topic. We attain in a new, shortened way a mathematical representation of the generalized observables introduced by the ESR model and a generalization of the projection postulate of elementary (...) QM. Basing on these results we prove that the Bell-Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt (BCHSH) inequality, a modified BCHSH inequality and quantum predictions hold together in the ESR model because they refer to different parts of the picture of the physical world supplied by the model. Then we show that a new mathematical representation of mixtures must be introduced in the ESR model which does not coincide with the standard representation in QM and avoids some deep problems that arise from the representation of mixtures provided by QM. Finally we get a nontrivial generalization of the Lüders postulate, which is justified in a special case by introducing a reasonable physical assumption on the evolution of the compound system made up of the measured system and the measuring apparatus. (shrink)

Cephalopods are extraordinary molluscs equipped with vertebrate‐like intelligence and a unique buoyancy system for locomotion. A growing body of evidence from the fossil record, embryology and Bayesian molecular divergence estimations provides a comprehensive picture of their origins and evolution. Cephalopods evolved during the Cambrian (∼530 Ma) from a monoplacophoran‐like mollusc in which the conical, external shell was modified into a chambered buoyancy apparatus. During the mid‐Palaeozoic (∼416 Ma) cephalopods diverged into nautiloids and the presently dominant coleoids. Coleoids (i.e. (...) squids, cuttlefish and octopods) internalised their shells and, in the late Palaeozoic (∼276 Ma), diverged into Vampyropoda and the Decabrachia. This shell internalisation appears to be a unique evolutionary event. In contrast, the loss of a mineralised shell has occurred several times in distinct coleoid lineages. The general tendency of shell reduction reflects a trend towards active modes of life and much more complex behaviour. (shrink)

It is usually maintained that a subject with manifestly contradictory beliefs is irrational. How can we account, then, for the intuitive rationality of dialetheists, who believe that some manifest contradictions are true? My paper aims to answer this question. Its ultimate goal is to determine a characterization of (or rather a constraint for) rational belief approvable by both the theorists of Dialetheism and its opponents. In order to achieve this goal, a two-step strategy will be adopted. First, a characterization of (...) rational belief applicable to non-dialetheist believers will be determined; this characterization will involve the semantic apparatus of Nathan Salmon’s Millian Russellianism but will get rid of the problematic and obscure notion of mode of presentation (guise in his own terminology), replacing it with a couple of novel devices, belief subsystems and cognitive coordination. Second, using ideas from Graham Priest, the leading proponent of Dialetheism, such a characterization will be modified, so as to devise a new one able to account for the intuitive rationality of both dialetheist and non-dialetheist believers. (shrink)

The secretory pathway delivers proteins synthesized at the rough endoplasmic reticulum (RER) to various subcellular locations via the Golgi apparatus. Currently, efforts are focused on understanding the molecular machineries driving individual processes at the RER and Golgi that package, modify and transport proteins. However, studies are routinely performed using non‐dividing cells. This obscures the critical issue of how the secretory pathway is affected by cell division. Indeed, several studies have indicated that protein trafficking is down‐regulated during mitosis. Moreover, the (...) RER and Golgi apparatus exhibit gross reorganization in mitosis. Here I provide a relatively neglected perspective of how the mitotic cyclin‐dependent kinase (CDK1) could regulate various stages of the secretory pathway. I highlight several aspects of the mitotic control of protein trafficking that remain unresolved and suggest that further studies on how the mitotic CDK1 influences the secretory pathway are necessary to obtain a deeper understanding of protein transport. (shrink)

The theories that form the heterogeneous family of two‐dimensional or 2D semantics are rooted in the tradition of possible‐worlds semantics made popular by Saul Kripke and David Lewis. Advocates of 2D semantics agree that recognizing a dependence of truth on fact is not enough. Advocates of two‐dimensional semantics share a second trademark idea. They agree that the familiar apparatus of worlds‐cum‐intensions can be modified so as to capture both the dependencies they see. The commitments of all 2D theories (...) can basically be captured by one and the same formal framework of worlds‐cum‐intensions. David Kaplan's semantics aims to cover pure indexicals such as 'today' alongside impure indexicals such as 'you' and demonstratives such as 'this'. Kaplan starts off with two 'obvious principles': The referent of an indexical systematically depends on the respective context; and Indexicals are directly referential. (shrink)

The response aims at detecting additional angles in Benhabib's problematic and adding some variables to its potential resolution. I examine two such variables. One concerns the rights-bearing subject. Benhabib addresses the tension between individual universal rights and sovereign self-determination by positing a modified Kantian `cosmopolitan federalism'. While I can support this thesis, I see a whole other reality in the making that offers additional kinds of resolutions as well as a repositioning of cosmopolitan federalism in a different field of (...) forces. Critical here is the incipient denationalizing of citizenship which is taking place inside the nation state, and hence is not predicated on post-national and transnational conditions for citizenship. Such resolutions are precluded in Benhabib's text because of the closure she projects onto the nation state. The second variable I discuss addresses precisely this question of the state today — that is to say, in a context of the ascendance of an international human rights regime and of globalization. Benhabib sees the national and the global as mutually exclusive. In my own research I see a process whereby global logics get partly constituted inside the nation state and the state apparatus itself, producing, again, an incipient denationalizing of what historically was constructed as national. This opens up possibilities for cosmopolitan federalism that Benhabib overlooks given her national—global binary. (shrink)

This paper outlines a formal account of tensed sentences that is consistent with Ockhamism, a view according to which future contingents are either true or false. The account outlined substantively differs from the attempts that have been made so far to provide a formal apparatus for such a view in terms of some expressly modified version of branching time semantics. The system on which it is based is the simplest quantified modal logic.

The A-theory of time has intuitive and metaphysical appeal, but suffers from tension, if not inconsistency, with the special and general theories of relativity (STR and GTR). The A-theory requires a notion of global simultaneity invariant under the symmetries of the world's laws, those ostensible transformations of the state of the world that in fact leave the world as it was before. Relativistic physics, if read in a realistic sense, denies that there exists any notion of global simultaneity that is (...) invariant under the symmetries of the world's laws. If physics is at least a decent guide to metaphysics--as sympathies for scientific realism would suggest--then relativistic physics supports the B-theory. If there were a physically natural way to modify the symmetries of the physical laws so as to remove those that are repugnant to the A-theory, while retaining empirical adequacy, then such an altered physics might be attractive to the A-theorist and would weaken the support given by relativity to the B-theory. I exhibit a way to do so here, displaying a Lagrangian density explicitly containing distant simultaneity, yet implying Einstein's field equations. The modification involves a change in the nature of the lapse function and makes use of the Dirac-Bergmann formalism of constrained dynamics, which recently has been discussed much by John Earman. Here this formalism is adapted slightly to permit both local and global generalized coordinates. A classification of senses in which time might be absolute or not is made along the way. Some suggestions for extending the work by finding a first principles motivation are made. An appendix outlines an argument why many local presents are insufficient and a global present is attractive, while two more appendices review the Dirac-Bergmann apparatus for GTR and then apply it to the theory at hand. (shrink)

Shoshana Zuboff’s international bestseller, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, was reviewed in the Wall Street Journal as a book that asks us ‘to pause long enough to think about the future and how it might be different from today.’ That description could work as the definition of the literary utopia or dystopia. In fact, Zuboff’s book has consecutive chapters titled ‘Big Other and the Rise of Instrumentalist Power’ and (...) ‘A Utopia of Certainty’. In the former chapter, the title of which seems to reference George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, Zuboff argues that there now exists a ‘ubiquitous digital apparatus’ that ‘renders, monitors, computes and modifies human behaviour’. In the latter chapter she asserts that the ‘surveillance capitalist leaders [such as Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Page, CEOs of Facebook and Google respectively] are sui generis utopianists’. This article critically assesses Zuboff’s claims in relation to Dave Eggers’ 2013 novel The Circle, where the eponymous utopian/dystopian company’s name, as well its motto ‘ALL THAT HAPPENS MUST BE KNOWN’ gesture towards Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon writings. This article explores Zuboff’s factual and Eggers’ fictional examinations of surveillance capitalism. While Zuboff’s and Eggers’ works have different points of departure and modes of representation, a comparative reading suggests key points of overlap and disagreement about the impact of surveillance in the contemporary world, about what the future might hold, and about how we should respond. (shrink)

This work has two objectives. The first is to begin a mathematical formalism appropriate to treating particles which only interact with each otherindirectly due to hypothesized memory effects in a stochastic medium. More specifically we treat a situation in which a sequence of particles consecutively passes through a region (e.g., a measuring apparatus) in such a way that one particle leaves the region before the next one enters. We want to study a situation in which a particle may interact (...) with other particles that previously passed through the system via disturbances made in the region by these previous particles.Second, we apply the type of stochastic process appearing in this context to the stochastic interpretation of quantum mechanics to obtain a modified version of this interpretation. This version is free of many of the criticisms made against the stochastic interpretation of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

The article presents and discusses an ongoing fellowship project entitled ‘Space for Interference’, conducted under the Norwegian Programme for Research Fellowships in the Arts. Two concrete site-specific art projects produced under Space for Interference serve as a point of departure for an investigation into methods of interference and the forms of address that artists use when intervening in other specialized fields in society. The institutions that provide the site for an art project have different social functions. We ask what may (...) be their motivation for allowing artists access to their physical environments, apparatuses, procedures, systems and discourses. The fact that the artists’ projects in these contexts function as a means of self-observation for the institutions seems obvious. Nevertheless, we seek to investigate the various economic and political factors that allow these institutions to include potentially critical activities, which aim to modify or transgress their systems, and thereby displaying how they are malleable and mobile bodies. One assertion we make is that by doing so the involved institutions prove to be modern, self-critical and flexible, thus complying with political requirements to adapt to the rapidly changing environments of the information and communication age. The perspective from systems theory in the Luhmannian tradition has proved useful since it shows how the issues of art may also be the problems of science, business, politics and the law in the complex and decentered social universe of today. The issues of contingency, insecurity, paradox and autoreflexivity, surplus meanings and the complexity and decentering of the subject are at the heart of contemporary art. Systems theory provides a way to link such practices theoretically with scientific discourse and with the advanced problem solving and criticality of other social domains, like politics, business and the media industries. (shrink)

Abstract In this paper I propose a mereological account of ordinary macro-events of experience that is based on two central features of these entities, namely their spatio-temporal character, and their status as things that belong to event-kinds. I argue that, from the perspective of descriptive metaphysics, these features must be incorporated in the analysis of the part-whole relations of events, and I show the steps involved in achieving this task. Furthermore, I argue that the program initiated here is quite promising: (...) the analysis of event-part that I propose stands up quite well against the more serious objections, and the apparatus I provide for the mereological conditions of events can be easily modified to yield similar conditions for material objects. (shrink)

Ockham has a very particular definition of modality: every term that is predicable of a whole sentence is a modal term. His definition reaches well beyond “necessary,” “possible,” “contingent” and “impossible,” including predicates such as “known” and “believed,” but also “written” and “spoken.” He provides a general framework for inferences including every term covered by his definition of modality. However, there is a proper modal syllogistic in Ockham only for the Aristotelian modalities, that combines two distinct semantic apparatus, constituted (...) by Ockhamist modal predicates, on the one hand, and by modal and modally modified copulae, on the other. For the development of a syllogistic for the Aristotelian modalities, both are needed. There is no similar apparatus for other modalities in Ockham. (shrink)

Columella invites his readers to plant different flowers, including violets—which will be the main focus of the following discussion :uerum ubi iam puro discrimine pectita tellusdeposito squalore nitens sua semina poscet, 95pangite tunc uarios, terrestria sidera, flores:candida leucoia et flauentia lumina caltae,narcissique comas et hiantis saeua leonisora feri, calathisque uirentia lilia canis,necnon uel niueos uel caeruleos hyacinthos. 100tum quae pallet humi, quae frondes purpurat auro,ponatur uiola, et nimium rosa plena pudoris.96 pangite Heinsius: pingite SAR || 99 nitentia Gesner || 101 (...) frondes SA: frondens R | purpurat auro ϛ: purpura tabo SAR: purpura et auro Ursinus: purpurat albo HeinsiusThis is the text of Rodgers's recent OCT, but with a somewhat modified apparatus criticus. For the purposes of my argument, it will be useful also to quote from the outset a related catalogue of melliferous flowers from another book of Columella's treatise : mille praeterea semina uel crudo caespite uirentia uel subacto sulco flores amicissimos apibus creant, ut sunt in uirgineo solo […] gladiolus narcissi. at in hortensi lira consita nitent candida lilia nec his sordidiora leucoia, tum Punicae rosae luteolaeque et Sarranae uiolae, nec minus caelestis luminis hyacinthus.There are a number of more general similarities, but the relevant point is that the two catalogues list many of the same flowers and describe them in similar ways, which means that one catalogue can serve as an interpretative guide to the other. The first two items in the prose list of garden flowers correspond to candida leucoia and calathisque uirentia lilia canis, similarly listed in the first half of the verse catalogue; nitent can thus support Gesner's emendation nitentia for uirentia, unduly neglected by recent editors. The metaphoric periphrasis gladiolus narcissi can be compared with narcissique comas. Both texts describe the hyacinth as sky-blue, which seems to be otherwise unparalleled. Finally, just like the prose list, Columella's poem groups roses with two varieties of violet :tum quae pallet humi, quae frondes purpurat auro,ponatur uiola, et nimium rosa plena pudoris.The prose version makes it all but certain that the poem should likewise refer to a yellow and a purple varieties of violet. While Columella's verse description of the former variety is fairly unambiguous, that of the latter raises questions. (shrink)

The following is excerpted from Sean Gurd’s translation of Euripides’ Hippolytus published with Uitgeverij this year. Though he was judged “most tragic” in the generation after his death, though more copies and fragments of his plays have survived than of any other tragedian, and though his Orestes became the most widely performed tragedy in Greco-Roman Antiquity, during his lifetime his success was only moderate, and to him his career may have felt more like a failure. He was regularly selected to (...) have his plays performed in the annual festival of Dionysus at Athens. But the plays were performed in a competition, and in the competitions he lost and lost, winning first place only five times in a career that spanned more than forty years. His corpus reads like the remains of a life spent trying to get a few things right and never being quite satisfied: scenes and schematized combinations of elements recur again and again, each time slightly changed. Hippolytus itself is an example: it contains two scenes in which a sick or dying character lies on a couch or a stretcher and is surrounded by silence and grief; he had experimented with such scenes in Alcestis, and would work with them again in Herakles and Orestes. Nor, judging from appearances, was he immune to the desire to score a hit, or to satisfy the audiences and the judges at the competition. Hippolytus is a rewrite of another Hippolytus, performed several years earlier, which scandalized the audience and certainly did not take first place. In that earlier Hippolytus (called by later writers Hippolytus Veiled), Euripides fashioned a Phaedra who was neither ashamed of loving her stepson nor incapable of taking steps to satisfy her desire. The forwardness of her approach to Hippolytus so outraged him that he covered his head with a robe (hence the play’s later title). Euripides liked to write energetic and self-confident women like this. He staged his Medea in 431, just three years before he revised Hippolytus, and in it the jilted title character murders her children in revenge for Jason’s new marriage to a more politically advantageous wife. Another flop: the play came in third of three. Evidently the judges did not like their women showing agency, especially when the consequences were transgressive. “The ornament of women,” wrote another great Athenian a little earlier, “is silence.”i Euripides’ Medea and his first Phaedra had other decorations. So three years after Medea crashed and burned and some time after the first Hippolytus suffered the same fate, he produced another Hippolytus play with a different setting and story. How could this one not have been a reaction to the failure of the first? “Second thoughts are always better,” he has one of his characters say, as though he were offering an apology for his first thoughts on the same story. In this new version, Phaedra is suicidally ashamed of her love, choosing to die rather than have it discovered, and willing to bring down her beloved Hippolytus in the service of the same end. Now it is Phaedra herself who covers her head in shock and horror at her desire. Only an intermediary, a slave of the house and an old crone with her fingers in all sorts of illicit pots, communicates Phaedra’s secret – against orders – and in consequence brings about the demise of two resolutely moral figures. It worked. For his tale of two well-born nobles with an unswerving commitment to moral action, destroyed by the meddling of a slave (and by the hostility of some particularly uncaring divinities), the judges crowned Euripides winner. It was the first time he had won, after almost thirty years of work. *** What Hippolytus wants more than anything else, as he protests with outrage just before leaving Trozen for the last time, is the benefit of due process – oaths, witnesses, an investigation that would reveal who really lusted after whom. Ironic, given that in the first Hippolytus, as far as we can make out, he did get a trial – but too late, and Theseus’ successful processing of Hippolytus failed to prevent his death. I cannot help hearing in the second Hippolytus’ complaints the anger of his authorial semblable who lost year after year by a process of judging that might have seemed brutal to him. Judges took no cognizance of how he worked, how long or hard or why; they just voted, and Euripides lost. But then I hear, in the fate of the first Hippolytus, an even grimmer commentary. Processed or not, we lose. We run aground. At the very least, this might cast a darker shadow on the business of watching or reading a play: in that twilight, things move too fast to make a fair assessment and, in any case, the reasonably high definition of what you see and hear belies the truth of indistinction, the multiplicities just below the surface. Watching is a constrained activity, a form of captivity, but reading is plastic. This translation was begun to supply the script for an audio version of the play, recorded in the spring of 2012, and here and there it sacrifices literalness for sayability and the voices and passions of the actors on that occasion. But it was finished to be read, and engineered to create a reading caught between the poles of specificity and non-specificity that the play itself conjures and relies on at its generative core. Thus two texts: the one clear, perhaps overprecise, respectably modern in its presentation, and the other ancient, a reasonable approximation of the classical reading process, and indistinct in vital ways. Like early modern dramatic texts, the exact provenance and original function of the scripts that have made it down to us are unknown. We do know that the ultimate survival of Hippolytus was thanks to its wide-spread use as a school text. But its relation to the first performance in 428 BCE is a matter only of speculation. Euripides presumably had a fair copy before production began; it was probably modified during rehearsals. The actors may have had copies, too (probably the young men who served in the chorus did not). The chor?gos, a wealthy Athenian who paid for the production, might have been presented with or just made sure to get his hands on a high-quality text, to commemorate the play’s success. Fans might have been able to buy copies. Any one of these sources might have provided the ultimate progenitor of our text. Several of them might have, in fact, if later editors compared and conflated traditions. The plays toured extensively in the Greek-speaking world, and were restaged as repertoire for centuries afterwards. In the process they were subjected to enough modifications by producers and actors that in the later fourth century the Athenian statesman Lycurgus had a law passed prohibiting performances at Athens from deviating from the official “city” text of the tragedies (which he had commissioned). It is unlikely that the city text was the last word; but it marks an important moment in Athens’ role in their dissemination, since after this the major sites of textual curatorship moved overseas, to Alexandria, Pergamum, Rome, Antioch, Constantinople. Any single text of any single play is thus no more than a moment of clarity and stability, crossed and subtended by multiple vectors of change, including that of textual flux (from Euripides’ first drafts to the latest printed text) and that of Euripides’ life work as a writer, in the light of which the Hippolytus is just one attempt to produce something exactly right, to win the prize or finally satisfy himself or prove to himself that all this longing for perfection was a waste of time. I am intrigued by the possibility that a single text might somehow serve as a lens onto this wider zone of indistinction, representing a small region clearly but nonetheless containing a blurred image of the whole, like a Leibnizian monad. After all, no text is a witness: it is, rather, a perception and a performance, and what every Hippolytus must perform is the awkward overlay of singular and plural, social practise and subliminal drive, that structures the tragedy. Modern critical editions can do this by juxtaposing a (relatively) clean and simple text with a textual apparatus reporting variants and theorizing the relationship between textual instantiations. A translation lacks the resolution to catch the fine variations which feed into the construction of an apparatus. But there are other means to hand. Guessing at the exact words of the original text is always just that – guessing – though Hippolytus is less problematic than plays like Iphigenia at Aulis. But we can make a pretty secure guess at what such a text looked like. Texts read by fifth-century readers were fundamentally different from what is presented in the best medieval MSS and printed in modern publications. The texts of Euripides’ time and for many centuries afterwards did not indicate word division with spaces (or by any other means) and were extremely sparing in punctuation, often avoiding it altogether. There was only one “case” of letters – what we call “capitals.” Musical sections were inscribed as though they were prose, without line endings to reflect their rhythm or their rhetorical structure. There was no indication of the speakers within a dramatic text, either. The earliest surviving dramatic texts, which come from over a century after Euripides’ death and a time which was much more elaborate and precise in its textual culture, indicated speaker-change with a little line or paragraphos below the line and a double-point [:] at its end. This convention almost certainly does not date back to Euripides’ own time; it may not even date to Lycurgus. In any case, such indications were understood to be readers’ marks: they did not have the same authority as the text and they were subject to readers’ revisions. At least ideationally, if not in concrete and distinguishable fact, a dramatic text was understood as containing no indication of speaker-change (and certainly none of who was saying what). The reader had to figure that out for him-/herself. The clear, legible, easy texts we are accustomed to reading are the fabrications of medieval and modern reading cultures. The first text, then, presents the translation as the text would have been in the mid-fourth century, perhaps decades after Euripides’ death. The second text processes Hippolytus, makes sense of it and makes it “readable.” That is: too distinct, dangerously so. It gets in your way, conjures fantoms, tries to make you see. Fragments of the Hippolytus Veiled, otherwise almost entirely lost, are juxtaposed with similar passages in the text – not to suggest a reconstruction, but a dialogue and a complex set of reassessments. I have not tried to represent the full variety of textual variants, but I have signalled where, for one reason or another, the text is soft and different editions propose excisions or changes. The two texts must be read together: you, reader, form the bridge between the distinctly seen and the indistinct invisible. You, in the end, will be its mask. *** illsandhateddiseaseswhatcanidoforyouwhatshouldinotdohereisthelightandthebrightairyoursickbedisnowout s idethehouseyoureverywordwastocomeherebutyouwillrushbacktoyourbedroomagainyoufadequicklyyoudelig htinnothingyoudislikewhatyouhaveyoulovewhatyoudontitsbettertobesickthantendthesickthefirstissimpleto the secondattachesheartspainandhandsworkeveryhumanlifeispainfulthereisnoendtotoildarknesshidesbehindclo udswhateverisdearerthanlifeweproveunhappyloversofwhatshineshereforlackofknowledgeofanotherlifethere isnoproofforthingsbeneaththeearthonlystoriessustainus liftmybodystraightenmyheadthebondsofmylimbsareloosenedtakemyhandsandmypalearmsthishatistooheavy formyheadtoweartakeitoffspreadmyhairovermyshoulders couragechilddonttossandturnsoviolentlyyouwillbearyoursicknessmoreeasilywithpeaceandanoblemindallmort alssuffer aiaiiwanttodrinkpurewaterfromadewyspringiwanttoliebackandrestunderthetreesinsomegrassymeadowchildw hycrydontsaythesethingsnearthecrowdhurlingwordsmountedonmadness sendmetothemountainiwillgototheforestwherebeastkillingdogspressthespotteddeergodsilongtoshouttothedo gstoshootthethessalianjavelinpastmyblondhairtoholdthebarbeddartinmyhandwhythisanxietychildwhatdoyouc areabouthuntingwhydoyoulustforflowingspringstheresahillwithwaterjustnexttothetowerwecangetyouadrinkt h ereartemismistressofthesaltlakeandthecoursethunderingwithhorseshoovesiwishiwereonyourplainsbreakings t uds whythrowthesefrenziedwordsaboutjustnowyouweresettingoutforthemountaintohuntandnowyoulongforhorses onthewavelesssand thesethingsneedanoracletotellwhichgodreinsyouinanddrivesyoufromyoursenseschild whathaveidonehowfarhaveibeendrivenfromgoodthoughtsiwascrazyiwascursedbysomepowerpheupheualasn ursecovermyheadagainimashamedofwhativesaidcovermeatearmovesdownfrommyeyeanditembarrassesm eithurtstostraightenourmindanditisterribletobeinsanebesttodiebeforeyoubecomelucidagain illcoveryoubutwhenwilldeathcovermeimoldivelearnedalotmortalsshoulddrinkoffriendshipmoderatelynotfrom th edeepestmarrowofthesoulamindslovecharmsshouldbeeasytoundoorthrustawayortiemoretightlyitisaverydiffic ultweightforonesoultolaborovertwopeopleasiamwrackedbypainforhertoomuchdisciplinecausesmoreharmthan pleasureandwarswithhealthipraisetoomuchlessthannothinginexcessandthewiseagreewithme *** Scene 1 Enter Phaedra and the Nurse; the former is recumbent on a couch while the latter bustles about her with gestures that might be those of a caregiver or a guard. NURSE Ills and hated diseases! What can I do for you? What should I not do? Here is the light, and the bright air; your sick bed is now outside the house. Your every word was to come here, but you will rush back to your bedroom again. You fade quickly. You delight in nothing. You dislike what you have. You love what you don’t. It’s better to be sick than tend the sick – the first is simple. To the second attaches heart’s pain and hand’s work. Every human life is painful. There is no end to toil. Darkness hides behind clouds whatever is dearer than life. We prove unhappy lovers of what shines here for lack of knowledge of another life. There is no proof for things beneath the earth. Only stories sustain us. PHAEDRA Lift my body, straighten my head: the bonds of my limbs are loosened. Take my hands and my pale arms. This hat is too heavy for my head to wear. Take it off, spread my hair over my shoulders. NURSE Courage, child; don’t toss and turn so violently. You will bear your sickness more easily with peace and a noble mind. All mortals suffer. PHAEDRA Aiai. I want to drink pure water from a dewy spring. I want to lie back and rest under the trees in some grassy meadow. NURSE Child, why cry? Don’t say these things near the crowd, hurling words mounted on madness. PHAEDRA Send me to the mountain. I will go to the forest where beast-killing dogs press the spotted deer. Gods! I long to shout to the dogs, to shoot the Thessalian javelin past my blond hair, to hold the barbed dart in my hand. NURSE Why this anxiety, child? What do you care about hunting? Why do you lust for flowing springs? There’s a hill with water just next to the tower; we can get you a drink there. PHAEDRA Artemis, mistress of the salt lake and the course thundering with horse’s hooves: I wish I were on your plains breaking studs! NURSE Why throw these frenzied words about? Just now you were setting out for the mountain to hunt – and now you long for horses on the waveless sand. These things need an oracle to tell which god reins you in and drives you from your senses, child. PHAEDRA What have I done? How far have I been driven from good thoughts? I was crazy, I was cursed by some power. Pheu pheu. Alas. Nurse, cover my head again. I’m ashamed of what I’ve said. Cover me – a tear moves down from my eye and it embarrasses me. It hurts to straighten your mind and it is terrible to be insane. Best to die before you become lucid again. NURSE I’ll cover you. But when will death cover me? I’m old; I’ve learned a lot. Mortals should drink of friendship moderately, not from the deepest marrow of the soul. A mind’s love-charms should be easy to undo, or thrust away, or tie more tightly. It is a very difficult weight for one soul to labor over two people, as I am wracked by pain for her. Too much discipline causes more harm than pleasure and wars with health. I praise “too much” less than “nothing in excess,” and the wise agree with me. ***. (shrink)

THE FIRST STAGE OF COMMUNISM, FOR MARX, IS A MODIFIED EXCHANGE ECONOMY. THUS IT SHOULD BE MARKED BY ALIENATION OR FETISHISM. BUT MARX DENIES THIS IN CHAPTER 1 OF VOLUME I OF "CAPITAL". THE REASON BEING THAT THE WORKERS WOULD BE IN CONTROL OF THEIR EXCHANGE RATHER THAN CONTROLLED BY IT. IN EARLIER WRITINGS, THIS CONTROL SEEMED TO REQUIRE A POWERFUL STATE APPARATUS, AND THUS POLITICAL ESTRANGEMENT. IN SOME, BUT NOT ALL, OF HIS LATER WRITINGS, MARX ARGUES THAT (...) SUCH A STATE APPARATUS WOULD NOT BE NECESSARY. THIS CONFLICT IS DUE TO THE FACT THAT MARX EMPLOYS TWO DIFFERENT MODELS FOR THE TRANSITION TO SOCIALISM. (shrink)

The primary goal of this article is to get to the specifics of Zbigniew Herbert’s work. The poet had formal philosophical education and cannot be treated merely as a writer raising existential issues. The consequence of his studies in philosophy with the most eminent Polish philosophers of the time was that he took up important philosophical questions rather than used the answers that philosophers of the past had given. This is an important feature of his poetry and distinguishes Herbert from (...) those writers who subscribed to the worldview of their era. Failure to distinguish between these two stances has led to one-sided readings of his poem To Marcus Aurelius. The interpretations of the last sixty years quoted in the article lead to the conclusion that we are dealing with a kind of “contemporary”, or modified, “stoicism”. Later scholars interpreted the work as existential. A comparison of the poem with the work of Marcus Aurelius, and above all, an analysis of the differences between the ancient and modern understanding of such concepts as “nature”, “fate”, “self”, or “suffering”, allowed us to show the internal intellectualemotional tension in Herbert’s poem, and above all, the general idea of philosophizing poetry. The poet himself believed that it resembles primary reflection, such as that of the early Ionian thinkers. This is not about philosophizing on the basis of an elaborate conceptual apparatus, but about philosophical intuition and “philosophical experience”, an intellectual and emotional tension, in which – thanks to poetic talent – beauty is born. The dialog in To Marcus Aurelius is precisely a record of such poetic agitation. (shrink)

Both the defenders and critics of judicial review assume tacitly that there is a special moral capacity needed for a correct articulation of constitutional (explicit or implied) rights, and they only disagree about who is likely to possess this moral capacity to a higher degree. In this working paper I challenge this unstated assumption. It is not the case that the reasoning oriented towards rights articulation is more moral than many non-rights-oriented authoritative public decisions in the society. Further, I suggest (...) that rights-related reasoning cannot be shown to be differently moral in a way which would support the idea that this relevant difference may justify why some political agents (such as judges) may be more suited to performing this particular type of moral reasoning than others (such as legislators). The best argument for such a distinction refers to the opportunity for and habit of conducting "moral thought experiments" which is what, as part of their professional duties, judges normally do, and which they can therefore instinctively do also when they engage in a "concrete" judicial review of a statute. But there is no good moral reason to believe that "moral thought experiments" triggered by specific fact-situations should be privileged as a method of moral reasoning, compared to an unashamedly abstract, principle-based moral reasoning. If anything, a good case may be made (referring to the need to openly acknowledge moral conflict, secure impartiality, equality and legitimacy) for deliberately abstracting from specific cases and focusing on the abstract and general level, only modifying it later, if one is compelled to such modifications by considering evidence from specific instances. Not even one half (the bottom-up half) of the Rawlsian famous "reflective equilibrium" apparatus can be of help in this regard. (shrink)

This is James Diggle's OCT , with a modified apparatus. The lacuna at 186 prompted two conjectures by Willink: υτθυ and the ingenious αλθυ . I wonder, however, whether an adverb is what we want: the anadiplosis of λακυ would not have come amiss to lend a touch of hysterical urgency to the cry of the rapist's victim; but that would not give us the rhythm we need . Something approaching the effect of the suggested anadiplosis might be (...) obtained by the supplement πoλλοσιυ. Although it lacks the palaeographical plausibility of αλθυ, it gives us an expression that is characteristically Euripidean in contexts pertaining to souls in torment: Ale. 185 πoλλυ δακρωυ, 938 πολλυ δ μχθωυ Su. 1119 ἂλγσι πoλλος, Tr. 28 πολλος δ κωκυτοσιυ, 38 δκρυα χουσα πολλ, etc. The adjective applied to sound is not unknown:Rh. 290–1 πολλι γᾰρ χι Θρικιοςωυ στρατς1στιχ. It can also be used to describe the frequency of sung laments accompanied by hysterical self-mutilation: S. El. 88–90 πολλς μυ θρυωυ ιδς, 1 πολλᾰς δ’ υτρις ισθxυ 1 στρυωυ πλαγᾰς αμασσομυωυ. (shrink)

The quantum Zeno effect (QZE) is often associated with the ironic maxim, “a watched pot never boils”, although the notion of “watching” suggests a continuous activity at odds with the usual (pulsed measurement) presentation of the QZE. We show how continuous watching can provide the same halting of decay as the usual QZE, and, for incomplete hindrance, we provide a precise connection between the interval between projections and the response time of the continuous observer. Thus, watching closely, but not so (...) closely as to halt the “boiling”, is equivalent to—gives the same degree of partial hindrance as—pulsed measurements with a particular pulsing rate. Our demonstration is accomplished by treating the apparatus for the continuous watching as a fully quantum object. This in turn allows us a second perspective on the QZE, in which it is the modified level structure of the combined system/apparatus Hamiltonian that slows the decay. This and other considerations favor the characterization “dominated time evolution” for the QZE. (shrink)

This book is in the Studies in Philosophy: Outstanding Dissertations series. Its central theme is that Frege’s concept-notation is inadequate because it does not formalize his semantic theory after the introduction of the sense-reference distinction in 1891. This failing, according to Klement, opens Frege up to a number of philosophical and logical challenges that can be met only by completing the project of showing “how Frege’s mature semantic views would be incorporated into his mature logical system”, a project which, Klement (...) plausibly argues, Frege would have endorsed. This involves: allowing the concept-notation to represent explicitly what is expressed in natural language with indirect constructions such as “said that...” or “believes that... ”; allowing principles to be formulated over this notion which capture inferences involving indirect constructions such as: The Morning Star is a planet, Gottlob believes the Morning Star is a planet, so, Gottlob believes something true; being able to respond to certain objections to Frege’s views, some first bruited by Russell and in later correspondence, others involving the identity conditions on intensional entities and “quantifying in” ; making the concept-notation reflect Frege’s ontology; and evaluating the consistency of Frege’s ontology. The chapters of this book are devoted to fulfilling this project “based upon a careful reading of Frege’s own works”, and their contents are mostly self-explanatory. Chapter 2 sets out the formal apparatus of the Grundgeseze, even the bits Frege left out. Chapter 3 is the most philosophical. Senses are construed as interpersonally accessible information uniquely true of the references they determine—senses are objects and functions in the “third realm.” Singular terms are associated with an impossibly rich hierarchy of senses as objects. Functors, including predicates, are associated with senses as functions. Sentences are associated with thoughts as objects, composed of constituent sense-functions, and in many cases, also sense-objects. Robust compositionality at the level of sense raises the question of the nature of the relation between constituents and the whole—is it functional, or not? Compositionality potentially conflicts with a number of other claims, and Klement’s conclusion is reasonable: “the context principle, the priority thesis, and the possibility of there existing multiple decompositions for the same Gedanke, do not pose any great difficulty for the compositionality principle or the understanding of Gedanke as having determinate inner structures”. Chapter 4 sets out Church’s original system and investigates reformulations suggested by Church himself, Kaplan, and others. Chapter 5 presents Klement’s formalization of an intensional logic of sense and reference, based on the results of chapters 2 and 4, and sufficient for indirect speech and quantifying-in, but containing a contradiction. Chapter 6 takes up arguments of early Russell, Searle, and Bergmann. Chapter 7 addresses strategies for repairing the inconsistencies of chapter 5, but in a Fregean spirit: dropping some realms of entities, restricting their number, or modifying our conception of their nature. (shrink)

Social scientists from different fields have identified security as a future-oriented mode of governance designed to preserve the social order from diverse types of global risk through international cooperation, militarization and privatization of the state security apparatus, surveillance technologies, community policing, and stigmatization of identities and behaviors deemed dangerous. This literature has largely been limited to English-speaking countries in the Global North, however, that are relatively “secure.”. To understand how security operates in a different context, this article focuses on (...) the current War on Crime in México using newspaper and magazine articles, government documents, and extant academic research. In México, it is argued, the basic elements of security governance (international cooperation, militarized police, surveillance technologies, law, etc.) are present, but in modified form. Rather than focusing on external risks that could develop into future threats, security in México is turned inward against traditional forms of national economic, political, and cultural life thought to produce harm in the present. This, in turn, underscores security’s unique purpose in the country, which is not to preserve the prevailing social order, but to transform an emergent social order that through globalization has come to threaten the state’s legitimacy. These observations suggest an international divide in the operation of security that leaves those most vulnerable in the Global South to bear the greatest costs. (shrink)

In effort to investigate how quantum physics might modify Einstein's Theory of Relativity at speeds v→c, the relationship between space-time coordinates of different reference frames is revisited by introducing only one new parameter xo, a fundamental constant for the quantization of space. The starting point is three criteria: (a) real space-time data are conditioned by standard quantum effects on measurements; (b) since currently used apparatus are only capable of probing the aggregate behavior of these quanta the relevant model is (...) one which maximizes the Entropy subject to certain defining constraints; and (c) the constraints simply involve fixed ensemble averages in the case of an inertial frame, or boundary conditions on running averages in the case of an accelerated frame. In this context it is found that both the Lorentz transformation and a simple scheme for the quantization of space-time which resembles identically Planck's photon picture of radiation are a direct consequence of the Principle of Relativity. Non-inertial behavior corresponds to local Entropy maxima, obtainable by solution of a diffusion equation which gives gradually varying ensemble averages across space-time, as demonstrated by the example of a profile which connects a central region of highly agitated quanta with an asymptotic ambient environment—the outcome is the Schwarzschild metric of General Relativity. Apart from the above, a new feature emerges from the theory: the space-time data of an observer, when referred to the frame of his moving partner, are subject to extra quantum fluctuations which increase indefinitely in severity as v→c, with the Lorentz transformation providing only the mean data values. Thus for fast moving bodies like cosmic rays or matter at the horizon of a black hole, physical processes which affect them may not always be perceived by us to occur at the expected length or time scales. (shrink)

As space travel and intentions to colonise other planets are becoming the norm in public debate and scholarship, we must also confront the technical and survival challenges that emerge from these hostile environments. This paper aims to evaluate the various arguments proposed to meet the challenges of human space travel and extraterrestrial planetary colonisation. In particular, two primary solutions have been present in the literature as the most straightforward solutions to the rigours of extraterrestrial survival and flourishing: (1) geoengineering, where (...) the environment is modified to become hospitable to its inhabitants, and (2) human (bio)enhancement where the genetic heritage of humans is modified to make them more resilient to the difficulties they may encounter as well as to permit them to thrive in non-terrestrial environments. Both positions have strong arguments supporting them but also severe philosophical and practical drawbacks when exposed to different circumstances. This paper aims to show that a principled stance where one position is accepted wholesale necessarily comes at the opportunity cost of the other where the other might be better suited, practically and morally. This paper concludes that case-by-case evaluations of the solutions to space travel and extraterrestrial colonisation are necessary to ensure moral congruency and the survival and flourishing of astronauts now and into the future. (shrink)

What is an apparatus? -- The friend -- What is the contemporary?

Young netizens are an emerging generator of online content, engaging in an increasing number of online flaming interactions. This shortened communication mode has incorporated power amplifiers, enabling the inclusion of both verbal and non-verbal triggers, thereby initiating abuses akin to cyberbullying. Cyberbullying has emerged as an extremely unstable hot issue, which is difficult to regulate upstream, severely impacting inexperienced young netizens. This Machiavellian apparatus proves to be sophisticated, given its powerful nature, and results in its victims being ensnared in (...) a cyber net from which they see very little escape. Laws have been enacted to combat cyberbullying, which is rampant among netizens, highly naive or actively aggressive in their use of various social media platforms. (shrink)

Within-category induction is the projection of a generic property from a class to a subtype of that class. The modifier effect refers to the discovery reported by Connolly et al., that the subtype statement tends to be judged less likely to be true than the original unmodified sentence. The effect was replicated and shown to be moderated by the typicality of the modifier. Likelihood judgements were also found to correlate between modified and unmodified versions of sentences. Experiment 2 elicited (...) justifications, which suggested three types of reason for the effect-pragmatics, knowledge-based reasoning, and uncertainty about attribute inheritance. It is argued that the results provide clear evidence for the default inheritance of prototypical attributes in modified concepts, although a full account of the effect remains to be given. (shrink)

The modifier effect is the reduction in perceived likelihood of a generic property sentence, when the head noun is modified. We investigated the prediction that the modifier effect would be stronger for mutable than for central properties, without finding evidence for this predicted interaction over the course of five experiments. However Experiment 6, which provided a brief context for the modified concepts to lend them greater credibility, did reveal the predicted interaction. It is argued that the modifier effect (...) arises primarily from a general lack of confidence in generic statements about the typical properties of unfamiliar concepts. Neither prototype nor classical models of concept combination receive support from the phenomenon. 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

The work of Michel Foucault is not often considered in animal ethics discussions, but I believe that many of his insights can be fruitfully extended into this area of philosophical inquiry. In this paper, I present the slaughterhouse as a technology of power that is complicit in the domination and objectification of both human and nonhuman animal subjects. I begin by arguing that Foucault’s notion of an “apparatus” is a useful methodological tool for thinking about the constellation of spaces (...) and discourses in which various bodies (both human and nonhuman) find themselves enmeshed. Next, I outline Foucault’s multifaceted conceptualization of “power,” and I consider whether it makes sense to think of other animals as implicated in “power relations” in the various Foucauldian senses. Finally, I analyze a journalistic account of a contemporary slaughterhouse. Here, I argue that a variety of hierarchies (spatial, racial, species, etc.) dovetail to create an environment in which care and concern are virtually impossible. By coupling a Foucauldian analysis with certain insights developed in the bioethical work of Ralph Acampora, I offer a normative critique of an institution that has pernicious effects on both human and nonhuman animals. (shrink)

In this article, we describe and attempt to solve a puzzle arising from the interpretation of modified numerals like less than five and between two and five. The puzzle is this: such modified numerals seem to mean different things depending on whether they combine with distributive or non-distributive predicates. When they combine with distributive predicates, they intuitively impose a kind of upper bound, whereas when they combine with non-distributive predicates, they do not. We propose and explore in detail (...) four solutions to this puzzle, each involving some notion of maximality, but differing in the type of maximality involved and in the source of maximality. While the full range of data we consider do not conclusively favor one theory over the other three, we do argue that overall the evidence goes against the view that modified numerals lexically encode a ‘standard’ maximality operator, and suggests the need for a pragmatic blocking mechanism that filters out readings of sentences that are generated by the grammar but intuitively unavailable. (shrink)

We explain two ways of revising a tense logic like kripke's (1963) modal logic by adding predicate modifiers. first we show that modifiers allow us to render valid some mixing formulas--conditionals reversing the order of a quantifier and an operator--within a complete bivalent system. then we show how modifiers enable a tense logic to give analyses close to the surface form for sentences with temporal qualifications of singular terms, e.g., 'toby was fatter then than william is today'.

Implementing Poincaré’s geometric conventionalism a scalar Lorentz-covariant gravity model is obtained based on gravitationally modified Lorentz transformations (or GMLT). The modification essentially consists of an appropriate space-time and momentum-energy scaling (“normalization”) relative to a nondynamical flat background geometry according to an isotropic, nonsingular gravitational affecting function Φ(r). Elimination of the gravitationally unaffected S 0 perspective by local composition of space–time GMLT recovers the local Minkowskian metric and thus preserves the invariance of the locally observed velocity of light. The associated (...) energy-momentum GMLT provides a covariant Hamiltonian description for test particles and photons which, in a static gravitational field configuration, endorses the four ‘basic’ experiments for testing General Relativity Theory: gravitational (i) deflection of light, (ii) precession of perihelia, (iii) delay of radar echo, (iv) shift of spectral lines. The model recovers the Lagrangian of the Lorentz–Poincaré gravity model by Torgny Sjödin and integrates elements of the precursor gravitational theories, with spatially Variable Speed of Light (VSL) by Einstein and Abraham, and gravitationally variable mass by Nordström. (shrink)

The apparatus theory is used to challenge the interpretation of religion and also to determine whether religion is a factor to contend with in modern society. Religion could be the element that keeps the city intact or could be the one element that is busy ruining our understanding of reality and the way this interacts with society in the urban environment. Paradigms determine our relationships. In this case, the apparatus theory would be a more precise way of describing (...) not only our relationship towards the city but also the way in which we try to perceive our relationship with religion and the urban conditions we live in. This article gives theoretical background to the interpretation and understanding of the relationship between various entities within the city. The apparatus of the city creates space for religion to function as a binding form. Religion could bind different cultures, diverse backgrounds and create space for growth. (shrink)