The genetic code has been regarded as arbitrary in the sense that the codon-amino acid assignments could be different than they actually are. This general idea has been spelled out differently by previous, often rather implicit accounts of arbitrariness. They have drawn on the frozen accident theory, on evolutionary contingency, on alternative causal pathways, and on the absence of direct stereochemical interactions between codons and amino acids. It has also been suggested that the arbitrariness of the genetic (...) code justifies attributing semantic information to macromolecules, notably to DNA. I argue that these accounts of arbitrariness are unsatisfactory. I propose that the code is arbitrary in the sense of Jacques Monod's concept of chemical arbitrariness: the genetic code is arbitrary in that any codon requires certain chemical and structural properties to specify a particular amino acid, but these properties are not required in virtue of a principle of chemistry. This notion of arbitrariness is compatible with several recent hypotheses about code evolution. I maintain that the code's chemical arbitrariness is neither sufficient nor necessary for attributing semantic information to nucleic acids. (shrink)

Freezing is a common sign of panic, a response to accidents or events that overflow our capacity to react. Just as all civil airspace was cleared after the 9/11 attacks, the US-Canada border was also frozen, causing economic slowdowns. Border policies are caught between these two panics: security failures and economic crisis. To escape this paradox, American and Canadian authorities have implemented a series of security measures to make the border ‘smarter’, notably the implementation of biometric identity documents and (...) surveillance by UAV Predator drones. Psychoanalytic theory can help us explain why the Canadian and American governments have invested so much money for so little evident or measurable increase in either security or economic flows. The article uses the notion of phantastic objects to explain these (over-)reactions to risk management at the US-Canada border. (shrink)

Contemporary evolutionary theory, derived from the intellectual marriage of Darwin's and Mendel's discoveries, leads us to view organisms as successful, but essentially ad hoc, responses to chance and necessity. Biological universals, the code, the pentadactyl limb, are frozen accidents shared by descent. The source of biological order has come to be seen as selection itself. This paper argues that this view is fundamentally inadequate. It ignores those underlying sources of biological order which derive from the generic self-organizing properties (...) of the biological building blocks. Among these generic properties are almost universal aspects of phase resetting responses in biological rhythmic systems, fascinating properties of continuity, symmetry and handedness seen in pattern regeneration across distant phyla; and statistically robust properties expected of eukaryotic gene regulatory systems persistently subject to mutations which "scramble" regulatory interactions. These examples suggest that many properties in organisms reflect a balance between selection, and the rich generic properties which would occur in the absence of selection. Where the balance is "close" to generic, a new pattern of evolutionary inference, and an ahistorical source of biological universals may be found: Those properties reflect, not selection, but the self-organizing features of the building blocks. (shrink)

We discuss cultural group selection under the view of the frozen plasticity theory and the different explanatory power and predictions of this framework. We present evidence that cultural adaptations and their influence on the degree of cooperation may be more complex than presented by Richerson et al., and conclude with the gene-environment-culture relationship and its impacts on cultural group selection.

This work applies the competitive exclusion principle and the concept of potential competitors as simple axiomatic tools to generalized situations in ecology. These tools enable apparent competition and its dual counterpart to be explicitly evaluated in poorly understood ecological systems. Within this set-theory framework we explore theoretical symmetries and invariances, De Morgan’s laws, frozen evolutionary diversity and virtual processes. In particular, we find that the exclusion principle compromises the geometrical growth of the number of species. By theoretical extending (...) this principle, we can describe interspecific depredation in the dual case. This study also briefly considers the debated situation of intraspecific competition. The ecological consequences of our findings are discussed; particularly, the use of our framework to reinterpret coupled mathematical differential equations describing certain ecological processes. (shrink)

The Disney movie Frozen is the fifth highest grossing movie of all time. In order to better understand this phenomenon and to hypothesize as to why the movie resonated so strongly with audiences, we have interpreted the movie using psychodynamic theory. We pay particular attention to the themes of puberty, adolescence and sibling relationships and discuss examples of ego defenses that are employed by the lead character in relation to these concepts.

In his commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, Nicole Oresme propounds a very specific theory of the ontological status of accidents. Characteristic of Oresme’s view on accidents is that he does not consider them accidental forms, but only so-called condiciones or modi of the substance. Unlike the term “modus”, the term “condicio” seems to be very characteristic of Oresme’s own terminology. Up to now it has been unknown whether Oresme exerted any influence with his condicio-theory of accidents. This paper presents (...) an anonymous 14th-century commentary on Aristotle’s Meteorology, in two Questions of which the term “condicio” occurs in an ontological context. Moreover, the text shows further striking coincidences with known works by Oresme, and this makes an influence by Oresme appear all the more probable. (shrink)

This paper investigates the late medieval controversy over the causal role of substantial forms in the generation of new substances. At the beginning of the fourteenth century, when there were two basic positions in this debate (section II), an original position was defended by Walter Burley and Peter Auriol, according to which accidents alone—by their own power—can generate substantial forms (section III). The paper presents how this view was received by the next generation of philosophers, i.e., around 1350 (section IV), (...) and how, even though some of the initial theoretical motivations for this view were quickly abandoned, the view was still defended by several philosophers in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (section V). It is finally shown that this theory, still discussed by Suárez and early modern scholastics, and despite being generally rejected, contributed in its own way to the evolution of hylomorphism in the late Middle Ages and, to a certain extent, its gradual decline (section VI). (shrink)

I explore and develop the idea that (NA) knowledge is non-accidentally true belief. The applicable notion of non-accidentality differs from that of ‘epistemic luck’ discussed by Pritchard. Safety theories may be seen as a refinement of, or substitute for, NA but they are subject to a fundamental difficulty. At the same time, NA needs to be adjusted in order to cope with two counterexamples. The Light Switch Case turns on the ‘directionof-fit’ between a belief and the facts, while the Meson (...) Case concerns knowledge of nomological necessities. A proposed revision to NA is: (ENA) S knows that P when S’s belief that P is non-accidentally true because (i) it is based on good evidence, and (ii) in and of themselves, beliefs based on good evidence tend to be true. ‘knowledge-as-credit’ accounts have been offered as an alternative way of sharpening NA. I argue that such accounts face serious objections that don’t apply to ENA. Finally, I take up Lackey’s worry that the credit-based approach mishandles knowledge via testimony. ENA faces no difficulty on that score, which counts in its favor. (shrink)

Self-driving cars hold out the promise of being safer than manually driven cars. Yet they cannot be a 100 % safe. Collisions are sometimes unavoidable. So self-driving cars need to be programmed for how they should respond to scenarios where collisions are highly likely or unavoidable. The accident-scenarios self-driving cars might face have recently been likened to the key examples and dilemmas associated with the trolley problem. In this article, we critically examine this tempting analogy. We identify three important (...) ways in which the ethics of accident-algorithms for self-driving cars and the philosophy of the trolley problem differ from each other. These concern: the basic decision-making situation faced by those who decide how self-driving cars should be programmed to deal with accidents; moral and legal responsibility; and decision-making in the face of risks and uncertainty. In discussing these three areas of disanalogy, we isolate and identify a number of basic issues and complexities that arise within the ethics of the programming of self-driving cars. (shrink)

Widespread commercial use of the internet has significantly increased the volume and scope of data being collected by organisations. ‘Big data’ has emerged as a term to encapsulate both the technical and commercial aspects of this growing data collection activity. To date, much of the discussion of big data has centred upon its transformational potential for innovation and efficiency, yet there has been less reflection on its wider implications beyond commercial value creation. This paper builds upon normal accident (...) class='Hi'>theory to analyse the broader ethical implications of big data. It argues that the strategies behind big data require organisational systems that leave them vulnerable to normal accidents, that is to say some form of accident or disaster that is both unanticipated and inevitable. Whilst NAT has previously focused on the consequences of physical accidents, this paper suggests a new form of system accident that we label data accidents. These have distinct, less tangible and more complex characteristics and raise significant questions over the role of individual privacy in a ‘data society’. The paper concludes by considering the ways in which the risks of such data accidents might be managed or mitigated. (shrink)

Work on the nature and scope of formal logic has focused unduly on the distinction between logical and extra-logical vocabulary; which argument forms a logical theory countenances depends not only on its stock of logical terms, but also on its range of grammatical categories and modes of composition. Furthermore, there is a sense in which logical terms are unnecessary. Alexandra Zinke has recently pointed out that propositional logic can be done without logical terms. By defining a logical-term-free language with (...) the full expressive power of first-order logic with identity, I show that this is true of logic more generally. Furthermore, having, in a logical theory, non-trivial valid forms that do not involve logical terms is not merely a technical possibility. As the case of adverbs shows, issues about the range of argument forms logic should countenance can quite naturally arise in such a way that they do not turn on whether we countenance certain terms as logical. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Banks provide a valuable but inherently unstable combination of deposit‐taking and lending functions that were successfully held together for several decades after the New Deal by tough banking rules. The weakening of the rules after the 1970s promoted the displacement of traditional relationship‐based banking with securitized, arms‐length alternatives that encouraged banks to undertake activities about which bankers lacked deep relationship‐based knowledge of the risks. Ironically, this risky behavior, encouraged by loosened regulation, was reinforced by progressively tightened securities regulation, which (...) promoted stock‐market liquidity but also deprived large banks (and other publicly traded companies) of oversight by investors with “insiders’” knowledge. Both the underregulation of banking and the overregulation of securities were underpinned by economic theories that favored blind diversification in liquid, anonymous markets, and that ignored the value of relationship‐based knowledge and case‐by‐case due diligence. (shrink)

In this late story, Truman Capote celebrates a peculiar form of object relations to expand definitions of sexuality beyond conventional identity categories and thus suggest a more expansive model of social inclusion and civil rights. Building on work in animal studies, queer theory, and the new materialities, I argue that the literalism of these object relations decenters the human and reimagines a wider ethics of belonging. The story describes an elderly widow who keeps all of her deceased cats in (...) a freezer because she cannot bear to be parted from them. Although the story prepares us to expect that the frozen cats could be symbols or surrogates for her dead husband, it becomes clear that she loves her cats literally as cats and nothing more. Capote pushes us to acknowledge and accept this love for her cats just as it is. And by doing so, he invites us to imagine a more hospitable world in which we accommodate other kinds of object-choice beyond the confines of heterosexual marriage, including but certainly not limited to his own homosexuality. (shrink)

Collapsing buildings, unexpected meetings in the marketplace, monstrous births, encounters with pirates at sea - these and other unforeseen 'accidents' at the turn of the seventeenth century in England acquired unprecedented significance in the early modern philosophical and cultural imagination. Drawing on intellectual history, cultural criticism, and rhetorical theory, this book chronicles the narrative transformation of 'accident' from a philosophical dead end to an astonishing occasion for revelation and wonder in early modern religious life, dramatic practice, and experimental (...) philosophy. Alongside texts by such canonical figures as Shakespeare and Bacon, this study draws on several lesser known authors of sensational news accounts about accidents that occurred around the turn of the seventeenth century. The result is a cultural anatomy of accidents as philosophical problem, theatrical conceit, and spiritual landmark. (shrink)

The essay constructs an ontological theory designed to capture the categories instantiated in those portions or levels of reality which are captured in our common sense conceptual scheme. It takes as its starting point an Aristotelian ontology of “substances” and “accidents”, which are treated via the instruments of mereology and topology. The theory recognizes not only individual parts of substances and accidents, including the internal and external boundaries of these, but also universal parts, such as the “humanity” which (...) is an essential part of both Tom and Dick, and also “individual relations”, such as Tom’s promise to Dick, or their current handshake. (shrink)

L’A. retrace l’histoire des propriétés individuelles de l’Antiquité et du Moyen Âge à la lumière de la théorie des tropes de D.C. Williams et Campbell. Il insiste sur l’importance de la relation de co-présence et la compare avec des notions apparentées (comme le « syndrome des qualités » ou le « rassemblement des qualités »). L’A. examine également la validité des principes du particularisme ontologique pour la philosophie d’Abélard. Il s’attache à l’examen de la thèse de la non-transférabilité des tropes, (...) chez Boèce, Abélard, et il en rappelle les origines dans l’Islam classique (théologie ash’arite). L’A. insiste sur le fait, en conclusion, que ce particularisme ontologique n’a pas forcément partie liée avec le nominalisme. (shrink)

This article interrogates postmodern and Levinasian conceptions of ethics with recourse to Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs and certain psychoanalytical concepts formulated in Jacques Lacan's Ethics of Psychoanalysis. Since Levinas, ethical thinking has, in some quarters, moved away from conventional questions about moral agency, rights and social justice, on to a concern towards the ultimate unknowability of `the other'. Ethics depends, for Levinas, on an unpredictable, accidental encounter with something Other, that, in its singularity, demands a response; it is precisely the (...) contingency of the encounter that constitutes the ethical difference from the realm of morality and law. Tarantino's movie narratives are also structured around accidents, disclosing the pain and jouissance of accidental expenditures that lie at the heart of any relation to the Other. In the midst of trauma, the Thing emerges, around which goods and signification circulate, that both delimits the identification of the Good and marks a space beyond moral law that becomes the site of radical ethical questioning. (shrink)

This paper questions the fairness of our current tort-law regime and the philosophical underpinnings advanced in its defense, a theory known as corrective justice. Fairness requires that the moral equality and responsibility of persons be respected in social interactions and institutions. The concept of luck has been used by many egalitarians as a way of giving content to fairness by differentiating between those benefits and burdens that result from informed choice and those that result from fate or fortune. We (...) argue that the theory of corrective justice, along with its institutional embodiment of tort law, is at odds with an egalitarian commitment to fairness because it allows luck an unjustifiable role in determining dissimilar liability for similar wrongs and dissimilar compensation for similar losses to bodily integrity. Many egalitarian political theorists have also recognized, if not defended, the notion of distinct forms of justice, namely corrective, retributive, and distributive. Although theorists of these different forms of justice have been concerned with negating unfair luck inside the operations of each form of justice, there has been little attention to the way in which luck operates to sort cases into each form of justice. We claim that there is a significant way in which luck operates to subject different people to principles of corrective, retributive, and distributive justicewhich flies in the face of the egalitarian value of fairness. After surveying the arguments put forward by theorists defending a categorical distinction between corrective justice and retributive and distributive principles, we argue that although analytical distinctions can be made between different forms of justice (although, we also suggest that the distinctions are not as sharp as some commentators suggest), there is no good reason to defend an acoustic separation between these forms of justice when doing so creates unfair outcomes. (shrink)

This essay examines the work of Ewa Lipska, who, since the publication of her first book in 1967, has been among the most acclaimed of recent Polish poets but less well known in the West than Czesław Miłosz, Wisława Szymborska, or Adam Zagajewski. She is a philosophical poet, making frequent reference to the tradition of the Frankfurt School, in order to ironize the Enlightenment, Marxism, and Critical Theory, but also in order to assess the dangers of globalization. The focus (...) of the analysis is Lipska’s volume 1999, the linchpin of a poetic project that engages centuries of social systems (political, economic, scientific, technological, artistic) and their vocabularies in order to examine the viability of human knowledge and the motivations underlying its creation. (shrink)

In acting intentionally, it is no accident that one is doing what one intends to do. In this paper, I ask how to account for this non-accidentality requirement on intentional action. I argue that, for systematic reasons, the currently prevailing view of intentional action – the Causal Theory of Action – is ill-equipped to account for it. I end by proposing an alternative account, according to which an intention is a special kind of cause, one to which it (...) is essential that it represents its effect. (shrink)

In the etiology of teleological functions, what role can be played by accidental occurrences? Douglas Ehring's essay “Accidental Functions” constructs a theory of ideological functions which makes it possible for objects to have functions even when their causal origins are due entirely to accident—be they natural functions or artifact functions. Ehring constructs this view on the basis of a set of putative counterexamples aimed largely at the theories of Enc and Adams. Both of these theories block the attribution (...) of ideological function to structures with entirely accidental causal histories—accidental in originandin the way their effects are causally sustained. (shrink)

"Alexander's commentary on Book 1 concerns the definition of Aristotelian syllogistic argument; its resistance to the rival Stoic theory of inference; and the character of inductive inference and of rhetorical argument. Alexander distinguishes inseparable accidents, such as the whiteness of snow, from defining differentiae, such as its being frozen, and considers how these differences fit into the schemes of categories. He speaks of dialectic as a stochastic discipline in which success is to be judged not by victory but (...) by skill in argument. Alexander also investigates the subject of ambiguity, which had been richly developed since Aristotle by the rival Stoic school."--BOOK JACKET. (shrink)

This article explores the issues for contemporary critical practice raised by Paul Virilio's engagement with the future. Virilio's project is an ongoing attempt to theorize cultural, political, military and techno-scientific developments in terms both of the speed at which those developments occur and the different speeds which they impose on the modes and forms of existence. Virilio's work represents a key moment in the addressing of what I will call the aporia of speed confronting critical work today. This aporia concerns (...) the need for critical thought to move both slowly - with reference to traditional, established historico-critical interpretative frameworks - and quickly - at the ever-increasing speed of techno-scientific developments that call into question the very viability of those conventional interpretative frameworks. Virilio's engagement with the aporia of speed is necessarily an engagement with the future, for his effort to maintain a critical discourse at the 'leading edge' must encounter the mainstream discourses of a 'future perfect' that accompany, promote and even generate techno-scientific progress. At a more profound level, Virilio's work addresses not only these technophilic discourses but also the humanist conceptions of space, time and history that allow both celebratory and critical discourse to be articulated. My examination of Virilio's encounter with these fundamental conceptions focuses on his theorization of the tendency and the accident, for an understanding of these is crucial to understanding how his work engages with questions of space, time and history. Indeed, Virilio's work is best thought of, I will argue, as an ongoing series of 'tendential analyses' that privilege the accident over the 'substance' of any given techno-scientific development. But these tendential analyses do not posit alternative, more pessimistic accounts of the 'future perfect'. In his paradoxical theorizing of the accident as unforeseeable but nevertheless substantive and non-contingent, Virilio approaches the aporia of speed - the dual necessity and impossibility of critical thought. His work is not so much another futurological discourse as it is a discourse that tends toward an experience of the untimely. It is this tendency that is its most valuable contribution to the criticism of the future. (shrink)

This research examines how the meaning of risk, safety, and accidents are constructed in a military context. We compare meanings of these constructs among members working for three organizations (Health and Safety Executive, Ministry of Defence, and Royal Marine Commandos) jointly responsible for planning and executing "safe" military training and maneuvres in a particular unit of the United Kingdom's Royal Marine Commandos. The discourse among these members embodies the inter-organizational collaboration over military safety, and through an analysis of this discourse (...) we situate and frame shared and contested meanings of risk, safety, and accidents within this particular community of practice. We discuss implications of these findings for theory and practice, rallying for a more contextualized understanding of what risk, safety, and accidents mean in organizational life and thus the relative nature of the standards to which organizations are expected to adhere. (shrink)

While 3/11 has altered energy policies around the world, insufficient attention has focused on reactions from local nuclear power plant host communities and their neighbors throughout Japan. Using site visits to such towns, interviews with relevant actors, and secondary and tertiary literature, this article investigates the community crisis management strategies of two types of cities, towns, and villages: those which have nuclear plants directly in their backyards and neighboring cities further away (within a 30 mile radius). Responses to the disaster (...) have varied with distance to nuclear facilities but in a way contrary to the standard theories based on the concept of the . Officials in communities directly proximal to nuclear power plants by and large remain supportive of Japan's nuclear power program, while those in cities and towns at a distance (along with much of the general public) have displayed strong opposition to the pre 3/11 status quo. Using qualitative data, this article underscores how national energy and crisis response policies rest strongly on the political economy, experiences of, and decisions made at the subnational level. (shrink)

For quite a long time now I have argued against the view, widely held, and forcefully expounded by John Burnet, that at Phaedo 102b2-d2 Plato is formulating the notion of essential attribute and contrasting essence with accident. I have claimed that the essence-accident contrast is absent from that passage. This is a view that others have also held. But I have since 1950 found in that passage a formidable theory of relations. Recently, Professor David Gallop has taken (...) me to task for my heterodoxy. His reaction is overwhelming:I confess that I do not see how such a theory, [A] even if the text were to embody it, [B] could be held to provide an adequate account of relational statements in general. Gallop's paper is very tantalizing. Although he establishes neither A nor B, he does offer a series of very extraordinary arguments, whose examination reveals the depth of Plato's thinking on relations. (shrink)

A familiar feature of our moral responsibility practices are pleas: considerations, such as “That was an accident”, or “I didn’t know what else to do”, that attempt to get agents accused of wrongdoing off the hook. But why do these pleas have the normative force they do in fact have? Why does physical constraint excuse one from responsibility, while forgetfulness or laziness does not? I begin by laying out R. Jay Wallace’s (Responsibility and the moral sentiments, 1994 ) (...) class='Hi'>theory of the normative force of excuses and exemptions. For each category of plea, Wallace offers a single governing moral principle that explains their normative force. The principle he identifies as governing excuses is the Principle of No Blameworthiness without Fault: an agent is blameworthy only if he has done something wrong. The principle he identifies as governing exemptions is the Principle of Reasonableness: an agent is morally accountable only if he is normatively competent. I argue that Wallace’s theory of exemptions is sound, but that his account of the normative force of excuses is problematic, in that it fails to explain the full range of excuses we offer in our practices, especially the excuses of addiction and extreme stress. I then develop a novel account of the normative force of excuses, which employs what I call the “Principle of Reasonable Opportunity,” that can explain the full range of excuses we offer and that is deeply unified with Wallace’s theory of the normative force of exemptions. An important implication of the theory I develop is that moral responsibility requires free will. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Is Biology Like Physics? Laws of Nature: The Standard Picture Why Not Laws of Biology? The Problem of Exceptions Why Not Laws of Biology? The Problem of Accidentalness A Worked Example: The “Area Law” Evolutionary Accidents as Laws of Functional Biology References Further Reading.

The bulk of Orientalist research regarding Islamic theological literature has neglected Ibāḍī theological opinions related to cosmology, which has led to an incomplete understanding of Islamic theology in the West and to a significant gap in Western scholarship. The omission of this important movement of Islam is understandable, considering the unavailability, lack of publication, circulation and translation of Ibāḍī texts. Therefore, this study seeks to address some of these gaps in the scholarship on early Islamic theology. The goals of this (...) article are: 1) to characterize the classical Ibāḍī theological literature dealing with the atomistic theory of substance and accident; 2) to review the texts of Ibāḍī scholars as they argued and engaged with other Islamic theological schools: pre-Bahshamiyya Muʿtazilites and Ashʿarites , in relation to the atomistic theory of substance and accident during the 3 rd /9 th century; 3) to survey the wide range of opinions among the early Ibāḍī theologians, and to examine the specific sources and themes that may have influenced this multifarious school of thought. Likewise, it is the aim of this article to demonstrate the common features in the Ibāḍī approach to producing theological literature during the formation of Islamic theology, and to explore how these early theologians may have gained access to cosmological themes that predate Islam. Résumé Le gros de la recherche orientaliste consacrée à la littérature théologique islamique a négligé les idées théologiques Ibāḍī à portée cosmologique, ce qui a conduit à une compréhension incomplète de la théologie islamique et à un manque considérable dans la recherche occidentale. L'omission de ce mouvement important de l'Islam est compréhensible étant donné que les textes Ibāḍī ne sont accessibles, publiés, diffusés et traduits que de façon très partielle. Cette étude vise donc à combler certaines de ces lacunes dans la recherche sur la première théologie islamique. Les objectifs de cet article sont de: 1) caractériser la littérature Ibāḍī classique portant sur la théorie atomiste de la substance et de l'accident; 2) examiner les textes d'auteurs Ibāḍī du iii e / ix e siècle dialoguant et discutant avec d'autres écoles théologiques islamiques, à savoir les Muʿtazilites pré-Bahshamiyya et les Ashʿarites , en lien avec la théorie atomiste de la substance et de l'accident; 3) passer en revue le grand nombre d'opinions soutenues parmi les premiers théologiens Ibāḍī, et examiner les sources et les thèmes spécifiques susceptibles d'avoir influencé cette école de pensée diversifiée. Cet article cherche aussi à identifier des traits communs dans l'approche Ibāḍī durant la période de formation de la théologie islamique, et à explorer les voies grâce auxquelles ces premiers théologiens ont pu avoir accès à des thèmes cosmologiques antérieurs à l'Islam. (shrink)

This paper takes as a starting point William Ophul's claim that the last 450 years amount to an 'era of exception' in terms of resource availability. Ophuls suggests that it is no accident that this exceptional era of abundance coincides with the birth and development of liberalism - that liberalism, in other words, would not/could not have occurred without the conditions provided by this era of exception. Some of the ways in which this suggestion might be critically examined are (...) discussed, and attention is drawn to one of its more interesting implications: if liberalism depends on abundance, what kind of political theory do we need if we are entering a new era of scarcity ('peak oil/peak everything')? (shrink)

Taking up Lemke’s (2000) critical questions of how moments add up to lives and social life, we articulate theoretical and methodological frameworks for _perezhivanie_ and becoming, challenging binaries that splinter entangled flows of _perezhivanie_ into frozen categories. Working from a flat CHAT notion of assemblage to develop an ontology of moments, we stress consequentiality, arguing it emerges in intersections of embodied intensities (not only affective, but also indexical, intra-actional, and historic), the dispersed bio-cultural-historical weight of artifacts and practices, and (...) dialogic resonances across moments. Methodologically, we take an ethico-onto-epistemological perspective to systematically study perezhivanie. The bio-ecological model of rich environments (centered around meaningful complexity, agency, and individual optimization) offers both a key framework for understanding becoming and a design framework for transdisciplinary realizations of ethico-onto-epistemological practice. We illustrate these frameworks with examples from four research projects: a university physics lab group doing and writing an experiment, a former pastor managing bipolar disorder and rejecting faith, a sustained social justice education program at a university, and intersections of aging policies, media representations, and stroke survival in Brazil. Finally, we argue that an ontology of moments centered on consequentiality can illuminate _perezhivanie's_ relationship to becoming and that the model of enriched environments offers metrics to assess and design environments. (shrink)

There is, no doubt, a temptation to treat preventions, such as ‘the father’s grabbing the child prevented the accident’, and cases of ‘causation’ by omission, such as ‘the father’s inattention was the cause of the child’s accident’, as cases of genuine causation. I think they are not, and in this paper I defend a theory of what they are. More specifically, the counterfactual theory defended here is that a claim about prevention or ‘causation’ by omission should (...) be understood not as being directly about actual genuine causation but primarily as a counterfactual claim about genuine causation.1 The relation between actual causation and the mere possibility of causation allows my theory to explain both the difference and the similarity between the two notions (causation and prevention/omission). Further, the difference explains certain intuitions we have and the similarity justifies and explains the fact that for practical purposes we usually treat preventions and omissions as if they were genuine causation. Finally, the fact that this counterfactual theory of prevention and omission takes causation as primitive suggests that it is consistent with any theory of causation. This allows us to construct two arguments against what I will call genuinism, the view that cases of prevention and ‘causation’ by omission really are cases of genuine causation. In section II I show that genuinism does not account for the so-called intuition of difference. In section III I outline a number of problems that various theories of causation have with preventions and ‘causation’ by omission. These problems are ipso facto problems for genuinism, whereas I show in section V how the counterfactual theory solves those problems. Further, I answer a genuinist argument based on another type of intuition—the genuinist intuition—by showing why we have that intuition and how it should be handled (section VI). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:IntroductionConformément à la tradition des commentateurs de la Physique d'Aristote au xiiie siècle, Walter Burley a étudié avant 1320 de façon approfondie le rapport entre matière, substance et quantité en reprenant avec exhaustivité les théories avicénienne et averroïste sur la quantification de la matière première. Selon Avicenne, la matière est dimensionnée grâce à une forme inséparable d'elle et éternelle appartenant à la catégorie de substance. Contrairement à Avicenne, Averroès, (...) auquel se réfère Burley le plus souvent, soutient que la matière pourrait être quantifiée par une autre forme corporelle distincte d'elle ou dimension indéterminée qui serait de nature quantitative et accidentelle et donnerait à la matière son extension et sa capacité à recevoir différentes formes. L'objet de cette étude est de montrer que la première partie du Traité des formes réunit les principales sources sur les théories quantitatives de la matière chez Burley et témoigne d'un averroïsme teinté d'éclectisme. Nous présenterons d'abord l'économie générale de la première partie du Traité des formes et les foyers d'émergence de ces différentes théories. Nous mettrons alors en évidence trois conceptions parfois contradictoires de Burley sur la nature de ces dimensions, avant d'exposer un exemple remarquable d'averroïsme dans la discussion sur la composition des corps mixtes.les foyers d'emergence des theories quantitatives de la matiere dans le traite La première partie du Traité des formes est consacrée à l'étude de la matière et des différentes formes qu'elle reçoit lors de la génération et de la corruption. Elle présente six volets principaux dans sa structure d'ensemble: une première définition de la matière, une définition de la forme substantielle, un approfondissement de la nature de la matière première, une étude sur les conditions de réception des formes par la matière, un inventaire des difficultés sur la coexistence des différentes formes dans la matière, une longue conclusion sur le statut des formes accidentelles et le statut des universaux.Les différentes conceptions des dimensions indéterminées apparaissent dans le second, le quatrième, puis le sixième volet. Dans la seconde partie, Burley définit la nature de la forme substantielle, qui est la matière perfectionnée et non la quiddité du composé ou la forme accidentelle. La forme substantielle confère l'essence à ce qui est, elle perfectionne immédiatement la matière, alors que la forme accidentelle perfectionne immédiatement le composé. Burley recourt à la doctrine des dimensions indéterminées en exposant deux versions différentes qu'il rend complémentaires, la version averroïste et la version égidienne. Dans la quatrième étape du traité, Burley présente la théorie d'Avicenne selon lequel les dimensions indéterminées présentent une forme de corporéité inséparable de la matière lui permettant la réception des formes. Dans la sixième et dernière partie, Burley utilise la théorie d'Averroès contre Avicenne dans deux aspects de la discussion sur la composition des corps mixtes: la subsistance des formes élémentaires dans la matière des corps mixtes, puis dans les changements substantiel et qualitatif.Les trois conceptions des dimensions indeterminees dans le traiteLa position éclectique de Burley: une résistance traditionnelle à la conception averroïsteBurley reprend le plus souvent la théorie averroïste des dimensions indéterminées mais, comme la majorité de ses contemporains, Burley peine à admettre que des accidents inhérents à la matière puissent précéder le principe de la génération, la forme substantielle, qui donne l'être à tout ce qui advient dans la matière. Dans la seconde partie du traité, avant d'introduire la doctrine averroïste sur les dimensions indéterminées, Burley rappelle l'ordre ontologique entre forme substantielle et forme accidentelle dans la perfection de la matière:A propos de la forme qui parfait la matière, il faut savoir qu'une forme, d'une part, parfaisant la matière est substantielle, et qu'une autre forme, d'autre part, est accidentelle, et qu'entre ces deux formes existe une double différence. La première différence est que la forme substantielle donne l'être simple au composé dont elle est la forme, alors que la forme accidentelle donne l'être selon.. (shrink)

The problem of human freedom have been addressed by al-Mutakallimūn (Islamic theologians) in the context of human acts and discussed from the point of view its relation with the will and other elements. At this point, whether the human has will and power in his own act, the limits of his will and power, the role of human in the act and his responsibilities have prompted to different debates. The theory of tawlīd put forward by Mu‘tazila is very crucial (...) in terms of determining the scope and limits of the freedom of human in acts. Mu‘tazila’s tawlīd theory defenses based on two important reasons. The first is to present the nature and limits of the acts that man did them outside himself. The other is to explain the relationship of human with such acts with regards to moral responsibility. Because both issues are very important in the principle of justice of Mu‘tazila. The effort to put the cause-effect relationship of human with his acts in terms of tawhīd and justice on the rational and moral ground is the reason for emergence of the theory. In this respect, the purpose of this theory which enables establishing a causality relationship between the human act and nature is aimed at the justification of freedom and responsibility between agent (fā‘il) and act.In this study, firstly, the definition of the concept of tawlīd and its meaning area have been presented and tackled the discussions about the agent of indirect acts. And then it has been discoursed upon the criticisms of Ahl al-Sunna about the subject of tawlīd. The subject has been outlined in the context of the intellectual discussion between Ahl al-Sunna and Mu‘tazila which constitute the dominant part of theological dispute tradition. In this respect, the main purpose of the study is to reveal how the limits of indirect actions belonging to human by force of freedom and moral responsibility are drawn and understood.Although they did not have a uniform thought about the topic, Mu‘tazila theologians who accepted semi-determinism in the theory of tawlīd acknowledged the existence of natures in the substances. Those who admitted the reason as a means of the act did not approve this. By accepting the continuity of the accidents in the acts, they twisted together the voluntary acts and the natural acts, and accepted that directly acts were realized through the human will and the other according to the principle of necessity. According to Mu‘tazila, causes are only means. Hence, the act emerging as a result of the means is the act of the agent who used this means to reach the result, not the means. Therefore, man is the agent of engendered acts and responsible for all kinds of acts that arise as a reflection of the will and their consequences. While Ahl al-Sunna has directly associated the action of man and all its consequences with the power of Allah, Mu‘tazila has based these actions on the power of man, which Allah has created in man and has been the source of the acts. Contrary to Mu‘tazila, the continuance of power which are not a constant accident is not possible for a second act from the point of Ahl al-Sunna since they have accepted the idea that the accidents will not be continuous. In this respect, according to Ahl al-Sunna, there is no compulsory relationship between the agent that caused the formation of the acts and the result supervening from them. They did not accept the idea of tawlīd, which its meaning is that accident gives birth to accident, because it would oblige the relationship between cause and effect. Because this relationship, which Mu‘tazila gives the name of tawlīd in human acts, is made up for that Allah has created His laws right after the orientation of human to the cause. In this respect, Ahl al-Sunna thinkers rejected tawlīd because it would mean attributing an act to an inanimate being and require a mandatory relationship between cause and effect in the functioning of the universe. Although the result does not occur with his own act when the person applies to the cause, he is responsible for his act because it is related to the person who did it. Māturīdī tradition did not accept the acts that emerged as a result of tawlīd as the production of man, but they tried to establish a balance by holding the person responsible because he is the reason for the outcome that emerged. As for the Ash‘arites, they avoided giving a real effect of the will and power to the causes by considering that created will and power is only a locus in the emergence of the act. The person has no effect on his act except for directing his will to that act and his behavior which will make the person responsible is based on this will. (shrink)

The eight relatively short papers in this volume were first presented at the International Institute of Philosophy Entretiens held at Helsinki in 1970. Four main topics are considered: the definition of knowledge, memory, Wittgenstein’s theory of knowledge, and evidence. Representing the first topic, B. A. O. Williams’ paper "Knowledge and Reasons" is chiefly directed toward examining the role of reasons in knowledge. His main thesis is that when speaking in general about knowledge, it is not necessary either that "the (...) knower be able to support or ground his true belief by reference to other propositions" or "that he be in any special state" concerning his belief. Yet it is necessary that, "given the truth of p, it is no accident that A believes p rather than not-p." The author is quick to indicate that this formula is highly schematic and, as an analysis of knowledge, insufficient. A. J. Ayer, as commentator on Williams’ paper, tends to concur with and further amplify a number of Williams’ ideas. However, he does take issue with Williams on two main points: his remarks on the possibility of "radically impersonal knowledge" and his formula that true belief should not be accidental. Concerning the latter, Ayer, while aware of the outline form of Williams’ argument, is "sceptical of its power to yield a precise formula which would differentiate between knowledge and true belief" in a satisfactory manner. (shrink)

Quand on parle d'une substance et de ses accidents, peut-on dire que tous deux sont des etants au meme sens? Quand on parle de Dieu et de ses creatures, peut-on dire que tous les deux sont bons ou justes au meme sens? Quand on parle d'une potion et d'un animal, peut-on dire que tous les deux sont sains au meme sens? Telles sont les problematiques metaphysiques, theologiques et semantiques que la notion d'analogie developpee par les penseurs du Moyen Age cherche (...) a affronter. Les quatre etudes, issues des Conferences Pierre Abelard presentees a l'Universite de Paris-IV Sorbonne en 2004, examinent les modes complexes selon lesquels ces trois problematiques se sont croisees et les questionnements nouveaux auxquels elles ont donne lieu pendant plus de quatre siecles. L'auteur interprete la pensee de Thomas d'Aquin dans le contexte qui en a permis l'emergence, et analyse les critiques qui ont suivi, ainsi que les reponses nouvelles qui ont ete avancees. Ce faisant, elle jette une lumiere nouvelle sur les rapports entre l'Aquinate et le Cardinal Cajetan, et sur l'importance de la semantique durant la periode medievale. (shrink)

In this paper I offer a fresh interpretation of Leibniz’s theory of space, in which I explain the connection of his relational theory to both his mathematical theory of analysis situs and his theory of substance. I argue that the elements of his mature theory are not bare bodies (as on a standard relationalist view) nor bare points (as on an absolutist view), but situations. Regarded as an accident of an individual body, a situation (...) is the complex of its angles and distances to other co-existing bodies, founded in the representation or state of the substance or substances contained in the body. The complex of all such mutually compatible situations of co-existing bodies constitutes an order of situations, or instantaneous space. Because these relations of situation change from one instant to another, space is an accidental whole that is continuously changing and becoming something different, and therefore a phenomenon. As Leibniz explains to Clarke, it can be represented mathematically by supposing some set of existents hypothetically (and counterfactually) to remain in a fixed mutual relation of situation, and gauging all subsequent situations in terms of transformations with respect to this initial set. Space conceived in terms of such allowable transformations is the subject of Analysis Situs. Finally, insofar as space is conceived in abstraction from any bodies that might individuate the situations, it encompasses all possible relations of situation. This abstract space, the order of all possible situations, is an abstract entity, and therefore ideal. (shrink)

In the Dutch debates on Cartesianism of the 1640s, a minority believed that some Cartesian views were in fact Calvinist ones. The paper argues that, among others, a likely precursor of this position is the Aristotelian Franco Burgersdijk (1590-1635), who held a reductionist view of accidents and of the essential extension of matter on Calvinist grounds. It seems unlikely that Descartes was unaware of these views. The claim is that Descartes had two aims in his Replies to Arnauld: to show (...) the compatibility of res extensa and the Catholic transubstantiation but also to differentiate the res extensa from some views of matter explicitly defended by some Calvinists. The association with Calvinism will be eventually used polemically against Cartesianism, for example in France. The paper finally suggests that, notwithstanding the points of conflict, the affinities between the theologically relevant theories of accidents, matter and extension ultimately facilitated the dissemination of Cartesianism among the Calvinists. (shrink)

Searching for information is critical in many situations. In medicine, for instance, careful choice of a diagnostic test can help narrow down the range of plausible diseases that the patient might have. In a probabilistic framework, test selection is often modeled by assuming that people's goal is to reduce uncertainty about possible states of the world. In cognitive science, psychology, and medical decision making, Shannon entropy is the most prominent and most widely used model to formalize probabilistic uncertainty and the (...) reduction thereof. However, a variety of alternative entropy metrics (Hartley, Quadratic, Tsallis, Rényi, and more) are popular in the social and the natural sciences, computer science, and philosophy of science. Particular entropy measures have been predominant in particular research areas, and it is often an open issue whether these divergences emerge from different theoretical and practical goals or are merely due to historical accident. Cutting across disciplinary boundaries, we show that several entropy and entropy reduction measures arise as special cases in a unified formalism, the Sharma–Mittal framework. Using mathematical results, computer simulations, and analyses of published behavioral data, we discuss four key questions: How do various entropy models relate to each other? What insights can be obtained by considering diverse entropy models within a unified framework? What is the psychological plausibility of different entropy models? What new questions and insights for research on human information acquisition follow? Our work provides several new pathways for theoretical and empirical research, reconciling apparently conflicting approaches and empirical findings within a comprehensive and unified information-theoretic formalism. (shrink)

This paper develops a methodology for using Activity Theory (AT) to investigate pedagogical practices in primary school mathematics classrooms by selecting object-oriented pedagogical activity as the unit of analysis. While an understanding of object-oriented activity is central to Activity Theory (AT), the notion of object is a frequently debated and often misunderstood one. The conceptual confusion surrounding the object arises both from difficulties related to translating the original Russian conceptualisation of object-oriented activity into English as well as from (...) the different interpretations of the object currently in use within two contemporary approaches in activity theory. This paper seeks to clarify understandings of the object by exploring notions of object oriented activity. To this end, the paper traces the historical development of the object through Leontiev (1978; 1981) and Engeström’s (1987; 1999) expansion of Vygotsky’s original triadic understanding of object oriented activity. Drawing on Basil Bernstein’s (1996) notion of evaluative criteria as those rules that transmit the criteria for the production of a legitimate text, the paper goes on to elaborate a methodology for using AT to analyse observational data by developing the notion of “evaluative episodes” as pedagogical moments in which the pedagogical object is made visible. Findings indicate that an evaluative episode can serve as an analytical space in which the dynamism of an activity system is momentarily frozen, enabling one to model human activity in the system under investigation and, hence, in this study, to understand pedagogy in context. (shrink)

To judge from the dust-jacket, this book has received a considerable amount of praise--and not just from the usual suspects. In particular, the publishers seem keen to promulgate the view that there is widespread support for the claim that Overman makes a clear, compelling, and well-argued case for the conclusions which he wishes to defend. However, it seems to me that those cited on the dust-jacket--Pannenberg ("lucid and sobering arguments"), Polkinghorne ("scrupulously argued"), Nicholi ("compelling logic and carefully reasoned argument"), Kaita (...) ("cogent and lucid"), Gingerich ("interesting and convincing"), Behe ("compelling case"), and McGrath ("clear and informed arguments")--cannot have been commenting on the book which I am currently in the process of reviewing. True enough, the book is well-organised and mostly easy to read; moreover, the book clearly demonstrates that Overman is thoroughly acquainted with popular presentations of recent work in a variety of scientific fields. But the crucial question is whether it makes a clear, compelling, and well-argued case for the conclusions which Overman wishes to defend. I shall claim in this review that the book fails on all three counts. (shrink)