Leo Strauss insistiert, dass jedes Ereignis mehr als nur ein singuläres Nu im Fortgang der Geschichte ist, und mehr zu sein hat als ein Eintrag im historischen Protokoll. Stattdessen muss sich historisches Verstehen am Begriff des Menschen und am Ideal der guten Gesellschaft orientieren. Nur so lässt sich eine ethische Verantwortlichkeit menschlichen Tuns einfordern. Folgt man dieser Prämisse, dann bleibt Raul Hilbergs eigenes Unbehagen an seinem Ansatz, die Ereignisse des Holocaust zu sichten und sie immanent zu- und anzuordnen, bestehen; einem (...) solchen Ansatz verschließt sich selbst ein nur anfängliches Verstehen des Holocaust. In der Warum-Frage jedoch, in der sich ein bloß historisches in ein ethisches Fragen wandelt, öffnet sich eine Möglichkeit, dem Rätsel auf die Spur zu kommen. (shrink)

Die Gegner der Finalisierungsthese setzen sich in der Regel nur mit dem Projektentwurf der Starnberger Gruppe, nicht mit ihren substantiellen Forschungen, noch viel weniger mit der Sache selbst auseinander, so auch M. Tietzel in Z. f. allg. Wissenschaftstheorie IX, 2, 1978. Als Replik wird deshalb hier ein Stück dieser substantiellen Untersuchungen veröffentlicht: Es geht um die Frage, ob dem Begriff "abgeschlossene Theorie" ein ausweisbarer Sinn gegeben werden kann. Dies wird untersucht durch Analyse der Theoriestruktur der klassischen Hydrodynamik. Hier läßt sich (...) eine systematische Beziehung zwischen der Struktur der Theorie und der empirischen Charakterisierung der Gegenstände, auf die sie sich bezieht , nachweisen. Die Theorie wird also mit Notwendigkeit gültig sein, kann also in diesem Sinne auf der entsprechenden Gegenstandsklasse als abgeschlossen angesehen werden. (shrink)

Why does one theory "succeed" while another, possibly clearer interpretation, fails? By exploring two observationally equivalent yet conceptually incompatible views of quantum mechanics, James T. Cushing shows how historical contingency can be crucial to determining a theory's construction and its position among competing views. Since the late 1920s, the theory formulated by Niels Bohr and his colleagues at Copenhagen has been the dominant interpretation of quantum mechanics. Yet an alternative interpretation, rooted in the work of Louis de Broglie in the (...) early 1920s and reformulated and extended by David Bohm in the 1950s, equally well explains the observational data. Through a detailed historical and sociological study of the physicists who developed different theories of quantum mechanics, the debates within and between opposing camps, and the receptions given to each theory, Cushing shows that despite the preeminence of the Copenhagen view, the Bohm interpretation cannot be ignored. Cushing contends that the Copenhagen interpretation became widely accepted not because it is a better explanation of subatomic phenomena than is Bohm's, but because it happened to appear first. Focusing on the philosophical, social, and cultural forces that shaped one of the most important developments in modern physics, this provocative book examines the role that timing can play in the establishment of theory and explanation. (shrink)

The de Broglie–Bohm interpretation is a no-collapse interpretation, which implies that we are in principle surrounded by empty waves generated by all particles of the universe, empty waves that will never collapse. It is common to establish an analogy between these pilot-waves and 3D radio-waves, which are nearly devoided of energy but carry nevertheless information to which we may have access after an amplification process. Here we show that this analogy is limited: if we consider empty waves in configuration space, (...) an effective collapse occurs when a detector clicks and the 3ND empty wave associated to a particle may not influence another particle (even if these two particles are identical, e.g. bosons as in the example considered here). (shrink)

We consider the special and general relativistic extensions of the action principle behind the Schrödinger equation distinguishing classical and quantum contributions. Postulating a particular quantum correction to the source term in the classical Einstein equation we identify the conformal content of the above action and obtain classical gravitation for massive particles, but with a cosmological term representing off-mass-shell contribution to the energy–momentum tensor. In this scenario the—on the Planck scale surprisingly small—cosmological constant stems from quantum bound states having a Bohr (...) radius a as being \. (shrink)

We are often told that quantum phenomena demand radical revisions of our scientific world view and that no physical theory describing well defined objects, such as particles described by their positions, evolving in a well defined way, let alone deterministically, can account for such phenomena. The great majority of physicists continue to subscribe to this view, despite the fact that just such a deterministic theory, accounting for all of the phe nomena of nonrelativistic quantum mechanics, was proposed by David Bohm (...) more than four decades ago and has arguably been around almost since the inception of quantum mechanics itself. Our purpose in asking colleagues to write the essays for this volume has not been to produce a Festschrift in honor of David Bohm or to gather together a collection of papers simply stating uncritically Bohm's views on quantum mechanics. The central theme around which the essays in this volume are arranged is David Bohm's version of quantum mechanics. It has by now become fairly standard practice to refer to his theory as Bohmian mechanics and to the larger conceptual framework within which this is located as the causal quantum theory program. While it is true that one can have reservations about the appropriateness of these specific labels, both do elicit distinc tive images characteristic of the key concepts of these approaches and such terminology does serve effectively to contrast this class of theories with more standard formulations of quantum theory. (shrink)

From Bohm-Bawerk on, political economists have seemingly blown great holes in Marxism, disproving its key concepts and falsifying Marx's predictions. In this book, Geoffrey Pilling maintains that even the most devastating of such factual analyses are fruitless because they misconstrue the nature of Marx's critique. In Pilling's presentation, Marx's critique of political economy is not "economic" but philosophic. In criticizing political economy, Marx transcends it and in so doing is essentially immune from any analysis which turns on "facts." According to (...) Pilling, "Marx's work cannot be reduced to a series of results, to be tested against the 'facts' of capitalist development". Pilling, following the lead of Lenin, seeks to overturn the "shallow empiricism" which has led to the degeneration of Marxism. It is Pilling's aim to recover the "philosophical method" of Capital, i.e., to re-work Capital in the light of Hegel's Logic, to rehabilitate dialectic over empiricism. Pilling begins by showing how "... Marx's critique of political economy [is] of a philosophic nature, rather than one concerned with the details of economic theory alone". Marx, as we know, rejects the individualism of political economy which derives from Locke. He condemns the uncritical and "ahistorical" character of political economy, i.e., the tendency to treat the categories of economics as natural. According to Pilling's. (shrink)

Bruce Caldwell has disputed a number of points in my earlier account of the development of the Austrian school of economics from Carl Menger to Ludwig von Mises and F.A. Hayek. The issues in contention regard Friedrich von Wieser’s intellectual affiliation with Hayek and his influence on the formation of Hayek’s economic thought; Wieser’s status as a general equilibrium theorist; and the reason for Hayek’s early flirtation with general equilibrium theory. In this article I argue that Hayek was a self-conscious (...) adherent of the Wieserian tradition and remained so even after he received the Nobel Prize in 1974 and that he distinguished between this tradition and the Böhm-Bawerkian tradition followed by Ludwig von Mises. I also contend that Wieser used the construction of a general equilibrium economy subject to a single will as both a normative benchmark by which to appraise the performance of the real-world market economy and as an analytical tool to explain the formation of market prices. Finally, I argue that Hayek concerned himself with the problems of the Wieser-type general equilibrium economy beginning with his earliest writings as a professional economist, years before he began to focus on the theoretical problems of money and the business cycle.Bruce Caldwell a discuté un certain nombre de points de mon article récent sur le développement de l’école autrichienne d’économie de Carl Menger en passant par Ludwig von Mises et F.A. Hayek. Les controverses concernant l’affiliation intellectuelle de Hayek vis-à-vis de Friedrich von Wieser et l’influence de ce dernier sur la pensée économique de Hayek, le statut de Wieser en tant que théoricien de l’équilibre général, et les raisons pour lesquelles le jeune Hayek flirta avec la théorie de l’équilibre général.Dans cet article je défends la thèse selon laquelle Hayek était conscient du fait qu’il s’inscrivait dans la tradition Wieserienne et qu’il l’était toujours même après sa réception du prix Nobel en 1974 et quand il fît la distinction entre cette tradition et la tradition inaugurée par Böhm-Bawerk et poursuivie par Mises. L’article affirme aussi que Wieser utilisa la construction d’une économie en équilibre général sujette à une volonté unique à la fois comme standard normatif pour évaluer les performances des marchés dans le monde réel et comme outil analytique pour expliquer la formation des prix marchands. Enfin, l’article argumente que Hayek s’intéressa aux problèmes relevant d’une économie en équilibre général à la Wieser dans ses premiers écrits en tant qu’économiste et cela bien avant qu’il ne se concentrât sur les problèmes théoriques de la monnaie et du cycle des affaires. (shrink)

The French liberal school, the school of Frédéric Bastiat, thoroughly dominated economics in France for most of the nineteenth century. In addition, the school exercised a profound influence on the development of nineteenth-century economic theory outside France, particularly in countries such as Italy, Germany and Austria where its merits were recognized by eminent Continental marginalists including Böhm-Bawerk, Cassel, Wicksell and Pareto. In the United States, Great Britain and Australia, also, the school inspired a number of important economic theorists and (...) movements such as William Stanley Jevons and the American catallactic tradition. Yet despite its significant international influence, the school has been almost completely neglected by Englishspeaking economists and doctrinal scholars after World War One. In this paper, I suggest that the resolution of this puzzle lies in a conjunction of peculiar institutional and doctrinal circumstances that accompanied the professionalization of economics in France, Great Britain and the United States.L’école libérale française, celle de Frédéric Bastiat, domina totalement la pensée économique en France pendant une majeure partie du dixneuvième siècle. De plus, l’école exerça une influence profonde sur le développement de la théorie économique à l’extérieur de la France, en particulier dans des pays tels que l’Allemagne et l’Autriche. Dans ces pays, les mérites de l’école furent reconnus par des marginalistes continentaux aussi éminents que Böhm-Bawerk, Cassel, Wicksell et Pareto. L’école inspira aussi un nombre important d’économistes et de mouvements aux Etats-Unis, en Angleterre et en Australie tels que William Stanley Jevons et la tradition catallactique américaine. Néanmoins, en dépit de cette influence internationale, l’école a été presque totalement négligée par les économistes de langue anglaise et par les penseurs doctrinaux après la première guerre mondiale. Dans cet article, l’auteur suggère que la solution à cette énigme se trouve dans la conjonction de circonstances institutionnelles et doctrinales particulières qui accompagna la professionnalisation de l’économie en France, en Grande- Bretagne et aux Etats-Unis. (shrink)

It is generally believed that Bohm's version of quantum mechanics is observationally equivalent to standard quantum mechanics. A more careful statement is that the two theories will always make the same predictions for any question or problem that is well posed in both interpretations. The transit time of a “particle” between two points in space is not necessarily well defined in standard quantum mechanics, whereas it is in Bohm's theory since there is always a particle following a definite trajectory. For (...) this reason tunneling times (in a scattering configuration through a potential barrier may be a situation in which Bohm's theory can make a definite prediction when standard quantum mechanics can make none at all. I summarize some of the theoretical and experimental prospects for an unambiguous comparison in the hope that this question will engage the attention of more physicists, especially those experimentalists who now routinely actually do gedanken experiments. (shrink)

We propose a new approach to describe quantum mechanics as a manifestation of non-Euclidean geometry. In particular, we construct a new geometrical space that we shall call Qwist. A Qwist space has a extra scalar degree of freedom that ultimately will be identified with quantum effects. The geometrical properties of Qwist allow us to formulate a geometrical version of the uncertainty principle. This relativistic uncertainty relation unifies the position-momentum and time-energy uncertainty principles in a unique relation that recover both of (...) them in the non-relativistic limit. (shrink)

A comparison is made between the Bohm trajectory and Feynman path approaches to the long-standing problem of determining the average lime taken for a particle described by the Schrödinger wave function ψ to tunnel through a potential barrier. The former approach follows simply and uniquely from the basic postulates of Bohm's causal interpretation of quantum mechanics; the latter is intimately related to the most frequently cited approaches based on conventional interpretations. Emphasis is given to the fact that fundamentally different transmission (...) (T)-reflection (R) decompositions, particlelike and wavelike respectively, are central to the two methods: ¦ψ¦2=[¦ψ¦2]T+[¦ψ¦2]R (Bohm trajectory approach); ψ=ψT+ψR (Feynman path approach). (shrink)

This "axiom" must be used with great care. It is well-known that the formalism of Relativistic Quantum Field Theory (RQFT) is 'Relativistic" in the sense that it allows no "signal" to be transmitted faster than the speed of light. So RQFT does conform to "The FIN Axiom" if by "effectively transmitted" one is referring to the transmission of a "signal". Here a "signal" means a controllable dependence of a faraway observable upon a sender's choices (of how he will act); a (...) dependence that affects the faraway situation in a way that would allow the sender to convey information available to him, the sender, to a faraway observer. (shrink)

Elay Shech and John Earman have recently argued that the common topological interpretation of the Aharonov–Bohm (AB) effect is unsatisfactory because it fails to justify idealizations that it presupposes. In particular, they argue that an adequate account of the AB effect must address the role of boundary conditions in certain ideal cases of the effect. In this paper I defend the topological interpretation against their criticisms. I consider three types of idealization that might arise in treatments of the effect. First, (...) Shech takes the AB effect to involve an idealization in the form of a singular limit, analogous to the thermodynamic limit in statistical mechanics. But, I argue, the AB effect itself features no singular limits, so it doesn’t involve idealizations in this sense. Second, I argue that Shech and Earman’s emphasis on the role of boundary conditions in the AB effect is misplaced. The idealizations that are useful in connecting the theoretical description of the AB effect to experiment do interact with facts about boundary conditions, but none of these idealizations are presupposed by the topological interpretation of the effect. Indeed, the boundary conditions for which Shech and demands justification are incompatible with some instances of the AB effect, so the topological interpretation ought not justify them. Finally, I address the role of the non-relativistic approximation usually presumed in discussions of the AB effect. This approximation is essential if—as the topological interpretation supposes—the AB effect constrains and justifies a relativistic theory of the electromagnetic interaction. In this case the ends justify the means. So the topological view presupposes no unjustified idealizations. (shrink)

This paper examines the nature of classical correspondence in the case of coherent states at the level of quantum trajectories. We first show that for a harmonic oscillator, the coherent state complex quantum trajectories and the complex classical trajectories are identical to each other. This congruence in the complex plane, not restricted to high quantum numbers alone, illustrates that the harmonic oscillator in a coherent state executes classical motion. The quantum trajectories we consider are those conceived in a modified de (...) Broglie-Bohm scheme. Though quantum trajectory representations are widely discussed in recent years, identical classical and quantum trajectories for coherent states are obtained only in the present approach. We may note that this result for standard harmonic oscillator coherent states is not totally unexpected because of their holomorphic nature. The study is extended to coherent states of a particle in an infinite potential well and that in a symmetric Poschl-Teller potential by solving for the trajectories numerically. For the Gazeau-Klauder coherent state of the infinite potential well, almost identical classical and quantum trajectories are obtained whereas for the Poschl-Teller potential, though classical trajectories are not regained, a periodic motion results as t→∞. Similar features were found for the SUSY quantum mechanics-based coherent states of the Poschl-Teller potential too, but this time the pattern of complex trajectories is quite different from that of the previous case. Thus we find that the method is a potential tool in analyzing the properties of generalized coherent states. (shrink)

I study in detail a proposal made by T. H. Boyer in an attempt to explain classically the Aharonov-Bohm (AB) effect. Boyer claims that in an AB experiment, the perturbation the external incident particle produces on the charge and current distributions within the solenoid will affect back the motion of the external particle. With a qualitative analysis based on energetic considerations, Boyer seemed to arrive at the conclusion that this perturbation could give account of the AB effect. In this paper (...) I make explicit calculations which show that Boyer's conjecture fails. Indeed I find that the perturbation produced on the solenoid, and then its effect on the external charge, is independent of the solenoid current and consequently cannot account for the AB effect, which is current dependent. (shrink)

The Energy-Time Uncertainty (ETU) has always been a problem-ridden relation, its problems stemming uniquely from the perplexing question of how to understand this mysterious Δ t . On the face of it (and, indeed, far deeper than that), we always know what time it is. Few theorists were ignorant of the fact that time in quantum mechanics is exogenously defined, in no ways intrinsically related to the system. Time in quantum theory is an independent parameter, which simply means independently known (...) . In the early 1960s Aharonov (1961-64) and Bohm (1961-64) mounted a spirited attack against the ETU, which sealed its fate to the present date. By emphasising that time is always “well-defined” in quantum theory, they were led to the conclusion that no ETU should exist, a view shared by many in the 1990s, if Busch (1990) is to be believed. In a similar vein, I emphasize that (a) physical systems occupy a particular energy state at a particular instant of time, if at all; (b) even in absence of all time-measuring instruments, it is still trivially warranted that one can measure a system's energy as accurately as one pleases, and simply announce “The system's energy is exactly E NOW!”, a possibility which no quantum mechanics of any sort, or any physical theory whatsoever, can afford to tamper with or change, except circularly. One never loses one's own perception of time, when one measures the energy, a fact which no measurement conceivable can interfere with or affect. Both (a) and (b) uniquely entail that energy and time are compatible, if not indeed intimately interconnected, contrary to what the relevant uncertainty seems to affirm. In response to Aharonov's and Bohm's initial problem, I reinterpret ΔEΔt ≥ h , as directly derived from authentic quantum principles, without however having to assume a direct incompatibility between its related concepts, attributing their complementarity to conditions other than ordinarily assumed. (shrink)

Als atmospharisch bergendes Gefuhl steht Heimat in einem fruchtbaren Spannungsfeld vielfaltiger gesellschaftlicher Einflusse. In Zeiten der Globalisierung verandern sich die Voraussetzungen fur die Konstitution von Heimat insbesondere durch Mobilitat, Migration, soziale Unsicherheit und Ideologisierung. Die Beitrage des Bandes diskutieren das Spannungsfeld von Eigenem und Fremdem aus verschiedenen theoretischen Perspektiven. Mit Beitragen von Amalia Barboza, Gernot Bohme, Simone Egger, Jurgen Hasse, Karen Joisten, Reinhard Knodt, Hermann Schmitz, Carolin Stapenhorst und Nina Trcka.

It is generally argued that if the wave-function in the de Broglie–Bohm theory is a physical field, it must be a field in configuration space. Nevertheless, it is possible to interpret the wave-function as a multi-field in three-dimensional space. This approach hasn’t received the attention yet it really deserves. The aim of this paper is threefold: first, we show that the wave-function is naturally and straightforwardly construed as a multi-field; second, we show why this interpretation is superior to other interpretations (...) discussed in the literature; third, we clarify common misconceptions. (shrink)

‘PHILOSOPHY, or the doctrine and discipline of ideas’, as S. T. Coleridge understood it, is the theme of this book. It considers the most vital and mature vein of Coleridge’s thought to be ‘the contemplation of ideas objectively, as existing powers’. A theory of ideas emerges in critical engagement with thinkers including Plato, Plotinus, Böhme, Kant, and Schelling. A commitment to the transcendence of reason, central to what he calls ‘the spiritual platonic old England’, distinguishes him from his German contemporaries. (...) The book also engages with Coleridge’s poetry, especially in a culminating chapter dedicated to the ‘Limbo’ sequence. This book pursues a theory of contemplation that draws from discussions of imagination and the ‘Ideas of Reason’ in Coleridge’s published texts and extensively from his unpublished works, fragments, letters, and notebooks. He posited a hierarchy of cognition from basic sense intuition to the apprehension of scientific, ethical, and theological ideas. The structure of the book follows this thesis, beginning with sense data, moving upwards into aesthetic experience, imagination, and reason, with final chapters on formal logic and poetry that constellate the contemplation of ideas. Coleridge’s Contemplative Philosophy is not just a work of intellectual history, it addresses a figure whose thinking is of continuing interest, arguing that contemplation of ideas and values has consequences for everyday morality and aesthetics, as well as metaphysics. The volume will be of interest to philosophers, intellectual historians, scholars of religion, and of literature. (shrink)

Ein kritischer Literaturbericht zu: Gernot Böhme, Die Natur vor uns. Naturphilosophie in pragmatischer Hinsicht. Kusterdingen : Die Graue Edition. 2002; M. Drieschner, Moderne Naturphilosophie. Eine Einführung. Paderborn : Mentis. 2002; M. Esfeld, Einführung in die Naturphilosophie. Darmstadt : Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. 2002; T. S. Hoffmann, Philosophische Physiologie. Eine Systematik des Begriffs der Natur im Spiegel der Geschichte der Philosophie. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt : Frommann-Holzboog. 2003; R. Huber, Natur-Erkenntnis. Band 1. Naturphilosophie von der Antike bis Descartes. Paderborn : Mentis. 2002; K. Köchy, Perspektiven (...) des Organischen. Biophilosophie zwischen Natur- und Wissenschaftsphilosophie. Paderborn : Schöningh. 2003; H. D. Mutschler, Grundkurs Philosophie: Naturphilosophie [Band 12]. Stuttgart : Kohlhammer. 2002, in: Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung, 58. Jg. (2004), S. 447-456. (shrink)

Philosophy with children often focuses on abstract reasoning skills, but as David Bohm points out the “entire process of mind” consists of our abstract thought as well as our “tacit, concrete process of thought.” Philosophy with children should address the “entire process of mind.” Our tacit, concrete process of thought refers to the process of thought that involves our actions such as the process of thought that goes into riding a bicycle. Bohm contends that we need to develop an awareness (...) or proprioception of thinking as well. When Socrates enters into dialogue with his interlocutors, he shows the limitations of purely abstract thought by leading them to admit that they really “don’t know.” But, of course, they know. We know what bravery is or what love is, even though we can never “explain” these concepts in abstract terms. Life has taught us through experience what these concepts mean and we have developed an understanding of them. We can recognize when a person acts bravely. This is where I see the link between our tacit, concrete process of thought and emotional intelligence. We need emotional intelligence to learn how to be brave, to learn how to love, and be just in the way we act in the world. Knowing what justice is abstractly does not make us act justly. We have to develop awareness of our actions in order to develop the skills necessary to act the part. This is also where emotional intelligence comes in. In the bulletin of the play Romeo and Juliet, director Barry Edelstein wrote the following: “To perform Romeo and Juliet, actors need a series of skills… they must have the emotional and psychological awareness and openness of uncommon depth; they must listen with acuteness, they must possess an imagination of real suppleness and subtlety…” An abstract portrayal would not bring these characters to life. We can surely agree – abstractly – that racism is destructive, but still act racist, without being even slightly aware of it. My contention is that while our abstract sense of racism has evolved, our tacit, concrete knowledge has not, which explains that racism is for the most part still rampant, even though we know abstractly that it is wrong. So how do we educate and develop the awareness of the tacit, concrete knowledge that informs our actions, and develop the emotional intelligence to give a depth of understanding to what we know and believe abstractly. (shrink)

⦿ In my dissertation I introduce, motivate and take the first steps in the implementation of, the project of naturalising modal metaphysics: the transformation of the field into a chapter of the philosophy of science rather than speculative, autonomous metaphysics. -/- ⦿ In the introduction, I explain the concept of naturalisation that I apply throughout the dissertation, which I argue to be an improvement on Ladyman and Ross' proposal for naturalised metaphysics. I also object to Williamson's proposal that modal metaphysics (...) --- or some view in the area --- is already a quasi-scientific discipline. -/- ⦿ Recently, some philosophers have argued that the notion of metaphysical modality is as ill defined as to be of little theoretical utility. In the second chapter I intend to contribute to such skepticism. First, I observe that each of the proposed marks of the concept, except for factivity, is highly controversial; thus, its logical structure is deeply obscure. With the failure of the "first principles" approach, I examine the paradigmatic intended applications of the concept, and argue that each makes it a device for a very specific and controversial project: a device, therefore, for which a naturalist will find no use for. I conclude that there is no well-defined or theoretically useful notion of objective necessity other than logical or physical necessity, and I suggest that naturalising modal metaphysics can provide more stable methodological foundations. -/- ⦿ In the third chapter I answer a possible objection against the in-principle viability of the project: that the concept of metaphysical modality cannot be understood through the philosophical analysis of any scientific theory, since metaphysical necessity "transcends'' natural necessity, and science only deals with the latter. I argue that the most important arguments for this transcendence thesis fail or face problems that, as of today, remain unsolved. -/- ⦿ Call the idea that science doesn't need modality, "demodalism''. Demodalism is a first step in a naturalistic argument for modal antirealism. In the fourth chapter I examine six versions of demodalism to explain why a family of formalisms, that I call "spaces of possibility'', are (i) used in a quasi-ubiquitous way in mathematised sciences (I provide examples from theoretical computer science to microeconomics), (ii) scientifically interpreted in modal terms, and (iii) used for at least six important tasks: (1) defining laws and theories; (2) defining important concepts from different sciences (I give several examples); (3) making essential classifications; (4) providing different types of explanations; (5) providing the connection between theory and statistics, and (6) understanding the transition between a theory and its successor (as is the case with quantisation). -/- ⦿ In fifth chapter I propose and defend a naturalised modal ontology. This is a realism about modal structure: my realism about constraints. The modal structure of a system are the relationships between its possible states and between its possible states and those of other systems. It is given by the plurality of restrictions to which said system is subject. A constraint is a factor that explains the impossibility of a class of states; I explain this concept further. First, I defend my point of view by rejecting some of its main rivals: constructive empiricism, Humean conventionalism, and wave function realism, as they fail to make sense of quantum chaos. This is because the field requires the notion of objective modal structure, and the mentioned views have trouble explaining the modal facts of quantum dynamics. Then, I argue that constraint realism supersedes these views in the context of Bohm's standard theory and mechanics, and underpins the study of quantum chaos. Finally, I consider and reject two possible problems for my point of view. -/- ⦿ A central concern of modal metaphysicians has been to understand the logical system that best characterises necessity. In the sixth chapter I intend to recover the logical project applied to my naturalistic modal metaphysics. Scientists and philosophers of science accept different degrees of physical necessity, ranging from purely mathematically necessary facts that restrict physical behaviour, to kinetic principles, to particular dynamical constraints. I argue that this motivates a multimodal approach to modal logic, and that the time dependence of dynamics motivates a logic of historical necessity. I propose multimodal propositional (classical) logics for Bohmian mechanics and the Everettian theory of many divergent worlds, and I close with a criticism of Williamson's approach to the logic of state spaces of dynamic systems. (shrink)

continent. 1.3 (2011): 149-155. The world is teeming. Anything can happen. John Cage, “Silence” 1 Autonomy means that although something is part of something else, or related to it in some way, it has its own “law” or “tendency” (Greek, nomos ). In their book on life sciences, Medawar and Medawar state, “Organs and tissues…are composed of cells which…have a high measure of autonomy.”2 Autonomy also has ethical and political valences. De Grazia writes, “In Kant's enormously influential moral philosophy, autonomy (...) , or freedom from the causal determinism of nature, became prominent in justifying the human use of animals.”3 One of the oldest uses of autonomy in English is a description of the French civil war from the late sixteenth century: “Others of the…rebellion entred in counsell, whether they ought to admit the King vpon reasonable conditions, specially hauing their autonomy.”4 Life, and in particular human life, and in particular human politics, is well served by the usages of autonomy . What about the rest of reality, however? Should it be thought of, if it's even considered real and mind-independent, as pure stuff for the manipulation or decorative tastes of truly autonomous beings? We tend to think of things such as paperweights and iPhones as mere tools of human design and human use. To use them is to cause them to exist as fully and properly as they can. But according to Martin Heidegger, when a tool such as a paperweight is used, it disappears, or withdraws ( Entzug ). We are preoccupied with copying the page that the paperweight is holding down. We are concerned with an essay deadline, and the paperweight simply disappears into this general project. If the paperweight slips, or if the iPhone freezes, we might notice it. All of a sudden it becomes vorhanden (present-at-hand) rather than zuhanden (ready-to-hand).5 Yet Heidegger is unable to draw a meaningful distinction between what happens to a paperweight when it slips from the book I'm copying from and what happens to the paperweight when it presses on the still resilient pages of the thick paperback itself. Further still and related to this point, even when I am using the paperweight as part of some general task, I am not using the entirety of the paperweight as such. My project itself selects a thin slice of paperweight-being for the purposes of holding down a book. Even when it is zuhanden the paperweight is withdrawn. Graham Harman is the architect of this way of thinking.6 Harman discovered a gigantic coral reef of withdrawn entities beneath the Heideggerian submarine of Da-sein, which itself is operating at an ontological depth way below the choppy surface of philosophy, beset by the winds of epistemology, and infested with the sharks of materialism, idealism, empiricism and most of the other isms that have defined what is and what isn't for the last several hundred years. At a moment when the term ontology was left alone like a piece of well chewed old chewing gum that no one wants to have anything to do with, object-oriented ontology (OOO) has put it back on the table. The coral reef isn't going anywhere and once you have discovered it, you can't un-discover it. And it seems to be teeming with strange facts. The first fact is that the entities in the reef—we call them “objects” somewhat provocatively—constitute all there is: from doughnuts to dogfish to the Dog Star to Dobermans to Snoop Dogg. People, plastic clothes pegs, piranhas and particles are all objects. And they are all pretty much the same, at this depth. There is not much of a distinction between life and non-life (as there isn't in contemporary life science). And there is not much of a distinction between intelligence and non-intelligence (as there is in contemporary artificial intelligence theory). A lot of these distinctions are made by humans, for humans (anthropocentrism). And the concept autonomy has come into play in policing such distinctions. In this essay I shall to try to liberate autonomy for the sake of nonhumans. I shall do so by parsing carefully the title, which is taken from Hakim Bey's work The Temporary Autonomous Zone .8 First we shall explore the term autonomous . Then we shall explore what the full meaning of zone is. Finally, we shall investigate what temporary means. Each of these terms is of great value. An object withdraws from access. This means that its very own parts can't access it. Since an object's parts can't fully express the object, the object is not reducible to its parts. OOO is anti-reductionist. But OOO is also anti-holist. An object can't be reduced to its “whole” either, “reduced upwards” as it were. The whole is not greater than the sum of its parts. So we have a strange irreductionist situation in which an object is reducible neither to its parts nor to its whole. A coral reef is made of coral, fish, seaweed, plankton and so on. But one of these things on its own doesn't embody part of a reef. Yet the reef just is an assemblage of these particular parts. You can't find a coral reef in a parking lot. In this way, the vibrant realness of a reef is kept safe both from its parts and from its whole. Moreover, the reef is safe from being mistaken for a parking lot. Objects can't be reduced to tiny Lego bricks such as atoms that can be reused in other things. Nor can be reduced upwards into instantiations of a global process. A coral reef is an expression of the biosphere or of evolution, yes; but so is this sentence, and we ought to be able to distinguish between coral reefs and sentences in English. The preceding facts go under the heading of undermining . Any attempt to undermine an object—in thought, or with a gun, or with heat, or with the ravages of time or global warming—will not get at the withdrawn essence of the object. By essence is meant something very different from essentialism . This is because essentialism depends upon some aspect of an object that OOO holds to be a mere appearance of that object, an appearance-for some object. This reduction to appearance holds even if that object for which the appearance occurs is the object itself! Even a coral reef can't grasp its essential coral reefness. In essentialism, a superficial appearance is taken for the essence of a thing, or of things in general. In thinking essentialism we may be able to discern another way of avoiding OOO. This is what Harman has christened overmining .? The overminer decides that some things are more real than others: say for example human perception. Then the overminer decides that other things are only granted realness status by somehow coming into the purview of the more real entity. When I measure a photon, when I see a coral reef, it becomes what it is. But when I measure a photon, I never measure the actual photon. Indeed, since at the quantum scale to measure means “to hit with a photon or an electron beam” (or whatever), measurement, perception ( aisthesis ), and doing become the same. What I “see” are deflections, tracks in a diffusion cloud chamber or interference patterns. Far from underwriting a world of pure illusion where the mind is king, quantum theory is one of the very first truly rigorous realisms, thinking its objects as irreducibly resistant to full comprehension, by anything.9 So far we have made objects safe from being swallowed up by larger objects and broken down into smaller objects—undermining. And so far we have made objects safe from being mere projections or reflections of some supervenient entity—overmining. That's quite a degree of autonomy. Everything in the coral reef, from the fish to a single coral lifeform to a tiny plankton, is autonomous. But so is the coral reef itself. So are the heads of the coral, a community of tiny polyps. So is each individual head. Each object is like one of Leibniz's monads, in that each one contains a potentially infinite regress of other objects; and around each object, there is a potentially infinite progress of objects, as numerous multiverse theories are now also arguing. But the infinity, the uncountability, is more radical than Leibniz, since there is nothing stopping a group of objects from being an object, just as a coral reef is something like a society of corals. Each object is “a little world made cunningly” (John Donne).10 We are indeed approaching something like the political valance of autonomy . The existence of an object is irreducibly a matter of coexistence. Objects contain other objects, and are contained “in” other objects. Let us, however, explore further the ramifications of the autonomy of objects. We will see that this mereological approach (based on the study of parts) only gets at part of the astonishing autonomy of things. Yet there are some more things to be said about mereology before we move on. Consider the fact that since objects can't be undermined or overmined, it means that there is strictly no bottom object . There is no object to which all other objects can be reduced, so that we can say everything we want to say about them, hypothetically at least, based on the behavior of the bottom object. The idea that we could is roughly E.O Wilson's theory of consilience .11 Likewise, there is no object from which all things can be produced, no top object . Objects are not emanations from some primordial One or from a prime mover. There might be a god, or gods. Suppose there were. In an OOO universe even a god would not know the essential ins and outs of a piece of coral. Unlike even some forms of atheism, the existence of god (or nonexistence) doesn't matter very much for OOO. If you really want to be an atheist, you might consider giving OOO a spin. If there is no top object and no bottom object, neither is there a middle object . That is, there is no such thing as a space, or time, “in” which objects float. There is no environment distinct from objects. There is no Nature (I capitalize the word to reinforce a sense of its deceptive artificiality). There is no world, if by world we mean a kind of “rope” that connects things together.12 All such connections must be emergent properties of objects themselves. And this of course is well in line with post-Einsteinian physics, in which spacetime just is the product of objects, and which may even be an emergent property of a certain scale of object larger than 10?¹?cm).13 Objects don't sit in a box of space or time. It's the other way around: space and time emanate from objects. How does this happen? OOO tries to produce an explanation from objects themselves. Indeed, the ideal situation would be to rely on just one single object. Otherwise we are stuck with a reality in which objects require other entities to function, which would result in some kind of undermining or overmining. We shall see that we have all the fuel we need “inside” one object to have time and space, and even causality. We shall discover that rather than being some kind of machinery or operating system that underlies objects, causality itself is a phenomenon that floats ontologically “in front of” them. In so doing, we will move from the notion of autonomy and begin approaching a full exploration of the notion of zone , which was promised at the outset of this essay. Since an object is withdrawn, even “from itself,” it is a self-contradictory being. It is itself and not-itself, or in a slightly more expanded version, there is a rift between essence and appearance within an object (as well as “between” them). This rift can't be the same as the clichéd split between substance and accidents , which is the default ontology. On this view, things are like somewhat boring cupcakes with somewhat less boring sugar sprinkles on them of different colors and shapes. But on the OOO view, what is called substance is just another limited slice of an object, a way of apprehending something that is ontologically fathoms deeper. What is called substance and what is called accidence are just on the side of what this essay calls appearance. The rift (Greek, chorismos ) between essence and appearance means that an object presents us with something like what in logic is known as the Liar: some version of the sentence “This sentence is false.” The sentence is true, which means that it is a lie, which means that it is false. Or the sentence is false, which means that it is telling the truth, which means that it is true. Now logic since Aristotle has tried desperately to quarantine such beasts in small backwaters and side streets so that they don't act too provocatively.14 But if OOO holds, then at least one very significant thing in the universe is both itself and not-itself: the object. An object is p ? ¬p. To cope with this fact, we shall need some kind of paraconsistent or even fully dialetheic logic, one that is not allergic to dialetheias (double-truthed things). Yet if we accept that objects are dialetheic, p ? ¬p, we can derive all kinds of things easily from objects. Consider the fact of motion. If objects only occupy one location “in” space at any “one” time, then Zeno's paradoxes will apply to trying to think how an object moves. Yet motion seems like a basic, simple fact of our world. Either everything is just an illusion and nothing really moves at all (Parmenides). Or objects are here and not-here “at the same time.”15 This latter possibility provides the basic setup for all the motion we could wish for. Objects are not “in” time and space. Rather, they “time” (a verb) and “space.” They produce time and space. It would be better to think these verbs as intransitive rather than transitive, in the manner of dance or revolt . They emanate from objects, yet they are not the object. “How can we know the dancer from the dance?” (Yeats).16 The point being, that for there to be a question, there must be a distinction—or there must not be (p ? ¬p).17 It becomes impossible to tell: “What constitutes pretense is that, in the end, you don't know whether it's pretense or not.”18 In this notion of the emergence of time and space from an object we can begin to understand the term zone . Zone can mean belt , something that winds around something else. We talk of temperate zones and war zones. A zone is a place where a certain action is taking place: the zone winds around, it radiates heat, bullets fly, armies are defeated. To speak of an autonomous zone is to speak of a place that a certain political act has carved out of some other entity. Cynically, Tibet is called TAR, the Tibetan Autonomous Region, for this very reason. In this phrase, Region tries to emulate zone : it sounds as if the place has its own rules, but of course, it is very much under the control of China. What action is taking place? “[N]ot something that just is what it is, here and now, without mystery, but something like a quest…a tone on its way calling forth echoes and responses…water seeking its liquidity in the sunlight rippling across the cypresses in the back of the garden.”19 If as suggested earlier there is no functional difference between substance and accidence; if there is no difference between perceiving and doing; if there is no real difference between sentience and non-sentience—then causality itself is a strange, ultimately nonlocal aesthetic phenomenon. A phenomenon, moreover, that emanates from objects themselves, wavering in front of them like the astonishingly beautiful real illusion conjured in this quotation of Alphonso Lingis. Lingis's sentence does what it says, casting a compelling, mysterious spell, the spell of causality, like a demonic force field. A real illusion: if we knew it was an illusion, if it were just an illusion, it would cease to waver. It would not be an illusion at all. We would be in the real of noncontradiction. Since it is like an illusion, we can never be sure: “What constitutes pretense…” A zone is what Lingis calls a level . A zone is not entirely a matter of “free will”: this concept has already beaten down most objects into abject submission. Objects are far more threateningly autonomous, and sensually autonomous, than the Kantian version of autonomy cited in the first paragraph of this essay. A zone is not studiously decided upon by an earnest committee before it goes into action. One of its predominant features is that it is already happening . We find ourselves in it, all of a sudden, in the late afternoon as the shadows lengthen around a city square, giving rise to an uncanny sensation of having been here before. Objects emit zones. Wherever I find myself a zone is already happening, an autonomous zone. It is the nonautonomous zones that are impositions on what is already the case. Or rather, these zones are autonomous zones that exclude and police. They are brittle. Every object is autonomous, but some objects try to maintain themselves through rigidity and brittleness, like (and such as) a police state. Paradoxically, the more rigidly one tries to exclude contradiction, the more virulent become the dialetheias that are possible. I can get around “This sentence is false” by imagining that there are metalanguages that explain what counts as a sentence. Then I can decide that this isn't a real sentence. This is basically Alfred Tarski's strategy, since he invented the notion of metalanguage specifically to cope with dialetheias.20 For example we might claim that sentences such as “This sentence is false” are neither true nor false. But then you can imagine a strengthened version of the Liar such as: “This sentence is not true”; or “This sentence is neither true nor false.” And we can go on adding to the strengthened Liar if the counter-attack tries to build immunity by specifying some fourth thing that a sentence can be besides true, false, and neither true nor false: “This sentence is false, or neither true nor false, or the fourth thing.” And so on.21 It seems as if language becomes more brittle the more it tries to police the Liars of this world. Why? I believe that this increasing brittleness is a symptom of a deep fact about reality. What is this deep fact? Simply that there are objects, that these objects are withdrawn, and that they are walking contradictions. This means indeed that (as Lacan put it) “there is no metalanguage,” since a metalanguage would function as a “middle object” that gave coherency and evenness to the others.22 Since there is no metalanguage, there is no rising above the disturbing illusory play of causality. This may even have political implications: no global critique is therefore possible, and attempts to smooth out or totalize are doomed to fail. To think the zone is to think the notion of temporary , which we shall now begin to discuss in greater detail. The zone is not in time: rather it “times.” But because a zone is an emanation of an object, it is based on a wavering fragility, since objects are p ? ¬p. When an object is born, that means that it has broken free of some other object. An object can be born because it and other objects are fragile. If not, no movement would be possible. Objects contain the seeds of their own destruction, a dialetheic sentence that says something like “This sentence cannot be proved.” Kurt Gödel argues that every true system of propositions contains at least one sentence that the system cannot prove. In order to be true, the system must have a minimum incoherence. To be real, it has to be fragile. Imagine a record player. Now imagine a record called I Cannot Be Played on This Record Player . When you play it on this record player, it produces sympathetic vibrations that cause the record player to shudder apart. No matter how many defense mechanisms you build in, there will always be the possibility of at least one record that destroys the record player.23 That is what being physical is. An object is inherently fragile because it is both itself and not-itself. When the rift between appearance and essence collapses, that is called destruction, ending, death. When an object breaks, several new objects are born. An opera singer sings a loud note in tune with the resonant frequency of a wine glass. (See the movie included below.) The singing is a zone, an autonomous level of intensity, opening a rift between appearance and essence. The glass ripples—for a moment it is nakedly a glass and a not-glass—almost as if it were having an orgasm, a little death. It is caught in the rift of the singing. Then its structure can't handle the coherence of the sound waves, and it breaks. It is incoherence and inconsistency that is the mark of existence, not consistency and noncontradiction. When things break or die, they become coherent. Essence disappears into appearance. I become the memories of friends. A glass becomes a dancing wave. Instantly, there are glass fragments, new temporary autonomous zones. The fragments have broken free from the glass. They are no longer its parts, but emanate their own time and space, becoming perhaps accidental weapons as they bury themselves in my flesh. Thus Hakim Bey's instructions on creating temporary autonomous zones oscillate disturbingly between performance art and politics, circus clowning and revolution. To play with the aesthetic is to play with causality, to rip from the sensual ether emanating from things new regions, new zones. Anarchist politics is the creation of fresh objects in a reality without a top or a bottom object, or for that matter a middle object: Everything in nature is perfectly real including consciousness, there's absolutely nothing to worry about. Not only have the chains of the Law been broken, they never existed; demons never guarded the stars, the Empire never got started, Eros never grew a beard. … There is no becoming, no revolution, no struggle, no path; already you're the monarch of your own skin—your inviolable freedom waits to be completed only by the love of other monarchs: a politics of dream, urgent as the blueness of sky.24 Bey imagines that this is because chaos is a primordial “undifferentiated oneness-of-being.” A Parmenides or a Spinoza or a Laruelle would read this a certain way. Individual objects, or decisions to talk about this rather than that, are just maggot-like things crawling around on the surface of the giant cheese of oneness.25 Yet he also describes chaos as “Primordial uncarved block, sole worshipful monster, inert & spontaneous, more ultraviolet than any mythology.” This image is of an inconsistent object, not of an undifferentiated field. An object, indeed, that can be distinguished from other things. If not, then the first part of The Temporary Autonomous Zone , subtitled “The Broadsheets of Ontological Anarchism,” is a kind of onto-theology. Onto-theology proclaims that some things are more real than others. Bey, however, is writing poetically, and thus ambiguously. We are at liberty to read “undifferentiated oneness-of-being” as something like the irreducibility of a thing to its parts and so forth (undermining and overmining). This certainly seems closer to the language in the following paragraph: “There is no becoming … already you're the monarch of your own skin.”26 On this view, there is no difference between art and politics: “When ugliness, poor design & stupid waste are forced upon you, turn Luddite, throw your shoe in the works, retaliate.” Since Romanticism this has been the war cry of the vanguard artist.27 To say to is to fall prey to the tired axioms of the avant-garde, and we think we know how the game goes. But OOO is not simply a way to advocate “new and improved” versions of this shock-the-bourgeoisie boredom. Bey's text is certainly full enough of that. Rather, since causality as such is aesthetic, and since nonhumans are not that different from humans, the new approach would be to form aesthetic–causal alliances with nonhumans. These alliances would have to resist becoming brittle, whether that brittleness is right wing (authoritarianism) or left wing (the endless maze of critique). No “ism,” especially not the ultimate forms, nihilism and cynicism, is in any sense effective at this point. All forms of brittleness are based on the mistaken assumption that there is a metalanguage and that therefore “Anything you can do, I can do meta.” I will not be listing any approaches here, as Bey does. Such lists and manifestos belong to the vanguardism that no longer works. Why? Not because of some marvelous revolution in human consciousness, but because nonhumans have so successfully impinged upon human social, psychic and aesthetic space. It is the time after the end of the world. That happened in 1945, when a thin layer of radioactive materials was deposited in Earth's crust. Geology now calls it this era the Anthropocene . Ironically, this period, named after humans, is the moment at which even the most thick headed of us make decisive contact with nonhumans, from mercury in our blood to manta rays to magnesium. Richard Dawkins, Pat Robertson and Lady Gaga all have to deal with global warming and mass extinction, somehow. We now live in an Age of Asymmetry marked by a skewed, spiraling relationship between vast knowledge and vast nonhuman things—both become vaster and vaster because of one another and for the same reasons.28 This means that coming up with the perfect attitude or the perfect aesthetic prescription just won't work any more. Even the most hardened anthropocentrist now has to pay through the nose for basic food supplies, and has to use more sunscreen. Whether he knows it or acknowledges it, he is already acting with regard towards nonhumans. There is nothing special to think, no special critique that will get rid of the stains of coexistence. The problem won't fit into the well-established modern boxes, which is why the “mystical,” “spiritual” quality of Bey's prose is welcome. Of course, when I put it this way, you may immediately close off and decide that I am talking about perfect attitudes after all, or something outside of politics, or other ways that the radical left marshals to police its thinking of the nonhuman. Because that is what is really at stake in all this: the nonhuman in its coexistence with the human—bosons, gods, clouds, spirits, lifeforms, experiences, the sunlight rippling across the cypresses. Bey begins to get at this in a Latour litany in the second part of The Temporary Autonomous Zone , “The Assassins”: Pomegranate, mulberry, persimmon, the erotic melancholy of cypresses, membrane-pink shirazi roses, braziers of meccan aloes & benzoin, stiff shafts of ottoman tulips, carpets spread like make-believe gardens on actual lawns—a pavilion set with a mosaic of calligrammes—a willow, a stream with watercress—a fountain crystalled underneath with geometry— the metaphysical scandal of bathing odalisques, of wet brown cupbearers hide-&-seeking in the foliage—“water, greenery, beautiful faces.”29 This will be conveniently dismissed as orientalism. If we're never allowed to escape the crumbling prison of modernity for fear of imperialism there is truly no hope. In a similar way, the fear of anthropocentrism and anthropomorphism is very often staged from a place that just is anthropocentrism .30 Critique turns into ressentiment . An object radiates a zone that is aesthetic and therefore causal. Because objects “time” they are temporary. Not because they exist “in” time that eventually gets the better of them. Their very existence implies the possibility of their non-existence. Since objects are not consistent, they can cease to exist. But nothing, no one, will ever be able to insert a blade between appearance and existence, even thought there is a rift there. Now that's what I call autonomy. NOTES 1. John Cage, Silence: Lectures and Writings (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1973), 96. 2. P. B. Medawar and J. S. Medawar, The Life Science: Current Ideas in Biology (London: Wildwood House, 1977), 8. 3. David DeGrazia, Animal Rights: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 5. 4. Antony Colynet, A True History of the Civil Warres in France (London, 1591), 480. 5. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time , tr. Joan Stambaugh (Albany, N.Y: State University of New York Press, 1996) 62–71. 6. Graham Harman, Tool-Being: Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Objects (Peru, IL: Open Court, 2002). 7. Hakim Bey, The Temporary Autonomous Zone (Brooklyn: Autonomedia, 1991). 8. Graham Harman, The Quadruple Object (Ripley: Zero Books, 2011), 7–18. 9. This is not the place to get into an argument about quantum theory, but I have argued that quanta also do not endorse a world that I can't speak about because it is only real when measured. This world is that of the reigning Standard Model proposed by Niels Bohr and challenged by De Broglie and Bohm (and now the cosmologist Valentini, among others). See Timothy Morton, “Here Comes Everything: The Promise of Object-Oriented Ontology,” Qui Parle 19.2 (Spring–Summer, 2011), 163–190. 10. John Donne, Holy Sonnets 15, in The Major Works: Including Songs and Sonnets and Sermons , ed. John Carey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 11. Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (New York: Knopf, 1998). 12. Martin Heidegger, What Is a Thing? (Washington: Regnery, 1968), 243. 13. Albert Einstein, Relativity: The Special and the General Theory (London: Penguin, 2006); Petr Horava, “Quantum Gravity at a Lifshitz Point,” arXiv:0901.3775v2 [hep-th]. 14. Graham Priest, In Contradiction (Oxford University Press, 2006), passim: the most notable recent quarantine officers have been Tarski, Russell, and Frege. 15. Priest, In Contradiction , 172–181. 16. William Butler Yeats, “Among School Children,” Collected Poems , ed. Richard J. Finneran (New York: Scribner, 1996). 17. Paul de Man, “Semiology and Rhetoric,” Diacritics 3.3 (Autumn, 1973), 27–33 (30). 18. Jacques Lacan, Le seminaire, Livre III: Les psychoses (Paris: Editions de Seuil, 1981), 48. See Slavoj Zizek, The Parallax View (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2006), 206. 19. Alphonso Lingis, The Imperative (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 29. 20. Priest, In Contradiction , 9–27. 21. See Graham Priest and Francesco Berto, “ Dialetheism ,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2010 Edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta. 22. Jacques Lacan, Écrits: A Selection , tr. Alan Sheridan (London: Tavistock, 1977), 311. 23. The analogy can be found at length in Douglas Hofstadter, “Contracrostipunctus,” Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (New York: Basic Books, 1999), 75–81. 24. Bey, “ Chaos: The Broadsheets of Ontological Anarchism ,” Temporary Autonomous Zone . 25. This is closest to the language of François Laruelle in Philosophies of Difference: A Critical Introduction to Non-Philosophy (New York: Continuum, 2011) 179. 26. Bey, “ Chaos: The Broadsheets of Ontological Anarchism ,” Temporary Autonomous Zone . 27. Peter Bürger, Theory of the Avant Garde (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984). 28. For further discussion see Timothy Morton, “From Modernity to the Anthropocene: Ecology and Art in the Age of Asymmetry,” The International Social Science Journal 209 (forthcoming). 29. Bey, “ The Assassins ,” Temporary Autonomous Zone . 30. Timothy Morton, The Ecological Thought (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2010), 75–76. (shrink)

Machiavelli, Niccolò, 1469-1527-Criticism and interpretation ; Political science-Translating.

Logic; Islamic philosophy; Islam--doctrines.

Byzantine Empire; economic and social conditions; history.

In this book, T. L. Short corrects widespread misconceptions of Peirce's theory of signs and demonstrates its relevance to contemporary analytic philosophy of language, mind and science. Peirce's theory of mind, naturalistic but nonreductive, bears on debates of Fodor and Millikan, among others. His theory of inquiry avoids foundationalism and subjectivism, while his account of reference anticipated views of Kripke and Putnam. Peirce's realism falls between 'internal' and 'metaphysical' realism and is more satisfactory than either. His pragmatism is not verificationism; (...) rather, it identifies meaning with potential growth of knowledge. Short distinguishes Peirce's mature theory of signs from his better-known but paradoxical early theory. He develops the mature theory systematically on the basis of Peirce's phenomenological categories and concept of final causation. The latter is distinguished from recent and similar views, such as Brandon's, and is shown to be grounded in forms of explanation adopted in modern science. (shrink)

This paper explores the notion that children have a knowledge of the world of their own – an intuitive knowledge. Being fully immersed in the world as adults are, they too have a knowledge of the world. In contrast to adults, who have developed a cognitive knowledge of the world, children still depend on their intuitive knowledge. Children certainly have a strong grasp of the world they live in; it’s just not dependent on cognitive knowledge. In my paper I compare (...) and contrast Kohlberg and Lipman’s views on children’s ability to be natural philosophers. To be immersed in the world, brings to mind Martin Buber’s idea that we are born in relation, the a priori of relation, which only later develops into the essential relation as we develop the consciousness of our individual separateness. This a priori relation, then, forms the basis for children’s intuitive knowledge, and which is expressed through the language of imagination. And certainly, imagination is not devoid of any kind of reason. In focusing strictly on children’s cognitive development and ignoring their inborn relation with the world, we essentially rob them of their foothold in the world, their inner authority needed for self-regulated thinking. We create a world where children grow up dependent on authority, status, trends and fads. This can lead to what we’ve observed in the famous Milgram study. Philosophy with children encourages children to speak from their own place, in a form of parrhesia, if you will, and to discuss together with others the complexities of ideas. It honors their inborn relation with the world, their statements and aids in the process of developing their cognitive knowledge out of their intuitive grasp of the world. In respecting their inborn relation, philosophy with children allows children to grow up as full human beings, not just as smart and educated “disembodied creatures.” Children speak from the logic of experience (Foucault). Through the process of putting thinking itself into question, children become aware of themselves as thinking beings. It is what Bohm refers to as the “proprioception of thought,” the ability to “observe thought.” Philosophers, I argue, are experts in not knowing. In practicing the art of philosophy, the art of not knowing, we need each other to think together to explore deeper concepts. This binds us and allows us to explore the unknown with joy, curiosity and confidence. In an example from my own experience, I show that children not only intuitively touch on complex philosophical ideas; students are wrestling with ideas about how to understand the world, which is where philosophy began as well. How can we be surprised when children decide computer games are more interesting than life itself, if we have essentially robbed them of the desire to “get dirty,” and engage this world filled with wonder. We have created a world too boring and act surprised when children are bored. The world isn’t boring and in “doing” philosophy with children we keep the fascination with this place we call earth alive. (shrink)

Controversy over providing financial incentives to research participants has a long history and remains an issue of contention in both current discussions about research ethics and for institutional review bodies/human research ethics committees which are charged with the responsibility of deciding whether such incentives fall within ethical guidelines. The arguments both for and against financial incentives have been well aired in the literature. A point of agreement for many is that inducement in the form of financial incentive is permissible when (...) the risk of harm to the individual is negligible in terms of degree and probability of occurrence. In the absence of harm to the individual, encouraging more people to participate in research would appear to be a good thing in so far as it will lead to statistically more robust research outcomes, which can then be translated into better healthcare and other practice. Whilst, on the face of it, this position seems highly defensible, I will explore the possibility that it is counterproductive – that is, providing individuals with financial incentives to become research participants may have the unintended outcome of reducing participation rates in some areas of research. In exploring this idea I will draw on empirical findings from the literature on crowding-out – the hypothesis that providing monetary incentives to people can backfire by overall reducing intrinsic motivation, in this instance intrinsic motivation to behave altruistically or undertake civic duties. (shrink)

We observe that Schrödinger’s equation may be written as two real coupled Hamilton–Jacobi (HJ)-like equations, each involving a quantum potential. Developing our established programme of representing the quantum state through exact free-standing deterministic trajectory models, it is shown how quantum evolution may be treated as the autonomous propagation of two coupled congruences. The wavefunction at a point is derived from two action functions, each generated by a single trajectory. The model shows that conservation as expressed through a continuity equation is (...) not a necessary component of a trajectory theory of state. Probability is determined by the difference in the action functions, not by the congruence densities. The theory also illustrates how time-reversal symmetry may be implemented through the collective behaviour of elements that individually disobey the conventional transformation (T\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathrm{T}$$\end{document}) of displacement (scalar) and velocity (reversal). We prove that an integral curve of the linear superposition of two vectors can be derived algebraically from the integral curves of one of the constituent vectors labelled by integral curves associated with the other constituent. A corollary establishes relations between displacement functions in diverse trajectory models, including where the functions obey different symmetry transformations. This is illustrated by showing that a (T\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathrm{T}$$\end{document}-obeying) de Broglie-Bohm trajectory is a sequence of points on the (non-T\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathrm{T}$$\end{document}) HJ trajectories, and vice versa. (shrink)

Many complex systems, like biologic ones, cannot be understood with reductionist and analytic methods which are based upon an aristotelian logic with two values, false and true; in the past, mathematicians and philosophers have developed alternative logics, and the philosopher Stéphane Lupasco proposed a dynamic logic named logic of contradictory statements, with three values, potential, actual, and T which represents a mediate position between actual state and potential state, moreover, dynamics is introduced in form of a logical movement from potential (...) to actual, which can be reversed; last but not least, this logic presents a correlation with metaphysical concepts like involution/evolution dualism proposed by Aurobindo, implicate/explicate order proposed by the physician David Bohm, and hegelian synthesis.In this paper, we propose to describe biological systems with a general model derived from this logic, and propose that dynamics of such systems can be represented by use of (i) discontinuities which propagate, and (ii) organizing centres, so, two kinds of propagation can be involved; we propose to name actualization waves the discontinuities which propagate from centers toward periphery, and potentialization waves the ones which propagate from periphery toward centers (see fig. 1 and 2). (shrink)

In a recent paper [1], O. F. de Alcantara Bonfim, J. Florencio, and F. C. S´ a Barreto claim to have found numerical evidence of chaos in the motion of a Bohmian quantum particle in a double square-well potential, for a wave function that is a superposition of five energy eigenstates. But according to the result proven here, chaos for this motion is impossible. We prove in fact that for a particle on the line in a superposition of n + (...) 1 energy eigenstates, the Bohm motion x(t) is always quasiperiodic, with (at most) n frequencies. This means that there is a function F (y1, . . . , yn) of period 2π in each of its variables and n frequencies ω1, . . . , ωn such that x(t) = F (ω1t, . . . , ωnt). The Bohm motion for a quantum particle of mass m with wave function ψ = ψ(x, t), a solution to Schrödinger’s equation, is defined by.. (shrink)