At least since Descartes, philosophers have been interested in the special knowledge or authority that we exhibit when we speak about our own thoughts, attitudes, and feelings. This book contends that even the best work in contemporary philosophy of mind fails to account for this sort of knowledge or authority because it does not pay the right sort of attention to the notion of expression. What's at stake is not only how to understand self-knowledge and first-person authority, but also what (...) it is that distinguishes conscious from unconscious psychological states, what the mental life of a nonlinguistic animal has in common with our sort of mental life, and how to think about Wittgenstein's legacy to the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

The controversy surrounding targeted killings represents a crisis of conscience for policymakers, lawyers, philosophers and leading military experts grappling with the moral and legal limits of the war on terror. The book examines the legal and philosophical issues raised by government efforts to target suspected terrorists without giving them the safeguards of a fair trial.

Weighing Lives in War examines the core principles of the modern law of war: necessity, proportionality, and distinction, and provides new and innovative insights into the process of weighing lives implicit in all theories of jus in bello.

A language for quantum physics is derived from set theory by replacing the classical predicate algebra (Boolean) by a certain quantum predicate algebra (rational projective), time space and the Hamilton-Schroedinger dynamics by a Feynman-like graph dynamics, and the Dirac spin operators by topological switching operators on the graph. The development is described from the basic level of elementary monadic processes to the level of the free Dirac equation.

Present physics is a mix of theories of time, logic, and matter. These may have a common origin in a unitary quantum cosmology founded on process alone. A quantum theory of sets, or something like it, is helpful for such a cosmology, and one is constructed by adding superposition to a slightly reformulated classical set theory. There is an elementary or atomic process in such theories. The size of its characteristic time is estimated from the mass spectrum, although this gives (...) a much larger time than is usually accepted. In a discussion of the foundations of quantum theory, the problem of the collapsing state-vector is attributed to statism, the ideology, alien to quantum theory, that the system under study has a state. The origin of metrical and gauge structure is considered. Using von Neumann's work on the lattices of algebras, we may represent almost any gauge structure by enlarging the ring of c-numbers of quantum theory beyond the complex (or quaternion) field. Ultimately the gauge structure and c-numbers may express a transport relation defined by the discrete network of the world. (shrink)

A quantum mechanics for nomogenesis is conjectured.

Segal proposed transquantum commutation relations with two transquantum constants ħ′, ħ″ besides Planck's quantum constant ħ and with a variable i. The Heisenberg quantum algebra is a contraction—in a more general sense than that of Inönü and Wigner—of the Segal transquantum algebra. The usual constant i arises as a vacuum order-parameter in the quantum limit ħ′,ħ″→0. One physical consequence is a discrete spectrum for canonical variables and space-time coordinates. Another is an interconversion of time and energy accompanying space-time meltdown (disorder), (...) with a fundamental conversion factor of some kilograms of energy per second. (shrink)

An analysis is made of Deutsch's recent claim to have derived the Born rule from decision-theoretic assumptions. It is argued that Deutsch's proof must be understood in the explicit context of the Everett interpretation, and that in this context, it essentially succeeds. Some comments are made about the criticism of Deutsch's proof by Barnum, Caves, Finkelstein, Fuchs, and Schack; it is argued that the flaw which they point out in the proof does not apply if the Everett interpretation is (...) assumed. (shrink)

“Toda interpretación pende, juntamente con lo interpretado, en el aire; no puede servirle de apoyo. Las interpretaciones solas no determinan el significado”Wittgenstein, Investigaciones filosóficas § 198IntroducciónLa obra del filósofo estadounidense David H. Finkelstein, Expression and the Inner, publicada originariamente en 2003 por Harvard University Press (2ª ed. 2008) puede ahora leerse en la versión española de Lino San Juan, editada por la ovetense KRK Ediciones con el título: La expr.

La obra del filósofo estadounidense David H. Finkelstein, Expression and the Inner, publicada originariamente en 2003 por Harvard University Press (2ª ed. 2008) puede ahora leerse en la versión española de Lino San Juan, editada por la ovetense KRK Ediciones con el título: La expresión y lo interno. Finkelstein propone en La expresión y lo interno un análisis expresivista del autoconocimiento. Podría parecer cuando menos sorprendente y aún más admirable que con tan sólo dos capítulos (“Detectivismo y (...) constitutivismo” y “Expresión”) y un Epílogo (“Deliberación y transparencia”), Finkelstein haya conseguido presentar en esta obra un planteamiento calificado por muchos como una auténtica renovación de la discusión analítica en torno al tema del autoconocimiento, o sea, acerca del problema de qué clase de autoridad quepa atribuir a las expresiones sobre nuestros propios estados de ánimo y/o nuestros estados mentales sin más. (shrink)

Partant de l'idée énoncée par le philosophe Charles Taylor, selon laquelle les êtres humains sont « des animaux capables d'auto-interprétation », cet article vise à comprendre le rôle constitutif de l'auto-interprétation dans la connaissance de soi. Une conception satisfaisante de l'auto-interprétation devrait à la fois rendre compte de l'autorité de la connaissance de soi en première personne et satisfaire les exigences du réalisme ordinaire. Si la version constitutiviste de l'auto-interprétation semble incompatible avec de telles exigences, c'est parce qu'elle considère ce (...) pouvoir constituant comme le privilège du sujet de modeler ses états mentaux au gré de sa volonté. Pour autant, il est possible de conserver un rôle constitutif à l'auto-interprétation en évitant toute implication volontariste et en maintenant une certaine indépendance des contenus mentaux du sujet envers lui-même. C'est ce que proposent les philosophes américains Richard Moran et David Finkelstein, le premier, en redéfinissant l'activité d'auto-interprétation en termes de croyance impliquant l'adhésion du sujet à ses attitudes mentales. Considérant le sujet en tant qu'agent responsable de ses attitudes, Moran défend une conception cognitive et engagée de l'interprétation, un point de vue pratique du sujet sur lui-même. La délibération fournit ainsi les raisons d'adopter une croyance, un désir, une émotion,... raisons qui justifient en même temps l'auto-interprétation. Moins attaché à la valeur cognitive de l'auto-interprétation, Finkelstein développe également une conception pratique de la connaissance de soi, fondée sur la fonction expressive des auto-attributions et où l'auto-interprétation a valeur de contexte de cela même qu'elle interprète. (shrink)

Part of the appeal of the biological approach to personal identity is that it does not have to countenance spatially coincident entities. But if the termination thesis is correct and the organism ceases to exist at death, then it appears that the corpse is a dead body that earlier was a living body and distinct from but spatially coincident with the organism. If the organism is identified with the body, then the unwelcome spatial coincidence could perhaps be avoided. It is (...) argued that such an identification would be a mistake. A living organism has a different part/whole relationship and persistence conditions than the alleged body. A case will be made that the concept ‘human body’ is a conceptual mess, vague in an unprincipled manner, and that an eliminativist stance towards dead bodies is the appropriate response. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

As a continuation of the work of the third author in [5], we make further observations on the features of Galois cohomology in the general model theoretic context. We make explicit the connection between forms of definable groups and first cohomology sets with coefficients in a suitable automorphism group. We then use a method of twisting cohomology (inspired by Serre’s algebraic twisting) to describe arbitrary fibres in cohomology sequences—yielding a useful “finiteness” result on cohomology sets. Applied to the special case (...) of differential fields and Kolchin’s constrained cohomology, we complete results from [3] by proving that the first constrained cohomology set of a differential algebraic group over a bounded, differentially large, field is countable. (shrink)

In this classic work David Bohm, writing clearly and without technical jargon, develops a theory of quantum physics which treats the totality of existence as an unbroken whole.

It has been known for some time that there is a primitive recursive permutation of the nonnegative integers whose inverse is recursive but not primitive recursive. For example one has this result apparently for the first time in Kuznecov [1] and implicitly in Kent [2] or J. Robinson [3], who shows that every singularly recursive function ƒ is representable aswhere A, B, C are primitive recursive and B is a permutation.

In this innovative study, Lea David critically investigates the relationship between human rights and memory, suggesting that, instead of understanding human rights in a normative fashion, human rights should be treated as an ideology. Conceptualizing human rights as an ideology gives us useful theoretical and methodological tools to recognize the real impact human rights has on the ground. David traces the rise of the global phenomenon that is the human rights memorialization agenda, termed 'Moral Remembrance', and explores what (...) happens once this agenda becomes implemented. Based on evidence from the Western Balkans and Israel/Palestine, she argues that the human rights memorialization agenda does not lead to a better appreciation of human rights but, contrary to what would be expected, it merely serves to strengthen national sentiments, divisions and animosities along ethnic lines, and leads to the new forms of societal inequalities that are closely connected to different forms of corruptions. (shrink)

Liberal thinkers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were alert to the political costs and human cruelties involved in European colonialism, but they also thought that European expansion held out progressive possibilities. In Progress, Pluralism, and Politics David Williams examines the colonial and anti-colonial arguments of Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant, Jeremy Bentham, and L.T. Hobhouse. Williams locates their ambivalent attitude towards European conquest and colonial rule in a set of tensions between the impact of colonialism on European states, the (...) possibilities of progress in distant and diverse places, and the relationship between universalism and cultural pluralism. In so doing he reveals some of the central ambiguities that characterize the ways that liberal thought has dealt with the reality of an illiberal world. Of particular importance are appeals to various forms of universal history, attempts to mediate between the claims of identity and the reality of difference, and the different ways of thinking about the achievement of liberal goods in other places. Pointing to key elements in still ongoing debates within liberal states about how they should relate to illiberal places, Progress, Pluralism, and Politics enriches the discussion on political thought and the relationship between liberalism and colonialism. (shrink)