The present discussion arose from the desire to explain, to an audience of non-physicists, the epistemology to which one is forced if one pursues the quantum mechanical theory of observation to its ultimate consequences. However, the conclusions will not be derived from the aforementioned theory but obtained on the basis of a rather general analysis of what we mean by real. Quantum theory will form the background but not the basis for the analysis. The concept of the real to be (...) arrived at shows considerable similarity to that of the idealist. As the title indicates, it is formulated as a dualism. It is quite possible that it will soon be rejected not only by the community of the philosophers but also by that of the scientists. If this should be the case, the attempt to derive an epistemology from physics will prove to have been premature. Naturally, the author hopes that this will not be the case because, quite apart from the quantum theoretical background, the concepts to be presented appear natural also as an outgrowth of common sense considerations. They have been arrived at by many who did not accept the epistemology of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

It is proposed to consider present-day physics as dealing with a special situation, the situation in which the phenomena of life and consciousness play no role. It is pointed out that physical theory has often dealt, in the past, with similarly special situations. Planetary theory neglects all but gravitational forces, macroscopic physics neglects fluctuations due to the atomic structure of matter, nuclear physics disregards weak and gravitational interactions. In some of these cases, physicists were well aware of dealing with special (...) situations, or limiting cases as they are called in the article; in other cases, they were not. It is pointed out that, even if it were true that present-day physics accurately describes the motion of the physical constituents of living bodies, it would not give the whole story. Arguments are adduced, however, to show that the laws of physics, applicable for inanimate matter, will have to be modified when dealing with the more general situation in which life and consciousness play significant roles. (shrink)

The book should be a gem for all those interested in the history and philosophy of science.

Attempts at solving what has been labeled as Eugene Wigner’s puzzle of applicability of mathematics are still far from arriving at an acceptable solution. The accounts developed to explain the “miracle” of applied mathematics vary in nature, foundation, and solution, from denying the existence of a genuine problem to designing structural theories based on mathematical formalism. Despite this variation, all investigations treated the problem in a unitary way with respect to the target, pointing to one or two ‘why’ (...) or ‘how’ questions to be answered. In this paper, I argue that two analyses, a semantic analysis ab initio and a metatheoretical analysis starting from the types of unreasonableness involved in this problem, will establish the interdisciplinary character of the problem and reveal many more targets, which may be addressed with different methodologies. In order to address objectively the philosophical problem of applicability of mathematics, a foundational revision of the problem is needed. (shrink)

This paper traces the origins of Eugene Wigner's pioneering application of group theory to quantum physics to his early work in chemistry and crystallography. In the early 1920s, crystallography was the only discipline in which symmetry groups were routinely used. Wigner's early training in chemistry, and his work in crystallography with Herman Mark and Karl Weissenberg at the Kaiser Wilhelm institute for fiber research in Berlin exposed him to conceptual tools which were absent from the pedagogy available (...) to physicists for many years to come. This both enabled and pushed him to apply the group theoretic approach to quantum physics. It took many years for the approach first introduced by Wigner in the 1920s – and whose reception by the physicists was initially problematical – to assume the pivotal place it now holds in physical theory and education. This is but one example that attests to the historic contribution made by the periphery in initiating new types of thought-perspectives and scientific careers. (shrink)

Attempts at solving what has been labeled as Eugene Wigner’s puzzle of applicability of mathematics are still far from arriving at an acceptable solution. The accounts developed to explain the “miracle” of applied mathematics vary in nature, foundation, and solution, from denying the existence of a genuine problem to designing structural theories based on mathematical formalism. Despite this variation, all investigations treated the problem in a unitary way with respect to the target, pointing to one or two ‘why’ (...) or ‘how’ questions to be answered. In this paper, I argue that two analyses, a semantic analysis ab initio and a metatheoretical analysis starting from the types of unreasonableness involved in this problem, will establish the interdisciplinary character of the problem and reveal many more targets, which may be addressed with different methodologies. In order to address objectively the philosophical problem of applicability of mathematics, a foundational revision of the problem is needed. (shrink)

Attempts at solving what has been labeled as Eugene Wigner’s puzzle of applicability of mathematics are still far from arriving at an acceptable solution. The accounts developed to explain the “miracle” of applied mathematics vary in nature, foundation, and solution, from denying the existence of a genuine problem to designing structural theories based on mathematical formalism. Despite this variation, all investigations treated the problem in a unitary way with respect to the target, pointing to one or two ‘why’ (...) or ‘how’ questions to be answered. In this paper, I argue that two analyses, a semantic analysis ab initio and a metatheoretical analysis starting from the types of unreasonableness involved in this problem, will establish the interdisciplinary character of the problem and reveal many more targets, which may be addressed with different methodologies. In order to address objectively the philosophical problem of applicability of mathematics, a foundational revision of the problem is needed. (shrink)

Eugene Wigner's several general discussions of symmetry and invariance principles are among the canonical texts of contemporary philosophy of physics. Wigner spoke from a position of authority, having pioneered for recognition of the importance of symmetry principles from nuclear to molecular physics. But perhaps recent commentators have not sufficiently stressed that Wigner always took care to situate the notion of invariance principles with respect to two others, initial conditions and laws of nature. Wigner's first such (...) general consideration of invariance principles, an address presented at Einstein's 70th birthday celebration, held in Princeton on 19 March 1949, began by laying out just this distinction, and in a way that seems to suggest that the three notions arise through abstraction in an analysis of the general problem of cognition in the natural sciences: The world is very complicated and it is clearly impossible for the human mind to understand it completely. Man has therefore devised an artifice which permits the complicated nature of the world to be blamed on something which is called accidental and thus permits him to abstract a domain in which simple laws can be found. The complications are called initial conditions; the domain of regularities, laws of nature. the underlying abstraction is probably one of the most fruitful the human mind has made. It has made the natural sciences possible. (shrink)

Jagdish Mehra (ed.): The Collected Works of Eugene Paul Wigner. Part B. Historical, Philosophical, and Socio-Political Papers. Volume 6: Philosophical Reflections and Syntheses (annotated by Gérard G. Emch) (Berlin: Springer, 1995), XX + 631 pp., ISBN 3-.

Review of "The Collected Works of Eugene Paul Wigner", Volume I, III, and VI. Excerpt from the Conclusions: Many of Wigner’s papers on mathematical physics are great classics. Most famous is his work on group representations which is of lasting value for a proper mathematical foundation of quantum theory. The modern development of quantum theory (which is not reflected in Wigner’s work) is in an essential way a representation theory (e.g. representations of kinematical groups, or representations (...) of C*-algebras). This view owes very much to Wigner’s seminal papers on the unitary representations of compact and noncompact groups. Wigner showed much courage in relating the then unresolved questions of the measurement problem to the much deeper problem of consciousness. In view of this very unorthodox proposal it is astonishing that Wigner was very reactionary with respect of the dogmas of orthodox quantum mechanics. In contrast to von Neumann himself, he took the old von-Neumann codification of quantum mechanics as authoritative and not to be questioned. Much of the efforts to interpret the meaning of this codification and to prove no-go theorems, such as the insolubility of the measurement problem or the impossibility of a quantum theory of individual objects, are physically irrelevant since they are based on a codification of quantum mechanics that is valid only for strictly closed systems with finitely many degrees of freedom. However, in nature there are no such systems. Every material system is coupled to the gravitational and to the electromagnetic field – systems which require in a Hamiltonian description infinitely many degrees of freedom. A deeper insight into the conceptual problems of quantum theory is possible only if the modern development of a quantum theory of infinite systems is taken into account. (shrink)

In his influential 1960 paper ‘The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences’, Eugene P. Wigner raises the question of why something that was developed without concern for empirical facts—mathematics—should turn out to be so powerful in explaining facts about the natural world. Recent philosophy of science has developed ‘Wigner’s puzzle’ in two different directions: First, in relation to the supposed indispensability of mathematical facts to particular scientific explanations and, secondly, in connection with the idea that (...) aesthetic criteria track theoretical desiderata such as empirical success. An important aspect of Wigner’s article has, however, been overlooked in these debates: his worries about the underdetermination of physical theories by mathematical frameworks. The present paper argues that, by restoring this aspect of Wigner’s argument to its proper place, Wigner’s puzzle may become an instructive case study for the teaching of core issues in the philosophy of science and its history. (shrink)

The Deleuze and Guattari Dictionary is a comprehensive and accessible guide to the world of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, two of the most important and influential thinkers in twentieth-century European philosophy. Meticulously researched and extensively cross-referenced, this unique book covers all their major sole-authored and collaborative works, ideas and influences and provides a firm grounding in the central themes of Deleuze and Guattari's groundbreaking thought. Students and experts alike will discover a wealth of useful information, analysis and criticism. A-Z (...) entries include clear definitions of all the key terms used in Deleuze and Guattari's writings and detailed synopses of their key works. The Dictionary also includes entries on their major philosophical influences and key contemporaries, from Aristotle to Foucault. It covers everything that is essential to a sound understanding of Deleuze and Guattari's philosophy, offering clear and accessible explanations of often complex terminology. The Deleuze and Guattari Dictionary is the ideal resource for anyone reading or studying these seminal thinkers or Modern European Philosophy more generally. (shrink)

Body-environment (b-en) -- Functional cycle (fucy) -- An object -- The body and time -- Evolution, novelty, and stability -- Behavior -- Culture, symbol, and language -- Thinking with the implicit.

A Thousand Plateaus is the engaging and influential second part of Capitalism and Schizophrenia, the remarkable collaborative project written by the philosopher Gilles Deleuze and the psychoanalyst Félix Guattari. This hugely important text is a work of staggering complexity that made a major contribution to contemporary Continental philosophy, yet remains distinctly challenging for readers in a number of disciplines. Deleuze and Guattari's 'A Thousand Plateaus': A Reader's Guide offers a concise and accessible introduction to this extremely important and yet challenging (...) work. Written specifically to meet the needs of students coming to Deleuze and Guattari for the first time, the book offers guidance on: - Philosophical and historical context - Key themes - Reading the text - Reception and influence - Further reading. (shrink)

Akratic belief, or belief one believes one should not have, has often been thought to be impossible. I argue that the possibility of akratic belief should be accepted as a pre-theoretical datum. I distinguish intuitive, defensive, systematic, and diagnostic ways of arguing for this view, and offer an argument that combines them. After offering intuitive examples of akratic belief, I defend those examples against a common argument against the possibility of akratic belief, which I call the Nullification Argument. I then (...) offer an Argument from Belief Attribution, using a discussion of the marks by which we typically attribute belief to defend attributions of akratic belief. I conclude by offering a way to explain what is puzzling about akratic belief, while allowing that it is possible. (shrink)

T.M. Scanlon has recently offered an influential treatment of blame as a response to the impairment of a relationship. I argue, first, that Scanlon’s remarks about the nature of blame suggest several sharply diverging views, so different that they can reasonably be considered different theories: a judgment-centered theory, on which blame is the reaction the blamer judges appropriate; an appropriateness-centered theory, on which blame is any reaction that is actually appropriate; and a substantive list theory, on which blame is any (...) of a list of reactions, such as anger or loss of trust. Once distinguished, each theory faces a series of formidable challenges that neither Scanlon nor his commentators have addressed. I argue that the notion of directed attention, central in Scanlon’s earlier work, can be used to address these challenges, while preserving the spirit of Scanlon’s discussion of blame. (shrink)

This letter explores the intricate historical and contemporary links between large language models (LLMs) and cognitive science through the lens of information theory, statistical language models, and socioanthropological linguistic theories. The emergence of LLMs highlights the enduring significance of information‐based and statistical learning theories in understanding human communication. These theories, initially proposed in the mid‐20th century, offered a visionary framework for integrating computational science, social sciences, and humanities, which nonetheless was not fully fulfilled at that time. The subsequent development of (...) sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology, especially since the 1970s, provided critical perspectives and empirical methods that both challenged and enriched this framework. This letter proposes that two pivotal concepts derived from this development, metapragmatic function and indexicality, offer a fruitful theoretical perspective for integrating the semantic, textual, and pragmatic, contextual dimensions of communication, an amalgamation that contemporary LLMs have yet to fully achieve. The author believes that contemporary cognitive science is at a crucial crossroads, where fostering interdisciplinary dialogues among computational linguistics, social linguistics and linguistic anthropology, and cognitive and social psychology is in particular imperative. Such collaboration is vital to bridge the computational, cognitive, and sociocultural aspects of human communication and human−AI interaction, especially in the era of large language and multimodal models and human‐centric Artificial Intelligence (AI). (shrink)

Pragmatism is the distinctive contribution of American thought to philosophy. It is a movement that attracted much attention in the early part of the twentieth-century, went into decline, and reemerged in the last part of the century. Part of the difficulty in defining pragmatism is that misconceptions of what pragmatism means have abounded since its beginning, and continue in today’s “neopragmatism.”.

Volume 11 of Eugen Fink’s ‘Collected Works’ brings together Fink's contributions on ancient philosophy since the 1940s: three main texts—the lecture on the ‘Basic Questions of Ancient Philosophy’ (winter semester 1947/48), the seminar on the ‘Principle of Contradiction’ (winter semester 1959/60) and the seminar on Heraclitus (winter semester 1966/67), which he held together with Heidegger—, two smaller works entitled ‘Time and the Concept of Time in Aristotle’ and ‘Asebeia and Techne in the 10th Book of the Nomoi’ (1963 and 1969), (...) and drafts in the context of several seminars on Heraclitus, Parmenides, Plato and Aristotle. The volume shows the important role played by Fink’s analysis of the ancient philosophers for the development of his phenomenological cosmology in the tension between Husserl and Heidegger: In the early thinkers, Fink finds traces of an original philosophy that has the world as a whole as its centre and guiding principle. (shrink)

Begrüssung und Einführung, von H. Gehrig.--Bewusstseinsanalytik und Weltproblem, von E. Fink.--Die Zeitanalyse in der Phänomenologie und in der klassischen Tradition, von L. Landgrebe.--Einige Reflexionen über den geschichtlichen Ort der Phänomenologie, von M. Müller.--Der gegenwärtige Stand der Arbeiten am Nachlass Edmund Husserls, von H. L. Van Breda.--Über das Zeitverständnis in der Phänomenologie und im Denken der Seinsfrage, von M. Heidegger.--Personalia.

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