Absolute pitch, besides the psychological and neurological interests it has, raises some conceptual difficulties that can teach us about the richness of our notion of musical tone and various aspects of its identification. It is argued that when AP is conceived under a slim notion of identifying the pitch of a crude sound, it is hardly meaningful and has no significance in music comprehension. The rich notion, which is the meaningful and important one, involves knowing the position of (...) a tone in a tone-space and its relations. This is presented as experiential: hearing and identifying tones under concepts and relations that are experienced rather than figured out or derived on the basis of crude identification of bare tones. Since many of these concepts and relations are musically meaningful, this rich notion of identification is thus connected to musical understanding and aesthetic appreciation of a musical work. It may also be claimed to be vital in passing between different sense modalities, and can explain various aspects of AP and puzzles connected with it. (shrink)

Carnap famously argued that metaphysics unavoidably involves a confusion between science and poetry. Unlike the lyric poet, who does not attempt to make an argument, the metaphysician attempts to make an argument while simultaneously lacking in musical talent. Carnap’s objection that metaphysics unavoidably involves a blend of philosophy and poetry is not a 20th century insight. Plato, in his beautifully crafted Phaedo, presents us with the imprisoned Socrates, who having been condemned to death for practicing philosophy in the Apology, has (...) a dream in which he realizes that he ought to make music. In this dialogue, however, Plato indicates no hint of the scorn that Carnap has for metaphysics—rather Socrates’ friends find him setting Aesop’s fables to verse. In the modern era, Nietzsche re-introduced the ‘music making Socrates’ in his Birth of Tragedy. But Nietzsche is not the first to revive the concept in modern philosophy. Before Nietzsche’s call for a new music-making Socrates, the early German Romantics, in particular Schlegel, explicitly called for the identification of poetry and science in the concept of Poesie. As Schlegel writes: ‘Alle Kunst soll Wissenschaft werden, und alle Wissenschaft Kunst werden; Poesie und Philosophie sollen vereinigt sein.’ On the one hand, in Ion Socrates is not wrong to critique Ion for not knowing the significance of his own work. On the other hand, Socrates himself recognizes in Phaedo that he is guilty of failing to heed the call to make music. Long misunderstood, the Romantic concept of Poesie is not mere irrationalism, for it offers an aesthetic metaphysics of the Absolute. Romanticism is indeed a philosophy of the Absolute, but one which cannot conceive of any solution to the profound impasses that confront philosophical knowing except by learning to make music. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to examine Heidegger’s critique of Hegel and to determine whether it is justified. Heidegger claims that Hegel tries to reduce everything to a single absolute entity, to the absolute knowing subject. The result is the identification of being and nothing, as Hegel formulates it at the beginning of his Logic. Hegel identifies being with nothing because being has no references, no predicates, no properties. Heidegger agrees with Hegel that being and nothing (...) are the same, but in completely different respects. They are the same because only entity actually exists, i.e. as an existent being. But Being itself does not exist, and should be conceived in an utterly different way from entity. And since Being cannot “be” it is a non-entity and therefore nothing. (shrink)

Trustworthiness is typically regarded as a desirable feature of national identification systems (NISs); but the variegated nature of the trustor communities associated with such systems makes it difficult to see how a single system could be equally trustworthy to all actual and potential trustors. This worry is accentuated by common theoretical accounts of trustworthiness. According to such accounts, trustworthiness is relativized to particular individuals and particular areas of activity, such that one can be trustworthy with regard to some individuals (...) in respect of certain matters, but not trustworthy with regard to all trustors in respect of every matter. The present article challenges this relativistic approach to trustworthiness by outlining a new account of trustworthiness, dubbed the expectation-oriented account. This account allows for the possibility of an absolutist (or one-place) approach to trustworthiness. Such an account, we suggest, is the approach that best supports the effort to develop NISs. To be trustworthy, we suggest, is to minimize the error associated with trustor expectations in situations of social dependency (commonly referred to as trust situations), and to be trustworthy in an absolute sense is to assign equal value to all expectation-related errors in all trust situations. In addition to outlining the features of the expectation-oriented account, we describe some of the implications of this account for the design, development, and management of trustworthy NISs. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Racine, Oedipus, and Absolute Fantasies*Mitchell Greenberg (bio)Tout mythe se rapporte à l’origine. Toute question d’origine ne saurait ouvrir que sur un mythe [Every myth points back to an origin. Any questioning of origins necessarily opens onto myth].—Jean-Paul Valabrega, Phantasme, mythe, corps et sensAinsi l’itinéraire de la psychanalyse freudienne est-il celui d’une recherche qui... se fait attentive à ce qui du corps réside dans les mots, s’inscrit dans les (...) traces, reste gravé en mémoire au point de n’apparaître que comme réminiscence [Thus the itinerary of Freudian psychoanalysis would be a quest for... what of the body resides in words, is inscribed in traces, or remains engraved in memory to such an extent that it only can reappear as reminiscence].—Pierre Fédida, “L’anatomie dans la psychanalyse”Something happened in the seventeenth century. Somethings in this particularly conflicted period radically altered the ways in which human subjectivity was created and internalized to produce what in our late twentieth century we have come to call modernity. Despite the different and often contradictory inflections we like to give it, it now seems fairly certain that there was a “crisis of the seventeenth century,” a crisis that was traumatic and that was marked, most significantly for our purposes at least, by an altering of subjective sensibility.In an ever-crescendoing leitmotiv from Machiavelli to Montaigne, from Richelieu to Louis XIV, from Olivares to James I, we hear echoing across Europe the same strident clamor. An anxious, pervasive suspicion that the order of things was out of kilter, that in fact the world was sinking into disorder, seems to dominate European thought in the first half of the century. 1 The fear of chaos, especially in societies whose past has been grounded in rigid hierarchical structures, is obviously exacerbated in periods of great [End Page 40] social change. Nevertheless, if we are to believe those political theorists influenced by the work of Freud, this fear, although enflamed by real experience of social unrest, reaches well beyond the actuality of a particular historical event and finds its terrifying power in the most archaic strata of the human psyche. “All civilization,” writes Eugène Enriquez,is a struggle against chaos. Not against chaos as it might or might not have actually existed in prehistoric times, but against the phantasm of a primordial chaos, of a primeval disorder, of an immixture, of the undifferentiated, against an ordinary violence.... Chaos is the constantly retreating horizon in front of which all social organization and institutions are constructed. It returns us to our ancestral fear. We embrace any and all protection against it.[101]The stately image of Classical France, therefore, an image to which we have become accustomed by almost two hundred years of academic history and which finds its most paradigmatic icon in the tragic production of Racine, tends to obscure a reality of almost constant social and religious trauma. For the purposes of my discussion, I would like to return to Racine, who is perhaps the most prominent representative of the aesthetic and ethical tradition of classicism, which, perfected in France in the mid-1600s, will go on to colonize European ethics and aesthetics into the eighteenth century. Despite the radical changes wrought by political, industrial, philosophical, and psychoanalytical revolutions, classicism, through its corollary myth of the unitary ego, continues to haunt our own inabilities to live unneurotically the various drives, contradictions, identifications, and projections that continually tell us that we are not one but many.A central paradox exists at the heart of any discussion of Racinian dramaturgy. While the tragic dilemma of Racine’s theater is profoundly anchored in the passionate, forbidden sexuality of its characters, passions that are inextricably tied to the desiring body, this body is absent, banished from the lexical construction of the Racinian text. How are we to understand the conundrum of a theater that, more than any other, presents incestuous sexual desire and its frustration as the enchafed crucible of tragedy, when the crucible itself has been exiled from the field of representation? In its plots and peripeteia, Racine’s theater ingeniously reconfigures how his protagonists... (shrink)

In the Remark to the final paragraph of the Chapter on “existence” (Dasein) in the Logic of the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Basic Outline (1830) Hegel states that the “ideality of the finite is the chief proposition of philosophy” and that “every true philosophy is for that reason idealism” (Enz § 95A). In turn, at the end of the Chapter on “existence” in the Science of Logic (1832) Hegel claims, further, that “every philosophy is essentially idealism or at (...) least has idealism for its principle, and the question then is only how far this principle is carried out” (GW 21.142). Along this line, Hegel conceives of absolute idealism not only as the result of the history of philosophy, but also as the philosophical system that reveals the essence of the philosophical systems before idealism, that is to say, as the philosophy that reveals, by developing it and formulating it adequately, what the precedent philosophies, mostly unknowingly, tried to develop and formulate, namely a general theory about reality based on the principle of the unity of being and thought. According to Hegel, every particular philosophy throughout history exposed in a successive, partial and complementary way the process of identification of being and thought; inasmuch as the system of absolute idealism assumes the latently idealist theses present in former philosophies, it makes those theses explicit and exposes the process of the identification of being and thought as its own internal development. Thus, absolute idealism is for Hegel the philosophy that exposes and shows what philosophy is actually about. The purpose of this essay is to render explicit the metaphilosophical implications of Hegel´s conception of absolute idealism as the “true philosophy” (wahre Philosophie, wahrhafte Philosophie). (shrink)

In this paper, I examine some main threads of the identification stage of Scotus's project in the fourth chapter of De Primo, where he tries to show that a first efficient cause must have the attributes of simplicity, intellect, will, and infinity. Many philosophers are favorably disposed towards one or another argument such as Scotus's (e.g., the cosmological argument from contingency) purporting to show that there is an absolutely first efficient cause. How far can Scotus take us from this (...) starting point towards the ultimate aim of establishing the existence of a being more recognizably identifiable as God? (shrink)

Miller (1956) identified his famous limit of 7 ± 2 items based in part on absolute identification—the ability to identify stimuli that differ on a single physical dimension, such as lines of different length. An important aspect of this limit is its independence from perceptual effects and its application across all stimulus types. Recent research, however, has identified several exceptions. We investigate an explanation for these results that reconciles them with Miller’s work. We find support for the hypothesis (...) that the exceptional stimulus types have more complex psychological representations, which can therefore support better identification. Our investigation uses data sets with thousands of observations for each participant, which allows the application of a new technique for identifying psychological representations: the structural forms algorithm of Kemp and Tenenbaum (2008). This algorithm supports inferences not possible with previous techniques, such as multidimensional scaling. (shrink)

This book is yet another in the recent growth of studies of Kant’s "investigation and establishment of the supreme principle of morality." Its aim is stated in the subtitle and again in a number of variations throughout the book. The author examines and objects to the intrusion of Kant’s "official metaphysics" in what he believes is intended to be, but does not succeed in being, a guide to action. He deplores Kant’s unawareness that he was, in fact, a utilitarian. He (...) argues that Kant’s and all rationalistic ethics are teleological. Along the way he confuses Kant’s carefully distinguished supreme good and complete good and ignores—in good part by omitting considerations of the third section of the Groundwork—Kant’s identification of pure practical reason and the good will. Nevertheless, there are some virtues to this study: the analysis of the language of major passages of the first two sections of the Groundwork and, more effective, the presentation of the author’s own view, in the final thirty pages, of the notion of man as an end in himself; this is a view which Hutchings thinks Kant should have had but also one which many readers have long since attributed to him. (shrink)

SummaryThis essay explains why and how nineteenth-century chemists sought to stabilize the melting and boiling points of organic substances as reliable characteristics of identity and purity and how, by the end of the century, they established these values as ‘Constants of Nature’. Melting and boiling points as characteristic values emerge from this study as products of laboratory standardization, developed by chemists in their struggle to classify, understand and control organic nature. A major argument here concerns the role played by the (...) introduction of organic synthesis in driving these changes. Synthetic organic chemistry vastly increased the number of known organic substances, precipitating the chemical identity crisis of my title. Successful natural product synthesis, moreover, depended on chemists’ ability to demonstrate the absolute identity of synthetic product and natural target – something late nineteenth-century chemists eventually achieved by making reliable, replicable melting and boiling point measurements. In the period before the establishment of national standards laboratories, chemists and scientific glassblowers worked together to standardize melting and boiling points as physical constants, such collaborations highlighting the essential importance of chemical glassware and glassblowing skill in the development of nineteenth-century organic chemistry. (shrink)

The thesis develops a cognitivist account of the supposed ineffability of musical experience. It is contended that, when the ineffability is viewed as adhering to a certain kind of perceptual knowledge of a musical signal, its nature can be illuminated by the adoption of a recent cognitivist theory of perception in conjunction with a generative grammar for tonal music . On this two-headed view, music perception consists in a rule-governed process of computing a series of increasingly abstract mental representations of (...) a musical signal. In this framework the investigation of musical ineffability is recast as the search for a level of mental representation of whose content we are conscious but cannot make verbal report. Two types of report are distinguished--one consisting in so-called absolute identification, the other in comparative identification or discrimination. It turns out that certain features of the signal are likely to be computed at such superficial or "shallow" neuronal levels that they fail to be mentally categorized in the manner thought necessary for the learning of verbal labels and ipso facto for report of the first kind. Therein, on the present account, lies their ineffability, called 'perceptual ineffability'. These shallow features do, however, admit of comparative identification and ipso facto of the second kind of report. Hence a principal task of the thesis is to show how a kind of ineffability and a kind of report are compatible. ;The account of perceptual ineffability is then set against two well-known texts in contemporary philosophy of art in order to show that it squares with more standard approaches and makes good on its explanatory promises. It is hoped that, over and above its proposed solution to a longstanding problem in aesthetics, the present study may shed some light on the relationship between philosophical and scientific theorizing. (shrink)

In this paper I provide an ontology for the co‐variant vectors, contra‐variant vectors and tensors that are familiar from General Relativity. This ontology is developed in response to a problem that Timothy Maudlin uses to argue against universals in the interpretation of physics. The problem is that if vector quantities are universals then there should be a way of identifying the same vector quantity at two different places, but there is no absolute identification of vector quantities, merely a (...) path‐relative one.My solution to the problem is to use the mathematical characterization of vectors as differential operators on scalar fields. On the proposed hypothesis a scalar field is a conjunctive state of affairs, and vector and tensor fields are relations instantiated by scalar fields. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Language, Thought, and LogicGabriele PooleLanguage, Thought, and Logic, by John M. Ellis; x & 163 pp. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1993, $29.95.It is John Ellis’s contention that notwithstanding the enormous amount of energy that has gone into language studies not very much progress has been achieved and our theory of language remains vastly fragmented and contradictory. Language, Thought, and Logic is presented as an effort to overcome this (...) impasse. Many ideas are discussed, but the fundamental themes are the following four: the priority of categorization over communication, the functional nature of most categories, the attack on the severance of grammar from meaning which characterizes generative grammarians, and the dismissal of the debate on the relationship between language and thought as a meaningless issue.In chapters two and three, Ellis—after having convincingly argued for the logical priority of (language induced) categorization over communication—proceeds to illustrate the difference between “real” and “functional” categories. He states that a few categories, such as chemical classes, have their base in “reality.” Most categories, however, (Ellis uses the example of poison) are not based on intrinsic characteristics of its members (poisons differ widely in chemical structure) but on the collective purposes of the speakers (identifying dangerous substances). The former are “real” categories, the latter functional ones, and on the basis of this opposition Ellis attacks “naive realists” who claim that most linguistic categories are grounded in the extra-linguistic world. Ellis’s dichotomy however is not fully convincing: reality, of course, includes human beings and their interactions with the world. Once we concede that the chemical structure of a given substance is a real fact, then we have to admit that the interaction of a given substance with the human body is equally “real,” and [End Page 142] that a category based on a given type of interaction is grounded in “reality” just as one based on a given type of chemical structure.Chapter five instead is devoted to the traditional question of the relationship between thought and language. Ellis’s contention is that this discussion is in itself logically absurd, since language is an essential part of thought. This “initial logical misstep” inevitably leads thinkers such as John Lyons, Max Black, Eric Lenneberg, and no doubt countless others, to “astonishing” and “bewildering” statements, pseudoproblems,” and “comic” errors (pp. 56–58). In this case, too, Ellis’s position is not particularly convincing, and one wishes that he had devoted some of his unforgiving examination of the logical integrity of other people’s positions to his own arguments. For readers are bound to ask themselves why on earth does the fact that language is part of thought make it “not possible” to speak of the relationship between the two. Is it logically “not possible” to speak of the relationship of the part to the whole? Is it “not possible,” for example, to speak of the relationship of the heart to the rest of the human body?In general, by denying the possibility of discussing the relationship of thought and language, Ellis ends up completely ignoring the tension between the more standardized and collective aspects of language (grammar, and denotation, in particular) and the various ways it becomes articulated within individuals, through its inevitable enmeshment in their different experiences. This is a pity, because in many ways Ellis is trying to carve a commendable path between the Scylla of “deep structures” and the Charybdis of “linguistic determinism,” between the severance of language from meaning, and their absolute identification. It is perhaps inevitable that in shying away from the latter peril he ends up contradicting himself. After having declared the logical impossibility of speaking of the influence of the structure of language on thought, he subsequently states that it is certainly not true that everything in our mental life is completely determined by the structure of our language” (p. 61).Ultimately one is left with the impression that what would have best been offered as a refinement and integration of other positions has been polemically presented as a radical alternative, with the risk of helping to perpetuate the fragmentation of linguistic studies it was meant to overcome. Thus, as far as... (shrink)

The identification of astrology with an ideology for dependence, proposed by Adorno in a 1975 essay, which was apparently eccentric compared to the rest of his production, offers an opportunity to discuss the (far from unequivocal) approach to political astrology in the philosophical-scientific literature of the Jewish Middle Ages. Reviewing some of the main positions in this respect, it will turn out that, beyond Adorno’s reductive interpretation, the public dimension of astrology instead testifies to the independence of the Land (...) of Israel from all that is not God or – in a diametrically opposite perspective, which links the Jewish people to the most general and powerful astral determinations – their absolute independence from the accidental processes of time. (shrink)

On a certain reading, the respective theories of Freud and Nietzsche might be described as exploring the suffered relational histories of the subject, who is driven by need; these histories might also be understood as histories of language. This suggests a view of language as a complicated mode of identifying-with, which obliges linguistic subjects to identify the non-identical, but also enables them to simultaneously identify with each other in the psychoanalytic sense. This ambivalent space of psychoanalytic identification would be (...) conditioned by relational histories. On one hand, this might lead to conformity within a system of language as a shared, obligatory compromise formation that would defend against the non-identical; magical language, typified in Freud’s critique of animism and in Nietzsche’s critique of “free will” guided by absolute normative signifiers (“Good” and “Evil”), would be symptomatic of this sort of defense. On the other hand, given other relational histories, it may produce the possibility for more transitional modes of identification, and thereby modes of language that can bear its suffered histories, and lead to proliferation of singular compromise formations. It is suggested that while the former is historically dominant, Nietzsche and various psychoanalytic thinkers contribute to conceiving of the possibility of working ourselves towards the latter. (shrink)

In this article, we present a case for the recognition of multiple religions, arguing that states have a non-absolute duty to recognise religions which it is likely they should discharge along different dimensions and to different degrees. More concretely, we focus on several Western European states (or regions thereof), arguing that they would be more legitimate if they were to recognise an extensive range of faiths and ethno-religious groups. In order to make this argument, we deploy a method of (...) iterative contextualism, consisting of two interlocking steps which can be thought of as obverse halves of a hermeneutic circle. First we identify and describe two cross-contextual principles, which we call identification and discretionary recognition. Then we suggest how it may be shown that these principles are already present to a significant degree in Denmark, Finland and Alsace-Moselle – the three contexts with which we are particularly concerned here. This, then, is a normatively robust and contextually sensitive argument for the multidimensional recognition of religion by a state, and at the same time it explains how we apply the method of iterative contextualism. (shrink)

The self as the identification of the self with itself is a product of the dynamic transformation of European culture beginning in the Renaissance. The self, or absolute ego, was an outgrowth of the consciously rationalist spirit. However, modernity's Faustian drive was conscious paradoxically without being self conscious of itself or its cultural creations. Modernism deconstructed the values and assumptions of modernity. A casualty was the problematization of the self that had been banished and/or erased by formalism, structuralism (...) and deconstruction. The modernist self erases the absolute ego reconstructing it with a rich, complex, narrative idea of a self‐conscious relational self encompassing memory, repression, autobiography and history. This paper explores the modernist conception of self in Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time. Proust demolishes the absolute ego in favor of the paradoxical self which knows itself only in relation to otherness actualized in persons and culture in the sacred time of existence. (shrink)

The General Medical Council renewed its guidance on consent in 2020. In this essay, I argue that the 2020 guidance does not advance on the earlier, 2008 guidance in regard to treatments that doctors are obliged to offer to patients. In both, doctors are instructed to not provide treatments that are not in the overall benefit, or clinical interests, of the patient; although, patients are absolutely entitled to decline treatment. As such, consent has two aspects, and different standards apply to (...) each aspect. To explore this paradigm, I propose the reconceptualisation of consent as a person’s freedom to achieve treatment, using Amartya Sen’s approach. Sen explains that freedom has two aspects: process and opportunity. Accordingly, a patient’s freedom to achieve treatment would comprise a process for the identification of proper treatment, followed by an opportunity for the patient to accept or decline this treatment. As per Sen, the opportunity aspect is to be assessed by the standard of public reason, whereas the standard for the process aspect is variable and contingent on the task at hand. I then use this reconceptualised view of consent to analyse case law. I show that senior judges have conceived the patient’s opportunity to be encompassed in information, which is to be decided by public reason. On the other hand, the process aspect relies on the private reason of medical professionals. Given the nature of professionalism, this reliance is inescapable, and it is maintained in the case law that is cited in both guidances. (shrink)

Theories of spatial cognition are derived from many sources. Psychologists are concerned with determining the features of the mind which, in combination with external inputs, produce our spatialized experience. A review of philosophical and other approaches has convinced us that the brain must come equipped to impose a three-dimensional Euclidean framework on experience – our analysis suggests that object re-identification may require such a framework. We identify this absolute, nonegocentric, spatial framework with a specific neural system centered in (...) the hippocampus.A consideration of the kinds of behaviours in which such a spatial mapping system would be important is followed by an analysis of the anatomy and physiology of this system, with special emphasis on the place-coded neurons recorded in the hippocampus of freely moving rats. A tentative physiological model for the hippocampal cognitive map is proposed. A review of lesion studies, in tasks as diverse as discrimination learning, avoidance, and extinction, shows that the cognitive map notion can adequately explain much of the data.The model is extended to humans by the assumption that spatial maps are built in one hemisphere, semantic maps in the other. The latter provide a semantic deep structure within which discourse comprehension and production can be achieved. Evidence from the study of amnesic patients, briefly reviewed, is consistent with this extension. (shrink)

Because metaphysics aims for absolute generality, its primary job is to tell us what are the fundamental particulars, of which one may say that is ultimately all there is, and yet be assured of an unabridged version of reality. It should be clear that such a search for the fundamental particulars is totally different from the enterprise of determining which particulars are basic from the point of view of particular-identification, which though it has recently been labeled "metaphysics," albeit (...) "descriptive metaphysics," might less confusingly be called "descriptive epistemology.". (shrink)

What is involved in the consciousness of a conscious, "occurrent" propositional attitude, such as a thought, a sudden conjecture or a conscious decision? And what is the relation of such consciousness to attention? I hope the intrinsic interest of these questions provides sufficient motivation to allow me to start by addressing them. We will not have a full understanding either of consciousness in general, nor of attention in general, until we have answers to these questions. I think there are constitutive (...) features of these states which can be identified by broadly philosophical investigation, and in the early part of this paper I will try to do some of that identification. -/- Beyond the intrinsic interest of the topic, the nature of such conscious attitudes is highly pertinent to a philosophical account of psychological self-knowledge. So I will also say something about the significance of the constitutive features of these conscious attitudes for a philosophical account of how it can be that a thinker has a distinctive kind of knowledge of some of his mental states. The general challenge in this area is to find anything intermediate between the unexceptionable but uninformative, on the one hand, and the absolutely unbelievable on the other. (shrink)

The paper considers the symmetries of a bit of information corresponding to one, two or three qubits of quantum information and identifiable as the three basic symmetries of the Standard model, U(1), SU(2), and SU(3) accordingly. They refer to “empty qubits” (or the free variable of quantum information), i.e. those in which no point is chosen (recorded). The choice of a certain point violates those symmetries. It can be represented furthermore as the choice of a privileged reference frame (e.g. that (...) of the Big Bang), which can be described exhaustively by means of 16 numbers (4 for position, 4 for velocity, and 8 for acceleration) independently of time, but in space-time continuum, and still one, 17th number is necessary for the mass of rest of the observer in it. The same 17 numbers describing exhaustively a privileged reference frame thus granted to be “zero”, respectively a certain violation of all the three symmetries of the Standard model or the “record” in a qubit in general, can be represented as 17 elementary wave functions (or classes of wave functions) after the bijection of natural and transfinite natural (ordinal) numbers in Hilbert arithmetic and further identified as those corresponding to the 17 elementary of particles of the Standard model. Two generalizations of the relevant concepts of general relativity are introduced: (1) “discrete reference frame” to the class of all arbitrarily accelerated reference frame constituting a smooth manifold; (2) a still more general principle of relativity to the general principle of relativity, and meaning the conservation of quantum information as to all discrete reference frames as to the smooth manifold of all reference frames of general relativity. Then, the bijective transition from an accelerated reference frame to the 17 elementary wave functions of the Standard model can be interpreted by the still more general principle of relativity as the equivalent redescription of a privileged reference frame: smooth into a discrete one. The conservation of quantum information related to the generalization of the concept of reference frame can be interpreted as restoring the concept of the ether, an absolutely immovable medium and reference frame in Newtonian mechanics, to which the relative motion can be interpreted as an absolute one, or logically: the relations, as properties. The new ether is to consist of qubits (or quantum information). One can track the conceptual pathway of the “ether” from Newtonian mechanics via special relativity, via general relativity, via quantum mechanics to the theory of quantum information (or “quantum mechanics and information”). The identification of entanglement and gravity can be considered also as a ‘byproduct” implied by the transition from the smooth “ether of special and general relativity’ to the “flat” ether of quantum mechanics and information. The qubit ether is out of the “temporal screen” in general and is depicted on it as both matter and energy, both dark and visible. (shrink)

The concept of ‘‘certitude” is central in Arabic discussions of the theory of demonstration advanced by Aristotle in the Posterior Analytics. In the Arabic tradition it is ‘‘certitude,” rather than ‘‘knowledge”, that is usually identified as the end sought by demonstrations. Al-Fārābī himself devotes a short treatise, known as the Conditions of Certitude, to determining the criteria according to which a subject can claim to have absolute certitude of any proposition. In this article the author traces the roots of (...) the concept of certitude to the Arabic translation of the Posterior Analytics. She then offers a close reading of the text of al-Fārābī's Conditions and its parallels in his Epitome of the Posterior Analytics. She argues that the identification of certitude as a cognitive state distinct from knowledge enabled al-Fārābī to introduce a number of interesting and sometimes problematic innovations into Arabic epistemology. Foremost amongst his positive innovations is the recognition that contingent as well as necessary propositions allow for an attenuated form of certitude, and the introduction of reliabilism into the justification of claims to certitude. But al-Fārābī is also one of the first philosophers to articulate explicitly the idea that certitude must include an element of ‘‘knowing that one knows,” a controversial principle that tends to undermine both al-Fārābī’s reliabilism and his efforts to loosen some of the strictures in traditional Aristotelian epistemology. (shrink)

The concept of ‘‘certitude” is central in Arabic discussions of the theory of demonstration advanced by Aristotle in the Posterior Analytics. In the Arabic tradition it is ‘‘certitude,” rather than ‘‘knowledge”, that is usually identified as the end sought by demonstrations. Al-Fārābī himself devotes a short treatise, known as the Conditions of Certitude, to determining the criteria according to which a subject can claim to have absolute certitude of any proposition. In this article the author traces the roots of (...) the concept of certitude to the Arabic translation of the Posterior Analytics. She then offers a close reading of the text of al-Fārābī's Conditions and its parallels in his Epitome of the Posterior Analytics. She argues that the identification of certitude as a cognitive state distinct from knowledge enabled al-Fārābī to introduce a number of interesting and sometimes problematic innovations into Arabic epistemology. Foremost amongst his positive innovations is the recognition that contingent as well as necessary propositions allow for an attenuated form of certitude, and the introduction of reliabilism into the justification of claims to certitude. But al-Fārābī is also one of the first philosophers to articulate explicitly the idea that certitude must include an element of ‘‘knowing that one knows,” a controversial principle that tends to undermine both al-Fārābī’s reliabilism and his efforts to loosen some of the strictures in traditional Aristotelian epistemology. (shrink)

English summary: It was not until the publication of Schelling''s Munich and Berlin lectures that we learned the decisive source for his theory of an identity of identity or identity doubled in itself. Schelling referred to what he called an older logic that was still acquainted with the figure of reduplication, for instance in Leibniz and Wolff. Philosophers in this tradition employed this term to refer to the specification of an aspect under which the subject-term is being considered. An often (...) quoted example: As consul, Fabius Maximus has authority over his father, but as son he stands under his fathers authority. Schelling gave the following turn to reduplication: Nature as nature does not coincide with the mind; and the mind as mind does not coincide with nature. Both have different truth conditions, so as to integrate an essential moment of difference into the identity formula. There is an X, however, which is strictly (seamlessly) identical with itself (the absolute subject = X) while transitively being both of them in turn; and it is only via X that the relata (nature and mind) are indirectly identified with each other: X is B and X is A (and X is strictly identical to itself). In addition to this, Schelling held a view of predication as kind of identification. He became acquainted with this view at the Tubingen Seminary through his teacher Gottfried Ploucquet. This insight helps us understand why Schelling reasonably thought that the identity-formula A=A is the genuine matrix of all veridical judgments. Taken together with his conviction that judging (Kant''s relative position) is a minor (or inferior) form of existential being (Kant''s absolute position) sheds light on why in 1806 Schelling made the radical contention in his Aphorisms: The strict sense of being (absolutely posited seamless self-sameness) is taken over by the looser sense of the copulative is which identifies subject and predicate; yes, this copula alone is existence itself and nothing else. Why should Schelling''s conception of nature-mind identity interest recent philosophers of mind? Because Schelling presents an ontologically neutral solution: Identity is a symmetrical relation that does not favor mind or matter, and prevents the idealistic reduction of nature to the mind. Nor can we conceive of the nature-mind identity as a fact inwardly disclosed to the mind (McGinn, Levine). Consciousness remains an enigma for itself; so does its identity with nature. Schelling teaches us that identity theories are not justified by self-evidence, but by an inference to the best explanation. German description: Nie ist genau erklart worden, was Schelling unter Identitat von Natur und Geist verstand. Dabei hat er sein reifes Denken Identitatssystem genannt und sich zeitlebens um kein zweites Problem begrifflich ahnliche Muhe gegeben. Da er aber seine Uberlegungen in Schriften verpackte, deren grosser systematischer Ausgriff sie schier erdruckte, ist, was er bis hinein in die Weltalter-Periode daruber herausfand, kaum eigens gewurdigt oder auch nur klar benannt worden. Die Schellingliteratur arbeitete entweder historisch oder liess sich vom Systemgedanken oder einzelnen in die Augen springenden Problemen blenden (z. B. Natur, Organismus, Freiheit, Existenz). Dabei ist Schellings Starke in einzelnen entscheidenden Argumenten versteckt, die, waren sie bekannt, die gegenwartige, auch analytische Diskussion durchaus zu inspirieren vermochten. Wir konnen heute urteilen, dass schon der junge Schelling in seiner Schrift Form der Philosophie eine differenzsensitive Form der Identitat im Sinn hatte, die er in den kommenden Jahrzehnten immer genauer auszubuchstabieren unternahm. Seine eigentlichen Quellen hat er kunstvoll verborgen. Es sind erstens die Identitatstheorie der Pradikation seines Universitatslehrers Ploucquet, die den Stiftlern in Tubingen eingeblaut wurde und die ihre merkwurdige Fixierung auf die ganz unkantische Auffassung vom Urteil als Subjekt-Pradikat-Identifikation (mit quantifiziertem Pradikator) erklart. Und zweitens Schellings Entdeckung einer alteren Logik, die mit der Figur der reduplicatio arbeitete. - So auch das Absolute: Als Geist ist es nicht Natur (und umgekehrt; Aussagen uber beide haben unterschiedliche Wahrheitsbedingungen), aber Geist und Natur werden beide vom Absoluten gewesen (transitiv ins Sein gehoben), und dies Absolute ist im striktest denkbaren Sinne mit sich identisch. So lasst sich die Schelling''sche Formel von der Identitat der Identitat und Differenz dem gesunden Menschenverstand vermitteln und Schellings aufrichtiger Jugendgedanke (Marx) aktualisieren. Er schneidet respektabel ab im Wettbewerb mit allerlei heutigen Leib-Seele-Identitatstheorien. (shrink)

The text is a continuation of the article of the same name published in the previous issue of Philosophical Alternatives. The philosophical interpretations of the Kochen- Specker theorem (1967) are considered. Einstein's principle regarding the,consubstantiality of inertia and gravity" (1918) allows of a parallel between descriptions of a physical micro-entity in relation to the macro-apparatus on the one hand, and of physical macro-entities in relation to the astronomical mega-entities on the other. The Bohmian interpretation ( 1952) of quantum mechanics proposes (...) that all quantum systems be interpreted as dissipative ones and that the theorem be thus derstood. The conclusion is that the continual representation, by force or (gravitational) field between parts interacting by means of it, of a system is equivalent to their mutual entanglement if representation is discrete. Gravity (force field) and entanglement are two different, correspondingly continual and discrete, images of a single common essence. General relativity can be interpreted as a superluminal generalization of special relativity. The postulate exists of an alleged obligatory difference between a model and reality in science and philosophy. It can also be deduced by interpreting a corollary of the heorem. On the other hand, quantum mechanics, on the basis of this theorem and of V on Neumann's (1932), introduces the option that a model be entirely identified as the modeled reality and, therefore, that absolutely reality be recognized: this is a non-standard hypothesis in the epistemology of science. Thus, the true reality begins to be understood mathematically, i.e. in a Pythagorean manner, for its identification with its mathematical model. A few linked problems are highlighted: the role of the axiom of choice forcorrectly interpreting the theorem; whether the theorem can be considered an axiom; whether the theorem can be considered equivalent to the negation of the axiom. (shrink)

This is part I of a two-part essay introducing case-intensional first order logic, an easy-to-use, uniform, powerful, and useful combination of first-order logic with modal logic resulting from philosophical and technical modifications of Bressan’s General interpreted modal calculus. CIFOL starts with a set of cases; each expression has an extension in each case and an intension, which is the function from the cases to the respective case-relative extensions. Predication is intensional; identity is extensional. Definite descriptions are context-independent terms, and lambda-predicates (...) and -operators can be introduced without constraints. These logical resources allow one to define, within CIFOL, important properties of properties, viz., extensionality and absoluteness, Bressan’s chief innovation that allows tracing an individual across cases without recourse to any notion of “rigid designation” or “trans-world identity.” Thereby CIFOL abstains from incorporating any metaphysical principles into the quantificational machinery, unlike extant frameworks of quantified modal logic. We claim that this neutrality makes CIFOL a useful tool for discussing both metaphysical and scientific arguments involving modality and quantification, and we illustrate by discussing in diagrammatic detail a number of such arguments involving the extensional identification of individuals via absolute properties, essential properties, de re vs. de dicto, and the results of possible tests. (shrink)

Manfred Frank has in recent publications criticized a number of prevailing views concerning the nature of self-awareness,1 and it is the so-called reflection theory of self-awareness which has been particularly under fire. That is, the theory which claims that self-awareness only comes about when consciousness directs its 'gaze' at itself, thereby taking itself as its own object. But in his elaboration of a position originally developed by Dieter Henrich (and, to a lesser extent, by Cramer and Pothast) Frank has also (...) more generally criticized every attempt to conceive original self-awareness as a relation, be it a relation between two acts or a relation between the act and itself.2 Every relation entails a distinction between two (or more) relata and, according to Frank, it would be impossible to account for the immediacy and infallibility of selfawareness (particularly its so-called immunity to the error of misidentification), if it were in any way a mediated process. Thus, self-awareness cannot come about as the result of a self-identification, a reflection, an inner vision or introspection, nor should it be conceived as a type of intentionality or as a conceptually mediated propositional attitude, all of which entails the distinction between two or more relata. The pre-reflective self-awareness of an experience is not mediated by foreign elements such as concepts and classificatory criteria, nor by any internal difference or distance. It is an immediate and direct self- acquaintance which is characterized by being completely and absolutely irrelational (and consequently best described as a purely immanent self-presence).3 Frank's approach is unusually broad, since he draws on the resources of several different philosophical traditions, including German Idealism, analytical philosophy of mind, and phenomenology. When it comes to the latter, it is particularly in Sartre that Frank has found important insights, whereas he has criticized Husserl's position persistently in most of his writings on self-awareness.. (shrink)

In 1928 Edmund Husserl wrote that “The ideal of the future is essentially that of phenomenologically based (“philosophical”) sciences, in unitary relation to an absolute theory of monads” (“Phenomenology”, Encyclopedia Britannica draft) There are references to phenomenological monadology in various writings of Husserl. Kurt Gödel began to study Husserl’s work in 1959. On the basis of his later discussions with Gödel, Hao Wang tells us that “Gödel’s own main aim in philosophy was to develop metaphysics—specifically, something like the monadology (...) of Leibniz transformed into exact theory—with the help of phenomenology.” (A Logical Journey: From Gödel to Philosophy, p. 166) In the Cartesian Meditations and other works Husserl identifies ‘monads’ (in his sense) with ‘transcendental egos in their full concreteness’. In this paper I explore some prospects for a Gödelian monadology that result from this identification, with reference to texts of Gödel and to aspects of Leibniz’s original monadology. (shrink)

Peter Reed has defended the basis for an environmental ethic based upon feelings of awe for nature together with an existentialist absolute gulf between humans and nature. In so doing, he has claimed that there are serious difficulties with Ecosophy T and the terms, Self-realization and identification with nature. I distinguish between discussions of ultimate norms and the penultimate deep ecology platform. I also clarify and defend a technical use of identification and attempt to show that awe (...) and identification may be compatible concepts. (shrink)

The paper outlines a deflationary interpretation of Hegel’s metaphysics, as presented in the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences. It focuses mainly on the Science of Logic as a theory of categories, which explores the movement of the Concept. The major idea is to read Hegel’s identification of logic and metaphysics as a thesis on deflating metaphysics into logic and semantics. Hegel’s metaphysics, which may better be called logico-metaphysics, does not describe the objective world directly. Rather, as a second-order theory, (...) it unfolds and makes transparent the fundamental concepts that are necessary for our understanding of the world and our orientation in it. -/- The paper begins with a brief discussion of Hegel’s idea of philosophy as system. The argument is made that Hegel should be interpreted holistically, in contrast to the popular approach of distinguishing between what is living and what is dead in his philosophy. In the second and third parts of the paper, an analysis is given of Hegel’s criticism of Kant, with an explanation of how Hegel’s Logic further develops Kant’s project of transforming traditional metaphysics. Here, the interesting fact that Hegel’s logical categories are not derived from an absolute first principle is pointed out. Instead, the task of Hegel’s Logic is to comprehend and systematize the concepts that have already been evolved in the history of philosophy. In the last part of the paper, the deflationary approach is extended to Hegel’s Realphilosophie. While Hegel’s Logic takes the place of ontology, his Philosophy of Nature and Spirit offers a comprehensive metaphysica specialis, laying conceptual foundations for understanding various dimensions of reality, from nature through the ethical-political world to different cultural domains. The paper takes Hegel’s Philosophy of Objective Spirit as an example to illustrate how the deflationary interpretation sheds light on Hegel’s “practical” philosophy as a second-order theory that does not aim to uncover first-order normative principles for guiding actions, but rather to develop the concepts necessary for normative judgments. (shrink)

Abstract: This paper examines two fundamental claims by Michel Henry on his philosophy’s relationship with classical phenomenology (Husserl and Heidegger) and Christianity. It shows in what way Henry’s phenomenology is the radicalization and absolutization of classical phenomenology: pure phenomenological truth is the identification of appearing and what appears rather than the separation of the two. According to Henry, his notions of life and truth is fully in accordance with Christianity’s Revelation of God. In the last part, the paper challenges (...) Henry’s claim that his phenomenology is a Christian philosophy from a Kierkegaardian point of view and argues that Henry’s phenomenology is, as a matter of fact, a philosophy without Christ. Contrary to a popular viewpoint that Michel Henry is a Christian thinker of our age, I would argue that Henry’s concept of God and Christ is essentially a scholarly philosophical invention. If Henry’s philosophy is an absolute and ultimate form of phenomenology, then it is reasonable to draw a conclusion that Christ as the Truth of Christianity is outside the boundary of phenomenology. (shrink)

It is accepted that first-person thoughts are immune to error through misidentification. I argue that there is also immunity to error through misascription, failure to recognise which has resulted in mistaken claims that first-person thoughts involving the self-ascription of bodily states are, at best, circumstantially immune to error through misidentification relative to ‘I’ and, at worst, subject to error. Central to my thesis is that, first, ‘I’ is immune to error through misidentification absolutely, and that if there is any problem (...) with first-person thoughts this cannot be with the self-identification component, but only with the self-ascriptive component. Secondly, the ‘know who’, or ‘know what’, or ‘know which’ requirement is appropriately relevant to considerations of different self-ascriptive properties, and thus its inapproriateness in self-identification does not entail that ‘I’ may fail to refer and identify. (shrink)

The concept of vulnerability has been the topic of considerable discussion in research bioethics, largely because of dissatisfaction with early constructions of the concept that were based on subpopulations of research subjects. These subpopulations have attributes likely to undermine their capacity to provide autonomous informed consent: persons who are relatively or absolutely incapable of protecting their own interests through negotiations for informed consent. Several subpopulations were seen as requiring special protections, including children, pregnant women, prisoners, racial minorities, the economically disadvantaged, (...) the very sick, and the institutionalized. Recent years have witnessed the identification of other subpopulations with attributes that could render them vulnerable, as well. For example, the Council for the International Organization of Medical Societies has named such potentially vulnerable groups as the homeless, nursing home residents, patients with incurable diseases, patients in the emergency department, employees, students, and members of communities who are unfamiliar with modern medicine. (shrink)

In the last decade and a half the process of desecularization has been undoubtedly verified in Serbia. Not only that the changes have been verified in the religious complex in general, but in traditional religious groups in particular as well. The revival of religiousness and people?s attachment to religion and church have been clearly proved in all aspects of religious life: in the areas of religious identification, doctrinaire religious beliefs and ritual religious practices. It should also be noted that (...) in times of extremely turbulent political and social changes in the Balkans, all traditional religious complexes, orthodox, catholic and Muslim, began forming close ties with political and state, public and binding domains, which was absolutely unthinkable of a decade and a half ago. Which leads us to the crucial question: can religion make a contribution to the process of integration coming form the surrounding countries as the imperative of foreign powers on one hand, and as the striving of the majority of population in all the post socialist countries in the Balkans on the other hand, or will it only cause damage and interfere with the process of integration of those societies into the European commonwealth of nations? This article discusses different opinions that view the traditional complexes of religion, language and nation as disruptive factors of modernization of the Balkan countries, as well as completely opposite opinions based on the experiences of traditional Islamic societies in which religion is not a factor that hinders their rapid modernization. U poslednjih petnaestak godina proces desekularizacije je u Srbiji nedvosmisleno empirijski verifikovan. Verifikovane su promene u religijskom kompleksu uopste, a posebno kod tradicionalnih religijskih zajednica. Revitalizacija religioznosti i vezanosti ljudi za religiju i crkvu jasno je dokazana u svim podrucjima religijskog zivota: u podrucju konfesionalnog religijskog identifikovanja, zatim doktrinarnih religijskih verovanja i u podrucju obredne religijske prakse. Takodje, u vremenu izuzetno burnih politickih i socijalnih promena na Balkanu, tradicionalni religijski kompleks, bilo pravoslavni, katolicki ili islamski, poceo je da stupa u tesnu vezu sa politickim i drzavnim, javnim i obavezujucim, sto je pre jedne i po decenije bilo potpuno nezamislivo. Odatle, presudno pitanje: moze li religija u tom vidu da doprinese integrativnim procesima koji dolaze iz okruzenja, sa jedne strane kao strani imperativi, sa druge strane kao teznja preteznog dela stanovnistva ovih balkanskih post socijalistickih drzava, ili ce samo da steti i presudno da ometa proces ulaska ovih drustava u evropsku porodicu naroda? Ovaj projekat treba da odgovori na pitanje: da li tradicionalni kompleks religije, jezika i nacije u balkanskim uslovima predstavlja otezavajucu okolnost za integraciju balkanskih drustava u Evropu ili ovaj tradicionalni kompleks nece biti tome smetnja, kao sto pokazuju neka iskustva tradicionalnih islamskih drustava u kojima religija nije faktor koji ometa njihovu ubrzanu modernizaciju. (shrink)

In several of his writings Hegel suggests an identification of his absolute idea/spirit with Aristotle's God in the Metaphysics. This suggestion is remarkable since it indicates that Hegel regarded his philosophy in line with classical positions in ancient metaphysics. Although there is increasing discussion of the relation between Hegel and Aristotle it is still doubtful what it was that Hegel seemed to find at the highest point of Aristotle's philosophy. To clarify this relation within the realm of first (...) philosophy I will first give a short reconstruction of Aristotle's conception of God in order, second, to confront this conception with the absolute idea/spirit in Hegel. Against Ferrarin, I will not primarily discuss the conception of actuality/activity and infinite subjectivity; rather I will focus on Aristotle's and Hegel's ontological understanding of truth. The new thesis in my paper is that Hegel can relate his theory of the absolute idea/spirit to Aristotle's God on the basis of their shared understanding of truth. This understanding allows both of them to find the highest realization and thus the fulfillment of truth in the self-thinking thinking of God or the self-thinking thinking of the absolute idea/spirit. When Hegel seems to return to Aristotle at the end of his system, this return has its systematic link in the idea of a fulfilled truth which is God or the Absolute in the sense of self-thinking thinking. Although Hegel's return to Aristotle's theology has a certain plausibility, it is also limited by the fact that for Aristotle God's self-thinking thinking is not a process of self-determination, as Hegel finds it to be and which leads him to miss a crucial feature of Aristotle's theology. (shrink)

Heidegger’s philosophy has been interpreted as an absolute historicism, unable to point to a unhistorical standpoint from which history can be judged upon. K. Löwith, for instance, has indicated that the cause of this difficulty is to be found in the conception of time: whereas, in Greek thought, time was considered only as a manifestation of the essence, in modern thought time has the tendency to become the essence itself, as that which fulfills itself in time, up to Heidegger’s (...) identification of being and event. What is interesting in my critique is that the conception of time is strictly interwoven with a specific way of conceiving justice and, broadly speaking, ethics. In Plato’s philosophy, justice as measure corresponds to a cyclical and even retrogressive conception of time, the one enounced in the myth of Chronos, in the Politikos. The modern conception of time, spiritualistic and biologistic, is instead cyclical and irreversible, cumulative: its most significant expression is Hegelianism. The existential conception of time, instead, is neither cyclical nor cumulative. By commenting on Heidegger’s Anaximander’s Saying, I wish to show the possibility of conceiving temporality as disjunction and only as such capable of producing justice – which I understand as a new possibility of meaning that does not exclude, but carries within itself, emancipation. An ethics of the present developed on the basis of this conception of time – which Heidegger has not completely endorsed – would then be an ethics which accepts as its own ground the discontinuous, yet inventive, dimension of time. (shrink)

It is accepted that first-person thoughts are immune to error through misidentification. I argue that there is also immunity to error through misascription, failure to recognise which has resulted in mistaken claims that first-person thoughts involving the self-ascription of bodily states are, at best, circumstantially immune to error through misidentification relative to ‘I’ and, at worst, subject to error. Central to my thesis is that, first, ‘I’ is immune to error through misidentification absolutely, and that if there is any problem (...) with first-person thoughts this cannot be with the self-identification component, but only with the self-ascriptive component. Secondly, the ‘know who’, or ‘know what’, or ‘know which’ requirement is appropriately relevant to considerations of different self-ascriptive properties, and thus its inapproriateness in self-identification does not entail that ‘I’ may fail to refer and identify. (shrink)

This is part I of a two-part essay introducing case-intensional first order logic, an easy-to-use, uniform, powerful, and useful combination of first-order logic with modal logic resulting from philosophical and technical modifications of Bressan’s General interpreted modal calculus. CIFOL starts with a set of cases; each expression has an extension in each case and an intension, which is the function from the cases to the respective case-relative extensions. Predication is intensional; identity is extensional. Definite descriptions are context-independent terms, and lambda-predicates (...) and -operators can be introduced without constraints. These logical resources allow one to define, within CIFOL, important properties of properties, viz., extensionality and absoluteness, Bressan’s chief innovation that allows tracing an individual across cases without recourse to any notion of “rigid designation” or “trans-world identity.” Thereby CIFOL abstains from incorporating any metaphysical principles into the quantificational machinery, unlike extant frameworks of quantified modal logic. We claim that this neutrality makes CIFOL a useful tool for discussing both metaphysical and scientific arguments involving modality and quantification, and we illustrate by discussing in diagrammatic detail a number of such arguments involving the extensional identification of individuals via absolute properties, essential properties, de re vs. de dicto, and the results of possible tests. (shrink)