A number of authors claim that Western European modern romantic love has been ‘gamified’ by digital apps and platforms, resulting in a ludic market logic that is increasingly compulsive and even addictive. This paper will suggest that modern romantic love was, in fact, predicated on games, particularly games of chance and competition. These games are seen to provide a number of functions, including homosocial bonding, the vindication of personal responsibility, and bringing about the probability of the improbable. The paper examines (...) changing attitudes to chance at several key historical moments in Western Europe, changes which we can discern in romantic codification, as well as in the modern economy. We trace these tendencies to digital corporations, where gathered behavioural data accelerates the capacity to economize and determine futures. (shrink)

There are two opposing traditions in contemporary quantum field theory (QFT). Mainstream Lagrangian QFT led to and supports the standard model of particle interactions. Algebraic QFT seeks to provide a rigorous consistent mathematical foundation for field theory, but cannot accommodate the local gauge interactions of the standard model. Interested philosophers face a choice. They can accept algebraic QFT on the grounds of mathematical consistency and general accord with the semantic conception of theory interpretation. This suggests a rejection of particle ontology. (...) Or they can accept the standard model on the grounds of its established success. This alternative, which I defend, suggests revising philosophical accounts of scientific theory and finding some way of accommodating particles. (shrink)

This article probes the question of what interpretations of quantum mechanics actually accomplish. In other domains, which are briefly considered, interpretations serve to make alien systematizations intelligible to us. This often involves clarifying the status of their implicit ontology. A survey of interpretations of non-relativistic quantum mechanics supports the evaluation that these interpretations make a contribution to philosophy, but not to physics. Interpretations of quantum field theory are polarized by the divergence between the Lagrangian field theory that led to the (...) Standard Model of Particle physics and the Algebraic quantum field theory, that discounts an ontology of particles. Ruetsche's interpretation, it is argued, offers a potential for loosening the sharp polarization that presently obtains. A brief evaluation focuses on the functional ontology of quantum field theory considered as an effective theory. (shrink)

The tension that many early scientists experienced between a reliance on religious tradition as a source of truth and scientific methodology as a guide to truth eventually led to a clash between theists who claimed that the existence of the universe required a creator and non-theists, who insisted that recourse to a creator to explain why there is something perverts scientific methodology. The present paper defends the position that physics and its foreseeable cosmological extensions neither requires nor excludes either opposed (...) contention. Each has the status of an inference to the best explanation. This is developed in three stages. The first uses historical analysis to support the claim that the advancement of physics and cosmology do not rely on an appeal to supernatural forces. The second explains inference to the best explanation. The third shows how this accommodates these conflicting claims. An appendix examines an influential argument that the intelligibility of the universe requires a creator. (shrink)

The idea that science aspires to and routinely achieves truths about the world has been challenged in recent writings. Rather than beginning with a theory of scientific development, or of scientific explanation, we begin with a consideration of truth claims in ordinary discourse, particularly with Davidson's truth-functional semantics. Next we consider the way in which some framework features of ordinary language discourse are extended to and modified in scientific discourse. Two areas are treated in more detail: quantum theory, and the (...) peculiar problem of semantic entailment it involves; and quantum field theory. These supply a basis for criticizing some historicist and logicist treatments of the truth of scientific claims. (shrink)

Although Philippe Ariès’s claims that death has been replaced by illness as our main obsession, I argue that illness is being replaced by wellness, an approach to living that encourages preemptive behavior. I review various critiques of “survivalism,” a view that both insists on our vulnerability and welcomes professional intervention in personal life. The resulting sense of anxiety, critics maintain, extends even to the “minutiae of human behavior,” including diet and fitness. I follow Jackson Lears in tracing these therapeutic commitments (...) to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and examine a novel set in that period: T. C. Boyle’s The Road to Wellville, a satire about the perils of healthy living. I conclude by adapting Michael Sandel’s arguments against genetic enhancement to the issue of health. (shrink)

Les lecteurs ayant une simple connaissance de la littérature de recherche dans le domaine de la formation des enseignants au cours des 25 dernières années sont conscients de l’augmentation spectaculaire de l’utilisation de la «réflexivité» pour décrire les attributs souhaités ou les comportements des participants au programmes de développement professionnel pour les enseignants novices ou expérimentés. Notre intention est de tirer parti de nos propres expériences collectives de pratiques de recherche et d’enseignement pour cartographier comment et pourquoi nous avons d’abord (...) été interpellés par les nombreuses significations associées à ce terme et comment notre compréhension a changé au cours des quelque 25 dernières années. Nous pensons que ce type de «réflexion-sur-expérience» est mieux révélée grâce à l’utilisation d’un style narratif et donc nous avons délibérément utiliser un format conversationnel afin de faire part de notre histoire. (shrink)

In the course of his long development, Kant's concept of matter changed somewhat, while his concept of scientific explanation changed considerably. Both developments achieved a coherent integration in Kant's Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. Using this developmental background, the present paper argues that the Foundations should be interpreted as an attempted rational reconstruction of the mechanics of Newton and Euler. Kant attempted to do this by constructing a concept of matter that would confer a Leibnizian intelligibility on Newtonian mechanics, and (...) also accord with Kant's theories on the nature of concepts and their role in scientific explanation. (shrink)

Introduction -- Cultural theories of people -- Identities in standard English -- Language and social institutions -- The cultural self -- The self's identities -- Theories of identities and selves -- Theories of norms and institutions -- Social reality and human subjectivity.

For twenty years, _Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice_ has been the definitive sourcebook of theoretical foundations, pedagogical and design frameworks, and curricular models for social justice teaching practice. Thoroughly revised and updated, this third edition continues in the tradition of its predecessors to cover the most relevant issues and controversies in social justice education in a practical, hands-on format. Filled with ready-to-apply activities and discussion questions, this book provides teachers and facilitators with an accessible pedagogical approach to issues of (...) oppression in classrooms. The revised edition also focuses on providing students the tools needed to apply their learning about these issues. Features new to this edition include: A new bridging chapter focusing on the core concepts that need to be included in _all_ SJE practice and illustrating ways of "getting started" teaching foundational core concepts and processes. A new chapter addressing the possibilities for adapting social justice education to online and blended courses. Expanded overview sections that highlight the historical contexts and legacies of oppression, opportunities for action and change, and the intersections among forms of oppression. Added coverage of key topics for teaching social justice issues, such as establishing a positive classroom climate, institutional and social manifestations of oppression, the global implications of contemporary SJE work, and action steps for addressing injustice. New and revised material for each of the core chapters in the book complemented by fully-developed online teaching designs, including over 150 downloadables, activities, and handouts on the book’s Companion Website. A classic for teachers across disciplines, _Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice_ presents a thoughtful, well-constructed, and inclusive foundation for engaging students in the complex and often daunting problems of discrimination and inequality in American society. (shrink)

In place of earlier instrumentalist and phenomenalist interpretations of science both Quine and Sellars have developed highly influential realist positions centering around the doctrine that accepting a theory as explanatory and irreducible rationally entails accepting the entities posited by the theory. A growing reaction against this realism is partially based on perceived inadequacies in the doctrines of Quine and Sellars, but even more on reconstructions of scientific explanations which do not involve such ontic commitments. Three types of anti-realistic positions are (...) considered and criticized. Hesse's neo-Duhemian position couples a statistical theory of inference to a downgrading of purely theoretical statements. Sneed uses the method of axiomatrization through set-theoretic predicates to supply a reconstruction of Kuhn's account of scientific development. Here Ramsey-reduction sentences serve to eliminate purely theoretical terms. The longest section deals with van Fraassen's semantic model based on a state-space representation of scientific theories and the use of this model in interpreting quantum mechanics. It is argued that the model is valuable, but that the anti-realist interpretation accorded it is not justified and entails serious inconsistencies. (shrink)

The institutional guarantees of modern labour law, that provide the keystone of progressive liberalism, are often only reactionary to the entrenched concepts of socialist law. Adoption of institutions of “workers rights”, and employment protection based upon contract, inevitably nullify the ideological promise of the inalienable “right to work”. China, among the last bastions of theoretical Marxist socialism, and among the first socialist countries ready to accept that it has been in desperate need of reforming uneconomical state enterprises, seems willing to (...) sacrifice ideological purity for economic development. Yet, if economic turnaround requires enterprise rationalisation in a market economy, it is understandable that Chinese labour requires the same kinds of protection against unbridled capitalism as progressive labour movements elsewhere. Doubtless, for those who have enjoyed no such institutional guarantees in the past, official commitment to improvement of labour conditions is better than no acknowledgment of need for reform of social policy whatever. Yet, the real question for students of social change is “Are these legislated reforms effective policy guides for local administration and the courts?”“|Or are they merely regulations for licensing compliance – primarily for foreign invested enterprises?”. In brief, “... to what extent are the new ‘workers’ rights’ realistically attainable sources of judicial remedies for individual workers?”. (shrink)

This book is the first to offer a systematic account of the role of language in the development and interpretation of physics. An historical-conceptual analysis of the co-evolution of physics and mathematics leads to the classical/quantum interface. Bohr's interpretation is analyzed and extended to the interpretation of the standard model of particle physics.

In this paper I wish to examine in detail the arguments which Spinoza uses in a very brief section of the Ethics, the lemmas following Proposition 13 of Part II. My aim in this analysis will be twofold: to attempt a preliminary sketch of the nature of a physical system in Spinoza’s view, and to clarify what Spinoza means by speaking of certain items as “individuals.” At least a partial fulfillment of the first aim is a necessary condition for the (...) second, since most of what Spinoza has to say about individuation in the Ethics and elsewhere is expressed in terms of individual bodies. His own solution of the mind-body problem entails that there will be correlative statements true at the ideational level; but, unfortunately, he usually leaves such correlations to his reader. I use the term “ideational” herein in preference to “mental” to avoid any dualistic connotation. Ideational and extensional levels for Spinoza refer to a dualism of denoting complexes, but not to a dualism of objects denoted by these. (shrink)

An epistemological interpretation of quantum mechanics hinges on the claim that the distinctive features of quantum mechanics can be derived from some distinctive features of an observational basis. Old and new variations of this theme are listed. The program has a limited success in non-relativistic quantum mechanics. The crucial issue is how far it can be extended to quantum field theory without introducing significant ontological postulates. A C*-formulation covers algebraic quantum field theory, but not the standard model. Julian Schwinger’s anabatic (...) methodology extended a strict measurement-based formulation of quantum mechanics through field theory. His extension also excluded the quark hypothesis and the standard model. Quarks and local gauge invariance are postulates that go beyond the limits of an epistemological interpretation of quantum mechanics. The ontological significance ascribed to these advances depends on the role accorded ontology. (shrink)

It is assumed that the motion of a particle in spacetime does not depend on the motion relative to it of any observer or of any frame of reference. Thus if the particle has an internal vibration of the type hypothesized by de Broglie, the phase of that vibration at any point in spacetime must appear to be the same to all observers, i.e., the same in all frames of reference. Each observer or reference frame will have its own de (...) Broglie wave for the particle. The phase of the particle's vibration must, by definition, be the same as that of all possible de Broglie waves at the point where the particle is. By superimposing all these possible de Broglie waves, a wave packet is formed centered in space on the particle. The formation of such a packet is discussed with the help of spacetime diagrams; the packet does not spread with time. The relevance of this packet to the wave mechanics of Schrödinger is discussed; it is also pointed out that any vibration can lead to such a packet. (shrink)

This article clarifies Bohr's position by focusing on the work he did in nuclear physics and scattering theory.

Russell had two theories of names and one theory of description. Logically proper names are Millian names, which have only denotation but no connotation. Ordinary names are not genuine names but disguised definite descriptions subject to quantificational analyses. Only by asserting that ordinary names are definite descriptions could Russell motivate his theory of description to solve three problems for Millian names, namely, Frege’s puzzle, empty reference and negative existentials. Critics usually discuss Russell’s theories of names and his theory of description (...) separately. This paper takes a new perspective and presents a dilemma for the overall project, arguing that it is hard to be a Russellian about names coherently. The central issue is whether contextualisation is semantic or pragmatic in nature, an issue very much alive in contemporary debates. This paper traces Russell’s ambiguity on this matter back to his conception of the roles of knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description in naming. (shrink)

The consistent histories reformulation of quantum mechanics was developed by Robert Griffiths, given a formal logical systematization by Roland Omn\`{e}s, and under the label `decoherent histories', was independently developed by Murray Gell-Mann and James Hartle and extended to quantum cosmology. Criticisms of CH involve issues of meaning, truth, objectivity, and coherence, a mixture of philosophy and physics. We will briefly consider the original formulation of CH and some basic objections. The reply to these objections, like the objections themselves, involves a (...) mixture of physics and philosophy. These replies support an evaluation of the CH formulation as a replacement for the measurement, or orthodox, interpretation. (shrink)

Rom Harré's proposed Copernican Revolution in the philosophy of science is a very ambitious undertaking. It challenges established views, proposes a radically new model for scientific explanation, and forces a rethinking of the foundations of the field. In his treatment of the natural sciences, Harré rejects all deductivist accounts of scientific explanation basically on the grounds that such accounts seriously distort the methods of explanation actually operative in science. In the social sciences Harré, in collaboration with Secord, rejects mechanistic, positivistic, (...) and behavioristic accounts of human behavior [5]. In place of these discarded interpretations he substitutes a new realism which stresses the role that models play in supplying accounts of observed patterns of phenomena in terms of the things and processes whose interactions are responsible for the manifest phenomena. This revolution, if successfully carried out, would indeed be a valuable contribution to the philosophy of science. (shrink)