Tsirelson’s problem deals with how to model separate measurements in quantum mechanics. In addition to its theoretical importance, the resolution of Tsirelson’s problem could have great consequences for device independent quantum key distribution and certified randomness. Unfortunately, understanding present literature on the subject requires a heavy mathematical background. In this paper, we introduce quansality, a new theoretical concept that allows to reinterpret Tsirelson’s problem from a foundational point of view. Using quansality as a guide, we recover all known results on (...) Tsirelson’s problem in a clear and intuitive way. (shrink)

This study described the relationships between academic class and student moral sensitivity and reasoning and between curriculum design components for ethics education and student moral sensitivity and reasoning. The data were collected from freshman (n = 506) and senior students (n = 440) in eight baccalaureate nursing programs in South Korea by survey; the survey consisted of the Korean Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire and the Korean Defining Issues Test. The results showed that moral sensitivity scores in patient-oriented care and conflict were (...) higher in senior students than in freshman students. Furthermore, more hours of ethics content were associated with higher principled thinking scores of senior students. Nursing education in South Korea may have an impact on developing student moral sensitivity. Planned ethics content in nursing curricula is necessary to improve moral sensitivity and moral reasoning of students. (shrink)

Faced with an Alexandrian (Arian) anthropology of Neoplatonic inspiration, Eustathius adopts a strong position in several statements that is similar to astoic Aristotelianism of the 4th century. Nevertheless, Eustathius's reflection is more genuinely theological, than it is reflective of any particular philosophical trend. For him, the human body is a dynamic concept which finds its full meaning in light of the history of salvation, wherein the incarnate and glorified Logos, the second Adam, brings to completion the perfection and incorruptibility of (...) the humble body formed from clay in the first Adam, the protoplast. (shrink)

At the beginning of Irenaeus of Lyons’ Adversus Haereses, the doctrine of the Valentinian Ptolemy is presented using terms from the semantic field of time and eternity, which were undergoing a semantic evolution in contemporary Middle Platonic philosophy. These allow us to identify three phases, from a chronological point of view, at the beginning of the Valentinian myth: strict, supra-durational, eternity – eternity of indefinite duration – moment ante tempus.

This passage from Irenaeus’ Letter to Florinus offers sufficient material for reflection on the patristic function within dogmatic theology, provided that we understand both Polycarp in the role of a Church Father standing in direct contact with the apostolic kerygma, and, at times, Irenaeus as a theologian reflecting on faith. We begin with the apostolic kerygma which Policarp first hears, learns and sets down clearly, then later recalls and transmits in harmony with faith and scripture. Irenaeus, for his part, carries (...) out the role of theologian to the extent to which he listens to what was handed on attentively, commits it to memory, reflects upon it and then witnesses to it, moved by the grace of God. The language utilized by Irenaeus reveals reminiscences of the Platonic tradition, apropos of the function of memory and scripture and of the Philonian tradition, apropos of the theological content of the biblical term to ruminate. The analysis undertaken offers a ground upon which to think about new relationships between dogmatic and patristic theologies, a question that can be developed in a later article. (shrink)

The Spanish Federal Council of the European Movement (SFCEM), founded as a Spanish organization to favour the integration of Spain in Europe, was composed of representatives of various political organizations of the Republican government in exile. Correspondence between the President, Salvador de Madariaga, and the members of the Basque and Catalonian delegations discloses one of the most critical issues of the time: how to organize the Spanish regions after the fall of Franco’s regime. This article explores how the ideas of (...) a Spanish federation – defended by Madariaga – and the interest of the nationalist groups collided during the decades of 1950s and 1960s. The result was a harsh debate on separatism between the Basques and Catalans, who saw Franco’s Spain as the representation of centralism and repression of their identities, and other Spanish exiles. (shrink)

The article discusses the meaning of chaos in the series of four elements introduced by Irenaeus in haer. 1, 30, 1 to characterize the system of the so-called “Ophites”. Contrary to the explanation that renders this Gnostic system dualistic, it is argued here that, in reality, the “Ophites” of Irenaeus anticipates what we find in other Gnostic families (Naassenes, On the Origin of the World, The Hypostasis of the Archonts) and continues the Orphic tradition that appeared in the Theogony of (...) Jerome and Hellanicus, in which the eternal chaos had been domesticated with the Jewish monotheism of Genesis, and, according to which, this chaos would come to be something like a “hollow”, not eternal, which precedes the material world, shelters it and then favors the appearance of the corporeal. Its status as a Principle should always be understood in a derivative sense, with no obstacle to monism: the Primordial Light (Lumen primum), the only absolute principle, provokes the appearance of the region of the shadow (chaos), but it does so indirectly through the intermediate veil (Spiritus Sanctus). Nothing justifies speaking, therefore, of the “Ophite” system as an ontologically dualistic system. (shrink)

Sometimes Theophilus used neologisms in his apologetic presentation of the faith. This is the case with ajsumbivbastoç. The term corresponds to a Christological interpretation of Is. 40,13-14 in an anti-Hermogenian context (anti-middle platonic). We should translate it as “not counsel - able”, an allusion to the Creator God's self-sufficiency, who deliberates with his Logos-counsel without resorting to eternal matter.

Sometimes Theophilus used neologisms in his apologetic presentation of the faith. This is the case with ajsumbivbastoç. The term corresponds to a Christological interpretation of Is. 40,13-14 in an anti-Hermogenian context. We should translate it as “not counsel - able”, an allusion to the Creator God's self-sufficiency, who deliberates with his Logos-counsel without resorting to eternal matter.

En las últimas décadas se ha prestado una gran atención a la obra de Hannah Arendt: de su teoría acerca del totalitarismo a su polémico análisis del juicio de Eichmann, las páginas de la literatura secundaria acerca de la filósofa hebrea han crecido enormemente. Sin embargo, aquellos textos marginales, secundarios, en los que la autora ensayaba retratos de grandes hombres y mujeres de su tiempo permanecen, en gran medida, ocultos. En este artículo nos ocupamos de desentrañar la lectura que Arendt (...) realizó del gran poeta de posguerra de lengua alemana: Franz Kafka. Esta relación, transida por el judaísmo, adoptó tres rostros diferentes a lo largo de los muchos años en que la pensadora estuvo escribiendo. La conceptualización que se realiza aquí gira en torno al eje de la gran obra The Origins of Totalitarianism para comprender al paria de buena voluntad, el contemporáneo apolíneo y el pensador del tiempo. (shrink)

In Hippolytus, in Cant. II, 3 we find the Georgian term შჯულ-ი (šǯul-i) several times. G. Garitte rendered it in his Latin translation always as lex, causing quite a bit of obscurity in Hippolytus’ lines. The solution appears when we recognize that it can be traced both to the Greek νόμος and to διαϑήκη. If we take this into account, the text now flows harmoniously with other passages in the works of Hippolytus and with the literal tenor of the terms (...) chosen by the Greek epitomist from the Interpretatio Cantici canticorum of Hippolytus. (shrink)

This article offers a series of reflections on the relationship that should exist between the Church Fathers and dogmatic theology. In order not to underplay the indispensable function performed by the Fathers, a function understood in theological and not in historical terms, the dogmatic theologian must stand before them – as Irenaeus stood before the elderly Polycarp – listening and receiving from them the message that, in harmony with the Scriptures and guided by the grace of God, they ought to (...) deepen and con-temporize. (shrink)

This paper is an update of the documents we have concerning the Acts of the Christian martyrs, focused on three main aspects: 1) the kind of acts we know of and their classification from the point of view of their historic value; 2) the versions or editions of the texts that are most accepted by scholars; 3) the relevance of the different parts that make up these documents in order to discern the original text from passages that were rewritten or (...) underwent later variations. In this way, the article offers an exhaustive list of the documents for use in researching Christian martyrs in the Roman period. (shrink)

Faced with an Alexandrian (Arian) anthropology of Neoplatonic inspiration, Eustathius adopts a strong position in several statements that is similar to astoic Aristotelianism of the 4th century. Nevertheless, Eustathius's reflection is more genuinely theological, than it is reflective of any particular philosophical trend. For him, the human body is a dynamic concept which finds its full meaning in light of the history of salvation, wherein the incarnate and glorified Logos, the second Adam, brings to completion the perfection and incorruptibility of (...) the humble body formed from clay in the first Adam, the protoplast. (shrink)

The activity of Wnt and Notch signalling is central to many cell fate decisions during development and to the maintenance and differentiation of stem cell populations in homeostasis. While classical views refer to these pathways as independent signal transduction devices that co‐operate in different systems, recent work has revealed intricate connections between their components. These observations suggest that rather than operating as two separate pathways, elements of Wnt and Notch signalling configure an integrated molecular device whose main function is to (...) regulate transitions between cell states in development and homeostasis. Here, we propose a general framework for the structure and function of the interactions between these signalling systems that is focused on the notion of ‘transition states’, i.e. intermediates that arise during cell fate decision processes. These intermediates act as checkpoints in cell fate decision processes and are characterised by the mixed molecular identities of the states involved in these processes.Editor's suggested further reading in BioEssays: Notch: Implications of endogenous inhibitors for therapy Abstract. (shrink)

The causal compatibility question asks whether a given causal structure graph — possibly involving latent variables — constitutes a genuinely plausible causal explanation for a given probability distribution over the graph’s observed categorical variables. Algorithms predicated on merely necessary constraints for causal compatibility typically suffer from false negatives, i.e. they admit incompatible distributions as apparently compatible with the given graph. In 10.1515/jci-2017-0020, one of us introduced the inflation technique for formulating useful relaxations of the causal compatibility problem in terms of (...) linear programming. In this work, we develop a formal hierarchy of such causal compatibility relaxations. We prove that inflation is asymptotically tight, i.e., that the hierarchy converges to a zero-error test for causal compatibility. In this sense, the inflation technique fulfills a longstanding desideratum in the field of causal inference. We quantify the rate of convergence by showing that any distribution which passes the nth-order inflation test must be On−1/2$\begin{array}{} \displaystyle {O}{\left(n^{{{-}{1}}/{2}}\right)} \end{array}$-close in Euclidean norm to some distribution genuinely compatible with the given causal structure. Furthermore, we show that for many causal structures, the (unrelaxed) causal compatibility problem is faithfully formulated already by either the first or second order inflation test. (shrink)

In recent literature, panpsychism has been defended by appeal to two main arguments: first, an argument from philosophy of mind, according to which panpsychism is the only view which successfully integrates consciousness into the physical world (Strawson 2006; Chalmers 2013); second, an argument from categorical properties, according to which panpsychism offers the only positive account of the categorical or intrinsic nature of physical reality (Seager 2006; Adams 2007; Alter and Nagasawa 2012). Historically, however, panpsychism has also been defended by appeal (...) to a third argument based on considerations about the nature and observability of causation. This argument has not been much discussed in recent times. Here is a concise version from William James: "… the concrete perceptual flux, taken just as it comes, offers in our own activity-situations perfectly comprehensible instances of causal agency … If we took these experiences as the type of what actual causation is, we should have to ascribe to cases of causation outside of our life, to physical cases also, an inwardly experiential nature. In other words, we should have to espouse a so-called “pan-psychic” philosophy" (James 1911: 218). James here suggests that we have direct experience of causation in our own agency. He thereby directly contradicts David Hume, who famously denied that we have any experience of causation. James goes on to claim that if this experience is representative of causation in general, it follows that all causation is mental, and that panpsychism is true. This kind of argument for panpsychism can be called the argument from (experience of) causation. This chapter offers, first, a history of this argument and arguments closely related to it, and second, an analysis of the argument – is it valid, are its premises in any way defensible, and how does it relate to the other, more popular arguments for panpsychism from philosophy of mind and categorical properties? (shrink)

Ibn al-ʻArabī, 1165-1240; views on freedom; Sufism; Islamic philosophy.

Greek text, english translation and commentary on the surviving fragments of Empedocles (fragments as known in 1981, does not include more recent finds).

Contrary to Vaesen's argument that humans are unique with respect to nine cognitive capacities essential for tool use, we suggest that although such cognitive processes contribute to variation in tool use, it does not follow that these capacities arenecessaryfor tool use, nor that tool use shaped cognition per se, given the available data in cognitive neuroscience and behavioral biology.

There are obvious benefits to be gained from the study of logic: heightened ability to express ideas clearly and concisely, increased skill in defining one's terms, enlarged capacity to formulate arguments rigorously and to analyze them critically. But the greatest benefit, in my judgment, is the recognition that reason can be applied in every aspect of human affairs.

This paper is devoted to the study of some subvarieties of the variety Qof Q-Heyting algebras, that is, Heyting algebras with a quantifier. In particular, a deeper investigation is carried out in the variety Q 3 of three-valued Q-Heyting algebras to show that the structure of the lattice of subvarieties of Qis far more complicated that the lattice of subvarieties of Heyting algebras. We determine the simple and subdirectly irreducible algebras in Q 3 and we construct the lattice of subvarieties (...) (Q 3 ) of the variety Q 3. (shrink)

Traditional Chinese commentators rightly see that understanding Zhuangzi's way with words is the presupposition for understanding Zhuangzi at all. They are not sure, however, if Zhuangzi's words are super-effective or pure nonsense. I consider Zhuangzi's experience with language, and then turn to Heidegger's word of being to see if it may throw light on Zhuangzi's way of saying. I argue that a conversation between Heidegger and Zhuangzi on language is possible, but only by expanding Heidegger's notion of Gestell and through (...) a destruction of the dominant Confucian discourse that obscures Zhuangzi's way of saying. (shrink)

Introduction Max Horkheimer was born on February in Stuttgart. By the time he died, on 7 July in Nuremberg, he had played a decisive role in launching and ...

The philosophical problem of mental causation concerns a clash between commonsense and scientific views about the causation of human behaviour. On the one hand, commonsense suggests that our actions are caused by our mental states—our thoughts, intentions, beliefs and so on. On the other hand, neuroscience assumes that all bodily movements are caused by neurochemical events. It is implausible to suppose that our actions are causally overdetermined in the same way that the ringing of a bell may be overdetermined by (...) two hammers striking it at the same time. So how are we to reconcile these two views about the causal origins of human behaviour? One philosophical doctrine effects a nice reconciliation. Neuralism, or the token-identity theory, states that every particular mental event is a neurophysiological event and that every action is a physically specifiable bodily movement. If these identities hold, there is no problem of causal overdetermination: the apparently different causal pathways to the behaviour are actually one and the same pathway viewed from different perspectives. This attractively simple view is enjoying a recent revival in fortunes. (shrink)

For the theorists of crisis, the revolutionary state comes into existence through violence, and due to its inability to provide an authoritative katechon (restrainer) against internal and external violence, it perpetuates violence until it self-destructs. Writing during extreme economic depression and growing social and political violence, the crisis theorists––Joseph de Maistre, Juan Donoso Cortés, and Carl Schmitt––each sought to blame the chaos of their time upon the Janus-faced postrevolutionary ideals of liberalism and socialism by urging a return to pre-revolutionary moral (...) and religious values. They are united by three counterrevolutionary principles, all of which are purported to remedy revolutionary violence: traditional constitutional fidelity, the philosophy of the decision, and opposition to bourgeois liberalism. This essay is followed by the first complete English translation and publication of Donoso’s letter of October 24, 1851, which contains Donoso’s only reference to the “discussing class,” a political entity later popularized by Schmitt in his 1922 work Political Theology. (shrink)

Several variants of Lewis's Best System Account of Lawhood have been proposed that avoid its commitment to perfectly natural properties. There has been little discussion of the relative merits of these proposals, and little discussion of how one might extend this strategy to provide natural property-free variants of Lewis's other accounts, such as his accounts of duplication, intrinsicality, causation, counterfactuals, and reference. We undertake these projects in this paper. We begin by providing a framework for classifying and assessing the variants (...) of the Best System Account. We then evaluate these proposals, and identify the most promising candidates. We go on to develop a proposal for systematically modifying Lewis's other accounts so that they, too, avoid commitment to perfectly natural properties. We conclude by briefly considering a different route one might take to developing natural property-free versions of Lewis's other accounts, drawing on recent work by Williams. (shrink)