Time has multiple aspects and is difficult to define as one unique entity, which therefore led to multiple interpretations in physics and philosophy. However, if the perception of time is considered as a composite time concept, it can be decomposed into basic invariable components for the perception of progressive and support-fixed time and into secondary components with possible association to unit-defined time or tense. Progressive time corresponds to Bergson’s definition of duration without boundaries, (...) which cannot be divided for measurements. Time periods are already lying in the past and fixed on different kinds of support. The human memory is the first automatic support, but any other support suitable for time registration can also be considered. The true reproduction of original time from any support requires conditions identical to the initial conditions, if not time reproduction becomes artificially modified as can be seen with a film. Time reproduction can be artificially accelerated, slowed down, extended or diminished, and also inverted from the present to the past, which only depends on the manipulation of the support, to which time is firmly linked. Tense associated to progressive and support fixed time is a psychological property directly dependent on an observer, who judges his present as immediate, his past as finished and his future as uncertain. Events can be secondarily associated to the tenses of an observer. Unit-defined time is essential for physics and normal live and is obtained by comparison of support-fixed time to systems with regular motions, like clocks. The association of time perception to time units can also be broken. Einstein’s time units became relative, in quantum mechanics, some physicist eliminated time units, others maintained them. Nevertheless, even the complete elimination of time units is not identical to timelessness, since the psychological perception of progressive and support-fixed time still remains and cannot be ignored. It is not seizable by physical methods, but experienced by everybody in everyday life. Contemporary physics can only abandon the association of time units or tenses to the basic components in perceived time. (shrink)

I might summarize this section by saying that the English tenses, according to this analysis, form quite a motley group. PAST, PRES and FUT serve to relate reference time to speech time, while WOULD and USED-TO behave like Priorian operators, shifting the point of evaluation away from the reference time. HAVE also shifts the point of evaluation away from the reference time, but in a more complicated way. And FUT, in contrast to PRES and PAST, is (...) a substitution operator, putting the reference time of its clause in the plate of the speech time of subordinate clauses. (shrink)

Contemporary semantic theories can be classified along two dimensions: (i) the way and time-course in which contextual factors influence sentence truth-conditions; and (ii) whether and to what extent comprehension involves sensory, motor and emotional processes. In order to explore this theoretical space, our ERP study investigates the time-course of the interaction between the lexically specified telic component of a noun (the function of the object to which the noun refers to, e.g., a funnel is generally used to pour (...) liquids into containers) and an ad-hoc affordance contextually induced by the situation described in the discourse. We found that, if preceded by a neutral discourse context, a verb incongruent with the noun’s telic component as in “She uses the funnel to hang her coat” elicited an enhanced N400 compared to a congruent verb as in “She uses the funnel to pour water into a container”. However, if the situation introduced in the preceding discourse induced a new function for the object as an ad-hoc affordance (e.g., the funnel is glued to the wall and the agent wants to hang the coat), we observed a crossing-over regarding the direction of the N400 effect: comparing the ad-hoc affordance-inducing context with the neutral context, the N400 for the incongruent verb was significantly reduced, whereas the N400 for the congruent verb was significantly enhanced. We explain these results as a consequence of the incorporation of the contextually triggered ad-hoc affordance into the meaning of the noun. Combining these results with an analysis of semantic similarity values between test sentences and contexts, we argue that one possibility is that the incorporation of an ad-hoc affordance may be explained on the basis of the mental simulation of concurrent motor information. (shrink)

Journal Name: Semiotica Issue: Ahead of print.

SummaryThe question of Cassius Dio’s time of writing is characterised by scant evidence and a lack of consensus. This article will present a highly significant correction to our understanding of the most important passage for this question, as well as two passages that have not generally been taken into consideration. The article will argue that Dio finished his main work in the late 210s and thereby support a so-called ‘early dating’. This is central for the current re-evaluation of Dio (...) since it gives a clearer picture of the background against which Dio conceived his work and his many sophisticated interpretations. (shrink)

Our world is full of composite objects that persist through time: dogs, persons, chairs and rocks. But in virtue of what do a bunch of little objects get to compose some bigger object, and how does that bigger object persist through time? This book aims to answer these questions, but it does so by looking at accounts of composition and persistence through a new methodological lens. It asks the question: what does it take for two theories to (...) be genuinely different, and how can we know whether what seems like metaphysical disagreement is really just semantic disagreement? By offering a framework within which to explore issues of theoretical diversity, this book provides a novel way of thinking about the inter-relationship between composition and persistence. Ultimately, it argues for a new way of thinking about these issues, a way that does not preserve the standard theoretical dichotomies between four-dimensionalist theories on the one hand, and three-dimensionalist theories on the other. (shrink)

Composition, persistence, vagueness, and more constitute an interconnected network of problems. My criticism of Hud Hudson's provocative claims made in a recent paper (Hudson 2002) was focused almost exclusively on the issue of diachronic composition (Balashov 2003). Hudson's response (2003) has highlighted the dangers of such isolationism. But I want to hold to my strategy to the end. Part of the reason is to evade the appalling responsibility of presenting a full-blown theory of all the above phenomena; I must confess (...) that I do not have such a theory. At the same time, I contend that diachronic composition can be profitably carved out from the medley of the surrounding issues more or less at the joints provided by nature itself. And I do subscribe to some sort of realism about the joints of nature. (shrink)

This paper defends a realist account of the composition of Newtonian forces, dubbed ‘residualism’. According to residualism, the resultant force acting on a body is identical to the component forces acting on it that do not prevent each other from bringing about its acceleration. Several reasons to favor residualism over alternative accounts of the composition of forces are advanced. (i) Residualism reconciles realism about component forces with realism about resultant forces while avoiding any threat of causal overdetermination. (ii) Residualism provides (...) a systematic semantics for the term ‘force’ within Newtonian mechanics. (iii) Residualism allows us to precisely apportion the causal responsibility of each component force in the ensuing acceleration. (iv) Residualism handles special cases such as null forces, single forces, and antagonistic forces in a natural way. (v) Residualism provides a neat picture of the causal powers of forces: each force essentially has two causal powers⎯the power to bring about accelerations (sometimes together with other co-directionnal forces) and the power to prevent other forces from doing so⎯exactly one of which is manifested at a time. (vi) Residualism avoids commitment to unobservable effects of forces: forces cause either stresses (tensile or compressive) or accelerations. (shrink)

The paper is an extended discussion of what I call the ‘dismissive attitude’ towards metaphysical questions. It has three parts. In the first part, I distinguish three quite different versions of dismissivism. I also argue that there is little reason to think that any of these positions is correct about the discipline of metaphysics as a whole; it is entirely possible that some metaphysical disputes should be dismissed and others should not be. Doing metametaphysics properly requires doing metaphysics first. I (...) then put two particular disputes on the table to be examined in the rest of the paper: the dispute over whether composite objects exist, and the dispute about whether distinct objects can be colocated. In the second part of the paper, I argue against the claim that these disputes are purely verbal disputes. In the third part of the paper, I present a new version of dismissivism, and argue that it is probably the correct view about the two disputes in question. They are not verbal disputes, and the discussion about them to date has not remotely been a waste of time. At this stage, however, our evidence has run out. I argue that neither side of either dispute is simpler than the other, and that the same objections in fact arise against both sides. (For example, the compositional nihilist does not in fact escape the problem of the many, and the one-thinger does not in fact escape the grounding problem.). (shrink)

Physical activity, body composition and sedentary behavior may affect the health of children. Therefore, this study examined the effect of an educational hybrid physical education program on physical fitness, body composition and sedentary and PA times in adolescents. A 9-month group-randomized controlled trial was conducted in 150 participants allocated into the control group and experimental group. Cardiorespiratory fitness, speed, strength, agility, flexibility and body mass index were assessed through previously validated field tests. Sedentary time, PA at school and afterschool (...) were evaluated with the Youth Activity Profile-Spain questionnaire. Significant differences were observed concerning to the CG in APA-weekend, speed-agility and agility. Regarding the intervention, cardiorespiratory fitness, speed-agility, strength, flexibility, agility, PA in school, APA-weekday, APA-weekend, APA-week, and sedentary time increased significantly in the EG. The use of a hybrid program based on teaching personal and social responsibility and gamification strategies produced enhancements in cardiorespiratory fitness, agility, speed, APA-weekdays and APA-weekends, reducing the sedentary time. (shrink)

“Each and every important work of art leaves traces behind in its material and technique,” Theodor W. Adorno postulates in Aesthetic Theory, as he describes the way a composition is both a result of its own time and reacts critically to the time it belongs to. This quote demonstrates a reversal: rather than merely an expression or an outcome of an artist’s idea, art itself is regarded as a source for change. The work may come to affect its (...) own tools and materials and the social space around it. The primary question of this article is: what is it in musical composition that leaves the traces? This article attempts to move the focus away from discussion of finished works, and instead, depict how composition as a discipline engages in dialogue with its handcraft, historicity, and surrounding social world. I call this aspect of composition that possesses critical potential a lingering reflection. Slow and heteronomous in its nature, it presents a counterpoint to ideas that seem solid, are easily accessible and unquestioned. (shrink)

We define mereologically invariant composition as the relation between a whole object and its parts when the object retains the same parts during a time interval. We argue that mereologically invariant composition is identity between a whole and its parts taken collectively. Our reason is that parts and wholes are equivalent measurements of a portion of reality at different scales in the precise sense employed by measurement theory. The purpose of these scales is the numerical representation of primitive relations (...) between quantities of being. To show this, we prove representation and uniqueness theorems for composition. Thus, mereologically invariant composition is trans-scalar identity. (shrink)

I analyze the importance of parts in the style of biological theorizing that I call compositional biology. I do this by investigating various aspects, including partitioning frames and explanatory accounts, of the theoretical perspectives that fall under and are guided by compositional biology. I ground this general examination in a comparative analysis of three different disciplines with their associated compositional theoretical perspectives: comparative morphology, functional morphology, and developmental biology. I glean data for this analysis from canonical textbooks and defend the (...) use of such texts for the philosophy of science. I end with a discussion of the importance of recognizing formal and compositional biology as two genuinely different ways of doing biology – the differences arising more from their distinct methodologies than from scientific discipline included or natural domain studied. Ultimately, developing a translation manual between the two styles would be desirable as they currently are, at times, in conflict. (shrink)

We show that it is possible to consider parity and time reversal, as basic geometric symmetry operations, as being absolutely conserved. The observations of symmetry-violating pseudoscalar quantities can be attributed to the fact that some particles, due to their internal structure, are not eigenstates of parity or CP, and there is no reason that they should be. In terms of a model it is shown how, in spite of this, pseudoscalar terms are small in strong interactions. The neutrino plays (...) an essential role in these considerations. (shrink)

Principles of constructivism are used here to explore how organisms develop tools, subagents, scaffolds, signs, and adaptations. Here I discuss reasons why organisms have composite nature and include diverse subagents that interact in partially cooperating and partially conflicting ways. Such modularity is necessary for efficient and robust functionality, including mutual construction and adaptability at various time scales. Subagents interact via material and semiotic relations, some of which force or prescribe actions of partners. Other interactions, which I call “guiding”, (...) do not have immediate effects and do not disrupt the evolution and learning capacity of partner agents. However, they modify the extent of learning and evolutionary possibilities of partners via establishment of scaffolds and constraints. As a result, subagents construct reciprocal scaffolding for each other to rebalance their communal evolution and learning. As an example, I discuss guiding interactions between the body and mind of animals, where the pain system adjusts mind-based learning to the physical and physiological constraints of the body. Reciprocal effects of mind and behaviors on the development and evolution of the body includes the effects of Lamarck and Baldwin. (shrink)

When Wittgenstein started writing the Tractatus in June 1915, he was convinced that he was producing a theory. Accordingly, he chose a theoretical style of expressing his thought. Wittgenstein abandoned this stance only at the end of his work of composing the book. He realized that what he is producing in not a theory but a manual for improving our language and thinking. Unfortunately, it was too late to change the architecture and the style of the book: Wittgenstein simply had (...) no time to do that. This drawback makes the Tractatus notoriously difficult to understand and is apparently the major factor that caused the so called “Tractarian Wars”. (shrink)

The increased popularity of desktop documentary making among both teachers and students in history classrooms warrants an examination of its integrationinto classroom instruction. This multiple case study focused on two secondary students in an AP European History course during a unit that featured desktopdocumentary making. Employing Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) as a theoretical framework, this study revealed that the students constructedhistorical narratives with multiple web-based encounters that affected their composition over a span of time. Whenever students experienced tensions (...) in their narrative process, the students made historical judgments that furthered the narrative process. These judgments were, at times, based on evidence, and atother times devoid of evidence. These findings suggest that students may form baseless historical conclusions when given creative freedom in a desktopdocumentary making assignment. The challenge for history teachers and teacher educators who seek to integrate desktop documentary making into theirinstructional repertoire is to balance the need to provide students with creative freedom while creating an instructional setting that effectively and efficientlyaddresses students' historical understanding. (shrink)

Market inefficiency is a latent concept, and it is difficult to be measured by means of a single indicator. In this paper, following both the adaptive market hypothesis and the fractal market hypothesis, we develop a new time-varying measure of stock market inefficiency. The proposed measure, called composite efficiency index, is estimated as the synthesis of the most common efficiency measures such as the returns’ autocorrelation, liquidity, volatility, and a new measure based on the Hurst exponent, called the (...) Hurst efficiency index. To empirically validate the indicator, we compare different European stock markets in terms of efficiency over time. (shrink)

Meditative poetry has the ability to reproduce aspects of the meditative experience. In this paper we explore this ability, trying to clarify the phenomenon by pointing out the cognitive processes involved. We focus on Christian Jesuit meditation and pinpoint one of its most effective elements: “the composition of place”. We argue that three main abilities associated with “the composition of place” are responsible for the meditative quality detected in poetic meditative texts: The text’s ability to evoke an orientation process; the (...) text’s ability to support diffuse perception and encourage divergent ways of processing; the text’s ability to generate the mental set required for this experience, the absence of purpose, and to supply the conditions that enable such a mental set to exist over time. We illustrate our theoretical discussion through a close reading of two meditative poetic masterpieces: Donne’s Holy Sonnet No. 7, and the Spanish anonymous sonnet “A Cristo Crucificado”. (shrink)

Whether certain objects compose a whole at a given time does not seem to depend on anything other than the character of those objects and the relations between them. This observation suggests a far-reaching constraint on theories of composition. One version of the constraint has been explicitly adopted by van Inwagen and rules out his own answer to the composition question. The constraint also rules out the other well-known moderate answers that have so far been proposed.

Few studies in sub-Saharan Africa evaluate Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) capacity. The study aims to explore the composition of IRBs, training, and challenges experienced in the ethics review processes by members of research institutions and universities in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Our findings indicate that most IRBs members were trained on research ethics and good clinical practice. However, majority perceived the trainings as basic. IRB members faced several challenges including: investigators wanting rapid review; time pressure; investigators not following checklists; limited (...) expertise in reviewing clinical trials, studies on genetics, and traditional medicine; lack of IRB offices for administrative work; competing tasks; limited staffing and the lack of a standardized review system. There is need for advanced training on research ethics to meet the evolving research needs. In addition, investments in IRBs are needed in terms of funding, and physical and human resources in Addis Ababa and Ethiopia in general. (shrink)

Few studies in sub-Saharan Africa evaluate Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) capacity. The study aims to explore the composition of IRBs, training, and challenges experienced in the ethics review processes by members of research institutions and universities in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Our findings indicate that most IRBs members were trained on research ethics and good clinical practice. However, majority perceived the trainings as basic. IRB members faced several challenges including: investigators wanting rapid review; time pressure; investigators not following checklists; limited (...) expertise in reviewing clinical trials, studies on genetics, and traditional medicine; lack of IRB offices for administrative work; competing tasks; limited staffing and the lack of a standardized review system. There is need for advanced training on research ethics to meet the evolving research needs. In addition, investments in IRBs are needed in terms of funding, and physical and human resources in Addis Ababa and Ethiopia in general. (shrink)

Meditative poetry has the ability to reproduce aspects of the meditative experience. In this paper we explore this ability, trying to clarify the phenomenon by pointing out the cognitive processes involved. We focus on Christian Jesuit meditation and pinpoint one of its most effective elements: ¿the composition of place¿. We argue that three main abilities associated with ¿the composition of place¿ are responsible for the meditative quality detected in poetic meditative texts: The text¿s ability to evoke an orientation process; the (...) text¿s ability to support diffuse perception and encourage divergent ways of processing; the text¿s ability to generate the mental set required for this experience, the absence of purpose, and to supply the conditions that enable such a mental set to exist over time. We illustrate our theoretical discussion through a close reading of two meditative poetic masterpieces: Donne¿s Holy Sonnet No. 7, and the Spanish anonymous sonnet ¿A Cristo Crucificado¿. (shrink)

Hobbes claimed to have written the The Elements of Law during the Short Parliament of the spring of 1640. However, it seems unlikely that such a lengthy, systematic treatise could have been composed in so short a time. This article closely examines the text to make the case that the bulk of it was written prior to the 1640 political crisis. What was probably written that spring were chapters defending absolutism. Their hurried composition accounts in particular for the odd (...) assertion that democracy is foundational to all forms of government. The puzzle surrounding the composition of the Elements opens up general issues concerning Hobbes's method of writing. His habit of slotting new material into pre-existing frameworks generated inconsistencies and frustrated his ambitions for rigour. Readers need to be alert to the possibility that textual puzzles may be artifacts of Hobbes's composition process. (shrink)

Pace Benovsky's ‘Presentism and Persistence,’ presentism is compatible with perdurantism, tropes and bundle-of-universals theories of persisting objects. I demonstrate how the resemblance, causation and precedence relations that tie stages together can be accommodated within an ersatzer presentist framework. The presentist account of these relations is then used to delineate a presentist-friendly account of the inter-temporal composition required for making worms out of stages. The defense of presentist trope theory shows how properties with indexes other than t may be said to (...) exist at t. This involves an account of how times other than t exist at t, and how times may be multiply located at any given time. Benovsky's objection to bundles of universals is shown to assume that a bundle of properties must have the properties of its element properties. (shrink)

One way of understanding the reduplicative formula ‘Christ is, qua God, omniscient, but qua man, limited in knowledge’ is to take the occurrences of the ‘ qua ’ locution as picking out different parts of Christ: a divine part and a human part. But this view of Christ as a composite being runs into paradox when combined with the orthodox understanding of the Incarnation, according to which Christ is identical to the second person of the Trinity. In response, we (...) have to choose between modifying the orthodox understanding, adopting a philosophically and theologically contentious perdurantist account of persistence through time, or rejecting altogether the idea of the composite Christ. (shrink)

In ‘Essential stuff' (2008) and ‘Stuff' (2009), Kristie Miller argues that two generally accepted theses, often formulated as follows, are incompatible: - (Temporal) mereological essentialism for stuff (or matter), the thesis that any portion of stuff has the same parts at every time it exists. - Stuff composition, the thesis that for any two portions of stuff, there exists a portion of stuff that is their mereological sum (or fusion). She does this by considering competing hypotheses about stuff, trying (...) to prove inconsistency in all cases and with all corresponding understandings of mereological essentialism and stuff composition. I explain why, from an endurantist standpoint, her argument does not go through. (shrink)

We employ data envelopment analysis on a series of experiments performed in Fermilab, one of the major high-energy physics laboratories in the world, in order to test their efficiency (as measured by publication and citation rates) in terms of variations of team size, number of teams per experiment, and completion time. We present the results and analyze them, focusing in particular on inherent connections between quantitative team composition and diversity, and discuss them in relation to other factors contributing to (...) scientific production in a wider sense. Our results concur with the results of other studies across the sciences showing that smaller research teams are more productive, and with the conjecture on curvilinear dependence of team size and efficiency. (shrink)

Due to the dissolution of Parliament, election diate had to be advanced. As parties did not dispose of a long time in order to constitute their candidates-lists, their leadership were compelled to abandon all kinds of consultation of their members. They therefore used the technique of indirect vote, by asking the active militant core to approve a test-list of candidates selected by the leadership.

Substratism and Replacementism are the two major contending accounts of intrinsic change. This chapter discusses the interaction between composition and persistence, as the persistence of composite objects provides a critical test case for evaluating these two accounts. The chapter covers important puzzles and paradoxes for those who believe that mereological inconstancy and mereological coincidence are possible. There are actually two somewhat different conceptions of coincidence. One involves the sharing of a time‐slice or instantaneous temporal part. This is Temporal (...) Coincidence. A second kind of coincidence involves having exactly the same parts (whether spatially or temporally extended or both) at the same time. On some views, Temporal Coincidence and Temporary Mereological Coincidence are exactly the same things. The most compelling case of temporary mereological coincidence is that of composite things and their matter. (shrink)

One way of understanding the reduplicative formula "Christ is, ’qua’ God, omniscient, but ’qua’ man, limited in knowledge" is to take the occurrences of the ‘qua‘ locution as picking out different parts of Christ: a divine part and a human part. But this view of Christ as a composite being runs into paradox when combined with the orthodox understanding of the Incarnation, according to which Christ is identical to the second person of the Trinity. In response, we have to (...) choose between modifying the orthodox understanding, adopting a philosophically and theologically contentious perdurantist account of persistence through time, or rejecting altogether the idea of the composite Christ. (shrink)

This article sets forth a compositional model of ideology by drawing on the tradition of historical materialism and further developing its insights into the aesthetic composition of reality. It demonstrates how ideology is not simply a set of false beliefs but is rather the process by which social agents are composed over time in every dimension of their existence, including their thoughts, practices, perceptions, representations, values, affects, desires, and unconscious drives. By working through a number of diverse debates and (...) authors—ranging from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels to Louis Althusser, Eduardo Galeano, Rosaura Sánchez, and Paulo Freire—it thereby elucidates how ideology is best understood as an aesthetic process that includes aspect of sense and sense-making, and that therefore requires a collective, cultural revolution as its antidote. (shrink)

In the treatise On the Spiritual in Art, Wassily Kandinsky divided the creation of art into three categories, the ultimate one of which is called Composition. In this article, I argue that Kandinsky’s classification is similar and comparable to the principle of semi-abstract Chinese freehand brushwork summarized by Zheng Xie in the Inscriptions on Painting - Bamboo. In an attempt to clarify the core of Kandinsky’s strategy of abstraction, i.e. the transformation from painting to writing, I then connect it with (...) the evolution of Chinese characters and the aesthetic theory of Chinese calligraphy, which is also in accord with Kandinsky’s idea of internal necessity and the spirit in art. Through this aesthetic dialogue across time and space, this article aims to bring a new dimension to the understanding of Western abstractionism from the perspective of the oriental philosophy of art. (shrink)

To escape from the labyrinth of the continuum, Leibniz maintains, we must think very differently about the nature of space, time, bodies, and substances; and in particular we must posit an infinity of simple substances or monads. The main aim of this historically rich and interpretively provocative book is to explain why Leibniz says such things by examining his purported solution and how he arrived at it. Each of the book’s seven chapters focuses on a different “Ariadnean thread” that (...) supposedly helped Leibniz find his way out of the labyrinth. They concern the themes of “composition, aggregation, atoms, forms, motion, substance, and continuation in existence” (6). (shrink)

When do objects at different times compose a further object? This is the question of diachronic composition. The universalist answers, ‘under any conditions whatsoever’. Others argue for restrictions on diachronic composition: composition occurs only when certain conditions are met. Recently, some philosophers have argued that restrictions on diachronic compositions are motivated by our best physical theories. In Persistence and Spacetime and elsewhere, Yuri Balashov argues that diachronic compositions are restricted in terms of causal connections between object stages. In a recent (...) article, Nikk Effingham argues that the standard objections to views that endorse restrictions on composition do not apply to a view that restricts composition according to compliance with the laws of nature. On the face of it, such restrictions on diachronic composition preserve our common-sense ontology while eliminating from it scientifically revisionary objects that travel faster than the speed of light. I argue that these attempts to restrict diachronic composition by appealing to either causal or nomological constraints face insurmountable difficulties within the context of special relativity. I discuss how the universalist should best respond to Hudson’s argument for superluminal objects, and in doing so, I present and defend a new sufficient condition for motion that does not entail that such objects are in superluminal motion. 1 Introduction2 Diachronic Composition3 Diachronic Composition and Superluminal Objects4 Restricting Diachronic Composition5 Causal and Nomological Restrictions on Composition in a Relativistic Context6 Superluminal Objects and Motion7 Conclusion. (shrink)

This article proposes a mereological approach to the dao-you relation in the Daodejing. It is claimed here that dao and you can be conceived of as two integrated subregions, defined in terms of rules of composition and their persistence through time. It is shown that dao is an atemporal object (a fourdimensional unrestricted composition), whereas you is a temporal object (a three-dimensional restricted composition). This particular approach can provide a new understanding of essential issues in Daoist metaphysics.

There are two fundamentally distinct kinds of biological theorizing. "Formal biology" focuses on the relations, captured in formal laws, among mathematically abstracted properties of abstract objects. Population genetics and theoretical mathematical ecology, which are cases of formal biology, thus share methods and goals with theoretical physics. "Compositional biology," on the other hand, is concerned with articulating the concrete structure, mechanisms, and function, through developmental and evolutionary time, of material parts and wholes. Molecular genetics, biochemistry, developmental biology, and physiology, which (...) are examples of compositional biology, are in serious need of philosophical attention. For example, the very concept of a "part" is understudied in both philosophy of biology and philosophy of science. ;My dissertation is an attempt to clarify the distinction between formal biology and compositional biology and, in so doing, provide a clear philosophical analysis, with case studies, of compositional biology. Given the social, economic, and medical importance of compositional biology, understanding it is urgent. For my investigation, I draw on the philosophical fields of metaphysics and epistemology, as well as philosophy of biology and philosophy of science. I suggest new ways of thinking about some classic philosophy of science issues, such as modeling, laws of nature, abstraction, explanation, and confirmation. I hint at the relevance of my study of two kinds of biological theorizing to debates concerning the disunity of science. (shrink)

Understanding compositional practices is a major goal of musicology and music theory. Compositional practices have been traditionally viewed as disembodied and idiosyncratic. This view makes it hard to integrate musical creativity into our understanding of the general cognitive processes underlying meaning construction. To overcome this unnecessary isolation of musical composition from cognitive science, in this conceptual analysis, we approach compositional processes with the analytic tools of blending theory, material anchoring, and enaction. Our case study is Iannis Xenakis’ use of sieves (...) for distributing rhythmic patterns in Psappha. Though disregarded in previous accounts, the timeline and the gearwheel provide crucial conceptual templates for anchoring Xenakis’ idea of time for this score. This case study of conceptual integration templates for temporal representation seeks to gain insight into musical creativity, embodiment, and blending, especially into how virtual interactions with material structures facilitate the construction of complex meanings. (shrink)

In the late 19th century, the questionnaire was one means of taking the case study into the multitudes. This article engages with Forrester’s idea of thinking in cases as a means of interrogating questionnaire-based research in early American psychology. Questionnaire research was explicitly framed by psychologists as a practice involving both natural historical and statistical forms of scientific reasoning. At the same time, questionnaire projects failed to successfully enact the latter aspiration in terms of synthesizing masses of collected data (...) into a coherent whole. Difficulties in managing the scores of descriptive information questionnaires generated ensured the continuing presence of individuals in the results of this research, as the individual case was excerpted and discussed alongside a cast of others. As a consequence, questionnaire research embodied an amalgam of case, natural historical, and statistical thinking. Ultimately, large-scale data collection undertaken with questionnaires failed in its aim to construct composite exemplars or ‘types’ of particular kinds of individuals; to produce the singular from the multitudes. (shrink)

It is often assumed that believing that p for a normative reason consists in nothing more than (i) believing that p for a reason and (ii) that reason’s corresponding to a normative reason to believe that p, where (i) and (ii) are independent factors. This is the Composite View. In this paper, we argue against the Composite View on extensional and theoretical grounds. We advocate an alternative that we call the Prime View. On this view, believing for a (...) normative reason is a distinctive achievement that isn’t exhausted by the mere conjunction of (i) and (ii). Its being an achievement entails that (i) and (ii) are not independent when one believes for a normative reason: minimally, (i) must hold because (ii) holds. Apart from its intrinsic interest, our discussion has important upshots for central issues in epistemology, including the analysis of doxastic justification, the epistemology of perception, and the place of competence in epistemology. (shrink)