Gascoigne, Robert In his exchanges with French sociologist Dominique Wolton, Pope Francis constantly emphasises the imperative to build bridges and gives this a Christological foundation: 'We must build bridges in the image of Jesus Christ, our model, who was sent by the Father to be the Pontifex, the bridge-builder. In my view, that is where the foundation of the Church's political action is to be found'. Responding to the challenge to deepen networks of solidarity in a disconnected world, Christians (...) find the foundation, model and inspiration of their commitment in Christ. Yet the specific invocation of Christ in this ethical task provokes a number of challenges: How does this appeal to a particular person and object of faith reconcile itself with universalist languages of solidarity and human dignity? How should it respond to those who argue that Christians have 'a conflict of interest' when they seek to contribute to debates concerning the common good? Does the appeal to Christ's particularity risk the degradation of Christian faith to a civilisational weapon in disconnected times, a form of closure against other traditions? (shrink)

I offer a diagnosis of the parallelism between the Doctrine of Potential Parts and the Doctrine of Potential Wholes and briefly examine its bearing on Johansson’s account of the Tibbles-Tib Problem.

In this article, we explore how sense of time and sense of place shape the development of organizational sustainability frames (OSFs). Time and place are fundamental cultural assumptions that influence the way organizations form these frames. Given that globalization and digitalization have fundamentally altered how organizations experience and value time and place, we develop a typology of OSF development and theorize how an organization’s sense of time and sense of place interact to shape the content and structure of OSFs. In (...) so doing, we offer a spatiotemporal perspective to the sustainability literature by bringing together previously disconnected research streams on time and place. We also highlight the importance of understanding the origins, not just the outcomes, of OSFs. (shrink)

In this paper, I investigate the nature of the metaphysical possibility of disunified time. A possibility that I argue presents unique problems for those who adhere to a strict A-theory of time, particularly those A-theorists who propose a presentist view. The first part of the paper discusses various arguments against the coherence of the concept of disunified time. I attempt to discount each of these objections and show that disunified time is indeed a possible and consistent topology of time. Then, (...) I attempt to show that disunified time is a problem for a semantics based on the A-series since A-truthmakers are hard to come by in a universe of temporally disconnected time-series. Finally, I provide a novel argument showing that presentists should be particularly fearful of such a universe. (shrink)

In this article human-posthuman ruptures and disconnections both in comprehension and in practices, as well as the possibility of epistemological contingency contemporaneously are investigated. This means that an epistemological ruptures and an ontological disconnections of sexuality both differ from one another, and also join together. Since ancient times both sensitive and sensible practices of sexuality were considered the best mode to concern to sexual care of self. It has shown that, in relation to sexuality, a correlation of epistemological discontinuity (...) and continuity is possible. Sexuality, which is actualized with the help of both natural, vital and death, annihilative drives, fits into the context of onticology as a posthuman ontology. Being connected with the thermodynamics of infinitesimal vital parts, anonymous strange strangers, singularities, it turns out to be especially awesome. Such a mode of sexuality is not necessarily reproductive; rather, it unfolds in the fluid space of non-presence and at the same time determines this space. It emphasizes that that the cos mo‑illogical becoming of posthuman leads to negentropy or extropy as vitality. Following this position, the foucaultian conception of the care of self mirrors lacanian graphs of sexuation in a context of object-oriented ontologies in comparison with philosophies of presence. It is recognized that this is the sexuality of the productive disconnection and the pleasure cosmic dissolution. This article concludes by illustrating that the mode of sexuality of Speculative Posthumanism is contingent with the Libidinal Materialism or Vital Posthumanism in a context in which the sexuality of Wide Human Descendants is thought to be oriented to that which is pleasure and is differentiated. (shrink)

1. Introduction: The problems of time and consciousness What is time? St. Augustine remarked that when no one asked him, he knew what time was; however when someone asked him, he did not. Is time a process which flows? Is time a dimension in which processes occur? Does time actually exist? The notion that time is a process which "flows" directionally may be illusory (the "myth of passage") for if time did flow it would do so in some medium or (...) vessel (e.g. minutes per what?) [1]. But if time is a dimension in which processes occurred, e.g. as one component of a 4 dimensional spacetime, then why would processes occur unidirectionally in time? Yet we perceive time as an orderly, unidirectional process. An alternative explanation is that time does not exist as either a process or dimension, but that reality is a collage of discrete, disconnected and haphazardly arranged configurations of the universe, e.g. as described in Julian Barbour's "The end of time" [2]. In this view our perception of a unidirectional flow of time occurs because each moment, or "Now" as Barbour terms them, involves memory of other conceptually relevant moments, and the orderly flow of time is an illusion. Barbour's deconstruction of time contrasts the Newtonian reality of objects moving deterministically through 4 dimensional spacetime. Newton's contemporary (and rival) Leibniz [3] viewed the world in a manner consistent with Barbour (and with Mach's principle that the spatiotemporal structure of the universe is dependent on the distribution of mass, a foundation of Einstein's general relativity). According to Leibniz the world is to be understood not as matter/mass moving in a framework of space and time, but of more fundamental snapshot-like entities that momentarily fuse space and matter into single possible arrangements or configurations of the entire universe. Such configurations, which can be fabulously rich and complex considering the vastness of the universe, are the ultimate "things" of reality, which Leibniz termed "monads".. (shrink)

The paper reports the results of a comparative analysis of the two groups students coming from temporarily disconnected families due to foreign work parents and teenagers with the same social environment, but without the experience of separation time. The subject of the analysis was: the cohesion of a family from the perspective of the evaluated adolescent and three factors of psychological loneliness: social loneliness, emotional loneliness and existential loneliness. The Loneliness Scale was used based on an original concept of (...) multidimensional sense of loneliness. The questionnaire for the survey of family cohesion were used too. The age, gender, family structure and the family lifestyle were controlled. Obtained results revealed significantly lower cohesion and significantly higher existential loneliness in group of teenagers from temporarily disconnected families. Not confirmed the supposition that made in earlier studies of temporarily disconnected families due to economic migration, that these teenagers suffer from a sense of emotional loneliness There has also confirmed the belief that the level of family cohesion and a sense of loneliness in adolescents is associated with atypical organization of family life associated with the duration of migration of parent/parents, frequency of contact with family members working abroad: mothers, fathers or broth parents, the duration of stays at home. (shrink)

In the passage from the Enneads devoted to discussing and defining the nature of time, it is written that first one must experience eternity, which, as everyone knows, is the model and archetype of time. This initial warning, which is especially serious because we trust in its sincerity, appears to wipe out all hope of finding common ground with its author.Jorge Luis Borges, History of EternitySo let us leave the Platonists to wander off down a blind alley. Poor simpletons, they (...) think they will find the secret of discourse about time in the link with eternity. Whereas I, who am powerless in the face of eternity, would prefer to ask: what link can be retained, in discourse about time, between past, present, and future? If there is some link, can the three kinds of time break free of their mutual bonds? Can predicting the future, a time that will be but has never existed before, be disconnected from what determines the future as a product of what already exists and what has already existed? Can the past be what it once was or will it always be what each age decides it should have been? (shrink)

The concept of well-defined and mutually exclusive objective facts has no counterpart in the formalism of standard quantum mechanics. Bypassing decoherence theories, we then inquire into the conditions of use of this concept of objective fact, and find that it is grounded on the possibility of making reference to spatio-temporal continuants and permanent properties. Since these conditions are not fulfilled within the quantum paradigm, one must look for appropriate substitutes. Two such substitutes are discussed. The first one is phenomenal fact (...) , whose relevance to quantum physics is evaluated in the framework of Husserl’s phenomenology. The second substitute is intersubjective agreement, which can be disconnected from objectivity stricto sensu, as quantum mechanics seems to require. A study of intersubjectivity in terms of the pragmatics of language is undertaken. This study is applied to both Everett’s symbolism of memory brackets and Bohr’s transcendental remark that description of scientific experiments cannot dispense with ordinary language. (shrink)

Recently it has been argued that there are conceivable situations in which we would be led to think of our experiences as belonging to two different, entirely disconnected spaces or times. From this it follows that there is no necessity in the claim that all our experiences must be conceived of as belonging together in one space or time. Let us call the claim that all our experiences must belong to one space and time the connectedness hypothesis, and (...) the counterclaim that there are conceivable situations in which we would be led to think of our experiences as belonging to disconnected spaces or times the discreteness hypothesis. Note that neither of these hypotheses is concerned with the nature of physical space or time: the connectedness hypothesis does not affirm that the universe can be composed only of worlds connected by some path through space or time; it affirms merely that whatever the state of the topology of the universe, we can conceive of our experiences only as related within a single space and time; the discreteness hypothesis does not affirm that the universe may be composed of two or more worlds not connected by some path through space or time; it affirms merely that it is possible for us to find ourselves in a situation where our experiences can be divided into two or more disjoint sets, such that the members of one set cannot be placed in any sort of spatiotemporal relation to the members of any other set. Perhaps either hypothesis could be used as a premise toward a conclusion about the nature of the physical world—but that would be another argument. (shrink)

Recently it has been argued that there are conceivable situations in which we would be led to think of our experiences as belonging to two different, entirely disconnected spaces or times. From this it follows that there is no necessity in the claim that all our experiences must be conceived of as belonging together in one space or time. Let us call the claim that all our experiences must belong to one space and time the connectedness hypothesis, and (...) the counterclaim that there are conceivable situations in which we would be led to think of our experiences as belonging to disconnected spaces or times the discreteness hypothesis. Note that neither of these hypotheses is concerned with the nature of physical space or time: the connectedness hypothesis does not affirm that the universe can be composed only of worlds connected by some path through space or time; it affirms merely that whatever the state of the topology of the universe, we can conceive of our experiences only as related within a single space and time; the discreteness hypothesis does not affirm that the universe may be composed of two or more worlds not connected by some path through space or time; it affirms merely that it is possible for us to find ourselves in a situation where our experiences can be divided into two or more disjoint sets, such that the members of one set cannot be placed in any sort of spatiotemporal relation to the members of any other set. Perhaps either hypothesis could be used as a premise toward a conclusion about the nature of the physical world—but that would be another argument. (shrink)

The logical theory of branching space-times, which provides a relativistic framework for studying objective indeterminism, remains mostly disconnected from discussions of space-time theories in philosophy of physics. Earman has criticized the branching approach and suggested “pruning some branches from branching space-time.” This article identifies the different—order-theoretic versus topological—perspective of both discussions as a reason for certain misunderstandings and tries to remove them. Most important, we give a novel, topological criterion of modal consistency that usefully generalizes an earlier criterion, (...) and we introduce a differential-geometrical version of branching space-times as a non-Hausdorff (generalized) manifold. (shrink)

In this paper, we study the synchronization of a class of multiple neural networks with delay and directed disconnected switching topology based on state observer via impulsive coupling control. The coupling topology is connected sequentially, and the controller adjusts the state value through event-triggering strategies. Different from the related works on MNNs, its state in this paper is assumed to be unmeasurable, and the time delay is also unmeasurable. Therefore, the observer does not contain the time-delay term. The impulsive (...) switching controller and observer controller adjust the system through the observed value. By constructing the corresponding augmented matrix, the system can finally achieve quasi-synchronization. Through derivation, we give the sufficient conditions ensuring quasi-synchronization via the event-triggered impulse control mechanism. In addition, numerical simulation examples are given to test our results of the theorem. (shrink)

Declan and Karesha’s case reflects one of the most challenging narratives resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic: the experience of isolation, frustration, and disconnection for patients and their fa...

In recent years, labour markets have been characterised by stagnant wages, reduced incomes and growing insecurity supplemented by the ongoing proliferation of outstanding payment obligations at almost all levels of economy and society. We draw upon current debates in social and economic theory to explore the disconnect between the deterioration of late capitalism’s distributive measures and the relative vitality of consumer cultures, suggesting that the latter relies substantially on immaterial, credit-based payment means to bridge the gap between the fundamental fantasy (...) of ‘more and better’ and the decline of material productivity denoted by base rate of profit. We then use this disconnect as a breach-point for an in-depth interdisciplinary discussion of the substantive and ideological function of credit. (shrink)

The papers in this volume reflect much of the current unease of a world that perceives itself once more at the edge of chaos. The authors present different vistas of that experience and their inherent dialectic, expressed in numerous and ceaseless conflicts between ordering and disordering processes. They can be read as comments on the ongoing processes that lead toward greater complexity.