B a c k g r o u n d. According to the genre characteristics, the article is a form of publicizing analytical conclusions from the experience of research in the field of the history of philosophy in the local community of philosophers of Ukraine. The material for understanding was supplied from the environment of educational and scientific professional activity of the authors and was based on the long experience of using a certain type of historical and (...) class='Hi'>philosophical sources, which even now constitute the main resource of sources of Ukrainian philosophical education. The article explores the concept of "physical object" in the context of the history of philosophy and examines its relevance for philosophical reflections. It is noted that the variety of interpretations of the term in the history of philosophy creates the need for new methods of revealing its essence M e t h o d s. Problems with establishing the authenticity and verifiability of such sources prompted the search for methods and techniques of source studies in related fields of knowledge, in particular analytical philosophy and philosophy of science. The article uses an analytical approach based on the study of historical and philosophical sources. Methods of source studies are used to solve problems related to the authenticity and reliability of sources R e s u l t s. With this in mind, the purpose of scientific research was to justify the appropriateness of using such a phenomenon as a "physical object" in historical-philosophical research. It was established that, despite the significant unusualness of the presence of a terminological counterpart to this phenomenon in the historical-philosophical realm, its implementation and application has significant creative potential. C o n c l u s i o n s. After a concise inquiry, the authors have reached a consensus that, in contemporary research on the history of philosophy within the Ukrainian philosophical community, it is pertinent and essential to develop a methodology. This methodology should be founded on the imperative of establishing the initial point for comprehensively studying the philosophical primary source, treating it as a "physical object". (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 127 seems to imply. Of course, this critique can easily be dismissed as asking for a book that Krieger did not wish to write. His method has produced important results, for Krieger has discerned developmental trends overlooked by others. Otherwise, the only area that I think needs further discussion is Ranke's conception of the nature and function of science. Krieger seems to imply that science automatically means (...) a nomological approach modeled upon the mechanical physical sciences. But Ranke was nourished in an atmosphere where science was often equated with Naturphilosophie. Certainly, Ranke's language is filled with images and terms popularized by Naturphilosophen. Ranke's quest for a science of history may fit very nicely with the ideal dimension of his thought if the science that he is talking about is analogous to Naturphilosophie. It may turn out that the basic polarity in Ranke's idea of history is an analytic construct that has little meaning for Ranke's own intentions. Krieger ends his study with a chapter devoted to the meaning of Ranke's work for modem historiography. It is the dialectical synthesis of the whole study. After recapitulating Ranke's achievements, Krieger then emphasizes the breach that separates Ranke from our conceptual world. We no longer share Ranke's beliefs or values. In fact, for most of us "he must seem simply archaic, and the more he is himself historically restored the more archaic he must seem" (p. 355). For the reader who had to struggle through this difficult book and to contend with Professor Krieger's passion for complex dependent clauses, this announcement appears as a grand denouement. But the shock is only temporary. Krieger's assertion of the differences that separate Ranke from us serves as a warning to those who still take Ranke's approach as an objective model for historical reconstruction. The deeper meaning of Ranke's view of history is the affirmation of history as an autonomous and independent form of knowledge. "History is an inimitable way of rendering comprehensible modes of humanity which must otherwise be incomprehensible" (p. 356). This form of knowledge, which is devoted "to the actual but equipped with a language of common sense organized around the categorical," proceedes by arranging things along a time line (p. 357). Here Krieger launches a spirited counterattack against those modem theorists who have questioned the viability of history as an independent form of knowledge or who have minimized the importance of developmental analysis, preferring instead to concentrate upon relatively static deep structures. Krieger's study affirms Ranke's project in its most general sense; that history is a cumulative logic of the actual, "the meeting ground of philosophy, science, and cataclysmic experience" (p. 356). And it serves, at the same time, as a positive demonstration that a developmental analysis does impart knowledge that other approaches cannot achieve. In this sense, Krieger's masterful study of Ranke reaffirms Ranke's central position as a founding father of modem historical thought. PETER HANNS REILL University of California, Los Angeles Arthur Quinn. The Confidence of British Philosophers:An Essay in Historical Narrative. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1977. Pp. xii + 289. Gld. 80. This is a remarkable book. Almost all of it is a study, very well researched and presented, of four major English philosophical movements: Newtonians, the Utilitarians, the Oxford Hegelians, and the Russell, G. E. Moore, and Whitehead group. The study shows the initial enthusiasm, optimism, and confidence of each of the groups. Each believed that it had found a way to solve the intellectual and perhaps moral and social problems of mankind. As each movement developed, the confidence slowly eroded when philosophical problems and difficulties failed to disappear. The picture Quinn presents of these movements is very interesting. He has grouped together 128 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY much detail that makes us see the original intentions of the leaders of each of these movements. He also deftly shows how as stumbling blocks arose each movement lowered its goals and began to fade. Employing a very wide range of printed sources, Quinn presents a series of convincing vignettes, and in so doing be often reveals features of these movements that have been... (shrink)

This book takes a novel approach by highlighting comparative and long-term historical perspectives on experimental practice. The juxtaposition of accounts of natural, social, and medical experimentation is very enlightening, especially because the authors put the emphasis on the different kinds of objects of experimentation (physical matter, chemical reagents, social groups, organizations, sick individuals, archeological remains) and demonstrate how much the kinds of objects matter for the practice of experimentation, its methods, tools, and methodologies. Taken together, the chapters raise (...) several fascinating questions for further study: What do these different approaches have in common? Why do we call them “experimentation”? What are the intersections among the fields and their developments? The volume engages philosophical approaches that are not well known to Anglophone readers (Bachelard, Bergson, Bernard, Canguilhem, among others) and brings to attention a wealth of Francophone secondary literature on past and present scientific experimentation. The collection fills a yawning gap in science, science studies, and philosophy of science teaching, making it particularly valuable philosophers and historians of science in all subfields. (shrink)

. In our research about Fuzzy Time and modeling time, "Unexpected Hanging Paradox" plays a major role. Here, we compare this paradox to the Zeno Paradox and the relations of them with our standard models of continuum and Fuzzy numbers. To do this, we review the project "Fuzzy Time and Possible Impacts of It on Science" and introduce a new way in order to approach the solutions for these paradoxes. Additionally, we have a more general discussion about paradoxes, as (...) Philosophical back ground of the subject and in this way, we introduce the concepts of General View, the first picture, BBF-General View. -/- . (shrink)

In our research about Fuzzy Time and modeling time, "Unexpected Hanging Paradox" plays a major role. Here, we compare this paradox to the Zeno Paradox and the relations of them with our standard models of continuum and Fuzzy numbers. To do this, we review the project "Fuzzy Time and Possible Impacts of It on Science" and introduce a new way in order to approach the solutions for these paradoxes. Additionally, we have a more general discussion about paradoxes, as (...) class='Hi'>Philosophical back ground of the subject and in this way, we introduce the concepts of General View, the first picture, BBF-General View. (shrink)

In this book, Mark P. Fusco offers a historical, philosophical and theological review and appraisal of current research into quantum, post-modern, atheistic, mathematical, and philosophical theories that engage our interpretation of Hans Urs von Balthasar and Ferdinand Ulrich’s accounts of Ur-Kenosis. This cross-disciplinary approach inspires a new speculative metaphysical theory based on the representation of being as a holo-somatic ontology. Holocryptic metaphysics gives us a novel interpretation of transubstantiation as it is founded on the findings of (...) quantum mechanical theory. The quantum object and black hole’s properties present a new way to explain physical matter based on its holographic identity. This scientific theory for representing physical matter’s identity is recognized, for example, in the symmetry existing between a subatomic particle and its orbital shell, a single particle’s identity in relationship to its thermodynamic system, Hawking radiation, and black hole entropy. Further, the properties of quantum non-locality and teleportation signpost a new way to understand the Eternal Logos’ relationship to Jesus Christ and the Eucharist. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Preface: Virtual Entities in ScienceRobert Harlander, Jean-Philippe Martinez, Friedrich Steinle, and Adrian WüthrichIt is not only since the sudden increase of online communication due to the COVID-19 situation that the concept of the “virtual” has made its way into everyday language. In this context, it mostly denotes a digital substitute for a real object or process. Virtual reality is perhaps the best-known term in this respect. With these (...) digital connotations, “virtuality” has also been used in science and research: Chemists use virtual laboratories, biologists do virtual scanning of molecular structures, and geologists engage in virtual field trips. But the concept of the virtual has a much longer tradition, dating back to long before the dawn of the digital age. Virtual images and virtual displacements were introduced in classical physics already in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, respectively. They represent auxiliary objects or processes without instantiation, with the purpose of efficiently describing specific physical systems. In today’s physics, the term “virtual” is mostly associated with the quantum world, first and foremost with the “virtual particle” of quantum field theory. It has become such an integral part of modern high energy physics that its ontological character may be considered to go beyond the purely auxiliary, which is typically associated with the virtual. [End Page 263]In other disciplines, however, use of the term virtual without a digital connotation is much rarer. While concepts like “virtual adrenaline” show up in physiological research around 1940s, and Charles Darwin, in a private note in January 1840,1 spoke of “virtual change” in the context of embryology, these examples seem to be singular occurrences of entities that were explicitly called “virtual.” The basic idea behind the terminology of the virtual, however, might be much more common, even outside of physics. The “invisible hand” in economics, or the “vital force” in biology, for instance, may carry aspects of a virtual entity, even if they have not been referred to that way.These different observations raise several questions about the status of virtual entities in science. What has led scientists to call one entity “virtual” and not another? Do all virtual entities in science have the same roots and meet the same characteristics? Are they more than auxiliary objects or processes? Why does physics seem to occupy a specific position with respect to the use of the notion of virtuality? These are some points that led us to discuss virtual entities in science during a workshop, out of which grew the present collection. We invited contributions that addressed the historical formation and philosophical interpretation of concepts of virtual entities in physics and other disciplines—in whatever terms they may come. The main goal of the workshop was to bring to the fore similarities and differences in the meanings and functions of these concepts, so as to be able to precisely characterize why certain entities are considered virtual in specific contexts, why a different terminology was often used in each individual case, and in what sense the virtual entities relate to the real world.The organization of the workshop was part of our project “The formation and development of the concept of virtual particles,” a subproject of the Research Unit “The Epistemology of the Large Hadron Collider,” funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and Der Wissenschaftsfonds (FWF). The workshop took place online on four consecutive Fridays in March 2021. It brought together contributors who discussed the role of the concept of the virtual in theoretical as well as experimental activities, and investigated into the origins of the terminology of the virtual as it was applied to the various disciplines of natural science. Dealing with historical, philosophical, but also methodological questions, the presentations covered a wide time range, from the Middle Ages to the present day. While physics naturally emerged as the dominant field, natural philosophy, computer science and biology were also addressed. The papers in this volume were contributed by participants in this workshop and approach the subject from different angles. [End Page 264]First, Friedrich Steinle provides us with an introductory piece that reflects on the specific meaning of the use of the term ‘virtual’ in science. He highlights and... (shrink)

IT has been some time now since anyone professing himself to be a phenomenalist has characterized physical objects as ‘logical constructions out of sense-data’ in the strict sense of this expression. If he is to be justified in applying the expression in the strict sense, the phenomenalist must demonstrate that there exists a relation of mutual entailment between a statement implying the existence of a physical object and a statement referring exclusively to our ‘sense-experiences’. As a matter (...) of historical fact, no phenomenalist has ever succeeded in doing this; and it is now generally acknowledged, even by those who still wish to adhere to some form of a phenomenalistic analysis of physical object statements, that there are difficulties in principle why the reductivist programme of the early phenomenalists cannot be carried out. The modern-day phenomenalist, in an attempt to avoid the pitfalls in his predecessors’ position, tends to regard physical objects as fruitful and convenient theoretical constructions for interpreting and predicting our sense-experiences. Thus, although still committed to the view that physical objects are ‘constructed’ out of sense-data, he is no longer committed to the thesis of a strict logical equivalence between statements about objects and statements about experiences. Professor A J Ayer, perhaps the foremost exponent of this type of view today, put the matter this way not so long ago. (shrink)

Many contemporary historians and philosophers are dissatisfied both with the accounts traditional analytic philosophers have given of the epistemological dimensions of historical studies and also with the ways many continental philosophers more recently have brushed aside the need for any such accounts. Yet no one has yet proposed a unified research program that could serve as the central focus for a better epistemologically-oriented approach. Such a research program would not only address epistemological problems from a perspective that (...) would be of methodological interest to historians but would also be directly responsive to fundamental motivations people have for caring about historical studies in the first place. The main purpose of this review essay is to sketch and then illustrate the main outlines of such a research program.Basic to this research program is the recognition that the overwhelmingly central epistemological complication that arises in the attempt to say what happened in the past and what it means that it happened is that there are always competing ways to interpret evidence. The problem is to discover which among these competing interpretations is best, which involves, among other things, discovering which among them is most likely to be true. Strategies are suggested for solving this problem, which, at the limit, would result in the articulation of generally applicable criteria for assessing competing historical interpretations. (shrink)

The Evidence for the Top Quark offers both a historical and philosophical perspective on an important recent discovery in particle physics: evidence for the elementary particle known as the top quark. Drawing on published reports, oral histories, and internal documents from the large collaboration that performed the experiment, Kent Staley explores in detail the controversies and politics that surrounded this major scientific result. At the same time the book seeks to defend an objective theory of scientific evidence based (...) on error probabilities. Such a theory provides an illuminating explication of the points of contention in the debate over the evidence for the top quark. Philosophers wishing to defend the objectivity of the results of scientific research must face unflinchingly the realities of scientific practice, and this book attempts to do precisely that. (shrink)

The topic of this paper I would like to divide into two other questions than that of its title. The first question is the historical one and sounds like this: Why had Tarski chosen physical objects as truth-bearers in his original work from 1933 about truth in formalized languages?1 This historical problem may be still of importance not only from a historical point of view. Tarski’s truth-definition is still seen as one of undeniable importance for any (...) contemporary philosophical analysis of truth. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Historical Dictionary of Kant and KantianismJeffrey L. WilsonHelmut Holzhey and Vilem Mudroch. Historical Dictionary of Kant and Kantianism. Historical Dictionaries of Religions, Philosophies, and Movements, 60. Lanham, MD-Toronto-Oxford: The Scarecrow Press, 2005. Pp. xv + 374. Cloth, $75.00.The authors are emeritus professor and research associate (Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter) at the University of Zurich. Although Holzhey is founding director of the Hermann Cohen Archive, Neokantianism is (...) not disproportionately represented here. The emphasis is on Kant, with supplementary treatment of Kant’s predecessors and successors adequate to grasp Kant’s role in various developments in the history of philosophy. At the same time, a reader interested in the various forms of Kantianism will find ample useful information here; for example, Kant’s influence on ethical socialism is documented from several different directions. Even without these supplements, this would be a formidably comprehensive treatment of the central terms in Kant’s writings from the pre-critical period through the Opus postumum. The authors include references to the Reflexionen (Notes and Fragments) where appropriate. They also helpfully adjudicate certain English translation problems from the perspective of native German speakers.A number of articles stand out as especially noteworthy. “Categories” traces this term from Kant’s 1770 Inaugural Dissertation through to its reception by Peirce and C. I. Lewis. “Copernican Revolution” gives in a brief article a surprisingly comprehensive treatment of Kant’s term and its probable origins that is based on very wide study of the scholarship. “Dimensions of Space” deftly clarifies Kant’s changing attitudes toward non-Euclidean geometries. “Ether” discusses Kant’s uses of the term in the Opus postumum against the background of his pre-critical works. “Hegel” is admirably balanced, summarizing Hegel’s encounter with Kant without trying to defend Kant against Hegel’s critique. “Mathematics” includes a breathtakingly concise overview of the philosophy of mathematics from Descartes through Hilbert. “Noumenon” provides a nuanced explication of this term and “thing in itself” based on the differing roles the two expressions play in Kant’s discourse. “Object” gives the clearest explanation of Kant’s use of this term the reviewer has seen anywhere. “Pre-Critical Philosophy” discusses every philosophically relevant aspect of this period of Kant’s writings and its significance for later developments. “Substance,” among other articles, highlights differences between the first and second editions of the Critique of Pure Reason. “World” outlines the developments in Kant’s views of the significance of this term for physics, astronomy, epistemology, ethics, and biology.Although one might assume that having only two authors for a reference work might result in a certain narrowness or bias, the presentation here is comprehensive and balanced. The dictionary has the feel of a project that has been ripening over the course of many years. The advantage of the two-author model is a consistency of voice that makes reading the dictionary through cover to cover pleasant and rewarding. The chronology and sketch of Kant’s life provide an excellent overview, and the judiciously selected bibliography is preceded by the best compact orientation to Kant scholarship available. The topical arrangement of the bibliography, while it creates some difficulty in locating a work cited in the text of the dictionary, allows a reader interested in one area of Kant to find the most important relevant secondary sources instantly.The reviewer is at pains to find something here to criticize. There is the occasional linguistic indiscretion, such as the unidiomatic “dignity to be happy.” The authors refer to Kant-Studien as “Kant Studies,” so that a reader might search in vain for a journal of this name. Such infelicities are notable because they are rare in this well-edited volume. Sometimes information might be better placed under another heading; the reviewer often noted defects in one article that were remedied in a related one. (Following up the cross-referenced terms was the solution in every case.) There are also occasional omissions. Distinguished Kant scholarship taking place in Latin America should be recognized. “Antinomy” overlooks the clearest definition of this term: a necessary conflict of reason with itself. “Cognition” neglects Kant’s puzzling references to “practical cognition” (praktische Erkenntnis). Christian August Crusius, mentioned in... (shrink)

우리의 역사상 실재하였거나 그 건립이 주창되었지만 한 번도 같은 공간에 공존(共存)한 적이 없었던 민족고유의 종교적 신성공간(神聖空間)이 3개 있다. 그것은 신라시대의 신궁(神宮), 고려의 팔성당(八聖堂), 조선조의 무묘(武廟)이다. 본고는 이 셋을 같은 공간에 복원한 뒤에 이 공간에서 신라 진흥왕 이래로 고려에 이르기까지 간헐적으로 행하여졌던 무교(巫敎)적 삼신천제(三神天帝)로서의 팔관회(八關會)를 부활시켜서 개최하는 것의 중요성과 그 역사·철학적 의미를 탐색하였다. 이렇게 하면, 이곳은 단순한 전통의 복원을 넘어선 ‘전통의 창조적 계승의 장’이 될 수 있을 것이다. 여기서 앞의 세 신성공간에 숫자 3을 부여하고 뒤의 팔관회에 숫자 1을 부과하여, 이 3+1을 (...) 우리 고유성의 하드웨어로 보고자 하였다. 그리고 이 3+1의 장을 삼한시대의 종교적 신성공간이었던 소도(蘇塗)를 본 따서 ‘(가칭)소도지역’으로 명명하고자 하였다. 이처럼 소도지역 안에 공존할 3+1은 그 하나하나가 우리의 고유성[정체성]을 드러내고 있다. 그러므로 하나씩 그 함의를 고찰해 봤다. 이처럼 소도지역이라는 하드웨어가 설정되면 이제 이러한 하드웨어를 뒷받침 하는 소프트웨어가 무엇인지 궁금해진다. 이 소프트웨어에 대해서는 지면관계상 후속논문에서 탐구할 것이다. 아울러 후속논문에서는 이러한 고유성의 소프트웨어와 하드웨어를 갖춘 소도지역을 어떻게 활용할 것인지, 나아가 그 건립의 최적지가 어디인지? 왜 그렇게 보는지에 대해서도 검토하려고 한다. 따라서 본고는 후속논문을 위한 선행논문으로서의 의미도 동시에 갖는다고 할 것이다. (shrink)

HOW WE BECOME AWARE OF PHYSICAL OBJECTS OVER AND ABOVE THE PERCEPTUAL ACTS OF SEEING COLOR, SHAPES AND HEARING SOUNDS, ETC., IS A QUESTION THAT HAS OCCUPIED MANY CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHERS OF SENSE-PERCEPTION. DID ARISTOTLE EVER FACE THIS PROBLEM, AND IF HE DID, HOW DID HE DEAL WITH IT? THIS ARTICLE DISCUSSES THIS QUESTION AND CONCLUDES THAT THE ANSWER TO IT CAN BE FOUND "DE INSOMNIAS" IN ARISTOTLE'S DISCUSSION OF DREAMS AND ILLUSIONS. THERE IS AN ACT AFFIRMATION ("PHESIN") CARRIED OUT (...) BY THE CONTROLLING AND DISCRIMINATING SENSE ("TO KURION KAI TO EPIKRINON") WHICH DOES THIS. "FOR, SPEAKING GENERALLY, THE CONTROLLING POWER ("ERXE") AFFIRMS ("PHESIN") THE REPORT GIVEN BY EACH SENSE UNLESS SOME MORE AUTHORITATIVE POWER CONTRADICTS IT.". (shrink)

In modern science, an important feature is a fact that interdisciplinary research is becoming more popular. This is due to the mutual interest of different areas of science to the methods and principles of other areas. The article is devoted to the study of the possibility of dialogue between physical cosmology and transcendental philosophy. Transcendental philosophy provides an interesting look at the problem of subject-object relations in which the object depends on the observer. The possibility of (...) science using a specific transcendental method in the field of astrophysics has been studied. This possibility is due to the specifics of astronomical objects that exist for the observer as phenomena that do not correspond to reality in time and space. The article emphasizes the conventional concept of realism in modern science. The interdisciplinary dialogue of American and Ukrainian philosophical cosmology with its methods and physical cosmology with its objects promotes mutual development. (shrink)

The volume starts with the paper of Lynn Maurice Ferguson Arnold, former Premier of South Australia and former Minister of Education of Australia, concerning the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne (International Exposition of Art and Technology in Modern Life) that was held from 25 May to 25 November 1937 in Paris, France. The organization of the world exhibition had placed the Nazi German and the Soviet pavilions directly across from each other. Many papers are devoted (...) to the interpretation of this opposition. Arnold’s paper considers the differences in the two totalitarian states’ architectural and design discourse styles. Although each of them communicated a totalitarian language of purposes, permissions, and boundaries, they essentially differed in the styles of discourse represented by the architecture and design of their respective pavilions. They were opposites of each other and the liberal ideals they contested. The internationalist viewpoint reflecting the multi-ethnic mix of the USSR is contrasted to the ein Volk homogeneity represented in the German pavilion. The Soviet pavilion opted for a utopian future to be arrived at by “benign” leadership, whereas the German pavilion anchored itself in the myth of Teutonic history with the nostalgic pride protected by the swastika-bearing eagle. Jean-Yves Béziau is best known as a logician and founder of Universal Logic. However, in this paper, he poses a new philosophical question: why philosophical discourse does not use images? The paper begins with a general analysis of different types of philosophical discourses. Then, he focuses on why images have been and are still rejected in philosophical discourse. He explains various ways to use images in a fruitful way to develop philosophical thinking and discourse and illustrates his view by providing several examples. He concludes with a promising programmatic declaration about founding a new journal entitled World Journal of Pictorial Philosophy to stimulate the usage of images for developing philosophical thinking. Although complaints about the obscurity of many philosophers’ discourse are widespread, Tatiana Denisova, ex-professor of the Surgut University and a research associate of the University of the Aegean undertakes a positive attitude to this problem. She explains that the reasons for the obscurity of philosophical texts, the subsequent complexity in communicating philosophers’ meanings and their eventual incomplete understanding is not a sign of their inferiority. On the contrary, it is a sign of the fruitfulness of philosophical discourse, which can generate new meanings. Thus, the darkness of philosophical discourse is like the life-giving chaos, and the obscurity that it inevitably contains can be the keeper of implicit meanings and even their generator. Katarzyna Gan-Krzywoszyńska and Piotr Leśniewski, authors of a monograph on Polish philosopher Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz (1890 – 1963), make a comparative analysis of his educational style with that of Paulo Reglus Neves Freire (1921 – 1997). The authors highlight that these scholars have distinctly different backgrounds. The former was an educator, philosopher and a leading advocate of critical pedagogy connected with the dialogical Latin-American tradition. The latter was a philosopher and logician, a notable representative of the Lwów–Warsaw school of logic with significant contributions to semantics, model theory and the philosophy of science. Despite their apparent difference, the authors identify some striking similarities regarding their attitudes towards education; notably, their approaches are essentially dialogical. Gilah Yelin Hirsch is a multidisciplinary artist who works as a painter, writer, curator, educator, and filmmaker. In her experiential paper, he explains how and why she uses four channels of communication in her creative expression: writing, painting, filmmaking, and teaching, as dialogic inquiry. She considers that these channels compose a continuum of discourse styles, each reaching a different facet of kaleidoscopic consciousness. She claims that her choice of medium is prompted by a need to communicate her insights profoundly. Thus, for instance, she created painted allegories to express narratives based on dreams and visions emerging from her subconscious. Art and healing is another Tibetan-rooted type of discourse practised by the author. Creating and observing a healing image produces a positive psychophysiological change in both the artist and the viewer. The discourse here is tripartite between creator, image, and viewer. Filmmaking is another type of discourse she practices between the filmmaker/artist as shaman or healer and the viewer as respondent or participant. These films are meant to be experienced frame by frame, physically and emotionally in both the body and mind. Jocelyn Ireson-Paine is a cartoonist and programmer. His paper offers an original attempt to use category theory in cartooning. Category theory is a branch of mathematics that provides concepts and methods to describe general abstract structures in terms of a labelled directed graph called category, whose nodes are called objects, and whose labelled directed edges are called arrows (or morphisms or transformations or mappings). The author explores different ways to define “style” in art using category theory and a relational view of art. Moreover, he examines how “translation” (transformation) between styles could be defined and reveals the difficulties of how it could be implemented in a computer using special software. Jens Lemanski is a philosopher who has revived research in Arthur Schopenhauer’s legacy by exploring his work on mathematical evidence, logic diagrams, and problems of semantics. In this paper, he advances a new approach to eristic as an art of protecting oneself from the one who deliberately violates norms of discourse ethics to win an argument. The author attributes the origins of this view to Schopenhauer, suggesting a new reading of his work. According to the author, eristic is a prohibitive technique that takes effect when the norms of discourse ethics are transgressed and violated. Thus, eristic is viewed as a discipline of Enlightenment philosophy and a correlate of discourse ethics. Roshdi Rashed is an authority on the history of Arabic mathematical sciences. Proceeding from Gilles-Gaston Granger’s definition of mathematical style, he studies the question of whether a mathematical work can be characterized by a single style or by a multitude of styles. This question is explored within the style of a single work, namely Menelaus’s Sphaerica, and through the study of the development of a single problem over time, namely the isoperimetric problem. He indicates Menelaus’s divergence from the Euclidean style of (plane and stereometric) geometry caused by the drop of the Parallel Postulate, which associated it with hyperbolic geometry. Hence, the author concludes that Menelaus’s Sphaerica incorporates the well-known Euclidean style with a variation of the non-Euclidean one. On the other hand, examining the isoperimetric problem reveals another interesting historical picture. A succession of different styles (cosmological, geometric, infinitesimalistic, style of the calculus of variations, of synthetic geometry) can be observed due to the transformation of the research object over time. Boris Shalyutin, a Russian social philosopher, and Ombudsman for Human Rights in the Kurgan Region, explores the origins of discourse in combination with the birth of society and law. He claims that legal discourse marks the historical emergence of discourse in general. Homo Juridicus generated Homo Sapiens, which have created new spheres of discourse, notably moral discourse and further philosophical, political, and scientific discourse. Petros Stefaneas, a logician, computer scientist and novelist, suggests an alternative to the traditional narratology approach for studying (interactive) social media discourse. He claims that style describes how the parts of a narrative are blended into a whole. The author relies upon Goguen’s and Harrel’s concept of style as a choice of blending principles and transfers to the study of the social media narratives elements from the methodology of studying Web-based collaborative search for mathematical proofs like those implemented within the Polymath project. The last paper belongs to Ghil‘ad Zuckermann, a linguist, language revivalist, and proponent of a model of the emergence of Israeli Hebrew, according to which Hebrew and Yiddish were the primary sources of Modern Hebrew. This paper explores the fascinating and multifaceted Yiddish language and its survival in Israeli. Yiddish is characterized by a unique style that embeds psycho-ostensive expressions throughout its discourse. The author highlights the cross-fertilization between Hebrew and Yiddish as it manifests itself in any aspect of the Israeli language. He claims that Yiddish survives beneath Israeli phonetics, phonology, discourse, syntax, semantics, lexis, and even morphology, although traditional and institutional linguists have been most reluctant to admit it. (shrink)

Even though mathematics and physics have been related for centuries and this relation appears to be unproblematic, there are many questions still open: Is mathematics really necessary for physics, or could physics exist without mathematics? Should we think physically and then add the mathematics apt to formalise our physical intuition, or should we think mathematically and then interpret physically the obtained results? Do we get mathematical objects by abstraction from real objects, or vice versa? Why is mathematics effective into (...) physics? These are all relevant questions, whose answers are necessary to fully understand the status of physics, particularly of contemporary physics. The aim of this book is to offer plausible answers to such questions through both historical analyses of relevant cases, and philosophical analyses of the relations between mathematics and physics. (shrink)

This book presents 12 original essays on historical and contemporary philosophical discussions of judgment. The central issues explored in this volume can be separated into two groups namely, those concerning the act and object of judgment. What kind of act is judgment? How is it related to a range of other mental acts, states, and dispositions? Where and how does assertive force enter in? Is there a distinct category of negative judgments, or are these simply judgments whose (...) objects are negative? Concerning the object of judgment: How many objects are there of a given judgment? One, as on the dual relation theory of Frege and Moore? Or many as in Russell's later multiple relation theory? If there is a single object, is it a proposition? And if so, is it a force-neutral, abstract entity that might equally figure as the object of a range of intentional attitudes? Or is it somehow constitutively tied to the act itself? These and related questions are approached from a variety of historical and contemporary perspectives. This book sheds new light on current controversies by drawing on the details of the distinct intellectual contexts in which previous philosophers' positions about the nature of judgment were formulated. In turn, new directions in present-day research promise to raise novel interpretive prospects and challenges in the history of philosophy. istorical and contemporary perspectives. This book sheds new light on current controversies by drawing on the details of the distinct intellectual contexts in which previous philosophers' positions about the nature of judgment were formulated. In turn, new directions in present-day research promise to raise novel interpretive prospects and challenges in the history of philosophy. (shrink)

The subject of this study is materialism, understood in the broadest sense of this concept: both as a philosophical doctrine and as a way of life corresponding to a certain worldview position. The aim is to clarify the objective role of this worldview position in various fields of human activity. At the center of the research is the question of the essence of materialistic ideas about the world hiding behind the sensually given reality to man. The study consists (...) of two parts, published in separate articles. The first part is devoted to the origins of the materialistic worldview and the main question of philosophy, and in this, its second part, the question of the philosophical problems of non-classical physics is considered, the root of these problems is revealed, a comparative worldview analysis of the basic concepts of classical and non-classical physics is carried out and the overall result of the research is summarized. The methodology of this research is the principle of materialistic monism, according to which absolutely all phenomena of the human-cognizable world can be based only on something material, "influencing". The general conclusions of this study are as follows: the roots of the materialistic worldview go back to the origins of life, to such a condition of successful vital activity of living beings, which is inherently ideological; this condition, called by the author the Main Question of Life, is the historical forerunner of the Main Question of Philosophy; the worldview position, equivalent to the materialistic solution of the OVF, is inherent in the vital activity of absolutely all living beings; all people in their daily and practical activities are born materialists. In addition, this study clarifies the idea of the essence of materialistic teaching; shows the exclusivity of the materialistic worldview as the only true worldview; provides a refined definition of the concept of matter; proves the need to shift the "center of gravity" of modern materialistic teaching from dialectics to the principle of materialistic monism; formulates the missing requirement for scientific theories to ensure their ideological viability; shows the ideological inconsistency the main ideas of the new, non-classical physics. (shrink)

The study of social, ethical, and political issues from a naturalistic perspective has been pervasive in social sciences and the humanities in the last decades. This articulation of empirical research with philosophical and normative reflection is increasingly getting attention in academic circles and the public spheres, given the prevalence of urgent needs and challenges that society is facing on a global scale. The contemporary world is full of challenges or what some philosophers have called ‘existential risks’ to humanity. (...) Nuclear wars, natural and/or engineered pandemics, climate change, global totalitarianism, and emergent technologies, are some of the challenges mentioned by many authors devoted to the study of long-term potential risks for the survival of the human species. However, while there are many reasons to be a pessimist about the future of humanity, there is also a lot of ink wasted in showing that the world today is far better than we had in the past and also that there have been many instances of social and moral progress in the last centuries. Some authors have even claimed that “we have made more progress over the last 100 years than in the first 100,000”. According to ‘our world in data’, some of the most relevant advances of humanity in the last centuries have to do with the reduction of poverty and/or inequality, better health and security, the decline of violence and war, and the development of democracy and institutional mechanisms to guarantee individual freedom and rights. Yet, there is a more concrete concern that our world faces nowadays, and requires a particularly detailed analysis. In a few words, the advance in information and communication technologies, the huge volume of people migration because of prevalent instances of global inequality, and the reality of an interconnected world that just mirrors an extensive history of massive human intergroup relations open the question about the feasibility of social and moral progress in the contexts of diverse, multicultural, and unequal societies. This makes it crucial to reflect not only on whether human societies may keep advancing on a path of social progress, but how this can be achieved by addressing the challenges of inequality and potential intergroup conflict. This concern closely relates to the further consolidation of democratic values and the achievement of a more generalized consideration of the equal moral value of human individuals far from group, ethnic, or collective distinctions. This vision of progress follows the moral convictions that have been considered right and worthy to be pursued by most ethical theories explored by philosophers and social scientists so far. This work aims to contribute to the study of the mechanisms and feasibility of social and moral progress grounded on the precept of human equality and is guided by the idea that social and moral progress in a plural world requires the accomplishment of a more democratic and tolerant society. These forms of progress have already been defined by philosophers Allen Buchanan and Russel Powell as inclusivist forms of moral progress. According to these authors, inclusivist moral progress is featured by the transformation of moral judgments, motivations, and norms guided by the rejection of “group-based restrictions on moral standing and moral status” (2018). The work of Buchanan and Powell is fundamental for the argumentation developed in this work since they have pioneered a more complex debate in the field of evolutionary social sciences and philosophical anthropology. In brief, these authors have inquired how human nature, conceptualized by the advances in evolutionary thinking and the empirical sciences, is related to our moral convictions and the possibilities that we have to establish certain forms of social and moral progress. The work of Buchanan and Powell contributes to the debate on moral progress by incorporating empirically-informed concepts and arguments. With this objective in mind, they develop their discussion around a generalized tension between exclusivist and inclusivist forms of moral progress. This tension revolves around the question of whether and to what extent human moral concerns, motivations, and norms, are limited or bounded by social identities, group thinking, or collective values. This question is at the center of this work. In other words, I aim to answer whether and to what extent the nature of our social and moral cognition hinders or enables the development of inclusivist forms of morality and moral progress. As I mentioned so far, the distinction between exclusivist and inclusivist forms of morality has a practical implication and facilitates the reflection on the mechanisms and feasibility of concrete forms of progress based on the precept of human equality, which is the road to progress that we should follow according to most ethical theories. The distinction between exclusivist and inclusivist morality is not used here as a form of summarizing highly divergent descriptive approaches to morality, but as a way to address the practical implications of morality research, particularly around the question of the feasibility of social forms of progress based on the precept of equality and tolerance. My objective then has less to do with offering a conceptualization of human morality or with the proposition of a new ethical perspective. Instead, I aim to identify, from an empirically informed perspective, what enables the achievement of egalitarian forms of social progress, to subsequently offer a normative reflection about what we should do if we want to accomplish such inclusivist forms of progress. This task is of great relevance, having in mind that some theoretical proposals on the matter have claimed that human prosocial behavior and morality are constrained by exclusivist fixed tendencies as a product of our evolutionary history. According to these views, human morality is a group-centered cognitive and behavioral expression that has severe limits in its scope and extent, which hinders in the end the emergence of inclusivist forms of moral concerns and behaviors. These claims align with the philosophical intuition about the ‘dissociation of empathy’, or the fact that human individuals tend to express empathy and sympathy preferably for members of their group whereas their empathic and moral concern and recognition for outgroup individuals tend to be reduced or eliminated in real-life social interactions. Multiple theorists have expressed, however, that these assumptions are wrong for empirical and philosophical reasons, which results in a serious challenge to the conception of human morality as exclusivist by nature. Furthermore, simple intuition and practical experience constantly show us that human individuals can develop and endorse a broad spectrum of moral considerations and adopt an arguably inclusivist stance concerning the kind of persons or agents that deserve moral concern. Moreover, and adopting a historical perspective, the expansion of cultural and commercial exchanges, the consolidation of democracy, the development of welfare states, or the emergence of institutions based on the concept of universal human rights, have partially driven human progress based on the impartial concern for the well-being of persons. These historical instances of cultural evolution and institutional design have shown that it is feasible to promote behaviors and attitudes grounded in impersonal prosocial and inclusivist principles. This optimistic perspective, however, still begs the question of the exact relationship between social, cultural, and historical contexts, and the emergence of certain behavioral expressions of inclusivist morality. This is crucial since a great number of human individuals around the world still do not make part of these instances of social progress, and some authors have suggested that such instances of social and moral progress are particularly favored by the contexts of the WEIRD world, that is the world of Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic societies. Some of these approaches consider moral inclusivity a ‘luxury good’ and follow the ‘dependency thesis’ according to which the expression of moral inclusivity depends on the presence of very concrete material conditions that trigger inclusivist and impersonal prosocial tendencies that human beings are not able to express in threatening contexts without physical security. This thesis is problematic for various reasons and has led to incomplete explanations about the enabling and causal factors of inclusivist moral progress, as well as unsatisfactory suggestions about what we should do to foster the accomplishment of more generalized instances of progress based on inclusivist concerns. In an attempt to contribute to this debate, the main objective of this thesis is to offer an alternative proposal about the nature of human morality and a more detailed reflection on what we should do if we want to further accomplish such instances of progress. More precisely, this work adopts a particular developmental and constructivist vision of human morality to answer the question of how feasible it is to reach generalized forms of social progress based on the precepts of moral inclusivity. Furthermore, it offers some ideas about what are the most adequate and favorable conditions to foster such progress both at the individual and the collective level. At this point, a preliminary clarification of some starting points is necessary. In the first place, and contrary to what other authors have proposed when debating moral progress from an empirically-based approach, my perspective adopts a radical developmental and constructivist perspective, following particularly the conceptual and empirical ideas of the social-domain theory in moral psychology. From this perspective, morality is a domain of normative and social knowledge that develops and emerges in human interactions. Moral concerns, judgments, and norms are not only the result of the expression of innate adaptive intuitions, nor the product of social conformity and a simple process of mirroring the normativity that communities have established to organize their social life. Human individuals, instead, construct moral concerns and judgments during their situated interactions. More specifically, the constructivist tradition claims that we need to research how moral concerns, judgments, and reasons emerge in social interactions and how human beings construct the content of their moral knowledge in the first place. Based on these ideas, morality is defined here as the result of a constructive process through which human individuals, by the means of constant interactions on a background of mutual respect and recognition, develop evaluative concerns about how we ought to treat others, and how to ‘care’ and ‘respect’ others’ well-being, needs, and vulnerabilities. This developmental-constructivist theory of human psychology contributes to an alternative understanding of the origins of moral variability and informs a very particular normative stance about the most desirable contexts needed for the urgent accomplishment of inclusivist forms of morality in contemporary societies. This is so given that the very same definition of morality adopted presupposes the feature of inclusivity. The main objective of this work is then to argue, based on a developmental perspective, what are the most favorable conditions to foster the development of moral inclusivity and what we should do to accomplish concrete instances of moral progress that truly help us to overcome our most urgent moral challenges. The whole thesis is organized as follows. In part I, I show how received visions about human social evolution have informed conceptions of morality as an adaptive function evolved to solve the challenges of cooperative life. Based on these assumptions, some theories argue that human morality is limited by the boundaries of group thinking, and always obeys the mandates of collective interests and the will of the majority. However, this conception has problematic implications from a normative and ethical perspective. The aim of Chapter 1 is to present this introductory debate in detail. In chapter 2, I consider a relevant amount of scientific evidence that helps to consolidate a more optimistic and inclusivist perspective about the starting conditions of human prosocial behavior. Later, I will summarize some ideas offered to explain the possible evolutionary mechanisms that led to the consolidation of these inclusivist capacities. However, I will also show how evolutionary theories that share the same adaptationist foundations but initially seem relevant to explain the feasibility of moral inclusivity, result incomplete when considering the complexity of moral behavior and its ethical implications. Part II is devoted to presenting a developmental alternative to the adaptationist versions around the starting conditions of morality. In this section, I first summarize the epistemological, conceptual, and empirical basis of a constructivist perspective already proposed by several authors in the last decades. This is the goal of chapter 3. More precisely, I adopt the conceptualization of morality established by the social-domain theory school and clarify its conception of the situated development of moral concerns, motivations, and norms. All these ideas are essential for my argumentation on the feasibility of inclusivist moral progress offered later. Chapter 4 provides a more detailed idea of constructivist thinking about moral development, by analyzing one particular dimension: the development of moral concerns for fairness and the sense of justice in distributive dilemmas. In Part III, I assume a constructivist perspective on morality to contribute to the philosophy of moral progress. In particular, I discuss the implications of such a perspective for the conceptualization of human moral nature and discuss what are the most favorable conditions for moral inclusivity to emerge. Answering that question is of enormous relevance since favoring the transition of human societies towards more inclusivist forms of moral concern and behavior supposes a more generalized accomplishment of our most urgent moral convictions. Previous developmental or culturally-sensible attempts to explore this issue are already on the market. As mentioned before, most authors have approached the topic by situating the cultural evolution and development of (inclusivist) moral progress in the WEIRD world. For instance, some of these authors claim that very concrete material conditions (mostly present in the Western World) have been necessary for triggering inclusivist and impersonal prosocial tendencies that human beings are not able to express in threatening contexts without physical security. Despite their interest in explaining inclusivist morality and the feasibility of inclusivist forms of progress following a naturalistic and culturally situated approach, these theories are problematic for two main reasons. In the first place, most of the authors that explain moral progress tend to focus exclusively on the consolidation of liberal values in the Western world and the underlying adoption of laws, social-epistemic practices, and public narratives about tolerance and inclusivity, as unequivocal signs of inclusivist morality. Nevertheless, there is an enormous distance between the institutional and public support of inclusivist moral values or the construction of public images of tolerance and inclusivity, and the real materialization of impersonal moralities in situated social interactions. Secondly, the variability of human moral behavior is far bigger than most of the theories in moral psychology and moral progress tend to assume. Accordingly, inclusivist and exclusivist forms of morality may develop simultaneously in similar or divergent geographical and socio-ecological environments, including those with harsh conditions such as competition for scarce resources, potential intergroup conflict, and risks of disease transmission. In addition, harsh environmental conditions are usually present in almost all societies around the globe, and the presence of socio-ecological conditions such as physical security and prosperity, predominant in highly resourced populations, do not prevent the existence of exclusivist moral tendencies. My model explores a different perspective on the relationships between cultural, institutional, and historical factors, and the situated development of human morality. This supposes a clear distinction from previous approaches to the matter since it offers a different view on what we should do to pursue further instances of inclusivist social progress. In the fifth chapter, I first analyze the proposals of some defenders of the ‘dependency’ theory. The attention is focused on the ‘Evolutionary Developmental Model’ proposed by Buchanan and Powell (2018). Based on a critique of this approach, I will argue that to explain the evolution and development of human morality in its multiple manifestations, it is essential to put focus on social interactions. This also involves a different perspective on human-environment relations that in line with a constructivist worldview makes an innovative contribution to the philosophy of moral behavior and moral progress. Later, in the sixth chapter, I will define my alternative relational view of inclusivist morality and I will offer my view on how to establish favorable conditions that make inclusivist morality possible. Complementing the constructivist approach, my conception is based on the essential role of equality and individuality and on how moral inclusivity is favored if moral concerns do not develop driven by the accomplishment of group-centered, binding, and communitarian concerns and values. In brief, my relational model suggests that the accomplishment of moral inclusivity not only depends on the overall achievement of certain levels of physical security or economic prosperity. Instead, its development is favored by transforming the interactional contexts in which moral concerns towards autonomy and individuality emerge. In arguing so, I will need to start with a critique of contemporary situated and embodied approaches in ethics. Then, I will show how societies guided by the accomplishment of group-centered values of power, dominance, and relational inequality tend to express exclusivist moral behaviors, while individualistic societies tend to be more inclusivist. Starting from this diagnosis, my final attempt is then to reflect on which are the best conditions for the moral valuation of individuality to emerge and what we should do to promote the accomplishment of moral inclusivity at the societal level. (shrink)

Most recent work on the nature of experiment in physics has focused on "big science"--the large-scale research addressed in Andrew Pickering's Constructing Quarks and Peter Galison's How Experiments End. This book examines small-scale experiment in physics, in particular the relation between theory and practice. The contributors focus on interactions among the people, materials, and ideas involved in experiments--factors that have been relatively neglected in science studies. The first half of the book is primarily philosophical, with contributions from Andrew (...) Pickering, Peter Galison, Hans Radder, Brian Baigrie, and Yves Gingras. Among the issues they address are the resources deployed by theoreticians and experimenters, the boundaries that constrain theory and practice, the limits of objectivity, the reproducibility of results, and the intentions of researchers. The second half is devoted to historical case studies in the practice of physics from the early nineteenth to the early twentieth century. These chapters address failed as well as successful experimental work ranging from Victorian astronomy through Hertz's investigation of cathode rays to Trouton's attempt to harness the ether. Contributors to this section are Jed Z. Buchwald, Giora Hon, Margaret Morrison, Simon Schaffer, and Andrew Warwick. With a lucid introduction by Ian Hacking, and original articles by noted scholars in the history and philosophy of science, this book is poised to become a significant source on the nature of small-scale experiment in physics. (shrink)

David Hume was a highly original thinker. Nevertheless, he was a writer of his time and place in the history of philosophy. In this book, M. A. Stewart puts Hume’s writing in context, particularly that of his native Scotland, but also that of British and European philosophy more generally. Through meticulous research Stewart brings to life the circumstances by means of which we can get a deeper understanding of Hume’s writings on the nature and reach of human reason, the (...) foundation of morals, and, especially, on the philosophy of religion. Stewart pays particular attention to Hume’s intellectual development, beginning with his education at the College of Edinburgh, the writing of his Treatise of Human Nature, and his subsequent philosophical responses to criticisms of that book. He argues that Hume’s scepticism set him at odds with the Christian Stoicism of Scottish contemporaries including that of Francis Hutcheson - and shows that this conflict played a major role in his failure to obtain the Edinburgh Moral Philosophy Chair in 1745. Stewart’s detailed study of the physical character of Hume’s surviving manuscripts in Chapters 8 and 9 provides the best available dating of his early ‘Essay on Modern Chivalry’, his ‘Early Fragment on Evil’ and the periods of composition of his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Other chapters compare Hume’s theory of abstraction with that of Locke and Berkeley, provide the 17th and 18th century philosophical context of the central argument of his essay ‘Of miracles’, and consider the 18th and 19th century reception of his writings in England and Ireland. (shrink)

Individuals living with rare conditions are faced with important challenges derived from the rarity of their conditions and aggravated by the low priority given to rare disease research. However, current realities of rare disease research require consideration of the relationship between subjectivity and ‘traditional’ objectivity. Objectivity in research has traditionally been associated with processes and descriptions that are independent of the investigator. The need for researchers to provide unbiased knowledge and achieve a balance between objectivity and the (...) underlying values in nursing and scientific research requires an examination of how objectivity is conceptualized within the context of rare disease research. The aim of this paper is to examine scientific objectivity in rare disease research from a philosophical viewpoint and, in doing so, demonstrate the need to redefine it to reflect the current scientific environment. As such, healthcare providers working on this field need to redefine objectivity around ethical and moral obligation to advance science in an equitable manner with the end goal to produce knowledge that is trustworthy and beneficial to our patients. (shrink)

In modern science, an important feature is a fact that interdisciplinary research is becoming more popular. This is due to the mutual interest of different areas of science to the methods and principles of other areas. The article is devoted to the study of the possibility of dialogue between physical cosmology and transcendental philosophy. Transcendental philosophy provides an interesting look at the problem of subject-object relations in which the object depends on the observer. The possibility of (...) science using a specific transcendental method in the field of astrophysics has been studied. This possibility is due to the specifics of astronomical objects that exist for the observer as phenomena that do not correspond to reality in time and space. The article emphasizes the conventional concept of realism in modern science. The interdisciplinary dialogue of American and Ukrainian philosophical cosmology with its methods and physical cosmology with its objects promotes mutual development. (shrink)

This book develops a philosophical structure for historical explanation that resolves disputes about the scientific status of history that have persisted since the nineteenth century. It does this by showing why historical explanations must take the form of a narrative and by making their logic explicit. The books formulates a unique positive account of the logic of narrative explanations. This logic reveals how the rational evaluation of narrative explanation becomes possible. The book also develops a nonrealist (irrealist) (...) metaphysics and epistemology of history--that is, it argues that there exists no one fixed past but many pasts. It includes a novel reading of Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, displaying how Kuhn offers a narrative explanation of theory change in science. The book situates narrative explanations within a naturalistic framework. Naturalism regards all canons of rational inquiry as evolving and contingent. The book also argues for the general philosophical significance of historical explanation. The first four chapters defuse methodological and the metaphysical objections to narrative explanations. The final three chapters explore how narrative explanations relate to other sciences. It will be of interest to researchers in historiography, theory of history, philosophy of history, philosophy of science, philosophy of social science, and epistemology"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

In this paper I make more explicit a position that I have being advocating for more than two decades, though its full force does not seem to have been felt. I write in defence of the *commodification* rather than the simple *commercialisation* of knowledge. The two italicised terms are often spoken about in the same breath—and, to be sure, they are related to each other. But they are not the same. Commercialisation refers to the subjection of social life to the (...) price mechanism, something that Adam Smith believed happened spontaneously, if it was not impeded by churches and states. And while Smith’s celebration of commercial culture makes him the philosophical father of capitalism, he would probably not approve of capitalism’s long-term tendency to turn aggregated versions of these spontaneous exchanges into objects that are themselves subject to exchange relations, which is commodification. Nevertheless, it is precisely in this sense of ‘commodification’ that I defend the university as a producer of knowledge as a public good, both in terms of teaching and research. I place the shi from commercialisation to commodification in a larger historical context first clearly identified by Ernst Cassirer – namely, a shi in metaphysical consciousness that accompanied the treatment of substances as the bearers of functions, which is associated with the introduction of algebra as a unifying principle of mathematical reasoning in the early modern era, initially through Descartes, which then became the basis of the modern physical world-view. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Crystal Order That Is Most Concrete:The Wittgenstein HouseHui Zou (bio)IntroductionIn the instruction of architectural history, some historical references have to be mentioned in terms of the relationship between building and language. In Chapter I, Book II, of The Ten Books on Architecture, the ancient Roman theorist Vitruvius discussed the "origin of the dwelling house." According to him, the "primitive hut" originated from the gathering of men around (...) a fire through communicating in language.1 In the primitive hut, the origin of architecture was co-presented with the origin of language; the language helped establish a harmonic relationship, which developed builders' construction collectivity. Such a language-collectivity relationship was witnessed in the record of the Tower of Babel in the biblical scripture where the Lord decided to stop the human beings' construction of the tower by "confus[ing] their language there."2 During the Renaissance, the alphabetic language and the design of buildings were correlated through the application of geometry that was supposed to embody the "divine proportion." In the Franciscan professor Luca Pacioli's book On Divine Proportion, letters of the alphabet were geometricized to become objects of contemplation for tracing "God's light."3 In Chinese gardens, there has been a long tradition of naming a specific view with a poetical phrase that thematicized the scene into a meaningful unity of the view and the viewer—jing.4 In all these historical cases, language and building were integrated into a cosmological picture grounded in divine transcendence.After the modernism in architectural history of the 1960s and 1970s, a loss of meaning in architecture was widely observed,5 and the interrelationship between language and architectural design began to emerge as a prominent issue. Several trends in architectural theories during the 1960s and 1970s studied how meaning was created through architectural design. One was the post-modern development in architecture that sought to apply classic architectural elements to the facades of new buildings as gestures to [End Page 22] the past.6 Another trend was phenomenological, which attempted to discover a common language of building contexts that led to building humanized living environments.7 Yet another trend was to apply linguistic approaches to the rational methodology of architectural analysis.8 The analogy of building with language was provoked by an impelling sense of the crisis that the traditional embodied order was being lost in the prevalent instrumentalized practice of architecture.The predicament of the loss of meaning in contemporary architecture can be traced as far back in philosophy as the splitting of mind and body proposed by René Descartes in the seventeenth century. This split began to distance architecture from its traditional embodiment of transcendental meanings in the second half of the eighteenth century9 and finally led to the division of the metaphysical and physical parts in modern architecture, especially after the industrialization of the nineteenth century. Correspondingly, language became an instrumental means for architecture to impose posterior "ideas" to the material bodies of buildings rather than acting as an inherent component of architectural design for the creation of meaning in architecture. The desire for meanings in modern architecture, based on the split of the metaphysical and physical, theoretically catered to linguistic research, such as semiotics, and tended to define architecture as a symbol. The linguistic structure of signifier-signified was, however, coarsely transplanted into architectural theory and reduced architectural symbolism to a simple dualism of idea and form in which the former was usually arbitrarily applied to the latter by a designer. Such an arbitrary imposition of external "meanings" onto an architectural form through language intensified their separation, which in turn produced nihilism in architecture.The lessons learned from the transplantation of linguistic studies into architectural theories remind us that we need to pay close attention to the historical events that could open up the interaction between language and building and reveal the "fundamental linguistic character of our experience of the world" in Gadamer's sense.10 A house designed and built by Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) provides a unique case for us to contemplate this issue. My historical study of the Wittgenstein House is not to understand Wittgenstein's subjective intentions... (shrink)

Against Nature – Chapter Abstracts Chapter 1. A Transdisciplinary Approach. In this short book you will find philosophy – metaphysical and political - economics, critical theory, complexity theory, ecology, sociology, journalism, and much else besides, along with the signposts and reference texts of the Information Systems field. Such transdisciplinarity is a challenge for both author and reader. Such books are often problematic: sections that are just old hat to one audience are by contrast completely new and difficult to another. My (...) hope is that in the interconnections, arguments and thrust of this polemic, readers will discover both interest and insight, alongside a range of new avenues to explore. This introductory chapter sets the scene – today’s digital world of Tech Giants and Fake News, its roots in the philosophical arguments of the 1920s, and the book’s key claims: (i) that the early 20th century philosophical grounding of today’s digital revolution is culpable in digital’s (growing) contribution to the ecological catastrophe unfolding in the 21st century; (ii) that process philosophy offers a new way to rethink that philosophical grounding, and reshape the digital revolution to support strategies to counter that catastrophe. Chapter 2. The Problem with Digital. This chapter begins with a brief overview of the research approaches in information systems as an academic field, before turning to the deeper roots of its malaise, in individualism, and its looming consequences. The three branches of Information Systems research, in academia, prove to be a useful lens through which to understand the field: Positivism, Interpretivism, and the Critical stance taken by this book. The ‘scientism’ at the root of positivism is examined, and the positivism in Information Systems critiqued as a historically contingent response to the ascendancy of a new brand of economics in Business Schools after the Second World War. But the computational market-fundamentalist form of economics sponsored in the 1950s (and applied by governments since the 1970s) centred around notions of the individual rational actor as an information processor. The philosophical underpinning of methodological and possessive individualism in this approach is exposed, and its influence upon the development – long before computing – of the science of ecology, and our notion of ecosystems, introduced. Chapter 3. The Future Does Not Exist. The philosophical core of the book, this chapter introduces process philosophy. Through an examination of the irreversible reality of subjectivity, Bergson’s famous notion of the durée reélle, and Whitehead’s critique of the bifurcation of subject and object, are introduced. The causally closed ‘time’ of positive science determines existence from the beginning to the end of the universe, be it three seconds or three trillion years. But the reality, of course, is that the future does not exist: our choices are real, and only one of myriad potential futures comes into being at each moment. As Bergson insists, durational succession exists, I am conscious of it; it is a fact. Bergson’s star – once the brightest of any living philosopher in the world – faded almost as quickly as it rose, under the onslaught from the logical positivists whose verificationism insisted that any proposition has no factual meaning if no evidence of observation can count for or against it: all ethics, aesthetics, romance, and metaphysics – and the very subjectivity with which duration is experienced - were thus closed down and dismissed. In this chapter it is reintroduced, to a new audience. Chapter 4. The World in a New Light. Many fundamental problems in the world can be seen as resulting from the false philosophy of bifurcation, fixity, and the reification of abstractions critiqued by process philosophy. Being – with all the isolation and focus upon the individual that it entails – must, if we are to address these problems, be seen as secondary to Becoming, with all the connection, interrelatedness, and complex collectivity that it implies. Choices become clearer, between positivism and interpretivism, between accents upon individualism or collectivism, between reductionist and complex adaptive systems approaches. The systemic individualism in Anglo-American societies can be regarded as actually harmful: the Tech Giants severing ties and bonds rather than connecting us; algebraic ecological models actually breaking the co-dependencies and co-requisites upon which real – complex - ecological health depends. Positivism, built as it is upon methodological individualism, seen in the light of process philosophy, becomes a danger to personal psychological balance – cutting us off from one another; a danger to the social fabric – undermining and impoverishing our civic life; and a danger to the ecological health of the planet – ignoring the immense (eco)systemic impact of our activities over the last centuries upon everything around us in the natural world. Chapter 5. A Theoretical Manifesto for Green IT. We are not islands, and in a process-relational social organisation much must be held in common. We are individuals, but we cannot survive alone. Four different perspectives on individualism show it to be little more than greed. An ecological economics reintegrating the household, the social, the supportive State, and – crucially – the life-giving earth into our polities is introduced and promoted. I introduce the concept of ‘Infomateriality’ – a non-bifurcated digital world where the physical bodies of people - fingers touching keyboards and eyes scanning screens - are as much ‘hardware’ as cabling, circuitboards and haptic interfaces, and the social practices, power relations, and embedded politics within IT artefacts define all such techné as fundamentally social. Abstract divisions are false, and whole, socially embedded systems should be the focus of IS, and from a philosophically and sociologically much deeper perspective. ‘Tech for Good’ is held up as movement in the right direction. My hope is that this book will help promote action, in the field of information systems, toward a better world, where Green Tech for Good is deployed for Nature, rather than against it. (shrink)

The current stage of the development of amateur stayer running practices can be characterized as personality-building, since the main goals of runners (especially marathon runners and super marathon runners) are not so much related to strengthening health, as to the sphere of personal improvement and self-knowledge: the development of will, character, testing yourself in an extreme situation, testing previously inaccessible emotions and states of consciousness. The object of the study is ego texts (books for a wide audience, including the (...) online "samizdat") of modern Russian running enthusiasts. The method of studying these texts is the biographical method, which makes it possible to determine the multidimensional influence of running activity on fundamental changes in personality development and the formation of her life path. The analyzed biographies inherit both the confessional tradition of Augustine (the contrast of the aimless and vicious "pre-race" life, as well as the traumatic experience of running neophyte and significant achievements in many areas of personal development after the adoption of the values expressed through running Coubertin's "religio athleticae"), and the adventurous and heroic biographical tradition noted by M. M. Bakhtin, inherent in the Renaissance, as well as romanticism and Nietzscheanism with their focus on the formation (in our case, through a stayer run) of a new (or "super-") person. The qualitative result of running activity is the achievement by the subject of a new stage of development – a person running (homo currens), which is characterized by activity, mobility, heroism, asceticism, striving for maximum self-realization, achieving harmony of body and spirit. Homo currens opposes both virtual pastime and the fetishization of comfort culture, suggesting, referring to the concept of Viktor Frankl, filling life with new meanings and values through overcoming the inevitable suffering for a stayer run. Amateur running is considered by writers as a publicly available and effective means of gaining physical, mental and social well-being, which expresses its humanistic essence and gives philosophical and anthropological significance to the works under study. (shrink)

Chapter 1 First Person Access to Mental States. Mind Science and Subjective Qualities -/- Abstract. The philosophy of mind as we know it today starts with Ryle. What defines and at the same time differentiates it from the previous tradition of study on mind is the persuasion that any rigorous approach to mental phenomena must conform to the criteria of scientificity applied by the natural sciences, i.e. its investigations and results must be intersubjectively and publicly controllable. In Ryle’s view, philosophy (...) of mind needs to adopt an antimentalist stance to achieve this aim. Antimentalism not only definitively rejects the idea that mind is a substance separated from the body, it also denies that mental phenomena radically differ from physical phenomena by virtue of several unique features. Most problematically, mental phenomena have a conscious character (mental states are related to specific qualitative feelings) and are accessible only to the first-person (only the subject knows directly what s/he is experiencing inside his/her mind). Ryle takes a strong stance on antimentalism going so far as to maintain that an approach to mind which aims to meet the criteria of scientificity set by the natural sciences must avoid any reference to internal, unobservable mental states. In his view (which is considered a specifically philosophical version of psychological behaviorism and also addresses questions put forward in psychological research), mental states can be redescribed in terms of behavioral dispositions. In this chapter, we address the historical roots of the antimentalist view and analyze its relation to the later tradition of research on mind. We show that, compared to the antimentalist stance, functionalism and cognitivism take a step back when they maintain that direct reference to mental states is necessary since mental states cause and therefore explain human behavior. This step backwards is often interpreted as a return to mentalism. However, this is only partially true. Indeed, we suggest that these later traditions retain one important element of Ryle’s antimentalism, i.e. the idea that mental states must be uniquely identified using external and publicly observable criteria, while excluding any reference to introspection and those qualitative dimensions of a mental state, which are accessible only to the first-person. According to the perspective we put forward, this epistemological stance has continued to influence contemporary research on mind and current philosophical and psychological theories which both tend to exclude the subjective qualities of human experience from their accounts of how the mind works. The issue we raise here is whether this is legitimate or whether subjective qualities do play a role with respect to the way our mind works. The conclusion of this chapter anticipates the argument the book makes in in favor of this latter position, starting from a particular angle, i.e. the problem of how we categorize concepts related to our internal states. -/- Chapter 2 The Misleading Aspects of the Mind/Computer Analogy. The Grounding Problem and the Thorny Issue of Propriosensitive Information -/- Abstract. After the crisis of behaviorism, cognitivism and functionalism became the predominant models in the field of psychology and of philosophy, respectively. Their success is mainly due to the new key they use for interpreting mental processes: the mind/computer analogy. On the basis of this analogy, mental operations are seen as cognitive processes based on computations, i.e. on manipulations of abstract symbols which are in turn understood as informational unities (representations). This chapter identifies two main problems with this model. The first is how these symbols can relate to and communicate with perception and thus allow us to identify and classify what we perceive through the senses. Here we limit ourselves to presenting this issue in relation to the classical symbol grounding problem originally put forward by Harnad on the basis of Searle’s Chinese room argument. An attempt to address the problem raised here will be made in chap. 3. The second point we discuss in relation to the mind/computer analogy concerns the idea of information it fosters. Indeed, following this analogy, information is something available in the external world which can be captured by the senses and transmitted to the central system without being influenced or modified by the procedures of transmission. This perspective does not take into account that – unlike computers – in living beings information is acquired by means of the body. As Ulric Neisser has already pointed out, the body is itself an informational source that provides us with additional sensory experience that influences (modifies or complements) the information extracted from the external world by the senses. To develop this line of analysis and to determine exactly what information is provided by the body and how this might influence cognition, we examine Sherrington’s and Gibson’s positions. Moving on from their views, we qualify bodily information in terms of ‘proprioception’. We use ‘proprioception’ in a broad sense to describe any kind of experience we have of our internal states (including postural information as well as sensations related to the general state of the body and its parts). Following Damasio’s and Craig’s studies, we further elaborate this position, arguing that living beings are equipped with an internal propriosensitive monitoring system which maps all the changes that constantly occur in our body and that give us perceptual (‘proprioceptive’ or propriosensitive) information about what happens inside us. Moreover, relying on Goldie’s and Ratcliffe’s view, we show that emotional information can also be considered as a form of ‘proprioception’ which contributes to determining everything we perceive. This analysis leads us to the second main thesis of this book: ‘proprioception’ is a form of internal perception and it is an essential component of the sensory information we can access and use for all cognitive purposes. -/- Chapter 3 Semantic Competence from the Inside: Conceptual Architecture and Composition -/- Abstract. Concepts are essential constituents of thought: they are the instruments we use to categorize our experience, i.e. to classify things and group them together in homogeneous sets. Here we define concepts as the internal mental information (representations) that allows us, among other things, to master words in natural language. By analyzing the way in which individuals master word meanings we explore a number of hypotheses regarding the nature of concepts. Following Diego Marconi’s research, we differentiate between two kind of abilities that underpin lexical competence – so-called ‘referential’ and ‘inferential competence’ – and we suggest that, in order to support these abilities, concepts must also include two corresponding kinds of information, i.e. inferential and referential information. We point out that the most widely used and acknowledged theories of concepts do not make this distinction, instead broadly characterizing the information used for categorization in terms of propositionally described feature lists. However, we show that while feature lists can explain inferential competence, they do not account for referential competence. To address the issue of referential competence we examine Ray Jackendoff’s hypothesis that to account for the possibility of linking perceptual and conceptual information we need to assume the existence of a (visual) representation that encodes the geometric and topological properties of objects and bridges the gap between the percept and the concept. Furthermore, we analyze the extension of this work by Jesse Prinz who introduced the notion of a proxytype, a perceptual representation of a class of objects that incorporates structural and parametric information related to their appearance. However, as we point out, proxytypes can only explain the relationship between perception and concepts with respect to instances that can be perceived through the senses and that belong to the same class by virtue of their physical similarity. We suggest that this notion be extended to include larger conceptual classes. To accomplish this, we further develop Mark Johnson, George Lakoff and Jean Mandler’s idea of a schematic image and argue that conceptual representations include a perceptual schema. Perceptual schemata are non-linguistic, structured experiential gestalts (patterns or maps) that make use of information taken from all sensory modalities, including body perception. They accomplish a quasi-conceptual function: they allow us to recognize and to classify different instances. In this work, we hypothesize that perceptual schemata are an essential component of concepts, but not identical to them. Instead, we suggest that concepts include both perceptual and propositional information with perceptual schemata providing the ‘perceptual core concept’ that grounds related propositional information. -/- Chapter 4 In the Beginning There Were Categories. The Bodily Origin of Prelinguistic Categorical Organization: The Example of Folkbiological Taxonomies -/- Abstract. Studies of categorization in psychology and the cognitive sciences have made use of the notions of ‘category’ and ‘concept’ without precisely defining what is meant by either; in fact, often these terms have been used as synonyms, making it difficult to address specific issues related to conceptual development. This chapter begins by discussing the definitions of, as well as the distinctions between, ‘categories’ and ‘concepts’ in the classical philosophical tradition (Aristotle, Kant and Husserl). We introduce our view of categories with reference to Husserl. Categorization is defined as the way in which our experience is originally (pre-linguistically) organized in a passive and fully unconscious manner on the basis of universal structuring principles. Conceptualization is explained as a later process in which the earlier categorical macro-classes are further subdivided into more specific and detailed sets; this later process also relies on linguistic learning and exposure to culture. On the basis of Ray Jackendoff, Jean Mandler, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s work, we hypothesize that categorization is a two-step process that begins with the formation of homogeneous sets of entities partitioned into regions that describe the ontological boundaries of the objects that humans perceive (categories) and continues at a later stage with the development of more specific classifications (concepts). In this chapter, we mainly address three related issues: Why should we assume that there is categorical organization which precedes the development of a conceptual system? How do categories and concepts relate to each other? Shall we hypothesize that categories are innate or that they are formed before concepts on the basis of information and organizational structure available at a very early developmental stage? We show that categorical partitions are necessary for categorization and, following Mandler, that the general categories we form at an early age do not match our adult superordinate concepts. As for the third issue, we argue that there might be no need to assume that categories are innately present in the human mind, since their formation can be explained – at least in certain cases – by basic mechanisms that work on body (propriosensitive) information. This hypothesis will not be discussed in general, but in relation to a particularly relevant example of categorical partition, i.e. the folk-biological dichotomy between ANIMATE/INANIMATE. This is compared with other dichotomies that derive from it, but are not directly categorical such as LIVING/NON-LIVING and BIOLOGICAL/NON-BIOLOGICAL. -/- Chapter 5 Internal States: From Headache to Anger. Conceptualization and Semantic Mastery -/- Abstract. Here we ask if we can also apply the distinction between referential and inferential competence we introduced in Chapter 3 to words that do not refer to things that are perceived using the external senses, especially to words/concepts that denote bodily experiences (such as pain, thirst, hunger, etc.) or emotions. We introduce and discuss the hypothesis that – even though such words/concepts do not refer to intersubjectively identifiable entities in the external world – they do have a kind of referent that can be accessed via direct perception, more specifically ‘proprioception’, as we have defined it in terms of all propriosensitive information we can consciously access. In the first part of the chapter, we specifically consider terms denoting bodily experiences such as ‘pain’ or ‘hunger’ and argue that their referents are identified and classified from a first-personal point of view on the basis of four main characteristics: their specific intensity, their localization in the body, their co-occurrence with other signals and above all their specific qualitative sensations. Emotions are addressed in the second part of the chapter. We suggest that there is a continuity between bodily experiences and emotions. In particular, we argue for a perceptual theory of emotions in line with that proposed by James and Lange at the end of the 19th century and developed more recently by authors such as Damasio (see also chap. 2§5, §6). The hypothesis we put forward is that the referential information that supports the categorization of emotions and therefore also our mastery of terms referring to emotions consists in the perception (i.e. the ‘proprioception’) of those bodily states and changes in bodily states which constitute our emotional experience. In the context of this discussion we examine some objections to this line of reasoning that arise from a cognitivist perspective and following authors such as Oatley, Johnson-Laird and Frijda, we distinguish between basic emotions that can be identified and classified solely on the basis on how they feel and complex emotions whose identification and classification additionally depends on cognitive factors. To describe how emotions are identified and classified on the basis of how they feel, we rely on Marcel and Lambie’s distinction between an ‘emotion state’ and an ‘emotion experience’. Both notions indicate kinds of feelings that we consciously experience. However, they describe first-order and second order emotion awareness respectively. The emotion state is the feeling we have of the bodily states and changes that occur when we are experiencing an emotion, while the emotion experience is the fully developed and integrated emotion we both experience and are, with reflection, aware of experiencing. On the basis of this differentiation, we also show that the same characteristics that aid in the identification and classification of bodily experiences (specific qualitative sensations; somatic localization; specific intensity; presence/absence of specific concomitant sensations) can also be used for the identification and classification of emotions – at least basic emotions. In the last two sections of the chapter we present some clinical evidence on the semantic competence of people who suffer from Alexithymia and Autism Spectrum Disorder which supports the conclusions of our preceding analyses. -/- Chapter 6 The ‘Proprioceptive’ Component of Abstract Concepts -/- Abstract. In this chapter, we address the issue of whether the mastery of abstract words requires only inferential knowledge and thus, if the concepts that support the mastery of abstract words include only linguistic information. We start by differentiating the notions of ‘abstract’ and ‘general’ which are often erroneously confused. We then identify a strict definition of abstract, as contrasted with ‘concrete’, that applies to words or concepts whose referent cannot be experienced by the senses. We argue that abstract words/concepts would be better described as theoretical, because they are usually conceived as structured sets of inferential knowledge expressed linguistically; that is, as small theories. Pointing out parallels with Carnap’s analysis of this issue in philosophy of science, we hypothesize that words/concepts denoting non-observable entities are not all ‘equally theoretical’, because their link to sensory experience can be stronger or weaker. We revive the distinction, inspired by Quine, between theoretical and intertheoretical concepts/words. This distinction relies on the fact that the former – unlike the latter – retains a strong, although indirect, connection with perception. In Quine’s discussion, perception is understood uniquely in terms of observability, i.e. of external sensory experience. Here we argue, however, that bodily, ‘proprioceptive’ (i.e. propriosensitive) experience can also serve to referentially ground theoretical (i.e. abstract) concepts/words. We frame this issue using the example of the theoretical concept ‘freedom’ and Lakoff’s hypothesis that this concept is developed on the basis of bodily information. We contrast this with the example of ‘democracy’ which more closely resembles an intertheoretical concept/word. Furthermore, we show that one of the classical views put forward in psycholinguistic research to explain how abstract concepts are mentally represented – i.e. Paivio’s Dual Coding Theory – points in the same direction as our analysis. The same is true of Barsalou’s work suggesting that we use internal information to understand at least some abstract words. To sustain this position, we put forward two lines of evidence: the first comes from psycholinguistic studies while the second examines deficits of semantic competence exhibited by people with Autism Spectrum Disorder. On the basis of our analysis, we put forward a classification that distinguishes between different kinds of concreteness and different degrees of abstraction: concepts/words referring to body experiences and basic emotions are described as analogous to concrete concepts/words because they are grounded in perceptual (i.e. propriosensitive) experience, while abstract concepts/words are considered more or less abstract depending on whether they are intratheoretical (and rely entirely on inferential information) or theoretical (and are partially grounded in perceptual – or more often in propriosensitive perceptual – information). In the last section of the chapter we consider two scales that have been used in psycholinguistic research to measure the degree of concreteness vs. abstractness of words and we show that – used conjointly – they can provide a measure of the internal vs. external grounding of specific words. (shrink)

The second law results in the growth of the entropy – in superficial interpretation this principle presumes that the sufficient energy inevitably turns into the substandard energy. Order turns into chaos over time; however, chaos also turns into order under certain circumstances. The first research objective is to establish the possible prescientific ideas about the phenomenon – some philosophical intuitions that have preceded the scientific discovery of the second law and have conformed to it in a certain sense. (...) It is essential because there are always certain bonds and continuity in the history of philosophy and science – the correct interpretation of the phenomenon becomes difficult, if not impossible, without the establishment of such bonds.Moreover, the main task is to understand what the second law is and which significance its principal corollaries have. We need to give the second law a correct interpretation that will allow making assumptions about its connection with time in the context of the initial state problem and about the possible new ways of modern physics development – in particular, the creation of the quantum theory of gravity. Two solutions to the entropy and initial state connection problem are proposed in the context of the time arrow discussion (G. Calender’s approach to solving the problem is disputed). (shrink)

Pierre Gassendi (b. 1592, d. 1655) was a French philosopher, scientific chronicler, observer, and experimentalist, scholar of ancient texts and debates, and active participant in contemporary deliberations of the first half of the seventeenth century. His significance in early modern thought has in recent years been rediscovered and explored, towards a better understanding of the dawn of modern empiricism, the mechanical philosophy, and relations of modern philosophy to ancient and medieval discussions. Through an arch-empiricism—tempered by adherence to key elements of (...) Church doctrine—Gassendi views metaphysics as a realm for speculation grounded in the possibility of empirical confirmation, logic as a psychologistic and probabilistic enterprise, knowledge of the external world as built on and subject to sensory-based evidence, and ethics in quasi-hedonist, possibly quantifiable terms. His philosophy is a constant review of other sources, a thorough consideration of the landscape into which his own empiricism fits and represents an alternative to contrasting claims, past and present. Other hallmarks of his thought include an atomist matter theory, explorations and defenses of the new physics, objections to the Meditations, and refutations of contemporary Aristotelians and mystical thinkers. His presentation of an empiricism, atomism, and new cosmology in historical and philosophical context greatly advanced the community of scholarship in his day, and represents a then-new model of research and exposition. (shrink)

In recent years, many philosophers of modern physics came to the conclusion that the problem of how objectivity is constituted (rather than merely given) can no longer be avoided, and therefore that a transcendental approach in the spirit of Kant is now philosophically relevant. The usual excuse for skipping this task is that the historical form given by Kant to transcendental epistemology has been challenged by Relativity and Quantum Physics. However, the true challenge is not to force modern physics (...) into a rigidly construed static version of Kant's philosophy, but to provide Kant's method with flexibility and generality. In this book, the top specialists of the field pin down the methodological core of transcendental epistemology that must be used in order to throw light on the foundations of modern physics. First, the basic tools Kant used for his transcendental reading of Newtonian Mechanics are examined, and then early transcendental approaches of Relativistic and Quantum Physics are revisited. Transcendental procedures are also applied to contemporary physics, and this renewed transcendental interpretation is finally compared with structural realism and constructive empiricism. The book will be of interest to scientists, historians and philosophers who are involved in the foundational problems of modern physics. (shrink)

Throughout history, schools of economic thought have defined political economy—or economics—and its object of study in multiple ways. This paper reflects on the definitions of economics by schools of economic thought and also proposes the concepts of value and scarcity as key concepts to explain the differences between them. The most important findings of the paper are: (a) the ontological and epistemological characteristics of the concept of value and scarcity have shaped the definitions of economics; (b) the boundaries of (...) the study object of economics have been expanded since today’s mainstream economics deals with multiple topics as diverse as crime, education, development, health, etc. However, the methodological tools used in mainstream economics have been narrowed since approaches such as the philosophical, ethical, historical, and institutional approaches have been left behind; (c) the part of reality that mainstream economics can grasp have left behind important issues of the contemporary world, such as gender, social, and environmental issues. A clear understanding of the scope and boundaries of economics could help to define more realistic research questions for economic science, and it would help to define new economic paradigms that address the contemporary issues. (shrink)

Mental causation, idea that it is us – via our minds – who cause bodily actions is as commonsensical as it is indispensable for our understanding of ourselves as rational agents. Somewhat less uncontroversial, but nonetheless widespread (at least among ordinary people) is the idea that the mind is non-physical, following the intuition that what is physical can neither act nor think nor judge morally. Taken together, and cast into a metaphysical thesis, the two intuitions yield interactive dualism: (...) the view that human persons and their minds are non-physical but can nonetheless interact with their bodies, most notably through their brains. This thesis has two main objectives: first, to defend interactive dualism against objections, and second, to show how it can blend in with a physical world in which laws of nature hold. The first part (chapter 1) consists in a brief motivation of interactive dualism as opposed to non-interactive dualism. I argue that non-interactive, epiphenomenalist dualism sacrifices so many crucial aspects of our human existence that interactive dualism is highly to be preferred to it, barring even stronger counterarguments against the latter. It is those putative counterarguments I address in parts II and III. Part II takes on the philosophical objections from the causal closure of the physical and from causal heterogeneity. The former takes the success of physics and physiology as basis for the doctrine of the causal closure of the physical (CCP). I argue against this that there is not only no convincing argument for CCP, but also that any science-based belief in CCP cannot be epistemically justified. As regards the causal heterogeneity objection, it is ‘weighed and found wanting’, because it relies on unwarranted assumptions about causation. In part III, I examine the objection from energy conservation. It roughly says that if interactive dualism were true, then energy would not be conserved, which physics taught us cannot be the case. My reply is that the underlying conception of energy (and momentum) conservation is wrong-headed and not the one that actual physicists use. Instead of being categorical and global, conservation laws are conditional and local, thereby making natural room for mental interaction. Some dualists, however, have sought to make interactive dualism conservation-friendly, notably by invoking quantum physics; I show that these attempts are unnecessary and create more problems than they solve. Finally, in chapter 9, I turn the tables on non-interactionists by investigating current neurophysiological literature on volitional actions, which, though not addressing the question directly, still encourages the interactive dualist picture more than a non-interactionist one. Part IV is about the interplay between interactive dualism and the laws of nature. The ultimate goal is, if possible, to come up with a theory of the laws of nature that explains the lawlike behavior of nature and at the same time makes room for interaction. I begin by pointing out that the laws of nature are or at least should be what physicalists worry about (chapter 10). I then proceed with a historical survey on the development of the notion of laws of nature (chapter 11) that sheds light on its theistic origin. This is followed by an inquiry into the question how a law of nature could possibly be broken (chapter 12) and a survey of the extant metaphysical theories of the laws of nature with special regard to their receptivity to interaction (chapter 13). Finally, in chapter 14 I develop a theory of the laws of nature both faithful to their divine origin and the possibility of mental interaction: dispositionalist divine decretalism, a synthesis of dispositionalism and Jeffrey Koperski’s divine decretalism. (shrink)

This article may be of significant interest to those who may want to reconsider Aristotelian principles in the light of the philosophy of science---i. e., the Aristotelian Thomistic philosophy of sensation as harmonizable with recent findings in the physics/chemistry/physiology of sensation, especially in correlation with research in colorimetry and spectrophotometry. Primarily metaphysical and epistemological in orientation, this paper makes a case for “methodological realism”---viz., how evidence may be grasped, judged, and interpreted in a way that recognizes extemal sense objects (...) to be criteria for verifying statements made about these objects. Amongst the matters and/or problems, considered philosophically, historically, and scientifically, in the course of the article, are: the kinds of sensible qualities discoverable by us; the problem of “immediate” sensation; an analysis of the intemal process of sensation, investigated in conjunction with insights from Aquinas and today’s science; objective/subjective aspects of sensation; causality in sensation; sceptical positions regarding sensation; the problem of sense error; a critique of Descartes’s assumptions about sensation; a sumrnary of conclusions, based on this examination. (shrink)

The research has three objectives: 1) to study the concept of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, 2) to study the concept of reality and knowledge in Buddhist philosophy, and 3) to analyze the concept of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle in Buddhist philosophical perspective. This is documentary research. In this research, it was found that Heisenberg's uncertainty principle refers to the experiment of thought while studying physical reality on smaller particles than atoms where at the present no theory of (...) Physics can clearly explain such properties. In this respect, the mentioned principle is utilized to predict the pairs of a certain attribute of physics, position, and momentum, for instance. The accuracy of position, however, cannot be precisely yielded in advance by such a principle. In other words, it is impossible to measure the position and momentum of a quantum particle at the same time. In the study of the ultimate reality on the matter in the Buddhist philosophy, it showed that corporeality in nature is conditioned by cause and effect and thereby falling under the three common characteristics: 1) impermanence, 2) state of suffering, and 3) state of non-substantiality. In the study of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle in the Buddhist philosophical perspective, this research was found that the processes in acquiring certain knowledge of Heisenberg and Buddhist philosophy are by one another in the sense that such knowledge is methodologically acquired through experience, rationality, and intuition because both see the Reality in the same manners, that is, the physical reality is viewed by Heisenberg as the thing that goes under changing state of wave-particle all the times, and the matter is seen by Buddhist philosophy as the impermanence and change depending upon its factors involved and thereby is not-self. However, in the different aspect, on the one hand, Buddhist philosophy utilizes the knowledge on the matter to develop the morality and ethics by which the cessation of suffering could be respectively made, but on the other hand, Heisenberg somehow applies the certain knowledge on physical objects into quantum technology to accommodate the physical comfortability in living life. Suggestions in the application of knowledge gained from this research into benefit were that while Buddhist philosophy can make use of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle to provide certain help at the time of explanation of three common characteristics being done through the scientific method, science also can utilize knowledge gained from Buddhist philosophy to expand the framework of scientific knowledge which is aimed at studying only the physical objects to be able to study the mental objects through the integration of three epistemological methods as well. (shrink)

Joaquin Segura. Untitled (fig. 40) . 2007 continent. 1.2 (2011): 117-124. The interview that follows is a dialogue between artist and gallerist with the intent of unearthing the artist’s working strategies for a general public. Joaquin Segura is at once an anomaly in Mexico’s contemporary art scene at the same time as he is one of the most emblematic representatives of a larger shift toward a post-national identity among its youngest generation of artists. If Mexico looks increasingly like a foreclosed (...) home burning to the ground, Segura could likely be the one walking away, charred matchstick between thumb and forefinger and shit-eating grin on his face. His corrosive attacks on institutions, ideologies, and power reflect a deep general distrust of authority, increasingly evident within the work of younger Mexican artists. It is perhaps most directly the result of President Calderon’s deeply unpopular war against the cartels but no doubt equally the product of decades upon decades of rampant corruption and errant policy within Mexico. Brett W Schultz (BWS): A recurring—if not dominant—theme within your current work and investigation explores ideological extremism in reaction to some perceived political and economic disenfranchisement, especially that espoused and practiced by right-wing groups in United States. That's exactly why I thought of you when I was approached to contribute a piece to an issue on the subject of the moraine—taken metaphorically here to signify a certain set of beliefs that have resurfaced within mainstream American culture in the wake of a probably over-exaggerated political sea-change, marked by Obama's election. You're a Mexican artist who now lives and works in Guadalajara, far from the border cities where such concerns would seem more likely to be relevant to a contemporary artist; of course, you're even farther from the culture that birthed this nature of extremism. What interests you so intensely about this movement, if we can call it that? Joaquin Segura (JS): I think there are several seminal points that you touch on in this particular question. There's a very specific set of interests that make me address the socio-political issues I've been dissecting through my practice in the last few years. First of all, I don't really consider myself a 'mexican' artist. As I've made clear in the past, I don't really believe in the notion of 'identity' or the idea of 'nation', which I find totally laughable and heartwarmingly passé. I'm convinced that these are totally outdated models of understanding our differences and similarities, expanding our already immense and irreconcilable cultural abysses instead of bringing them together, thus resulting in their total dispersion among the complex and extremely arbitrary weaving of contemporary social nucleii. Pretty much a frankly bad joke, if I may say so. The fact that I live and work in Mexico is a completely random geographical and temporal factor, which of course affects what I think and what I do, but I've chosen not to be limited by this specific circumstance. In the past, while working abroad, I've taken advantage of this preconception of Mexico—to be more exact, pretty much all of Latin America—as one of the last barbaric bastions of western civilization. Totally amusing, if you ask me about it. I consider my practice to be, among other things, a gonzo strategy of deceit: there are quite a few roles you can adopt in this approach that may actually reveal themselves to be a privileged vantage point. In my experience, the gentle savage is one of the most effective ones to establish my standing position. Thus, I'm a mexican artist if I need it to prove my point. If it's not necessary in a specific circumstance, I'm not. Quite simple, I think. Said in other words, it's just an ace I can play to win a particular match. It has worked so far, at least for me. L: Hey, America… , 2009. R: The Inaugural Address , 2009. I am interested in the nature of power and the rise and fall of totalitarian ideological and political apparatuses nowadays. But I guess, going even further, I'm essentially fascinated by the fissures and contradictions that have made these structures spectacularly crumble to the ground. I do believe extreme ideologies have played a crucial role in the globalization of socio-political crisis. In the end, our world is nothing more than a fading monument to all things gone wrong—the inspiring triumph of failure, in every sense. I see this as an exciting parable. And of course, it is an undeniable fact that the US, through their influence in world economy, international policies and general attitude towards the rest of the planet is the largest structure waiting to collapse. I think we are all secretly awaiting that moment of splendor, even americans. It'll be disastrous and as nasty as it can get, but it will also be liberating and incredibly inspirational. Not just because it’s the US but because it'll prove that absolutely everything is susceptible to fall. And not only that, most importantly, it would confirm that radical change may actually be possible and not just one more of the unfulfilled promises modernity has left us to struggle with on our own. BWS: I want to talk first about two of your works in particular: Hey, America... and The Inaugural Address . I feel like your more recent work has a subtle —or even hidden—sinisterness, but these two works are perfect examples of how brutally confrontational your earlier work has been. When we showed Hey, America... at Mexico City's Zona Maco art fair in 2010, there were at least a couple visitors to our stand who were absolutely ready to punch me in my gringo face for having done so. Certainly the shock value of these works is crucial to their central ideas, but can you tell me more about your intentions and how these works relate to your general oeuvre? JS: So funny. Perhaps we do deserve to be punched in the face. I think that's what I'm sometimes looking for, but I hardly ever get it. I do think of such works as some sort of logical trap, a somewhat perverse ambush waiting for someone to walk into head-on. I think what I tried to do with those two specific works, as well as some other past projects, is just emphasize issues or themes that do disturb or make me uneasy and restless. I consider my essential intention a need to make clear that we do not have to look the other way, ignore or forget. We must address, understand and solve these manifestations of senseless violence and absurdity because if we don't confront them this way, they'll end up consuming us. In other words, I do consider these works as a personal need of coming to terms with the nonsense of the world we all are living in. I don't particularly consider myself to be someone with a clear set of beliefs. Perhaps my only certainty would be that everything is there to be denied, demolished and obliterated—even my supposed unquestionability of that particular 'dogma.' My practice is a reflection of that paradox, and I do think that's how these two pieces relate to a wider body of work. Every democratic system and so-called developed contemporary society is deeply flawed on the inside, and that is because each has swept things under the rug. Of course, there's tolerance, good will and eagerness to make a difference but there's also hatred, pain and fear lingering all around. We must learn to relate to both sides of the spectrum. In a way, I approach the themes behind these particular works in what I think to be a non-biased, somewhat 'neutral' way. I do think there's an encryption process going on in the way I work, some sort of formal refinement of this somewhat outrageous content. A digest of infamy, if we can refer to it that way. It is up to the individual experiencing the work to decide which way these pieces lean. They can easily be seen from both positions and I'm ok with that. If you look closely at these works, there's nothing that establishes an unrelenting position—neither support nor rejection. I don't want my personal political views to directly set an agenda for the spectator as that’s essentially propaganda, which is one of the things I absolutely despise. To sum it up, I strive for the spectator to complete the piece in that sense. The work then becomes a reflection of his or her own contradictions, a playground of the mind. I'm interested in achieving a deadpan and deadlock state in the observer. So, in a way, those visitors threatening to beat the shit out of you unconsciously became that particular issue the work is alluding to. Just blind and senseless reaction to god knows what people feel must be defended, the overwhelming virtue of ambiguity. Beautiful. Perhaps you can also think of my practice as a uber-sophisticated and snobbish version of Punk'd. And you wouldn't be far from what I'm trying to convey. Untitled (Disturbance Scenarios #2) . 2010. BWS: To me, an important transitional marker in the overall trajectory of your work is the series, Disturbance Scenarios , which evokes a similar generalized state of panic, paranoia, and impending doom through its incorporation of sensationalist newspaper headlines, yet also suggests this slyly mysterious meta-narrative via the context in which the newspaper itself is placed. How did you arrive at this series and why did you choose photorealistic painting as the medium for it? JS: I consider this series to be a by-product of the process I follow when making work. I spend an important part of my time just doing research, going through documentation and accumulating visual or historical references for the themes or episodes I'm interested in, in that particular moment. These are, of course, valuable assets that connect among themselves in a mysterious and almost undetectable manner, sometimes a few years between one and the other. I've employed similar production strategies in the past, in ongoing series like Random Moments of Urban Decay , in which I document what I consider to be physical traces of ethnic, religious or ideological violence in the form of text graffiti, invisibly scattered in different cities of the world, mostly in the US. Disturbance Scenarios was started in early 2010, following a particularly intense period of traveling here and there that lasted for most of the year. I've always felt compelled by text, as I find quite intriguing the idea of how words can create equally intense evocations of what I call a mental panorama of uneasiness than those produced by aesthetically-charged imagery; of course, if handled right. I have a close relationship to print media—due both to my academic background and to my attraction to its ubiquity and almost unlimited influence, which in the end, is nothing else but power—so I found myself with a growing archive of newspaper headlines snapshots from cities like Melbourne, Auckland, London, and LA. Going through them, I noticed that they had in common a very specific thematic slant: they were all about some sort of conflict: energy crisis, political unrest, local episodes of domestic violence, you name it. So as you very well put it, I felt they all connected through this feeling of anxiety and anguish and I decided to start thinking of them as a body of work. Basically, I felt an interest in creating what I think of as my personal fragmented prefigurements of the end of civilization. There were few elements on the shots that could give away its actual location, geographically speaking, and I liked that. I find this sensation of vagueness and uncertainty quite alluring. The more subtle, the more perverse. The formal resolution of the series—as photo-realistic painting—is linked to my intention of creating distance between me as the artist and the themes I work with. I rarely execute my own work, and that is more a personal choice as I'm more interested in the ideas I mingle with than in the actual outcome of that process, understood as an "art-object" with certain market value. I did some tests with light-jet prints of those snapshots and I found them devoid of that nightmarish, disturbing indistinctness that I felt was so important for them to be able to project the turmoil I experienced upon encountering them and in conceiving of them as a series. So I thought that photorealistic painting would be an interesting resource to play with, as I hardly had worked with that medium before because of my lenient animosity toward painters and their craft. So they were executed like that and I think it turned out to be just right. Homemade (Napalm #2) . 2010. BWS: Though Disturbance Scenarios remains ongoing, it's an interesting contrast to another series of yours, Homemade, which are these beautifully banal photographs of the ingredients used to make improvised explosives. Whereas Disturbance Scenarios still confronts the viewer aggressively with its visual emphasis on loaded texts, in Homemade , you've dropped the surface-level bravado entirely. They're pieces that require explanation to someone not already versed in the fine art of amateur explosive-making. You weren't known for subtlety in your past work; why this change in direction? JS: I'm personally convinced that these are just two angles of the same conceptual preoccupation. I mentioned before my obsession with the idea of encryption. I'm quite enticed by how these processes of translation can politically and semantically alter and deviate purportedly subversive materials such as the ones these works allude to. I do think subversion is futile. I was really troubled by that thought for some time, but I think now I understand that it's not really that important. What is really significant is to elaborate on these alternate views, to envision and refine possible escape routes. It doesn't really matter if they go nowhere, but that is because nothing really matters. A "mute" artwork is a notion that captivates me. When you look at the works you mention, you know there's something off, but it's not fully clear how and why that is. I rely on that insecurity—on that moment of hesitation. And that can also be achieved through an approach like the one I'm now interested in. Let's just call it a smoke screen, a surrogate ruse to get to the same point: to talk about impotence and defeat in contemporary life. The notion that readily accessible information is actually a weapon is a double-edged fallacy: sure, you can make use of whatever resources you can lay your hands on, but that doesn't set you free because freedom is impossible. Still, that doesn't mean you can't blow up stuff during the process, metaphorically or not. I didn't understand the nature of subtlety before. I used to think that you needed to be loud and manifest anger and unconformity in the most aggressive manner possible. Then I finally realized that you can actually permeate and rarify a battleground—because after all, this is low-intensity war—if you actually aim at silently building up the contradictions and making the symbolic value of ideas and acts clash within themselves. Or perhaps it is that I am just getting old. I guess I used to be an angry kid until recently. Now I think of myself as a disenchanted post-teenager, and of course that reflects in my work and my approach to art-making. Kind of a rite of passage and I laugh at it because, overall, it has been overwhelmingly fun. And that doesn't mean that I'm not ready to stick it in someone or something's face again if I feel like it. BWS: You're now taking the subtlety of the Homemade series even further with your newest series, Definitive Reader For a Botched Revolution , in which you photograph a series of politically-charged books side-on, negating their content entirely—essentially reducing them to purely aesthetic objects in which the subject matter is only revealed in the title of the work. Can you talk about the ideas behind this series? Furthermore, is your recent interest in this idea of the "botched revolution" an indication of a general attitudinal or philosophical shift you've since adopted? JS: This new series of works is the logical outcome of a brief period I went through. Probably the last couple years, in which due to a number of circumstances that don't really have to do with my art-making, I was forced to renegotiate my ideas, my beliefs and practically everything that surrounds me. It was quite distressful and turbulent, but in the end, I think it was also almost epiphanic. I came to terms with myself and now I'm calm and serene. That is, of course, my personal take on it but I mention it because I do think it's important to address this shift you mention. The idea of an artwork as a container for latent revelations enthralls me quite a bit. That's how I see these particular works: art as an incendiary agent. It's up to the artist and the spectator to do whatever they please with it. I think the detachment and almost surgical cleanliness from the Definitive Reader series is also my take at poking fun of the way some art is totally innocuous and uncompromising. These images may be pleasing to the eye, but there's something twisted and rotten within them, well hidden beneath. You'll either see it or not, but without a doubt, it will not cancel its presence. This series is intrinsically linked to Homemade . I'm pretty much horsing around with similar ideas and statements here. And well, yes, I do think any revolution is a botched one. There's nothing too heavy about their own downfall. Decay and breakdown are here and will not go away. Perhaps we must learn to embrace them in one way or another, for our own sake. L: Untitled (T.A.Z.). R: Untitled (United States Marine Guidebook of Essential Subjects) . 2011. BWS: Finally, let's discuss the near future. You've got an upcoming solo show at the Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros [SAPS] in Mexico City this summer. What can we expect from that? What else do you have planned? JS: I'll go and get seafood as soon as I'm done with this interview. It's pretty good here in Guadalajara. That's my top priority at this very moment. About my solo project at SAPS, it's due to open in late July. I'm quite looking forward to it. I'm still closely working with the curator on the general feel for the show but I can say that it'll be more of a revision of past works that have not been shown in Mexico City except for a couple pieces. It definitely won't be a showcase for new projects, although we may include one or two previously unseen works. What you can expect is a rereading of what I've been working on during the past few years. In a way, that's exciting to me because for some reason I don't really care about, I'm not that active in Mexico City even though that's where I lived and work for years. I've hardly shown there after my solo project at Yautepec in February of 2010. It'll be nice to see how it all comes together and I'm more thrilled about it because I totally love the space and I think they're doing an excellent job with their programming and its direction. And in a certain way it feels like going back home. About everything else, I need a period to reflect and fully understand what I've been thinking and working on. I've got a few group shows here and there: New York, San Francisco, and Melbourne are the ones happening soon. I will present my censored project Untitled ( Gringo Loco ) as part of the programming of the Museo de Arte de Zapopan in Guadalajara, two years after being escorted at gunpoint from the installation site by police sent by the extreme right-wing mayor of the city, which I found pretty amusing for an otherwise typical Saturday afternoon. I'm also involved in a couple "curatorial" projects. In my case, "curatorial" means that I help put together stuff I like and I'm interested in. One of them will open in late September of 2011 at Arena Mexico Arte Contemporaneo, and I will work with three of whom I consider to be some of the best artists in a lively and active scene such as the one here in Guadalajara. But most importantly, I've been doing heavy research so there are also a number of projects that I've yet to finalize. That'll be my main focus during the rest of the year, even though I really enjoy procrastination. There'll be time for that later. Or maybe not. We'll see. About Joaquin Segura The action, installation, intervention and photographic work of Joaquin Segura (b. Mexico City, 1980) has been shown in solo and group exhibitions in Mexico, the United States, Europe, and Asia. Some spaces that have featured his work include La Panaderia, Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Centro de la Imagen and Ex-Teresa Arte Actual in Mexico City; El Museo del Barrio and apexart, New York, NY; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, Spain; National Center for Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia; and Palace Adria in Prague, Czech Republic. In 2008 and 2009, Segura was an artist-in-residence at the International Studio and Curatorial Program, New York, NY and at the 18th Street Arts Center, Santa Monica, CA. He is represented YAUTEPEC in Mexico City and by Arena Mexico Arte Contemporáneo in Guadalajara. Further Reading Joaquin Segura’s website YAUTEPEC artist page for Joaquin Segura Capps, Kriston. “ID-ENTITY: Washington, DC.” ART PAPERS . 2009. (shrink)

This volume explores the relationship between physics and metaphysics in Descartes' philosophy. According to the standard account, Descartes modified the objects of metaphysics and physics and inverted the order in which these two disciplines were traditionally studied. This book challenges the standard account in which Descartes prioritizes metaphysics over physics. It does so by taking into consideration the historical reception of Descartes and the ways in which Descartes himself reacted to these receptions in his own lifetime. The book stresses (...) the diversity of these receptions by taking into account not only Cartesianisms but also anti-Cartesianisms, and by showing how they retroactively highlighted different aspects of Descartes' works and theoretical choices. The historical aspect of the volume is unique in that it not only analyzes different constructions of Descartes that emerged in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, but also reflects on how his work was first read by philosophers across Europe. Taken together, the essays in this volume offer a fresh and up-to-date contribution to this important debate in early modern philosophy. (shrink)

This article may be of significant interest to those who may want to reconsider Aristotelian principles in the light of the philosophy of science---i. e., the Aristotelian Thomistic philosophy of sensation as harmonizable with recent findings in the physics/chemistry/physiology of sensation, especially in correlation with research in colorimetry and spectrophotometry. Primarily metaphysical and epistemological in orientation, this paper makes a case for “methodological realism”---viz., how evidence may be grasped, judged, and interpreted in a way that recognizes extemal sense objects (...) to be criteria for verifying statements made about these objects. Amongst the matters and/or problems, considered philosophically, historically, and scientifically, in the course of the article, are: the kinds of sensible qualities discoverable by us; the problem of “immediate” sensation; an analysis of the intemal process of sensation, investigated in conjunction with insights from Aquinas and today’s science; objective/subjective aspects of sensation; causality in sensation; sceptical positions regarding sensation; the problem of sense error; a critique of Descartes’s assumptions about sensation; a sumrnary of conclusions, based on this examination. (shrink)

This paper aims to show that the development of Feyerabend’s philosophical ideas in the 1950s and 1960s largely took place in the context of debates on quantum mechanics. In particular, he developed his influential arguments for pluralism in science in discussions with the quantum physicist David Bohm, who had developed an alternative approach to quantum physics which (in Feyerabend’s perception) was met with a dogmatic dismissal by some of the leading quantum physicists. I argue that Feyerabend’s arguments for theoretical (...) pluralism and for challenging established theories were connected to his objections to the dogmatism and conservatism he observed in quantum physics. However, as Feyerabend gained insight into the physical details and historical complexities which led to the development of quantum mechanics, he gradually became more modest in his criticisms. His writings on quantum mechanics especially engaged with Niels Bohr; initially, he was critical of Bohr’s work in quantum mechanics, but in the late 1960s, he completely withdrew his criticism and even praised Bohr as a model scientist. He became convinced that however puzzling quantum mechanics seemed, it was methodologically unobjectionable – and this was crucial for his move towards ‘anarchism’ in philosophy of science. (shrink)

No evidence of “new physics” was found so far by LHC experiments, and this situation has led some voices in the physics community to call for the abandonment of the “naturalness” criterion, while other scientists have felt the need to break a lance in its defense by claiming that, at least in some sense, it has already led to successes and therefore should not be dismissed too quickly, but rather only reflected or reshaped to fit new needs. In our paper (...) we will argue that present pro-or-contra naturalness debates miss the fundamental point that naturalness, despite contrary claims, is essentially a very hazily defined, in a sense even mythical notion which, in the course of more than four decades, has been steadily, and often not coherently, shaped by its interplay with different branches of model-building in high-energy physics and cosmology on the one side, and new incoming experimental results on the other. In our paper we will endeavor to clear up some of the physical and philosophical haze by taking a closer look back at origin of naturalness in the 1970s and 1980s, with particular attention to the early work of Kenneth Wilson. In doing this, we aim to bring to light how naturalness belongs to a long tradition of present and past physical and philosophical criteria for effectively guiding theoretical reflection and experimental practice in fundamental research. (shrink)

Investigation into the theme of receptions and influences is one of traditional topics in the historiography of national philosophies. This article analyses the models of reception and influence used by Ukrainian historians of philosophy: the model of “influence without reception” (А. Tykholaz), the model of “studying philosophy” (D. Tschižewskij) and the model of “reception without influence” (V. Horskyi). Resting upon works by J.-L. Viellard-Baron and P. Hadot, the author tried to argue that: а) the place that reception studies occupies in (...) historiography as well as understanding of its phenomenon is traditionally dictated by the perception of the historic-philosophical process, the genre of the historiography of philosophy and specific historiographic attitudes; b) reception is a complex phenomenon, which has totally different configurations and meanings in different periods of the history of philosophy and cannot be put into one formula; c) the application of obvious formulas from the contemporary vision of receptions in separate historical contexts can verify or objection of the originality or even the existence of separate philosophical traditions; d) through the reflection on the phenomenon of reception in all of its complexity it possible to reveal some aspects, research into which notably corrects our perception of the history of philosophy; e) the popular over the past decades idea of the history of philosophy as dialogue among philosophers is a challenge for the historiography, though it can have a positive effect on historic-philosophical research as well as on historic-philosophical discourse in general. Particularly, the research into reception and using dialogue as a regulatory idea can influence the international circulation of ideas and contribute to turning it into “rational dialogue”, promoted by P. Bourdieu. (shrink)

BACKGROUND: Representing is about theories and theory formation. Philosophy of science has a long-standing interest in representing. At least since Ian Hacking's modern classic Representing and Intervening analytical philosophers have struggled to combine that interest with a study of the roles of intervention studies. With few exceptions this focus of philosophy of science has been on physics and other natural sciences. In particular, there have been few attempts to analyse the use of the notion of intervention in other disciplines where (...) intervention studies are important, such as in nursing research. One unintended consequence of this is that the relations between representing and intervening tend to be less understood outside the natural sciences. OBJECTIVES AND DESIGN: This article highlights a number of possible topics on which nursing science and analytic philosophy of science can fruitfully interact. The basic idea is simple. Building on a characterisation of interventions in terms of what is intervened on and with respect to what, we suggest that interventions in nursing research typically are a blend of varieties belonging to the three dimensions of agency, epistemology, and ontology. The details of the blend determine the relation of the particular intervention study to traditional representational categories such as inductivism and hypothetico-deductive method, and have a bearing on its explanatory power and other more theory independent features of research as well. The framework we suggest should be relevant for nurse researchers who want to adopt a more general and analytically entrenched perspective on representing and intervening than the methodological boundaries in nursing research typically allow. (shrink)

This article analyzes the views of representatives of the scientific community on ancient Chinese landscape painting, emphasis is mainly placed on views that concern the spiritual qualities of landscape painting, as well as rethinking concepts that ignore the significance of sensual perception. Landscape painting is usually considered as a spiritual work of Taoism: landscape painting developed from Taoist thought, Taoist philosophy determined the identity of the artistic style and the inherent spirit of landscape painting. Moreover, some researchers even believe that (...) bodily contemplation of landscape painting means setting the very original nature of mountains and waters, and the "knowledge of the truth" is a spiritual process that is more blocked by the human capacity for sensual perception. Some of the scientists completely deny the possibility and truth of sensual perception of physical objects in landscape painting. The author of this article believes that the spiritual component of landscape painting lurks precisely in the value of sensual perception, and bodily contemplation of mountains and waters is impossible without the participation of the body, clear confirmation of which we find in the ancient Chinese theory of arts. Ancient Chinese works of art traditionally had a close connection with sensual perception through bodily contemplation. This process is not simply about capturing object information, but when the subject takes an active part in the vision of the object, when the subject gives feedback to the object, and through acquiring the object its meaning is transmitted. Only through bodily contemplation, the individual can fully feel the artistic value of landscape painting, and Taoist philosophy thus gains a real existence in landscape painting, becoming a kind of emotional thinking. (shrink)

Steven French and Decio Krause examine the metaphysical foundations of quantum physics. They draw together historical, logical, and philosophical perspectives on the fundamental nature of quantum particles and offer new insights on a range of important issues. Focusing on the concepts of identity and individuality, the authors explore two alternative metaphysical views; according to one, quantum particles are no different from books, tables, and people in this respect; according to the other, they most certainly are. Each view comes (...) with certain costs attached and after describing their origins in the history of quantum theory, the authors carefully consider whether these costs are worth bearing. Recent contributions to these discussions are analyzed in detail and the authors present their own original perspective on the issues. The final chapter suggests how this perspective can be taken forward in the context of quantum field theory. (shrink)

In this paper, I present the conjunction between a) a new history and philosophy of science, which, under the banner of a renewed historical epistemology, articulate a new relation between conceptual history and situated history; and b) new narratives in the history of philosophy that integrate women philosophers by showing the displacements this causes in terms of corpus, objects of research, and forms of writing. By questioning the philosophical canon, new focal points are brought to light.. Then (...) I briefly present the tools of feminist epistemology as methodological instruments to, in act, proceed to these decenterings. I conclude with two examples from the Modern Age: Margaret Cavendish and Emilie du Châtelet. Until recently, these two women philosophers were mocked and little considered, but today they are part of the canon, have become mainstream in many Anglo-Saxon universities. I show how this shift changes the landscape of history and philosophy of science. (shrink)

The historical features of the playing of the flute group in the symphony orchestra, the ability of soloists-instrumentalists to be performers of a single group and a single whole among the large composition of members of the symphony orchestra are analyzed. The authors substantiate the expediency of the development of instrumental musicians first of all as orchestra players, and then as solo performers. The aim and the tasks: to analyze the historical development of the ensemble playing of the (...) flute group as part of the symphony orchestra. The tasks of the research are the analysis of publications on this issue and the selection of the necessary components for playing a group of flutes in a symphony orchestra.Research methods: the research methodology consists of the ratio of traditional and modern expedient, ascent from individual to generalized (generalizing principle) from abstract to concrete. Research results: a wide range of research on the musical performance process from the New Age to the present is analyzed. Analysis of new modern concepts of training of instrumental musicians in institutions of higher education is carried out. The European search for new forms is characterized by the search for objective regularities in music education of past centuries, taking into account the modern demand for orchestra players on the European labor market. Discussion. What should come first in the training of an orchestra playerindividual classes or his training in a team. Conclusion. Thus, the analysis of the historical development of the ensemble playing of the flute group in the symphony orchestra allowed us to draw the following conclusions: during the reign of the classicism and romantic styles, an understanding of the necessary components for a symphony orchestra artist in the flute group was formed: a the component of pure vertical and horizontal intonation; a the component to feel the dynamic balance of all participants in the ensemble playing of the flute group as part of the symphony orchestra; a component of the timbre fusion of the flute group and full sounding in different registers; a component understanding in performing strokes in groups of flutes; a component of expressiveness and vivid phrasing of the ensemble playing of a group of flutes as part of a symphony orchestra; a component of metrorhythmic feeling in ensemble playing; a component of the collective understanding of style by a group of flautists in a symphony orchestra. All these components in their unity will allow the group of flutes to sound as a single harmonious whole. (shrink)

Until recently, English-speaking scholars have had few outlets to review the philosophy of sport literature generated in Slavonic countries. Existing English texts of this nature consist primarily of review essays providing little historical and cultural context from which to understand the development of specific tendencies in lines of inquiry from this part of the world (23,24,27). This article attempts to fill this gap in understanding by 1) briefly describing the cultural history of the Slavonic region, and, within this context, (...) 2) identifying key sport philosophers and their current trends of philosophic thought in sporting practices. It is hoped that this project will better inform scholars of the philosophy of sport research being done in Slavonic nations, will advance new scholarship in the English-speaking world, and will encourage more international collaboration within the discipline of philosophical kinanthropology. (shrink)

In this article, we offer a detailed study of two important episodes in the early history of high-energy physics, namely the development of the Chew and the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio models. Our study reveals that both models resulted from the combination of an old Hamiltonian, which had been introduced by earlier researchers, and two new approximation methods developed by Chew and by Nambu and Jona-Lasinio. These new approximation methods, furthermore, were the key component behind the models’ success. We take this historical (...) investigation to support two philosophical theses about the manner in which scientific modelling operates in high-energy physics. Both of these theses run counter to a view that is commonly accepted among philosophers of science: the view that all approximations can be embedded within an equivalent idealized system, and that whatever role the former might play in scientific modelling is therefore parasitic on the much more substantial work performed by the latter. Our first thesis, which we call “Distinctness,” states that approximation methods constitute an independent category of theoretical output from idealized systems. We thus believe that approximations and idealized systems constitute two independent types of objects, both of which are essential to the practice of modelling. Our second, more radical thesis is called “Content Determination.” Our claim here is that approximation methods can in fact be essential to assigning determinate physical content to the idealized systems with which they jointly operate. As we show, this is due to the fact that quantum field theory allows for a very thin characterization of idealized systems only, making the use of approximations necessary to supply additional content. We conclude the paper with a few reflections about the manner in which our two theses can be used to articulate David Kaiser’s views on the “vanishing of scientific theory” in physics after WWII. (shrink)