In this paper we argue that one-way quantum computation can be seen as a form of phase transition with the available information about the solution of the computation being the order parameter. We draw a number of striking analogies between standard thermodynamical quantities such as energy, temperature, work, and corresponding computational quantities such as the amount of entanglement, time, potential capacity for computation, respectively. Aside from being intuitively pleasing, this picture allows us to make novel conjectures, such as an estimate (...) of the necessary critical time to finish a computation and a proposal of suitable architectures for universal one-way computation in 1D. (shrink)

Gleeson, Damian John In 1924, after a hiatus of a decade, the Australasian Catholic Record was re-established under the driving force of Monsignor John Joseph Nevin, the then vice-president of St Patrick's College, Manly. Mgr Nevin was ACR's principal editor up until 1937 and with the exception of a trip to Ireland and Europe in 1927, he contributed articles and answered questions on topics ranging across canon law, marriage, and moral theology in virtually every quarterly issue of ACR for (...) more than two decades. At Manly, he educated thousands of seminarians for dioceses across New South Wales and beyond, and was the college's president from 1929 to 1942. As such, Mgr Nevin was probably the most formidable Catholic clerical academic in New South Wales in the interwar period, yet we know little of this prodigious writer and intellectual who was a key adviser, not just to the Sydney hierarchy, but to a wide range of bishops. Apart from Dr Kevin Walsh's splendid history of St Patrick's College, Manly, church historians have not sought to consider the significant career of Mgr Nevin and his influence on several generations of clergy and bishops. (shrink)

I explore the view that metaphysics is essentially imaginative. I argue that the central goal of metaphysics on this view is understanding, not truth. Metaphysics-as-essentially-imaginative provides novel answers to challenges to both the value and epistemic status of metaphysics.

Nicolas Bourriaud postuluje konieczność wyłonienia się „nowej nowoczesności” – w czasach nasilenia przepływu dóbr i kapitałów w skali globalnej, gdy rosną w siłę podmioty polityczne niekontrolowane przez władze poszczególnych państw, a każdego roku przybywa emigrantów liczonych w milionach. Francuski kurator twierdzi jednocześnie, że historyczny modernizm rezonuje i odbija się echem w tym, co określił najpierw mianem estetyki relacyjnej, a później powiązał z koncepcją sztuki postprodukcjonistycznej. Innym obszarem, w którym według Bourriauda nadal dochodzi do oddziaływania tradycji awangard artystycznych, okazała się twórczość (...) didżejów; to koresponduje z jego twierdzeniem, że „deejaying i sztuka współczesna to dwie odpowiadające sobie figury”. Celem artykułu jest przede wszystkim wykazanie, że pojęcie „didżej” stosowane w wywodach Bourriauda należy traktować jako kategorię historyczną. Pozwala to na możliwie szerokie określenie jej zakresu znaczeniowego, a w konsekwencji – wyznaczenie kontekstu, który dla samej koncepcji sztuki posprodukcjonistycznej okazuje się tak samo ważny jak myśl Michela de Certeau. Albowiem wytwory pola sztuk wizualnych mogą być opisywane przy pomocy kategorii wywodzących się z domeny audialnej. (shrink)

Berkeley is popular in the philosophical tradition as the philosopher who denied the existence of matter in favor of spiritual substance. His esse est percipi thesis is understandably seen as a recipe for subjective idealism. While there is a point to this reading of Berkeley, it remains to be seen whether it does justice to the full significance of Berkeley’s philosophy. In Berkeley’s scholarship consequently the traditional understanding of Berkeley as a subjective idealist has been challenged by scholars such as (...) Jessop and Ardley who argue that Berkeley is better understood as a common sense realist. In approaching Berkeley’s Immaterialism from the standpoint of the philosophical issues raised by the emergence of modern science, this book is a sympathetic reconstruction of Berkeley’s philosophy. The contention is that if approached in this manner, Berkeley’s opposition to philosophical materialism not only emerges as an attempt to overcome false abstractions but it also becomes possible to make sense of Berkeley’s claimed alliance with common sense in his battle against philosophical materialism. While the realist portrait of Berkeley that emerges from this exercise is not free of difficulties, it arguably offers us a fuller conspectus of Berkeley’s immaterialism. (shrink)

Celebrated performer Giulio Caccini's life as a court musician throws light on the ways in which the soloist formulated and reformulated his/her own identity in order to fit within each of the spaces used for music. Tracing the documented performances associated with Caccini, one can map them onto a continuum of spaces from the most public to the most private. Caccini's successful passage into the more intimate spaces required him to re-form himself as the inheritor of the century-old tradition of (...) the intimate vocal improvvisatori, a stylistic and physical transformation that was, in a sense, his life's work. This performative conception of his musical work is a potent reminder of the ambiguous status of solo song at the beginning of the Seicento, perched between the abstract space of the printed score and the traditional space of the court chamber. (shrink)

Thinking about ethics -- Philosophical ethics -- Why not do wrong? -- Is the ethical a human construct or a factual realm? -- Do you just do what is right or do you try to predict the outcomes? -- Natural law and virtue ethics -- Ethics and the bible -- Learning from the wisdom of the world -- Humanism : do we need god to realize that people just matter? -- Ethical dilemmas -- Dilemmas in bed -- Dilemmas in business (...) -- Dilemmas in medicine -- Dilemmas involving violence and power -- Dilemmas in government and leadership -- Dilemmas and the future : the environment, animals, and plants -- Dilemmas in the cyber world -- Making a decision -- Becoming a morally serious person -- Taking an ethical position. (shrink)

Yet many in the USA and Europe are not familiar with his important work; this book seeks to rectify that gap.In Globalization, Ethics and Islam, Jewish, ...

Damian Byers analyzes the form Husserl gives to the problem of knowledge—the way this form influences the development of the phenomenological method, and the results of its application. In a very clear fashion, Byers presents Husserl’s understanding of the roles of intentionality, idealism, temporalization, and kinesthesia in the constitution of knowledge. Drawing upon all of Husserl’s major texts, he corrects many misapprehensions about Husserl’s doctrines of intentionality and idealism. Byers argues that Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology is both a philosophy of (...) closure and control and a philosophy of openness and vulnerability. (shrink)

The Renaissance sceptic and medical doctor Francisco Sanchez has been rather unduly neglected in scholarly work on Renaissance scepticism. In this paper I discuss his scepticism against the background of the ancient distinction between Academic and Pyrrhonian scepticism. I argue that Sanchez was a Pyrrhonist rather than, as has been claimed in recent years, a mitigated Academic sceptic. In keeping with this I shall also try to show that Sanchez was crucially influenced by the ancient medical school of empiricism, a (...) school closely allied with Pyrrhonism. (shrink)

This is a philosophical investigation into the differing sensations of time in cinema and photography.

In this new book, Fr. Damian Ference proposes a more precise lens for decoding Flannery O'Connor's narrative art, one that originates in O'Connor's own words about herself: Hillbilly Thomism. The author examines the various ways in which St. Thomas Aquinas and the philosophical tradition of Thomism shaped not only O'Connor's view of reality but also the stories she told to help us see and know it."--from inside front flap.

Starting from certain intuitions—which I would like to suppose are well founded—I shall try to discover if it is possible to speak of the visual arts characteristic of the American continent throughout the centuries.“L'intention de 1'œuvre d'art n'est pas 1'œuvre d'art.” (Henri Focillon, La Vie des Formes).

A striking feature of Bradley’s thought is its dialectical structure. This is evident in all his writings especially Ethical Studies in which he investigates the topic of self-realization within the larger context of the question of the nature of morality. In the Ethical Studies Bradley looks at different accounts of morality vis-à-vis the demand of self realization and finds none of them absolutely adequate albeit one is relatively adequate than the other. For this reason he condemns the “ethics of pleasure (...) for pleasure sake” and rates it lower than “ethics of duty for duty sake” even though from a larger standpoints he finds “ethics of duty for duty sake” equally inadequate whereas it takes it that the “ethics of my stations and duties” fares better than “ethics of duty for duty sake” even if it does not offer us any resting place. Although the structure of Bradley’s Ethical Studies is dialectical and to this extent is Bradley’s most Hegelian writing it is a mistake not to pay attention to Bradley’s divergence from Hegelianism which is already evident in Ethical Studies especially with regard to what he makes of the relationship between morality, religion and philosophy. What this means that despite his sympathy to dialectical thinking, Bradley’s relation to dialectics in the end is ambivalent. (shrink)

There is a tendency in recent development literature to couple the concept of good governance with the concept of sustainable development. The coupling of the two concepts witnesses to the correlation that subsists between good governance and sustainable development, such that given that sustainable development is a function of good governance, where there is good governance, we should not only expect that there will be progress, but, more importantly, we should also expect that the progress is sustainable, so that the (...) situation is one of growing from strength to strength rather than one of progress today and retrogression tomorrow. Yet paradoxically just as sustainable development is predicated on good governance, good governance itself is a function of effective communication, so that where there is lack of effective communication the result is always bad governance, which, in turn, means the possibility of sustainable development is impeded, as we cannot maximize the resources at our disposal, but wallow in endless recrimination and negativities that fail to contribute to our overall well being. Our aim is to show that there is a direct correlation between diplomacy and good governance on the one hand and good governance and sustainable development on the other, so that the best way to promote sustainable development in every sphere of life is to ensure an effective management of the resources at our disposal such as to satisfy all legitimate and competing interests. (shrink)

El trabajo de investigación busca esclarecer la Forma baconiana como “ley natural”. Se sostiene que los otros sentidos del concepto de Forma en Bacon, tales como diferencia verdadera, fuente de emanación o naturaleza naturante, forman parte de su eclecticismo, pero en estricto sentido, esas expresiones no dicen nada en torno a las leyes de las naturalezas simples o de los fenómenos físicos. En contraste, la Forma como ley no sólo permite comprender mejor la peculiar lectura de Bacon sobre la legalidad (...) natural, sino que posibilita establecer nexos con la parte operativa. En la investigación también se escudriñan las relaciones de la ley natural baconiana con la teología y la ley jurídica. (shrink)

The present note revisits the joint work of Leonard Goddard and Richard Routley on significance logics with the aim of shedding new light on their understanding by studying them under the lens of recent semantic developments, such as the plurivalent semantics developed by Graham Priest. These semantics allow sentences to receive one, more than one, or no truth-value at all from a given carrier set. Since nonsignificant sentences are taken to be neither true nor false, i.e. truth-value gaps, in this (...) essay we show that with the aid of plurivalent semantics it is possible to straightforwardly instantiate Goddard and Routley’s understanding of how the connectives should work within significance logics. (shrink)

Many philosophers take purportedly logical cases of ground ) to be obvious cases, and indeed such cases have been used to motivate the existence of and importance of ground. I argue against this. I do so by motivating two kinds of semantic determination relations. Intuitions of logical ground track these semantic relations. Moreover, our knowledge of semantics for first order logic can explain why we have such intuitions. And, I argue, neither semantic relation can be a species of ground even (...) on a quite broad conception of what ground is. Hence, without a positive argument for taking so-called ‘logical ground’ to be something distinct from a semantic determination relation, we should cease treating logical cases as cases of ground. (shrink)

In this article we revisit a number of disputes regarding significance logics---i.e., inferential frameworks capable of handling meaningless, although grammatical, sentences---that took place in a series of articles most of which appeared in the Australasian Journal of Philosophy between 1966 and 1978. These debates concern (i) the way in which logical consequence ought to be approached in the context of a significance logic, and (ii) the way in which the logical vocabulary has to be modified (either by restricting some notions, (...) or by adding some vocabulary) to keep as much of Classical Logic as possible. Our aim is to show that the divisions arising from these disputes can be dissolved in the context of a novel and intuitive proposal that we put forward. (shrink)

Logical realism is the view that there is logical structure in the world. I argue that, if logical realism is true, then we are deeply ignorant of that logical structure: either we can’t know which of our logical concepts accurately capture it, or none of our logical concepts accurately capture it at all. I don’t suggest abandoning logical realism, but instead discuss how realists should adjust their methodology in the face of this ignorance.

Abstract‘Logical Realism’ is taken to mean many different things. I argue that if reality has a privileged structure, then a view I call metaphysical logical realism is true. The view says that, first, there is ‘One True Logic’; second, that the One True Logic is made true by the mind‐and‐language‐independent world; and third, that the mind‐and‐language‐independent world makes it the case that the One True Logic is better than any other logic at capturing the structure of reality. Along the way, (...) I discuss a few alternatives, and clarify two distinct kinds of metaphysical logical realism. (shrink)

This article takes stock of the project of ecological democracy, a project that has been central to debates in Environmental Values since the late 1990s. Whilst we can identify quite distinct articulations of eco-democratic thinking emerging out of the fields of green political theory, postcolonial/feminist political ecology and science studies/radical geography, it is argued that these discussions have reached something of an impasse of late following the rise of climate scepticism, authoritarian populisms and technocratic eco-modernisms. Resurgent eco-authoritarian impulses and the (...) hankering for a ‘green leviathan’, a climate Lenin or a ‘dictatorship of the sustainment’ to resolve our climate crisis make it more important than ever to affirm the need for just, rapid and democratic post-carbon transitions. The article goes on to outline how emerging discussions in radical design studies focused on redirective practice in conjunction with a revived eco-socialist focus on labour-focused political ecologies might open up different possibilities for a materialist re-grounding of ecodemocratic discussions. It is suggested that a political ecology of design embedded in public institutions, the workplace and civil society could possibleyreground a more substantive vision of ecological democracy but also allow us to think about the forms of creative labour that could drive the just transition. (shrink)

Too many parts of the world testify to the difficulties religions have in tolerating each other. It is often concluded that the only way tolerance and plurality can be protected is to keep religion out of the public sphere. Ian Markham challenges this secularist argument. In the first half of the book, he advances a careful critique of European culture which exposes the problem of plurality. His analysis of the Christendom Group is contrasted with the outlook found in the (...) USA, where a religiously informed culture may be seen to be tolerant. In the second half of the book, the author argues that plurality is better safeguarded by a theistic, rather than a secularist, foundation. He submits that too often secularists use relativist arguments, while theists want to appeal to the complexity of God's world. He concludes that in our post-modern world the religious affirmation of diversity offers genuine political possibilities for cultural enrichment. (shrink)

How should business deal with society's increasing demands for ethical and social responsibility? In plain language this book considers these and other ethical questions of direct relevance to business in the 1990s. It discusses the nature of ethics, ethical reasoning, the use of stakeholder analysis, and other central concepts used in business ethics. Using mainly, but not exclusively, Australian cases and specific examples, the book covers issues such as fairness in business dealings, advertising ethics, discrimination, and codes of ethics.

Where does the impetus towards ethical theory come from? What drives humans to make values explicit, consistent, and discursively justifiable? This paper situates the demand for ethical theory in human life by identifying the practical needs that give rise to it. Such a practical derivation puts the demand in its place: while finding a home for it in the public decision-making of modern societies, it also imposes limitations on the demand by presenting it as scalable and context-sensitive. This differentiates strong (...) forms of the demand calling for theory from weaker forms calling for less, and contexts where it has a place from contexts where it is out of place. In light of this, subjecting personal deliberation to the demand turns out to involve a trade-off. (shrink)

Ewa Domańska, Professor at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań (Poland) and Stanford University (USA), historian of historiography and methodologist of history, formulated interesting comments about the state of humanities and social sciences. The development of interdisciplinary research causes the interpenetration of different disciplines. Although this kind of research is promising, inspiring as well as influencing the development of science, careless research may cause some threats in the longer term. According to Domańska, the lack of qualifications and reliability in this (...) area (especially in the area of theory and methodology) undermines the authonomy of the main disciplines and decline in the professionalism of research. This led the author to create the project, which aims to defend the independence of the threatened disciplines as well as their ‘re-professionalisation’. It can be achieved by strongly emphasizing the role of theory in science; a strong embeddement of a discipline in the theory. Domańska’s concept can be a recipe, which is a dichotomic project. Firstly, it supposes a ‘practical methodology’, which is a constructing of the theory thanks to empirical research material. Secondly, it supposes a ‘virtue epistemology’, which is the ethical aspect of the researcher’s attitude and his work. The aim of the paper is to discuss Domańska’s project and underline the originality of her concept in the context of economic and social sciences. The economic history is a specific discipline which develops at the crossroad of history and economics. It lets me put forward the thesis that Domańska’s suggestions are relevant to the research of economic history. I will show what cognitive chances are the result of the ontology of economic history. I will question what the possible threats are for the main disciplines (history and economics) as a result of the lack of professionalism in the interdisciplinary research of the economic past, and ask if Domańska’s project is attractive for the economic history research thanks to the strong setting in the ‘practical methodology’ in the theory. I also ask what the role of new theoretical approaches in that area is, and whether it is possible to formulate innovatory conceptions in the economic history. Finally, I question the role of ‘virtue epistemology’ or the ethical aspect of an economic historian’s work. (shrink)