We introduce a new “positive formalism” for encoding quantum theories in the general boundary formulation, somewhat analogous to the mixed state formalism of the standard formulation. This makes the probability interpretation more natural and elegant, eliminates operationally irrelevant structure and opens the general boundary formulation to quantum information theory.

In General Relativity in Hamiltonian form, change has seemed to be missing, defined only asymptotically, or otherwise obscured at best, because the Hamiltonian is a sum of first-class constraints and a boundary term and thus supposedly generates gauge transformations. By construing change as essential time dependence, one can find change locally in vacuum GR in the Hamiltonian formulation just where it should be. But what if spinors are present? This paper is motivated by the tendency in space-time (...) philosophy tends to slight fermionic/spinorial matter, the tendency in Hamiltonian GR to misplace changes of time coordinate, and the tendency in treatments of the Einstein-Dirac equation to include a gratuitous local Lorentz gauge symmetry along with the physically significant coordinate freedom. Spatial dependence is dropped in most of the paper, both restricting the physical situation and largely fixing the spatial coordinates. In the interest of including all and only the coordinate freedom, the Einstein-Dirac equation is investigated using the Schwinger time gauge and Kibble-Deser symmetric triad condition are employed as a \ version of the DeWitt-Ogievetsky-Polubarinov nonlinear group realization formalism that dispenses with a tetrad and local Lorentz gauge freedom. Change is the lack of a time-like stronger-than-Killing field for which the Lie derivative of the metric-spinor complex vanishes. An appropriate \-friendly form of the Rosenfeld-Anderson-Bergmann-Castellani gauge generator G, a tuned sum of first class-constraints, is shown to change the canonical Lagrangian by a total derivative, implying the preservation of Hamilton’s equations. Given the essential presence of second-class constraints with spinors and their lack of resemblance to a gauge theory, it is useful to have an explicit physically interesting example. This gauge generator implements changes of time coordinate for solutions of the equations of motion, showing that the gauge generator makes sense even with spinors. (shrink)

The boundary of a boundary principle in field theories is described. The difference in treatment of the principle in electrodynamics and general relativity is pointed out and reformulated in terms of underlying mathematical structure of the theories. The problem of unifying the treatment is formulated and solved. The role of E. Cartan's concept of the moment of rotation associated with the curvature of a Levi-Civita connection on a frame bundle is shown to be crucial for the unification. (...) The analysis of the boundary of a boundary principle in Kaluza-Klein theory is performed and the recipe for a unified treatment of the principle in electrodynamics and general relativity is shown to follow from the analysis. It is pointed out that the unification cand be extended to Yang-Mills fields easily. (shrink)

This book is essential reading for all interpreters of William James. Too often they, myself included, sadly neglect the historical setting of his work. Bordogna's erudite and often brilliant scholarly forays in the history of science and intellectual history, which make effective use of concepts from the sociology of science and the history of disciplinarity, go a long way to compensate for this deficiency.This is a real book, and a bold one at that, because it has an exciting underlying thesis (...) that runs throughout, everything being an illustration and deepening of it; however, the numerous formulations fluctuate between a weak and strong version. The following quotations present the weak thesis: James' "general philosophy, properly conducted, would facilitate new modes of social relationships and new ways of collaboration and communication among the diverse kind of inquirers. These new modes of engagement would bring together philosophers, psychologists, practitioners of the other sciences, and people with practical concerns, making them into a community that would engage in cross-disciplinary and cross-divisional discussion" ; "James located philosophers in interstitial knowledge spaces, and made philosophy … into a form of mediation between diverse modes of inquiry". (shrink)

In sentences like Every teacher laughed we think of every teacher as a unary (=type (1)) quantifier - it expresses a property of one place predicate denotations. In variable binding terms, unary quantifiers bind one variable. Two applications of unary quantifiers, as in the interpretation of No student likes every teacher, determine a binary (= type (2)) quantifier; they express properties of two place predicate denotations. In variable binding terms they bind two variables. We call a binary quantifier Fregean (or (...) reducible) if it can in principle be expressed by the iterated application of unary quantifiers. In this paper we present two mathematical properties which distinguish non-Fregean quantifiers from Fregean ones. Our results extend those of van Benthem (1989) and Keenan (1987a). We use them to show that English presents a large variety of non-Fregean quantifi ers. Some are new here, others are familiar (though the proofs that they are non-Fregean are not). The main point of our empirical work is to inform us regarding the types of quantification natural language presents - in particular (van Benthem, 1989) that it goes beyond the usual (Fregean) analysis which treats it as mere iterated application of unary quantifiers. Secondarily, our results challenge linguistic approaches to "Logical Form" which constrain variable binding operators to "locally" bind just one occurrence of a variable, e.g., the Bijection Principle (BP) of Koopman and Sportiche (1983). The BP (correctly) blocks analyses like For which x, x's mother kissed x? for Who did his mother kiss? since For which x would locally bind two occurrences of x. But some of our irreducible binary quantifiers are naturally represented by operators which do locally bind two variables. This paper is organized as follows: Section 1 provides an explicit formulation of our questions of concern. Section 2 classifies the English constructions which we show to be non-Fregean. Section 3 presents the mathematical properties which test for non-Fregean quantification and applies these tests to the constructions in Section 2. Proofs of the mathema tical properties are given in the Appendix. (shrink)

The text focuses on a revision of the narrative about and status of Ethnic Groups and Boundaries (1969), touted as a ground-breaking publication which heralded a historic turning point in the study of ethnicity. In the first part, the author demonstrates that the understanding of ethnic groups, as presented in this work, was in no way original in its time; rather, it exemplified an already well-established and generally accepted theoretical model. In the second part, the author provides an alternative explanation (...) for the fame and success of this text. He reveals that the central concept of the book – the bounded (ethnic) group – resonates very well with the mental module of “groupism” – part of the human cognitive apparatus. The generally favourable reception of Ethnic Groups and Boundaries is therefore not rooted in its novelty but rather in that it explicitly formulated a fundamental component of the human cognitive apparatus. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian-Science Dialogue at the BoundariesPaul O. IngramMuch of the discussion in current science-religion dialogue focuses on "limit" or "boundary" questions.1 In the natural sciences, boundary questions are questions that arise in scientific research that cannot be answered by scientific methods. Boundary questions arise because of (1) the intentional limit of scientific methods of investigation to extremely narrow bits of physical processes while ignoring wider bodies of (...) experience, as well as (2) the resulting incompetence of scientific methods when applied to aesthetic, moral, and religious experiences. Furthermore, scientific theoretical constructions are intentionally falsifiable. Often scientific theories themselves require further theoretical explanation. For example, Isaac Newton (1642-1727) proposed a theory of gravity as a general explanation of the motion of terrestrial objects—such as falling objects like apples—and of the orbits of planets in the solar system. But Newton was unable to offer an explanatory theory of gravity itself and was deeply troubled by the notion of "action at a distance," which he believed was intrinsically impossible. Albert Einstein's (1879-1955) general theory of relativity, although maintaining Newton's three laws of motion, fills in this gap in Newton's theory by explaining gravity as the warping of space occupied by objects such as planets, stars, and galaxies rather than action at a distance.In other words, boundary questions create methodological and conceptual constraints that often lead to deeper knowledge of the universe's physical structures. At the same time, boundary questions also tend to engender metaphysical questions along with scientific questions. For example, standard Big Bang theory about the origins of the universe imposes a temporal boundary that constrains what cosmologists can know about the universe. Why is there a universe at all? The standard response is that cosmologists can describe how the universe originated with a high degree of probability, but are ignorant, or at least agnostic, about why the universe exists. Here, a boundary question generated by the application of scientific methods in cosmology generates a metaphysical question cosmology is incapable of answering. Whenever this happens, an opening is created for science-religion dialogue in general, and a science-Buddhist-Christian "trilogue" in particular.But boundary questions are not limited to the natural sciences. Religious questions [End Page 165] incapable of solution through the application of theological or philosophical methods arise at the boundaries engendered by what Joseph Campbell (1904-1987) called "the universals of human experience," meaning experiences all human beings undergo no matter what their cultural or religious environments might be. For example, the experience of suffering raises the theodicy problem for classical Christian theism. How can a loving, omnipotent creator of the universe permit unmerited suffering? Here, the assertion of God's creative power and love creates a boundary question that cannot be resolved apart from rethinking the nature of God, as in process theology.Anxiety and confrontation with death, as well as experiences of beauty, joy, hunger, fear, hope, and anger, and the need for community are also examples of universals of human experience. Buddhists and Christians theoretically interpret the meaning of such experiences according to their particular texts, doctrinal formulations, and practice traditions. Similarly, the work done by scientists is influenced by their cultural contexts, although on a shorter-term basis than is the case with religions. As in the natural sciences, religious constructs are also theory laden, so that neither Christian theology nor Buddhist philosophy can claim complete knowledge. What, exactly, is the nature of God? What, exactly, is Awakening? The standard Christian and Buddhist responses are that God or Awakening are ultimately beyond human thought because both transcend anything human beings can imagine them to be, or not to be.Still, boundary constraints do not imply that significant and reliable knowledge is impossible in the sciences or in Buddhist or Christian thought. To conclude that scientists, Buddhists, or Christians cannot achieve complete knowledge via scientific method, the practice of Buddhist philosophy, or the practice of Christian theological reflection because of boundary constraints does not imply that the sciences have not amassed an incredible body of reliable knowledge about physical reality, or that Buddhists and Christians have not accumulated large bodies of reliable knowledge... (shrink)

The general process view of learning, which guided research into learning for the first half of this century, has come under attack in recent years from several quarters. One form of criticism has come from proponents of the so-called biological boundaries approach to learning. These theorists have presented a variety of data showing that supposedly general laws of learning may in fact be limited in their applicability to different species and learning tasks, and they argue that the limitations (...) are drawn by the nature of each species' adaptation to the particular requirements of its natural environment. The biological boundaries approach has served an important critical function in the move away from general process learning theory, but it is limited in its ability to provide an alternative to the general process approach. In particular, the biological boundaries approach lacks generality, it is in some respects subservient to the general process tradition, and its ecological content is in too many cases limited toex post factoadaptive explanations of learning skills. A contrasting, ecological approach to learning, which can provide a true alternative to general process theory, is presented. The ecological approach begins by providing an ecological task description for naturally occurring instances of learning; this step answers the question:Whatdoes this animal learn to do? The next step is an analysis of the means by which learning occurs in the course of development, answering the question:Howdoes the animal learn to do this? On the basis of such analyses, local principles of adaptation are formulated to account for the learning abilities of individual species. More global principles are sought by generalization among these local principles and may form the basis for a general ecological theory of learning. (shrink)

Formulating quantum gravity is the greatest challenge that 21st century physics must address. If quantum physics refuses to blend with general relativity, it may be that relativity does not represent a good description of the universe in line with gravity and all its effects. This opens a path for us: first understanding quantum physics and what it reveals about nature and then analyzing the boundaries of relativistic cosmology and reconsidering the whole matter. Physicists consider entanglement as a fundamental property (...) derived from quantum mechanics, which is a physics of communication. The involvement of quantum computing shows that the entanglement/geometry duality works by employing a "quantum algorithm" that corrects the information. Most physical theories make use of gauges. Gauges give us evidence about two things: how the cosmos is organized; and why and how nature is "captured" by mathematical theories, opening a line of inquiry about the relationship between man and the universe. (shrink)

A survey is presented of the essential principles for formulating relativistic wave equations in curved spacetime. The approach is relatively simple and avoids much of the philosophical debate about covariance principles, which is also indicated. Hypercomplex numbers provide a natural language for covariance symmetry and the two important kinds of covariant derivative.

A topical issue in natural resource management is that of scale, in particular, the organizational entry-point to community-based systems of natural resource management. This study investigated access to woodland resources from the perspective of the relevance of units (traditional villages) enjoying policy attention and the nature of boundaries of resource management units as espoused in academic debates. The relevance of the boundaries was investigated from the perspective of flow of resources across boundaries of the recommended units, and resource use relations (...) among communities residing in contiguous units. The study used questionnaire surveys, informal interviews, and personal observations to explore woodland resource use patterns within and across the villages. People acquired woodland products from both within their own villages and from adjacent ones. Most people extracted resources from within residence villages but varying proportions of the people extracted various products from other villages. In general, members of the ruling clan – those holding exclusively ancestral beliefs, those with traditional main house types – were more likely to acquire resources from neighboring villages. People extracted lighter products like wild fruits, mushrooms, and medicinal herbs from other villages compared to bulkier products like fuel wood, kraal (cattle pens) and fence posts, wall and roof poles, and brushwood. The main reasons why people did not extract woodland products from other villages were availability of the products in their own villages, the long distances to walk to gather the resources from other villages, and, to a small extent, availability of substitutes and exclusion to some products by members of other villages. Overall, people did not deny woodland resource users from other villages access to resources in their own villages, although this applied less so in the case of extraction from areas under ritual designations or extraction for commercialization. The study argues that instead of aspiring for ``hard'' or ``distinct'' boundaries, policy needs to recognize ``diffuse and soft'' product use boundaries as a given, so as to promote resource management formulations/options that are more in phase with the operational contexts. (shrink)

A Lagrangian formulation is constructed for particle interpretations of quantum mechanics, a well-known example of such an interpretation being the Bohm model. The advantages of such a description are that the equations for particle motion, field evolution and conservation laws can all be deduced from a single Lagrangian density expression. The formalism presented is Lorentz invariant. This paper follows on from a previous one which was limited to the single-particle case. The present paper treats the more general case (...) of many particles in an entangled state. It is found that describing more than one particle while maintaining a relativistic description requires the specification of final boundary conditions as well as the usual initial ones, with the experimenter’s controllable choice of the final conditions thereby exerting a backwards-in-time influence. This retrocausality then allows an important theoretical step forward to be made, namely that it becomes possible to dispense with the usual, many-dimensional description in configuration space and instead revert to a description in space–time using separate, single-particle wavefunctions. (shrink)

While human beings generally act prosocially towards one another — contra a Hobbesian “war of all against all” — this basic social courtesy tends not to be extended to our relations with the more-than-human world. Educational philosophy is largely grounded in a worldview that privileges human-centered conceptions of the self, valuing its own opinions with little regard for the ecological realities undergirding it. This hyper-separation from the ‘society of all beings’ is a foundational cause of our current ecological crises. In (...) this paper, we develop an ecosocial philosophy of education based on the idea of an ecological self. We aspire to consolidate voices from deep ecology and ecofeminism for conceptualizing education in terms of being responsible to and for, a complex web of interdependent relations among human and more-than-human beings. By analyzing the notion of opinions in light of Gilles Deleuze’s critique of the ‘dogmatic image of thought,’ we formulate three aspects of ESPE capable of supporting an ecological as opposed to an egoistic conception of the self: rather than dealing with fixed concepts, ESPE supports adaptable and flexible boundaries between the self and the world; rather than fixating on correct answers, ESPE focuses on real-life problems shifting our concern from the self to the world; and rather than supporting arrogance, EPSE cultivates an epistemic humility grounded in our ecological embeddedness in the world. These approaches seek to enable an education that cultivates a sense of self that is less caught up with arbitrary, egoistic opinions of the self and more attuned to the ecological realities constituting our collective life-worlds. (shrink)

Managers of multinational companies often favour an aggressive tax avoidance strategy that pushes the legal limits onto the advantage of shareholders and the disadvantage of the spirit of democratically legitimized tax laws. The public and media debate whether such aggressive behaviour is immoral. Aggressive tax avoidance is a subset of the aggressive legal interpretations potentially observable in all fields which places little weight on the will of a democratically legitimized legislation. A thorough ethical analysis based on the deontological approach of (...) Kant demonstrates that aggressive tax avoidance as a special case of operating on the edge of legal boundaries is potentially immoral. Applying the Kantian “contradiction of conception or will” test shows that this maxim might not be conceived or willed as a general law of nature. If all natural or legal persons aggressively interpret laws on all subjects and in every imaginable situation, then central principles of the system of law we all rely upon would be severely compromised. Therefore, aggressive tax avoidance by managers of multinational companies may violate the managers’ moral duty to obey not only the letter but also the intention or spirit of the law. The validity of the argumentation depends critically on the formulation and interpretation of the respective maxims and on assumptions about the legal system. Preserving central elements of Kantian philosophy, the article demonstrates the complexity of a philosophical argumentation which tries to justify the moral intuitions that underpin the common negative evaluation of aggressive legal strategies in business. (shrink)

In order for the philosophy of history to be a really necessary methodological science in relation to theoretical and epistemological problems of history, it is quite necessary to get away from the practice of general discourse and from attempts to find universal solutions suitable for all times. On the contrary, it is desirable to focus on a search for principles and for methods of applying them to the problems of different levels, which, by no means predetermining the results of (...) concrete research, would play the role of a convenient and capacious form of concentration of materials; an effective tool of cognition; and a "compass" preserving a scientists efforts in search of a true solution. For this it is necessary while building up theories, first, to try to combine distinct partially true approaches; secondly, to define clearly the boundaries of applicability of arguments; and thirdly, to formulate laws not in the form of absolute conclusions but according to the rules admitted in other sciences. The possibility of realizing these goals is illustrated by the example of the present theme, "on the role of personality in history," wherein the author introduces the notion of a "factor of a situation," which makes it possible to unify various points correlating personality roles and diverse states of society, and gives the typology of "roles," personalities, etc. (shrink)

Many believe that the treatment-enhancement distinction marks an important ethical boundary that we should use to shape public policy on biomedical interventions. A common justification for this purported normative force appeals to the idea that, whereas treatments respond to genuine medical needs, enhancements can only satisfy mere preferences or “expensive tastes”. This article offers a critique of that justification, while still accepting the TED as a conceptual tool, as well as some of the key ethical axioms endorsed by its (...) proponents. I begin by laying out the TED, the practical implications that tend to be drawn from it, and the justification just sketched for these implications. Using examples drawn from preventive medicine, biomedical technology, and other categories of biomedical interventions, I then go on to challenge both the presupposition of a fundamental dichotomy between treatments and enhancements, and the assumption that enhancements – barring rare exceptions – cannot serve legitimate medical needs. Finally, I consider some ways in which supporters of the TED might try re-formulating the distinction to blunt the force of my critique. I conclude that such a move cannot fully succeed, and that while the TED does have some degree of normative force, it nevertheless cannot play the role that its advocates expect from it. Seeking to justify a general presumption against enhancements based on the rationale I critique here would mean ignoring their various potential benefits, including medical or therapeutic, and would reflect a prejudice – which I refer to as “treatment fetishism”. (shrink)

I point out a radical indeterminism in potential-based formulations of Newtonian gravity once we drop the condition that the potential vanishes at infinity. This indeterminism, which is well known in theoretical cosmology but has received little attention in foundational discussions, can be removed only by specifying boundary conditions at all instants of time, which undermines the theory's claim to be fully cosmological, i.e., to apply to the Universe as a whole. A recent alternative formulation of Newtonian gravity due (...) to Saunders pp.22-48) provides a conceptually satisfactory cosmology but fails to reproduce the Newtonian limit of general relativity in homogenous but anisotropic universes. I conclude that Newtonian gravity lacks a fully satisfactory cosmological formulation. (shrink)

In this paper we study local induction w.r.t. Σ1‐formulas over the weak arithmetic. The local induction scheme, which was introduced in, says roughly this: for any virtual class that is progressive, i.e., is closed under zero and successor, and for any non‐empty virtual class that is definable by a Σ1‐formula without parameters, the intersection of and is non‐empty. In other words, we have, for all Σ1‐sentences S, that S implies, whenever is progressive. Since, in the weak context, we have (at (...) least) two definitions of Σ1, we obtain two minimal theories of local induction w.r.t. Σ1‐formulas, which we call Peano Corto and Peano Basso.In the paper we give careful definitions of Peano Corto and Peano Basso. We establish their naturalness both by giving a model theoretic characterization and by providing an equivalent formulation in terms of a sentential reflection scheme.The theories Peano Corto and Peano Basso occupy a salient place among the sequential theories on the boundary between weak and strong theories. They bring together a powerful collection of principles that is locally interpretable in. Moreover, they have an important role as examples of various phenomena in the metamathematics of arithmetical (and, more generally, sequential) theories. We illustrate this by studying their behavior w.r.t. interpretability, model interpretability and local interpretability. In many ways the theories are more like Peano arithmetic or Zermelo Fraenkel set theory, than like finitely axiomatized theories as Elementary Arithmetic, and. On the one hand, Peano Corto and Peano Basso are very weak: they are locally cut‐interpretable in. On the other hand, they behave as if they were strong: they are not contained in any consistent finitely axiomatized arithmetical theory, however strong. Moreover, they extend, the theory of parameter‐free Π1‐induction. (shrink)

In this article, I intend to show, first of all, that the metaphysical neutrality of the Logical Investigations leads to untenable consequences and even threatens the coherence of Husserl's project. In truth, Husserl's distinction between phenomenology and metaphysics and its corollary, the pure and simple exclusion of metaphysical problems - such as that of the reality of the so-called external world - from the field of nascent phenomenology, make it impossible to give a satisfactory form to a problem as central (...) to this new discipline as that of perception. However, my final word will not be on the indissoluble link between the problems that phenomenology poses for itself and those that Husserl would like to be able to “purify” it from the outset. However permeable the boundaries between these two general research directions may be, phenomenology and metaphysics are not equivalent. Phenomenology can even be said to contribute to formulating and solving certain metaphysical problems, starting with the idealism/realism antithesis. It is to this contribution that I will devote the second part of these reflections. (shrink)

Semantic externalism is the view that meaning and mental content are determined by relations to the world of objects and properties outside the physical boundaries of the subject of mental states. What you mean by your words--what you're thinking when you're thinking about something--is essentially constituted by the world at large. It has become customary to formulate externalism in terms of so-called twin earth cases--cases where content do not supervene on inner states, but this formulation can be shown to (...) be too limited to be of any great use in characterizing a theory of mind. A more general formulation of externalism is defended in chapter 1, one that characterizes all content. ;That externalism has untoward consequences for belief-desire psychology is a familiar point, but, given the predominance of twin earth formulations, the problem of content's explanatory role is often construed as the problem of content's failing to supervene. In chapter 2 we argue that this is a mistake. Externalism in its most general formulation has consequences for all content in explanation, not just content that fails to supervene on inner states. If content is externalistically individuated, then content is redundant in causal explanation. In chapter 2 we examine the redundancy problem and consider the options for its solution. ;Part one of chapter 3 concerns the further--unnoticed--consequence of externalism that requires a reconsideration of Davidson's charge that Fregean semantic theories fail the test of 'semantic innocence.' If meaning is partly determined by reference, then what an expression refers to in an opaque context, is, ultimately, its reference. Part two of chapter 3 concerns the consequences of externalism for analytic truth. If meaning is partly determined by reference, a question arises as to what becomes of the classical philosophical distinction between analytic and synthetic truth; between 'truth in virtue of meaning alone' and 'truth in virtue of meaning and the world.' Chapter 3 concludes with an account of analytic truth from the perspective of semantic externalism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 13.3 (2003) 189-192 [Access article in PDF] Is There a Common Morality? Robert M. VeatchSenior EditorOne of the most exciting and important developments in recent ethical theory—especially bioethical theory—is the emergence of the concept of "common morality." Some of the most influential theories in bioethics have endorsed the notion using it as the starting point of their systems. This issue of the Journal is (...) devoted to these developments.The core idea of a common morality is that all humans—at least all morally serious humans—have a pretheoretical awareness of certain moral norms. The claim is that normal humans intuit or in some other way know that there is something wrong with things like lying or breaking promises or killing people. These purportedly universally shared insights can provide the raw data from which ethical theories are constructed. As such, they are perhaps analogous to the raw sense data that are relied on in the natural sciences to launch the construction of scientific theories and accounts of the nature of reality. Some common morality theorists suggest an analogy between the natural and the moral sciences.In the natural sciences there is a widely shared belief that some raw sensory data are perceived by all normal humans and provide the basis for the construction of various scientific theories. For example, it is widely believed that all normal humans looking at the top light on a traffic signal perceive something that in English is called "red." Of course, different cultures will use different language to describe this experience. They may parse the boundaries differently (varying on the exact borderline between red and orange), provide widely differing accounts of why the experience of "red" occurs, and eventually generate significantly different theoretical formulations to explain the experience of redness. Moreover, some individuals may look at that top light of the traffic signal and not see color at all. One generally, however, does not account for this by denying there is any objective, generally shared basis for the experience that produces a sensation of redness in normal people. One simply explains the experience of the one who fails to see color by positing a defect in perception, called "color-blindness."Some moral theorists suggest that something analogous happens when humans look at the moral scene. The claim is that all normal humans in all places and cultures "see" certain moral requiredness. They see that some behaviors are, in some sense, generally wrong; that other behaviors are generally right; that [End Page 189] some character traits are generally praiseworthy, others blameworthy. No sophisticated common morality theorist denies that, as with color-blindness, there may be occasional outliers who for one reason or another fail to intuit or perceive these simple, abstract moral norms. Certainly, people in different cultures will define the terms differently, will recognize different limits on the norms, and will construct different theories to account for their experience. The primitive idea that there is something generally wrong with killing other humans will be articulated very differently in different cultures—some referring to the "sacredness of life;" others to a duty not to kill, a right to life, or a prohibition on killing the innocent. Some may extend the insight to a duty to prolong living, others limit it merely to a prohibition of direct, active killing. Some may endorse more exceptions—for killing of unjust aggressors, for killing in just war, for killing in self-defense; others, such as pacifists, will be much more stingy in doling out exceptions. Certainly, people at different times and places will articulate the norms in different language and embed them in different theories. The basic claim of common morality theorists, however, is that there is some primitive, pretheoretical insight that is shared by all normal, morally serious persons.Recently, the notion of a common morality has served as a starting point for bioethical theories as diverse as Bernard Gert, Charles Culver, and Danner Clouser's Bioethics: A Return to Fundamentals (1997) and the latest edition of Tom Beauchamp and James Childress's Principles of Biomedical Ethics... (shrink)

Contemporary society operates beyond safe boundaries of the Earth system. Returning to a safe operating space for humanity within Earth system boundaries is a question of justice. The relevance of the economy—and thus of business—for bringing society back to a safe and just operating space highlights the importance of business ethics research for understanding the role of business in Earth system justice. In this commentary, we explore the relevance of business ethics research for understanding the crucial role of business in (...) the dynamics of the Earth system. We do so by integrating the perspectives of business ethics and system-oriented sustainability science on the basis of the theory of metabolic rift, which explains how the dynamics of capitalism result in the destruction of the natural environment. On this basis, we argue that a mutually reinforcing relationship between perpetual economic growth and profit seeking behaviour of business, which we call the _loop of unsustainability_, continually deepens the metabolic rift and keeps business from effectively contributing to Earth system justice. This perspective allows us to formulate firm-level and system-level preconditions for attaining Earth system justice, and to sketch a research agenda that links business ethics scholarship with questions of Earth system justice. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE: VIOLENCE DEFERRED OR VIOLENCE DENIED? Eric Gans University ofCalifornia—Los Angeles ~P ecently I was asked to review applicants at UCLA for a XVpostdoctoral fellowship. The competition was based, along with the usual CV and recommendation letters, on a project proposal relevant to this year's topic: the sacred. There were some sixty applicants working in the modern period since 1800; these new PhD's included literary scholars, (...) philosophers, historians, a few anthropologists, even a musicologist. I was taken aback to discover that not a single one ofthese projects made reference to the name or ideas of René Girard. When I remarked on this to the director ofthe program, a professor ofEnglish with a solid background in philosophy and literary theory, he offered the explanation that these ideas had had a vogue twenty years ago, but were no longer in fashion today. However exaggerated and shortsighted it may be, I take this judgment on the part ofan astute and reasonably unbiased observer as a call to action. Like it or not, the academic world, the university, is the center of American intellectual life. The ideas that motivate COV&R emerged from the university and, however powerful they may become and remain outside it, it is important for their survival that they retain their visibility within it. Thus it is important that we put aside any differences that may divide us in the pursuit ofthis goal that I know we all share. I will return to this point at the end of my talk. What is the origin of language? This question is not only one of formulating hypotheses about the origin, but ofdeciding what it is that we mean by the question itself. Recent advances in neuroscience, cognitive 2 Eric Gans science, speech physiology, paleontology, primatology, linguistics, and related fields make this question both easier and harder to answer than when I wrote The Origin ofLanguage over twenty years ago. I can say at the outset that nothing I have learned in the course of my research dissuades me as a humanist from venturing into an area in which the dominant voices are no longer those of linguists and prehistorians, but those of neuroscientists. As they have always done, scientific advances permit those concerned with the human, "anthropologists" in the broadest sense of the term, to redraw the boundaries of the domain within which anthropological reflection truly belongs. This position is not one widely held by the scientists themselves, who generally share an Enlightenment view for which all thinking not subject to scientific method, particularly that of religion, is a primitive survival condemned to, and deserving of, the fate of alchemy and Aristotelian cosmology. In this view, my—I think I can say, "our"—kind ofanthropology is not a respectable field of inquiry at all. The hypothetical attribution of an originary function to an event or scene considered memorable in itself is not-yet-understood as a necessary methodological tool in the human sciences. Yet a scientific method expanded to include events would not have to put religion within brackets as an expression of the irrational or explain it by an ad hoc theory of psychological expediency, but would begin to integrate within itself the understanding of the human that it has been the historical function of religion to provide. I do not think we need accept the Enlightenment vision ofhistory as the story ofthe continued advance ofscience into domains progressively vacated by unscientific thought. No doubt we no longer rely on religion to supply the basis for cosmology or for natural science in general. And as our knowledge ofthe brain continues to progress, it may no longer be necessary to rely on metaphysical philosophy in order to understand the processes of language and thought. But human culture is not centrally concerned with natural phenomena or even with logic or linguistic structure. It is concerned with the regulation ofhuman interaction, with ethics, and however much science can help provide ethical thought with options, it can never usurp its central cultural function. This last point is usually expressed by the old saw that you can't get to "ought" from "is." Science tells us how it is, not how... (shrink)

In this work we study the relativistic mechanics of continuous media on a fundamental level using a manifestly covariant proper time procedure. We formulate equations of motion and continuity (and constitutive equations) that are the starting point for any calculations regarding continuous media. In the force free limit, the standard relativistic equations are regained, so that these equations can be regarded as a generalization of the standard procedure. In the case of an inviscid fluid we derive an analogue of the (...) Bernoulli equation. For irrotational flow we prove that the velocity field can be derived from a potential. If in addition, the fluid is incompressible, the potential must obey the d'Alembert equation, and thus the problem is reduced to solving the d'Alembert equation with specific boundary conditions (in both space and time). The solutions indicate the existence of light velocity sound waves in an incompressible fluid (a result known in previous literature (19) ). Relaxing the constraints and allowing the fluid to become linearly compressible one can derive a wave equation, from which the sound velocity can again be computed. For a stationary background flow, it has been demonstrated that the sound velocity attains its correct values for the incompressible and nonrelativistic limits. Finally viscosity is introduced, bulk and shear viscosity constants are defined, and we formulate equations for the motion of a viscous fluid. (shrink)

The article examines the foundations that constitute the formulation of the metaphysical question in Martin Heidegger’s philosophy. The article focuses in detail on the period of 1929-1930, which includes the report “Was ist Metaphysik?” and the lecture course “Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik. Welt–Endlichkeit–Einsamkeit”. The introduction to the article and the main problem are three prejudices from Being and Time that make it impossible to ask a clear question about being. The main material is presented on the basis of primary (...) sources: “Being and Time”, “Basic Concepts of Metaphysics”. The peculiarity of Heidegger’s work of the 1929s and 1930s is the approximation of the research methodology in the 1927 treatise to the present. Phenomenological hermeneutics and fundamental ontology were used in relation to the ancient Greeks to develop a metaphysics of ciphers or special words in which Heidegger concentrated the Greek experience of being. During the 1930s, Heidegger would make an effort to realize this experience by looking for points of intersection between Greeks and Germans in German idealism and poetry. Since the Greeks are ruled by aeon (temporal time) and agon (the spirit of competition), modern metaphysics needs to develop a special concept of being that would distinguish who Germans are, where they came from, and where they are going. The article proposes a distinction between higher being - divine, human life-world – social, human essence – cultural, working, shepherd. Being, being and man are subject to metaphysical questioning as the most general concepts. That is, those that immediately or a priori express a certain clarity. Nihilism, as the spirit of the time, demands that metanarratives be questioned and self-evidence be reassessed. An outstanding achievement of Heidegger’s metaphysical question is the distinction being as Seyn. The nationalist or folk Old German definition of being both frees it from academic requirements and accurately captures the open horizon in which the existence of the first half of the 20th century was frozen. Since this essence of man is presented after the linguistic turn, it lacks the main feature of the turn-a specific linguistic ability or words that clarify being. The article aims to study Martin Heidegger’s metaphysical teaching in the 1929-1930s. The article concludes that the metaphysics of the above-mentioned years of Heidegger’s philosophy reveals itself in parallel with the spirit of the time of the then German conservative revolution. As we know, Martin Heidegger did not remove the question of being and selected names for it, because he was looking for an appropriated lawn and a boundary, beyond which the exit to the lawn opens. This article offers a look at this problematic in the contextual name of metaphysic – Seyn. (shrink)

Philosophers disagree, with some rare exceptions. One of those exceptions is the broadest-brush account of what language is. Language is a system of signs used for the communication of --well, and here the agreement begins to break down--thoughts, ideas, messages, propositions or propositional contents, intentions, and a host of technical terms offer themselves to chink the cracks. A list of philosophers subscribing would be impossible to complete. Locke, Carnap, Augustine, Hobbes, Fodor, Katz, Chomsky, Derrida, --well, and on and on. Easier (...) would be to list those who dissent. Heraclitus, Wittgenstein, maybe J.L. Austin, Frank Ebersole, and NOT on and on. The first chapter lays out the view that language is a system of signs in sympathetic terms. The second provides a selection of what are usually called “ordinary language” arguments against the view--reminders about how the view requires us to think in terms which are not consistent with how we think about language and signs when we are not doing philosophy. Those arguments have been unpersuasive among philosophers, and Chapter Three begins the work of investigating separate pieces of the view in detail. Chapter Three takes up an argument for the view which is familiar among philosophers, using Jerry Fodor’s formulation: we cannot be thinking in a public, natural language, because animals and preverbal infants think with no such language. I show this argument is not an argument at all but is rather an expression of the view in question. Chapter Four takes up the argument that the relations between particular words and their meanings is arbitrary or conventional rather than natural or necessary, otherwise there would be only one language among mankind. I argue that the alternatives (conventional vs. natural or necessary) are both generated by taking the division between words and their meanings to be the division between signs and signified--in other words, the question is a result of adopting the view of language as signs. Attempts to argue for the legitimacy of the question without taking the view for granted only serve to call it into question more. In Chapter Five I investigate whether we talk in order to communicate something which is otherwise hidden and invisible. We are tempted to think that you and I talk because I cannot read your mind or you mine. Though Wittgenstein has a famous set of comments on the notion of a private language, it remains a strong temptation to think that language gives public form to something (thoughts, ideas, intentions, feelings, content, meaning) which without language would be unknowable to all but the person whose something it is. Examples help point to the incoherence of this view and show that even if it were not incoherent, remedying the invisibility of those internal whatnots would still leave us with a need for language. Chapter Six takes up a hoary question about boundaries of effability--the possibility that there are limits to what can be said which are more restrictive than what can be thought or felt. The account of language as signs provides one easy way to make sense of this idea, but investigation into examples shows the problem is not one that makes sense unless we just grant that account. Chapter Seven investigates how to make sense of the notion that there are things which are in language and other things which are not. I spell out how the view of language as signs gives us a way to think this, and then show how one reaction to finding problems with the notion resonates with Wittgenstein’s early work and with some work of Jacques Derrida, who bite similar bullets and agree that everything is language, that the limits of language are the limits of our world. I then subject that reaction to critical investigation using examples, which reveals their reaction as a rear-guard attempt to save the view of language as signs. Chapter Eight uses examples as guides toward alternative views of language, feeling our way toward what language might be if it is not a system of signs. Finally, the appendix takes up what I take to be the serious arguments against the methods I use in this work, the first two articulated by John Searle (“the assertion fallacy”) and H. P. Grice (“conversational implicature”), and another the generally unspoken belief that philosophical work is like scientific work. (shrink)

This paper examines texts written by, or in collaboration with, female ex-members of the Italian left-wing armed organization, the Red Brigades. The corpus differs from male-authored or male-centred texts in that issues relating to identity and selfhood lie at the very heart of the project of narrating the terrorist past; the primary concern of Italian women's post-terrorist narration is not to narrate the experience of belonging to an armed organization, but to construct a new identity distinct from a pre-existing self (...) identified exclusively with the transgressive experience of political violence. I consider the corpus in the light of a number of critical problems posed both by the specificity of female perpetration and by the dearth of theoretical writings on perpetrator trauma more generally. I identify in each text an acute anxiety about the very act of speech or narration and find that, in order to circumvent the perceived prohibition on speech, the women of the Red Brigades subtly insinuate into their life writing a discourse of alterity bordering on subalternity that obscures the boundary between victim and perpetrator. The unacknowledged slippage between discourses of perpetration and victimization is explored in relation to Ruth Leys’ critique of Cathy Caruth's formulation of trauma as the wound that cries out through the voice of the victim. The paper concludes by questioning whether perpetrator trauma can ever be articulated as such and by considering the implications of that question for traumatized perpetrator and victimized society alike. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Editorial Reflections on Philosophizing in Music EducationEstelle R. Jorgensen and Iris M. YobIn this article, we reflect on issues that go to the heart of teaching and scholarship in the philosophy of music education. After thirty years of editing Philosophy of Music Education Review, it is a good time to take stock of the philosophical work that has been and is being published and of challenges that remain.Over the (...) years, there has been a growing quality of philosophical articles published in the journal, due in significant part to the efforts of reviewers and the willingness of writers to work with their suggestions. Authors regularly express appreciation for the informed, critical, and constructive reviews their work receives. An exemplary body of philosophical scholarship in music education has been published over this time and PMER is regarded as a premier journal internationally devoted exclusively to the philosophy of music education. In thirty volumes of uninterrupted publication, we have sought to be responsive to important issues in music education. Our writers have engaged relevant subjects of interest to our readers, citations of articles remain strong, and articles are included in [End Page 109] university and college course reading lists. PMER is available in print and online via subscription; it has a wide digital exposure in search engines and leading indexes, and our readership continues to grow.Despite this progress, although the number of submissions has increased, their quality has sometimes been uneven. Our pedagogical commitment to foster philosophical writing and the philosophical inexperience of some writers has significantly impacted the work required to bring submissions to publication standard. Submissions sometimes evidence a lack of attention to formulating a tight argument, citing relevant sources, and polishing and editing the manuscript. The published style guidelines are too often ignored, creating a poor first impression with reviewers and editors. Writers are occasionally in a hurry to publish and less willing to entertain multiple revisions of their articles required to produce work of lasting value. The growing number of music education journals that publish philosophical work, while opening more fora, in some cases perversely result in ideologically driven, polemical, and philosophically uninformed articles in the name of philosophy. This is a good moment to reconsider the importance of philosophical fundamentals that should undergird our philosophizing in music education and what these mean for our academic responsibilities. To this end, we suggest several principles that need to be central to our philosophizing in music education. These principles also have broader implications for the expectations of scholarship in music education generally.WRITING PHILOSOPHYLike other subject areas in the academy, philosophy has its own intellectual structure, a canon of significant writings, its own interpretative methods, and its distinctive role and purpose. A philosophical paper in music education reads differently from papers in the history of music education, methods of teaching music, sociology of music education, empirical research in music education, multi-cultural, gender, and ethnic studies, music education curriculum building and policy making, and so on. And yet, the boundaries between these disciplines, which are artificial constructions when human knowledge is considered wholistically anyway, are somewhat porous with concepts and ideas and claims seeming to move easily from one discipline to another.To help distinguish between philosophy and other areas of study and research, it may be helpful to consider philosophy as a second-order activity. That is, first-order activity examines the raw data of research and experience and attempts to make sense of them. Using inference, pattern-seeking, deduction, hypotheses, statistical analysis, and so on, these activities result in claims, interpretations, and theories that give meaning to what we see, hear, and feel. [End Page 110]The second-order activity takes a step away from these first-order activities. It does not concern itself so much with raw data or with creating theories about them, but critically analyzes the claims and inferences that are made in regard to them. Where first-order disciplines analyze inputs from observation and experimentation, second-order disciplines analyze these analyses—that is, they function as meta-analyses. Philosophers do not need laboratories or fieldwork (which makes applications for grants to support philosophical research difficult to secure!). They need libraries... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reflections on DuchampBergson ReadymadeFederico Luisetti (bio)Translated by David Sharp[I]nside the person we must distinctly perceive, as through a glass, a set-up mechanism.—Henri Bergson, Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic (1901)In spite of the enormous critical attention paid to Marcel Duchamp’s art and theoretical background, the dialogue with Bergsonism is mostly confined to scattered references and erudite observations.1 Paradoxically, the major obstacle to this encounter has been (...) the immense popularity of Henri Bergson’s philosophy since the initial decade of the twentieth century. Such success has come with a price, however, for the proliferation of neutralizing schematizations has progressively suffocated the specificity of his thought and subsequently impeded the understanding of his epistemological radicalism, so cherished by Duchamp and the historical avant-garde.2Consider, for example, how the specter of Bergson constantly hovers over Linda Dalrymple Henderson’s authoritative discussion of Duchamp’s scientific sources. Although Henderson recognizes the diffuse presence in Duchamp of various Bergsonian motives, because she regards Bergson as the antiscientific philosopher of the “inner self” and of “profound self-expression,”3 Bergsonian notions seem to her incompatible with the artistic revolution prompted by Duchamp. A historiographical exorcism is therefore needed in order to heal the consequences of the traumatic Bergson-Duchamp incest. Herein lies Henderson’s solution: since Duchamp rejects the aesthetic principles of the Puteaux Cubists, he also abandons Bergsonism, which represents their philosophical matrix. Thus, the Bergsonian ideas “undoubtedly” present in Duchamp’s artistic lexicon are nothing but debris accumulated in the course of his battle with the Cubist disciples of Bergson.4To counter these approaches, in the following pages I will map Duchamp’s absorption and creative distortion of Bergsonism,5 concentrating on key terms of both Bergson’s philosophy and Duchamp’s speculations on art: space, “readymade,” delay, body, virtual, circuit, machine.6 I will then discuss the theoretical implications of Duchamp’s Bergsonism and place the readymade7 within its proper context: the deconstruction of the Western metaphysics of reflection. [End Page 77]SpaceBeginning with Time and Free Will (1889), Bergson distinguishes between two types of multiplicities: on the one hand, “duration” (durée), “an internal multiplicity of succession, of fusion, of organization, of heterogeneity, of qualitative discrimination... a virtual and continuous multiplicity that cannot be reduced to numbers,” and on the other, “a multiplicity of exteriority, of simultaneity, of juxtaposition, of order, of quantitative differentiation... a numerical multiplicity, discontinuous and actual.”8 This opposition is generally understood as a clear-cut differentiation between the inner experience of time and the objective consistence of space. In Time and Free Will and Matter and Memory (1896), there are several passages that can be read accordingly, since duration is often described as a continuous, indivisible temporal experience, and space as that which “by definition, is outside us.”9Yet for Bergson space and time are mixed terms, and their internal complexity does not coincide with the semantic distinction between the two multiplicities. Deleuze has clearly formulated the central difficulty that a reductionist theory of space and time would imply, a problem of which Bergson is fully aware. Since the concept of duration has an ontological span, space must find a place within time and vice versa: “If things endure, or if there is duration in things, the question of space will need to be reassessed on new foundations. For space will no longer simply be a form of exteriority.... Space itself will need to be based in things... to have its own ‘purity’” [Deleuze, Bergsonism 49]. Hidden behind the motif of the “spatialization of time,” Bergson has devised a stratified theory of space, whose origins we can trace back to his philosophical apprenticeship [see Heidesick 29–42].Departing from Kant, Bergson introduces a boundary between the “perception of extension” and the “conception of space,” between qualitative space, which he calls “extensity” (étendue), and “abstract,” “homogeneous” space: “We must thus distinguish between the perception of extensity and the conception of space.... [S]pace is not so homogeneous for the animal as for us... determinations of space, or directions, do not assume for it a purely geometrical form” [Bergson, Time... (shrink)

In a recent paper (Berry in Eur J Phys 42: 015401, 2020), the boundaries of superoscillatory regions (the regions where a function oscillates faster than its fastest Fourier component) of waves described by the Helmholtz equation in a uniform medium were related to zeros of the quantum potential, arising in the Madelung formulation of quantum mechanics. We generalize this result, showing that the relativistic counterpart, which is, essentially, a Klein-Gordon equation, exhibits the same behaviour, but in spacetime, giving rise (...) to anomalous values for the local mass (instead of local momenta, in the classical case). This amounts to the generalization of the condition for superoscillations from the magnitude of a vector, to the norm of a four-vector. For a photon, boundaries of superoscillatory regions are surfaces on which the photon’s trajectory is locally light-like, separating time-like and space-like regions, which correspond to real and imaginary local mass, respectively. (shrink)

Introduction. Artificial intelligence is a trend of NBIC-convergence and information technologies in particular. Since the 70s of the 20th century it has been a subject of intense debate in the scientific community. A direct indicator of the importance of the topic is the publication dynamics and the annual increase in the number of indexed articles. According to the statistics, Western social sciences are in the top five industry leaders. The purpose of the study is to analyze the Scopus database and (...) identify the key mythologems of the scientific discourse of social sciences (in the field of artificial intelligence). The latter go beyond the boundaries of research norms and standards and express non-reflective research intentions. Methods. The reference base of scientific arti- cles includes works published during the decade (2010—2020). Methods for detecting verbal mark- ers and content analysis were used. At the same time, the emphasis was mainly placed not on quan- titative, but on qualitative analytics as well. The basis for the choice of markers was the frequency of their use in abstracts (abstracts), headings (titles) and keywords. The selection of verbal markers was made in accordance with two conditionally desig- nated categories: «trends», or frequency engineering, technical and social and humanitarian terms, expressing the direction of research practic- es and «mythologemes», or elements of a second- ary semiotic system. Scientific novelty of the study. Scientific novelty is due to the specification of the research subject. In the West, the direction of the so-called «Tech- nological mythology», which focuses mainly on the discourses of art and ideological documents is being developed. The analytics of scientific content makes it possible to remove the existing research limitations of the subject and identify prospects for further study of modern mythology. Content analysis made it possible to identify some extreme- ly general formulations of technological mythologe- mes, which can be refined and concretized. Results. Following the results of the study, a de- scription of three metatrends was made — techno- logical, social and anthropological. All key directions within the boundaries of each trend are listed. At the same time, it is argued that the anthropotrend has a relatively smaller share in the discourse of Western social sciences. As a debatable aspect of the study, five scientific mythologemes were iden- tified and conditionally designated. Interpretations and characteristic examples of the functioning of each are offered. Conclusion. The technological trend is constituted by the data of technical sciences and engineering developments with a social orientation. Sociotrend is determined by the spectrum of technology application areas. The conclusion is made about the diffusion of two trends and the discourses serving these trends. Discursively, the technotrend serves to construct a strictly scientific discourse based not on abstract, but on specific and precise proposi- tions. Particular attention is paid to the discursive mainstream of «smartization», which is characteris- tic of the scientific content of the second decade of the 21st century. Emphasis is placed on the anthro- pological risks of extrapolating «smartization» to specialized practices. (shrink)

continent. 1.1 : 3-13. / 0/ – Introduction I want to propose, as a trajectory into the philosophically weird, an absurd theoretical claim and pursue it, or perhaps more accurately, construct it as I point to it, collecting the ground work behind me like the Perpetual Train from China Mieville's Iron Council which puts down track as it moves reclaiming it along the way. The strange trajectory is the following: Kant's critical philosophy and much of continental philosophy which has followed, (...) has been a defense against horror and madness. Kant's prohibition on speculative metaphysics such as dogmatic metaphysics and transcendental realism, on thinking beyond the imposition of transcendental and moral constraints, has been challenged by numerous figures proceeding him. One of the more interesting critiques of Kant comes from the mad black Deleuzianism of Nick Land stating, “Kant’s critical philosophy is the most elaborate fit of panic in the history of the Earth.” And while Alain Badiou would certainly be opposed to the libidinal investments of Land's Deleuzo-Guattarian thought, he is likewise critical of Kant's normative thought-bureaucracies: Kant is the one author for whom I cannot feel any kinship. Everything in him exasperates me, above all his legalism—always asking Quid Juris? Or ‘Haven’t you crossed the limit?’—combined, as in today’s United States, with a religiosity that is all the more dismal in that it is both omnipresent and vague. The critical machinery he set up has enduringly poisoned philosophy, while giving great succour to the academy, which loves nothing more than to rap the knuckles of the overambitious [….] That is how I understand the truth of Monique David-Menard’s reflections on the properly psychotic origins of Kantianism. I am persuaded that the whole of the critical enterprise is set up to to shield against the tempting symptom represented by the seer Swedenborg, or against ‘diseases of the head’, as Kant puts it. An entire nexus of the limits of reason and philosophy are set up here, namely that the critical philosophy not only defends thought from madness, philosophy from madness, and philosophy from itself, but that philosophy following the advent of the critical enterprise philosophy becomes auto-vampiric; feeding on itself to support the academy. Following Francois Laruelle's non-philosophical indictment of philosophy, we could go one step further and say that philosophy operates on the material of what is philosophizable and not the material of the external world. [1] Beyond this, the Kantian scheme of nestling human thinking between our limited empirical powers and transcendental guarantees of categorical coherence, forms of thinking which stretch beyond either appear illegitimate, thereby liquefying both pre-critical metaphysics and the ravings of the mad in the same critical acid. In rejecting the Kantian apparatus we are left with two entities – an unsure relation of thought to reality where thought is susceptible to internal and external breakdown and a reality with an uncertain sense of stability. These two strands will be pursued, against the sane-seal of post-Kantian philosophy by engaging the work of weird fiction authors H.P. Lovecraft and Thomas Ligotti. The absolute inhumanism of the formers universe will be used to describe a Shoggothic Materialism while the dream worlds of the latter will articulate the mad speculation of a Ventriloquil Idealism. But first we must address the relation of philosophy to madness as well as philosophy to weird fiction. /1/ – Philosophy and Madness There is nothing that the madness of men invents which is not either nature made manifest or nature restored. Michel Foucault. Madness and Civilization. The moment I doubt whether an event that I recall actually took place, I bring the suspicion of madness upon myself: unless I am uncertain as to whether it was not a mere dream. Arthur Schopenhauer. The World as Will and Idea, Vol. 3. Madness is commonly thought of as moving through several well known cultural-historical shifts from madness as a demonic or otherwise theological force, to rationalization, to medicalization psychiatric and otherwise. Foucault's Madness and Civilization is well known for orientating madness as a form of exclusionary social control which operated by demarcating madness from reason. Yet Foucault points to the possibility of madness as the necessity of nature at least prior to the crushing weight of the church. Kant’s philosophy as a response to madness is grounded by his humanizing of madness itself. As Adrian Johnston points out in the early pages of Time Driven pre-Kantian madness meant humans were seized by demonic or angelic forces whereas Kantian madness became one of being too human. Madness becomes internalized, the external demonic forces become flaws of the individual mind. Foucault argues that, while madness is de-demonized it is also dehumanized during the Renaissance, as madmen become creatures neither diabolic nor totally human reduced to the zero degree of humanity. It is immediately clear why for Kant, speculative metaphysics must be curbed – with the problem of internal madness and without the external safeguards of transcendental conditions, there is nothing to formally separate the speculative capacities for metaphysical diagnosis from the mad ramblings of the insane mind – both equally fall outside the realm of practicality and quotidian experience. David-Menard's work is particularly useful in diagnosing the relation of thought and madness in Kant's texts. David-Menard argues that in Kant's relatively unknown “An Essay on the Maladies of the Mind” as well as his later discussion of the Seer of Swedenborg, that Kant formulates madness primarily in terms of sensory upheaval or other hallucinatory theaters. She writes: “madness is an organization of thought. It is made possible by the ambiguity of the normal relation between the imaginary and the perceived, whether this pertains to the order of sensation or to the relations between our ideas” Kant's fascination with the Seer forces Kant between the pincers of “aesthetic reconciliation” – namely melancholic withdrawal – and “a philosophical invention” – namely the critical project. Deleuze and Guattari's schizoanalysis is a combination and reversal of Kant's split, where an aesthetic over engagement with the world entails prolific conceptual invention. Their embrace of madness, however, is of course itself conceptual despite all their rhizomatic maneuvers. Though they move with the energy of madness, Deleuze and Guattari save the capacity of thought from the fangs of insanity by imbuing materiality itself with the capacity for thought. Or, as Ray Brassier puts it, “Deleuze insists, it is necessary to absolutize the immanence of this world in such a way as to dissolve the transcendent disjunction between things as we know them and as they are in themselves”. That is, whereas Kant relied on the faculty of judgment to divide representation from objectivity Deleuze attempts to flatten the whole economy beneath the juggernaut of ontological univocity. Speculation, as a particularly useful form of madness, might fall close to Deleuze and Guattari’s shaping of philosophy into a concept producing machine but is different in that it is potentially self destructive – less reliant on the stability of its own concepts and more adherent to exposing a particular horrifying swath of reality. Speculative madness is always a potential disaster in that it acknowledges little more than its own speculative power with the hope that the gibbering of at least a handful of hysterical brains will be useful. Pre-critical metaphysics amounts to madness, though this may be because the world itself is mad while new attempts at speculative metaphysics, at post-Kantian pre-critical metaphysics, are well aware of our own madness. Without the sobriety of the principle of sufficient reason we have a world of neon madness: “we would have to conceive what our life would be if all the movements of the earth, all the noises of the earth, all the smells, the tastes, all the light – of the earth and elsewhere, came to us in a moment, in an instant – like an atrocious screaming tumult of things”. Speculative thought may be participatory in the screaming tumult of the world or, worse yet, may produce its spectral double. Against theology or reason or simply commonsense, the speculative becomes heretical. Speculation, as the cognitive extension of the horrorific sublime should be met with melancholic detachment. Whereas Kant's theoretical invention, or productivity of thought, is self -sabotaging, since the advent of the critical project is a productivity of thought which then delimits the engine of thought at large either in dogmatic gestures or non-systematizable empirical wondrousness. The former is celebrated by the fiction of Thomas Ligotti whereas the latter is espoused by the tales of H.P. Lovecraft. /2/ – Weird Fiction and Philosophy. Supernatural horror, in all its eerie constructions, enables a reader to taste treats inconsistent with his personal welfare. Thomas Ligotti Songs of a Dead Dreamer. I choose weird stories because they suit my inclination best—one of my strongest and most persistent wishes being to achieve,momentarily, the illusion of some strange suspension or violation of the galling limitations of time, space, and natural law which forever imprison us and frustrate our curiosity about the infinite cosmic spaces beyond the radius of our sight and analysis H.P. Lovecraft. “Notes on Writing Weird Fiction” Lovecraft states that his creation of a story is to suspend natural law yet, at the same time, he indexes the tenuousness of such laws, suggesting the vast possibilities of the cosmic. The tension that Lovecraft sets up between his own fictions and the universe or nature is reproduced within his fictions in the common theme of the unreliable narrator; unreliable precisely because they are either mad or what they have witnessed questions the bounds of material reality. In “The Call of Cthulhu” Lovecraft writes: The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age. Despite Lovecraft's invocations of illusion, he is not claiming that his fantastic creations such as the Old Ones are supernatural but, following Joshi, are only ever supernormal. One can immediately see that instead of nullifying realism Lovecraft in fact opens up the real to an unbearable degree. In various letters and non-fictional statements Lovecraft espoused strictly materialist tenets, ones which he borrowed from Hugh Elliot namely the uniformity of law, the denial of teleology and the denial of non-material existence. Lovecraft seeks to explore the possibilities of such a universe by piling horror upon horror until the fragile brain which attempts to grasp it fractures. This may be why philosophy has largely ignored weird fiction – while Deleuze and Guattari mark the turn towards weird fiction and Lovecraft in particular, with the precursors to speculative realism as well as contemporary related thinkers have begun to view Lovecraft as making philosophical contributions. Lovecraft's own relation to philosophy is largely critical while celebrating Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. This relationship of Lovecraft to philosophy and philosophy to Lovecraft is coupled with Lovecraft's habit of mercilessly destroying the philosopher and the figure of the academic more generally in his work, a destruction which is both an epistemological destruction and an ontological destruction. Thomas Ligotti's weird fiction which he has designated as a kind of “confrontational escapism” might be best described in the following quote from one of his shortstories, “The human phenomenon is but the sum of densely coiled layers of illusion each of which winds itself on the supreme insanity. That there are persons of any kind when all there can be is mindless mirrors laughing and screaming as they parade about in an endless dream”. Whereas Lovecraft's weirdness draws predominantly from the abyssal depths of the uncharted universe, Ligotti's existential horror focuses on the awful proliferation of meaningless surfaces that is, the banal and every day function of representation. In an interview, Ligotti states: We don't even know what the world is like except through our sense organs, which are provably inadequate. It's no less the case with our brains. Our whole lives are motored along by forces we cannot know and perceptions that are faulty. We sometimes hear people say that they're not feeling themselves. Well, who or what do they feel like then? This is not to say that Ligotti sees nothing beneath the surface but that there is only darkness or blackness behind it, whether that surface is on the cosmological level or the personal. By addressing the implicit and explicit philosophical issues in Ligotti's work we will see that his nightmarish take on reality is a form of malevolent idealism, an idealism which is grounded in a real, albeit dark and obscure materiality. If Ligotti's horrors ultimately circle around mad perceptions which degrade the subject, it takes aim at the vast majority of the focus of continental philosophy. While Lovecraft's acidic materialism clearly assaults any romantic concept of being from the outside, Ligotti attacks consciousness from the inside: Just a little doubt slipped into the mind, a little trickle of suspicion in the bloodstream, and all those eyes of ours, one by one, open up to the world and see its horror [...] Not even the solar brilliance of a summer day will harbor you from horror. For horror eats the light and digests it into darkness. Clearly, the weird fiction of Lovecraft and Ligotti amount to a anti-anthrocentric onslaught against the ramparts of correlationist continental philosophy. /3/ – Shoggothic Materialism or the Formless Formless protoplasm able to mock and reflect all forms and organs and processes—viscous agglutinations of bubbling cells—rubbery fifteen-foot spheroids infinitely plastic and ductile—slaves of suggestion, builders of cities—more and more sullen, more and more intelligent, more and more amphibious, more and more imitative—Great God! What madness made even those blasphemous Old Ones willing to use and to carve such things? H.P. Lovecraft. “At the Mountains of Madness” On the other hand, affirming that the universe resembles nothing and is only formless amounts to saying that the universe is something like a spider or spit. Georges Bataille. “Formless”. The Shoggoths feature most prominently in H.P. Lovecraft's shortstory “At the Mountains of Madness” where they are described in the following manner: It was a terrible, indescribable thing vaster than any subway train – a shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self -luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and un-forming as pustules of greenish light all over the tunnel-filling front that bore down upon us, crushing the frantic penguins and slithering over the glistening floor that it and its kind had swept so evilly free of all litter. The term is a litmus test for materialism itself as the Shoggoth is an amorphous creature. The Shoggoths were living digging machines bio engineered by the Elder Things, and their protoplasmic bodies being formed into various tools by their hypnotic powers. The Shoggoths eventually became self aware and rose up against their masters in an ultimately failed rebellion. After the Elder Ones retreated into the oceans leaving the Shoggoths to roam the frozen wastes of the Antarctic. The onto-genesis of the Shoggoths and their gross materiality, index the horrifyingly deep time of the earth a concept near and dear to Lovecraft's formulation of horror as well as the fear of intelligences far beyond, and far before, the ascent of humankind on earth and elsewhere. The sickly amorphous nature of the Shoggoths invade materialism at large, where while materiality is unmistakably real ie not discursive, psychological, or otherwise overly subjectivist, it questions the relation of materialism to life. As Eugene Thacker writes: The Shoggoths or Elder Things do not even share the same reality with the human beings who encounter them—and yet this encounter takes place, though in a strange no-place that is neither quite that of the phenomenal world of the human subject or the noumenal world of an external reality. Amorphous yet definitively material beings are a constant in Lovecraft's tales. In his tale “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadatth” Lovecraft describes Azathoth as, “that shocking final peril which gibbers unmentionably outside the ordered universe,” that, “last amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blashphemes and bubbles at the centre of all infinity,” who, “gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time”. Azathoth's name may have multiple origins but the most striking is the alchemy term azoth which is both a cohesive agent and a acidic creation pointing back to the generative and the decayed. The indistinction of generation and degradation materially mirrors the blur between the natural and the unnatural as well as life and non-life. Lovecraft speaks of the tension between the natural and the unnatural is his short story “The Unnameable.” He writes, “if the psychic emanations of human creatures be grotesque distortions, what coherent representation could express or portray so gibbous and infamous a nebulousity as the spectre of a malign, chaotic perversion, itself a morbid blasphemy against Nature?”. Lovecraft explores exactly the tension outlined at the beginning of this chapter, between life and thought. At the end of his short tale Lovecraft compounds the problem as the unnameable is described as “a gelatin—a slime—yet it had shapes, a thousand shapes of horror beyond all memory”. Deleuze suggests that becoming-animal is operative throughout Lovecraft's work, where narrators feel themselves reeling at their becoming non-human or of being the anomalous or of becoming atomized. Following Eugene Thacker however, it may be far more accurate to say that Lovecraft's tales exhibit not a becoming-animal but a becoming-creature. Where the monstrous breaks the purportedly fixed laws of nature, the creature is far more ontologically ambiguous. The nameless thing is an altogether different horizon for thought. The creature is either less than animal or more than animal – its becoming is too strange for animal categories and indexes the slow march of thought towards the bizarre. This strangeness is, as aways, some indefinite swirling in the category of immanence and becoming. Bataille begins “The Labyrinth” with the assertion that being, to continue to be, is becoming. More becoming means more being hence the assertion that Bataille's barking dog is more than the sponge. This would mean that the Shoggotth is altogether too much being, too much material in the materialism. Bataille suggests that there is an immanence between the eater and the eaten, across the species and never within them. That is, despite the chaotic storm of immanence there must remain some capacity to distinguish the gradients of becoming without reliance upon, or at least total dependence upon, the powers of intellection to parse the universe into recognizable bits, properly digestible factoids. That is, if we undo Deleuze's aforementioned valorization of sense which, for his variation of materialism, performed the work of the transcendental, but refuse to reinstate Kant's transcendental disjunction between thing and appearance, then it must be a quality of becoming-as-being itself which can account for the discernible nature of things by sense. In an interview with Peter Gratton, Jane Bennett formulates the problem thusly: What is this strange systematicity proper to a world of Becoming? What, for example, initiates this congealing that will undo itself? Is it possible to identify phases within this formativity, plateaus of differentiation? If so, do the phases/plateaus follow a temporal sequence? Or, does the process of formation inside Becoming require us to theorize a non-chronological kind of time? I think that your student’s question: “How can we account for something like iterable structures in an assemblage theory?” is exactly the right question. Philosophy has erred too far on the side of the subject in the subject-object relation and has furthermore, lost the very weirdness of the non-human. Beyond this, the madness of thought need not override. /4/ - Ventriloquial Idealism or the Externality of Thought My aim is the opposite of Lovecraft's. He had an appreciation for natural scenery on earth and wanted to reach beyond the visible in the universe. I have no appreciation for natural scenery and want the objective universe to be a reflection of a character. Thomas Ligotti. “Devotees of Decay and Desolation.” Unless life is a dream, nothing makes sense. For as a reality, it is a rank failure [….] Horror is more real than we are. Thomas Ligotti. “Professor Nobody's Little Lectures on Supernatural Horror”. Thomas Ligotti's tales are rife with mannequins, puppets, and other brainless entities which of replace the valorized subject of philosophy – that of the free thinking human being. His tales such as “The Dream of the Manikin” aim to destroy the rootedness of consciousness. James Trafford has connected the anti-egoism of Ligotti to Thomas Metzinger – where the self is at best an illusion and we plead desperately for someone else to acknowledge that we are real. Trafford has stated it thus, “Life is played out as an inescapable puppet show, an endless dream in which the puppets are generally unaware that they are trapped within a mesmeric dance of whose mechanisms they know nothing and over which they have no control”. An absolute materialism, for Ligotti, implies an alienation of the idea which leads to a ventriloquil idealism. As Ligotti notes in an interview, “the fiasco and nightmare of existence, the particular fiasco and nightmare of human existence, the sense that people are puppets of powers they cannot comprehend, etc.” And then further elaborates that,“[a]ssuming that anything has to exist, my perfect world would be one in which everyone has experienced the annulment of his or her ego. That is, our consciousness of ourselves as unique individuals would entirely disappear”. The externality of the idea leads to the unfortunate consequence of consciousness eating at itself through horror which, for Ligotti, is more real than reality and goes beyond horror-as-affect. Beyond this, taking together with the unreality of life and the ventriloquizing of subjectivity, Ligotti's thought becomes an idealism in which thought itself is alien and ultimately horrifying. The role of human thought and the relation of non-relation of horror to thought is not completely clear in Ligotti's The Conspiracy Against the Human Race. Ligotti argues in his The Conspiracy Against the Human Race,that the advent of thought is a mistake of nature and that horror is being in the sense that horror results from knowing too much. Yet, at the same time, Ligotti seems to suggest that thought separates us from nature whereas, for Lovecraft, thought is far less privileged – mind is just another manifestation of the vital principal, it is just another materialization of energy. In his brilliant “Prospects for Post-Copernican Dogmatism” Iain Grant rallies against the negative definition of dogmatism and the transcendental, and suggests that negatively defining both over-focuses on conditions of access and subjectivism at the expense of the real or nature. With Schelling, who is Grant's champion against the subjectivist bastions of both Fichte and Kant, Ligotti's idealism could be taken as a transcendental realism following from an ontological realism. Yet the transcendental status of Ligotti's thought move towards a treatment of the transcendental which may threaten to leave beyond its realist ground. Ligotti states: Belief in the supernatural is only superstition. That said, a sense of the supernatural, as Conrad evidenced in Heart of Darkness, must be admitted if one's inclination is to go to the limits of horror. It is the sense of what should not be- the sense of being ravaged by the impossible. Phenomenally speaking, the super-natural may be regarded as the metaphysical counterpart of insanity, a transcendental correlative of a mind that has been driven mad. Again, Ligotti equates madness with thought, qualifying both as supernatural while remaining less emphatic about the metaphysical dimensions of horror. The question becomes one of how exactly the hallucinatory realm of the ideal relates to the black churning matter of Lovecraft's chaos of elementary particles. In his tale “I Have a Special Plan for This World” Ligotti formulates thus: A: There is no grand scheme of things. B: If there were a grand scheme of things, the fact – the fact – that we are not equipped to perceive it, either by natural or supernatural means, is a nightmarish obscenity. C: The very notion of a grand scheme of things is a nightmarish obscenity. Here Ligotti is not discounting metaphysics but implying that if it does exist the fact that we are phenomenologically ill-equipped to perceive that it is nightmarish. For Ligotti, nightmare and horror occur within the circuit of consciousness whereas for Lovecraft the relation between reality and mind is less productive on the side of mind. It is easier to ascertain how the Kantian philosophy is a defense against the diseases of the head as Kant armors his critical enterprise from too much of the world and too much of the mind. The weird fiction of both Lovecraft and Ligotti demonstrates that there is too much of both feeding into one another in a way that corrodes the Kantian schema throughly, breaking it down into a dead but still ontologically potentiated nigredo. The haunting, terrifying fact of Ligotti's idealism is that the transcendental motion which brought thought to matter, while throughly material and naturalized, brings with it the horror that thought cannot be undone without ending the material that bears it either locally or completely. Thought comes from an elsewhere and an elsewhen being-in-thought. The unthinkable outside thought is as maddening as the unthought engine of thought itself within thought which doesn't exist except for the mind, the rotting décor of the brain. /5/ - Hyperstitional Transcendental Paranoia or Self -Expelled Thought Weird fiction has been given some direct treatment in philosophy in the mad black Deleuzianism of Nick Land. Nick Land along with others in the 1990s created the Cyber Culture Research Unit as well as the research group Hyperstition. The now defunct hyperstitional website, an outgrowth of the Cyber Culture Research Unit, defined hyperstition in the following fourfold: 1-Element of effective culture that makes itself real. 2-Fictional quantity functional as a time-traveling device. 3-Coincidence intensifier. 4-Call to the Old Ones. The distinctively Lovecraftian character of hyperstition is hard to miss as is its Deleuzo-Guattarian roots. In the opening pages of A Thousand Plateaus Deleuze and Guattari write, “We have been criticized for over-quoting literary authors. But when one writes, the only question is which other machine the literary machine can be plugged into”. The indisinction of literature and philosophy mirrors the mess of being and knowing as post-correlationist philosophy, where philosophy tries to make itself real where literature, especially the weird, aims itself at the brain-circuit of horror. The texts of both Lovecraft and Ligotti work through horror as epistemological plasticity meeting with proximity as well as the deep time of Lovecraft and the glacially slow time of paranoia in Ligotti. Against Deleuze, and following Brassier, we cannot allow the time of consciousness, the Bergsonian time of the duree, to override natural time, but instead acknowledge that it is an unfortunate fact of existence as a thinking being. Horror-time, the time of consciousness, with all its punctuated moments and drawn out terrors, cannot compare to the deep time of non-existence both in the unreachable past and the unknown future. The crystalline cogs of Kant's account of experience as the leading light for the possibility of metaphysics must be throughly obliterated. His gloss of experience in Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics could not be more sterile: Experience consists of intuitions, which belong to the sensibility, and of judgments, which are entirely a work of the understanding. But the judgments which the understanding makes entirely out of sensuous intuitions are far from being judgments of experience. For in the one case the judgment connects only the perceptions as they are given in sensuous intuition [....] Experience consists in the synthetic connection of appearances in consciousness, so far as this connection is necessary. Here it is difficult to dismiss the queasiness that Kant's legalism induces upon sight for both Badiou and David-Menard. Kant's thought becomes, as Foucault says when reflecting on Sade's text in relation to nature, “the savage abolition of itself”. For Badiou, Kant's philosophy simply closes off too much of the outside, freezing the world of thought in an all too limited formalism. Critical philosophy is simply the systematized quarantine on future thinking, on thinking which would threaten the formalism which artificially grants thought its own coherency in the face of madness. Even the becoming-mad of Deleuze, while escaping the rumbling ground, makes grounds for itself, mad grounds but grounds which are thinkable in their affect. The field of effects allows for Deleuze's aesthetic and radical empiricism, in which effects and/or occasions make up the material of the world to be thought as a chaosmosis of simulacra. Given a critique of an empiricism of aesthetics, of the image, it may be difficult to justify an attack on Kantian formalism with the madness of literature, which does not aim to make itself real but which we may attempt to make real. That is, how do Lovecraft's and Ligotti's materials, as materials for philosophy to work on, differ from either the operative formalisms of Kant or the implicitly formalized images of Deleuzian empiricism? It is simply that such texts do not aim to make themselves real, and make claims to the real which are more alien to us than familiar, which is why their horror is immediately more trustworthy. This is the madness which Blanchot discusses in The Infinite Conversation through Cervantes and his knight – the madness of book-life, of the perverse unity of literature and life a discussion which culminates in the discussion of one of the weird's masters, that of Kafka. The text is the knowing of madness, since madness, in its moment of becoming-more-mad, cannot be frozen in place but by the solidifications of externalizing production. This is why Foucault ends his famous study with works of art. Furthermore extilligence, the ability to export the products of our maligned brains, is the companion of the attempts to export, or discover the possibility of intelligences outside of our heads, in order for philosophy to survive the solar catastrophe. To borrow again from Deleuze, writing is inseparable from becoming. The mistake is to believe that madness is reabsorbed by extilligence, by great works, or that it could be exorcised by the expelling of thought into the inorganic or differently organic. Going out of our heads does not guarantee we will no longer mean we cannot still go out of our minds. This is simply because of the outside, of matter, or force, or energy, or thing-in-itself, or Schopenhauerian Will. In Lovecraft’s “The Music of Erich Zahn” an “impoverished student of metaphysics” becomes intrigued by strange viol music coming from above his room. After meeting the musician the student discovers that each night he plays frantic music at a window in order to keep some horridness at bay, some “impenetrable darkness with chaos and pandemonium”. The aesthetic defenses provided by the well trained brain can bear the hex of matter for so long, the specter of unalterability within it which too many minds obliterate, collapsing everything before the thought of thought as thinkable or at least noetically mutable on our own terms. Transcendental paranoia is the concurrent nightmare and promise of Paul Humphrey's work, of being literally out of our minds. It is the gothic counterpart of thinking non-conceptually but also of thinking never belonging to any instance of purportedly solid being. As Bataille stated, “At the boundary of that which escapes cohesion, he who reflects within cohesion realizes there is no longer any room for him” Thought is immaterial only to the degree that it is inhuman, it is a power that tries, always with failure, to ascertain its own genesis. Philosophy, if it can truly return to the great outdoors, if it can leave behind the dead loop of the human skull, must recognize not only the non-priority of human thought, but that thought never belongs to the brain that thinks it, thought comes from somewhere else. To return to the train image from the beginning “a locomotive rolling on the surface of the earth is the image of continuous metamorphosis” this is the problem of thought, and of thinking thought, of being no longer able to isolate thought, with only a thought-formed structure. [1] One of the central tenets of Francois Laruelle's non-philosophy is that philosophy has traditionally operated on material already presupposed as thinkable instead of trying to think the real in itself. Philosophy, according to Laruelle, remains fixated on transcendental synthesis which shatters immanence into an empirical datum and an a prori factum which are then fused by a third thing such as the ego. For a critical account of Laruelle's non-philosophy see Ray Brassier's Nihil Unbound. (shrink)

The ’microcausality’ condition in quantum field theory is typically presented and justified on the basis of general principles of physical causality. I explore in detail a number of alternative causal interpretations of this condition. I conclude that none is fully satisfactory, independent of further and controversial assumptions about the object and scope of quantum field theories. In particular the stronger causalreadings require a fully reductionist and fundamentalist attitude to quantum field theory. I argue, in a deflationary spirit, for a (...) reading of the ‘microcausality’ condition as merely a boundary condition, inspired by Relativity, that different possible formulations of quantum field theory must obey. (shrink)

The Resource-Based View (RBV) has been instrumental in shaping strategic management theory by underscoring the significance of a firm's unique, valuable, and hard-to-copy internal resources in securing competitive advantage. However, the conventional RBV framework, with its emphasis on static, possession-oriented resource conceptualization, falls short in addressing the dynamic and relational nature of resources in contemporary business environments. This paper aims to bridge this gap by introducing a processual perspective to the RBV, grounded in process philosophy. In this study, we delve (...) into the philosophical underpinnings of RBV, critiquing its static ontological assumptions and proposing a shift towards a more dynamic and relational ontology. Drawing from the insights of process philosophers such as Whitehead and Bergson, and differentiating between 'strong' and 'weak' process views, we reconceptualize resources not as static entities, but as dynamic elements continually constituted and reconstituted within networks of relationships and ongoing organizational processes. This approach allows for a more nuanced understanding of resources, recognizing their evolutionary and interconnected nature. Our methodology involves a rigorous theoretical analysis and synthesis of existing RBV literature, coupled with philosophical inquiry to construct a novel framework for resource conceptualization. We demonstrate how this reconceptualization offers fresh insights into strategic management, particularly in formulating strategies that leverage the dynamic interplay of resources and in understanding the boundary between internal and external resources. This paper contributes to the RBV literature by offering a process-oriented perspective that aligns more closely with the complexities of modern strategic landscapes. By challenging and extending traditional RBV assumptions, we pave the way for future empirical research and theoretical development in strategic management, highlighting the significance of process philosophy in enriching management theories. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:61. HUME'S GEOMETRIC "OBJECTS" Arithmetic and algebra allow of precision and certainty. The science of geometry is not likewise a perfect and infallible science. At any rate, this is Hume's teaching in the Treatise. When two numbers are so combin ' d, as that the one has always an unite answering to every unite of the other, we pronounce them equal; and 'tis for want of such a standard (...) of equality in extension, that geometry can scarce be esteem'd a perfect and infallible science. 1 The ideas of, say, equality and right line shade into· inequality and curve. It must not be supposed, however, that the vagueness of these ideas renders all judgments uncertain and fallible. 'Tie evident, that the eye, or rather the mind is often able at one view to determine the proportions of bodies....Such judgments are not only common, but in many cases certain and infallible. (T47) Nevertheless, geometry is a fallible science because its essential ideas are vague. Vagueness, due to lack of boundaries between ideas, is in the ideas themselves. For this reason, 'tis impossible to produce any definition of them, which will fix the precise boundaries betwixt them. (T49) (Yet, some forty pages earlier Hume argued at length that the mind cannot form any notion of quantity or quality without forming a precise notion of the degrees of each [T18]) As far as the Treatise goes, geometry is the science of measurement and as such it must allow for error. Even if precise geometric standards could be had, they would not make the propositions of geometry certain. Thus, we might precisely define a right line by a rule of order of indivisible points. But geometry, construed as the science of measurement, would not be perfected. Nor, if it were (the standard), is there any such firmness in our senses or imagination, as to determine when such an order is violated or preserv ' d. The original standard of a right line is in reality nothing but a certain general appearance. (T52) 62. In the Enquiries, Hume continues to hold that notions essential to geometry, for example, equality, right line, and so on, are sensibles. But they are no longer generic appearances. They are determinate. The great advantage of the mathematical sciences above the moral consists in this, that the ideas of the former, being sensible, are always clear and determinate... even when no definition is employed, the object itself may be presented to the senses, and by that means be steadily and clearly apprehended. 2 In addition, geometry is no longer merely the science of measurement. The truths of Euclid, Hume holds, would remain truths even if there were no figures in nature. Though there never were a circle or triangle in nature, the truths demonstrated by Euclid would for ever retain their certainty and evidence. (EHU25) Professor Zabeeh, in his commentary on Hume, holds that Hume did not mean to imply that Euclid could dispense with the observation of figures. However, whenever possible Hume should be taken at his word: observation of figures is not a truth condition for propositions of geometry. A distinction must be drawn between discovery conditions and what Hume calls the "truth or evidence" of a geometric proposition. We may suppose that observation of figures is a discovery condition. But it is hardly a truth condition. The certainty, as opposed to the discovery, of geometric propositions does not depend on the existence in nature of any figure. I am mainly concerned, however, with Professor Zabeeh' s account of how, according to Hume, geometric propositions retain their certainty and evidence in the face of recalcitrant experience. Noting that Hume does not "fully explain," he gives the real reason for Hume's belief in the apodeictic certainty of mathematical truths. He appears to assume we never allow such truths to be controverted by empirical evidence. That is to say, if perchance we find, by measurement, that the sum of the angles of a Euclidean triangle 63. does not equal 180 degrees, either we say that we measured wrongly or we say that the triangle we have been measuring is not Euclidean.4 This formulation of Hume's reason avoids... (shrink)

There are two metaphysical pictures of spacetime: The evolutionary picture and the all-at-once picture. According to the evolutionary picture, spacetime is nothing but the evolution of space over time. In contrast, the all-at-once picture considers spacetime as ‘a global, four-dimensional boundary value problem’ that can be solved only in an all-at-once manner, i.e. as a whole which is fundamentally four-dimensional and non-decomposable into spatial and temporal parts. The two most-known formulations of general theory of relativity, i.e. the Hamiltonian (...) (or the canonical) and the Lagrangian (or the standard) formulations, enjoy the evolutionary and all-at-once pictures of spacetime respectively. Here, we have argued that (1) the all-at-once picture is more aligned with the philosophy of relativity theory, i.e. uniting space and time into spacetime, (2) the evolutionary picture is not as general as the all-at-once, since only in special cases, such as globally hyperbolic spacetimes, is it possible to deal with spacetime as the evolution of a spatial slice over time, and (3) the all-at-once picture paves the way to better understanding _four-dimensional_ physical entities, like event horizons, which cannot be explained within an evolutionary picture without raising a paradox. Therefore, the evolutionary picture is neither the _fundamentally-true_ nor the _naturally-chosen_ picture of spacetime. Rather, we choose the evolutionary picture for practical and computational reasons. While the all-at-once picture seems a more appropriate description of the quantum and cosmological reality, the evolutionary picture can be applied occasionally and locally, or quasi-locally, and is not the proper metaphysical picture of spacetime at the fundamental level of reality. (shrink)

The article examines the essence and relationship of aesthetic experience and aesthetic judgment. It is argued that philosophical aesthetics deals with constants that are fundamental to aesthetic experience. Such constants are phenomena and characteristics that have a fundamental ontological status in the aesthetic sphere. It was found that the ontological characteristic of aesthetic experience is that it is not reducible to “pure” rationality, that is, it is not something that is “adapted” to complete and final comprehension by the mind alone. (...) Therefore, a complete “absorption” of aesthetic experience by a certain semantic structure is impossible: such experience always goes beyond any discursive boundaries and simultaneously opens them. In addition, aesthetic experience serves as one of the means of a person’s “contact” with the world and society. Forming on the material of sensations, aesthetic experience extends from the most general ideas about the universe to the inner life of a person. The analysis also showed that the formulation of an aesthetic judgment is based on the concepts of the perfect and the imperfect. In turn, the mastery of such concepts is carried out in the process of correlating a certain aesthetic fact with the existing value scale. That is why aesthetic judgments have signs of normativity. They also create the basis for a common worldview and attitude, lay the foundation for mutual understanding between people of a certain culture. The study showed that the process of aesthetic assessment is a constant correlation of the existing state of affairs with something ideal, this is a permanent “demand” for perfection, as well as a tireless search for an opportunity to fulfill this “demand”. At the same time, ethical experience is dissociated from “pure” pragmatics, which personifies vital necessity, because the aesthetic sphere is always associated with a certain “redundancy” in human existence. Also, the results obtained in the course of the study suggested that philosophical aesthetics, which takes into account and investigates the specificity of the phenomenon of corporeality, as well as such phenomena of human existence as affective sensitivity and sensitive rationality, is able to overcome the limitation of “an-esthetic” naturalism in aesthetics. (shrink)

En faisant du sujet de droit la prémisse anthropologique de la société, la modernité bouleverse la nature de l’intérêt général qui se mesure désormais à l’aune des aspirations individuelles. L’intérêt général est moins un principe qu’une notion relationnelle, qui articule, par le moyen du contrat, la composition des droits et des intérêts particuliers. Pourtant, la réciprocité initiale entre le droit et l’intérêt débouche sur une tension contrariant le projet de composer un intérêt général apte à les satisfaire également. L’étude conjointe (...) de deux auteurs, Thomas Hobbes et John Locke, permet de saisir que la priorité accordée à l’un des deux pôles, le droit et l’intérêt, aboutit à des pensées politiques radicalement divergentes, selon qu’elles portent l’accent sur l’exigence de la justice ou sur la poursuite de l’utilité sociale. Parce que la satisfaction des intérêts menace parfois de se retourner contre les droits, tandis que la protection des droits tend à discriminer les intérêts, la question se pose de savoir si l’univocité de la formule « intérêt général » ne masque pas une dualité dans sa nature, rendant problématique son statut d’idéal régulateur pour les sociétés modernes. (shrink)

Biological evolution is a complex blend of ever changing structural stability, variability and emergence of new phe- notypes, niches, ecosystems. We wish to argue that the evo- lution of life marks the end of a physics world view of law entailed dynamics. Our considerations depend upon dis- cussing the variability of the very ”contexts of life”: the in- teractions between organisms, biological niches and ecosys- tems. These are ever changing, intrinsically indeterminate and even unprestatable: we do not know ahead of (...) time the ”niches” which constitute the boundary conditions on selec- tion. More generally, by the mathematical unprestatability of the ”phase space”, no laws of mo- tion can be formulated for evolution. We call this radical emergence, from life to life. The purpose of this paper is the integration of variation and diversity in a sound concep- tual frame and situate unpredictability at a novel theoretical level, that of the very phase space. Our argument will be carried on in close comparisons with physics and the mathematical constructions of phase spaces in that discipline. The role of symmetries as invariant preserving transformations will allow us to under- stand the nature of physical phase spaces and to stress the differences required for a sound biological theoretizing. In this frame, we discuss the novel notion of ”enablement”. Life lives in a web of enablement and radical emergence. This will restrict causal analyses to differential cases. Mutations or other causal differ- ences will allow us to stress that ”non conservation princi- ples” are at the core of evolution, in contrast to physical dynamics, largely based on conservation principles as sym- metries. Critical transitions, the main locus of symmetry changes in physics, will be discussed, and lead to ”extended criticality” as a conceptual frame for a better understanding of the living state of matter. (shrink)

The problem of synthetic judgments touches upon the question whether philosophy is in fact capable of making independent truth statements. According to Kant, synthetic judgments formulate the conditions for the possibility of objectively valid knowledge a priori. As far as empirical attempts at reinterpretation of the aprioristic fall short of this ambition, Kant’s a priori goes deeper. This is because modern science strives towards objective knowledge, although its statements are fundamentally fallible. The topic of synthetic a priori thus continues to (...) be relevant. -/- This paper will show that, in order to be viable at all, a modernized version of transcendental philosophy must ‘depart from’ the concepts of “independence from empirics” and/or the “purity” of the aprioristic. Kant’s reflections on non-pure synthetic a priori knowledge already contain attempts at this. Furthermore, the aprioristic validity of knowledge does not exclude the possibility, that it can be discovered empirically. Fries and, subsequently, Nelson proceeded with this separation (initially ascribed to Reichenbach) between the contexts of validity and discovery of knowledge, pointing out that the a priori can indeed be discovered empirically, yet never be proven. -/- Currently, there are still a number of valid reasons for arguing that concepts from transcendental philosophy continue to be of fundamental importance for the modern sciences. However, it must not be neglected that, even within a modernized framework of transcendental philosophy various unsolved problems remain and/or are created (such as the unfeasibility of the aprioristic claim to general validity and necessity, the problem of drawing a clear boundary between the noumenal and phenomenal worlds). Moreover, the “beautiful structure” of the Kantian system, which constitutes much of its persuasive strength, is lost. (shrink)

Unprecedented times compel new ways to explore relationships. Using interviews with dating app users quarantined in American cities at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, I show the impacts of digital mediation on the highly scripted interactional patterns in dating. Drawing from the literature on creative action, temporality, digital affordance, and the materiality of cultural objects, I examine how actors access the creative opportunities in digitally mediated interaction. I find that dating partners creatively mobilized the affordances of digital technologies to (...) approximate a dating script in organizing online interactions, which simultaneously allowed them to formulate relational narratives with varying deviation from the scripted temporal structure. I identify three aspects of digital affordances offering creative opportunities: the dissolution of spatial-temporal boundaries, the production and circulation of digital objects, and the connection between contexts. Taking advantage of an extraordinary moment of cultural and interactional rupture that necessitated digital solutions to connect, this article demonstrates how digital technologies unsettle culturally institutionalized interactional patterns and the formation of meaningful relationships. (shrink)

Interspecies intimacy defines an inescapable reality of lab animal research. This essay is an effort to disentangle this reality’s consequences—both in and outside the lab—as framed by the quandaries of ethnographic engagement. Encounters with lab staff and, in turn, with audiences unfamiliar with laboratory life, together provide crucial entry points for considering how the “messiness of the moral” might facilitate an “unbounded” approach to lab animal worlds. Within the lab, one encounters specialized ethical principles—often codified as law—that delimit strict boundaries (...) of in/appropriate human thought and action. Such principles determine quotidian practices of welfare and care that, in peculiar ways, privilege animal health (as key to reliable data) while obscuring, erasing, or denying human forms of self care. As such, they presuppose a regulatory ability to formulate, shape, and (re)direct human action. Yet attentiveness to the “messiness of the moral” of lab work exposes other realities: indeed, lab personnel regularly engage in a host of subversive responses that test or cross the boundaries of mandated behavior that (re)invigorate the meaning of moral acts of care as interspecies responsibility. The ethnographer’s ability to witness, record, and write about these actions within the lab rests comfortably on the relativist principle of suspended judgment. Once one moves outside the lab, however, I ask, wherein lies ethnographic responsibility, when one's accounts of the moral messiness of quotidian lab practices become unbounded and go public? I argue that a dialectical inter- and intraspecies framework—inspired by the existential anthropologist Michael Jackson—offers the ethnographer (and still other scholars) possibilities for forging a productively “unbounded” methodological analytic in and beyond domains of animal science. (shrink)

This paper advocates learned in the religious context of liberation, the "theology," a concept can be reasonably applied to religious traditions other than Christianity. According to that "beyond the world community and how the phenomenon of contact" as a general theological issues, and Consciousness-only school of Buddhism, one of the major literature of the "photo Mahayana theory of" how to respond to this issue. In the "photo Mahayana theory" in this issue of "inaction of the Dharma Realm to save (...) sentient beings in the phenomenal world and promising" in the form of presentation. This stands for "photo Mahayana theory" to this problem, but through three Buddha body of theory. In short, the body of law to the Buddha Dharma and sentient beings as a contact intermediary. On the one hand, body of law as a Buddha in the phenomenal world to attend the results, which do not transcend the phenomenal world; other hand, the body of law were no wisdom to properly recognize the judicial system, and therefore associated with the Dharma Realm. Further, the body of law can not smell, good enough for practical enlightenment through the body of living beings must engage with the changes in the body, while the body of law and the relationship between the other two, is equivalent to no difference between the intellect and wisdom after that relationship. Finally, the "photo Mahayana theory" liberation school structure and Christianity's "Christology" of relief to make a simple comparison study architecture, and as a conclusion. This paper begins with arguing that within the larger context of soteriology, the notion of "theology" can be legitimately applied to other religious traditions than Christianity. Following this, I propose that the issue of how the realm of transcendence could relate to the realm of phenomenon can serve as an example of a general theological issue across religious boundaries. I then investigate how this issue is discussed in the Mahāyānasamgraha as a seminal text in the Buddhist Yogācāra tradition. In the Mahāyānasamgraha, the above issue is formulated as the question of how unconditioned Dharma-realm could save the sentient beings in the conditioned world. I argue that the asnwer provided in the Mahāyānasamgraha hinges on its theory of three bodies of the Buddha. In short, the Dharma-body bridges between the Dharma-realm and sentient beings. On the one hand, the Dharma-body is the result of a bodhisattva's enduring practice in the phenomenal world, and hence does not transcend over the phenomenal world; on the other hand, the Dharma-body correctly knows the Dharma- realm through the non-discriminating cognition , and hence relates to the Dharma-realm. Furthermore, since sentient beings cannot see the Dharma-body, they can be taught only by the Enjoyment-body and the Transformation-body of the Buddha. The relation between the Dharma-body and the other two bodies is identical to the relation between the non-discriminating cognition and the subsequently-acquired cognition . Finally, this paper ends with a brief comparison between the soteriological scheme in the Mahāyānasamgraha and the scheme reflected in the issue of Christology. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Four Philosophical Models of the Relation Between Theory and PracticeEstelle R. JorgensenSince music education straddles theory and practice, my purpose is to sketch the strengths and weaknesses of four philosophical models of the relationship between theory and practice. I demonstrate that none of them suffices when taken alone; each has something to offer and its own detractions. And I conclude with four suggested ways in which the analysis can (...) be helpful to music teachers and those interested in their work.Clarifying what is meant by theory and practice raises a nest of conceptual problems. Concerning theory, it may be tempting to equate the terms "theory" and "philosophy." Among their shared properties, these terms deal with conceptual and abstract entities that, from the Enlightenment at least, have been held to be distinct from the phenomenal world. They also clarify ideas and distinguish one concept from another. Among their different purposes, the object of philosophy is the asking of questions in a search for wisdom or truth whereas theory is formulated for explanatory purposes, especially within the frame of scientific propositions that can be refuted through empirical observations. The tests of philosophy are, therefore, those of symbolic logic evidenced in principles such as [End Page 21] internal consistency, correspondence with evidence (deductive, inductive, or analogical), and coherence within a unity or whole. Although logical criteria may also be important in formulating and testing theory,1 it is tested and refuted primarily through means of qualitative descriptions and quantitative assessments of observable phenomena.Regarding practice, one is also confronted with an ambiguous construct that may be interpreted descriptively (what is done in the phenomenal world or taken to be the general state of affairs) or normatively (what is desirable or ideal). There is also the distinction between the practice of a seasoned performer and practice in the sense of striving towards the mastery of a competent and expert practice. In this regard, Vernon Howard distinguishes between "practice" (or the skills exemplified by proficient or expert performers) and "practise (or acquiring the level of mastery of proficient or expert performance)."2 For him, the ambiguous and paradoxical nature of artistic practice highlights the complexity of degrees of attaining mastery of skills or exemplary practice and the diverse array of skills ranging from habit to critical thinking involved in the practice of any art. Although each practice is distinguished by its own belief systems, rituals, expectations, and commonsense, boundaries between differing practices are sometimes "soft" or fuzzy, as one seeps into another.3 Consequently, it is often difficult to distinguish one from another at the margins where one practice becomes another.DichotomyThe notion of theory and practice as independent or a dichotomous relationship between the phenomenal world on the one hand and the mind and spirit on the other has its roots in the ancient world. For Plato, the world of "appearances," referring to the phenomenal world understood by imagination (eikasia) and belief (pistis), should be distinguished from the higher, abstract "intelligible world" grasped through thinking (dianoia), knowledge (episteme), and intelligence (noesis).4 René Descartes' later bifurcation of the inner and outer worlds and inversion of Platonic values and understandings resulted in the ascendancy of careful and deliberate observation of the phenomenal world over philosophical reflection.5 His ideas helped to set the stage for the Enlightenment and the Industrial, Scientific, and Information Revolutions. Empiricism, science, and technology gradually displaced philosophy as primary ways of knowing the phenomenal world and understanding the nature of mind, human cognition, feeling, and being. Making hard-boundaried distinctions between within and without one's self, the phenomenal world and the world of spiritual things, and theory and practice were important insights. These distinctions provided for limits on the sorts of ways in which truth could be known. Reasoned deliberation [End Page 22] and imaginative thought have particular usefulness in the world of theory while sensory perception and careful observation are especially useful in the phenomenal world of practice. So while the scholar might speculate about phenomena, observational tools are also useful in coming to know and understand them. Reason and observation each have particular strengths, and it ought not be assumed that philosophy or scientific observation... (shrink)

Failings of a categorical systemFor decades, standardized classification systems have attempted to define psychiatric disorders in our mental health care system, with the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.; DSM-5; American Psychiatric Association (APA), 2013) and International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems 10th revision (ICD-10; World Health Organization, 2010) being internationally best-known. One of the major advantages of the DSM must be that it has seriously diminished the international linguistic confusion regarding psychiatric disorders. Since (...) its introduction, it contributed extensively towards one common international language for defining and conceptualizing psychiatric disorders. Strikingly, within the field of psychological testing a similar step forward seems to have not yet been taken. At present, there exists no international standard for the use of psychological tests that takes the definition of a specific symptom as listed in DSM-5 as its starting point, and reliably and validly measures this symptom. Rather, the majority of tests are measuring constructs consisting of a multitude of symptoms. For example, the Beck’s Depression Inventory (Beck et al., 1996) measures core symptoms of depression summing up to a depression score. Accordingly, we believe it is time for a change. The diagnostics of psychiatric disorders, where disorders are defined as nosological units with a single cause, a single organic substrate, and a single time course, has been problematic for centuries. The field of psychiatry has always been ambivalent about its desire to follow a medical model (Blaney, 2015), but afflicted due to its definitions of pathology. The definition of a psychiatric disorder in DSM-5 offers little room for a clear cut pathogenesis and harsh demarcation of syndromes. This is reflected in the DSM-5, where it states: “A mental disorder is a syndrome characterized by clinically significant disturbance in an individual’s cognition, emotion regulation, or behavior that reflects a dysfunction in the psychological, biological, or developmental processes underlying mental functioning” (APA, 2013, p.20). An unfortunate and recognized consequence of this definition within the current system is that many symptoms overlap within categories of psychiatric disorders and patients end up diagnosed with many co-morbid disorders.Two fundamental problemsRegardless of new attempts to improve the diagnostics of psychiatric disorders, the DSM-5 represents the status quo. Consequently, the distinction between diagnosis and classification remains substantial and more than a discussion on semantics. We identify two fundamental problems within the current framework. Generally, a psychiatric diagnosis is considered to be descriptive (Hengeveld and Schudel, 2003). The clinician will describe a syndrome (its nature, timespan, and severity) within the framework of a disorder, and often include a differential diagnosis, predisposing protective or vulnerability factors, and provoking or maintaining factors. Within the DSM-5 framework, a similar ‘approach to clinical case formulation’ is taken (APA, 2013, p. 19). Evidently, a descriptive diagnosis has a hypothetical character. It consists of the clinician’s hypothesis and is based on his or hers professional considerations according to the abovementioned factors. Once the clinician has formulated a descriptive diagnosis, it is then complementary ‘translated’ into a DSM-5 classification. Herein lies the problem. For the layman, the existence of this distinction between diagnosis and classification is usually unknown. Preceding treatment, the clinician will give the client a classification of the existing psychiatric problems and the client may attribute more meaning to it than appropriate, thereby fostering the risk of reification. Second, the DSM-5 is a categorical system. Thus, individual disorders are regarded as discrete units – ‘you either have it, or you don’t’. DSM-5 states about this: “(…) scientific evidence places many, if not most, disorders on a spectrum with closely related disorders that have shared symptoms, shared genetic and environmental risk factors (…)”. And “(…) we have come to recognize that the boundaries between disorders are more porous than originally perceived.” (APA, 2013, p. 6). This leads to a fundamental problem. Because the overwhelming majority of psychiatric disorders examined thus far using taxometric methods appear to be dimensional in nature (Haslam, 2003; Widiger and Samuel, 2005), consequently all of their categorizations become artificial and debatable. Even though DSM-5 took a modest step towards a more dimensional approach, its core remains categorical. To illustrate, consider the Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). This classification consists of nine diagnostic criteria of which a minimum of five need to be present for the diagnosis of BPD. A simple numerical combination algorithm leads to a staggering number of 256 distinct presentations of BPD (Albion et al., 2013). Due to this chameleon-like nature, the disorder’s diagnostic validity becomes questionable. Strikingly, this number is relatively small when compared to other conditions, e.g., there are 636,120 ways to have posttraumatic stress disorder (Galatzer-Levy and Bryant, 2013).DSM-5 does propose an alternative model for personality disorders based on personality functioning and traits (APA, 2013, p. 761), as a possible answer to the problem that most patients fit with multiple co-morbid personality disorders or to the category of personality disorder not otherwise specified. In November 2012, the chair committee of APA decided to move this alternative model to section III of DSM-5 and to sustain the categorical system in section II. A potential solutionDSM-5 and its predecessors have brought about an invaluable improvement regarding the formulation of a common international language for psychiatric disorders. However, the individual disorders fit poorly with its starting point of discrete units and strict boundaries. Van Os (2014) has argued for a better balance between the categorical and personalized aspects of psychiatric disorders. We argue for a two-step approach.Particularly due to the ‘weak boundaries’ between disorders, it might be beneficial to limit ourselves by merely categorizing clients into the main categories of the DSM-5 according to their most prominent symptoms (Van Os, 2014), i.e. their main complaint. In other words, clinicians could first ask themselves whether the symptomatology is concerning a neurodevelopmental disorder, or a bipolar and related disorder, or a depressive disorder, and so on. It will drastically reduce the over 400 classifications in DSM-5 down to 20 categories. Van Os (2014) even argues to combine some of the main categories, reducing this number even further to 15 categories. The advantages of reducing the over 400 classifications are fivefold: 1) a syndrome, being an aggregation of symptoms, creates a false relation between symptoms that are that are already heterogeneous themselves; 2) 15 broad categories are functional: it results into a very heterogeneous group of clients within a category and thus prevents stereotypes and invites further personalizing of complaints; and 3) a dimensional measure of a symptom rather than a syndrome will correspond better with the client regardless of it not providing the complete picture. Focusing on the main complaint will indicate where there is an immediate need for care (Van Os, 2014); 4) it will allow clinicians to recognise subthreshold conditions more easily (Magruder and Calderone, 2000); and 5) it might facilitate the development of clear demarcations between normal and abnormal functioning (Kessler, 2002; Widiger and Samuel, 2005). Please, see also Table 1.This also fits well within scientific advances, as thus far strongest evidence has been found for a distinction between internalizing and externalizing disorders, even superseding these 15 main categories (DSM-5; APA, 2013, p.13, but see Weiss et al., 1998). The second step would concern the personalized aspect, which we argue to define on a level of core symptoms of the specific main category, to be agreed upon later. To assess these core symptoms, the field of psychological testing could develop an internationally applicable instrument to reliably and validly measure each (core) symptom on a dimensional scale. Many of these instruments are readily available and have proven its psychometric properties within scientific research. Elements from these instruments could be easily transformed to work within the new system. Within the field of psychology, this approach could aid development of a common international language to define symptoms, analogous to the field of psychiatry. Importantly, current psychological testing mainly implies the use of self-report measures. This leads to an abundance of auto-amnestic information. To increase the reliability and validity of psychological tests to assess DSM-5 symptoms, it may be important to add two additional information resources. This would entail psychological tests where a next of kin answers questions about the symptom of the client, and psychological tests that include the clinicians’ judgment, such as structured clinician-based interviews. Conversely, we also need to acknowledge the well-known limitations of clinical judgment (e.g., Faust, 1986; Garb, 1998). Advantages of a new frameworkThe changes we suggest have big implications and are not easily implemented in the current framework. Clients may prefer the comfort of a single clear label, similar to what they are used to in other areas of medicine. Health insurance providers and policy makers may argue for single labels as well. Therefore, it would require a lot of explanation from our clinicians to promote a change. Our suggestions for broader categories may not disambiguate the current situation better than the existing approach, but it will promote personalisation of health care. Difficulties in diagnostic reliability will remain in disorders that fall on the boundaries of the taxons, e.g., schizoaffective disorder versus bipolar disorder with psychotic characteristics, which may benefit from further study. There are also some politically tinged questions to keep in mind: How will we finance our health care, and how will we ensure a gradual transition from the current financing system, including clients who already have their labels? What about visitations from insurers and health inspection? How can they control for a good standard of quality in health care when considering the increasing heterogeneity? Nevertheless, we argue that the benefits outweigh the disadvantages. We will see a shift from a categorical to a personalized approach, which will lead to less (self) stigmatizing, less estrangement, and it will challenge reification thinking. DSM-V states that “a reformulation of research goals should also keep DSM-5 central to the development of dimensional approaches to diagnosis that will likely supplement or supersede current categorical approaches to diagnosis in coming years” (APA, 2013, p. 13). Our proposition for psychological testing on symptom level could contribute to this development. Furthermore, this new approach will do more justice to the heterogeneity of symptoms within and outside of classification categories, see also Table 1. Moreover, in this new approach we join forces of expert knowledge from the fields of psychiatry and psychological science. Finally, it offers new and potentially better opportunities to map health care needs. This in turn will lead to a better interface for allocation of appropriate treatment. It will present a clearer picture of when preventative care is preferred over treatment and vice versa. Importantly, health care needs will be more closely attuned to the ‘own story’ of the client.We argue for the national and international psychological associations in Europe and the United States of America to support the idea of a collective approach to develop an internationally standardized psychological testing battery to reliably assess all the core symptoms of the main categories in DSM-5. (shrink)

This paper examines organizational use of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and why private organizations are using multi-stakeholder SDG platforms as a strategic tool for achieving the goals. Whereas the SDGs’ predecessors, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), were specifically formulated for governmental adoption, the SDGs stand apart in inviting diverse stakeholders, including private industry, to participate in sustainable development. Literature is emerging about how private industry can engage in the SDG framework. We aim to contribute to the sustainability (...) and cross-sector partnership literatures by examining the motivations of organizations that partner into SDG platforms. This research started as an exploratory study to understand how corporations use the SDGs strategically, and we identified platforms as a means of strategic corporate engagement with the SDGs. Our findings are based on semi-structured interviews and documents, and they focus on four Danish SDG platforms: UNLEASH, Hello Science, Fra Filantropi til Forretning (From Philanthropy to Business), and the SDG Accelerator. The findings suggest that speed, impact, and scaling of SDG innovations are features of SDG platforms that motivate cross-sector, boundary-spanning collaboration. We suggest that the larger ambition of the platforms is to shift the value framing from profit outputs to SDG impacts and outcomes, ultimately imagined as a business landscape based on SDG innovation; and we propose a model to reflect the SDG platform process structure. (shrink)

The object of this work is the interdisciplinary dialogue between natural sciences and Christian theology. The objective is to study the theological, epistemological and semantic conditions that make possible an articulation between scientific worldviews and theological discourses. In this study "to articulate" means that scientific theories and theological discourses do not share the same semantic horizon. At the same time, the verb "to articulate" implies that there is a possible mediation between scientific worldviews and systematic theology. The main thesis of (...) this study is that an articulation between scientific worldviews and systematic theology is possible through the mediation of philosophy. Natural sciences and philosophy refer to the order of manifestation where real things appear as phenomena. Christian theology refers to the order of revelation where God communicates Himself to the human person. The relationship between these two orders can be expressed with the maxim: neither confusion nor separation. Furthermore, there is a positive formulation of that relation: revelation assumes and transfigures what is manifested. This model of relation is the fundamental theological condition that makes possible an articulation between natural sciences and theology. In addition, there is an epistemological condition: the homologous rational structure of each rational field (sciences, philosophy and theology). Based on these theological and epistemological conditions, this research work proposes a theological method that articulates scientific worldviews into systematic theology through the mediation of philosophy. The method seeks two objectives: (a) that theology remains in ist epistemological boundaries and (b) to respect symmetrically the autonomy of natural sciences' procedures. Finally, the proposed method is applied to three examples: the elaboration of theological discourses, in dialogue with natural sciences, about (i) creation, (ii) human action and (iii) a spiritual contemplation of God's presence in the world. This research follows the contributions of two major scholars of the twentieth century: Jean Ladriere and Xavier Zubiri. Our considerations are based on the scholars' analyses of the plurality of epistemologies and their analyses of the intellectual act. (shrink)

Introduction. In the history of philosophy we find a lot of philosophical practices that can be implemented in the university environment for students and outside the university for a wide audience. The Philosophical Walk is one of such practices. During a walk philosophy can become truly humane, turn to a person, his world, and everyday life. The purpose of the study is to comprehend the potential of a philosophical walk as a way of philosophical practice, a format of a modern (...) person’s self-knowledge and the implementation of self-care, available to a wide range of people without special philosophical education.Methods The research is based on the comparative historical method, the method of interpreting the texts of philosophical primary sources and the systematic approach. The study presents and analyzes an experiment in the context of which residents of a large city go on a philosophical walk in order to take care of themselves. Scientific novelty of the research. In theoretical terms, philosophical walk is conceptualized. In practical terms, the analysis of the effectiveness of a philosophical walk as a way of a large city resident’s self-care is carried out. Results. A philosophical walk is a form of group philosophical practice, in the context of which the participants become guided (literally and figuratively,) by the facilitator. In the summer of 2020, the authors of the article organized a series of walks, each of which was attended by 8 to 12 people who had not have direct contact with philosophy in their everyday life, in the educational and professional spheres. In September 2020, the participants of the walks were offered a questionnaire consisting of closed and open questions. According to the respondents’ answers, a general picture of the effectiveness of a philosophical walk as a form of self-care for a modern metropolis resident was drawn. Conclusions. We understand the philosophical walk as a kind of “place”, a space of calm and harmony for a person of the XXI century. A resident of a big city lives in constant noise. The events of 2020 have increased the noise and accompanying stress. A philosophical walk, in turn, within the boundaries of the same city creates an atmosphere for a person to meet with himself. With the help of an external plan (forest environment, clean air, sounds of nature) and a philosophical plan (concentration over the text, dialogue with a philosopher and a group), the meeting participant can formulate the life-meaning questions that concern him and start looking for answers. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 9.4 (2002) 381-382 [Access article in PDF] The Borderlands of Psychiatry and Theology Stephen Sykes Keywords: psychiatry, theology, spirituality. THE DISCUSSION OF THE TERMS we use to speak of experiences on the boundaries between spirituality and mental disorder is very important. Jackson and Fulford (1997) have gone a long way to avoid flattening the concepts into a single conceptual scheme, too far for some of (...) their critics like Littlewood (1997) and Storr (1997), but not far enough for Bratton and Marzanski (2002), who eventually accuse them of "anthropocentric psychologism." They want to preserve theological categories intact, mainly because this is how the subjects themselves see their experiences, but also because there is, they hold, additional explanatory value in such a language schema. As evidence they point to unremarkable attitudes and practices, which are nonetheless demonstrably part of the Christian way of life.The borderlands between theology and psychiatry are not alone in witnessing this dispute. A similar conflict has arisen in the discussion of public policy. In politics, people of religious conviction or representatives of faith communities have sometimes been told either to hold their tongues (because "not many people believe these things nowadays" or because "it's wrong to impose your beliefs on other people") or to formulate their proposals in nonreligious language. It is far from obvious that this is not a sophisticated form of discrimination, nonetheless objectionable for its being practiced by nonreligious people. The creation of genuine equality of access to the space for public discussion of political proposals is not at all easy.I have personal experience of the analogous difficulty in psychiatric practice. In a discussion of the overinvolvement of carers for a person with mental health problems self-sacrificing behavior was used with a negative connotation. But, as in the case of Carol, how were these actions to be construed—were they normal for a Christian or psychopathological? My personal response is that it is correct to say that a boundary exists between ordinary Christian spiritual experience (the kind that religious believers would immediately recognize as part of their religious lives) and disturbed or distorted perceptions that are the result of mental illness and can be mitigated by appropriate treatment. But the fact that a boundary exists in principle does not necessarily imply that it is always easy to draw the distinction in practice. Typically the cases that cause the most difficulty lie on the borderlands. Although on the face of it, it looks attractive to demonstrate the security of the criteria by making discriminations in precisely this area (and the point of the cases in Jackson and Fulford is precisely that they raise these complexities), in [End Page 381] fact it may be that such instances require both languages. In this case, Bratton and Marzanski are correct to argue for the retention of a theological frame of reference. The strength of their argument lies precisely in the support that fellow members of the respective faith communities are able to give to the people who, despite their manifest illnesses, persist in religiously justifiable courses of action.The paper raises one very important matter that bedevils a lot of the current literature, namely how spirituality is to be understood. In my view, there is a lot of purely arbitrary definition of this term, whose meaning has developed rapidly under specific social conditions (Sykes 2000a). In medicine, it functions best when it is taken to be a reminder that a patient may have had contact with a specific religious tradition that has contributed or still contributes to her worldview. In modern Western society, account has to be taken both of residual religiosities or fallback positions, and of new religions, as well as of traditional religious groupings. In the case of mental illness, it may be very important for a medical practitioner to be aware of the impact of these religious promptings on the formulation of the narrative identity of an individual—no easy task (Sykes 2000b).The generality of spirituality ought not to deflect the professional from attending to the particular tradition or traditions which have... (shrink)