In a sequel to our previous paper we discuss two thought experiments which show that potentials in force-free regions have not only a nonlocal physically measurable significance (via, e.g., ∮A ·dl), but, in singly connected portions of that region, also have a necessary local significance (via their quantum spread ΔA, which cannot be neglected). We then show, in continuation to the foregoing paper, how suchA arise “geometrically” as kinematic quantities associated with the transformation between “quantum-related” reference frames, e.g., when the (...) relative frame velocities areq-numbers possessing a quantum spread. (shrink)

We give an application of the extender based Radin forcing to cardinal arithmetic. Assuming κ is a large enough cardinal we construct a model satisfying 2κ = κ⁺ⁿ together with 2λ = λ⁺ⁿ for each cardinal λ < κ, where 0 < n < ω. The cofinality of κ can be set arbitrarily or κ can remain inaccessible. When κ remains an inaccessible, Vκ is a model of ZFC satisfying 2λ = λ+n for all cardinals λ.

The extender based Prikry forcing notion is being generalized to super compact extenders.

The paper examines the conditions under which we are responsible for actions performed under duress, focusing on a real case in which a soldier was compelled at gunpoint to participate in the massacre of civilian prisoners. The case stands for a class of cases in which the compelled act is neither clearly justified nor clearly excused on grounds of temporary incapacity, but in which it is nonetheless plausible that the agent is not morally blameworthy. The theoretical challenge is to identify (...) the excuse in such cases and to explain its basis. The paper argues that when mortal duress excuses in cases of this sort, it does so because the compelled act, though impermissible and freely chosen, nonetheless fails to manifest ‘an insufficiently good will’. The argument depends on a potentially controversial thesis in the ethics of concern, namely, that a thoroughly decent moral agent—someone who cares enough about morality and the values that underlie it—will not always be moved to do what he knows he ought to do. (shrink)

We show how to construct Gitik’s short extenders gap-3 forcing using a morass, and that the forcing notion is of Prikry type.

We show that Gitik’s short extender gap-2 forcing is of Prikry type.

Cultural rights of minority groups are recognized in international human rights law. These rights include the right of minority groups to adopt various measures to protect their cultural identity, which may include closure of the group’s community from outsiders. The state in which such groups reside has a concurrent duty to respect these rights and sometimes even to take positive measures to ensure their implementation. The consideration of demographic factors, then, is regarded as legitimate when designed to protect minority groups. (...) The rights of majority groups, on the other hand, are often ensured by the mere fact that they constitute a majority within the state and as such do not require special measures. This state of affairs is challenged, however, in face of mass immigration that could change the relation existing between majority and minority groups within the state. Under these circumstances, does a majority have the right to preserve its own culture through an immigration policy that takes into account demographic factors? I argue that the duty of states under international human rights law to protect rights of minority groups might serve as an incentive to restrict immigration endangering the character of the state. This character—the state’s public culture—is the outcome of collective preferences of the majority of its citizens, which is assumed ought to be respected. (shrink)

The ArgumentThe remarkable progress in modern genetic technology enables the identification of genes causing devastating diseases and thereby the development of tools for prenatal diagnosis and carrier detection. To implement the results of genetic research in traditional societies, where genetic diseases are more prevalent due to inbreeding, necessitates a culturally appropriate approach that also promotes traditional and societal values important to the relevant community. This paper presents our experience with implementing the results of modern genetic research among the traditional community (...) of the Negev Bedouin of Israel. Although the benefit of using those results for the prevention of genetic diseases seems obvious, successful implementation relies on a carefully designed educational program aimed at changing culturally related attitudes and perceptions. Such a program should attend to the needs of the community and be sensitive to its traditional values. (shrink)

This paper examines the politics behind algorithmic ordering in social media, focusing on the advertising logic behind them. This is explored through a practice I call rhythmedia – the way media companies render people, objects and their relations as rhythms and (re)order them for economic purposes. As a case study I examine the way the Facebook Immune System algorithm orchestrates people’s mediated experience towards a desired rhythm (sociality) while filtering out problematic rhythms (spam). This anti-spam algorithm shows that it is (...) important for Facebook to understand people as rhythms and assemble a dynamic database from their mediated experiences, to convince advertisers that they know when and where people do things. People’s rhythms become a product that advertisers pay and bid for through Ad Auction to intervene in specific moments and shape people’s experience. Thus, the company can shape, manage, and filter specific rhythms to order sociality that brings more value. (shrink)

While agreeing with Rose's reasoning about why the causes of organisms' behaviors cannot be reduced to the solely biological and molecular, this review questions Rose's uses of the terms “determinism” and “contingency”; his occasional seemingly cavalier acceptance as fact of unproven hypotheses about social and psychological phenomena; and his general disdain for the psychometric tradition and its causal modeling extensions.

Gideon Yaffe presents a theory of criminal responsibility according to which child criminals deserve leniency not because of their psychological, behavioural, or neural immaturity but because they are denied the vote. He argues that full shares of criminal punishment are deserved only by those who have a full share of say over the law.

Gideon Yaffe presents a ground-breaking work which demonstrates the importance of philosophy of action for the law. Many people are serving sentences not for completing crimes, but for trying to. Yaffe's clear account of what it is to try to do something promises to resolve the difficulties courts face in the adjudication of attempted crimes.

Two thought experiments are discussed which suggest, first, a geometric interpretation of the concept of a (say, vector) potential (i.e., as a kinematic quantity associated with a transformation between moving frames of reference suitably related to the problem) and, second, that, in a quantum treatment one should extend the notion of the equivalence principle to include not only the equivalence of inertial forces with suitable “real” forces, but also the equivalence of potentials of such inertial forces and the potentials of (...) suitable real forces. The two types of cancellation are physically independent of each other, because of the Aharonov-Bohm effect. Finally, we show that the latter effect itself can be understood “geometrically” as a kinematic effect arising upon the transformation between the two reference frames. (shrink)

Region R Question: How many objects — entities, things — are contained in R? Ignore the empty space. Our question might better be put, 'How many material objects does R contain?' Let's stipulate that A, B and C are metaphysical atoms: absolutely simple entities with no parts whatsoever besides themselves. So you don't have to worry about counting a particle's top half and bottom half as different objects. Perhaps they are 'point-particles', with no length, width or breadth. Perhaps they are (...) extended in space without possessing spatial parts (if that is possible). Never mind. We stipulate that A, B and C are perfectly simple. We also stipulate that they are connected as follows. A and B are stuck together in such a way that when a force is applied to one of them, they move together 'as a unit'. Moreover, the two of them together exhibit behavior that neither would exhibit on its own — Perhaps they emit a certain sound, or glow in the dark — whereas C is.. (shrink)

Web-cookies revolutionized the web because they gave it a memory. Cookies gave your actions on the web a ‘past’, which you have no idea about or access to. This think piece encourages an examination of ‘technical’ and ‘boring’ media phenomena such as cookies and spam, and points to their important contribution to the way we experience and understand the web.

When a person acts from ignorance, he is culpable for his action only if he is culpable for the ignorance from which he acts. The paper defends the view that this principle holds, not just for actions done from ordinary factual ignorance, but also for actions done from moral ignorance. The question is raised whether the principle extends to action done from ignorance about what one has most reason to do. It is tentatively proposed that the principle holds in full (...) generality. (shrink)

This chapter explores bridge-law non-naturalism: the view that when a particular thing possesses a moral property or stands in a moral relation, this fact is metaphysically grounded in non-normative features of the thing in question together with a general moral law. Any view of this sort faces two challenges, analogous to familiar challenges in the philosophy of science: to specify the form of the explanatory laws, and to say when a fact of that form qualifies as a law. The chapter (...) explores three strategies for answering these questions, all of which maintain that a moral law is a true generalization of the form [It is normatively necessary that whatever ϕ‎s is F]. (shrink)

If polygenic risk scores for traits are to be provided to parents before—as opposed to after—a child is born, these scores will provide the very first units of information upon which parents will b...

We show that under certain large cardinal requirements there is a generic extension in which the power function behaves differently on different stationary classes. We achieve this by doing an Easton support iteration of the Radin on extenders forcing.

This book, the third in a series on the life course, has significance in today's world of research, professional practice, and public policy because it symbolizes the gradual reemergence of power in the social sciences. Focusing on "self-directedness and efficacy" over the life course, this text addresses the following issues: * the causes of change * how changes affect the individual, the family system, social groups, and society at large * how various disciplines--anthropology, sociology, psychology, epidemiology--approach this field of study, (...) with consideration given to common themes and differences Finally, an effort is made to develop a multidisciplinary perspective unique to the study of self-directedness and efficacy. (shrink)

This collection presents policy and research that addresses digital inequalities, access, and skills, from multiple international perspectives. With a special focus on the impact of the COVID-19, the collection is based on the 2021 Digital Inclusion, Policy and Research Conference, with chapters from both academia and civic organizations. The COVID-19 pandemic has changed citizens’ relationship with digital technologies for the foreseeable future. Many people’s main channels of communication were transferred to digital services, platforms, and apps. Everything ‘went online’: our families, (...) friends, partners, health, work, news, politics, culture, arts and protesting. Yet access to digital technologies remained highly unequal. This brought digital inclusion policy and research to the fore, highlighting to policymakers and the public the ‘hidden’ challenges and impacts of digital exclusion and inequalities. The cutting-edge volume offers research findings and policycase studies that explore digital inclusion from the provision of basic access to digital, via education and digital literacy, and on to issues of gender and technology. Case studies are drawn from varied sources including the UK, Australia, South America, and Eastern Europe, providing a valuable resource in the pursuit of social equity and justice. ​ This is an open access book. (shrink)

Van Fraassen defines constructive empiricism as the view that science aims to produce empirically adequate theories. But this account has been misunderstood. Constructive empiricism in not, as it seems, a description of the intentional features of scientific practice, nor is it a normative prescription for their revision. It is rather a fiction about the practice of science that van Fraassen displays in the interests of a broader empiricism. The paper concludes with a series of arguments designed to show that constructive (...) empiricism so understood is self-undermining. (shrink)

In this stimulating investigation, Gideon Freudenthal has linked social history with the history of science by formulating an interesting proposal: that the supposed influence of social theory may be seen as actual through its co herence with the process of formation of physical concepts. The reinterpre tation of the development of science in the seventeenth century, now widely influential, receives at Freudenthal's hand its most persuasive statement, most significantly because of his attention to the theoretical form which is charac (...) teristic. of classical Newtonian mechanics. He pursues the sources of the parallels that may be noted between that mechanics and the dominant philosophical systems and social theories of the time; and in a fascinating development Freudenthal shows how a quite precise method - as he descriptively labels it, the 'analytic-synthetic method' - which underlay the Newtonian form of theoretical argument, was due to certain interpretive premisses concerning particle mechanics. If he is right, these depend upon a particular stage of con ceptual achievement in the theories of both society and nature; further, that the conceptual was generalized philosophically; but, strikingly, Freudenthal shows that this concept-formation itself was linked to the specific social relations of the times of Newton and Hobbes. (shrink)

1. Professor Brandom’s paper is addressed to a methodological question: When we set out to account for the intentionality of thought and language, what resources may we exploit? Which notions may we use? Brandom is a famously ambitious theorist. Unlike his colleague, John McDowell, Brandom has long maintained that we should at least aspire to explain intentionality in non-intentional terms. This leaves it open, however, which non-intentional resources are legitimate.

This is the first comprehensive interpretation of John Locke's solution to one of philosophy's most enduring problems: free will and the nature of human agency. Many assume that Locke defines freedom as merely the dependency of conduct on our wills. And much contemporary philosophical literature on free agency regards freedom as a form of self-expression in action. Here, Gideon Yaffe shows us that Locke conceived free agency not just as the freedom to express oneself, but as including also the (...) freedom to transcend oneself and act in accordance with "the good." For Locke, exercising liberty involves making choices guided by what is good, valuable, and important. Thus, Locke's view is part of a tradition that finds freedom in the imitation of God's agency. Locke's free agent is the ideal agent. Yaffe also examines Locke's understanding of volition and voluntary action. For Locke, choices always involve self-consciousness. The kind of self-consciousness to which Locke appeals is intertwined with his conception of personal identity. And it is precisely this connection between the will and personal identity that reveals the special sense in which our voluntary actions can be attributed to us and the special sense in which we are active with respect to them. Deftly written and tightly focused, Liberty Worth the Name will find readers far beyond Locke studies and early modern British philosophy, including scholars interested in free will, action theory, and ethics. (shrink)