Various tests have been proposed as helps to identify intrinsic properties. This paper compares three prominent tests and shows that they fail to pass adequate verdicts on a set of three properties. The paper examines whether improved versions of the tests can reduce or remove these negative outcomes. We reach the sceptical conclusion that whereas some of the tests must be discarded as inadequate because they don’t yield definite results, the remaining tests depend for their application on the details of (...) fundamental particle physics so much so that they cannot be relied upon. (shrink)

This year marks the tenth anniversary of the world's first transplantation of tissue generated from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). There is now a growing number of clinical trials worldwide examining the efficacy and safety of autologous and allogeneic iPSC‐derived products for treating various pathologic conditions. As we patiently wait for the results from these and future clinical trials, it is imperative to strategize for the next generation of iPSC‐based therapies. This review examines the lessons learned from the development of (...) another advanced cell therapy, chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells, and the possibility of incorporating various new bioengineering technologies in development, from RNA engineering to tissue fabrication, to apply iPSCs not only as a means to achieve personalized medicine but also as designer medical applications. (shrink)

In [1] it is claimed that, based on radiation emission measurements described in [2], a certain “variant” of the Orch OR theory has been refuted. I agree with this claim. However, the significance of this result for Orch OR per se is unclear. After all, the refuted “variant” was never advocated by anyone, and it contradicts the views of Hameroff and Penrose (hereafter: HP) who invented Orch OR [3]. My aim is to get clear on this situation. I argue that (...) it is indeed reasonable to speak of “variants” here. Orch OR is not a complete model of reality but a work in progress. At its core, it claims that wavefunction collapse is a real physical event that has something to do with gravity (“OR”) and that consciousness depends on orchestrated collapses in microtubules (“Orch”). There are many ways one could make these base ideas precise hence many “variants”. Furthermore, the ways that HP aim to make these ideas precise are radical and incomplete. If they don’t work out, Orch OR will need to fall back on another variant. Thus, I believe the significance of [1-2] for Orch OR is that it cuts out a small class of possible variants and leaves behind questions and challenges for the rest, including the variant preferred by HP. (shrink)

The purpose of this book is to explain Quantum Bayesianism (‘QBism’) to “people without easy access to mathematical formulas and equations” (4-5). Qbism is an interpretation of quantum mechanics that “doesn’t meddle with the technical aspects of the theory [but instead] reinterprets the fundamental terms of the theory and gives them new meaning” (3). The most important motivation for QBism, enthusiastically stated on the book’s cover, is that QBism provides “a way past quantum theory’s paradoxes and puzzles” such that much (...) of the weirdness associated with quantum theory “dissolves under the lens of QBism”. (shrink)

Is science getting at the truth? The sceptics – those who spread doubt about science – often employ a simple argument: scientists were sure in the past, and then they ended up being wrong. Such sceptics draw on dramatic quotes from eminent scientists such as Lord Kelvin, who reportedly stated at the turn of the 20th century “There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now,” shortly before physics was dramatically transformed. They ask: given the history of science, (...) wouldn’t it be naïve to think that current scientific theories reveal ‘the truth’, and will never be discarded in favour of other theories? Through a combination of historical investigation and philosophical-sociological analysis, Identifying Future-Proof Science defends science against such potentially dangerous scepticism. It is argued that we can confidently identify many scientific claims that are future-proof: they will last forever, so long as science continues. How do we identify future-proof claims? This appears to be a new question for science scholars, and not an unimportant one. It is argued that the best way to identify future-proof science is to avoid any attempt to analyse the relevant first-order scientific evidence, instead focusing purely on second-order evidence. Specifically, a scientific claim is future-proof when the relevant scientific community is large, international, and diverse, and at least 95% of that community would describe the claim as a ‘scientific fact’. In the entire history of science, no claim meeting these criteria has ever been overturned, despite enormous opportunity. (shrink)

[Under contract with CUP, in preparation] What is a mind? Is it possible for a computer or other machine to have a mind? And how would we know? Mental fictionalism offers a new approach to these timely questions. Its central idea is that mental states (thoughts, beliefs, desires) are useful fictions. When we talk about mental states, we should be seen as merely speaking “as if” humans (and perhaps other creatures or even artifacts) had such states, in order to make (...) sense of their behavior. -/- This book is unique in presenting and defending three versions of mental fictionalism in a single volume (prefix-semantical mental fictionalism, pretense mental fictionalism, and affective storyism). The authors are three of the world’s most prominent proponents (respectively) of each variety: T. Parent (Nazarbayev University), Adam Toon (University of Exeter), and Tamás Demeter (Corvinus University of Budapest). The book essentially pits these different varieties of mental fictionalism against each other, allowing the reader to size them up. In the process, fresh perspectives are offered on foundational matters in the philosophy of mind, such as the nature of mental states and folk psychology, as well as hot topics such as embodied cognition, animal cognition, consciousness, and AI. -/- UPDATE: The chapter on prefix-semantical mental fictionalism is available upon request; write to nontology "at" gmail. (shrink)

I think that to Lord Kelvin is attributed the saying that the scientific attitude to a thing, if you can't do anything else with it, is to measure it. This is the attitude I propose to adopt towards Time . The situation is to some extent analogous to the situation with regard to electricity . Science is unable to say what electricity is, and so it almost denies the word any entrance into a treatise on the subject. It replaces (...) it by the word charge , which is something that can be measured. It is important to avoid hypostatizing time into a thing-in-itself. Instead of trying to say what time is we try to find a way of measuring it. (shrink)

The sci-fi premise of the 2002 film Solaris allows director Steven Soderbergh to tell a compelling and distinctly philosophical love story. The “visitors” that appear to the characters in the film present us with a vivid thought experiment, and the film naturally prods us to dwell on the following possibility: If confronted with a duplicate (or near duplicate) of someone you love, what would your response be? What should your response be? The tension raised by such a far-fetched situation reflects (...) a tension that exists in real life: that between an attraction to qualities possessed by a person and attraction to the person in a manner that transcends such an attachment to qualities. In short, this cinematic thought-experiment challenges us to reflect on what we really attach to when we fall in love: is it the person, or is it merely the cluster of characteristics the person manifests? Which sort of attachment is appropriate? Which is philosophical defensible? The protagonist Chris Kelvin’s ambivalence at encountering this bizarre possibility is gripping because it tracks our own ambivalence about such matters. Frankly most of us don’t know just how we would react to such a situation. The thought that accepting and embracing such a “visitor” involves a violation to the original person is natural and pervasive, especially if the acceptance comes with a failure to acknowledge the distinction between the original person and the “visitor”. At the same time, a deep attraction to such a person would surely also be entirely natural and perhaps even inescapable. We, like Kelvin, are torn in different directions by this (thankfully) far-fetched possibility. One philosopher who affirms that accepting a duplicate as though it were the original is the rational thing to do is Derek Parfit. His argument for “the unimportance of identity” is both powerful and radical, and though I’ll be critical of his approach, in the final section of the paper I suggest that it does offer up the resources for an intriguing interpretation of the end of this complex and ambiguous film. (shrink)

This paper introduces a logical analysis of convex combinations within the framework of Łukasiewicz real-valued logic. This provides a natural link between the fields of many-valued logics and decision theory under uncertainty, where the notion of convexity plays a central role. We set out to explore such a link by defining convex operators on MV-algebras, which are the equivalent algebraic semantics of Łukasiewicz logic. This gives us a formal language to reason about the expected value of bounded random variables. As (...) an illustration of the applicability of our framework we present a logical version of the Anscombe–Aumann representation result. (shrink)

We characterize, in syntactic terms, the ranges of epimorphisms in an arbitrary class of similar first-order structures. This allows us to strengthen a result of Bacsich, as follows: in any prevariety having at most \ non-logical symbols and an axiomatization requiring at most \ variables, if the epimorphisms into structures with at most \ elements are surjective, then so are all of the epimorphisms. Using these facts, we formulate and prove manageable ‘bridge theorems’, matching the surjectivity of all epimorphisms in (...) the algebraic counterpart of a logic \ with suitable infinitary definability properties of \, while not making the standard but awkward assumption that \ comes furnished with a proper class of variables. (shrink)

The Gouldian argument for evolutionary contingency found in Wonderful Life can be dissected into three premises: palaeontological, macro-evolutionary, and developmental. Discussions of evolutionary contingency have revolved primarily around the developmental. However, a shift in methodological practice and new palaeontological evidence subsequent to the book’s publication appears to threaten the palaeontological premise that asserts high Cambrian disparity, or, roughly, that morphological differences between the Cambrian species were high. This presents a prima facie problem: Did the Cambrian consist of enough anatomical variety (...) to fuel a different outcome upon a replay of the tape of life? I investigate the role that disparity plays in the Gouldian argument for evolutionary contingency and conclude that the reduced disparity view does not undermine the argument, per se. As for the macro-evolutionary premise, Gould never offers any explicit justification for the idea that species sorting was indiscriminate or ‘lottery-like’ (though he certainly gestures at it). Putting aside the exegetical, I consider certain empirical avenues for underwriting the macro-evolutionary premise and argue that the most plausible route is to appeal to the special status of mass extinctions, a move that is not entirely unfamiliar to macro-evolutionists. That is, mass extinctions can be good sources of contingency due to their being ‘chancy’ in at least three respects. In sum, I update the palaeontological and macro-evolutionary premises as to reconstrue the Gouldian argument for evolutionary contingency in its strongest form. (shrink)

Hui-yüan was born in Tai hsien of Shansi Province in A. D. 334 and died in A. D. 416.

Recently, in Found. Phys. 53: 64 (2023), it has been argued that there is no reality to the PBR theorem. In Found. Phys. 54: 36 (2024), Hofer-Szabó has commented that the argument is flawed and that PBR theorem remains in tact. Here we reply to Hofer-Szabó by showing that his counterargument does not hold up, concluding that the PBR theorem has been disproved.

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Summary and ConclusionMinutes before the jury would have returned a decision in Kaufman's favor, assessing damages of almost a half-million dollars against the physicians who treated her, she settled out of court for approximately half that sum. I would argue that responsibility in medicine, that liability for malpractice, should be restricted to cases of negligence in which there is no question concerning the proximate causality of the physician's proven negligence to the harm which resulted. It is clear that “negligence” covers (...) a wide range of actions. The solution to this problem lies in the definition of the physician's duties—not in the use of malpractice settlements for the compensation of tragic but accidental consequences whose risks were realistically inevitable or else willfully assumed by the patient as well as the physician. In medicine, there is a strict prima facie duty to know as much as possible. In practice, this approaches an ideal duty. The distinction between an ideal duty and a realistic duty emphasizes the importance of having the patient assume as full responsibility for the risks attendant to inevitable and unforeseeable consequences as the physician. In assessing fault for such consequences, it is essential to recollect that an agent cannot be said to have caused every happenstance which occurs while he acts; moreover, he certainly cannot be held strictly responsible for the cause of every event which succeeds his act. Thus, the primary problem in medical ethics is epistemological rather than normative. (shrink)

The action for a massive particle in special relativity can be expressed as the invariant proper length between the end points. In principle, one should be able to construct the quantum theory for such a system by the path integral approach using this action. On the other hand, it is well known that the dynamics of a free, relativistic, spinless massive particle is best described by a scalar field which is equivalent to an infinite number of harmonic oscillators. We clarify (...) the connection between these two—apparently dissimilar—approaches by obtaining the Green function for the system of oscillators from that of the relativistic particle. This is achieved through defining the path integral for a relativistic particle rigorously by two separate approaches. This analysis also shows a connection between square root Lagrangians and the system of harmonic oscillators which is likely to be of value in more general context. (shrink)