It is always interesting to describe the life of people whose paths diverged substantially from the path of the majority. Such people attract the attention of historians in every age, for a path "against the current" always has something tragic about it. The Russian philosopher and Moscow University professor Lev Mikhailovich Lopatin can fully be ranked in the pleiad of such people. This is borne out by the assessments of not only his supporters but also his opponents. "You were (...) pervaded by the conviction that this old business, i.e., that to which philosophers have devoted themselves from ancient times down to the modern age [i.e., metaphysics—N.M.] is also its [philosophy's—N.M.] eternal business, and you decided to move ‘against the current’ under the banner of the great leaders of the past," wrote students and friends to Lopatin in an introductory article to the Philosophical Anthology [Filosofskii sbornik] dedicated to the thirtieth anniversary of Lopatin's activities as scholar and teacher. "Against the current" here means against the philosophical views that prevailed at that time in Russia, and abroad as well—views that repudiated metaphysics in favor of pure epistemology and various empirical theories. (shrink)

Historically, appearance of the quantum theory led to a prevailing view that Nature is indeterministic. The arguments for the indeterminism and proposals for indeterministic and deterministic approaches are reviewed. These include collapse theories, Bohmian Mechanics and the many-worlds interpretation. It is argued that ontic interpretations of the quantum wave function provide simpler and clearer physical explanation and that the many-worlds interpretation is the most attractive since it provides a deterministic and local theory for our physical Universe explaining the illusion of (...) randomness and nonlocality in the world we experience. (shrink)

Śiḥot maran ha-Mashgiaḥ Mohari Leṿinshṭain, zatsal -- Ḥidushe torato ʻa. Mas. B.ḳ. ṿe-liḳuṭim -- Leḳeṭ mi-maʼamraṿ mi-moreshet Daṿid Heber ṿe-ʻinyene ha-shaʻah.

We argue that the most‐promising area of clinical application of microarrays in the foreseeable future is the diagnostics and monitoring of infectious diseases. Microarrays for the detection and characterization of human pathogens have already found their way into clinical practice in some countries. After discussing the persistent, yet often underestimated, importance of infectious diseases for public health, we consider the technologies that are best suited for the detection and clinical investigation of pathogens. Clinical application of microarray technologies for the detection (...) of mycobacteria, Bacillus anthracis, HIV, hepatitis and influenza viruses, and other major pathogens, as well as the analysis of their drug‐resistance patterns, illustrate our main thesis. BioEssays 30:673–682, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Introduction A good example of emergentism - interpreted by M. Siderits [1] as - Buddhist reductionism) is an excerpt from the dialogue between King Milinda[4] and the monk Nāgasena[5] about the self, which is part of the text close to the Abhidhamma tradition entitled "Milindapaha". The text was published by V. Trenckner in 1880 in [2] and translated into English by T.W. Rhys Davids [3] in the series "Sacred Books of the East". Furthermore, there is an English translation by I. (...) B. Horner [4] and Bhikkhu Pesala [5] and into Russian by A.V. Paribok [6]. There are also German [7] and French translations [8; 9]. Yet the classical translation by Rhys Davids is currently largely obsolete. Paribok's translation into Russian is not convenient for practical use as it would need to be further translated into English, and this double translation, which is not very good from the point of view of the philological approach to the text. We have therefore decided to make our own, new translation of the passage from "Milindapaha", in which the dialogue about the self is being held. (shrink)

A brief review of the attempts to define “elements of reality” in the framework of quantum theory is presented. It is noted that most definitions of elements of reality have in common the feature to be a definite outcome of some measurement. Elements of reality are extended to pre- and post- selected systems and to measurements which fulfill certain criteria of weakness of the coupling. Some features of the newly introduced concepts are discussed.

This is a philosophical paper in favor of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum theory. The necessity of introducing many worlds is explained by analyzing a neutron interference experiment. The concept of the “measure of existence of a world” is introduced and some difficulties with the issue of probability in the framework of the MWI are resolved.

Argument of this text is that: to develop aesthetics of sport, we should not begin with aesthetics as philosophy of art but with aesthetics of everyday life; to start with aesthetics of sport, we should not begin with beautiful of ‘pure aesthetics’ but with the dramatic; to analyze the dramatic in sport, we should not open the analysis with analogy between theater and sport, but with sport as a sort of performance; to get at the meaning of sport as a (...) drama, we have to discuss different meanings ‘drama’ has in theory and everyday communication; to map the dramatic in sport as performance, we have to discuss some features of sport which determine its dramatics first, and its potential as spectacle later. To proceed with the argument, we have to take into account contemporary state of aesthetics, recent development of aesthetics of everyday life, and theory of performance, together with Bernard Suits’ definition of game, Gadamer’s idea of play, and Lévy-Strauss’ account on conjunctive and disjunctive ritual. (shrink)

We introduce the logics GLP Λ, a generalization of Japaridze’s polymodal provability logic GLP ω where Λ is any linearly ordered set representing a hierarchy of provability operators of increasing strength. We shall provide a reduction of these logics to GLP ω yielding among other things a finitary proof of the normal form theorem for the variable-free fragment of GLP Λ and the decidability of GLP Λ for recursive orderings Λ. Further, we give a restricted axiomatization of the variable-free fragment (...) of GLP Λ. (shrink)

By a result of Paris and Friedman, the collection axiom schema for $\Sigma_{n+1}$ formulas, $B\Sigma_{n+1}$ , is $\Pi_{n+2}$ conservative over $I\Sigma_n$ . We give a new proof-theoretic proof of this theorem, which is based on a reduction of $B\Sigma_n$ to a version of collection rule and a subsequent analysis of this rule via Herbrand's theorem. A generalization of this method allows us to improve known results on reflection principles for $B\Sigma_n$ and to answer some technical questions left open by Sieg (...) [23] and Hájek [9]. We also give a new proof of independence of $B\Sigma_{n+1}$ over $I\Sigma_n$ by a direct recursion-theoretic argument and answer an open problem formulated by Gaifman and Dimitracopoulos [8]. (shrink)

The Many-Worlds Interpretation (MWI) is an approach to quantum mechanics according to which, in addition to the world we are aware of directly, there are many other similar worlds which exist in parallel at the same space and time. The existence of the other worlds makes it possible to remove randomness and action at a distance from quantum theory and thus from all physics.

We study the arithmetical schema asserting that every eventually decreasing elementary recursive function has a limit. Some other related principles are also formulated. We establish their relationship with restricted parameter-free induction schemata. We also prove that the same principle, formulated as an inference rule, provides an axiomatization of the Σ2-consequences of IΣ1.Using these results we show that ILM is the logic of Π1-conservativity of any reasonable extension of parameter-free Π1-induction schema. This result, however, cannot be much improved: by adapting a (...) theorem of D. Zambella and G. Mints we show that the logic of Π1-conservativity of primitive recursive arithmetic properly extends ILM.In the third part of the paper we give an ordinal classification of -consequences of the standard fragments of Peano arithmetic in terms of reflection principles. This is interesting in view of the general program of ordinal analysis of theories, which in the most standard cases classifies Π-classes of sentences. (shrink)

It is argued that Lewis's approach to Elga's Sleeping Beaty problem is untenable and, therefore, the universality of the betting approach to probability has not been breached.

Le messianisme fait à la fois partie des principaux articles de foi du Judaïsme et appelle en même temps son renversement lorsqu’il se réalise de manière effective. Le messianisme s’exprime alors à travers une critique de la loi comme impératif catégorique, étatique et particulariste exercée par une instance transcendante. Saint-Paul incarne très certainement le fer de lance de cette révolution messianique au fondement de l’universalisme. Cette inauguration d’une loi immanente au sujet destinée à supplanter la loi transcendante du Judaïsme se (...) prolonge à travers un certain nombre de figures de la modernité, notamment celles de Spinoza et Freud. Le messianisme n’est pas à entendre ici comme pure et simple trahison de la loi juive mais au contraire comme révélation d’une fracture qui lui appartient originellement. (shrink)

The paper is devoted to analysis of P. Benacerraf’s argument against set-theoretic reductionist realism which is a fragment of a broader argument, know as the “identification problem”. The analyzed fragment of P. Benacerraf’s argument concerns the possibility of reducing of mathematical notions to set-theoretic notions. The paper presents a reconstruction of P. Benacerraf’s original argumentation, its analysis and also several possible objections proposed by P. Benacerraf himself about 30 years later after the original publication. Namely, he claimed (1) that a (...) set-theoretic definition of natural numbers in G. Frege’s fashion can serve as a proper and unique set-theoretic definition, (2) that his argument doesn’t undermine eliminative reductionsts’ position, (3) that even if there are no argument possible in favor of some particular set-theoretic definition of natural numbers one may take set-theoretic realism for granted. An analysis of the mentioned possible objections shows their dependence on a number of additional premises. The paper demonstrates that P. Benacerraf’s objections on his own argument against set-theoretic realism either have a pragmatic character themselves or essentially rely on additional arguments that are justified pragmatically or require additional argumentation. For example, his possible objections require that set theory is considered as the only true foundational theory in mathematics, and that it has several important pragmatic virtues, like convenience of use to formalize other mathematical theories. In some cases, P. Benacerraf’s objections on their own, or the indicated additional principles may well be called into question, which demonstrates the insufficiency of P. Benacerraf’s objections against his original argument. Without the mentioned pragmatic arguments P. Benacerraf’s objections become a kind of belief in mysticism. Accordingly, his doubts about his own argument against set-theoretical realism seem insufficient to reject the problem of identification and save the position of set-theoretical realism from collapse. (shrink)

We criticize the synaptic theory of long-term memory and the inappropriate usage of physical notions such as in motor control theories. Motor control and motor memory hypotheses should be based on explicitly specified hypothetical control variables that are sound from both physiological and physical perspectives. [HOUK et al.; SMITH; THACH].

This book is not only a major twentieth-century contribution to Dostoevsky’s studies, but also one of the most important theories of the novel produced in our century. As a modern reinterpretation of poetics, it bears comparison with Aristotle.“Bakhtin’s statement on the dialogical nature of artistic creation, and his differentiation of this from a history of monological commentary, is profoundly original and illuminating. This is a classic work on Dostoevsky and a statement of importance to critical theory.” Edward Wasiolek“Concentrating on the (...) particular features of ‘Dostoevskian discourse,’ how Dostoevsky structures a hero and a plot, and what it means to write dialogically, Bakhtin concludes with a major theoretical statement on dialogue as a category of language. One of the most important theories of the novel in this century.” The Bloomsbury Review. (shrink)

Rescued in 1972 from a storeroom in which rats and seeping water had severely damaged the fifty-year-old manuscript, this text is the earliest major work (1919-1921) of the great Russian philosopher M. M. Bakhtin. Toward a Philosophy of the Act contains the first occurrences of themes that occupied Bakhtin throughout his long career. The topics of authoring, responsibility, self and other, the moral significance of "outsideness," participatory thinking, the implications for the individual subject of having "no-alibi in existence," the difference (...) between the world as experienced in actions and the world as represented in discourse--all are broached here in the heat of discovery. This is the "heart of the heart" of Bakhtin, the center of the dialogue between being and language, the world and mind, "the given" and "the created" that forms the core of Bakhtin's distinctive dialogism. A special feature of this work is Bakhtin's struggle with the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Put very simply, this text is an attempt to go beyond Kant's formulation of the ethical imperative. Toward a Philosophy of the Act will be important for scholars across the humanities as they grapple with the increasingly vexed relationship between aesthetics and ethics. (shrink)

An attempt to solve the collapse problem in the framework of a time-symmetric quantum formalism is reviewed. Although the proposal does not look very attractive, its concept - a world defined by two quantum states, one evolving forwards and one evolving backwards in time - is found to be useful in modifying the many-worlds picture of Everett’s theory.

At IAPS Ljubljana conference (September 2007) Dag Vidar Hanstad and Sigmund Loland presented a paper on elite-level athletes' duty to provide information on their whereabouts, to decide between two opposing positions: is this WADA demand justifiable anti-doping work or an indefensible surveillance regime? They concluded that on moral grounds this regime is conditionally acceptable, the condition being the acceptability of a general framework and objectives embodied in anti-doping global legislative foundations (the World Anti-Doping Code). But, as they said, principled objections (...) against the system have more universal relevance, which has to be taken seriously . To take this ambiguous and intriguing conclusion a step further, I propose a legal rather than ethical approach, from the aspect of constitutional and international human rights law, and the possible clash of two legally acknowledged values - the concept of elite sport without doping, and the concept of individual human rights. This conflict between ideological or moral values and the legality of individual rights is not a novelty. This paper presents three instances of this conflict: Bernard de Mandeville's differentiation between public and private values; Eug ne Sue's parallel legal and civil morals; and the contemporary moralisation of law which conflates legality into morality. The subordination of legality to morality has potentially dangerous consequences: here, Agamben's 'state of exception' comes to mind, with his analysis of potestas and auctoritas. However, in the case of sport and the war against doping, the origin of power is not in the nation state; it originates in civil society's non-governmental national and international bodies recognised as autonomous sources of legal order. (shrink)

Prominent thinkers such as Jurgen Habermas and Michael Sandel are warning that biomedical enhancements will undermine fundamental political values. Yet whether biomedical enhancements will undermine such values depends on how biomedical enhancements will function, how they will be administered and to whom. Since only few enhancements are obtainable, it is difficult to tell whether these predictions are sound. Nevertheless, such warnings are extremely valuable. As a society we must, at the very least, be aware of developments that could have harmful (...) consequences. Indeed, if important values were to be jeopardized, we should take appropriate measures to protect them. This paper focuses on four central values: solidarity, personal responsibility, equality and autonomy. It delineates the conditions under which biomedical enhancements would undermine these values. It also details the circumstances under which these values would be unaffected by enhancements as well as those under which they would be promoted. Specifying these conditions is valuable; it would enable society to prepare appropriate ethical guidelines and policy responses in advance. (shrink)

Political philosophy is an examination of distribution of power in human communities and institutions. In previous period when identity issues were the most important political approach philosophy of sport had to deal mostly with discrimination and much less with the distribution of power in sport governance. Recent scandals revealed that at the top of sport governing bodies. Even more: it exposed the political character of the distribution of unleashed power in sport. That is why it is not enough to punish (...) ad to prevent. It is necessary to change the distribution of power, reform the models of control over political power in sport and to rethink the whole system of governance in sport. The proposal of this paper is just one short step in this direction with two points of departure: a change in initial sport’s associational character of aristocratic distribution of power into contemporary state of corporation with managerial distribution of power; and political philosophy’s proposals for models of democratic control at the global level. (shrink)

In this paper, I attempt to describe Mark Burgin’s results in non-Diophantine mathematics, which are important for the foundation of mathematics and its application in quantum field theory. In particular, the elimination of divergences in quantum electrodynamics is described.

Sociolinguistic research shows that listeners' expectations of speakers influence their interpretation of the speech, yet this is often ignored in cognitive models of language comprehension. Here, we focus on the case of interactions between native and non-native speakers. Previous literature shows that listeners process the language of non-native speakers in less detail, because they expect them to have lower linguistic competence. We show that processing the language of non-native speakers increases lexical competition and access in general, not only of the (...) non-native speaker's speech, and that this leads to poorer memory of one's own speech during the interaction. We further find that the degree to which people adjust their processing to non-native speakers is related to the degree to which they adjust their speech to them. We discuss implications for cognitive models of language processing and sociolinguistic research on attitudes. (shrink)

It is argued that the many-worlds interpretation is by far the best interpretation of quantum mechanics. The key points of this view are viewing the wave functions of worlds in three dimensions and understanding probability through self-locating uncertainty.

We suggest an algebraic approach to proof-theoretic analysis based on the notion of graded provability algebra, that is, Lindenbaum boolean algebra of a theory enriched by additional operators which allow for the structure to capture proof-theoretic information. We use this method to analyze Peano arithmetic and show how an ordinal notation system up to 0 can be recovered from the corresponding algebra in a canonical way. This method also establishes links between proof-theoretic ordinal analysis and the work which has been (...) done in the last two decades on provability logic and reflection principles. Because of its abstract algebraic nature, we hope that it will also be of interest for non-prooftheorists. (shrink)

People differ in the size of their social network, and thus in the properties of the linguistic input they receive. This article examines whether differences in social network size influence individuals’ linguistic skills in their native language, focusing on global comprehension of evaluative language. Study 1 exploits the natural variation in social network size and shows that individuals with larger social networks are better at understanding the valence of restaurant reviews. Study 2 manipulated social network size by randomly assigning participants (...) to learn novel evaluative words as used by two versus eight speakers. It replicated the finding from Study 1, showing that those exposed to a larger social network were better at comprehending the valence of product reviews containing the novel words that were written by novel speakers. Together, these studies show that the size of one's social network can influence success at language comprehension. They thus open the door to research on how individuals’ lifestyle and the nature of their social interactions can influence linguistic skills. (shrink)

I begin my eulogy to folly not in jest as did the illustrious Erasmus of Rotterdam in the old days, but in all sincerity and from all my heart. In this task Berdiaev's new book will be of great assistance to me. Had he wished to do so, he could have titled it, following his long-deceased colleague's example, In Praise of Folly, because its purpose is to challenge common sense. True, the book is a collection of articles written in the (...) last six years, hence, properly speaking, it does not and cannot serve some one purpose. Six years is a long time: not only a writer like Berdiaev, but any writer will change to some extent during so long a period. The book opens with an article written long ago, "The Struggle for Idealism" [Bor'ba za idealizm], in which the author still maintains a strictly Kantian viewpoint that admits, as we know, common sense and all its accompanying virtues. Then the author gradually evolves and, by the end of the book, he openly declares war on common sense, but what he opposes to common sense is not Folly, as is usually done, but Great Reason. Of course, one can express oneself in this way, calling Folly Great Reason, and, if you like, this has a deep meaning or, more precisely, a deep sting, for what can be more insulting and humiliating to common sense than to confer the honorific title of Great Reason on Folly? Until now common sense has been accepted as the father and closest friend of all minds, great and small. Now, Berdiaev, scorning genealogy and historically shaped heraldry, elevates "opposition to common sense," that is, Folly to the order of Great Reason. No doubt, this is very audacious, but Berdiaev is a writer who above all is daring and, in my opinion, this is his greatest strength. I would say that his gift, his philosophical and literary talent, lies in his audacity. As soon as it abandons him, the source of his inspiration evaporates, he has nothing to say, and he ceases to be himself. But I have run too far ahead. Let us return to his evolution or, rather, to the evolution of his idea. (shrink)

This paper is an answer to the preceding paper by Kastner, in which she continued the criticism of the counterfactual usage of the Aharonov-Bergman-Lebowitz rule in the framework of the time-symmetrized quantum theory, in particular, by analyzing the three-box “paradox.” It is argued that the criticism is not sound. Paradoxical features of the three-box example are discussed. It is explained that the elements of reality in the framework of time-symmetrized quantum theory are counterfactual statements, and therefore, even conflicting elements of (...) reality can be associated with a single system. It is shown how such “counterfactual” elements of reality can be useful in the analysis of a physical experiment (the three-box example). The validity of Kastner's application of the consistent histories approach to the time-symmetrized counterfactuals is questioned. (shrink)

“All Things Are Possible” is a 1920 English translation of the 1905 work by the Ukrainian/Russian existentialist philosopher Shestov. It draws on the aphoristic style of Nietzsche and deals with as diverse issues as science, rationalism and religion. This edition also includes an interesting foreword by D. H. Lawrence. Highly recommended for those with an interest in philosophy, and particularly existentialism. Contents include: “Lev Shestov”, “Note”, “Foreword”, “Zu Fragmentarish Ist Welt Und Leben”, and “Nur Für Schwindelfreie”. Many vintage books such (...) as this are increasingly scarce and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially-commissioned new biography of the author. (shrink)

We deal with the fragment of modal logic consisting of implications of formulas built up from the variables and the constant ‘true’ by conjunction and diamonds only. The weaker language allows one to interpret the diamonds as the uniform reflection schemata in arithmetic, possibly of unrestricted logical complexity. We formulate an arithmetically complete calculus with modalities labeled by natural numbers and ω, where ω corresponds to the full uniform reflection schema, whereas n<ω corresponds to its restriction to arithmetical Πn+1-formulas. This (...) calculus is shown to be complete w.r.t. a suitable class of finite Kripke models and to be decidable in polynomial time. (shrink)

The main focus of the book is the presentation of the 'inertial' view of population growth. This view provides a rather simple model for complex population dynamics, and is achieved at the level of the single species without invoking species interactions. An important part of this account is the maternal effect. Investment of mothers in the quality of their daughters makes the rate of reproduction of the current generation depend not only on the current environment, but also on the environment (...) experienced by the previous generation. (shrink)