Abstract.We investigate the existence of strong colorings on successors of singular cardinals. This work continues Section 2 of [1], but now our emphasis is on finding colorings of pairs of ordinals, rather than colorings of finite sets of ordinals.

This paper contains two traditions of diagrammatic studies namely one, the Euler–Venn–Peirce diagram and the other, following tradition of Aristotle, the square of oppositions. We put together both the traditions to study representations of singular propositions, their negations and the inter relationship between the two. Along with classical negation we have incorporated negation of another kind viz. absence. We have also considered the changes that take place in the context of open universe.

This book aims to provide a solution to the semantic paradoxes. It argues for a unified solution to the paradoxes generated by our concepts of denotation, predicate extension, and truth. The solution makes two main claims. The first is that our semantic expressions 'denotes', 'extension' and 'true' are context-sensitive. The second, inspired by a brief, tantalizing remark of Godel's, is that these expressions are significant everywhere except for certain singularities, in analogy with division by zero. A formal theory of (...) singularities is presented and applied to a wide variety of versions of the definability paradoxes, Russell's paradox, and the Liar paradox. Keith Simmons argues that the singularity theory satisfies the following desiderata: it recognizes that the proper setting of the semantic paradoxes is natural language, not regimented formal languages; it minimizes any revision to our semantic concepts; it respects as far as possible Tarski's intuition that natural languages are universal; it responds adequately to the threat of revenge paradoxes; and it preserves classical logic and semantics. Simmons draws out the consequences of the singularity theory for deflationary views of our semantic concepts, and concludes that if we accept the singularity theory, we must reject deflationism. (shrink)

This essay examines Italian philosopher Adriana Cavarero's ontology of uniqueness through a reading of Alex Haley's novel Roots, and the recent television adaptation of that book. If Cavarero has insisted throughout her work that we need to challenge the philosophical privileging of abstract universality and focus instead on the irreducibility of embodied singularity, and if such a move in her work has always relied on a feminist analysis of the role women play in such a drama, I argue that (...) attention to issues of race and the institution of slavery both supports and complicates her analysis in meaningful ways. (shrink)

The singularity space consists of all germs , with X a Noetherian scheme and x a point, where we identify two such germs if they become the same after an analytic extension of scalars. This is a complete, separable space for the metric given by the order to which jets agree after base change. In the terminology of descriptive set-theory, the classification of singularities up to analytic extensions of scalars is a smooth problem. Over , the following two (...) classification problems up to isomorphism are then also smooth: analytic germs; and polarized schemes. (shrink)

The Philosophy of Literature offers an opportunity to consider the gap between the analytic and the continental traditions of aesthetics. In particular, Lamarque's survey fails to take account of the possibility that literature is an institution and a practice that challenges the conventions of instrumental rationality, a position held by a number of continental philosophers who have written on art. It also pays little attention to the reader's experience of the inventiveness of the literary work, preferring to represent the reading (...) of literature as a matter of conventions confirmed. An alternative understanding of the literary work as an event that opens up new possibilities for the reader, put forward in the author's recent book, The Singularity of Literature, is sketched. (shrink)

The focus of this paper will be on singular thoughts. In the first section I will present Jeshion’s cognitivism; a view that holds that one should characterize singular thoughts by their cognitive roles. In the second section I will argue that, contrary to Jeshion’s claims, results from studies of object tracking in cognitive psychology do not support cognitivism. In the third section I will discuss Jeshion’s easy transmission of singular thought and argue that it ignores a relevant distinction between general (...) and specific understanding of names. Finally, the last section will argue that conscious attention should replace Jeshion’s significance condition as a necessary condition for one to have a singular thought. The paper will show that we need to take seriously the acquaintance requirement for singular thoughts, as even the easy transmission of singular thoughts with the use of names will be called into question. (shrink)

A complex length is introduced into the Coulomb and Yukawa potential energy equations. It is shown how this complex length can be used to remove the small-distance singularities in the above potentials. In addition, the Yukawa potential now exhibits a hard core.

Various aspects of the integrability of dynamical systems are discussed with the help of the singular point analysis. In particular the connection with the Painlevé property is described. Several examples will serve as illustrations.

A novel approach to quantization is shown to allow for superpositions of the cosmological constant in isotropic and homogeneous mini-superspace models. Generic solutions featuring such superpositions display: i) a unitary evolution equation; ii) singularity resolution; iii) a cosmic bounce. Explicit cosmological solutions are constructed. These exhibit characteristic bounce features including a ‘super-inflation’ regime with universal phenomenology that can naturally be made to be insensitive to Planck-scale physics.

Terms of logic like 'all' and 'some' can be understood in relation to one another purely in thought. Individual objects of which one becomes aware by sense perception are not objects of pure thought. Hence they cannot be uniquely named. Since Aristotelian and mathematical logic deals with pure thought alone there are no singular terms in either of them. The individual constants of mathematical logic are not objects of sense perception. In Nyaya and Buddhist logic singular terms are indispensable, because (...) inference does not deal with pure thought, but with knowledge which includes both thought and sense perception. (shrink)

Quantum anomalies in the inverse square potential are well known and widely investigated. Most prominent is the unbounded increase in oscillations of the particle’s state as it approaches the origin when the attractive coupling parameter is greater than the critical value of 1/4. Due to this unphysical divergence in oscillations, we are proposing that the interaction gets screened at short distances making the coupling parameter acquire an effective (renormalized) value that falls within the weak range 0–1/4. This prevents the oscillations (...) form growing without limit giving a lower bound to the energy spectrum and forcing the Hamiltonian of the system to be self-adjoint. Technically, this translates into a regularization scheme whereby the inverse square potential is replaced near the origin by another that has the same singularity but with a weak coupling strength. Here, we take the Eckart as the regularizing potential and obtain the corresponding solutions (discrete bound states and continuum scattering states). (shrink)

Transcranial Photobiomodulation has demonstrated its ability to alter electrophysiological activity in the human brain. However, it is unclear how tPBM modulates brain electroencephalogram networks and is related to human cognition. In this study, we recorded 64-channel EEG from 44 healthy humans before, during, and after 8-min, right-forehead, 1,064-nm tPBM or sham stimulation with an irradiance of 257 mW/cm2. In data processing, a novel methodology by combining group singular value decomposition with the exact low-resolution brain electromagnetic tomography was implemented and performed (...) on the 64-channel noise-free EEG time series. The gSVD+eLORETA algorithm produced 11 gSVD-derived principal components projected in the 2D sensor and 3D source domain/space. These 11 PCs took more than 70% weight of the entire EEG signals and were justified as 11 EEG brain networks. Finally, baseline-normalized power changes of each EEG brain network in each EEG frequency band were quantified during the first 4-min, second 4-min, and post tPBM/sham periods, followed by comparisons of frequency-specific power changes between tPBM and sham conditions. Our results showed that tPBM-induced increases in alpha powers occurred at default mode network, executive control network, frontal parietal network and lateral visual network. Moreover, the ability to decompose EEG signals into individual, independent brain networks facilitated to better visualize significant decreases in gamma power by tPBM. Many similarities were found between the cortical locations of SVD-revealed EEG networks and fMRI-identified resting-state networks. This consistency may shed light on mechanistic associations between tPBM-modulated brain networks and improved cognition outcomes. (shrink)

Contemporary orthodoxy affirms that singular terms cannot be predicates and that, therefore, ‘is’ is ambiguous as between predication and identity. Recent attempts to treat names as predicates do not challenge this orthodoxy. The orthodoxy was built into the structure of modern formal logic by Frege. It is defended by arguments which I show to be unsound. I provide a semantical account of atomic sentences which draws upon Mill's account of predication, connotation and denotation. I show that singular terms may be (...) predicates, that it is highly implausible that there is an ‘is’ of identity in natural languages, and that modern formal logic is deficient in that it cannot recognize sentences, including singular existentials, in which singular terms are predicates, or inferences which depend upon the logical role rather than the logical category of expressions. (shrink)

Thought about the singularity intersects the philosophy of mind in deep and important ways. However, thought about the singularity also intersects many other areas of philosophy, including the history of philosophy, metaphysics, the philosophy of science, and the philosophy of religion. I point to some of those intersections. Singularitarian thought suggests that many of the objects and processes that once lay in the domain of revealed religion now lie in the domain of pure computer science.

A formal analysis is offered of Pseudo-Scotus's theory of the conversion of (i) propositions containing singular terms (including propositions with a singular term as predicate): and (ii) propositions with a quantified predicate. An attempt is made to steer a middle course between using the Aristotelian logic as a framework for the analysis, and using a Fregean framework.

We investigate particular cosmological models, based either on tachyon fields or on perfect fluids, for which soft future singularities arise in a natural way. Our main result is the description of a smooth crossing of the soft singularity in models with an anti-Chaplygin gas or with a particular tachyon field in the presence of dust. Such a crossing is made possible by certain transformations of matter properties. We discuss and compare also different approaches to the problem of crossing (...) of the Big Bang–Big Crunch singularities. (shrink)

This paper looks at emergence in physical theories and argues that an appropriate way to understand socalled “emergent protectorates” is via the explanatory apparatus of the renormalization group. It is argued that mathematical singularities play a crucial role in our understanding of at least some well-defined emergent features of the world.

One of the most important and most frequently discussed theological problems related to cosmology is the creation problem. Unfortunately, it is usually considered in a context of a rather simplistic understanding of the initial singularity (often referred to as the Big Bang). This review of the initial singularity problem considers its evolution in twentieth‐century cosmology and develops methodological rules of its theological (and philosophical) interpretations. The recent work on the “noncommutative structure of singularities” suggests that on the (...) fundamental level (below the Planck's scale) the concepts of space, time, and localization are meaningless and that there is no distinction between singular and nonsingular states of the universe. In spite of the fact that at this level there is no time, one can meaningfully speak about dynamics, albeit in a generalized sense. Space, time, and singularities appear only in the transition process to the macroscopic physics. This idea, explored here in more detail, clearly favors an atemporal understanding of creation. (shrink)

The singularity of being -- The rewriting of destiny -- The ethics of the act -- The possibility of the impossible -- The jouissance of the signifier -- The dignity of the thing -- The ethics of sublimation -- The sublimity of love -- Conclusion: the other as face.

This paper is about the Descriptivism/Singularism debate, which has loomed large in 20-century philosophy of language and mind. My aim is to defend Singularism by showing, first, that it is a better and more promising view than even the most sophisticated versions of Descriptivism, and second, that the recent objections to Singularism (based on a dismissal of the acquaintance constraint on singular thought) miss their target.

Despite the problematic political positions he adopted during his life span, the work of Carl Schmitt contains a fascinating argument in favour of `the political', which is understood as a plural symbolic space composed of friends and enemies who reciprocally recognise each other. Schmitt's struggle for the political is a struggle for a public spirit which accounts for this plurality. One of the terrains on which Schmitt wages this struggle is that of historical meaning. The image of history is crucial (...) for the political, as it is one level on which the relation between enemies is symbolised. In this paper, Schmitt's polemic for a political conception of history, which gives the enemy and the defeated their due place as political subjects, will be reconstructed. Central to Schmitt's endeavour is the attempt to think historical singularity, against the notion of repetition in history, against the understanding of history as a reservoir of `lessons' and against ideologies of progress. Through his polemic, a profane and sober image of history appears which stresses singularity, relative contingency and openness, and the pluralisation of social temporalities. The enigmatic notion of the katechon will play a crucial role in providing a very minimal but crucial form of historical meaning for such a political conception of history. (shrink)

Religious views of the future often include detailed expectations of profound changes to nature and humanity. Popular American evangelical Christianity, especially writers like Hal Lindsey, Rick Warren, or Rob Bell, offer extended accounts that provide insight into the views of the future held by many people. In the case of Lindsey, detailed descriptions of future events are provided, along with the claim that forecasted events will occur within a generation. These views are summarized and compared to the secular idea of (...) a coming “intelligence explosion” or technological singularity as advanced by Ray Kurzweil, which is described in terms of its history as an idea and in terms of its specific proposals for the coming transformation of the cosmos, which is also predicted to occur within a generation. While profoundly different in important ways, these two perspectives share many features with each other—for example, in their respective predictions of distinct stages in the unfolding of the future of the cosmos. (shrink)

A perplexity about singular existence statements is that for their negations to be true their subject terms do not name anything. For example, in ‘Pegasus does not exist’ ‘does not exist’ is not said in respect to the referent of ‘Pegasus’ since there is none. But, then, in respect to what is that said? The paper answers the question by proposing a metalinguistic interpretation of singular existence statements, according to which singular existence statements are about names. It is argued that (...) this interpretation fits in well with Frege’s views on existence, presupposition, and his idea that names have senses. (shrink)

Recently, various people have maintained that one must revise either the externalistically-based notion of singular thought or the naïve realism-inspired notion of relational particularity, as respectively applied to some thoughts and to some perceptual experiences. In order to do so, one must either provide a broader notion of singular thought or flank the notion of relational particularity with a broader notion of phenomenal particularity. I want to hold that there is no need of that revision. For the original notions can (...) still play the role for which they were invoked. This requires that (i) both the first and the second notion respectively involve a dependence on and a metaphysical relation to the intentional objects of certain mental states once we are ontologically committed to such objects; (ii) both that object-dependence and that metaphysical relation are interpreted in terms of a substantive individuation of the relevant mental state via the object it is about: that object constitutes the state. (shrink)

Environmental designers employ ordering systems as a means of achieving spatial clarity and richness of organization while contending with the complexities that characterize design endeavors. This paper considers aesthetic potentialities when built and natural orders are considered together, specifically when an architectural investigation and ecological restoration are articulated as one integrated problem. After considering a range of approaches to the ordering the built and natural, I look to Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s notion of ‘continuity of singularities’ as intimating (...) an ‘aesthetics of the indeterminate’ that encourages a desired nuance, openness to the unforeseen and respect for the (ecologically) particular. (shrink)

This book uses the ontological notions of singularity and threshold to deconstruct the myth of the independent individual and address the question of what comes after sovereignty and the subject.

Introduction -- Creation and the other -- Originality and invention -- Inventive language and the literary event -- Singularity -- Reading and responding -- Performance -- Form, meaning, context -- Responsibility and ethics -- An everyday impossibility.

How to interpret singular terms in fiction? In this paper, we address this semantic question from the perspective of the Artifactual Theory of Fiction (ATF). According to the ATF, fictional characters exist as abstract artifacts created by their author, and preserved through the existence of copies of an original work and a competent readership. We pretend that a well-suited semantics for the ATF can be defined with respect to a modal framework by means of Hintikka’s world lines semantics. The question (...) of the interpretation of proper names is asked in relation to two inference rules, problematic when applied in intensional contexts: the Substitution of Identicals and Existential Generalization. The former fails because identity is contingent. The latter because proper names are not necessarily linked to well-identified individuals. This motivates a non-rigid interpretation of proper names in fiction, although cross-fictional reference (e.g. to real entities) is made possible by the interpretative efforts of the reader. (shrink)

Although the view that sees proper names as referential singular terms is widely considered orthodoxy, there is a growing popularity to the view that proper names are predicates. This is partly because the orthodoxy faces two anomalies that Predicativism can solve: on the one hand, proper names can have multiple bearers. But multiple bearerhood is a problem to the idea that proper names have just one individual as referent. On the other hand, as Burge noted, proper names can have predicative (...) uses. But the view that proper names are singular terms arguably does not have the resources to deal with Burge’s cases. In this paper I argue that the Predicate View of proper names is mistaken. I first argue against the syntactic evidence used to support the view and against the predicativist’s methodology of inferring a semantic account for proper names based on incomplete syntactic data. I also show that Predicativism can neither explain the behaviour of proper names in full generality, nor claim the fundamentality of predicative names. In developing my own view, however, I accept the insight that proper names in some sense express generality. Hence I propose that proper names—albeit fundamentally singular referential terms—express generality in two senses. First, by being used as predicates, since then they are true of many individuals; and second, by being referentially related to many individuals. I respond to the problem of multiple bearerhood by proposing that proper names are polyreferential, and also explain the behaviour of proper names in light of the wider phenomenon I called category change, and show how Polyreferentialism can account for all uses of proper names. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the transformations of society in the era of globalization. The global world is seen as a consequence of the successful implementation of the world-historical the Project of Modernity. Its completion results in the loss of its intellectual authority and historical effective- ness. The principal quality of contemporary society became its globality. The paradoxical phenomenon of the world, that had ceased to be a reality, became an integrative shape of the global transformations. Visibility took the privileged (...) place here. The degradation of reality is analyzed in its main forms: dematerialization of reality; decline and destruction of human sensory experience; destruction of the alive contacts with living beings and the capacity to empathize with somebody; the loss of the space of the human existence space features of a stable, predictable, structured se- mantic order. The consequence of that is the destruction of the foundations of the communities and society as a whole, which is fixed by the notion of their «vagueness». The correlation to this social metamorphosis is a new anthropological format — the singularity, which provides for the theoretical abolition of identity as a way for defining a man. It means the loss of an individual’s predictability and its determination as a social character. The network is the way through which the singularities interact, and swarms are the natural form of their association. Swarm is a historically new, unstructured, but subordinated to common impulses union, which consists of points of activity of different intensity. The analysis of society is incomplete without taking into account its discursive-communicative nature. In the global world there is a decline in the discourses. The signs of that process are the lack of legitimacy in classical instances of the meaning (truth, good, beauty, etc.), the degeneration of thinking into mixing, changing criteria of significance (dominance of curiosity and impression), social degradation of the media. The main feature of these changes is the latest phenomenon of information power (the power of depersonalized information space and information technology — those modes of circulation and use of information that became a determining factor in human life in the globalized world). (shrink)

We consider to what extent the fundamental question of spacetime singularities is relevant for the philosophical debate about the nature of spacetime. After reviewing some basic aspects of the spacetime singularities within general relativity, we argue that the well known difficulty to localize them in a meaningful way may challenge the received metaphysical view of spacetime as a set of points possessing some intrinsic properties together with some spatiotemporal relations. Considering the algebraic formulation of general relativity, we argue (...) that the spacetime singularities highlight the philosophically misleading dependence on the standard geometric representation of spacetime. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, University of Lausanne, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland; e-mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

For at least three decades, philosophers have argued that general causation and causal explanation are contrastive in nature. When we seek a causal explanation of some particular event, we are usually interested in knowing why that event happened rather than some other specified event. And general causal claims, which state that certain event types cause certain other event types, seem to make sense only if appropriate contrasts to the types of events acting as cause and effect are specified. In recent (...) years, philosophers have extended the contrastive theory of causation to encompass singular causation as well. In this article, I argue that this extension of the theory was a mistake. Although general causation and causal explanation may well be contrastive in nature, singular causation is not. (shrink)

The difficulties encountered by attempts to treat identity as a relation between an object and itself are well-known: "...the sentence 'The morning star is...the morning star' is analytic and a truism, while...'The morning star is the evening star' is synthetic and represents a 'valuable extension of our knowledge'... But if {the morning star} and {the evening star} are the same object, and identity is taken as a relation holding between this object and itself, then it is impossible to explain how (...) the two sentences can differ in cognitive content... ". Russell's solution to these difficulties rejects the identification of logical with grammatical form, in effect denying that such sentences assert relations between the morning star and itself. The logical representations which the Russellian proposes, contain quantifiers, predicate letters, and individual variables, but no expressions standing for particulars. The Fregean solution, while admitting logical representations whose nominal expressions stand for particulars, insists that the meaning of such expressions is different from their reference. Frege-Russell analyses thus both deny that the morning star is involved qua particular in the meaning of the sentences in question. ;Rather than replace the morning star as ontological subject of these sentences, I suggest that their difference in meaning arises from the kind of particular that the identity-relation relates--a particular which, unlike its Frege-Russell counterpart, is two-sided and multi-faceted. Such a particular requires an ambiguous singular term. In Chapter 1, I utilize such a term to provide a surfacist account of belief-context ambiguity requiring neither differences in relative scope nor distinctions between sense and reference. In Chapter 2, I go on to provide an account of negative existentials, necessity- and identity-statements which resolves philosophical problems that Russell-Frege analyses only avoid. To solve these problems, I show that it is necessary to reject two canons of philosophical logic, the Law of Identity and the Indiscernibility of Identicals. (shrink)

One of the goals of a certain brand of philosopher has been to give an account of language and linguistic phenomena by means of showing how sentences are to be translated into a "logically perspicuous notation" (or an "ideal language"—to use passe terminology). The usual reason given by such philosophers for this activity is that such a notational system will somehow illustrate the "logical form" of these sentences. There are many candidates for this notational system: (almost) ordinary first-order predicate logic (...) (see Quine [1960]), higher-order predicate logic (see Parsons [1968, 1970]), intensional logic (see Montague [1969, 1970a, 1970b, 1971]), and transformational grammar (see Harrnan [1971]), to mention some of the more popular ones. I do not propose to discuss the general question of the correctness of this approach to the philosophy of language, nor do I wish to adjudicate among the notational systems mentioned here. Rather, I want to focus on one problem which must be faced by all such systems—a problem that must be discussed before one decides upon a notational system and tries to demontrate that it in fact can account for all linguistic phenomena. The general problem is to determine what we shall allow as linguistic data; in this paper I shall restrict my attention to this general problem as it appears when we try to account for certain words with non-singular reference, in particular, the words that are classified by the count/ mass and sortal/non-sortal distinctions. (shrink)

Following the example of the late Professor R. S. Conway, who in the Transactions of the Cambridge Philological Society, vol. v, part i , discussed ‘The Use of the Singular Nos in Cicero's Letters’, I examined Catullus’ employment of the idiom in an article published in Mnemosyne, series iii, vol. vii, fasc. 2 , pp. 148–56. While the usage of Catullus exemplified various of Conway's indisputable types of the singular nos, such as the Plural of Authorship and the Plural of (...) Proprietorship, my observations did not confirm his main thesis of a ‘projective’ use, which L. C. Purser reviewing his rnonograph called ‘a Pluralis Dignitatis or Fiduciae, not to say Adrogantiae’, in direct contrast to the orthodox pluralis modestiae. I found that, where the use of nos related to a state of mind of the writer or speaker, not merely to circumstances of his environment, the usage in Catullus was either a pluralis modestiae or one of several derivative types. My examination of Virgil seems wholly to confirm the conclusions reached concerning Catullus, whose types of singular nos I classified as follows: the Plural of Proprietorship ; the Traveller's Plural ; the Local Plural ; the Plural of Authorship ; the Social and Domestic Plural ; the pluralis modestiae , pp. 87–9); the Plural of Pleading or Requesting; the Plural of Pathos or Self-pity. Of these , , , and are a product of circumstances of environment and relate to a group of which the speaker or writer is a member; , , , and express an attitude or state of mind. Virgil's examples of the usage fall into six of these categories, and being absent. For the purposes of the present study I shall, in order to indicate more clearly the connexion between and , and the subjective character of , number the six Virgilian categories as follows: the Plural of Proprietorship; the Social and Domestic Plural; the Plural of Authorship; the pluralis modestiae; the Plural of Pleading or Requesting; the Plural of Pathos, Self-pity, or Complaint. (shrink)

Is singular causation best understood within a dispositionalist framework? Although a positive answer has not yet been wholly developed, different philosophers have made some positive contributions suggesting that it is. Against these suggestions, I claim that any possible account of singular causation in terms of real, irreducible, dispositions conveys unsolvable flaws in its very metaphysical foundations.

In philosophy, “singular thought” refers to our capacity to represent entities as individuals, rather than as possessors of properties. Philosophers who defend singularism argue that perception allows us to mentally latch onto objects and persons directly, without conceptualizing them as being of a certain sort. Singularists assume that singular thought forms a unified psychological kind, regardless of the nature of the individuals represented. Empirical findings on the special psychological role of persons as opposed to inanimates threaten singularism. They raise the (...) possibility that tracking individuals specifically as persons might require conceptualizing them in certain ways, for example, as persons. In this paper, we take such a possibility seriously but ultimately reject it. Instead, we propose to revise a prominent singularist theory, the theory of mental files, in order to accommodate data on the psychological distinctiveness of persons: We advocate the postulation of perceptual person-files. Perceptual tracking via person-files is different from object-tracking but also from descriptive classification under the sortal concept PERSON. (shrink)

In recent decades, plural logic has established itself as a well-respected member of the extensions of first-order classical logic. In the present paper, I draw attention to the fact that among the examples that are commonly given in order to motivate the need for this new logical system, there are some in which the elements of the plurality in question are internally singularized (e.g. ‘Whitehead and Russell wrote Principia Mathematica’), while in others they are not (e.g. ‘Some philosophers wrote Principia (...) Mathematica’). Then, building on previous work, I point to a subsystem of plural logic in which inferences concerning examples of the first type can be adequately dealt with. I notice that such a subsystem (here called ‘discrete plural logic’) is in reality a mere variant of first-order logic as standardly formulated, and highlight the fact that it is axiomatizable while full plural logic is not. Finally, I urge that greater attention be paid to discrete plural logic and that discrete plurals are not used in order to motivate the introduction of full-fledged plural logic—or, at least, not without remarking that they can also be adequately dealt with in a considerably simpler system. (shrink)

Here, we show that by accepting Fuzzy time-Particle interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, the singularities in the new Model are vanished.

This paper explains why spacetime singularities do not constitute a breakdown of physical laws, and points out that the difference between the metrics at singularities and those outside of singularities is factual, rather than nomological.

The paper proposes to base the notion of the significance of life on the grounds of the singularity of each person as a psychical subject, i.e. personal singularity. No two persons are alike; each one of us, as a person, is intrinsically different from every other person. This personal singularity has a universal significance, namely, it makes a universal difference, whether or not this difference is distinct and acknowledged. Because morality and the significance of a person's life (...) both rely upon personal singularity, there is an inseparable connection between morality and the significance of a human life. Nevertheless, as relying upon personal singularity, there is no insignificant or meaningless life, for a person's life has a universal significance whatever the actions of that person may be. Immoral actions or behavior do not reflect or express the personal singularity of an agent, whereas moral ones reflect or express this singularity. There is more to personal singularity and the significance of life than morality. As singularity is not subject to any comparison or competition, personal singularity implies that the life of one person is not more significant than the life of any other person. Thus, in my view, the significance of life is strictly egalitarian. (shrink)

FRANCISCO SUÁREZ, THE GREAT JESUIT PHILOSOPHER AND THEOLOGIAN, has long been recognized as a pivotal figure in the development of Western philosophy. His thought is heavily indebted to the medieval philosophical tradition but also bears striking intimations of key themes in modern thought. In this paper I address one of the most controversial questions related to the thought of Suárez, namely, his relationship to the nominalist tradition. However, I shall do so rather indirectly by focusing not on explicit metaphysical questions (...) but rather on his account of our acquisition of universal concepts and its foundation in reality. By placing questions about the knowledge of singular and universal at the center of the discussion, I hope to shed new light on his account of the objectivity that we can have in our knowledge. (shrink)

Machine learning, and more broadly artificial intelligence (AI), is a fascinating technology and can be considered as the closest approximation to the Cartesian “thinking thing” that humans have ever created. Just as the industrial revolution required a new ethos, the age of intelligent machines will create its own, challenging the established moral, economic, and political presuppositions. This paper discusses the relationship between AI and society; it presents several thought experiments to explore the complexity of the relationship and highlights the insufficiency (...) of the current normative paradigm in addressing technological expansion. I argue that many of the externalities, such as security risks, loss of privacy, and economic instability will result from trying to fit the emerging technologies into the existing frame of efficiency and utility, by redefining the notions of human value, identity, autonomy, purity, and truth, among others. The age of the intelligent machine is elevating alienation to new levels, treating the individual as mere patterns in data—its primary commodity. I further argue that while the possibility of unintended consequences, due to the potential misuse of AI is ever present, the intelligent machine per se is unlikely to engage in a zero-sum game for power on its own initiative. I question whether singularity is at all attainable and argue that technology will forever remain a proxy for human interests. I conclude by posing questions for charting the path forward. Through this analysis, I aim to provide a more nuanced understanding of the complex relationship between the AI and humans. (shrink)

Purpose. The study is aimed at a philosophical analysis of the state of humanity’s readiness for technological singularity, the definition of the concept of postbiology and the investigation of ways to bring the population to a new, qualitatively higher level of existence. Theoretical basis. The author analyzes the level of public consciousness and the features of its cooperation with technological world. Due to the inability of most modern people to cope with changes effectively, the author questions humanity’s readiness for (...) the postbiological stage of evolution of our species. Based on the analysis of the ideas of authoritative futurists of our time, the author explores the prospects of Ukrainian society in the postbiological future. Originality. The author not only analyzes the challenges that humanity faces during its transition to a new type of civilization, but also explores the obstacles that hinder this process directly in the Ukrainian society. The author proves that the ideas of transhumanism and going beyond the human biology should not be postulated without a moral context. In addition, the scientific study proposes a number of projects designed to improve the educational institutions that are responsible for the intellectual and spiritual development of the individual. Conclusions. Postbiology can become both, a new qualitatively higher stage of the human species evolution and the collapse of humaneness. Along with overcoming human biology, there will be the destruction of moral guidelines, social and legal systems. In order to prevent total chaos and catastrophe, technological development must be complemented by appropriate developments of new norms that can balance society. (shrink)