In this paper I focus on the impact on structuralism of the quantum treatment of objects in terms of symmetry groups and, in particular, on the question as to how we might eliminate, or better, reconceptualise such objects in structural terms. With regard to the former, both Cassirer and Eddington not only explicitly and famously tied their structuralism to the development of group theory but also drew on the quantum treatment in order to further their structuralist aims and here I (...) sketch the relevant history with an eye on what lessons might be drawn. With regard to the latter, Ladyman has explicitly cited Castellani's work on the group-theoretical constitution of quantum objects and I indicate both how such an approach needs to be understood if it is to mesh with Ladyman's 'ontic' form of structural realism and how it might accommodate permutation symmetry through a consideration of Huggett's recent account. (shrink)

Non-propositional experiences can help justify beliefs, contrary to recent claims made by Donald Davidson and Laurence Bonjour. It is argued that a perceptual belief is justified if there are no undermining beliefs and it was arrived at in response to an experience through an adequate exercise of properly learned recognitional skills.

Abstract. The Western conception of the individual as a rational, self-directing agent is a mythology that organizes and distorts religion, science, economics, and politics. It produces an abstracted and atomized form of engagement that is fatal to collective self-governance. And it turns democracy into the enemy of equality. Considering the meaning of democracy and autonomy from a perspective that takes the subject as truly social would refocus our attention on the constitutive contexts and practices necessary for the production of citizens (...) who are capable of meaningful self-governance. Under modern conditions, it is in the development of sexual autonomy that we learn how to take initiative with respect to our well-being and do so in concert with others. Where the view of rational agency as the defining characteristic of humanity yields a deracinated view of autonomy, a more realistic, humanistic view that we are, necessarily, social beings yields a view of freedom and self-governance as social phenomena that require empathy, negotiation, compromise, cooperation, and mutual recognition and respect. (shrink)

What are the forces shaping the future of international green politics? This book provides an objective account of the basis of green arguments and their social and political implications. It offers a clear overview of the most pressing environmental threats.

We argue that the language of Zermelo Fraenkel set theory with definitions and partial functions provides the most promising bedrock semantics for communicating and sharing mathematical knowledge. We then describe a syntactic sugaring of that language that provides a way of writing remarkably readable assertions without straying far from the set-theoretic semantics. We illustrate with some examples of formalized textbook definitions from elementary set theory and point-set topology. We also present statistics concerning the complexity of these definitions, under various complexity (...) measures. (shrink)

DEBBIE MANDEL: The funny face of a baby makes us smile at potential and fresh life that is uninhibited. Everyone has an inner child that he wishes to release to..

Product differentiation has emerged as a central dynamic in contemporary agrofood systems. Departure from the mode of standardization emblematic of agrofood modernization raises questions about future technical trajectories and the ways in which learning will be sustained. This article examines two innovation trajectories: the rapid coupling of biotechnologies and information technologies to yield products differentiated by constituent components—a model based on a cognitive logic of decomposition/ recomposition—and the proliferation of product networks that mobilize distinctive, localized resources to create complete identities—a (...) model based on a cognitive logic of identity. The article analyzes the information structures—institutional mechanisms that support information exchange and learning—in each of these opposed development paradigms. We find that knowledge creation under each of the logics occurs through mechanisms not recognized within the respective paradigms. On this basis, we derive institutional hybridity as a fundamental resource in systems of innovation. (shrink)

The ArgumentThis paper is a study of the role of language in scientific activity. It recommends that language be viewed as a community's means of patterning its affairs. Language represents where the boundaries of the community are and who is entitled to speak within it, and it displays the structures of authority in the community. Moreover, language precipitates the community's view of what the world is like, such that linguistic usages can be taken as referring to that world. Thus, language (...) connects on the one side to a community's practical life, and, on the other, to the reality on which it “reports.”The example treated is Robert Boyle's view of the language proper for experimental practice, and his arguments against the value and legitimacy of mathematical representations within the experimental community. Boyle argued that the use of mathematics was inappropriate because (i) it would restrict the number of potential participants; (ii) it would give rise to unwarranted expectations of the certainty and accuracy to be expected of real physical inquiries; (iii) it would suggest views of natural law and God's relations with the natural world which were incorrect and possibly dangerous; and because (iv) the world upon which the experimentalist operated was not such as was represented by mathematical idealizations. I try to establish that decision about the appropriate language for the experimental community was a moral choice. (shrink)

This paper explores, from a phenomenological perspective, the conditions necessary for the possession of intentional content, i.e., for being intentionally directed toward the world. It argues that Levinas's concept of ethics as first philosophy makes an important contribution to this task. Intentional directedness, as understood here, is normatively structured. Levinas's ‘ethics’ can be understood as a phenomenological account of how our experience of the other subject as another subject takes place in the recognition of the normative force of a command. (...) This supplies a condition that—as the paper shows by examining Husserl and Sartre on how our experience of the Other constitutes an ‘objective’ world—earlier phenomenologists have misunderstood, because they have treated ethical experience as ‘founded’ on a prior theory of representation (‘ontology’ in Levinas's language). Ethics is first philosophy because it is only by acknowledging the command in the ‘face’ of the Other that we can account for the sensitivity to the normative distinctions that structure intentional content. Throughout, the paper shows how Levinas's analyses, in Totality and Infinity, draw upon and develop the analyses of Husserl and Sartre. (shrink)

This essay explores the question of a possible difference between innate and implanted ideas in the Regulae ad directionem ingentii. I maintain that, in this work, in order to avoid metaphysical difficulties in his account of error, Descartes introduces intothe mind an implanted ability which, while allowing for universal science, does not inherently rely on external objects for verification. Such a solution suspends metaphysicsin favor of epistemology.

The ‘mathematical imaginary’ at work in psychology is central to the contingent history of the discipline, but is also responsible for considerable confusion and ambiguity around the ontological assumptions of psychological theories and models. Rather than reject the mathematical altogether, this article argues for an alternative form of mathematical description in psychology through the use of topology. Drawing on DeLanda’s topological account of the virtual, the relationship between psychology and ontology is progressively questioned in relation to memory. Henri Bergson’s conception (...) of duration and the pure past is juxtaposed with the topological psychology of Kurt Lewin and its notion of life space as a manifold with n-dimensions. Using a diagrammatic strategy developed by Mullarkey, an actualist account of the virtual is used to hold these distinct bodies of work together. Psychological events may be given a ‘thick description’ through the identification of topological relations and invariants. The interplay between the actual entities that are afforded in experience can be seen to be virtualized as planes of irreality. A topological approach to psychology offers the opportunity of replacing the taxonomy of essences common to the discipline with a dynamic account of invariance through homeomorphism. (shrink)

The issue of just savings between generations presents an important,and for the most part unappreciated, problem for Rawls's theory ofdistributive justice. This paper argues that the just savingsprinciple, as Rawls formulates it in his recent work, standsin tension with the difference principle. When thought through,the just savings principle – and more precisely the foundationon which it rests – give us reason to reject the differenceprinciple in favor of a less egalitarian principle ofdistributive justice.

People living at the start of the third millennium enjoy a world that would have been inconceivable to our ancestors living in the 100 millennia that our species has existed. Ignorance and myth have given way to an extraordinarily detailed understanding of life, matter and the universe. Slavery, despotism, blood feuds and patriarchy have vanished from vast expanses of the planet, driven out by unprecedented concepts of universal human rights and the rule of law. Technology has shrunk the globe and (...) stretched our lives and our minds. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Several elements of the philosophical pessimism of Arthur Schopenhauer are used to explicate the critique of consumerism advanced by the 2003 film Lost in Translation. The negativity of fulfillment and the suffering involved in desire as primed by consumerism, as well as the ideological function of the phenomena of celebrity, are examined in the process.

RésuméJe fais un survol de ma carrière de philosophe, qui comprend quarante-quatre ans d'enseignement à Halifax, mais qui commence à Londres avec une thèse sur l'auto-tromperie. Je décris l'utilisation des œuvres littéraires comme guides de l'analyse conceptuelle, puis je fais une escale à Vienne pour traduire On Last Things (Weininger, 2001). Une phrase de Wittgenstein forme la base de réflexions sur le concept d'un Jugement dernier. J'examine en détail ma communication de 2018 pour l'Association régionale des philosophes de l'Atlantique, intitulée (...) « One Last Thing », qui prend comme point de départ le roman The Sense of an Ending de Julian Barnes. Je termine avec quelques affirmations sur la relation de Wittgenstein à la religion. En annexe, je commente brièvement sur les autres communications qui composent ce numéro spécial. (shrink)

Future work is needed to establish that pure short-term memory is a coherent individual difference attribute that is separable from traditional compound short-term memory measures. Psychometric support for latent pure short-term memory capacity will provide an important starting point for future fine-grained analyses of the intrinsic factors that influence individual differences in math skills.

Antimicrobial resistance is a global collective action problem with dire consequences for human health. This article considers how domestic and international legal mechanisms can be used to address antimicrobial resistance and overcome the governance and political economy challenges that accelerate it.

Tomasi’s view of social democracy is shown to mischaracterize it as hostile to private economic liberties, which all real-world social democracies guarantee. The supposed Manichean choice between social and market democracy, seen as requiring contrasting accounts of fairness, results from combining Rawls-style idealization of regime types, the Hayekian presumption that social democracies are advancing along the road to serfdom, and tendentious appeal to scant and unconvincing historical evidence. The proposed constitutional protection of ‘thick,’ market-based economic liberties, as favoring both individual (...) self-authorship and fair equality of opportunity, is defended by Tomasi against high-liberal and social democratic views as compatible with what Rawls’s social justice demands, but as their scope expands in the course of the book this fails to convince. Finally it is argued that the ever-expanding reach of the market across all social life, with feedback effects on the formation of preferences, renders questionable Tomasi’s claims that his account of market fairness is neutral with respect to ways of life and that it specifies conditions under which individuals can live lives that are truly their own. (shrink)

‘Skepticism’ refers primarily to two positions. Knowledge skepticism says there is no such thing as knowledge, and justification skepticism denies the existence of justified belief. How closely the two views are related depends on the relationship between knowledge and justification: if knowledge entails justified belief, as many theorists say, then justification skepticism entails knowledge skepticism (but not vice versa). Either form of skepticism can be limited in scope. Global (or radical) skepticism challenges the epistemic credentials of all beliefs, saying that (...) no one knows anything, or no belief is justified. More local skepticism is restricted to some domain; thus some skeptics question the epistemic credentials of beliefs about other minds (but not beliefs about one’s own mind), or beliefs concerning empirical matters (but not concerning a priori matters). (shrink)

The subject of this book is epistemology. Epistemology is the theory of knowledge, the study of the nature, sources, and limitations of knowledge and justification. In studying the nature of knowledge and justification, theorists typically try to delineate the conditions that must be met for a given person to know, or justifiably believe, that a given proposition is true. That is, they offer analyses of knowledge and justification. In this introduction, we will briefly describe the task of analysis, and review (...) some of the ways people have understood epistemic concepts. We will also outline some of the difficulties theorists have confronted while working out what may be known. (shrink)

Criminal law is a system for societal ordering, as much as it is for protection against interpersonal harm and wrongs. Whilst such laws can engage rights to privacy and freedoms of expression and movement, international human rights rarely feature in criminal theory. Using Duff’s public wrongs theory, a normative argument is made for recognition of international human rights within the national civil order, as well as through a proposed supra-national human rights polity. This is tested through identification of human rights (...) criminalization principles from public ordering cases in the European Court of Human Rights. International human rights offers a formal route to recognition of liberal principles, as well as adding possible new boundary conditions within criminal theory. (shrink)

In 1941, Tarski published an abstract, finitely axiomatized version of the theory of binary relations, called the theory of relation algebras, He asked whether every model of his abstract theory could be represented as a concrete algebra of binary relations. He and Jonsson obtained some initial, positive results for special classes of abstract relation algebras. But Lyndon showed, in 1950, that in general the answer to Tarski's question is negative. Monk proved later that the answer remains negative even if one (...) adjoins finitely many new axioms to Tarski's system. In this paper we describe a far-reaching generalization of the positive results of Jonsson and Tarski, as well as of some later, related results of Maddux. We construct a class of concrete models of Tarski's axioms-called coset relation algebras-that are very close in spirit to algebras of binary relations, but are built using systems of groups and cosets instead of elements of a base set. The models include all algebras of binary relations, and many non-representable relation algebras as well, We prove that every atomic relation algebra satisfying a certain measurability condition-a condition generalizing the conditions imposed by Jonsson and Tarski-is essentially isomorphic to a coset relation algebra. The theorem raises the possibility of providing a positive solution to Tarski's problem by using coset relation algebras instead of the standard algebras of binary relations. (shrink)