Urban dwellers’ food and nutritional wellbeing are both dependent on infrastructure and can be indicative of wider wellbeing in urban contexts and societal health. This paper focuses on the multiple relationships that exist between food and infrastructure to provide a thorough theoretical and empirical grounding to urgent work on urban food security and nutrition in the context of rapid urban and nutrition transitions in the South. We argue that urban systems and food systems thinking have not been well aligned, but (...) that such alignment is not only timely and overdue but also fruitful for both thematic areas of research and policy. We draw in particular on work within wider urban political economy and political ecology that can be classified as part of the ‘infrastructural turn’ that is influential with urban studies but little acknowledged within food studies. Drawing on these literatures helps us to better understand the interrelationships between people, things and ideas that make up both infrastructure and food systems. Policy, planning and research relating to both food and urban systems cannot afford to ignore such interlinkages, though much policy still operates on the neat assumptions of progressive connectivity to ‘the grid’ and formal food retail. Instead we argue how in many urban governance systems, a variety of hybrid mechanisms—on and off the grid, public and private formal and informal—better represent how urban residents, particularly the most marginalised, meet their everyday food and infrastructural needs along a continuum of gridded and off-grid access. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 40.3 (2006) 92-114 [Access article in PDF] A Global Art System: An Exploration of Current Literature on Visual Culture, and a Glimpse at the Universal Promethean Principle—with Unintended Oedipal Consequences Art Education 11-18: Meaning, Purpose And Direction, edited by Richard Hickman; New York, Continuum; 2nd edition, 2004; 176 pp. Global Visual Culture within a Global Art System I have harbored misgivings about the (...) term "visual culture" for several years. Having read Hickman's book with its collection of notable scholars in art and design education, those misgivings turned into qualified acceptance of "visual culture"—so long as it is understood as a global visual culture within a global art system. The ten chapters presented in Hickman's book clearly explore the notion of visual culture in the context of generating an expansive and appropriate canon of art distinctly relevant to our postmodern, multicultural, multidimensional classroom of multiple intelligences.1 And so, art and design education for the twenty-first century must perform three essential functions: one, it must color the classroom with signs of global human pictorial and textual expressions; two, it must attempt to comprehend an immeasurable universe through creative, scaled-down explorations of the phenomenal world all of humanity is subject to; and three, it must open up the Blakeian doors of perception,2 while remaining free of emotional, educational, social, political, or religious ideological bonds. In this light, Hickman's Art Education 11-18 (2004), is a must read for art and design educators currently bogged down in old curriculum, and a must read for educators who incorporate new pedagogical literature easily into their new curriculum. And I say must read because we are on the verge of a revolution in visual art history and education—immersed in it, struggling to make sense of our beloved classical canon of art, and struggling to come to grips with a strangely foreign, beautifully alien, semeiotic reality we call (vaguely) "visual culture." It is a visual culture and history from the north, east, and south. Not just from the west.Key innovative educational issues addressed in these chapters are (respectively) using the dynamic nature of art to expand the curricula (Richard Hickman); the collapse of cultural borders (Lesley Burgess and Nicholas [End Page 92] Addison); a balanced cultural history of the world (Colin Grigg); recognizing art and recognizing visual culture (Howard Hollands); a range of visual cultures and literacy (Darren Newbury); using computer technology as a pathway to a new art and visual culture (Andy Ash); critical study and analysis (Michele Tallack); hand-making as a universal link to nature and art (Rachel Mason); spirituality in the process of art creation (James Hall); and cross-cultural heritage toward a new canon of art (Hickman).I will review each chapter as it pertains to current literature exploring popular pedagogical terms like "visual culture," "postmodernism," "pluralism," and "radicalism" and (more importantly) as it fits into a global system of art and culture. In addition, I suggest another term ("cosmopolitanism"—to identify the viable gay and lesbian aesthetic and culture) not that they are necessarily different, but they are indeed relevant and operate from a fresh literary and historical perspective. Then, I will illustrate how a new, postmodern canon of art must be linked to global visual culture and art in order to expand the concept of visual culture. Thus, I see two tasks before me: the first task is to inventory the philosophy, pedagogy, and meanings within each of the ten chapters in Hickman's Art Education 11-18; and the second task is to integrate key pedagogical ideas highlighted in each chapter as a method of generating a meaningful, holistic, integrated direction for art and design education in the twenty-first century. Integrating Art and Design Education Art is a design process. All subject regimes, D. N. Perkins suggests, are a design process.3 This may seem too obvious now after all these years since the publication of Knowledge... (shrink)

The emerging concept of systems medicine (or ‘P4 medicine’—predictive, preventive, personalized and participatory) is at the vanguard of the post-genomic movement towards ‘precision medicine’. It is the medical application of systems biology, the biological study of wholes. Of particular interest, P4 systems medicine is currently promised as a revolutionary new biomedical approach that is holistic rather than reductionist. This article analyzes its concept of holism, both with regard to methods and conceptualization of health and disease. Rather than representing a medical (...) holism associated with basic humanistic ideas, we find a technoscientific holism resulting from altered technological and theoretical circumstances in biology. We argue that this holism, which is aimed at disease prevention and health optimization, points towards an expanded form of medicalization, which we call ‘holistic medicalization’: Each person’s whole life process is defined in biomedical, technoscientific terms as quantifiable and controllable and underlain a regime of medical control that is holistic in that it is all-encompassing. It is directed at all levels of functioning, from the molecular to the social, continual throughout life and aimed at managing the whole continuum from cure of disease to optimization of health. We argue that this medicalization is a very concrete materialization of a broader trend in medicine and society, which we call ‘the medicalization of health and life itself’. We explicate this holistic medicalization, discuss potential harms and conclude by calling for preventive measures aimed at avoiding eventual harmful effects of overmedicalization in systems medicine (quaternary prevention). (shrink)

It used to be thought that folk psychology is the only game in town. Focusing merely on what people do will not allow you to predict what they are likely to do next. For that, you must consider their beliefs, desires, intentions, etc. Recent evidence from developmental psychology and fMRI studies indicates that this conclusion was premature. We parse motion in an environment as behavior of a particular type, and behavior thus construed can feature in systematizations that we know. Building (...) on the view that folk psychological knowledge is knowledge of theoretical models, I argue that social knowledge is best understood as lying on a continuum between behavioral and full-blown psychological models. Between the two extremes, we have what I call social models. Social models represent social structures in terms of their overall purpose and circumscribe individuals' roles within them. These models help us predict what others will do or plan what we should do without providing information about what agents think or want. Thinking about social knowledge this way gives us a more nuanced picture of what capacities are engaged in social planning and interaction, and gives us a better tool with which to think about the social knowledge of animals and young children. (shrink)

We are living in a time of meta-organics and post-biology, where we perceive everything in our world as customizable and changeable. Modelling biology within a technological context allows us to investigate GEO-volutionary alternatives/alterations to our original natural systems, where augmentation and transmutation become standards in search of overall betterment (Genetically Engineered Organics). Our expectations for technology exceeds ubiquitous access and functional perfection and enters the world of technoetics, where our present hyper-functional, immersively multi-apped, borderline-prosthetic, global village devices fail to satiate (...) our desires to be synaptically surpassed. Most real-time interactive behavioural systems in art utilize two and three dimensions. Artificial neural networks and prediction (Latin: from pr- before plus dicere to say) systems give rise to experimentation within the third-plus-one (3+1) dimension of the spacetime continuum. Spacetime in accordance with string theory requires the where and when to describe something in existence, rather than mere points in space. It explains the workings of the universe from both super-galactic and subatomic levels. Physical cosmology studies the motions of the celestial bodies in relation to the first cause (ie. primum movens) or the source of all-being. In book 12 of Metaphysics, Aristotle spoke of something which moves without (itself) being moved (by anything), and referred to being as motion. In quantum mechanics, a particle is described by a wave. Physiognomy is an evolving area of psychological research that describes a direct correlation between human gesture (or movement) and thought. Early twentieth-century Persian philosopher Abdul-Baha mentioned that the reality of man is his thought, not his material body. Prediction systems apply models of the mind, or artificial neural networks and machine learning strategies, to use the recorded past with the present to anticipate the future. This article investigates existing human and artificial psychic systems in hopes of identifying tools necessary in building a gesture prediction system. The relationship of intent to gesture and whether intent can be perceived without the evidence of gesture are two factors that must be tested. (shrink)

Biogenic approaches investigate cognition from the standpoint of evolutionary function, asking what cognition does for a living system and then looking for common principles and exhibitions of cognitive strategies in a vast array of living systems—non-neural to neural. One worry which arises for the biogenic approach is that it is overly permissive in terms of what it construes as cognition. In this paper I critically engage with a recent instance of this way of criticising biogenic approaches in order to clarify (...) their theoretical commitments and prospects. In his critique of the biogenic approach, Fred Adams uses the presence of intentional states with conceptual content as a criterion to demarcate cognition-driven behaviour from mere sensory response. In this paper I agree with Adams that intentionality is the mark of the cognitive, but simultaneously reject his overly restrictive conception of intentionality. I argue that understanding intentionality simpliciter as the mark of the mental is compatible with endorsing the biogenic approach. I argue that because cognitive science is not exclusively interested in behaviour driven by intentional states with the kind of content Adams demands, the biogenic approach’s status as an approach to cognition is not called into question. I then go on to propose a novel view of intentionality whereby it is seen to exist along a continuum which increases in the degree of representational complexity: how far into the future representational content can be directed and drive anticipatory behaviour. Understanding intentionality as existing along a continuum allows biogenic approaches and anthropogenic approaches to investigate the same overarching capacity of cognition as expressed in its different forms positioned along the continuum of intentionality. Even if all organisms engage in some behaviour that is driven by weak intentional dynamics, this does not suggest that every behaviour of all organisms is so driven. As such, the worry that the biogenic approach is overly permissive can be avoided. (shrink)

: This paper argues for the consistency of adverse possession in land with a strict Lockean-liberatarian understanding of property rights due to the impermanence of man-made improvements by which unowned property is originally appropriated. This approach to property rights reconciles left- and right-libertarian positions as end points on a continuum of “temporal attitudes” toward property retention. ….

Nurses practising in mental health are faced with challenging decisions concerning confidentiality if a patient is deemed a potential risk to self or others, because releasing pertinent information pertaining to the patient may be necessary to circumvent harm. However, decisions to withhold or disclose confidential information that are inappropriately made may lead to adverse outcomes for stakeholders, including nurses and their patients. Nonetheless, there is a dearth of contemporary research literature to advise nurses in these circumstances. Cognitive Continuum Theory (...) presents a single‐system intuitive‐analytical approach to examining and understanding nurse cognition, analogous to the recommended single‐system approach to decision‐making in mental health known as structured clinical judgement. Both approaches incorporate cognitive poles of wholly intuition and analysis and a dynamic continuum characterised by a ‘common sense’ blending of intuitive and analytical cognition, whereby cues presented to a decision‐maker for judgement tasks are weighed and assessed for relevance. Furthermore, Cognitive Continuum Theory promotes the importance of determining pattern recognition and functional relations strategies, which can be used to understand the operationalisation of nurse cognition. (shrink)

Although Barsalou is right in identifying the importance of perceptual symbols as a means of carrying certain kinds of content, he is wrong in playing down the inferential resources available to amodal symbols. I argue that the case for perceptual symbol systems amounts to a false dichotomy and that it is feasible to help oneself to both kinds of content as extreme ends on a content continuum. The continuum thesis I advance argues for the inferential content at one (...) end and perceptual content at the other. In between the extremes, symbols might have aspects that are either perceptual or propositional-linguistic in character. I argue that this way of characterising the issue preserves the good sense of Barsalou's recognition of perceptual representations and yet avoids the tendency to minimise the gains won with symbolic representations vital to contemporary cognitive science. (shrink)

Gambles which induce the decision-maker to experience ambiguity about the relative likelihood of events often give rise to ambiguity-seeking and ambiguity-avoidance, which imply violation of additivity and Savage's axioms. The inability of the subjective Bayesian theory to account for these empirical regularities has determined a dichotomy between normative and descriptive views of subjective probability. This paper proposes a framework within which the two perspectives can be reconciled. First, a formal definition of ambiguity is given over a continuum ranging from (...) ignorance to risk, and including ambiguous contexts as subsets. Second, it is shown that the systems of inductive logic account for the effects of ambiguity. Then, Carnap's X-system is applied as a psychological model and compared to Einhorn and Hogarth's non-normative psychological model. Finally, the implications of this research to the modeling of subjective probability judgements are discussed. (shrink)

It is often argued that the indispensability of continuum models comes from their empirical adequacy despite their decoupling from the microscopic details of the modelled physical system. There is thus a commonly held misconception that temperature varying across a region of space or time can always be accurately represented as a continuous function. We discuss three inter-related cases of temperature modelling — in phase transitions, thermal boundary resistance and slip flows — and show that the continuum view is (...) fallacious on the ground that the microscopic details of a physical system are not necessarily decoupled from continuum models. We show how temperature discontinuities are present in both data (experiments and simulations) and phenomena (theory and models) and how discontinuum models of temperature variation may have greater empirical adequacy and explanatory power. The conclusions of our paper are: a) continuum idealisations are not indispensable to modelling physical phenomena and both continuous and discontinuous representations of phenomena work depending on the context; b) temperature is not necessarily a continuously defined function in our best scientific representations of the world; and c) that its continuity, where applicable, is a contingent matter. We also raise a question as to whether discontinuous representations should be considered truly de-idealised descriptions of physical phenomena. (shrink)

Key words: the continuum, structuralism, conceptual structuralism, basic structural conceptions, Euclidean geometry, Hilbertian geometry, the real number system, settheoretical conceptions, phenomenological conceptions, foundational conceptions, physical conceptions.

This book addresses one of the most urgent questions in American society today, one that is currently in the spotlight and hotly debated on all sides: Who shall rule the schools--parents or educators? _School Choice or Best Systems: What Improves Education?_ presents an overview of research and practical applications of innovative--even radical--school reforms being implemented across the United States. These fall along a continuum ranging from "parental choice" to "best systems." At the one extreme are schools of choice, which (...) allow parents to choose and even govern schools for their children. These include charter schools, traditional private and parochial schools, schools that are privately governed but publicly funded through vouchers, and those that are funded by private scholarships provided by both corporations and wealthy individuals. At the other extreme are centralized state or district systems, based on reform initiatives and new systems of education that have been developed in response to views of citizens and legislators that schools can do much better. These schools, which specify uniform goals, policies, and programs for each school, are highly innovative systems based on research or representing advanced thinking about "what works," and have attracted wide interest. Important questions related to schools of choice and best systems are addressed: How can we choose among schools of choice and best systems? Among the various approaches within each of these alternatives? How can we understand their guiding principles and operational practices? What results do they produce? How can we evaluate their claims? In choosing among the alternatives, how should issues of student achievement, accountability, costs, feasibility, and equity be factored in? This volume brings together leading researchers and education leaders who have carried out the latest studies and advances in the field, providing a forum for them to set forth the arguments and evidence that will be most helpful in making choices for tomorrow's schools. It does not provide a single "right" answer--values and preferences differ across parents, schools, districts, and states. However, there are benefits for all from seeing the rigorous research, challenging thinking, and alternate points of view this volume presents. (shrink)

Turing tersely mentioned a notion of ``cultural search'' while otherwise deeply engaged in the design and operations of one of the earliest computers. His idea situated the individual squarely within a collaborative intellectual environment, but did he mean to suggest this in the form of a general information system? In the same writing Turing forecast mechanizations of proofs and outlined genetical searches, much later implemented in cellular automata. The conjecture explores the networked data-information-knowledge continuum as the subject of Turing's (...) notions of search and intelligence, using analogous models from library systems theory. Floridi's philosophy of information is posed as a potential guide to applied information services design of the Turing type. The initial problem is to identify a minimal set of assumptions from Turing's essay beyond the general context of computing. This set will form a bridge to an analogous set of principles in library systems models by eliciting supporting evidence in the literature relating the two. Finally it will be shown how Floridi's philosophy of information more fully encompasses Turing's insight in view of the conjecture. (shrink)

There inevitably comes a time when even the best informed minds are tempted to yield to the lure of binarism: when we are no longer concerned with the details of a system, but rather with our vision of the relationship between man and the world. Without going any further it can already be said that the problem of existence is presented to us in terms of a man/world duality, as though we were unable to exceed our subjective vision of things (...) so as to assess their intrinsic reality.When linguists discovered that they could isolate discrete units called phonemes, they were tempted to oppose the discontinuity of these phonemes – reflecting the underlying discontinuity of the signifiers – to a continuum of prelinguistic experience, a continuum that is not arranged as discrete elements except with reference to any significant units of the language selected for the purpose of communicating this experience to others. At the outset we have nothing but a nebulous mass where only the application of a linguistic grid allows us to discern identifiable units. Even if, in the final analysis, it will prove necessary to doubt the universal validity of this vision of things, we must recognize its usefulness in concretizing a concept of linguistic facts – a concept that has for some time played a beneficent role in research. At least for some of us, this vision should reflect the manner in which the world is gradually organized in our minds each time a perceptible reality is isolated from its context at the instant it receives a name. Allow me to introduce an illustration from personal experience. It was the last day of July in 1914. In our little village in the Savoy the international tension – which would eventually end in general mobilization – was very perceptible; our classes were idle, and teachers and pupils had settled down in a field near the school. I was six. Sitting on the grass, my attention was attracted by a plant with large flat leaves. At that moment someone said the word plantain “plantain.” The plant had not been heretofore exactly unknown to me; it didn't strike me, at that moment, as a discovery; but it acquired a distinct existence only at that instant in the green carpet of the field when a signifier had definitively isolated it. It was most assuredly the gravity of the hour that engraved this incident in my memory. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the cognitive system is best viewed as a continuum of cognitive processing from modules to central systems rather than having these as discrete and wholly different modes of cognitive processing. I rely on recent evidence on the development of theory of mind (ToM) abilities and the developmental disorder of autism. I then turn to the phenomenology of modular processes. I show that modular outputs have a stronger force than non-modular or central system outputs. (...) I then evaluate social cognitions and show them to occupy a middle ground with respect to phenomenal strength between modular and non-modular outputs. The evidence presented then seems to indicate a continuum of cognitive processing rather than the traditional division between modules and central systems. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:240 Feminist Studies 45, no. 1. © 2019 by Mary Anna Evans Mary Anna Evans Personal Continuum The scent of gasoline is neither attractive nor repulsive. It falls somewhere on the continuum between. It is medicinal, but without the acrid bitterness of medicine. It draws children like a drug, but only when their parents aren’t hovering to warn of danger. Adults know about fire and poisoning and (...) long-range carcinogenic doom. Children only know that the odor around gas pumps smells naughty and fun, until their lips open and the flavor of petroleum turns their stomachs. Why do some things smell so much better than they taste? Gasoline, unlike honey, draws humans but not flies. Sarah was not thinking of fire, poisoning, or doom when she fitted the long metal nozzle into the mouth of her car’s fuel tank. She was trying not to think at all, though the customary thoughts slipped in. None of them were about gasoline. The pump’s air pollution control system was working well but not perfectly, so it took a moment for the odor to reach her nose. Her body roused and snarled at her. The baby. What are you thinking? If you breathe those fumes, what will they do to the baby? A moment passed while her body checked itself, remembering what it already knew. There was no baby. Where is the baby? Mary Anna Evans 241 The frantic voice didn’t echo between her ears. It had nothing to do with her brain at all. It was more than thought. It came from a place deeper than thought, and it wasn’t hers. Her body said things she didn’t want to say, and it needed things she didn’t need. Her body wanted things that were not good for her. Again, Where is the baby? And then, the darker question. What did you do? “Nothing,” she said aloud, since there was no one to hear. I didn’t do anything but bleed. I’m still bleeding. She resisted the instinct to clap her hands over her ears to shut out the voice that couldn’t be shut out. Her defiant hold on the nozzle kept her upright. She listened to the rhythmic throb of the pump. Refusing to turn her face from the gasoline’s stench, she opened her mouth and let the fumes seep in. * * * “Hello, sweetheart,” Frederick said as he came in the door. His peck on the cheek didn’t linger, so Sarah knew there would be no more expressions of affection that day. He had read in a self-help book that it was important for couples to use terms of endearment as a form of bonding. Physical displays of affection were important, too, or so said the self-affirmed relationship expert who wrote the book. In public, displays of affection affirmed the pair bond. In private, even a quick smooch forced men and women to secrete an attachment chemical called oxy-whatever. Oh, hell. She was a chemist. She knew what oxytocin was. She was just mystified by the notion of reading a book to find out how to get some. He turned away and went into the kitchen to fetch the marinating chicken. He always grilled when it was his night to cook. She had come to wonder whether modern men were drawn to cook with fire by an ageold hunter instinct, or whether they were attracted to an activity that put a well-insulated exterior wall between them and the women who remained inside to toss the salads. All across America, every warm summer night, lonely women toss salads and hope for romance. His head poked in the back door. “I bought slivered almonds and croutons.” 242 Mary Anna Evans Her “Thanks for remembering, sweetheart,” bounced off the closing door. Shit. She could have spared herself that soulless term of endearment. Leaving the lettuce in the refrigerator, she thrust her soapy hands under warm running water, because even thinking the word “shit” made the idea of handling raw food appalling. Her body, which had forgotten again that she’d lost the baby, approved of her caution. She guarded her thoughts against disturbing its... (shrink)

In his monograph On Numbers and Games, J. H. Conway introduced a real-closed field containing the reals and the ordinals as well as a great many less familiar numbers including $-\omega, \,\omega/2, \,1/\omega, \sqrt{\omega}$ and $\omega-\pi$ to name only a few. Indeed, this particular real-closed field, which Conway calls No, is so remarkably inclusive that, subject to the proviso that numbers—construed here as members of ordered fields—be individually definable in terms of sets of NBG, it may be said to contain (...) “All Numbers Great and Small.” In this respect, No bears much the same relation to ordered fields that the system ℝ of real numbers bears to Archimedean ordered fields. In Part I of the present paper, we suggest that whereas $\mathbb{R}$should merely be regarded as constituting an arithmetic continuum, No may be regarded as a sort of absolute arithmetic continuum, and in Part II we draw attention to the unifying framework No provides not only for the reals and the ordinals but also for an array of non-Archimedean ordered number systems that have arisen in connection with the theories of non-Archimedean ordered algebraic and geometric systems, the theory of the rate of growth of real functions and nonstandard analysis. In addition to its inclusive structure as an ordered field, the system No of surreal numbers has a rich algebraico-tree-theoretic structure—a simplicity hierarchical structure—that emerges from the recursive clauses in terms of which it is defined. In the development of No outlined in the present paper, in which the surreals emerge vis-à-vis a generalization of the von Neumann ordinal construction, the simplicity hierarchical features of No are brought to the fore and play central roles in the aforementioned unification of systems of numbers great and small and in some of the more revealing characterizations of No as an absolute continuum. (shrink)

The 200-Year Continuum is the producer, recorder and exhibitor in Christian Kerrigan's advancing anthology of narratives. Central to Kerrigan's practice is storytelling and myth-making as a means of engaging his audience. Kerrigan uses drawing as his primary mode of research into these narratives which are consequently offered in the form of live Internet feed installations acting as ecological sites, collaborative scientific experiments introducing new organic technologies and digital images of worlds unseen. Each addition acts as a middle story within (...) The 200-Year Continuum. In his narrative, The Amber Clock, a ship is grown in the yew forest, Kingley Vale, over 200 years. As such, he explores the possibilities of time in relationship to technology and the natural world. In his narrative, artificial and wild systems are choreographed, and the natural production of resin is harvested from the yew trees as a way of measuring time. Biological imperatives are harnessed in a second collaborative architectural project entitled Living Architecture: The Protocell. This project seeks to investigate the design potential of using the drivers of biology, the technological issues and the implications of intervention. (shrink)

We develop a point-free construction of the classical one- dimensional continuum, with an interval structure based on mereology and either a weak set theory or logic of plural quantification. In some respects this realizes ideas going back to Aristotle,although, unlike Aristotle, we make free use of classical "actual infinity". Also, in contrast to intuitionistic, Bishop, and smooth infinitesimal analysis, we follow classical analysis in allowing partitioning of our "gunky line" into mutually exclusive and exhaustive disjoint parts, thereby demonstrating the (...) independence of "indecomposability" from a non-punctiform conception. It is surprising that such simple axioms as ours already imply the Archimedean property and that they determine an isomorphism with the Dedekind-Cantor structure of R as a complete, separable, ordered field. We also present some simple topological models of our system, establishing consistency relative to classical analysis. Finally, after describing how to nominalize our theory, we close with comparisons with earlier efforts related to our own. (shrink)

Unitary field theories and “SUPER-GUT” theories work with an universal continuum, the structured spacetime of R. Descartes, B. Spinoza, B. Riemann, and A. Einstein, or a (Machian (1–3) ) structured vacuum according the quantum theory of unitary fields (Dirac, (4,5) and Heisenberg (6–8) ). The atomistic aspect of the substantial world is represented by the fundamental constants which are invariant against “all transformations” and which “depend on nothings” (Planck (9–11) ). A satisfactory unitary theory has to involve these constants (...) like the mathematical numbers. Today, Planck's conception of the three elementary constants ħ, c, and G may be the key to general relativistic quantum field theory like unitary theory. However, the elementary constants are a question of measurement-theory, also.According to Popper's theory (12–16) of induction, such unitary theories are “universal explaining theories.” The fundamental constants involve the complementarity between the universal statements in unitary theory and the “basic statements” in the language of classical observables. (shrink)

The physical and relational structure of the biologic continuum (both internal and external to the organism) creates the information signature that is the basis for the origination of meaning in the living system. A meaning metric can be grounded in the significance of that information to the stability of the system during the process of adaptive reconciliation of divergences from the steady state condition. From this perspective, an information-theoretic formulation of the process for translating incident information into adaptive action (...) is proposed that can be practically used in defining and quantifying the meaning of that information for the living system. (shrink)

Propositional logic is understood as a set of theorems defined by a deductive system: a set of axioms and a set of rules. Superintuitionistic logic is a logic extending intuitionistic propositional logic \. A rule is admissible for a logic if any substitution that makes each premise a theorem, makes the conclusion a theorem too. A deductive system \ is structurally complete if any rule admissible for the logic defined by \ is derivable in \. It is known that any (...) logic can be defined by a structurally complete deductive system—its structural completion. The main goal of the paper is to study the following problem: given a superintuitionistic logic L, is the structural completion of L hereditarily structurally complete? It is shown that, on the one hand, there is continuum many of such logics, including \, and many of its standard extensions. On the other hand, there is continuum many superintutitionistic logics structural completion of which is not hereditarily structurally complete. It is observed that the class of hereditarily structurally complete superintuitionistic consequence relations does not have the smallest element and it contains continuum many members lacking the finite model property. The following statement is instrumental in obtaining negative results: if a Lindenbaum algebra of formulas on one variable is finite and has more than 15 elements, then a structural completion of such a logic is not hereditarily structurally complete. (shrink)

In scientific modeling, continuum idealizations bridge scales but at the cost of fundamentally misrepresenting the microstructure of the system. This engenders a mystery. If continuum idealizations are dispensable in principle, this de-problematizes their representational inaccuracy, since continuum properties reduce to lower-scale properties, but the mystery of how this reduction could be carried out endures. Alternatively, if continuum idealizations are indispensable in principle, this is consistent with their explanatory and predictive success but renders their representational inaccuracy mysterious. (...) I argue for a deflationary solution, enlisting the applied scientific method of upscaling as demonstrated in a case from soil hydrology. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophy of science has seen a growing trend towards a focus on scientific practice over the epistemic outputs that such practices produce. This practice-oriented approach has yielded a clearer understanding of how reductive research strategies play a central role in contemporary scientific inquiry. In parallel, a growing body of work has sought to explore the role of non-reductive, or systems-level, research strategies. As a result, the relationship between reductive and non-reductive scientific practices is becoming of increased importance. In this (...) paper, I provide a framework within which research strategies can be compared. I argue that no strategy is reductive or non-reductive simpliciter, rather strategies are more, or are less, reductive than one another according to a frame of reference. That frame of reference is provided by a continuum of possible ways in which the target system might be conceptualised. I illustrate the utility of the framework by deploying it to analyse a recent debate in cancer research. When set within the framework, a prominent reductive strategy—the somatic mutation theory—and a prominent non-reductive strategy—the tissue organisational field theory—do not stand opposed to one another. Rather, they serve as boundary markers to chart the territory of approaches to carcinogenesis within which most strategies in the field fall. (shrink)

It is shown how the temporal-modal system of events TM (axiomatized in Appendix) allows for the avoidance of the logical determinism without the rejection of the principle of bivalence. The point is that the temporal and the modal parts of TM are so inter-related that modalities are in-the-real-world-inherent modalities independently of whether they concern actual or only possible events. Though formulated in a tenseless language, whose interpretation does not require the assumption of tense facts at the basic level of reality, (...) TM implies an objective, observer-independent difference between tenses based only on the way in which modalities are distributed along the time continuum. The conclusion is that the arrow of time is an intra-model characteristic of any model of TM that describes the non-deterministic real world up to a certain point of its history, while the flow of time is an inter-model characteristic of the continuous transition between these models. (shrink)

In this third paper in a series on stochastic electrodynamics (SED), the nonrelativistic dipole approximation harmonic oscillator-zero-point field system is subjected to an arbitrary classical electromagnetic radiation field. The ensemble-averaged phase-space distribution and the two independent ensemble-averaged Liouville or Fokker-Planck equations that it satisfies are derived in closed form without furtner approximation. One of these Liouville equations is shown to be exactly equivalent to the usual Schrödinger equation supplemented by small radiative corrections and an explicit radiation reaction (RR) vector potential (...) that is similar to the Crisp-Jaynes semiclassical theory (SCT) RR potential. The wave function in this SED Schrödinger equation is shown to have thea priori significance of position probability amplitude. The other Liouville equation has no counterpart in ordinary quantum mechanics, and is shown to restrict initial conditions such that (i) The Wigner-type phase-space distribution is always positive, (ii) in the absence of an applied field, the only allowed solution of both equations is the quantum ground state, and (iii) if a previously applied field is suddenly turned off, then spontaneous transitions occur, with no need for a triggering perturbation as in SCT, until the system is in the ground state. It is also shown that the oscillator energy is a fluctuating quantity that must take on a continuum of values, with average value equal to the quantum ground-state energy plus a contribution due to the applied classical field. (shrink)

It is very tempting to try to reconcile perception and cognition perceptual symbol systems may be a good way to achieve this; but is there actually a perception-cognition continuum? We offer several arguments for and against the existence of such a continuum and in favor of the choice of perceptual symbol systems. One of these arguments is purely theoretical, some are based on PET-scan observations and others are based on research with handicapped subjects who have communication problems associated (...) with cerebral lesions. These arguments suggest that modal perceptual symbols do indeed exist and that perception and cognition might have a common neuronal basis; but perceptual and cognitive activities require the activation of different neuronal structures. (shrink)

Truly transforming the healthcare delivery and payment system turns on the ability to engage in the interoperable electronic exchange of patient health information across and beyond the care continuum. Achieving transformation requires a legal framework that supports information sharing with appropriate privacy and security protections and a trusted governance structure.

In a number of works, we have suggested that whereas the ordered field R of real numbers should merely be regarded as constituting an arithmetic continuum (modulo the Archimedean axiom), the ordered field No of surreal numbers may be regarded as a sort of absolute arithmetic continuum (modulo NBG). In the present chapter, as part of a more general exposition of the absolute arithmetic continuum, we will outline some of the properties of the system of surreal numbers (...) that we believe lend credence to this mathematico-philosophical thesis. We will also provide an overview of No’s rich structure as a simplicity-hierarchical (or s-hierarchical) ordered field that recursively emerges from the interplay between its structure as an ordered field and its structure as a lexicographically ordered full binary tree. Finally, we will draw attention to how properties of the system of surreal numbers considered as an s-hierarchical ordered algebraic structure can be appealed to in conjunction with classical relations between ordered algebraic and geometric systems to help resolve, for the surreal case, one of the purported difficulties that lies at the heart of attempts to bridge the gap between the domains of number and of geometrical magnitude. In particular, we will explain how it is possible that despite the fact that every surreal number, considered as a member of an s-hierarchical ordered field, differs from every other in characteristic individual properties, the absolute (Euclidean) geometrical continuum, which is modeled by the Cartesian space over the ordered field No of surreal numbers, appears as an amorphous pulp of points that display little individuality. (shrink)

This paper is dedicated to a critical discussion of the logical-philosophical conceptions of language that are presented in Rolandas Pavilionis’ book Language. Logic. Philosophy, its primary focus being an analysis of Pavilionis’ hypothesis of meaning as nonverbal continuous system. The paper consists of two parts. Two types of theories of meaning are distinguished and an analysis of the discussed conceptions of natural languages is proposed in the first, analytic, part of the paper: assumptions that are relevant for the philosophical semantics (...) are identified and used for clarification of the presuppositions of the alternative semantic programme advanced by Pavilionis. Two shortcomings of Pavilionis’ semantic theory are presented in the second, critical, part of the paper. First, it is maintained that Pavilionis’ theory of understanding, which suggests taking the notion of interpretation as fundamental, is unacceptable: interpretation is an enabling, not a constitutive condition of understanding. Second, due to the lack of discussion of the epistemic aspects of meaning and the relation between concepts and conceptual capacities, it remains unclear what theoretical value can be carried by the idea of innate concepts and how can it be made compatible with externalistic aspects of this semantic theory. (shrink)

This study aimed to explore the enabling context of the HIV care continuum as perceived by people living with HIV and healthcare professionals. This qualitative study involved in‐depth individual interviews with eight people living with HIV and group interviews with seven nurses and physicians. These interviews took place between March 5, 2021, and July 13, 2022. Thematic analysis was conducted. The main themes that emerged included “network of support and systems,” “personal gains from the care continuum,” “continuity and (...) practicality of healthcare services,” “presence of significant other(s),” and “social belonging.” These themes were structured within the five levels of the socio‐ecological model (system, individual, organizational, interpersonal, and community levels), and 10 subthemes were identified. With the integration of themes, the enabling context was compared to a “care orbit,” indicating that people diagnosed with HIV start treatment at the system level and continue HIV care at other levels. In addition to primary support at the system level, the enabling context also includes individual commitment to care and regular health habits, hospital services, support from significant others, and community culture. Together, the context helps guide people living with HIV into the “orbit” of the care system. (shrink)

One of the most influential scientific treatises in Cauchy's era was J.-L. Lagrange's Mécanique Analytique, the second edition of which came out in 1811, when Cauchy was barely out of his teens. Lagrange opens his treatise with an unequivocal endorsement of infinitesimals. Referring to the system of infinitesimal calculus, Lagrange writes:Lorsqu'on a bien conçu l'esprit de ce système, et qu'on s'est convaincu de l'exactitude de ses résultats par la méthode géométrique des premières et dernières raisons, ou par la méthode analytique (...) des fonctions dérivées, on peut employer les infiniment petits comme un instrument sûr et commode pour abréger et simplifier les demonstrations.Lagrange's renewed enthusiasm for .. (shrink)

When so much is being written on conscious experience, it is past time to face the question whether experience happens that is not conscious of itself. The recognition that we and most other living things experience non-consciously has recently been firmly supported by experimental science, clinical studies, and theoretic investigations; the related if not identical philosophic notion of experience without a subject has a rich pedigree. Leaving aside the question of how experience could become conscious of itself, I aim here (...) to demonstrate that the terms experience and consciousness are not interchangeable. Experience is a notoriously difficult concept to pin down, but I see non-conscious experience as based mainly in momentary sensations, relational between bodies or systems, and probably common throughout the natural world. If this continuum of experience — from non-conscious, to conscious, to self-transcending awareness — can be understood and accepted, radical constructivism (the “outside” world as a construct of experience) will gain a firmer foundation, panexperientialism (a living universe) may gain credibility, and psi will find its medium. (shrink)

There are important studies that have directly focused on how, in times of conflict, it is possible for previously law abiding people to commit the most atrocious acts of cruelty and violence. The work of Erich Fromm, Hannah Arendt, Zygmunt Bauman and Ernest Becker have all contemplated the driving force of aggression and mass violence to further our understanding of how people are capable of engaging in extreme forms of cruelty and violence. This paper specifically addresses these issues by focusing (...) on C. P. Taylor’s play Good. This provocative play examines how a seemingly ‘good’ and intelligent university professor can gradually become caught up in the workings of the Third Reich. Taylor highlights the importance of appreciating how people can be steadily incorporated into an ideologically destructive system. I argue that the theatre is a powerful medium to explore these complex issues. The audience of Good find themselves confronted with the following question—‘What would you have done?’. (shrink)

This essay critically examines the emerging view among some ethnologists that replicable models of sustainable management of tropical forests may be found within the knowledge systems of contemporary indigenous peoples. As idealized epistemological types, several characteristics distinguishing “indigenous” from “modern” knowledge systems are described. Two culturally distinctive land use systems in Latin America are compared, one developed by an indigenous group, the Huastec Maya, and the other characteristic of colonist farms in Rondonia, Brazil. While each of these systems reflects a (...) different cultural-historical tradition, I argue that the process of knowledge formation and cultural adaptation is coevolutionary and continuous in both cases. The very concept of “indigenous” as a discrete analytic category is questioned; indigenicity alone cannot explain local adaptation of farming systems. Rather than dichotomize indigenous and colonist knowledge as inherently different categories, differences in land use patterns between such social groups may be more accurately viewed as reflecting different points on a single epistemological continuum. (shrink)

This phenomenological research investigates how it is possible to determine the extent to which a chromatic colour appears white and black in order to use it to build a new Colour Rendering Index. We tested two methods of subjective evaluation; in the first, the perceptual presence of white (and black) in a colour alone was assessed on a unipolar intensity scale, independently for the two attributes. In the second method, evaluations of whiteness (and blackness) were conducted for colours presented in (...) a sequence ordered from the least to the greatest presence of the respective attribute. In both tests evaluations were made either by moving an arrow on a slider from left (minimum) to right (maximum) or by choosing a grey cylinder that matched the same degree of similarity to white (and black) as the test colour. In four experiments, 16 colours of 4 hues and 4 different shades were studied; in a fifth experiment, 48 colours, 12 for each quadrant of the colour wheel, were studied; finally, in another test, 10 greys were studied. In the first three experiments, the results were unexpected, as the evaluations of whiteness and blackness were complementary, adding up to 100%, while in the current NCS, 100% includes not only the evaluation of white and black but also that of chromaticness, therefore white and black are not complementary. In the fourth and fifth experiments, the sum of the evaluations of white and black was always less than 100%, in accordance with the present NCS. In the last experiment, the evaluations of white and black given independently to the 10 greys samples were complementary, confirming the bipolar nature of white-black continuum. Suggestions have been provided to resolve the discrepancy between the results of this research and the structure of the current NCS. (shrink)

This thesis is about experiential content: what it is; what kind of account can be given of it. I am concerned with identifying and attacking one main view - I call it the inferentialist proposal. This account is central to the philosophy of mind, epistemology and philosophy of science and perception. I claim, however, that it needs to be recast into something far more subtle and enriched, and I attempt to provide a better alternative in these pages. The inferentialist proposal (...) holds that experiential content is necessarily under¬pinned by sophisticated cognitive influences. My alternative, the continuum theory, holds that these influences are relevant to experience only at certain levels of organisation and that at other levels there are contents which such features do not capture at all. Central to my account is that there are degrees to which cognitive influences affect experiential content; indeed, for the most part, experience is an amalgam of both inferential and non-inferential features. I claim that the inferentialist proposal is fundamentally flawed and deserves replacement, and I argue that my alternative fills the hollow that remains. The thesis is divided into four sections. In Part I, Chapter 1, I introduce two traditionally rival views of experiential content. In Chapter 2, I develop my continuum alternative. Chapter 3 assesses the relationship between experience and language, while Chapter 4 explores the relationship between beliefs and experience. The overall argument is that it has been a mistake to understand experience simply in inferential or non-inferential terms. In Part II, I examine the structure of mental content. Chapter 5 is concerned with the kinds of experiences which escape the inferentialist analysis. Chapter 6 considers Kant’s metaphysic of experience counterpointed to Lorenz’s reading of his work in the light of evolutionary biology. Chapter 7 treats animal experience in relation to the continuum view I am developing, while Chapter 8 reviews Fodor’s contribution to perceptual psychology. It is argued that the view of experiential content being developed is both consistent with empirical data on informationally local perceptual sub-systems, but also accords well with evolutionary theory and a naturalist interpretation of Kant’s taxonomy. Part III deals with inferentialism in the philosophy of science. In Chapter 9, I assess the theory dependence of observation thesis as it is advanced by Paul Feyerabend. I bring out of his account a subtle confusion concerning the importance of inference in the context of scientific inquiry. Part IV deals with the issue of experience in the philosophy of mind. In Chapter 10, I look at Wilfred Sellars’s attack on sense data theories. Chapter 11 confronts Paul Churchland’s treatment of ‘folk psychology’ while Chapter 12 isolates the issue of experiential qualia and the position of property dualism. I offer a critical review of Thomas Nagel’s work in this chapter and claim that his position can be read in a way which is consistent with the continuum account I am developing. I conclude the thesis in the usual fashion with a summary of the central claims. (shrink)

Structure entails arrangements and interrelations of parts that organize the whole (i.e., personality). It involves stability of traits over time. Extraversion varies along a continuum towards introversion. Multiple behavioral and biological variables in several systems vary and are regulated homeostatically within the normal range. If there is a fixed point for an individual, what inhibits variation in the biological parameter?

This article attempts to link the notion of absolute ego as the ultimate subjectivity of consciousness in continental tradition with a phenomenology of Mathematical Continuum as this term is generally established following Cantor’s pioneering ideas on the properties and cardinalities of sets. My motivation stems mainly from the inherent ambiguities underlying the nature and properties of this fundamental mathematical notion which, in my view, cannot be resolved in principle by the analytical means of any formal language not even by (...) the addition of any new axioms to a consistent first-order axiomatical system such as the Zermelo-Fraenkel Set Theory. In this phenomenologically motivated approach I deal, to some extent, with the undecidability of a fundamental statement about the cardinality of Continuum inside ZFC theory, namely the Continuum Hypothesis, and also with the underlying root of Gödel’s first incompleteness result.Este artigo procura conectar a noção de ego absoluto enquanto subjetividade última da consciência na tradição continental com a fenomenologia da matemática do contínuo tal como este termo foi estabelecido seguindo as idéias pioneiras de Cantor sobre as propriedades e cardinalidade de conjuntos. Minha motivação deriva basicamente das ambigüidades subjacentes à natureza e propriedades desta noção matemática fundamental as quais, no meu entender, não podem, em princípio, ser resolvidas pelos meios analíticos de qualquer linguagem formal e nem mesmo pela adição de novos axiomas a um sistema axiomático consistente de primeira ordem como a teoria de conjuntos de Zermelo Fraenkel . Neste tratamento fenomenológica-mente motivado eu lido em certa medida com a indecidibilidade de uma tese fundamental sobre a cardinalidade do contínuo em ZFC, a saber, a Hipótese do Contínuo, e também com aquilo que está na base do primeiro resultado de incompletude de Gödel. (shrink)

This paper discusses some of C. S. Peirce’s insights about continuity in his attempt to grasp the concept of the mathematical continuum. After a discussion of his earlier notions which he called ‘Kanticity’ and ‘Aristotelicity’ we arrive at his later belief that a continuum is rather a system of potential points. In his mature views, Peirce grasps a continuum as “a whole range of possibilities” without points at all. In the sequel, we turn to take into account (...) some of Leibniz’s attempts to deal with continuity and the continuum and we compare Peirce and Leibniz’s approaches detecting certain impressive similarities and differences. (shrink)

We study cardinal invariants of systems of meager hereditary families of subsets of ω connected with the collapse of the continuum by Sacks forcing S and we obtain a cardinal invariant yω such that S collapses the continuum to yω and y ≤ yω ≤ b. Applying the Baumgartner-Dordal theorem on preservation of eventually narrow sequences we obtain the consistency of y = yω < b. We define two relations $\leq _{0}^{\ast}$ and $\leq _{1}^{\ast}$ on the set $(^{\omega}\omega)_{{\rm (...) Fin}}$ of finite-to-one functions which are Tukey equivalent to the eventual dominance relation of functions such that if $\germ{F}\subseteq (^{\omega}\omega)_{Fin}$ is $\leq _{1}^{\ast}$ -unbounded, well-ordered by $\leq _{1}^{\ast}$ , and not $\leq _{0}^{\ast}$ -dominating, then there is a nonmeager p-ideal. The existence of such a system F follows from Martin's axiom. This is an analogue of the results of [3], [9, 10] for increasing functions. (shrink)

We aim to show that Kant’s theory of time is consistent by providing axioms whose models validate all synthetic a priori principles for time proposed in the Critique of Pure Reason. In this paper we focus on the distinction between time as form of intuition and time as formal intuition, for which Kant’s own explanations are all too brief. We provide axioms that allow us to construct ‘time as formal intuition’ as a pair of continua, corresponding to time as ‘inner (...) sense’ and the external representation of time as a line Both continua are replete with infinitesimals, which we use to elucidate an enigmatic discussion of ‘rest’ in the Metaphysical foundations of natural science. Our main formal tools are Alexandroff topologies, inverse systems and the ring of dual numbers. (shrink)

Since the emergence of computing as a mode of investigation in the sciences, computational approaches have revolutionised many fields of inquiry. Recently in philosophy, the question has begun rendering bit by bit—could computation be considered a deeper fundamental building block to all of reality? This paper proposes a continuum computing construct, predicated on a set of core computational principles: computability, discretisation, stability and optimisation. The construct is applied to the set of most fundamental physical laws, in the form of (...) non-relativistic conservation equations which underpin our governing physics. The discretisation approach divides all of space into a mesh of discrete computational cells, and evolution of data in those cells must obey pre-defined stability conditions from established continuum computing theory, namely, the Courant–Friedrichs–Lewy condition. Evolving cell-state data in a manner which logically optimises computational efficiency, combined with the defined stability condition, the construct derives a central coupling of space, time, and the fastest speed of information propagation. This coupling formed at the lowest level by the computing construct, naturally and inherently produces aspects of special relativity and general relativity at the macroscale. This paper therefore proposes a new explanation of why the nature of space and time may be fused, and explores simple emergent congruities with relativity. The theory invites us to reverse the philosophical premise of the original Simulation Argument. This argument currently leads us to consider: how might all of the observed physics of our reality be reproduced computationally in a simulation of our existence? This work asks instead: could foundations of the physics of our universe—namely spacetime coupling—emerge inherently, and necessarily, from fundamental principles of computation? (shrink)