This chapter is concerned with the representation of time and change in classical (i.e., non-quantum) physical theories. One of the main goals of the chapter is to attempt to clarify the nature and scope of the so-called problem of time: a knot of technical and interpretative problems that appear to stand in the way of attempts to quantize general relativity, and which have their roots in the general covariance of that theory. The most natural approach to these questions is via (...) a consideration of more clear cases. So much of the chapter is given over to a discussion of the representation of time and change in other, better understood theories, starting with the most straightforward cases and proceeding through a consideration of cases that lead up to the features of general relativity that are responsible for the problem of time. (shrink)

Le cours sur la dialectique (janvier-mai 1956) permet de comprendre l’épilogue des Aventures de la dialectique (janvier 1955) selon lequel « la dialectique se donne (…) la cohésion globale, primordiale, d’un champ d’expérience où chaque élément ouvre sur les autres » (p. 282). Loin de se contenter de l’exégèse des dialectiques historiques constituées (Hegel, Marx), le cours entend en effet retrouver le « plus pur de la dialectique » du côté de l’élaboration, y compris et surtout par des philosophies intuitives, (...) d’un « milieu commun » où«s’échangent les contradictoires ». Par un choc en retour, Merleau-Ponty y trouve également une inspiration pour une lecture renouvelée de Marx. The course on dialectic (January-May, 1956) helps to understand the epilogue of Adventures of the Dialectic (January, 1955), according to which “the dialectic […] provides the global and primordial cohesion of a field of experience wherein each element opens onto the others” (p.204). Far from contenting itself with the exegesis of historically constituted dialectics (Hegel, Marx), the course aims, in effect, to recover the “purest of the dialectic” via the elaboration – mostly through intuitive philosophies – of a “common milieu” where “the contradictories interchange.” Strikingly, Merleau-Ponty therein also finds inspiration for a renewed reading of Marx. Il corso sulla dialettica (gennaio-maggio 1956) ci permette di comprendere l’epilogo delle Avventure della dialettica (gennaio 1955) secondo cui “la dialettica si dà […] la coesione globale, primordiale, d’un campo d’esperienza in cui ogni elemento apre sugli altri” (p. 203). Lungi dall’accontentarsi dell’esegesi delle dialettiche storiche costituite (Hegel, Marx), il corso si propone piuttosto di ritrovare la dialettica nella sua purezza e di farne occasione di elaborazione, anche e soprattutto per le filosofie intuitive, di un “luogo comune” dove i contradditori si scambino. Di contraccolpo, Merleau-Ponty vi trova ugualmente ispirazione per una nuova lettura di Marx. (shrink)

Avant-propos.--Les principes de la morale positiviste et la conscience contemporaine, par G. Belot.--La morale de Renouvier, par A. Darlu.--La morale de Bastiat, par Ch. Gide.--La morale de Proudhon, par M. Bernès.--Karl Marx, par A. Landry.--Les idées morales de Vinet, par J.-E. Roberty.--La morale et la politique de Renan, par R. Allier.--Frédéric Nietzsche, par H. Lichtenberger.--Maurice Mæterlinck, par L. Brunschvicg.

This essay revisits some classic problems in the philosophy of space and time concerning the counting of possibilities. I argue that we should think that two Newtonian worlds can differ only as to when or where things happen and that general relativistic worlds can differ in something like the same way—the first of these theses being quaintly heterodox, the second baldly heretical, according to the mores of contemporary philosophy of physics.

It is widely thought that chance should be understood in reductionist terms: claims about chance should be understood as claims that certain patterns of events are instantiated. There are many possible reductionist theories of chance, differing as to which possible pattern of events they take to be chance-making. It is also widely taken to be a norm of rationality that credence should defer to chance: special cases aside, rationality requires that one’s credence function, when conditionalized on the chance-making facts, should (...) coincide with the objective chance function. It is a shortcoming of a theory of chance if it implies that this norm of rationality is unsatisfiable. The primary goal of this paper is to show, on the basis of considerations concerning computability and inductive learning, that this shortcoming is more common than one would have hoped. (shrink)

Under so-called primitive ontology approaches, in fully describing the history of a quantum system, one thereby attributes interesting properties to regions of spacetime. Primitive ontology approaches, which include some varieties of Bohmian mechanics and spontaneous collapse theories, are interesting in part because they hold out the hope that it should not be too difficult to make a connection between models of quantum mechanics and descriptions of histories of ordinary macroscopic bodies. But such approaches are dualistic, positing a quantum state as (...) well as ordinary material degrees of freedom. This paper lays out and compares some options that primitive ontologists have for making sense of the quantum state. (shrink)

A piece of folklore enjoys some currency among philosophical Bayesians, according to which Bayesian agents that, intuitively speaking, spread their credence over the entire space of available hypotheses are certain to converge to the truth. The goals of the present discussion are to show that kernel of truth in this folklore is in some ways fairly small and to argue that Bayesian convergence-to-the-truth results are a liability for Bayesianism as an account of rationality, since they render a certain sort of (...) arrogance rationally mandatory. (shrink)

Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 37: 263–282. [preprint] This paper is a critical discussion of Mathias Frisch’s book Inconsistency, Asymmetry, and Nonlocality.

The classical field theories that underlie the quantum treatments of the electromagnetic, weak, and strong forces share a peculiar feature: specifying the initial state of the field determines the evolution of some degrees of freedom of the theory while leaving the evolution of some others wholly arbitrary. This strongly suggests that some of the variables of the standard state space lack physical content-intuitively, the space of states of such a theory is of higher dimension than the corresponding space of genuine (...) physical possibilities. The structure of such theories can helpfully be characterized in terms of the action of symmetry groups on their space of states; and the conceptual problems surrounding their strange behavior can be sharpened in light of the observation that it is usually possible to eliminate the redundant variables associated with these symmetries-which turn out to be precisely those variables whose evolution is unconstrained by the dynamical laws of the theory. This paper discusses this approach, uses it to frame questions about the interpretation of classical gauge theories, and to reflect (pessimistically) on our prospects of reaching satisfactory answers to these questions. (shrink)

I will discuss only one of the several entwined strands of the philosophy of space and time, the question of the relation between the nature of motion and the geometrical structure of the world.1 This topic has many of the virtues of the best philosophy of science. It is of long-standing philosophical interest and has a rich history of connections to problems of physics. It has loomed large in discussions of space and time among contemporary philosophers of science. Furthermore, there (...) is, I think, widespread agreement that recent insights here have lead to a genuine deepening of our understanding. (shrink)

Stephen Hawking has argued that universes containing evaporating black holes can evolve from pure initial states to mixed final ones. Such evolution is non-unitary and so contravenes fundamental quantum principles on which Hawking's analysis was based. It disables the retrodiction of the universe's initial state from its final one, and portends the time-asymmetry of quantum gravity. Small wonder that Hawking's paradox has met with considerable resistance. Here we use a simple result for C*-algebras to offer an argument for pure-to-mixed state (...) evolution in black hole evaporation, and review responses to the Hawking paradox with respect to how effectively they rebut this argument. (shrink)

The twin goals of this essay are: to investigate a family of cases in which the goal of guaranteed convergence to the truth is beyond our reach; and to argue that each of three strands prominent in contemporary epistemological thought has undesirable consequences when confronted with the existence of such problems. Approaches that follow Reichenbach in taking guaranteed convergence to the truth to be the characteristic virtue of good methods face a vicious closure problem. Approaches on which there is a (...) unique rational doxastic response to any given body of evidence can avoid incoherence only by rendering epistemology a curiously limited enterprise. Bayesian approaches rule out humility about one’s prospects of success in certain situations in which failure is typical. (shrink)

There are many parts of science in which a certain sort of underdetermination of theory by evidence is known to be common. It is argued that reflection on this fact should serve to shift the burden of proof from scientific anti-realists to scientific realists at a crucial point in the debate between them.

I argue that the conviction, widespread among philosophers, that substantivalism enjoys a clear superiority over relationalism in both Newtonian and relativistic physics is ill-founded. There are viable relationalist approaches to understanding these theories, and the substantival-relational debate should be of interest to philosophers and physicists alike, because of its connection with questions about the correct space of states for various physical theories.

Recently Carolyn Brighouse and Jeremy Butterfield have argued that David Lewis's counterpart theory makes it possible both to believe in the reality of spacetime points and to consider general relativity to be a deterministic theory, thus avoiding the ‘hole argument’ of John Earman and John Norton. Butterfield's argument relies on Lewis's own counterpart-theoretic analysis of determinism. In this paper, I argue that this analysis is inadequate. This leaves a gap in the Butterfield–Brighouse defence against the hole argument.

A vast amount of ink has been spilled in both the physics and the philosophy literature on the measurement problem in quantum mechanics. Important as it is, this problem is but one aspect of the more general issue of how, if at all, classical properties can emerge from the quantum descriptions of physical systems. In this paper we will study another aspect of the more general issue-the emergence of classical chaos-which has been receiving increasing attention from physicists but which has (...) largely been neglected by philosophers of science. (shrink)

Two symmetry arguments are discussed, each purporting to show that there is no more room for a preferred division of spacetime into instants of time in general relativistic cosmology than in Minkowski spacetime. The first argument is due to Gödel, and concerns the symmetries of his famous rotating cosmologies. The second turns upon the symmetries of a certain space of relativistic possibilities. Both arguments are found wanting.

Introducing Dialogic Pedagogy presents some of the ideas of Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin concerning dialogism in a way that will engage and inspire those studying early childhood education. By translating the growing body of dialogic scholarship into a practical application of teaching and learning with very young children, this book provides readers with alternative ways of examining, engaging and reflecting on practice in the early years to provoke new ways of understanding and enacting pedagogy. This text combines important theoretical ideas (...) with a practical application to support practitioners who are keen to promote creativity and agency through ethical self-other relations. It provides unique insights into the amazing world of the youngest child, and offers enriched understandings of the profound impact of adults in their journey of becoming (or bildung). Key points covered include: Investigating dialogic philosophy and its application to early childhood education, with an emphasis on notions of justice, democracy, ethics and answerability Considering the relationship between dialogism and pedagogical approaches Theorising a range of approaches to relevant early childhood practice, as pedagogy This accessible and readable guide offers sound theoretical principles with practical suggestions for early years' settings. The book is supplemented by an extensive online video resource website that will bring these revolutionary ideas to life.. (shrink)

This collection of articles on the theme of space and time covers such broad topics as the philosophy of spacetime, spacetime structure, spacetime ontology, the epistemology of geometry, and general relativity.

Gordon Belot investigates the distinctive notion of geometric possibility that relationalists rely upon. He examines the prospects for adapting to the geometric case the standard philosophical accounts of the related notion of physical possibility, with particular emphasis on Humean, primitivist, and necessitarian accounts of physical and geometric possibility. This contribution to the debate concerning the nature of space will be of interest not only to philosophers and metaphysicians concerned with space and time, but also to those interested in laws (...) of nature, modal notions, or more general issues in ontology. (shrink)

Bayesians often assume, suppose, or conjecture that for any reasonable explication of the notion of simplicity a prior can be designed that will enforce a preference for hypotheses simpler in just that sense. But it is shown here that there are simplicity-driven approaches to curve-fitting problems that cannot be captured within the orthodox Bayesian framework.

Dans les pays occidentaux, de nombreux nouveaux parents se sentent seuls et parfois impuissants avec leur nouveau-né. Ce sentiment peut être lié à un défaut d’étayage familial dans l’immédiat post-partum. Cet article présente, à partir d’une recherche universitaire plus large, un cas clinique approfondi dans lequel la distance familiale et géographique a été un facteur de vulnérabilité majeur. Ce cas montre les incidences multiples et intriquées d’un défaut d’étayage familial sur les processus intrapsychiques et intersubjectifs : dépression du post-partum chez (...) la mère qui persiste dans le temps, relations conjugales et parentales qui se dégradent progressivement, et sur les interactions précoces difficiles. Révéler l’existence de ce risque améliorera la compréhension des besoins des parents et des bébés après la naissance et permettrait d’envisager une adaptation plus fine des pratiques professionnelles et des programmes de santé publique et, à plus grande échelle, des politiques familiales. (shrink)

_Seeing the World through Children’s Eyes_ brings an overarching emphasis on ‘seeing’ to early years research and provides an opportunity to see and hear from leading researchers in the field concerning how they work with visual methodologies in their early years research.

This paper is concerned with the relation between two notions: that of two solutions or models of a theory being related by a symmetry of the theory and that of solutions or models being physically equivalent. A number of authors have recently discussed this relation, some taking an optimistic view, on which there is a suitable concept of the symmetry of a theory relative to which these two notions coincide, others taking a pessimistic view, on which there is no such (...) concept. The present paper arrives at a cautiously pessimistic conclusion. (shrink)

It is often said that the Aharonov-Bohm effect shows that the vector potential enjoys more ontological significance than we previously realized. But how can a quantum-mechanical effect teach us something about the interpretation of Maxwell's theory—let alone about the ontological structure of the world—when both theories are false? I present a rational reconstruction of the interpretative repercussions of the Aharonov-Bohm effect, and suggest some morals for our conception of the interpretative enterprise.

Standard models of adolescent risk taking posit that the cognitive abilities of adolescents and adults are equivalent, and that increases in risk taking that occur during adolescence are the result of socio emotional differences in impulsivity, sensation seeking, and lack of self-control. Fuzzy-trace theory incorporates these socio emotional differences. However, it predicts that there are also cognitive differences between adolescents and adults, specifically that there are developmental increases in gist-based intuition that reflects understanding. Gist understanding, as opposed to verbatim-based analysis, (...) generally has been hypothesized to have a protective effect on risk taking in adolescence. Gist understanding is also an essential element of informed consent regarding risks in medical decision- making. Evidence thus supports the argument that adolescents’ status as mature minors should be treated as an exception rather than a presumption, because accuracy in verbatim analysis is not mature gist understanding. Use of the exception should be accompanied by medical experts’ input on the bottom-line gist of risks involved in treatment. (shrink)

Bayesians often assume, suppose, or conjecture that for any reasonable explication of the notion of simplicity a prior can be designed that will enforce a preference for hypotheses simpler in just that sense. Further, it is often claimed that the Bayesian framework automatically implements Occam's razor—that conditionalizing on data consistent with both a simple theory and a complex theory more or less inevitably favours the simpler theory. But it is shown here that there are simplicity-driven approaches to curve-fitting problems that (...) cannot be captured within the orthodox Bayesian framework and that the automatic razor does not function for such problems. (shrink)

The foundation of the Christian counselling movement -- Christian counselling in the UK -- The aims of Christian counselling -- Integrating psychological and biblical truth -- Sigmund Freud--the founding father of psychotherapy -- The individual psychology of Alfred Adler -- Abraham Maslow--the man with new age tendencies -- Carl Rogers--a man who believed in himself -- Albert Ellis--the aggressive atheist -- The Bible's verdict on psychological 'truth' -- The case against Larry Crabb -- Self-esteem: the secular foundation -- Self-esteem and (...) the Christian counselling movement -- Self-esteem dogma in the light of scripture. (shrink)

1. It is natural to wonder what our multitude of successful physical theories tell us about the world—singly, and as a body. What are we to think when one theory tells us about a flat Newtonian spacetime, the next about a curved Lorentzian geometry, and we have hints of others, portraying discrete or higher-dimensional structures which look something like more familiar spacetimes in appropriate limits?

Abstract In the philosophical literature, there are two common criteria for a physical theory to be deterministic. The older one is due to the logical empiricists, and is a purely formal criterion. The newer one can be found in the work of John Earman and David Lewis and depends on the intended interpretation of the theory. In this paper I argue that the former must be rejected, and something like the latter adopted. I then discuss the relevance of these points (...) to the current debate over the hole argument. (shrink)

An explication is offered of Reid’s claim (discussed recently by Yaffe and others) that the geometry of the visual field is spherical geometry. It is shown that the sphere is the only surface whose geometry coincides, in a certain strong sense, with the geometry of visibles.

The Great Psychotherapy Debate: Models, Methods, and Findings comprehensively reviews the research on psychotherapy to dispute the commonly held view that the benefits of psychotherapy are derived from the specific ingredients contained in a given treatment (medical model). The author reviews the literature related to the absolute efficacy of psychotherapy, the relative efficacy of various treatments, the specificity of ingredients contained in established therapies, effects due to common factors, such as the working alliance, adherence and allegiance to the therapeutic protocol, (...) and effects that are produced by different therapists. In each case, the evidence convincingly corroborates the contextual model and disconfirms the prevailing medical model. (shrink)

Big Ideas for Little Kids includes everything a teacher, a parent, or a college student needs to teach philosophy to elementary school children from picture books. Written in a clear and accessible style, the book explains why it is important to allow young children access to philosophy during primary-school education. Wartenberg also gives advice on how to construct a "learner-centered" classroom, in which children discuss philosophical issues with one another as they respond to open-ended questions by saying whether they agree (...) or disagree with what others have said. (shrink)

Alors que l’anthropologie montre que la naissance est d’abord un événement communautaire, actuellement des parents se retrouvent de plus en plus profondément seuls et démunis devant leur bébé. Ce phénomène est l’objet d’une recherche en cours qui essaie d’évaluer après la naissance les effets de l’isolement familial des parents sur la vie psychique du bébé lors de sa première année. Dans le cas clinique qui illustre ici cette « nouvelle solitude » des parents, les forums d’internet tentent de relayer la (...) faiblesse du soutien familial alors que les anxiétés, bien légitimes autour de la naissance, perdurent quand le bébé grandit. Au-delà des problèmes de la dépression maternelle du postpartum, l’accent est mis sur la place réelle que prend l’entourage comme soutien des processus plus intrapsychiques propres à la construction de la parentalité. (shrink)

Alors que l’anthropologie montre que la naissance est d’abord un événement communautaire, actuellement des parents se retrouvent de plus en plus profondément seuls et démunis devant leur bébé. Ce phénomène est l’objet d’une recherche en cours qui essaie d’évaluer après la naissance les effets de l’isolement familial des parents sur la vie psychique du bébé lors de sa première année. Dans le cas clinique qui illustre ici cette « nouvelle solitude » des parents, les forums d’internet tentent de relayer la (...) faiblesse du soutien familial alors que les anxiétés, bien légitimes autour de la naissance, perdurent quand le bébé grandit. Au-delà des problèmes de la dépression maternelle du postpartum, l’accent est mis sur la place réelle que prend l’entourage comme soutien des processus plus intrapsychiques propres à la construction de la parentalité. (shrink)

Intuitively, a classical field theory is background-in- dependent if the structure required to make sense of its equations is itself subject to dynamical evolution, rather than being imposed ab initio. The aim of this paper is to provide an explication of this intuitive notion. Background-independence is not a not formal property of theories: the question whether a theory is background-independent depends upon how the theory is interpreted. Under the approach proposed here, a theory is fully background-independent relative to an interpretation (...) if each physical possibility corresponds to a distinct spacetime geometry; and it falls short of full background-independence to the extent that this condition fails. (shrink)

It is sometimes claimed that the Bayesian framework automatically implements Ockham’s razor—that conditionalizing on data consistent with both a simple theory and a complex theory more or less inevitably favours the simpler theory. It is shown here that the automatic razor doesn’t in fact cut it for certain mundane curve-fitting problems.

This paper revisits the bearing of underdetermination arguments on scientific realism. First it argues that underdetermination considerations provide good reason to doubt that science is objective in the strong sense that anyone following the its methods will be led closer and closer to the truth about any given question within the purview of those methods, as more relevant data are considered. Then it argues that scientific realism is difficult to maintain in the absence of this sort of objectivity.