Eighty years after de Broglie’s, and a little more than half a century after Bohm’s seminal papers, the de Broglie–Bohm theory (a.k.a. Bohmian mechanics), which is presumably the simplest theory which explains the orthodox quantum mechanics formalism, has reached an exemplary state of conceptual clarity and mathematical integrity. No other theory of quantum mechanics comes even close. Yet anyone curious enough to walk this road to quantum mechanics is soon being confused by many misleading signposts that have been put up, (...) and not just by its detractors, but unfortunately enough also by some of its proponents. This paper outlines a road map to help navigate ones way. (shrink)

Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy is one of the last great works of English prose to have remained unedited. The present volume inaugurates an authoritative edition of the work, which is being prepared by scholars on both sides of the Atlantic. It will be followed by two further volumes of text with textual apparatus, and two volumes of commentary. Burton concentrated a lifetime of inquiry into the Anatomy, describing and analysing melancholy and its causes - devoting especial attention to (...) love and religion - and recording possible cures. Primarily a scholarly study of morbid psychology, it is also a compendium of curious facts and anecdotes, and combines seriousness of purpose with a marked satirical vein. First published in 1621, it was a great success: four more editions were published in Burton's lifetime, in each of which new material was added, and a sixth, containing his final revisions, was published in in 1651, eleven years after his death. The textual complexity and Burton's extraordinary range of reference have hitherto deterred editors: this is the first scholarly edition to appear. The text is based on a complete collation of all six authoritative editions. (shrink)

This monograph attempts to clarify one significant but much neglected aspect of Peirce's contribution to the philosophy of science. It was written in 1963 as my M. A. thesis at the Uni versity of Illinois. Since the topic is still neglected it is hoped that its pUblication will be of use to Peirce scholars. I should like to acknowledge my indebtedness to Dr. Max Fisch who broached this topic to me and who advised me con tinuously through its development, assisting (...) generously with his own insights and unpublished Peirce manuscripts. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1. A Current Issue in the Philosophy of Science 1 2. Peirce and His Theory of Abduction 5 3. The General Character of Abduction 7 PART I: THE EARLY THEORY 1. Peirce's Earliest Conception of Inference 11 2. Three Kinds of Inference and Three Figures of Syllogism 13 3. Ampliative Inference and Cognition 17 4. Induction and Hypothesis 20 5. The Method of Methods 23 PART II: THE LATER THEORY 1. The Transitional Period 28 2. Three Stages of Inquiry 31 3. Abduction and Guessing Instinct 35 4. Logic as a Normative Science 38 5. Hypothesis Construction and Selection 41 6. Abduction and Pragmatism 44 7. Economy of Research 47 8. Justification of Abduction 51 CONCLUSION 55 61 BIBLIOGRAPHY INTRODUCTION 1. (shrink)

In our article (Zawadzki and Adamczyk 2021), we analyzed threats that novel memory modifying interventions may pose in the future. More specifically, we discussed how optogenetics’ potential for reversible erasure/deactivation of memory “may impact authenticity by producing changes at different levels of personality.” Our article has received many thoughtful open peer commentaries for which we would like to express our great appreciation. We have identified two main threads of objections. They are related to the potential applicability of optogenetics as a (...) therapeutic memory modification technology (MMT) in humans—applicability thread, and the normative value of authenticity, that is, the assumption that preserving authenticity is valuable (either in general or in the particular approach we adopted)—normative thread. Both of these threads concern fundamental issues: The former deals with the scientific credibility of the case vignette on which our discussion is based, and the latter deals with the normative weight of our considerations. We think that addressing both of them can be instructive in a broader context as they reflect a more general disagreement among neuroethicists about the very purpose and method of our discipline. (shrink)

The covariant Klein-Gordon equation requires twice the boundary conditions of the Schrödinger equation and does not have an accepted single-particle interpretation. Instead of interpreting its solution as a probability wave determined by an initial boundary condition, this paper considers the possibility that the solutions are determined by both an initial and a final boundary condition. By constructing an invariant joint probability distribution from the size of the solution space, it is shown that the usual measurement probabilities can nearly be recovered (...) in the non-relativistic limit, provided that neither boundary constrains the energy to a precision near ℏ/t 0 (where t 0 is the time duration between the boundary conditions). Otherwise, deviations from standard quantum mechanics are predicted. (shrink)

A time-symmetric formulation of nonrelativistic quantum mechanics is developed by applying two consecutive boundary conditions onto solutions of a time- symmetrized wave equation. From known probabilities in ordinary quantum mechanics, a time-symmetric parameter P0 is then derived that properly weights the likelihood of any complete sequence of measurement outcomes on a quantum system. The results appear to match standard quantum mechanics, but do so without requiring a time-asymmetric collapse of the wavefunction upon measurement, thereby realigning quantum mechanics with an important (...) fundamental symmetry. (shrink)

I argue that there is a version of (quasi-Armstrongian) weak illusionism that intelligibly relates phenomenal concepts and introspective opacity, accounts for the (hard) problem intuitions Chalmers highlights (modal, epistemic, explanatory, and metaphysical), and undermines the most important arguments Chalmers deploys against type-B and type-C materialisms. If this is successful, we can satisfactorily account for the meta-problem of consciousness, mollify our hard problem intuitions, and remain genuine realists about phenomenal experience.

Papers presented at an annual inter-disciplinary seminar held to facilitate the 60th birthday of Kalarikkal Poulose Aleaz, b. 1947, theologist from Kerala, India during 20-21 September 2007.

Context: Metaphysics of perception explores fundamental questions regarding the structure and status of the perceived world or appearance(s. By virtue of perception, the apparent world comes to existence. This, however, does not mean that the apparent world is a projection of mind, that it exists “in the head.” Implications: PL-metaphysics reconciles realism with constructivism. As such, it might be considered either an alternative to constructivism or an improvement and completion of this position. Constructivist content: The article refers to non-Cartesian movements (...) in contemporary philosophy, including radical constructivism, enactive and embodied cognition. Keywords: Perception, metaphysics, radical constructivism, realism, appearance, Jerzy Perzanowski, Plato, Gottfried Willhelm Leibniz, Ernst von Glasersfeld. (shrink)

For those to whom John Bowring's name means anything, the most likely association with it is the complex and question-begging term ‘Benthamite’. Contemporaries certainly used the term, particularly when they wanted to suggest that his actions were narrowly ideological or theoretical. But to some of Bowring's contemporaries another association served hostile intent almost as well: his Unitarianism.

COVID-19 often manifests with different outcomes in different patients, highlighting the complexity of the host-pathogen interactions involved in manifestations of the disease at the molecular and cellular levels. In this paper, we propose a set of postulates and a framework for systematically understanding complex molecular host-pathogen interaction networks. Specifically, we first propose four host-pathogen interaction (HPI) postulates as the basis for understanding molecular and cellular host-pathogen interactions and their relations to disease outcomes. These four postulates cover the evolutionary dispositions involved (...) in HPIs, the dynamic nature of HPI outcomes, roles that HPI components may occupy leading to such outcomes, and HPI checkpoints that are critical for specific disease outcomes. Based on these postulates, an HPI Postulate and Ontology (HPIPO) framework is proposed to apply interoperable ontologies to systematically model and represent various granular details and knowledge within the scope of the HPI postulates, in a way that will support AI-ready data standardization, sharing, integration, and analysis. As a demonstration, the HPI postulates and the HPIPO framework were applied to study COVID-19 with the Coronavirus Infectious Disease Ontology (CIDO), leading to a novel approach to rational design of drug/vaccine cocktails aimed at interrupting processes occurring at critical host-coronavirus interaction checkpoints. Furthermore, the host-coronavirus protein-protein interactions (PPIs) relevant to COVID-19 were predicted and evaluated based on prior knowledge of curated PPIs and domain-domain interactions, and how such studies can be further explored with the HPI postulates and the HPIPO framework is discussed. (shrink)

This article proceeds on two main assumptions. (1) The ‘understanding’ of universes of discourse and human practice can no longer be based on the rules developed by older systems of hermeneutics. (2) Modern hermeneutics has not tried to compensate this loss of methodological efficiency by working out new frameworks. It is rather exclusively occupied with (metatheoretical) efforts to provide ‘foundations’. Thus we get ontological, dialectical, transcendental etc. systems. These may serve as general possibilities for looking at history. They do not, (...) however, advance the solution of the manifold methodological difficulties of concrete research. A functional analysis of fundamentalist hermeneutics can demonstrate more precisely that this type of theory has largely proved fruitless. Certainly we cannot do without fundamentalist concepts like historicity, tradition, consciousness or, for that matter, emancipation. It is equally clear, however, that these concepts cannot merely be defined along the lines prescribed by philosophies of science. The present article therefore pleads for an anthropological extension and specification of ‘hermeneutic’ (?) frameworks which should allow us to analyse historical life forms, ways of experience, strategies of meaning formation in a more precise and differentiated manner. (shrink)

K. Mitchells; IV—Aesthetic Perception and Aesthetic Qualities, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 67, Issue 1, 1 June 1967, Pages 53–72, https://do.

The Aristotelian view that the moral virtues–the virtues of character informed by practical wisdom–are essential to an individual's happiness, and are thus in an individual's self-interest, has been little discussed outside of purely scholarly contexts. With a few exceptions, contemporary philosophers have tended to be suspicious of Aristotle's claims about human nature and the nature of rationality and happiness. But recent scholarship has offered an interpretation of the basic elements of Aristotle's views of human nature and happiness, and of reason (...) and virtue, that brings them more into line with common-sense thinking and with contemporary philosophical and empirical psychology. This makes it fruitful to reexamine the question of the role of virtue in self-interest. (shrink)

Originally published in 1938, this book examines the meaning of the word 'intuition'. Wild considers many different applications of the word in a variety of poetic and philosophical sources, and questions whether or not such a faculty truly can be said to exist. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in intuition and the implications of such a word's usage.

As part of a larger research study, we present model language for disclosing financial interests in clinical research to potential research participants, and we describe the empirical basis and theoretical assumptions used in developing the language. The empirical process for creating appropriate disclosure language resulted in a generic disclosure statement for cases in which no risk to participants’ welfare or the scientific integrity of the research is expected, and nine more specific disclosure statements for cases in which some risk is (...) expected. The disclosure statements are not meant to be canonical, but were instead designed to reflect the typical situations in which disclosure of financial interest might be considered by an institutional review board or conflict of interest committee. Individual institutions could modify key phrases to suit their purposes, and others could use the language in future empirical work on informed consent to better refine the options for disclosing financial interests in clinical research. (shrink)