Tsirelson’s problem deals with how to model separate measurements in quantum mechanics. In addition to its theoretical importance, the resolution of Tsirelson’s problem could have great consequences for device independent quantum key distribution and certified randomness. Unfortunately, understanding present literature on the subject requires a heavy mathematical background. In this paper, we introduce quansality, a new theoretical concept that allows to reinterpret Tsirelson’s problem from a foundational point of view. Using quansality as a guide, we recover all known results on (...) Tsirelson’s problem in a clear and intuitive way. (shrink)

This collection addresses a post-WWII shift in the hierarchy of scientific explanations, where the highest goal moves from reductionism towards some ...

For the theorists of crisis, the revolutionary state comes into existence through violence, and due to its inability to provide an authoritative katechon (restrainer) against internal and external violence, it perpetuates violence until it self-destructs. Writing during extreme economic depression and growing social and political violence, the crisis theorists––Joseph de Maistre, Juan Donoso Cortés, and Carl Schmitt––each sought to blame the chaos of their time upon the Janus-faced postrevolutionary ideals of liberalism and socialism by urging a return to pre-revolutionary moral (...) and religious values. They are united by three counterrevolutionary principles, all of which are purported to remedy revolutionary violence: traditional constitutional fidelity, the philosophy of the decision, and opposition to bourgeois liberalism. This essay is followed by the first complete English translation and publication of Donoso’s letter of October 24, 1851, which contains Donoso’s only reference to the “discussing class,” a political entity later popularized by Schmitt in his 1922 work Political Theology. (shrink)

Faced with an Alexandrian (Arian) anthropology of Neoplatonic inspiration, Eustathius adopts a strong position in several statements that is similar to astoic Aristotelianism of the 4th century. Nevertheless, Eustathius's reflection is more genuinely theological, than it is reflective of any particular philosophical trend. For him, the human body is a dynamic concept which finds its full meaning in light of the history of salvation, wherein the incarnate and glorified Logos, the second Adam, brings to completion the perfection and incorruptibility of (...) the humble body formed from clay in the first Adam, the protoplast. (shrink)

The causal compatibility question asks whether a given causal structure graph — possibly involving latent variables — constitutes a genuinely plausible causal explanation for a given probability distribution over the graph’s observed categorical variables. Algorithms predicated on merely necessary constraints for causal compatibility typically suffer from false negatives, i.e. they admit incompatible distributions as apparently compatible with the given graph. In 10.1515/jci-2017-0020, one of us introduced the inflation technique for formulating useful relaxations of the causal compatibility problem in terms of (...) linear programming. In this work, we develop a formal hierarchy of such causal compatibility relaxations. We prove that inflation is asymptotically tight, i.e., that the hierarchy converges to a zero-error test for causal compatibility. In this sense, the inflation technique fulfills a longstanding desideratum in the field of causal inference. We quantify the rate of convergence by showing that any distribution which passes the nth-order inflation test must be On−1/2$\begin{array}{} \displaystyle {O}{\left(n^{{{-}{1}}/{2}}\right)} \end{array}$-close in Euclidean norm to some distribution genuinely compatible with the given causal structure. Furthermore, we show that for many causal structures, the (unrelaxed) causal compatibility problem is faithfully formulated already by either the first or second order inflation test. (shrink)

The Spanish Federal Council of the European Movement (SFCEM), founded as a Spanish organization to favour the integration of Spain in Europe, was composed of representatives of various political organizations of the Republican government in exile. Correspondence between the President, Salvador de Madariaga, and the members of the Basque and Catalonian delegations discloses one of the most critical issues of the time: how to organize the Spanish regions after the fall of Franco’s regime. This article explores how the ideas of (...) a Spanish federation – defended by Madariaga – and the interest of the nationalist groups collided during the decades of 1950s and 1960s. The result was a harsh debate on separatism between the Basques and Catalans, who saw Franco’s Spain as the representation of centralism and repression of their identities, and other Spanish exiles. (shrink)

The article discusses the meaning of chaos in the series of four elements introduced by Irenaeus in haer. 1, 30, 1 to characterize the system of the so-called “Ophites”. Contrary to the explanation that renders this Gnostic system dualistic, it is argued here that, in reality, the “Ophites” of Irenaeus anticipates what we find in other Gnostic families (Naassenes, On the Origin of the World, The Hypostasis of the Archonts) and continues the Orphic tradition that appeared in the Theogony of (...) Jerome and Hellanicus, in which the eternal chaos had been domesticated with the Jewish monotheism of Genesis, and, according to which, this chaos would come to be something like a “hollow”, not eternal, which precedes the material world, shelters it and then favors the appearance of the corporeal. Its status as a Principle should always be understood in a derivative sense, with no obstacle to monism: the Primordial Light (Lumen primum), the only absolute principle, provokes the appearance of the region of the shadow (chaos), but it does so indirectly through the intermediate veil (Spiritus Sanctus). Nothing justifies speaking, therefore, of the “Ophite” system as an ontologically dualistic system. (shrink)

Faced with an Alexandrian (Arian) anthropology of Neoplatonic inspiration, Eustathius adopts a strong position in several statements that is similar to astoic Aristotelianism of the 4th century. Nevertheless, Eustathius's reflection is more genuinely theological, than it is reflective of any particular philosophical trend. For him, the human body is a dynamic concept which finds its full meaning in light of the history of salvation, wherein the incarnate and glorified Logos, the second Adam, brings to completion the perfection and incorruptibility of (...) the humble body formed from clay in the first Adam, the protoplast. (shrink)

Sometimes Theophilus used neologisms in his apologetic presentation of the faith. This is the case with ajsumbivbastoç. The term corresponds to a Christological interpretation of Is. 40,13-14 in an anti-Hermogenian context (anti-middle platonic). We should translate it as “not counsel - able”, an allusion to the Creator God's self-sufficiency, who deliberates with his Logos-counsel without resorting to eternal matter.

Sometimes Theophilus used neologisms in his apologetic presentation of the faith. This is the case with ajsumbivbastoç. The term corresponds to a Christological interpretation of Is. 40,13-14 in an anti-Hermogenian context. We should translate it as “not counsel - able”, an allusion to the Creator God's self-sufficiency, who deliberates with his Logos-counsel without resorting to eternal matter.

En las últimas décadas se ha prestado una gran atención a la obra de Hannah Arendt: de su teoría acerca del totalitarismo a su polémico análisis del juicio de Eichmann, las páginas de la literatura secundaria acerca de la filósofa hebrea han crecido enormemente. Sin embargo, aquellos textos marginales, secundarios, en los que la autora ensayaba retratos de grandes hombres y mujeres de su tiempo permanecen, en gran medida, ocultos. En este artículo nos ocupamos de desentrañar la lectura que Arendt (...) realizó del gran poeta de posguerra de lengua alemana: Franz Kafka. Esta relación, transida por el judaísmo, adoptó tres rostros diferentes a lo largo de los muchos años en que la pensadora estuvo escribiendo. La conceptualización que se realiza aquí gira en torno al eje de la gran obra The Origins of Totalitarianism para comprender al paria de buena voluntad, el contemporáneo apolíneo y el pensador del tiempo. (shrink)

In Hippolytus, in Cant. II, 3 we find the Georgian term შჯულ-ი (šǯul-i) several times. G. Garitte rendered it in his Latin translation always as lex, causing quite a bit of obscurity in Hippolytus’ lines. The solution appears when we recognize that it can be traced both to the Greek νόμος and to διαϑήκη. If we take this into account, the text now flows harmoniously with other passages in the works of Hippolytus and with the literal tenor of the terms (...) chosen by the Greek epitomist from the Interpretatio Cantici canticorum of Hippolytus. (shrink)

This article offers a series of reflections on the relationship that should exist between the Church Fathers and dogmatic theology. In order not to underplay the indispensable function performed by the Fathers, a function understood in theological and not in historical terms, the dogmatic theologian must stand before them – as Irenaeus stood before the elderly Polycarp – listening and receiving from them the message that, in harmony with the Scriptures and guided by the grace of God, they ought to (...) deepen and con-temporize. (shrink)

At the beginning of Irenaeus of Lyons’ Adversus Haereses, the doctrine of the Valentinian Ptolemy is presented using terms from the semantic field of time and eternity, which were undergoing a semantic evolution in contemporary Middle Platonic philosophy. These allow us to identify three phases, from a chronological point of view, at the beginning of the Valentinian myth: strict, supra-durational, eternity – eternity of indefinite duration – moment ante tempus.

This passage from Irenaeus’ Letter to Florinus offers sufficient material for reflection on the patristic function within dogmatic theology, provided that we understand both Polycarp in the role of a Church Father standing in direct contact with the apostolic kerygma, and, at times, Irenaeus as a theologian reflecting on faith. We begin with the apostolic kerygma which Policarp first hears, learns and sets down clearly, then later recalls and transmits in harmony with faith and scripture. Irenaeus, for his part, carries (...) out the role of theologian to the extent to which he listens to what was handed on attentively, commits it to memory, reflects upon it and then witnesses to it, moved by the grace of God. The language utilized by Irenaeus reveals reminiscences of the Platonic tradition, apropos of the function of memory and scripture and of the Philonian tradition, apropos of the theological content of the biblical term to ruminate. The analysis undertaken offers a ground upon which to think about new relationships between dogmatic and patristic theologies, a question that can be developed in a later article. (shrink)

In much of the current academic and public discussion, conspiracy theories are portrayed as a negative phenomenon, linked to misinformation, mistrust in experts and institutions, and political propaganda. Rather surprisingly, however, philosophers working on this topic have been reluctant to incorporate a negatively evaluative aspect when either analyzing or engineering the concept conspiracy theory. In this paper, we present empirical data on the nature of the concept conspiracy theory from five studies designed to test the existence, prevalence and exact form (...) of an evaluative dimension to the ordinary concept conspiracy theory. These results reveal that, while there is a descriptive concept of conspiracy theory, the predominant use of conspiracy theory is deeply evaluative, encoding information about epistemic deficiency and often also derogatory and disparaging information. On the basis of these results, we present a new strategy for engineering conspiracy theory to promote theoretical investigations and institutional discussions of this phenomenon. We argue for engineering conspiracy theory to encode an epistemic evaluation, and to introduce a descriptive expression—such as ‘conspiratorial explanation’—to refer to the purely descriptive concept conspiracy theory. (shrink)

The activity of Wnt and Notch signalling is central to many cell fate decisions during development and to the maintenance and differentiation of stem cell populations in homeostasis. While classical views refer to these pathways as independent signal transduction devices that co‐operate in different systems, recent work has revealed intricate connections between their components. These observations suggest that rather than operating as two separate pathways, elements of Wnt and Notch signalling configure an integrated molecular device whose main function is to (...) regulate transitions between cell states in development and homeostasis. Here, we propose a general framework for the structure and function of the interactions between these signalling systems that is focused on the notion of ‘transition states’, i.e. intermediates that arise during cell fate decision processes. These intermediates act as checkpoints in cell fate decision processes and are characterised by the mixed molecular identities of the states involved in these processes.Editor's suggested further reading in BioEssays: Notch: Implications of endogenous inhibitors for therapy Abstract. (shrink)

Contingency is the presence of non-actualized possibility in the world. Fatalism is a view of reality on which there is no contingency. Since it is contingency that permits agency, there has traditionally been much interest in contingency. This interest has long been embarrassed by the contention that simple and plausible assumptions about the world lead to fatalism. I begin with an Aristotelian argument as presented by Richard Taylor. Appreciation of this argument has been stultified by a question pertaining to the (...) source of necessity and possibility and a closely related one regarding the nature of metaphysics itself. Answering these questions reveals the crucial issue here, to wit, necessity and possibility in a temporal world. This issue is investigated through an important later criticism of Taylor by David Foster Wallace. Wallace’s critique is significant because it brings to the fore the pivotal notion for understanding contingency in a temporal world, that of synchronic possibility, the idea that incompatible states of affairs are possible at a single moment. This notion provides the basis of distinguishing two systematic accounts of truth, modality and time: two metaphysics of contingency. On one account, Taylor’s Aristotelian argument is straightforwardly valid and compelling; on the other, it is fallacious. In closing, I present reasons why the former account, supporting the Aristotelian views of time and truth, is correct and make some comments to ameliorate this conclusion. (shrink)

The X-ray and bulk densities of PdIn alloys have been determined at ambient temperature on samples annealed at 1273 and 1373 K and quenched in water-ice mixtures. From these measurements the vacancy concentrations in this intermetallic phase have been obtained as a function of In concentration at these two temperatures. In addition, a generalized thermodynamic model is presented which considers the existence of antisite and vacancy defects on both sublattices without any dilute solution approximations. This model uses three energy parameters, (...) whose values have been obtained for PdIn using the measured vacancy concentrations and the chemical potentials of In. This model is able to describe all the available vacancy data and is suitable for calculating these values at compositions and temperatures when such data are not available. In addition, the model permits the calculation of the concentrations of the minority point defects. It is shown that dilute-solution approximations, which have invariably been used in this kind of modelling, are unsatisfactory. The present results and their analysis confirm that PdIn is a near-triple-defect type of intermetallic and not a near-Schottky type, as has been claimed recently. (shrink)

Bioethics has paid surprisingly little attention to the special problems faced by women and to feminist analyses of current health care issues other than ...

Reprint of paper first published in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research in 1984.

This volume provides a philosophical introduction to and analysis of the study of metaphor. By proceeding from the concrete analysis of complex metaphors, White is able to identify a range of features which are incompatible with standard accounts of the way words function in metaphor.

The spiritual geography of Russian cosmism. General characteristics ; Recent definitions of cosmism -- Forerunners of Russian cosmism. Vasily Nazarovich Karazin (1773-1842) ; Alexander Nikolaevich Radishchev (1749-1802) ; Poets: Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov, (1711-1765) and Gavriila Romanovich Derzhavin (1743-1816) ; Prince Vladimir Fedorovich Odoevsky (1803-1869) ; Aleksander Vasilyevich Sukhovo-Kobylin (1817-1903) -- The Russian philosophical context. Philosophy as a passion ; The destiny of Russia ; Thought as a call for action ; The totalitarian cast of mind -- The religious and spiritual (...) context. The kingdom of god on earth ; Hesychasm: two great Russian saints ; The Third Rome ; Pre-Christian antecedents -- The Russian esoteric context. Early searches for "deep wisdom" ; Popular magic ; Higher magic in the time of Peter the Great ; Esotericism after Peter the Great ; Theosophy and anthroposophy -- Nikolai Fedorovich Fedorov (1829-1903), the philosopher of the common task ; The one idea ; The unacknowledged prince ; The village teacher ; First disciple: Dostoevsky and Tolstoy ; The Moscow librarian ; Last years: Askhabad: the only portrait -- The "common task" ; Esoteric dimensions of the "common task" ; Fedorov's legacy: projectivism, delo, regulation -- The religious cosmists. Vladimir Sergeevich Solovyov (1853-1900) ; Sergei Nikolaevich Bulgakov (1871-1944) ; Pavel Aleksandrovich Florensky (1882-1937) ; Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdyaev (1874-1948) -- The scientific cosmists. Konstantin Edouardovich Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935) ; Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky (1863-1945) ; Alexander Leonidovich Chizhevsky (1897-1964) ; Vasily Feofilovich Kuprevich (1897-1969) -- Promethean theurgy. Life-creation ; Cultural immortalism ; God-building ; Re-aiming the arrows of Eros ; Technological utopianism ; Occultism -- Fedorov's twentieth century followers. Nikolai Pavlovich Peterson (1844-1919) and Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kozhevnikov (1852-1917) ; Svyatogor and the biocosmists ; New wine and the universal task ; Alexander Konstantinovich Gorsky (1886-1943) and Nikolai Alexandrovich Setnitsky (1888-1937) ; Valerian Nikolaevich Muravyov (1885-1932) ; Vasily Nikolaevich Chekrygin (1897-1922) -- Cosmism and its offshoots today. The N.F. Fedorov museum-library ; The Tsiolkovsky museum and Chizhevsky center ; ISRICA - Institute for Scientific Research in Cosmic Anthropoecology ; Lev Nikolaevich Gumilev (1912-1992) and neo-eurasianism ; The hyperboreans ; Scientific immortalism: Igor Vishev, Danila Medvedev ; Conclusions about the Russian cosmists. (shrink)

Much discussion about experimental philosophy and philosophical methodology has been framed in terms of the reliability of intuitions, and even when it has not been about reliability per se, it has been focused on whether intuitions meet whatever conditions they need to meet to be trustworthy as evidence. But really that question cannot be answered independently from the questions, evidence for what theories arrived at by what sorts of inferences? I will contend here that not just philosophy's sources of evidence, (...) but also its inferential resources, are in great need of closer examination. (shrink)

Linguistic anthropologists have studied emotion in societies around the world for several decades. This article defines the discipline, introduces its general relevance to emotion theory, then presents five of the most important contributions linguistic anthropology has made to the study of emotion.

Arguably no concept is more fundamental to science than that of causality, for investigations into cases of existence, persistence, and change in the natural world are largely investigations into the causes of these phenomena. Yet the metaphysics and epistemology of causality remain unclear. For example, the ontological categories of the causal relata have been taken to be objects (Hume 1739), events (Davidson 1967), properties (Armstrong 1978), processes (Salmon 1984), variables (Hitchcock 1993), and facts (Mellor 1995). (For convenience, causes and effects (...) will usually be understood as events in what follows.) Complicating matters, causal relations may be singular (Socrates’s drinking hemlock caused Socrates’s death) or general (Drinking hemlock causes death); hence the relata might be tokens (e.g., instances of properties) or types (e.g., types of events) of the category in question. Other questions up for grabs are: Are singular causes metaphysically and/or epistemologically prior to general causes or vice versa (or neither)? What grounds the intuitive asymmetry of the causal relation? Are macro-causal relations reducible to micro-causal relations? And perhaps most importantly: Are causal facts (e.g., the holding of causal relations) reducible to non-causal facts (e.g., the holding of certain spatiotemporal relations)? (shrink)

In this paper I argue that both defence and criticism of the claim that humans act ‘under the guise of the good’ neglects the metaphysical roots of the theory. I begin with an overview of the theory and its modern commentators, with critics noting the apparent possibility of acting against the good, and supporters claiming that such actions are instances of error. These debates reduce the ‘guise of the good’ to a claim about intention and moral action, and in so (...) doing have become divorced from the theory's roots in classical and medieval philosophy. Aristotle and Aquinas’ ‘guise of the good’ is primarily a metaphysical claim resting on the equivalence between actuality and goodness, from which conclusions about moral action are derived. I show the reasoning behind their theory and how it forms the basis for the claims about intention and action at the centre of the modern debate. Finally, I argue that the absence of its original foundation is apparent in recent attacks on the ‘guise of the good’. It is unsurprising that modern action theory and ethics have not always been able to comfortably accommodate the ‘guise of the good’; they are only telling half of the story. (shrink)