O objetivo desde artigo é analisar a espiritualidade na educação em Paulo Freire e bell hooks. Trata-se de uma pesquisa bibliográfica que tem como fundamentação teórica: Freire, hooks, Oliveira, Boff, Dullo, entre outros. Considera-se nesta análise que os educadores percebem a educação como um processo de libertação de toda forma de dominação, a partir do diálogo, do desenvolvimento do pensamento crítico, da construção coletiva do conhecimento, da práxis e do respeito aos saberes e as experiências de educandos e educadores. A (...) espiritualidade tratada como pertencente à sala de aula de forma a garantir a integralidade, a inteireza do ser, espiritualidade que nutre a esperança na educação como prática de liberdade. (shrink)

Ao mesmo tempo que a disciplinaridade continua e se reforça, assiste-se crescentemente a um movimento que, para simplificar, designamos de interdisciplinaridade. As interdisciplinaridades com os seus objectos científicos próprios e os anseios de uma ciência da totalidade assumem crescente importância. Uma relevância que frequentemente é mais simbólica do que epistemológica, mais discursiva do que metodológica, mais emblemática do que construtora. 'Interdisciplinaridade - Antologia' reúne um conjunto de textos de importantes autores contemporâneos que fizeram do tema da interdisciplinaridade objecto de estudo (...) privilegiado. A sua publicação tem como principal propósito contribuir para o esclarecimento teórico do conceito de interdisciplinaridade e conceitos afins visando o aprofundamento do seu significado, a compreensão do seu valor e limites e um mais profundo entendimento das dificuldades em presença. (shrink)

Not all symmetries are on a par. For instance, within Newtonian mechanics, we seem to have a good grasp on the empirical significance of boosts, by applying it to subsystems. This is exemplified by the thought experiment known as Galileo’s ship: the inertial state of motion of a ship is immaterial to how events unfold in the cabin, but is registered in the values of relational quantities such as the distance and velocity of the ship relative to the shore. But (...) the significance of gauge symmetries seems less clear. For example, can gauge transformations in Yang-Mills theory—taken as mere descriptive redundancy—exhibit a similar relational empirical significance as the boosts of Galileo’s ship? This question has been debated in the last fifteen years in philosophy of physics. I will argue that the answer is ‘yes’, but only for a finite subset of gauge transformations, and under special conditions. Under those conditions, we can mathematically identify empirical significance with a failure of supervenience: the state of the Universe is not uniquely determined by the intrinsic state of its isolated subsystems. Empirical significance is therefore encoded in those relations between subsystems that stand apart from their intrinsic states. (shrink)

Why is gauge symmetry so important in modern physics, given that one must eliminate it when interpreting what the theory represents? In this paper we discuss the sense in which gauge symmetry can be fruitfully applied to constrain the space of possible dynamical models in such a way that forces and charges are appropriately coupled. We review the most well-known application of this kind, known as the 'gauge argument' or 'gauge principle', discuss its difficulties, and then reconstruct the gauge argument (...) as a valid theorem in quantum theory. We then present what we take to be a better and more general gauge argument, based on Noether's second theorem in classical Lagrangian field theory, and argue that this provides a more appropriate framework for understanding how gauge symmetry helps to constrain the dynamics of physical theories. (shrink)

Local gauge theories are in a complicated relationship with boundaries. Whereas fixing the gauge can often shave off unwanted redundancies, the coupling of different bounded regions requires the use of gauge-variant elements. Therefore, coupling is inimical to gauge-fixing, as usually understood. This resistance to gauge-fixing has led some to declare the coupling of subsystems to be the \textit{raison d'\^etre} of gauge \cite{RovelliGauge2013}. Indeed, while gauge-fixing is entirely unproblematic for a single region without boundary, it introduces arbitrary boundary conditions on the (...) gauge degrees of freedom themselves---these conditions lack a physical interpretation when they are not functionals of the original fields. Such arbitrary boundary choices creep into the calculation of charges through Noether's second theorem, muddling the assignment of physical charges to local gauge symmetries. The confusion brewn by gauge at boundaries is well-known, and must be contended with both conceptually and technically. It may seem natural to replace the arbitrary boundary choice with new degrees of freedom, for using such a device we resolve some of these confusions while leaving no gauge-dependence on the computation of Noether charges \cite{DonnellyFreidel}. But, concretely, such boundary degrees of freedom are rather arbitrary---they have no relation to the original field-content of the field theory. How should we conceive of them? Here I will explicate the problems mentioned above and illustrate a possible resolution: in a recent series of papers \cite{GomesRiello2016, GomesRiello2018, GomesHopfRiello} the notion of a connection-form was put forward and implemented in the field-space of gauge theories. Using this tool, a modified version of symplectic geometry---here called `horizontal'---is possible. Independently of boundary conditions, this formalism bestows to each region a physically salient, relational notion of charge: the horizontal Noether charge. Meanwhile, as required, the connection-form mediates an irenic composition of regions, one compatible with the attribution of horizontal Noether charges to each region. Thes aims of this paper are to highlight the boundary issues in the treatment of gauge, and to discuss how gauge theory may be conceptually clarified in light of a resolution to these issues. (shrink)

‘Social auditing’ is everywhere. An increasing number of companies – and also public and voluntary sector organisations – are trying to assess their social performance systematically. Shell, BP and General Motors are among them. How are they doing it? What impact do NGOs and civil society organisations have on this process? Do they have a privileged place in social audits? This article looks at these questions, and sets out a framework for understanding social audits and civil society. Examples are drawn (...) particularly from the recent Camelot social audit (‘Camelot and Social Responsibility’, Social Report 1999). Camelot plc is the operator of the UK national lottery. (shrink)

This article aims to rethink the meaning of “nature” and the human in Plato, more specifically through some examples contained in the _Phaedrus_, a rare dialogue further away from the city. Phaedrus and Socrates leave Athens on a path outside the walls, past the Ilisus stream and the breeze of the woods, and end up sitting in the shadows of trees full of singing cicadas. What is the meaning of this scenario in the construction o the text? Is it possible (...) to learn from oak trees or insects? The philosophizing of this dialogue passes through the coolness of the shadows of the trees in the hot summer noon. This sensuous topography through the text reveals the writer Plato wary of the enveloping meaning of the living drama between Phaedrus and Socrates. The audience and participation of natural elements, trees and cicadas in the dialogue reveals an involvement of the discourse with the surrounding atmosphere, a special concern of Socrates in his palinode and in his final prayer to Pan. In this dialogue, more than distinct and removed from nature, we think the human being (and reason) immersed in it - in an attempt to integrate a mythological and dialogical search between river, rock, plants, animals, humans, gods and demigods. The image of an overly rationalist and humanist Plato finds in this text a perspective of an inspired writer, a hybrid poet and philosopher, with a mission to restore language and the city to animal and cosmic life. (shrink)

Since communication and expression are central aspects of music performance it is important to develop a systematic pedagogy of teaching children and teenagers expressiveness. Although research has been growing in this area a comprehensive literature review that unifies the different approaches to teaching young musicians expressiveness has been lacking. Therefore, the aim of this article is to provide an overview of literature related to teaching and learning of expressiveness from music psychology and music education research in order to build a (...) new theoretical framework for teaching and learning expressive music performance in instrumental music lessons with children and teenagers. The article will start with a brief discussion of interpretation and expression in music performance, before providing an overview of studies that investigated teaching and learning of performance expression in instrumental music education with adults and children. On the foundation of this research a theoretical framework for dialogic teaching and learning of expressive music performance will be proposed and the rationale explained. Dialogic teaching can be useful for scaffolding young musicians’ learning of expressivity as open questions can stimulate thinking about the interpretation and may serve to connect musical ideas to the embodied experience of the learner. A “toolkit” for teaching and learning of expressiveness will be presented for practical application in music lessons. In addition, a theoretical model will be proposed to further our understanding of teaching and learning of expressive music performance as a multifaceted and interactive process that is embedded in the context of tutors’ and learners’ experiences and environment. Finally, implications of this framework and suggestions for future research will be discussed. (shrink)

After a brief introduction to issues that plague the realization of a theory of quantum gravity, I suggest that the main one concerns defining superpositions of causal structures. This leads me to a distinction between time and space, to a further degree than that present in the canonical approach to general relativity. With this distinction, one can make sense of superpositions as interference between alternative paths in the relational configuration space of the entire Universe. But the full use of relationalism (...) brings us to a timeless picture of Nature, as it does in the canonical approach. After a discussion of Parmenides and the Eleatics' rejection of time, I show that there is middle ground between their view of absolute timelessness and a view of physics taking place in timeless configuration space. In this middle ground, even though change does not fundamentally exist, the illusion of change can be recovered in a way not permitted by Parmenides. It is recovered through a particular density distribution over configuration space which gives rise to 'records'. Incidentally, this distribution seems to have the potential to dissolve further aspects of the measurement problem that can still be argued to haunt the application of decoherence to Many-Worlds quantum mechanics. I end with a discussion indicating that the conflict between the conclusions of this paper and our view of the continuity of the self may still intuitively bother us. Nonetheless, those conclusions should be no more challenging to our intuition than Derek Parfit's thought experiments on the subject. (shrink)

Civility is often treated as an essential virtue in liberal democracies that promise to protect diversity as well as active disagreement in the public sphere. Yet the fear that our tolerant society faces a crisis of incivility is gaining ground. Politicians and public intellectuals call for "more civility" as the solution--but is civility really a virtue? Or is it something more sinister--a covert demand for conformity that silences dissent? Mere Civility sheds light on this tension in contemporary political theory and (...) practice by examining similar appeals to civility in early modern debates about religious toleration. In seventeenth-century England, figures as different as Roger Williams, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke could agree that some restraint on the wars of words and "persecution of the tongue" between sectarians would be required; and yet, they recognized that the prosecution of incivility was often difficult to distinguish from persecution.--. (shrink)

Intuitions about retractions have been used to motivate truth relativism about certain types of claims. Among these figure epistemic modals, knowledge attributions, or personal taste claims. On MacFarlane’s prominent relativist proposal, sentences like “the ice cream might be in the freezer” or “Pocoyo is funny” are only assigned a truth-value relative to contexts of utterance and contexts of assessment. Retractions play a crucial role in the argument for assessment-relativism. A retraction of a past assertion is supposed to be mandatory whenever (...) the asserted sentence is not true at the context of use and the context of assessment. If retractions were not obligatory in these conditions, there would be no normative difference between assessment-relativism and contextualism. The main goal of this paper is to undermine the claim that retractions reveal this normative difference. To this effect, the paper offers a review of three important objections to the obligatoriness of retractions. Taken together, these objections make a strong case against the alleged support that retractions give to assessment-relativism. The objections are moreover supported by recent experimental results that are also discussed. This will satisfy a further goal, which is to undermine the idea that there is a constitutive retraction rule. The paper also discusses two ways to understand what such a rule would be constitutive of, and concludes with a discussion of how to describe what retractions are. (shrink)

We review three broadly geometrodynamical---and in part, Machian or relational---projects, from the perspective of spacetime functionalism. We show how all three are examples of functionalist reduction of the type that was advocated by D. Lewis, and nowadays goes by the label `the Canberra Plan’. The projects are: the recovery of geometrodynamics by Hojman et al. ; the programme of Schuller and collaborators to deduce a metric from the physics of matter fields; the deduction of the ADM Hamiltonian by Gomes and (...) Shyam. We end by drawing a positive corollary about shape dynamics: namely, it has a good rationale for the Hamiltonian it postulates. (shrink)

The idea that one can 'soak up' someone else's mood or sense the tension in a room is familiar - as in 'negative energy'. This ability to borrow or share states of mind is now pathologized, as the author shows in relation to affective transfer in psychiatric clinics.

Barbour’s interpretation of Mach’s principle led him to postulate that gravity should be formulated as a dynamical theory of spatial conformal geometry, or in his terminology, “shapes.” Recently, it was shown that the dynamics of General Relativity can indeed be formulated as the dynamics of shapes. This new Shape Dynamics theory, unlike earlier proposals by Barbour and his collaborators, implements local spatial conformal invariance as a gauge symmetry that replaces refoliation invariance in General Relativity. It is the purpose of this (...) paper to answer frequent questions about (new) Shape Dynamics, such as its relation to Poincaré invariance, General Relativity, Constant Mean (extrinsic) Curvature gauge, earlier Shape Dynamics, and finally the conformal approach to the initial value problem of General Relativity. Some of these relations can be clarified by considering a simple model: free electrodynamics and its dual shift symmetric formulation. This model also serves as an example where symmetry trading is used for usual gauge theories. (shrink)

Concepts stand at the centre of human cognition. We use concepts in categorizing objects and events in the world, in reasoning and action, and in social interaction. It is therefore not surprising that the study of concepts constitutes a central area of research in philosophy and psychology, yet only recently have the two disciplines developed greater interaction. Recent experiments in psychology that test the role of concepts in categorizing and reasoning have found a great deal of variation, across individuals and (...) cultures, in categorization behaviour. Meanwhile, philosophers of language and mind have investigated the semantic properties of concepts, and how concepts are related to linguistic meaning and linguistic communication. A key motivation behind this was the idea that concepts must be shared across individuals and cultures. With the dawn of experimental philosophy, the proposal that the experimental data from psychology lacks relevance to semantics is increasingly difficult to defend. -/- This volume brings together leading psychologists and philosophers to advance the interdisciplinary debate on the role of concepts in categorizing and reasoning, the relationship between concepts and linguistic meaning and communication, the challenges conceptual variation poses to communication, and the social and political effects of conceptual change. (shrink)

Cultural diversity is an increasingly important phenomenon that affects not only social and political harmony but also the cohesion and efficiency of organisations. The problems that firms have with regard to managing cultural diversity have been abundantly studied in recent decades from the perspectives of management theory and moral philosophy, but there are still open questions that require deeper reflection and broader empirical analysis. Managing cultural diversity in organisations is of prime importance because it involves harmonising different values, beliefs, credos (...) and customs, and, in essence, human identity. Taking into consideration these cultural differences and harmonising them is a human rights issue and a central dimension of corporate social responsibility. Here we are going to focus on theoretical reflection about the ideas that lie behind corporate policies and organisational initiatives that deal with cultural diversity. The aim of our paper is twofold: to present a critical reflection on the ideology of tolerance, and propose an ideology of respect for dealing with cultural diversity. We start by presenting the plurality of interpretations of the concept of ideology, and justify its applicability to the field of cultural diversity. We then reflect on the differences between “tolerance” and “respect” and identifying the practical implications for managing cultural diversity. And finally, we propose a culture of respect that goes beyond tolerance and complements and legitimizes the “business case” perspective for managing cultural diversity in companies. The ideology of respect is based on the Kantian tradition and on the discursive approach where rational dialogue and argumentation are considered the legitimate process for creating a culture of intercultural respect. From this theoretical discussion of the key philosophical concepts we can suggest some general principles for managing cultural diversity in organisations. (shrink)

In an accompanying paper Gomes, we have put forward an interpretation of quantum mechanics based on a non-relativistic, Lagrangian 3+1 formalism of a closed Universe M, existing on timeless configuration space \ of some field over M. However, not much was said there about the role of locality, which was not assumed. This paper is an attempt to fill that gap. Locality in full can only emerge dynamically, and is not postulated. This new understanding of locality is based solely on (...) the properties of extremal paths in configuration space. I do not demand locality from the start, as it is usually done, but showed conditions under which certain systems exhibit it spontaneously. In this way we recover semi-classical local behavior when regions dynamically decouple from each other, a notion more appropriate for extension into quantum mechanics. The dynamics of a sub-region O within the closed manifold M is independent of its complement, \, if the projection of extremal curves on \ onto the space of extremal curves intrinsic to O is a surjective map. This roughly corresponds to \, where \ is a linear projection. This criterion for locality can be made approximate—an impossible feat had it been already postulated—and it can be applied for theories which do not have hyperbolic equations of motion, and/or no fixed causal structure. When two regions are mutually independent according to the criterion proposed here, the semi-classical path integral kernel factorizes, showing cluster decomposition which is the ultimate aim of a definition of locality. (shrink)

Through a theoretical examination of the preventive turn in criminal law and justice which has gained momentum in Anglo-American criminal justice systems since the late-twentieth century, The Preventive Turn in Criminal Law demonstrates how recent transformations in criminal law and justiceare intrinsically related to and embedded in the way liberal society and liberal law have been imagined, developed, and conditioned by its social, political, and historical context. Henrique Carvalho identifies a tension between the idea of punishment as an expression of (...) individual justice, andprevention as a manifestation of the need for security and the promotion of welfare. Tracing this tension back to an intrinsic ambivalence within the modern conception of individual liberty, which is both repressed and preserved by liberal conceptions of responsibility and punishment, Carvalhoproves that as long as this ambivalence remains unexamined, liberal law has the potential to both promote and undermine individual justice.Engaging with the dominant contemporary literature on criminal law, prevention, risk, security, and criminalisation, this volume deploys a theoretical perspective developed through a critical analysis of both classical and contemporary works of social and political theory. The book reveals that thepervasiveness of prevention in 21st century criminal justice systems represents not only the consequence of new and unprecedented features of contemporary politics and society, but also the manifestation of essential aspects of the liberal legal and political tradition. (shrink)

The article aims to reconstruct the seventeenth-century debate of the scientific nature of mathematics and the possibility of conceiving an idea of a positive infinite to address the philosophical implications of mathematics in Spinoza’s work, emphasizing the geometric ordering in his Ethics. We will approach the mathematical thinking of that philosopher from three perspectives: the pedagogical, the epistemological and the ontological. In the pedagogical sense, his synthetic geometry aims to inhabit the evidence as rhetorical and pedagogical expression of a perfect (...) and self-evident concatenation that leads the progress of the reader through philosophical propositions. In the epistemological sense, we have the aim of inhabiting the thing defined by a genetic definition that provides the very acting essence of a thing. That epistemological sense provides us the difference between a definition of a thing by its predicates or through its inner essence. And finally, in the ontological sense of inhabiting the infinite itself, because geometry can bring us the proper way to conceive the positive idea of the absolutely infinite in which we necessarily are and take part. (shrink)

In this paper, we propose Kripke-style models for the logics of evidence and truth LETJ and LETF. These logics extend, respectively, Nelson’s logic N4 and the logic of first-degree entailment with a classicality operator ∘ that recovers classical logic for formulas in its scope. According to the intended interpretation here proposed, these models represent a database that receives information as time passes, and such information can be positive, negative, non-reliable, or reliable, while a formula ∘A means that the information about (...) A, either positive or negative, is reliable. This proposal is in line with the interpretation of N4 and FDE as information-based logics, but adds to the four scenarios expressed by them two new scenarios: reliable information for the truth and for the falsity of a given proposition. (shrink)

O presente artigo pretende fazer uma exposição de temas e duas personalidades da história do pensamento e das letras no Brasil. Benedito Nunes e Clarice Lispector. Razão e imaginação que se encontram na memória, personagem Macabéa, da novela a hora da estrela de Clarice Lispector. A vida da moça nordestina: desvalida, solteira, obtusa, enfermiça, desamparada, religiosa. É o centro onde os dois autores circulam e adentram como em uma atmosfera oceânica. O que trazem? O Mistério perene que é a vida (...) humana. (shrink)

O artigo procura considerar a fecundidade da ideia de arte e da própria criação artística no interior da prática filosófica de Marilena Chaui a partir de quatro pontos: i - a defesa de uma estética que não seja meramente pautada pelo julgamento de gosto e pela experiência do belo, mas por relações ativas entre arte, vida, crítica e engajamento social; ii - um parêntese de uma história pessoal que entrelaça política, ensino e literatura; iii - uma análise da escrita não (...) apenas filosófica, mas literária da autora, em uma comparação à própria escrita de Espinosa; iv - a importância da voz e da criação no ensino de filosofia de Chaui. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that hate speech expresses hate, and answer some objections to expressivist views. First, I briefly comment on some limitations of pragmatic accounts of harmful speech. I then present an expressive-normative view of derogatory discourse according to which it is expressive of an affective state by presupposing it. A linguistic act expressive of an affective state inherits the normativity that is constitutive of that state, as directed to its intentional object. If the act is successful, it (...) updates the conversational context with the normative appraisal conditions of the affective state presupposed. I argue that this model can be applied to hate speech. I rely on current research on the psychology of hate to identify the appraisal conditions, action tendencies, and motivational goals characteristic of hate. The account supplements other pragmatic accounts of hate speech. (shrink)

Describing a Mundus Novus was a very singular task in the sixteenth century. It was an effort shaped by a permanent inherent tension between novelty and normality, between the immense variety of new facts and the demand of credibility. How did these inner strains affect the narrative style of the first descriptions of the natural world of ‘the Indies’? How were the first European observers of the nature of America able to simultaneously transmit the idea of immensity and regularity, and (...) that of novelty? How did they attempt to describe new worlds knowing that there was a lot – perhaps too much – to tell? This paper focuses not on the much-discussed epistemological issues related to those questions, but on their narrative and stylistic consequences. We argue that the first Europeans meeting the new realities of the Americas or India had to meet new challenges, and these translated into texts with specific characteristics. Thus, their first descriptions are essentially different from the texts about the natural world that were written before or after the ‘discovery’. We show that they adopted very specific discursive approaches, and were deeply influenced by the credibility strategies of the medical profession in which they had been trained. (shrink)

Literature on consumer ethics tends to focus on issues within the public sphere, such as the environment, and treats other drivers of consumption decisions, such as family, as non-moral concerns. Consequently, an attitude–behaviour gap is viewed as a straightforward failure by consumers to act ethically. We argue that this is based upon a view of consumer behaviour as linear and unproblematic, and an approach to moral reasoning, arising from a stereotypically masculine understanding of morality, which foregrounds abstract principles. By demonstrating (...) the importance of context to consumption decisions and articulating the impact of caring relationships, we highlight how such decisions are both complex and situated. This is particularly evident for decisions involving the needs of others, as occurs in family life. We argue that the incorporation of care ethics provides both theoretical insights and a more complete account of consumer ethics. This is explored empirically through an investigation of the ethical dilemmas arising from consumption decisions made by mothers of young children. Such decisions juxtapose an ethical consumption orientation with care for one’s child. Therefore, what has been previously considered a failure to act ethically may in fact be the outcome of complex decision making, which involves competing ethical considerations. We discuss the implications of our findings for theory and practice and how this approach to consumer ethics could be applied more widely. (shrink)

A FUNÇÃO SOCIAL DA POSSE COMO PARÂMETRO PARA TRATAMENTO DOS CONFLITOS FUNDIÁRIOS URBANOS.

A Era Tecnológica em que vivemos agrava os riscos de despersonalização do ser humano, sobretudo no campo da Medicina, subvertendo a ordem de a ciência servir à pessoa. Cuidados paliativos e direitos do paciente terminal apresenta análise pioneira da terminalidade da vida à luz do Direito Civil, com ênfase nos direitos da personalidade, da Bioética e da Filosofia de Emmanuel Lévinas. São alguns tópicos de destaque- - pessoa e personalidade; - direitos da personalidade; - futilidade terapêutica; - cuidados em saúde (...) para pacientes terminais; - qualidade de vida na enfermidade; - decisões em fim de vida; - ética à beira do leito do paciente; - direitos sobre o próprio estado de saúde; - diretivas antecipadas de vontade. Obra de sensibilidade ímpar, Cuidados paliativos e direitos do paciente terminal destina-se a estudantes e profissionais do Direito e da área da saúde, e a todos aqueles que se interessam por discussão tão delicada e necessária nos dias atuais. Para acessar as atualizações dos textos legais após a publicação da obra e outros documentos sobre o tema, acesse- manoleeducacao.com.br/cuidados-paliativos. (shrink)

Bergson e a sociologia.--Problemas de filosofía do direito.--Direito e evolucionismo.--Código de Hamurabi e codificac̦ões anteriores.--Ideais jurídicos.--Problemas da planificac̦ão através do direito.--Aspectos da sociologia juridíca de Gurvitch.--A problemática da sociologia política.

This text represents our first attempting to offer a Metaphysic model to interpret the late modernity (which emerges in the middle of the 18th century and goes along until the end of the IIWW) through the concept of Teleontology. Thus, Teleontology means the procedure of the spirit of the late modern age to shift its paradigms from ontology (an investigation about the being as being, in which existence means an attribute) to teleology, in which essence must be conquered and revealed (...) in the final of a progressive process. Instead of Being, Man became the main object of this investigation; the question of the being as being has given way as to an enlightened concept of being-man (never reached) as also to the task to achieve this in order to satisfy what reason designed to human species. However, as this project of achieving the concept of Being-Man advanced, its true nature became clear: a unilateral and arbitrary colonial expansion, which forced everyone to follow Teleontological paradigms. Teleontology can demonstrate that Greek-Christian metaphysics means a particular element (never universal) submitted to a specific culture and, in this case, expresses the structure of Eurocentric thought that became global by way of the expanding of capitalism/colonialism. Specifically, in this text, we propose to investigate: 1 - what is Teleontology; 2 - what are its objects; 3 - what are its origins. (shrink)

The inherent difficulty in talking about quantum decoherence in the context of quantum cosmology is that decoherence requires subsystems, and cosmology is the study of the whole Universe. Consistent histories gave a possible answer to this conundrum, by phrasing decoherence as loss of interference between alternative histories of closed systems. When one can apply Boolean logic to a set of histories, it is deemed ‘consistent’. However, the vast majority of the sets of histories that are merely consistent are blatantly nonclassical (...) in other respects, and further constraints than just consistency need to be invoked. In this paper, I attempt to give an alternative answer to the issues faced by consistent histories, by exploring a timeless interpretation of quantum mechanics of closed systems. This is done solely in terms of path integrals in non-relativistic, timeless, configuration space. What prompts a fresh look at such foundational problems in this context is the advent of multiple gravitational models in which Lorentz symmetry is not fundamental, but only emergent. And what allows this approach to overcome previous barriers to a timeless, conditional probabilities interpretation of quantum mechanics is the new notion of records—made possible by an inherent asymmetry of configuration space. I outline and explore consequences of this approach for foundational issues of quantum mechanics, such as the natural emergence of the Born rule, conservation of probabilities, and the Sleeping Beauty paradox. (shrink)

In History After Lacan, Teresa Brennan argues that Jacques Lacan was not an ahistorical post-structuralist. She tells the story of a social psychosis, beginning with a discussion of Lacan's neglected theory of history which argued that we are in the grip of a psychotic's era which began in the seventeenth century and climaxes in the present. By extending and elaborating on Lacan's theory, Brennan develops a general theory of modernity. Contrary to postmodern assumptions, she argues, we need a general (...) historical explanation. An understanding of historical dynamics is essential if we are to make the connections between the outstanding facts of modernity--ethnocentrism, the relation between the sexes, and ecological catastrophe. A challenging feminist, interdisciplinary study, History After Lacan will be essential reading for social, cultural, and political theorists, historians, psychoanalysts, and literary theorists. (shrink)

The eliminative view of gauge degrees of freedom—the view that they arise solely from descriptive redundancy and are therefore eliminable from the theory—is a lively topic of debate in the philosophy of physics. Recent work attempts to leverage properties of the QCD $$\theta _{\text {YM}}$$ θ YM -term to provide a novel argument against the eliminative view. The argument is based on the claim that the QCD $$\theta _{\text {YM}}$$ θ YM -term changes under “large” gauge transformations. Here we review (...) geometrical propositions about fiber bundles that unequivocally falsify these claims: the $$\theta _{\text {YM}}$$ θ YM -term encodes topological features of the fiber bundle used to represent gauge degrees of freedom, but it is fully gauge-invariant. Nonetheless, within the essentially classical viewpoint pursued here, the physical role of the $$\theta _{\text {YM}}$$ θ YM -term shows the physical importance of bundle topology (or superpositions thereof) and thus counts against (a naive) eliminativism. (shrink)