The philosophical, logical, and terminological junctions between Description Logics (DLs) and Modal Logic (ML) are important because they can support the formal analysis of modal notions of ‘possibility’ and ‘necessity’ through the lens of DLs. This paper introduces functional contingents in order to (i) structurally and terminologically analyse ‘functional possibility’ and ‘functional necessity’ in DL world descriptions and (ii) logically and terminologically annotate DL world descriptions based on functional contingents. The most significant contributions of this research are (...) the logical characterisation and terminological analysis of functional contingents in DL world descriptions. The ultimate goal is to investigate how modal operators can – logically and terminologically – be expressed within DL world descriptions. (shrink)

The concept of magic is frequently used to discuss technology, a practice considered useful by some with others arguing that viewing technology as magic precludes a proper understanding of technology. The concept of magic is especially prominent in discussions of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Based on an anthropological perspective, this paper juxtaposes ML technology with magic, using descriptions drawn from a project on an ML-powered system for propulsion control of cargo ships. The paper concludes that prior scholarly work on (...) technology has failed to both define magic adequately and use research into magic. It also argues that although the distinction between ML technology and magic is important, recognition of the similarities is useful for understanding ML technology. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to discuss rival views of business and business ethics in terms of narrative. I want to show that we can tell various stories about business, and that our worldview narratives shape our accounts of business. These narratives not only involve description, but contain normative ramifications. We can only act within the world that we perceive. To evaluate competing narratives, I suggest dialectical comparison of the narratives with important values. The second part of (...) the paper discusses five distinct genres of worldview narratives and their implications for business: homo economicus, libertarian, conservative, liberal, and religio-philosophical. (shrink)

A framework for the mind-matter problem in a holistic universe which has no parts is outlined. The conceptual structure of modern quantum theory suggests to use complementary Boolean descriptions as elements for a more comprehensive non-Boolean description of a world without an a priori mind-matter distinction. Such a description in terms of a locally Boolean but globally non-Boolean structure makes allowance for the fact that Boolean descriptions play a privileged role in science. If we accept the insight (...) that there are no ultimate building blocks, the existence of holistic correlations between contextually chosen parts is a natural consequence. The main problem of a genuinely non-Boolean description is to find an appropriate partition of the universe of discourse. If we adopt the idea that all fundamental laws of physics are invariant under time translations, then we can consider a partition of the world into a tenseless and a tensed domain.In the sense of a regulative principle, the material domain is defined as the tenseless domain with its homogeneous time. The tensed domain contains the mental domain with a tensed time characterized by a privileged position, the Now. Since this partition refers to two complementary descriptions which are not given a priori we have to expect correlations between these two domains. In physics it corresponds to Newton 's separation of universal laws of nature and contingent initial conditions Both descriptions have a non-Boolean structure and can be encompassed into a single non-Boolean description. Tensed and tenseless time can be synchronized by holistic correlations. (shrink)

Description Logics (DLs) are a family of formal knowledge representation formalisms and the most well-known formalisms in semantics-based systems. The central focus of this research is on logical-terminological characterisation/analysis of possibilistic and probabilistic descriptions of events in DLs. Based on a logical characterisation of the concept of `being', this paper conceptualises events within DLs world descriptions. Accordingly, it deals with the concepts of `possibility of events' and `probability of events'. The main goal of this research is to investigate (...) how possible and probable notations can, terminologically and logically, be interpreted and analysed within DLs world descriptions. In other words, the research logically-terminologically investigates how possibilistic and probabilistic descriptions of events can be expressed in DLs. (shrink)

This paper examines different kinds of definite descriptions denoting purely contingent, necessary or impossible objects. The discourse about contingent/impossible/necessary objects can be organised in terms of rational questions to ask and answer relative to the modal profile of the entity in question. There are also limits on what it is rational to know about entities with this or that modal profile. We will also examine epistemic modalities; they are the kind of necessity and possibility that is determined by (...) epistemic constraints related to knowledge or rationality. Definite descriptions denote so-called offices, roles, or things to be. We explicate these -offices as partial functions from possible worlds to chronologies of objects of type , where  is mostly the type of individuals. Our starting point is Prior’s distinction between a ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ definite article ‘the’. In both cases, the definite description refers to at most one object; yet, in the case of the weak ‘the’, the referred object can change over time, while in the case of the strong ‘the’, the object referred to by the definite description is the same forever, once the office has been occupied. The main result we present is the way how to obtain a Wh-knowledge about who or what plays a given role presented by a hyper-office, i.e. procedure producing an office. Another no less important result concerns the epistemic necessity of the impossibility of knowing who or what occupies the impossible office presented by a hyper-office. (shrink)

2020 is the year of the first pandemic lived through the Internet. More than half of the world population is now online and because of self-isolation, our moral and social lives unfold almost exclusively online. Two pressing questions arise in this context: how much can we rely on the Internet, as a set of technologies, and how much should we trust online platforms and applications? In order to answer these two questions, I develop an argument based on two fundamental (...) assumptions: the development stage of today’s Internet is a contingent and not a necessary one and technologies are never neutral. My argument is that today’s pandemic produced an acceleration of the change which started almost 30 years ago, one of online migration, datafication and algorithmization of day to day life, a change in which digital technologies take on the classic role of institutions, both formal and informal. My thesis is a descriptive one, although it has some normative implications: this take over is not just a translation, but a modification or mutation which demands a creative collective answer, although users don’t have direct power over it. When they play the role of institutions, these technologies are surrogates or simulacra. I offer the paradigmatic case of online education, an experiment we were forced into because of the pandemic, in order to show that the institutional matrix of education cannot be reproduced online, due to the limitations of the medium and of the applications, especially those concerning physical presence. In the end I will critically address the question of the role played by Artificial Intelligence in the pandemic, and then I will show that the open source ethics was more useful in approaching scientifically and technologically the problems generated by the epidemic. (shrink)

Taking Savage's subjective expected utility theory as a starting point, this thesis distinguishes three types of uncertainty which are incompatible with Savage's theory for small worlds: ambiguity, option uncertainty and state space uncertainty. Under ambiguity agents cannot form a unique and additive probability function over the state space. Option uncertainty exists when agents cannot assign unique consequences to every state. Finally, state space uncertainty arises when the state space the agent constructs is not exhaustive, such that unforeseen contingencies can occur. (...) Chapter 2 explains Savage's notions of small and large worlds, and shows that ambiguity, option and state space uncertainty are incompatible with the small world representation. The chapter examines whether it is possible to reduce these types of uncertainty to one another. Chapter 3 suggests a definition of objective ambiguity by extending Savage's framework to include an exogenous likelihood ranking over events. The definition allows for a precise distinction between ambiguity and ambiguity attitude. The chapter argues that under objective ambiguity, ambiguity aversion is normatively permissible. Chapter 4 gives a model of option uncertainty. Using the two weak assumptions that the status quo is not uncertain, and that agents are option uncertainty averse, we derive status quo bias, the empirical tendency for agents to choose the status quo over other available alternatives. The model can be seen as rationalising status quo bias. Chapter 5 gives an axiomatic characterisation and corresponding representation theorem for the priority heuristic, a heuristic which predicts binary decisions be- tween lotteries particularly well. The chapter analyses the normative implications of this descriptive model. Chapter 6 defends the pluralist view of decision theory this thesis assumes. The chapter discusses possible applications of the types of uncertainty defined in the thesis, and concludes. (shrink)

This article argues that Ursula Le Guin’s science fiction is a form of ‘speculative anthropology’ that reconciles thick description and historicity. Like Clifford Geertz’s ethnographic writings, Le Guin’s science fiction utilises thick description to place the reader within unfamiliar social worlds rendered with extraordinary phenomenological fluency. At the same time, by incorporating social antagonisms, cultural contestation, and historical contingency, Le Guin never allows thick description to neutralise historicity. Rather, by combining the two and exploring their interplay, Le (...) Guin establishes a critical relation between her imagined worlds and the reader’s own historical moment. This enables her to both counter Fredric Jameson’s influential criticism of her work – the charge of ‘world reduction’ – and point to ungrasped utopian possibilities within the present. Le Guin’s speculative anthropology thus combines the strengths while overcoming some of the limitations of both Geertz’s thick-descriptive method and Jameson’s theory of the science fiction genre. (shrink)

About 1904 Meinong formulated his most famous idea: there are no empty (non-referential) terms. Russell also did not accept non-referential singular terms, but in “On Denoting” he claimed that all singular terms that are apparently empty could be explained away as apparent singular terms. However, if we take a more careful look at both theories, the picture becomes more complex. It is well known that Russell’s concept of a genuine proper name is very technical; but this is also true of (...) Meinong. Also, according to Meinong we can refer “directly” only to a very special category of ontologically simple objects. However, a very important difference is that, in the domain of Meinongian objects, a _plurality_ of objects always corresponds to each description. Thus, if Meinong were right, there could be _no definite descriptions_. If we narrow the domain of reference to _existent_ objects, we can secure the uniqueness of the reference object by specifying a collection of predicates that is contingently satisfied by only one (existing) object. But if we operate in the domain of all _possible_ objects, we have to specify _all_ properties that are had by the object in question. It turns out that such a “Leibnizian” specification amounts to the complete description of a possible world. (shrink)

SummaryIn his essay on rational theology Holm Tetens broaches the issue of God’s role as creator and additionally addresses the relationship of the absolute to the contingent world in a philosophical perspective. By making this a topic, the question arises as to whether or not God’s creative activities are limited by the laws of nature. According to Tetens, God as the infinite self-conscious subject must not just considered as free from all restrictions concerning his creative activities, but rather, (...) characterized as the absolute, he must be thought of as the ultimate ground of all beings, and therefore also as the creator of natural laws. In this article I will give a brief sketch of how this task could be tackled in philosophical terms. In doing so I will both pick up some of Tetens’ main intentions and concepts and try to explore them in some detail, as well as attempt to link them with the principle of determinacy as the main characteristic of the absolute. (shrink)

Special Issue, n. I, ch. 1, On the Transcendental.

Logical analysis of the applicability of nominals (which are introduced by hybrid logic) in the formal descriptions of the world (within modern knowledge representation and semantics-based systems) is very important because nominals, as second sorts of propositional symbols, can support logical identification of the described world at specific [temporal and/or spacial] states. This paper will focus on answering the philosophical-logical question of ‘how a fundamental world description in description logic (DL) and a nominal can be (...) related to each other?’. Based on my assumption that nominals can support more adequate identification of the world in DL, this paper will deal with the concept of ‘world identification’. Accordingly, based on a logical-terminological analysis of nominals, the paper will analyse hybridised fundamental world descriptions. The research will finally reach the idea that we can have a hybrid description logic based on the analysed concepts. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 38.4 (2000) 479-502 [Access article in PDF] Possible Worlds in the Tahâfut al-Falâsifa Al-Ghazâlî on Creation and Contingency Taneli Kukkonen University of Helsinki 1. This article is the second half in an inquiry into the debate between al-Ghazâlî (1058-1111) and Averroes (1126-1198) on the metaphysical basis of modalities. The first article focused on Averroes' exposition of the Arabic Aristotelian position on the eternity (...) of the world and the modalities, as found in the Tahâfut al-tahâfut, the "Incoherence of the Incoherence [of the Philosophers]" from ca. 1180.1 In this paper I propose to sketch the outlines to a very different conception suggested by al-Ghazâlî in the Tahâfut al-falâsifa (1095) and quoted verbatim and commented upon by Averroes in the Tahâfut al-tahâfut.2 In contrast to the naturalistic model of modalities propounded by [End Page 479] Averroes, al-Ghazâlî develops an interpretation of possibility in which conceivability and co-assertability are central. In several key respects al-Ghazâlî's approach mirrors that of John Duns Scotus in the fourteenth century: it makes possible, for instance, a distinction between conceptual and natural possibilities in a manner reminiscent of later Latin medieval theory, and, reflecting this, a distinction between the (non-temporal) moments of conception and causation in the divine mind. The parallels between al-Ghazâlî's and Augustine's basic conceptions, meanwhile, highlight the theological motives lying at the heart of the new thinking.As in the previous article, the dialectical form of Averroes' later Tahâfut al-tahâfut is used for critical insight. Averroes' criticism of al-Ghazâlî's modal theoretical innovations gives rise to an important question about the lengths to which al-Ghazâlî's proposals could be taken. The issue is to an extent unresolveable; one would do well to note why. Whereas Averroes' formulations in the Tahâfut al-tahâfut are made readily understandable against the backdrop of his Aristotelian commentaries and wider systematic teaching, it is less easy to determine how far al-Ghazâlî is willing to develop his own ideas. The materials given in the Tahâfut al-falâsifa leave the impression of being inconclusive and open-ended—perhaps deliberately so—and the ambiguities are mirrored in al-Ghazâlî's other texts.3Taken as they stand, al-Ghazâlî's formulations retain a substantial Avicennian residue, for better or for worse. This makes for a curious mixture of old and new in his overall scheme, a feature which Averroes can exploit by criticizing al-Ghazâlî from a strict Aristotelian viewpoint (just as he criticized Avicenna), while all the time maintaining that his adversary's proposals do not add up to a coherent and full-bodied alternative to that venerable tradition. But Averroes' criticisms do not touch on the way al-Ghazâlî's suggestions, vague as they may be, do represent a genuine breakthrough. Al-Ghazâlî's interpretation of the modal terms bypasses the connection traditionally made between true possibility and temporal instantiation. This allows for a freer handling of counterfactual possibilities, an important feature in any refiguring of the limits of possibility. 2. Al-Ghazâlî's innovations have their root in the idea of God freely choosing (arbitrating) between alternatives equal to him. This simple kernel of an idea, seated in the kalâm conception of possibility, allows for a recognition of the genuineness of synchronic alternatives: a seemingly small shift, but all-important [End Page 480] to the ensuing debate. Al-Ghazâlî has defended the notion of God's genuine choice earlier,4 but in refuting "the third proof of the philosophers for the world's eternity," he begins to make systematic use of the notion of possibility. A brief recapitulation of the philosophers' argument will serve to recall the reasoning from which al-Ghazâlî takes his cue. The philosophers, in al-Ghazâlî's words, had... (shrink)

This article presents an analysis of James Benning's film, BNSF. It argues that the film comprises a landscape rendered in such a way that the temporal aspects of the processes, both cultural and natural, of which it is composed are brought forth. The article also asserts that, by relating a world that unfolds with a measure of contingency, the film not only manifests the inherent inadequacy of representation, but also it draws attention to the efficacy of the world (...) in the making of its moving image. Finally, the article demonstrates that the qualities of the world delimited by the film impel the viewer to attempt to envision facts of nature that greatly outsize the horizon of her human point of view. (shrink)

Physicalism holds that the laws of physics are inviolable and ubiquitous and thereby account for all of reality. Laws leave no “wiggle room” or “gaps” for action by numinous agents. They cannot be invoked, however, without boundary stipulations that perforce are contingent and which “drive” the laws. Driving contingencies are not limited to instances of “blind chance,” but rather span a continuum of amalgamations with regularities, up to and including nearly determinate propensities. Most examples manifest directionality, and their very (...) definition encompasses intentionality. Contingencies, via their interactions with laws, can reinforce and maintain one another, thereby giving rise to enduring, ordered configurations of constraints. All of ordered nature thus results from ongoing transactions between mutualistic contingencies that constrain possibilities and entropic chance events that degrade order but diversify opportunities. Laws do not of themselves determine reality; interactions among contingencies do. For believers, the robust abundance of indeterminacies provides ample latitude for divine intervention, free will, and prayer. The priority of contingency also affords some insight into the meaning of suffering and evil. (shrink)

Shrek! focuses on an issue in the philosophy of language, a relatively new area of philosophical investigation that first emerged during the twentieth century. Some philosophers disagree with the claim that you cannot separate the descriptive and evaluative elements of linguistic statements. This is because they take descriptive statements to be the basic elements of language, to which our subjective attitudes get attached later in a contingent manner. At its most basic level language presents a symbolic picture of facts (...) in the world. Shrek! presents what philosophers call a thought experiment that purports to show that the descriptive and evaluative contents of sentences are really distinct. The chapter ends by suggesting how to discuss the philosophy of language with children. (shrink)

According to Stoic moral psychology, emotions are cognitive responses to perceived value in the contingent world. This dissertation begins by defending a contemporary version of this descriptive theory; it then proceeds with a critique of the Stoics' normative thesis that emotions involve amorally deplorable kind of cognitive error. I distinguish two senses in which this thesis is historically put forward, and show that both are thematically pertinent. The structural variant, as I call it, is a qualified critique of (...) the particular cognitive flaws to which emotions are liable; the fundamental argument, on the other hand, is that emotions are categorically unreliable. My goal in the rest of the dissertation is to respond to each aspect of normative Stoicism with a positive account of how it might be possible for a moral agent to avoid false emotion without doing away with emotion altogether. This means explaining how a person's emotional perception might become reliable rather than sentimental within a given moral context, and indicating what axiological conditions must generally obtain if emotion is justifiable in any case. In doing so, I draw largely upon Kierkegaard's pseudonymous and signed writings, while also engaging with other relevant philosophical texts along the way. I argue that a morality of virtue and narrative awareness is necessary for accurate emotional perception; then, I attempt to define the conditions on which a qualified value realism might be tenable. It is one thing to argue for the importance of emotion in human life, as a number of recent studies have done, but it is quite another to show how we might cultivate truthful, and avoid false, emotion. The outcome of this inquiry into the possibility of reliable emotion is a positive account of the ideal state in which one could trust oneself to be rational in being passionate. (shrink)

I use a distinction between single-minded and indifferent choice attitudes, modeled across maximally determinate plans of action, as a basis for interpreting deontic claims – about what ought, ought not, and may be done – as expressing a mode of relation between mind and world that gives voice to the exercise of practical rationality. At the same time, I use maximally determinate possible worlds to model descriptive claims in order to understand them as involving a mode of relation between (...) mind and world that manifests our theoretical rationality. The result is of interest to both linguists looking for a formal treatment of deontic modality that captures the role prescriptive mental states play in our lives, and philosophers interested in substantive questions about action-guiding and representational mental states as exercises of practical and theoretical rationality. (shrink)

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

I consider the most serious problem for the traditional account of divine creation in theistic actualism. According to van Inwagen's modal collapse argument, ultimate explanation entails that gratitude to God for one's existence is totally inappropriate. Ultimately, the actual world, and everything in it, is self-explanatory, and not a consequence of divine creation. I argue that van Inwagen's argument is unsound. It is consistent with an ultimate explanation for the world that the actual world is contingently necessary. (...) If God actualizes the world as a matter of contingent necessity, then gratitude to God for one's existence is perfectly appropriate. It is true that we exist as a matter of necessity, but that necessary existence is just a contingent fact. There are possible worlds in which we fail to exist altogether. (shrink)

Former discussions of biological generalizations have focused on the question of whether there are universal laws of biology. These discussions typically analyzed generalizations out of their investigative and explanatory contexts and concluded that whatever biological generalizations are, they are not universal laws. The aim of this paper is to explain what biological generalizations are by shifting attention towards the contexts in which they are drawn. I argue that within the context of any particular biological explanation or investigation, biologists employ two (...) types of generations. One type identifies causal regularities exhibited by particular kinds of biological entities. The other type identifies how these entities are distributed in the biological world. (shrink)

Since the pioneering work by Kripke and Montague, the term possible world has appeared in most theories of formal semantics for modal logics, natural languages, and knowledge-based systems. Yet that term obscures many questions about the relationships between the real world, various models of the world, and descriptions of those models in either formal languages or natural languages. Each step in that progression is an abstraction from the overwhelming complexity of the world. At the end, nothing (...) is left but a colorful metaphor for an undefined element of a set W called worlds, which are related by an undefined and undefinable primitive relation R called accessibility. For some purposes, the resulting abstraction has proved to be useful, but as a general theory of meaning, the abstraction omits too many significant features. So much information has been lost at each step that many philosophers, linguists, and psychologists have dismissed model-theoretic semantics as irrelevant to the study of meaning. This article examines the steps in the process of extractingthe pair (W,R) from the world and the way people talk about the world. It shows that the Kripke worlds can be reinterpreted as part of a Peircean semiotic theory, which can also include contributions from many other studies in cognitive science. Among them are Dunn’s semantics based on laws and facts, the lexical semantics preferred by manylinguists, psychological models of how the world is perceived, and philosophies of science that relate theories to the world. A full integration of all those sources is far beyond the scope of this article, but an outline of the approach suggests that Peirce’s vision is capable of relating and reconciling the competing sources. (shrink)

The paper examines the constitutive rule of the Documentality (object = written act), its explanatory power, and the role that writing and relations play in it. The social object is explained as a hybrid object, of higher order, consisting of heterogeneous parts; its identity is determined, amongst other things, by the relations it entertains with other entities. In the second part, after criticizing Searle’s notion of collective intentionality, which fails to explain conflict situations, the article focuses on some political implications (...) of social ontology, examining the role of immigrants sans papiers. (shrink)

The main aim of this paper is to characterize Maurizio Ferraris’ New Realism as a metaphilosophical account that develops Peter Strawson’s project of a descriptive metaphysics. The paper consists of two sections. The former outlines Strawson’s descriptive metaphysics by highlighting its realist commitments. The latter characterizes New Realism as a way of turning Strawson’s metaphysics into a metaphilosophy. New Realism moves from Strawson’s metaphysical description of the world we share through our experience to the metaphilosophical claim that philosophy (...) should primarily consist in this kind of description. (shrink)

RESUMO Este artigo é dedicado ao argumento contra o Requisito de Existência fornecido por Takashi Yagisawa. Argumentamos que o cerne do argumento de Yagisawa – a Forte Iterabilidade – não pode ser inferido pela ideia de contingente a priori (Kripke) e é incompatível com a ideia de @-transformação (Plantinga). Assim, essas ideias, contrariamente a Yagisawa, não podem servir de base metodológica da Forte Iterabilidade. Também argumentamos que a Forte Iterabilidade é incompatível com o Princípio Constitutivo. Finalmente, mostramos que o conceito (...) de propriedades indexadas pelo mundo (o argumento de Yagisawa se fa na ideia de propriedades indexadas pelo mundo) é inconsistente e, mesmo que o defensor da Forte Iterabilidade possa resistir a esta objeção, a Forte Iterabilidade deve ser abandonada. (shrink)

This book is about the influence of varying theological conceptions of contingency and necessity on two versions of the mechanical philosophy in the seventeenth century. Pierre Gassendi and René Descartes both believed that all natural phenomena could be explained in terms of matter and motion alone. They disagreed about the details of their mechanical accounts of the world, in particular about their theories of matter and their approaches to scientific method. This book traces their differences back to theological presuppositions (...) they inherited from the Middle Ages. Theological ideas were transformed into philosophical and scientific ideas which led to the emergence of different styles of science in the second half of the seventeenth century. (shrink)

The Nuclear Threat Initiative focuses on preventing catastrophes related to weapons of mass destruction, with a wide range of attacks including nuclear, biologic, radiologic, chemical and cyb...

INTRODUCTION Historical reality is one of the most important dimensions of philosophy. A philosophy is especially to be valued by the degree to which it ...

According to the Principle of Sufficient Reason (‘PSR’), every fact has an explanation for why it obtains. If the PSR is true, there must be a sufficient reason for why God chose to create our world. But a sufficient reason for God’s choice plausibly necessitates that choice. It thus seems that God could not have done otherwise, and that our world exists necessarily. We therefore appear forced to pick between the PSR, and the contingency of creation and divine (...) choice. I show that a third option remains open, and thus that it is possible to preserve the contingency of creation and divine choice even while endorsing the PSR. My solution depends on the coherence of a restricted modal realism. On this modal realism, there is more than one possible morally optimal created world, and for each such world there is an existing possibility in which God creates that world. (shrink)

Contingent transcranialists claim that the physical mechanisms of mind are not exclusively intracranial and that genuine cognitive systems can extend into cognizers' physical and socio-cultural environments. They further claim that extended cognitive systems must include the deep functional integration of external environmental resources with internal neural resources. They have found it difficult, however, to explicate the precise nature of such deep functional integration and provide compelling examples of it. Contingent intracranialists deny that extracranial resources can be components of (...) genuine extended cognitive systems. They claim that transcranialists fallaciously conflate coupling with constitution and construe cognition as extending always from brains into world rather than world into brains. By using insights from recent research in developmental psychology and by explicating the nature of one form that deep functional integration can take, I argue that (i) transcranialists do not fallaciously conflate coupling wth constitution, and (ii) human emotional ontogenesis is a world-to-brain transcranial achievement. Jennifer Greenwood is a PhD Candidate in Philosophy at the School of History, Philosophy, Religion, and Classics, University of Queensland. (shrink)

Identities formed with proper names may be contingent. this claim is made first through an example. the paper then develops a theory of the semantics of concrete things, with contingent identity as a consequence. this general theory lets concrete things be made up canonically from fundamental physical entities. it includes theories of proper names, variables, cross-world identity with respect to a sortal, and modal and dispositional properties. the theory, it is argued, is coherent and superior to its (...) rivals, in that it stems naturally from a systematic picture of the physical world. (shrink)

This book defends a radical new theory of contingency as a physical phenomenon. Drawing on the many-worlds approach to quantum theory and cutting-edge metaphysics and philosophy of science, it argues that quantum theories are best understood as telling us about the space of genuine possibilities, rather than as telling us solely about actuality. When quantum physics is taken seriously in the way first proposed by Hugh Everett III, it provides the resources for a new systematic metaphysical framework encompassing possibility, necessity, (...) actuality, chance, counterfactuals, and a host of related modal notions. -/- Rationalist metaphysicians argue that the metaphysics of modality is strictly prior to any scientific investigation; metaphysics establishes which worlds are possible, and physics merely checks which of these worlds is actual. Naturalistic metaphysicians respond that science may discover new possibilities and new impossibilities. This book's quantum theory of contingency takes naturalistic metaphysics one step further, allowing that science may discover what it is to be possible. As electromagnetism revealed the nature of light, as acoustics revealed the nature of sound, as statistical mechanics revealed the nature of heat, so quantum physics reveals the nature of contingency. (shrink)

The title of this book is somewhat misleading. A more apt title would have been, "A Marxist Critique of Husserl’s Nullification of the Real World." Such a title would have made the central argument and underlying concern in the present discussion more explicit. The author is intent on a spirited refutation of Husserl’s phenomenology as a transcendental, phenomenological idealism. It is particularly this stage of Husserl’s phenomenological development, maintains Sang-Ki Kim, that effects a sacrifice of the real world. (...) The belated return to the life-world, characteristic of Husserl’s later thought, does not, according to the author, help matters much. Husserl’s analysis of the life-world continues to be informed by the anti-historical apriorism that defined his earlier program of phenomenological idealism. Husserl’s concept of the life-world thus remains a bloodless abstraction, bereft of any acknowledgement of the concrete, historical, naturalist-materialist basis that undergirds it. (shrink)