T echnocrati c fundamentalis m (neocons ) an d theocrati c fundamentalis m (teocons) ar e t w o manifestation s o f politica l though t v e r y restrict i v e o f democra c y . Th e f irst on e ha s a highe r incidenc e i n th e f iel d o f econo m y an d th e secon d on e i n tha t o f the (...) religion , bu t bot h imp l y a stron g challeng e fo r th e democrati c State . Thi s a r ticl e deals wit h th e mor e o r les s fo r ma l conjunctio n bet w ee n bot h kind s o f fundamentalism , that appear s an d acts , e v e n a t a globa l l e v el , a s a v e r y conse r v at i v e reactio n agains t the mai n demand s o f c i vi c laicis m an d o f pr o g ress i v e policies . Th e autho r maintain s that th e an s w e r t o thes e n e w fundamentalisms , li k e t o th e ol d d o gmatisms , i s no t a t all th e relat i vism , bu t th e critica l an d aut o critica l thought . Th e poin t i s t o ad v ance , with thi s critica l attitude , i n th e const r uctio n o f n e w democrati c fo r mulations , pr o vided wit h a mor e stron g fundamen t i n te r m s o f ethica l l e gitima c y an d socia l l e gitimation. (shrink)

Por razones de eficacia (cohesión social, comunidad cívica) y, unidas a ellas, por razones éticas (valores de libertad, igualdad y solidaridad) la propuesta normativa de nuestro tiempo debe ser la universalización de la democracia. No hay futuro para nadie si no se avanza en ella, en la universalización de los derechos humanos, en su protección y realización efectiva en esa escala. Frente a los hechos que impone hoy el neoliberalismo conservador y la muy desigual globalización realmente existente, deben prevalecer los (...) derechos que derivan de la filosofía ética, política y jurídica de la democracia. Su expresión institucional -se estima aquí- es aquella que se concreta en la fórmula o paradigma del Estado social y democrático de Derecho: es decir, un Estado de importante intervención cualitativa; una sociedad civil más y mejor vertebrada, de trama más ajustada, más inclusiva de los nuevos movimientos sociales (feministas, ecologistas, antixenófobos, etc.); un sistema económico mixto, con sector público estatal y social donde el mercado y el sector privado encuentren coherente articulación; todo ello para la protección y realización de los derechos humanos civiles y políticos, económicos, sociales y culturales, así como los nuevos derechos fundamentales de las minorías, los derivados de las diferencias personales y sociales (étnicas, sexuales...), del medio ambiente, etc. En definitiva la razón de ser del Estado de Derecho es la protección y realización efectiva de los derechos humanos. La universalización de éstos y de la democracia exige, pues, la universalización del Estado social y democrático de Derecho. (shrink)

Frente a la mala «Razón de Estado», del pasado y del presente, se alegan aquí algunas de las posibles y potenciales buenas razones del Estado, también como exigencias válidas para el futuro. Con ello se pretende coadyuvar a una imprescindible recuperación teórica y práctica de la política y, con ella, de la cultura y de la ética en el espacio público. Ante el actual poder omnimodo e «incontrolado» de la economía, de su versión pretendidamente única, la del «capitalismo científico» y (...) la muy desigual «globalización», se hace necesario tomar completamente en serio la perspectiva de los intereses generales : y, dentro de ellos, los legítimos intereses individuales y, en especial, los de aquellos amplios sectores sociales dotados de muchos menos poderes y posibilidades. La ética de los valores ilustrados de libertad, igualdad, fraternidad , así como la seguridad que deriva de la propia cohesión social -justicia y eficiencia unidas- constituyen la base de esas buenas razones del Estado. (shrink)

A look at the nature of the universe, God, and our place within it explores the transformational role of consciousness in all human enterprise, offering inspirational insights into questions about religion, human existence, and good and evil.

Confidentiality is a central bioethical principle governing the provider–patient relationship. Dating back to Hippocrates, new laws have interpreted it for the age of precision medicine and electronic medical records. This is where the discussion of privacy and technology often ends in the scientific health literature when Internet-related technologies have made privacy a much more complex challenge with broad psychological and clinical implications. Beyond the recognised moral duty to protect patients’ health information, clinicians should now advocate a basic right to privacy (...) as a means to safeguard psychological health. The article reviews empirical research into the functions of privacy, the implications for psychological development and the resigned sentiment taking hold regarding the ability to control personal data. The article concludes with a call for legislative, educational and research steps to readjust the equilibrium between the individual and ‘Big Data’. (shrink)

Desde la tradición de los estudios de gubernamentalidad y sus resonancias en las sociologías políticas y de la educación, en este artículo se recuperan los debates vigentes en torno a las nociones de gubernamentalidad, gobierno y biopolítica desarrolladas en la vasta obra de Michel Foucault y sus continuadoras/es para enlazarlas con las discusiones sobre el objeto de estudio y el campo teórico de la política educativa, enfatizando el potencial analítico que ofrece su grilla de inteligibilidad para los fenómenos educativos propios (...) de las sociedades posdisciplinares. En esa dirección, este trabajo esboza una serie de propuestas epistemológicas, teóricas y metodológicas producidas a partir de una investigación empírica recientemente finalizada (Aguirre, 2022), de corte descriptivo y de carácter cualitativo. En vistas a estos propósitos, se producen diálogos interdisciplinares a la vez que se tensionan y discuten algunos supuestos clásicos y tradicionales de la política educativa, para incitar una renovación analítica que posibilite el estudio de las relaciones sociales de autogobierno y gobierno de las/os otras/os en tanto articulaciones históricas entre el saber, el poder y la subjetividad. Finalmente, se exponen algunos indicios y propuestas para el abordaje sociológico de los fenómenos educativos contemporáneos, que convocan y promueven la necesidad de producir ciertos desplazamientos epistemológicos en el campo teórico de la política educativa, así como invitan a la reconfiguración de sus objetos de estudio en el marco de la adscripción a un enfoque posestructuralista. (shrink)

Christopher Hom has recently argued that the best-overall account of the meaning of pejorative terms is a semantic account according to which pejoratives make a distinctive truth-conditional contribution, and in particular express complex, negative socially constructed properties. In addition, Hom supplements the semantic account with a pragmatic strategy to deal with the derogatory content of occurrences of pejorative terms in negations, conditionals, attitude reports, and so on, according to which those occurrences give rise to conversational implicatures to the effect that (...) the pejorative terms are non-empty, which explains the offensiveness of those occurrences. In this paper, I aim to defend this semantic strategy from several recent objections, and I will also present a novel objection, which in my view shows that we should understand the semantic account as a version of inferentialism, rather than radical externalism. (shrink)

Despite the promises made by molecular evolutionists since the early 1960s that phylogenies would be readily reconstructed using molecular data, the construction of molecular phylogenies has both retained many methodological problems of the past and brought up new ones of considerable epistemic relevance. The field is driven not only by changes in knowledge about the processes of molecular evolution, but also by an ever-present methodological anxiety manifested in the constant search for an increased objectivity—or in its converse, the avoidance of (...) subjectivity.This paper offers an exhaustive account of the methodological and conceptual difficulties embedded in each of the steps required to elaborate molecular phytogenies. The authors adopt a historical perspective on the field in order to follow the development of practices that seek to increase the objectivity of their methods and representations. These include the adoption and development of explicit criteria for evaluation of evidence, and of procedures associated with methods of statistical inference, quantification and automation. All these are linked to an increasing use of computers in research since the mid 1960s. We will show that the practices of objectivity described are highly dependent on the problems and tools of molecular phylogenetics. (shrink)

In 1817, in the preface to his Rein analytischer Beweis, Bernard Bolzano revealed that he had decided to postpone the publication of any subsequent instalment of his Beyträge zu einer begründeteren Darstellung der Mathematik because of the few and ‘superficial’ reviews of its first instalment, published in 1810. Bolzano’s transcriptions of the only two known reviews of this book are conserved at the Literární archiv Památníku národního písemnictví / Muzea literatury, in Prague, together with another manuscript on his Beyträge, the (...) provenance of which was unknown to Bolzano’s scholars until recently. In this paper it is shown that this latter manuscript is a draft of an announcement that was published at the time and that was indeed written at least to some extent by Bolzano himself. This hitherto unknown announcement of Bolzano’s Beyträge not only solves the mystery surrounding that manuscript, but also helps to date the publication of this book more precisely and provides an unusual insight into what we must take Bolzano himself to have considered most noteworthy about his work, namely his study on logic. The paper includes a transcription of the manuscript and an English translation of the announcement. (shrink)

The use of molecules and reactions as evidence, markers and/or traits for evolutionary processes has a history more than a century long. Molecules have been used in studies of intra-specific variation and studies of similarity among species that do not necessarily result in the analysis of phylogenetic relations. Promoters of the use of molecular data have sustained the need for quantification as the main argument to make use of them. Moreover, quantification has allowed intensive statistical analysis, as a condition and (...) a product of increasing automation. All of these analyses are subject to the methodological anxiety characteristic of a community in search of objectivity. It is in this context that scientists compared and evaluated protein and nucleic acid sequence data with other types of molecular data – including immunological, electrophoretic and hybridization data. This paper argues that by looking at long-term historical processes, such as the use of molecular evidence in evolutionary biology, we gain valuable insights into the history of science. In that sense, it accompanies a growing concern among historians for big-pictures of science that incorporate the fruitful historical research on local cases of the last decades. (shrink)

Adults (more than 18 years old) are likely to reproduce the habits that they acquired during childhood and adolescence (from 6 to 16 years old). For that reason, teachers and parents have the responsibility to promote an active and healthy lifestyle in children and adolescents. Even though every school subject should promote healthy activities, Physical Education (PE) is the most important subject to foster well-being habits associated to healthy lifestyle during sport practice and other kinds of active tasks. Indeed, there (...) are many factors that influence the acquisition of healthy habits that should be taken into account when programs and activities are implemented in both educational and extracurricular context. In this sense, psychological and social factors are of utmost importance to achieve optimal experiences for an active and healthy lifestyle. However, due to the myriad of studies analyzing different factors in different contexts, there could be confusion when programs and pedagogical strategies are applied in educational or extracurricular contexts. The objective of this investigation is to analyze the state of art of the psychosocial factors which influence the engagement in physical activities and sport practice. The keywords used in this review were mainly: ‘Self-Determination Theory’, ‘motivation’, ‘Psychological need satisfaction, ‘physical activity and sport engagement’, ‘Elementary Education’, ‘Secondary Education’, ‘Physical Education’. The articles were selected according to the following criteria: (a) peer-reviewed original research published in international journals indexed in JCR or SJR, (b) published in English or Spanish, (c) about psychosocial factors which influence the physical activity and sport engagement, (b) in educational or extracurricular context. Research articles selected were found through nine databases. It was observed that physical activities and sport practice engagement are closely related to psychological factors. In particularly, intrinsic motivation was able to determine the active participation in any activity, including physical activity and sport practice during the implementation of Small-Sided Games and other kinds of pedagogical strategies (e.g., Pedagogical Models). Motivation was also closely related to flow state. Finally, these variables should be considered in order to organize effective programs to promote an active and healthy lifestyle in Physical Education classes. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the consolidation of Molecular Evolution, a field originating in the 1960s at the interface of molecular biology, biochemistry, evolutionary biology, biophysics and studies on the origin of life and exobiology. The claim is made that Molecular Evolution became a discipline by integrating different sorts of scientific traditions: experimental, theoretical and comparative. The author critically incorporates Timothy Lenoir’s treatment of disciplines , as well as ideas developed by Stephen Toulmin on the same subject. On their account disciplines (...) are spaces where the social and epistemic dimensions of science are deeply and complexly interwoven. However, a more detailed account of discipline formation and the dynamics of an emerging disciplinary field is lacking in their analysis. The present essay suggests focusing on the role of scientific concepts in the double configuration of disciplines: the social/political and the epistemic order. In the case of Molecular Evolution the concepts of molecular clock and informational molecules played a central role, both in differentiating molecular from classical evolutionists, and in promoting communication between the different sorts of traditions integrated in Molecular Evolution. The paper finishes with a reflection on the historicity of disciplines, and the historicity of our concepts of disciplines. (shrink)

Between December 14 and 20, 1965, the World Health Organization Scientific Group on Haemoglobinopathies and Allied Disorders metatthe Geneva agency's headquarters. The group comprised eight well-known physicians including Tulio Arends, a leading Latin American human geneticist from the Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Investigations. Others came from North America, Northern and Southern Europe, the Middle East and South East Asia, an array that reflected the delicate geopolitical equilibriums of postwar international health programs, but also the development of highly specialized biomedical research (...) around the globe. They elected Herman Lehmann, from the Abnormal Haemoglobin Research Unit of the Medical Research... (shrink)

A recent quarrel over faultless disagreements assumes that disputes over evaluative sentences should be understood as regular, factual disagreements. Instead, I propose that evaluative disagreements should be understood in Lewisian terms. Language use works like a rule-governed game. In it, the assertion of an evaluative sentence is an attempt to establish one value as default in the conversation; its rejection, in turn, is in most cases the refusal to accept this move.

This paper extends previous arguments against the assumption that the study of variation at the molecular level was instigated with a view to solving an internal conflict between the balance and classical schools of population genetics. It does so by focusing on the intersection of basic research in protein chemistry and the molecular approach to disease with the enactment of global health campaigns during the Cold War period. The paper connects advances in research on protein structure and function as reflected (...) in Christian Anfinsen’s The molecular basis of evolution, with a political reading of Emilé Zuckerkandl and Linus Pauling’s identification of molecular disease and evolution. Beyond atomic fallout, these advances constituted a rationale for the promotion of genetic surveys of human populations in the Third World, in connection with international health programs. Light is shed not only on the experimental roots of the molecular challenge but on the broader geopolitical context where the rising role of biomedicine and public health had an impact on evolutionary biology. (shrink)

Supervenience is one of the 'hot discoveries' of analytic philosophy, and this collection of essays on the topic represents an examination of it and its application to major areas of philosophy. The interest in supervenience has much to do with the flexibility of the concept. To say that x supervenes on y indicates a degree of dependence without committing one to the view that x can be reduced to y. Thus supervenience is a relationship that has the potential of replacing (...) the traditional notion of dependence, while performing at least part of the function reductive relationships were supposed to fulfil. Moreover, since it is a topic-neutral concept, supervenience has a wide range of applicability. (shrink)

The concept of truth arguably plays a central role in many areas of philosophical theorizing. Yet, what seems to be one of the most fundamental principles governing that concept, i.e. the equivalence between P and , is inconsistent in full classical logic, as shown by the semantic paradoxes. I propose a new solution to those paradoxes, based on a principled revision of classical logic. Technically, the key idea consists in the rejection of the unrestricted validity of the structural principle of (...) contraction. I first motivate philosophically this idea with the metaphysical picture of the states-of-affairs expressed by paradoxical sentences as being distinctively . I then proceed to demonstrate that the theory of truth resulting from this metaphysical picture is, in many philosophically interesting respects, surprisingly stronger than most other theories of truth endorsing the equivalence between P and (for example, the theory vindicates the validity of the traditional laws of excluded middle and of non-contradiction, and also vindicates the traditional constraint of truth preservation on logical consequence). I conclude by proving a cutelimination theorem that shows the consistency of the theory. (shrink)

A widespread need to explain the behavior and outcomes of AI-based systems has emerged, due to their ubiquitous presence. Thus, providing renewed momentum to the relatively new research area of eXplainable AI (XAI). Nowadays, the importance of XAI lies in the fact that the increasing control transference to this kind of system for decision making -or, at least, its use for assisting executive stakeholders- already affects many sensitive realms (as in Politics, Social Sciences, or Law). The decision-making power handover to (...) opaque AI systems makes mandatory explaining those, primarily in application scenarios where the stakeholders are unaware of both the high technology applied and the basic principles governing the technological solutions. The issue should not be reduced to a merely technical problem; the explainer would be compelled to transmit richer knowledge about the system (including its role within the informational ecosystem where he/she works). To achieve such an aim, the explainer could exploit, if necessary, practices from other scientific and humanistic areas. The first aim of the paper is to emphasize and justify the need for a multidisciplinary approach that is beneficiated from part of the scientific and philosophical corpus on Explaining, underscoring the particular nuances of the issue within the field of Data Science. The second objective is to develop some arguments justifying the authors’ bet by a more relevant role of ideas inspired by, on the one hand, formal techniques from Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, and on the other hand, the modeling of human reasoning when facing the explanation. This way, explaining modeling practices would seek a sound balance between the pure technical justification and the explainer-explainee agreement. (shrink)

Cause and effect relationships play a central role in how we perceive and make sense of the world around us, how we act upon it, and ultimately, how we understand ourselves. Almost two decades ago, computer scientist Judea Pearl made a breakthrough in understanding causality by discovering and systematically studying the “Ladder of Causation” [Pearl and Mackenzie 2018], a framework that highlights the distinct roles of seeing, doing, and imagining. In honor of this landmark discovery, we name this the Pearl (...) Causal Hierarchy (PCH). In this chapter, we develop a novel and comprehensive treatment of the PCH through two complementary lenses, one logical-probabilistic and another inferential-graphical. Following Pearl’s own presentation of the hierarchy, we begin by showing how the PCH organically emerges from a well-specified collection of causal mechanisms (a structural causal model, or SCM). We then turn to the logical lens. Our first result, the Causal Hierarchy Theorem (CHT), demonstrates that the three layers of the hierarchy almost always separate in a measure theoretic sense. Roughly speaking, the CHT says that data at one layer virtually always underdetermines information at higher layers. Since in most practical settings the scientist does not have access to the precise form of the underlying causal mechanisms – only to data generated by them with respect to some of PCH’s layers – this motivates us to study inferences within the PCH through the graphical lens. Specifically, we explore a set of methods known as causal inference that enable inferences bridging PCH’s layers given a partial specification of the SCM. For instance, one may want to infer what would happen had an intervention been performed in the environment (second-layer statement) when only passive observations (first-layer data) are available. We introduce a family of graphical models that allows the scientist to represent such a partial specification of the SCM in a cognitively meaningful and parsimonious way. Finally, we investigate an inferential system known as docalculus, showing how it can be sufficient, and in many cases necessary, to allow inferences across PCH’s layers. We believe that connecting with the essential dimensions of human experience as delineated by the PCH is a critical step towards creating the next generation of AI systems that will be safe, robust, human-compatible, and aligned with the social good. (shrink)

In this paper, I focus on an influential account of phenomenal concepts, the recognitional account, and defend it from some recent challenges. According to this account, phenomenal concepts are recognitional concepts that we use when we recognize experiences as “another one of those.” Michael Tye has argued that this account is viciously circular because the relevant recognitional abilities involve descriptions of the form “another experience of the same type,” which is also a phenomenal concept. Tye argues that we avoid the (...) circularity worry if we explain the reference-fixing of phenomenal concepts in terms of dispositions to re-identify tokens of the same type without appealing to any further phenomenal concepts. However, he argues, this account is incompatible with the intuitive claim that phenomenal concepts seem to involve rich modes of presentation of their referents. Philip Goff and others have similarly argued that a recognitional account of phenomenal concepts would make phenomenal concepts opaque, that is, unable to reveal anything about their referents, which seems problematic. In this paper, I present a new version of the recognitional account that avoids the circularity worry without entailing that phenomenal concepts are opaque. (shrink)

Two experiments were conducted to examine whether the resistance to extinction obtained in evaluative conditioning (EC) studies implies that EC is a qualitatively distinct form of classical conditioning (Baeyens, Eelen, & Crombez, 1995 Baeyens, F, Eelen, P, and Crombez, G, (1995a). Pavlovian associations are forever: On classical conditioning and extinction, Journal of Psychophysiology 9 ((1995a)), pp. 127–141.[Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]a) or whether it is the result of an nonassociative artefact (Field & Davey, 1997 Field, AP, and Davey, GCL, (...) (1997). Conceptual conditioning: Evidence for an artifactual account of evaluative learning, Learning and Motivation 25 ((1997)), pp. 446–464.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar], 1998 Field, AP, and Davey, GCL, (1998). Evaluative conditioning: Arti‐fact or ‐fiction?‐ A reply to Baeyens, De Houwer, Vansteenwegen, and Eelen (1998), Learning and Motivation 29 ((1998)), pp. 475–491.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar], 1999 Field, AP, and Davey, GCL, (1999). Reevaluating evaluative conditioning: A nonassociative explanation of conditioning effects in the visual evaluative conditioning paradigm, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes 25 ((1999)), pp. 211–224.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]). Both experiments included between‐subjects control groups in addition to standard within‐subjects control conditions. In Experiment 1, only verbal ratings were measured in order to evaluate the effect of postacquisition CS‐only exposures on EC whereas in Experiment 2, verbal ratings and postextinction priming effects were measured. The results showed that the EC effects are demonstrable in a between‐subjects design and that the extinction procedure did not have any influence on the acquired evaluative value of CSs regardless of whether the verbal ratings or the priming effects were used as dependent variables. The present results provide evidence that EC is resistant to extinction and suggest an interpretation of EC as a qualitatively distinct form of associative learning. (shrink)

ArgumentThis paper explores the connection between the epistemic and the “political” dimensions of the metaphor of information during the early days of the study of Molecular Evolution. While preserving some of the meanings already documented in the history of molecular biology, the metaphor acquired a new, powerful use as a substitute for “history.” A rhetorical analysis of Emilé Zuckerkandl's paper, “Molecules as Documents of Evolutionary History,” highlights the ways in which epistemic claims on the validity and superiority of molecular evidence (...) for evolution were intimately connected with authority issues in evolutionary biology. The debate is situated within the framework of the battle for resources between traditional evolutionists and molecular biologists at the beginning of the 1960s. The architects of evolutionary synthesis questioned the idea that molecular characters constitute “cleaner” and “more direct” evidence of evolution. Nevertheless, the information discourse constituted a productive space for the development of a new research program that, paradoxically, has made explicit the limitations of the information metaphor in reconstructing life's history. (shrink)

Elias Baumgarten taught philosophy at the University of Michigan-Dearborn from 1972 to 2018. He was born in Brooklyn, grew up in California, and went to schools in Boston and Chicago. He was one of the first recipients of the campus’s “Distinguished Teaching Award.” He taught a wide variety of courses including Medical Ethics, Ethics of War and Peace, Ethics of Nationalism, and Darwinism and Philosophy. Most of his publications are in ethics, including “Zionism, Nationalism, and Morality” and “Curiosity as a (...) Moral Virtue.” Dr. Baumgarten also served for over 30 years on hospital ethics committees at the University of Michigan Health System in Ann Arbor. A child of immigrants, Prof. Baumgarten was passionate, both as teacher and citizen, in celebrating multicultural diversity both on our campus and in our country. He sees travel as a form of education and traveled to over 70 countries. (shrink)

In this special issue we explore practices of scientific inquiry into human populations in Latin America in order to generate new insights into the complex historical and sociopolitical dynamics that have made certain human groups integral to the production of scientific knowledge in and about the region. In important contributions, other scholars have shown that the science of human difference is racist and all too often has been a mediator of development ideologies. To further unpack these arguments we focus attention (...) on the complex interaction between scientists and the populations they study. We explore cases from across the fields of evolutionary biology, demography, epidemiology... (shrink)

In this article Elias Hemelsoet questions the way irregular migrants are approached in educational policymaking. In most cases, estimations of the number of irregular migrants serve—despite large methodological problems—as a starting point for policymaking. Given the very diverse composition of this group of people, the question is whether residence status is an appropriate benchmark for dealing with the social problems related to these people. There seems to be a homogenizing tendency at work that reduces the complexity of irregular migration. Preferable (...) distinctions are overlooked or even denied. Inclusive education seems to provide an alternative that does not reduce individuals to a group they belong to, claiming that differences only matter at the individual level. The question is whether such an approach entails a new form of homogenization. Using the case of Roma people, Hemelsoet argues here that group differences do matter for educational practice, theory, and policy. Qualitative data on the social practices of groups can help provide insight into the particularity of situations. This “insight” or “understanding,” in its turn, is a requirement in order for policymakers to make well‐considered choices. (shrink)

In Crull it is argued that, in order to confront outstanding problems in cosmology and quantum gravity, interpretational aspects of quantum theory can by bypassed because decoherence is able to resolve them. As a result, Crull concludes that our focus on conceptual and interpretational issues, while dealing with such matters in Okon and Sudarsky, is avoidable and even pernicious. Here we will defend our position by showing in detail why decoherence does not help in the resolution of foundational questions in (...) quantum mechanics, such as the measurement problem or the emergence of classicality. (shrink)

The Consistent Histories (CH) formalism aims at a quantum mechanical framework which could be applied even to the universe as a whole. CH stresses the importance of histories for quantum mechanics, as opposed to measurements, and maintains that a satisfactory formulation of quantum mechanics allows one to assign probabilities to alternative histories of a quantum system. It further proposes that each realm, that is, each set of histories to which probabilities can be assigned, provides a valid quantum-mechanical account, but that (...) different realms can be mutually incompatible. Finally, some of its proponents offer an “evolutionary” explanation of our existence in the universe and of our preference for quasiclassical descriptions of nature. The present work questions the validity of claims offered by CH proponents asserting that it solves many interpretational problems in quantum mechanics. In particular, we point out that the interpretation of the framework leaves vague two crucial points, namely, whether realms are fixed or chosen and the link between measurements and histories. Our claim is that by doing so, CH overlooks the main interpretational problems of quantum mechanics. Furthermore, we challenge the evolutionary explanation offered and we critically examine the proposed notion of a realm-dependent reality. (shrink)

This article contributes to the literature on national varieties of socially responsible investment (SRI) by demonstrating how Scandinavian SRI developed from the 60s and onwards. Combining findings on Scandinavian SRI with insights from previous research and institutional theory, the article accounts for the role of changes in societal values and norms, the mechanisms by which SRI practices spread, and how investors adopt and transform practices to suit their surrounding institutional contexts. Especially, the article draws attention to how different categories of (...) investors act as institutional entrepreneurs during specific historical periods, and how these roles come to shift as institutional rule systems of varying societal levels change. Thus, the insights gained are useful in the future research agenda concerned with advancing knowledge on idiosyncrasies and commonalities of national SRI manifestations, and to understand the reasons underlying such characteristics. (shrink)

According to the naive theory of vagueness, the vagueness of an expression consists in the existence of both positive and negative cases of application of the expression and in the non- existence of a sharp cut-off point between them. The sorites paradox shows the naive theory to be inconsistent in most logics proposed for a vague language. The paper explores the prospects of saving the naive theory by revising the logic in a novel way, placing principled restrictions on the transitivity (...) of the consequence relation. A lattice-theoretical framework for a whole family of “tolerant logics” is proposed and developed. Particular care is devoted to the relation between the salient features of the formal apparatus and the informal logical and semantic notions they are supposed to model. A suitable non-transitive counterpart to classical logic is defined. Some of its properties are studied, and it is eventually shown how an appropriate regimentation of the naive theory of vagueness is consistent in such a logic. (shrink)

We critically evaluate the treatment of the notion of measurement in the Consistent Histories approach to quantum mechanics. We find such a treatment unsatisfactory because it relies, often implicitly, on elements external to those provided by the formalism. In particular, we note that, in order for the formalism to be informative when dealing with measurement scenarios, one needs to assume that the appropriate choice of framework is such that apparatuses are always in states of well defined pointer positions after measurements. (...) The problem is that there is nothing in the formalism to justify this assumption. We conclude that the Consistent Histories approach, contrary to what is claimed by its proponents, fails to provide a truly satisfactory resolution for the measurement problem in quantum theory. (shrink)

In response to a recent rebuttal of Okon and Sudarsky presented in Griffiths, we defend the claim that the Consistent Histories formulation of quantum mechanics does not solve the measurement problem. In order to do so, we argue that satisfactory solutions to the problem must not only not contain anthropomorphic terms at the fundamental level, but also that applications of the formalism to concrete situations should not require any input not contained in the description of the situation at hand at (...) the fundamental level. Our assertion is that the Consistent Histories formalism does not meet the second criterion. We also argue that the so-called second measurement problem, i.e., the inability to explain how an experimental result is related to a property possessed by the measured system before the measurement took place, is only a pseudo-problem. As a result, we reject the claim, defended in Griffiths, that the capacity of the Consistent Histories formalism to solve it should count as an advantage over other interpretations. (shrink)

Ever since the early days of quantum mechanics it has been suggested that consciousness could be linked to the collapse of the wave function. However, no detailed account of such an interplay is usually provided. In this paper we present an objective collapse model where the collapse operator depends on integrated information, which has been argued to measure consciousness. By doing so, we construct an empirically adequate scheme in which superpositions of conscious states are dynamically suppressed. Unlike other proposals in (...) which “consciousness causes the collapse of the wave function,” our model is fully consistent with a materialistic view of the world and does not require the postulation of entities suspicious of laying outside of the quantum realm. (shrink)