The development of quantum information theory has renewed interest in the idea that the state vector does not represent the state of a quantum system, but rather the knowledge or information that we may have on the system. I argue that this epistemic view of states appears to solve foundational problems of quantum mechanics only at the price of being essentially incomplete.

Quantum Bayesianism, or QBism, is a recent development of the epistemic view of quantum states, according to which the state vector represents knowledge about a quantum system, rather than the true state of the system. QBism explicitly adopts the subjective view of probability, wherein probability assignments express an agent’s personal degrees of belief about an event. QBists claim that most if not all conceptual problems of quantum mechanics vanish if we simply take a proper epistemic and probabilistic perspective. Although this (...) judgement is largely subjective and logically consistent, I explain why I do not share it. (shrink)

The U.S. and Canadian health care systems are more similar than is commonly believed. This article debunks some of the powerful myths about these health care systems and opens up the discussion for greater policy learning from both sides of the border. Cross-border comparisons can yield a number of lessons from common policy challenges such as cost control, physician organization and payment, and the organization of health coverage and services for Native Americans and Indigenous Canadians.

The transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics, following the time-symmetric formulation of electrodynamics, uses retarded and advanced solutions of the Schrödinger equation and its complex conjugate to understand quantum phenomena by means of transactions. A transaction occurs between an emitter and a specific absorber when the emitter has received advanced waves from all possible absorbers. Advanced causation always raises the specter of paradoxes, and it must be addressed carefully. In particular, different devices involving contingent absorbers or various types of interaction-free measurements (...) have been proposed as threatening the original version of the transactional interpretation. These proposals will be analyzed by examining in each case the configuration of absorbers and, in the special case of the so-called quantum liar experiment, by carefully following the development of retarded and advanced waves through the Mach-Zehnder interferometer. We will show that there is no need to resort to the hierarchy of transactions that some have proposed, and will argue that the transactional interpretation is consistent with the block-universe picture of time. (shrink)

The theory of visual perception that Irvin Rock develops and supports in this book with numerous original experiments, views perception as the outcome of a process of unconscious inference, problem solving, and the building of structural descriptions of the external world.

Everett’s relative states interpretation of quantum mechanics has met with problems related to probability, the preferred basis, and multiplicity. The third theme, I argue, is the most important one. It has led to developments of the original approach into many-worlds, many-minds, and decoherence-based approaches. The latter especially have been advocated in recent years, in an effort to understand multiplicity without resorting to what is often perceived as extravagant constructions. Drawing from and adding to arguments of others, I show that proponents (...) of decoherence-based approaches have not yet succeeded in making their ontology clear. (shrink)

Several arguments have been proposed some years ago, attempting to prove the impossibility of defining Lorentz-invariant elements of reality. I find that a sufficient condition for the existence of elements of reality, introduced in these proofs, seems to be used also as a necessary condition. I argue that Lorentz-invariant elements of reality can be defined but, as Vaidman pointed out, they won’t satisfy the so-called product rule. In so doing I obtain algebraic constraints on elements of reality associated with a (...) maximal set of commuting Hermitian operators. (shrink)

La succession récente de crises économiques et financières constitue le symptôme le plus évident des dysfonctionnements du système économique. De nouvelles approches comme la responsabilité sociale des entreprises et la finance socialement responsable proposent d’humaniser le capitalisme et de reconfigurer l’économie de marché. Ces deux courants de pensée ont d’ailleurs contribué à opérer un important changement dans l’imaginaire social quant à la façon de concevoir la légitimité des activités économiques. Malgré leur grand inté­rêt, ces nouvelles approches comportent des limites relativement (...) à leur effica­cité et leur capacité de remédier aux dysfonctionnements reconnus. C’est pour­quoi nous souhaitons examiner ces deux approches et envisager la discussion des questions éthiques dans une perspective plus large. Nous le ferons en affirmant que le dilemme éthique de l’économie se pose assez simplement dans les termes suivants : moraliser l’économie de l’intérieur ou reformuler la question éthique à l’extérieur du discours économique, notamment par la voie politique et démocra­tique. Dans le premier cas de figure, c’est l’effectivité des approches normatives comme la RSE et la FSR qui doit être examinée. Dans le second cas de figure, c’est la place de l’éthique dans le discours social et sa relation avec l’économie qui doit être discutée. Nous discuterons donc ces deux cas de figure et proposerons de reformuler la question éthique à l’extérieur de la sphère économique en utilisant l’éthique comme cadre d’analyse transversale et matrice des choix sociopolitiques. (shrink)

In a recently proposed interpretation of quantum mechanics, U. Mohrhoff advocates original and thought-provoking views on space and time, the definition of macroscopic objects, and the meaning of probability statements. The interpretation also addresses a number of questions about factual events and the nature of reality. The purpose of this note is to examine several issues raised by Mohrhoff's interpretation, and to assess whether it helps providing solutions to the long-standing problems of quantum mechanics.

Arien Mack and Irvin Rock make the radical claim that there is no conscious perception of the visual world without attention to it.

"Based on the true life experiences of a recovering corporate executive, award-winning journalist, yogi, wife, mother and survivor of fifty years of life.".

Si le déploiement d’une compétence éthique en situation nécessite la capacité et la volonté de la personne à déceler et à résoudre les problèmes de nature éthique qu’il rencontre, je proposerai dans ce texte qu’il nécessite aussi, en raison de la part d’autonomie qu’il requiert, que la personne ait le pouvoir de déployer cette compétence. Or, alors que les deux premières conditions d’exercice dépendent de la personne, cette troisième condition, à laquelle je m’intéresserai plus particulièrement dans ce texte, lui est (...) pour sa part externe. Ainsi, je proposerai que c’est non seulement la personne, mais aussi un enchevêtrement d’éléments du contexte, de la situation et surtout, du réseau d’interactions dans lesquels une personne s’insère qui, parce qu’ils exercent sur elle des pouvoirs, détermineront si la personne aura la possibilité d’agir de façon compétente en situation éthique. Ainsi, s’intéresser à la compétence éthique impliquera nécessairement de s’intéresser à la question du pouvoir et à la façon dont s’exerceront les pouvoirs en situation – des pouvoirs sur ou des pouvoirs avec – puisque cela aura une influence déterminante sur le pouvoir de la personne de déployer sa compétence de façon effective en situation. (shrink)

Tolman's paradox arises in Lorentz-invariant theories of superluminal particles. In this paper we first try to clarify the nature of the paradox and what it means to solve it. We then analyze the various attempts made to either solve or eliminate it. We show that general consequences can be drawn which hold in essentially all paradox-free schemes proposed so far.

This paper explores the financial reporting scandals of the past decade and the resulting U.S. legislative attempts to impose ethical behavior and control the incidence of new reporting problems via the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation. We begin with a brief historical perspective followed by assertions of ethical consequences of legislation with discussions of key recent corporate scandals, the motives for the frauds, and the consequences. Ethics related provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act are discussed with the potential impact of the legislation on the (...) likelihood of similar future frauds and accompanying prognosis for future corporate ethical behavior. (shrink)

In this paper, I will describe how Brentano was able to integrate descriptive philosophy and logical analysis fruitfully by pointing out Brentano’s concept of philosophy as a rigorous science. First I will clarify how Brentano attempted to turn philosophy into a rigorous descriptive science by applying scientific methods to philosophical questions. After spelling out the implications of such a descriptive understanding of philosophy, I will contrast this descriptive view of philosophy with a semantic-analytic understanding of philosophy as proposed by Frege. (...) After having thus set the stage I will argue that the current separation of philosophy into the seemingly antithetical strands of phenomenology and analytic philosophy may be seen as a consequence of how the term ‘rigorous science’ in ‘philosophy as a rigorous science’ is interpreted: Does a rigorous science grasp its object with as much exactitude as possible? Or is a science rigorous when its theories are expressed unambiguously, and their implications are drawn with precision? In the course of this investigation I will also point out how Brentano’s integrative use of descriptive philosophy and analysis can provide a suitable starting point for an equally successful integration of these methods in contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

Although Kant is often considered the philosopher who ended the reign of metaphysical dogmatism, the situation is not quite so clear. On the one hand, this analysis must bear in mind that Kant himself had a great interest in metaphysics, insofar as it was not dogmatic – Kant himself considered his Critique to be just a reform of metaphysics. On the other hand, the Critique of Pure Reason itself is a result of certain metaphysical-dogmatic preliminary decisions. In order to show (...) how one-sided the idea is that Kant simply did away with metaphysics, I will draw attention to the metaphysical presuppositions that shape the Critique of Pure Reason. The first thinker who attempted to explicate the metaphysical basis of the Critique was Kant’s friend and colleague Johann Georg Hamann. With Hamann’s guidance I will argue that even his Critique of Pure Reason was based on metaphysical presuppositions and that such an influence by metaphysical preliminary decisions is inevitable – even for such a sharp critic of metaphysical dogmatism as Kant. At the same time this text provides an introduction to Hamann’s thought, a thinker ahead of his times. (shrink)

This article attempts a contextual study of the origin and early development of August Kekulé's theory of aromatic compounds. The terminus a quo is essentially August Hofmann's coining of the modern chemical denotation of ‘aromatic’ in 1855; the terminus ad quem is the first full codification of Kekulé's theory in the sixth fascicle of his Lehrbuch der organischen Chemie, published in the summer of 1866. Kekulé's theory is viewed in context with the earlier and concurrent experimental work of such chemists (...) as Hermann Kolbe, Friedrich Beilstein, Rudolph Fittig, and Hugo Müller. The reception of the theory is briefly examined. Attention is paid to the role of Kekulé's molecular models and of his celebrated dream anecdote of the snake that seizes its own tail. The episode is used as a case study for the continuity of scientific progress, and to illustrate the close reciprocal interactions of hypothesis and experiment in the evolution of a scientific theory. (shrink)

In this contribution, I will argue for an ontological understanding of time as temporality. This, however, implies that in a certain sense being is temporality, by which I mean that on an ontological level temporality is nothing but the process of change, i.e. the dynamic aspect of being in its becoming, changing, and perishing, and that concrete beings are not merely in time, but they are temporal. This leads to the conclusion that actual time is the process of change that (...) becoming beings are, as well as the conclusion that reality is fundamentally temporal as argued by process metaphysicians like Alfred North Whitehead, Henri Bergson, Martin Heidegger, and Gilles Deleuze. The investigation begins with first establishing the methodological difficulties involved in thinking temporality as an ontological feature. In a second step, dynamic ontologies are introduced as the conceptual background best suited to think ontological temporality and their difference to event-ontologies is explained. Finally, the distinction between temporality and linear time is clarified. This introduction of temporality ends with some arguments for the existence of temporality that are inspired by Aristotle’s famous investigations into the nature of time. After having thus introduced temporality as an ontological feature and argued for the existence and relevance of it, its implications for our understanding of the dimensions of time and especially for anticipation are discussed. (shrink)

Within the field of medical ethics, discussions related to public health have mainly concentrated on issues that are closely tied to research and practice involving technologies and professional services, including vaccination, screening, and insurance coverage. Broader determinants of population health have received less attention, although this situation is rapidly changing. Against this backdrop, our specific contribution to the literature on ethics and law vis-à-vis promoting population health is to open up the ubiquitous presence of pets within cities and towns for (...) further discussion. An expanding body of research suggests that pet animals are deeply relevant to people’s health (negatively and positively). Pet bylaws adopted by town and city councils have largely escaped notice, yet they are meaningful to consider in relation to everyday practices, social norms, and cultural values, and thus in relation to population health. Nevertheless, not least because they pivot on defining pets as private property belonging to individual people, pet bylaws raise emotionally charged ethical issues that have yet to be tackled in any of the health research on pet ownership. The literature in moral philosophy on animals is vast, and we do not claim to advance this field here. Rather, we pragmatically seek to reconcile philosophical objections to pet ownership with both animal welfare and public health. In doing so, we foreground theorizations of personhood and property from sociocultural anthropology. (shrink)

Some recent philosophers of science have argued that chemistry in the nineteenth century “largely lacked theoretical foundations, and showed little progress in supplying such foundations” until around 1900, or even later. In particular, nineteenth-century atomic theory, it is said, “played no useful part” in the crowning achievement of nineteenth-century chemistry, the powerful subdiscipline of organic chemistry. This paper offers a contrary view. The idea that chemistry only gained useful theoretical foundations when it began to merge with physics, it will be (...) argued, is based on an implicit conception of scientific theory that is too narrow, and too exclusively oriented to the science of physics. A broader understanding of scientific theory, and one that is more appropriate to the science of chemistry, reveals the essential part that theory played in the development of chemistry in the nineteenth century. It also offers implications for our understanding of the nature of chemical theory today. (shrink)

One Health is a novel paradigm that recognizes that human and non-human animal health is interlinked through our shared environment. Increasingly prominent in public health responses to zoonoses, OH differs from traditional approaches to animal-borne infectious risks, because it also aims to promote the health of animals and ecological systems. Despite the widespread adoption of OH, culling remains a key component of institutional responses to the risks of zoonoses. Using the threats posed by highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses to human (...) and animal health, economic activity and food security as a case exemplar, we explore whether culling and other standard control measures for animal-borne infectious disease might be justified as part of OH approaches. Our central premise is that OH requires us to reformulate ‘health’ as universal good that is best shared across species boundaries such that human health and well-being are contingent upon identifying and meeting the relevant sets of human and non-human interests and shared dependencies. Our purpose is to further nascent discussions about the ethical dimensions of OH and begin to describe the principles around which a public health agenda that truly seeks to co-promote human and non-human health could potentially begin to be implemented. (shrink)

Quel est ce schisme que Popper remarque dès les années cinquante et qui dure encore vingt-cinq ans plus tard? C’est le conflit entre les tenants de l’orthodoxie quantique ou, si l’on préfère, de l’interprétation de Copenhague et ceux qui s’y opposent. Ces derniers forment un groupe nettement moins homogène que les premiers, même si ceux-ci ont d’importantes divergences de vues, dont ils ne sont pas toujours conscients.

Collection of Buddhist canonical texts translated from Sanskrit into Tibetan.

Based on a creative use of the phenomenological method, we argue that a close examination of the temporality of objects reveals the future as genuinely open. Without aiming to decide the matter of phenomenological realism, we suggest that this method can be used to investigate the mode of being of objects in their own temporality. By bracketing the anticipatory structure of experience, one can get a sense of objects’ temporality as independent of consciousness. This contributes to the current Realism versus (...) Idealism debates, but it does so without taking sides. The starting point is neither an analysis of pure consciousness, nor attempts to describe objects in-themselves, but the idea that things can be phenomenologically grasped through the difference between their temporality and our own. By being methodically “open to the future,” one can become aware of the sui generis temporality of objects as different from the temporality shaped by our anticipation. (shrink)