For Knox, ‘spacetime’ is to be defined functionally, as that which picks out a structure of local inertial frames. Assuming that Knox is motivated to construct this functional definition of spacetime on the grounds that it appears to identify that structure which plays theoperationalrole of spacetime—i.e., that structure which is actually surveyed by physical rods and clocks built from matter fields—we identify in this paper important limitations of her approach: these limitations are based upon the fact that there is a (...) gap between inertial frame structure and that which is operationally significant in the above sense. We present five concrete cases in which these two notions come apart, before considering various ways in which Knox’s spacetime functionalism might be amended in light of these issues. (shrink)

For Knox, ‘spacetime’ is to be defined functionally, as that which picks out a structure of local inertial frames. Assuming that Knox is motivated to construct this functional definition of spacetime on the grounds that it appears to identify that structure which plays the operational role of spacetime—i.e., that structure which is actually surveyed by physical rods and clocks built from matter fields—we identify in this paper important limitations of her approach: these limitations are based upon the fact that there (...) is a gap between inertial frame structure and that which is operationally significant in the above sense. We present five concrete cases in which these two notions come apart, before considering various ways in which Knox’s spacetime functionalism might be amended in light of these issues. (shrink)

Brown and Pooley’s ‘dynamical approach’ to physical theories asserts, in opposition to the orthodox position on physical geometry, that facts about physical geometry are grounded in, or explained by, facts about dynamical fields, not the other way round. John Norton has claimed that the proponent of the dynamical approach is illicitly committed to spatiotemporal presumptions in ‘constructing’ space-time from facts about dynamical symmetries. In this article, I present an abstract, algebraic formulation of field theories and demonstrate that the proponent of (...) the dynamical approach is not committed, in special relativity, to the illicit presumptions to which Norton refers. (shrink)

Supersymmetry (SUSY) is a proposed symmetry between bosons and fermions. The structure of the space of SUSY generators is such that the distinction between internal and spacetime symmetries is blurred. As a result, there are two viable candidates for the correct spacetime setting for a flat supersymmetric field theory---Minkowski spacetime and superspace. an extension of four- dimensional Minkowski spacetime to include (at least) four new dimensions, coordinatised by mathematical objects known as supernumbers. These objects are, in one significant way, quite (...) different from real or complex number---some of them have the property that their order of multiplication makes a difference; in mathematical terms, they are said to have nontrivial commutation properties. This paper argues for two theses: first, that one standard set of arguments, related to universality of symmetry behaviour, that motivate a particular choice of spacetime structure in familiar spacetime theories motivates the choice of superspace as the appropriate spacetime for SUSY field theories. And second, that the metaphysical utility of the concept of spacetime requires more than just the satisfaction of this universality condition; in supersymmetric theories, the spacetime concept is not as useful as in special relativity. (shrink)

Recent work in the physics literature demonstrates that, in particular classes of rotating spacetimes, physical light rays in general do not traverse null geodesics. Having presented this result, we discuss its philosophical significance, both for the clock hypothesis, and for the operational meaning of the metric field.

If we cannot directly empirically test the claims of particular scientific theory, then it would be nice to have some other criteria with which to assess its viability. In his 2013 book, String Theory and the Scientific Method, Richard Dawid aims to develop such criteria, with an eye to vindicating research programs in disciplines where direct empirical data is scant or non-existent. In an accompanying paper, Dawid, Hartmann and Sprenger formalise Dawid’s so-called ‘No Alternatives Argument’ using a generalised Bayesian framework, (...) as a first step towards formalising Dawid’s entire re- search programme. In this paper, I argue that the formalisation of the NAA cannot play the central role in Dawid’s programme as intended. This is based on the observation that not all confirmation is non-negligible confirmation. For Dawid’s programme to be useful, it must demonstrate the viability not just of non-empirical theory confirmation, but of non-negligible non-empirical theory confirmation. I argue that Dawid et al.’s appeal to Bayesian confirmation theory to formalise his NAA cannot guarantee non-negligible confirmation. As a result, I conclude that if Dawid’s overall project is to succeed, it must do so without the NAA formalised in this way. (shrink)

Recent work in the physics literature demonstrates that, in particular classes of rotating spacetimes, physical light rays in general do not traverse null geodesics. Having presented this result, we discuss its philosophical significance, both for the clock hypothesis (and, in particular, a recent purported proof thereof for light clocks), and for the operational meaning of the metric field. 1Introduction 2Fletcher's Theorem 2.1Maudlin on the clock hypothesis in special relativity 2.2Fletcher’s result in special relativity 2.3Fletcher’s theorem in general relativity 3Electromagnetism and (...) the Geometrical-Optical Limit 3.1Maxwell’s equations in curved spacetime 3.2The geometrical-optical limit 3.3Rotating spacetimes 3.4Aren’t Gödel spacetimes unphysical? 4The Clock Hypothesis and Chronogeometry 4.1Natural and mathematical observations 4.2Clock registry discord 4.3Chronogeometry 5Conclusion. (shrink)

Noncommutative geometries generalize standard smooth geometries, parametrizing the noncommutativity of dimensions with a fundamental quantity with the dimensions of area. The question arises then of whether the concept of a region smaller than the scale—and ultimately the concept of a point—makes sense in such a theory. We argue that it does not, in two interrelated ways. In the context of Connes’ spectral triple approach, we show that arbitrarily small regions are not definable in the formal sense. While in the scalar (...) field Moyal–Weyl approach, we show that they cannot be given an operational definition. We conclude that points do not exist in such geometries. We therefore investigate (a) the metaphysics of such a geometry, and (b) how the appearance of smooth manifold might be recovered as an approximation to a fundamental noncommutative geometry. (shrink)

In a recent article, Halvorson and Manchak (Br J Philos Sci, Forthcoming) claim that there is no basis for the Hole Argument, because (in a certain sense) hole isometries are unique. This raises two important questions: (a) does their argument succeed?; (b) how does this formalist response to the Hole Argument relate to other recent responses to the Hole Argument in the same tradition—in particular, that of Weatherall (Br J Philos Sci 69(2):329–350, 2018)? In this article, _ad_ (a), we argue (...) that Halvorson and Manchak’s claim does not go through; _ad_ (b), we argue that although one _prima facie_ plausible reading would see Halvorson and Manchak as filling an important hole (no pun intended) in Weatherall’s argument, in fact this reading is implausible; there is no need to supplement Weatherall’s work with Halvorson and Manchak’s results. (shrink)

In his paper, ‘Regarding the ‘Hole Argument”, Weatherall suggests that models of general relativity related by a hole diffeomorphism must be regarded as being physically equivalent. At a later stage in the paper, however, he also argues that there is a sense in which two such models may be regarded as being empirically distinct—a fortiori physically distinct. We attempt to delineate the logic behind these two prima facie contradictory claims. We argue that the latter sense rests upon a misunderstanding of (...) the import of shift arguments in the foundations of spacetime theories. (shrink)

This book brings together ancient spiritual wisdom and modern science and philosophy to address age-old questions regarding our existence, free will and the nature of conscious awareness. Stuart Hameroff MD Professor, Anesthesiology and Psychology, and Director, Center for Consciousness Studies The University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona This book presents a rich, broad-ranging overview of contemporary research and scholarship into consciousness and the self.... It is... to their credit that the editors have assembled a highly stimulating set of scholars whose expertise (...) cover all the relevant areas. I strongly recommend the book to anyone with an interest in understanding the directions in which contemporary thinking about the nature of consciousness is headed. B. Les Lancaster Emeritus Professor of Transpersonal Psychology Liverpool John Moores University, UK This volume is a collection of 17 essays that contribute to the emerging discipline of consciousness studies with particular focus on the concept of the self. The essays together argue that to understand consciousness is to understand the self that beholds consciousness. Two broad issues are addressed in the volume: the place of the self in the lives of humans and nonhuman primates; and the interrelations between the self and consciousness, which contribute to the understanding of cognitive functions, awareness, free will, nature of reality, and the complex experiential and behavioural attributes of consciousness. The book presents cutting-edge and original work from well-known authors and scholars of philosophy, psychiatry, behavioural sciences and physics. This is a pioneering attempt to present to the reader multiple ways of conceptualizing and thus understanding the relation between consciousness and self in a nuanced manner. (shrink)

This book discusses consciousness from the perspectives of neuroscience, neuropsychiatry and philosophy. The author argues that the central issue in brain studies is to explain the unity, continuity, and adherence of experience, whether it is sensory or mental awareness, phenomenal- or self-consciousness. The fascinating discussion that this book presents is: How do the brain and the self create the conspiracy of experience where the physicality of the brain is lost in the subjectivity of the self?

Plato was the first philosopher in the Western tradition to reflect systematically on rhetoric. In this book, Tushar Irani presents a comprehensive and innovative reading of the Gorgias and the Phaedrus, the only two Platonic dialogues to focus on what an art of argument should look like, treating each of the texts individually, yet ultimately demonstrating how each can best be understood in light of the other. For Plato, the way in which we approach argument typically reveals something about (...) our deeper desires and motivations, particularly with respect to other people, and so the key to understanding his views on the proper practice of argument lies in his understanding of human psychology. According to this reading, rhetoric done well is simply the practice of philosophy, the pursuit of which has far-reaching implications for how we should relate to others and how we ought to live. (shrink)

Study of the fundamentals of Nyaya and Vaiśeṣika philosophy, with special reference to Samavāya (inherence) one of the six catagories of the system.

This paper focuses on a neglected portion of Plato’s Gorgias from 506c to 513d during Socrates’s discussion with Callicles. I claim that Callicles adopts the view that virtue lies in self-preservation in this part of the dialogue. Such a position allows him to assert the value of rhetoric in civic life by appealing not to the goodness of acting unjustly with impunity, but to the badness of suffering unjustly without remedy. On this view, the benefits of the life of rhetoric (...) depend on the idea that virtue consists in the power to protect oneself from the predations of others. I argue that by challenging this understanding of virtue as self-preservation, Socrates both deprives Callicles of any remaining justification for the rhetorical life in the Gorgias and, at the same time, makes room for his own defense of the life of philosophy. (shrink)

This edited volume presents perspectives from computer science, information theory, neuroscience and brain imaging, aesthetics, social sciences, psychiatry, and philosophy to answer frontier questions related to artificial intelligence and human experience. Can a machine think, believe, aspire and be purposeful as a human? What is the place in the machine world for hope, meaning and transformative enlightenment that inspires human existence? How, or are, the minds of machines different from that of humans and other species? These questions are responded to (...) along with questions in the intersection of health, intelligence and the brain. It highlights the place of consciousness by attempting to respond to questions with the help of fundamental reflections on human existence, its life-purposes and machine intelligence. The volume is a must-read for interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary researchers in humanities and social sciences and philosophy of science who wish to understand the future of AI and society. (shrink)

This paper reevaluates the role of Adeimantus in Book 2 of Plato's Republic, arguing that his challenge to Socrates' view of justice—specifically, his interest in the influence of the outer world on our inner lives—serves a crucial yet underappreciated purpose in initiating the political project of the work. I suggest that it's due to Adeimantus' contribution in the Republic that Plato's wide-ranging inquiry into issues in ethics, politics, psychology, epistemology, and metaphysics hangs together as an integrated whole. A further benefit (...) of this reevaluation, I argue, is the way it illuminates Plato's assessment of poetry in the dialogue. This paper was delivered this past year as part of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy. Comments are welcome but please do not cite without permission. (shrink)

This paper explores Plato’s views on the purpose of rhetorical form by surveying the way in which Socrates engages in speechmaking at several points in the Gorgias. I argue that Socrates has nothing in principle against the use of a long speech as part of the practice of philosophical inquiry and argument, provided that the speech is geared toward understanding. This reflects a key and relatively unremarked distinction that Socrates makes in the Gorgias between persuasion that comes from being convinced (...) and persuasion that comes from being taught. The kind of long speeches that Socrates objects to are those that have a conviction-based purpose. However, this leaves open the use of a wide variety of rhetorical techniques—pieces of argument, speechifying, analogy, myth, and exhortation—that have a teaching-based purpose, which is precisely the sort of rhetoric that Socrates licenses in the dialogue. (shrink)

Robustness arguments hold that hypotheses are more likely to be true when they are confirmed by diverse kinds of evidence. Robustness arguments require the confirming evidence to be independent. We identify two kinds of independence appealed to in robustness arguments: ontic independence —when the multiple lines of evidence depend on different materials, assumptions, or theories—and probabilistic independence. Many assume that OI is sufficient for a robustness argument to be warranted. However, we argue that, as typically construed, OI is not a (...) sufficient independence condition for warranting robustness arguments. We show that OI evidence can collectively confirm a hypothesis to a lower degree than individual lines of evidence, contrary to the standard assumption undergirding usual robustness arguments. We employ Bayesian networks to represent the ideal empirical scenario for a robustness argument and a variety of ways in which empirical scenarios can fall short of this ideal. (shrink)

The value-free ideal for science holds that values should not influence the core features of scientific reasoning. We defend the difference-to-inference model of value-permeation, which holds that value-permeation in science is problematic when values make a difference to the inferences made about a hypothesis. This view of value-permeation is superior to existing views, and it suggests a corresponding maxim—namely, that scientists should strive to eliminate differences to inference. This maxim is the basis of a novel value-free ideal for science. -/- (...) . (shrink)

This paper examines how Plato’s rejection of the friends of the forms at 248a–249b in the Sophist is continuous with the arguments that he develops shortly after this part of the dialogue for the interrelatedness of the forms. I claim that the interrelatedness of the forms implies that they are changed, and that this explains Plato’s rejection of the friends of the forms. Much here turns on the kind of change that Plato wants to attribute to the forms. I distinguish (...) my view of the sort of change that the forms experience from other kinds of change—such as ‘Cambridge change’—that scholars have believed Plato has in mind in rejecting the friends of the forms. On the view that I advance, a form experiences a change (which I call ‘perfect change’) in its association with another form that distinguishes it as the distinctive being that it is—that is, through its possession of its distinctive properties. (shrink)

I begin with a puzzle. According to some scholars, Plato’s view that the forms possess value as objects of desire gives rise to a problem in his metaphysics: how can forms of injustice and ugliness be considered desirable? To resolve this puzzle, I focus on Plato’s views on eros and argue that the philosopher’s love of forms is best understood as a kind of rational compulsion. Approaching the puzzle from this direction gives us an idea of how Plato’s forms might (...) be viewed as value laden. It also suggests an understanding of his metaphysics that’s less otherworldly than is often thought. (shrink)

This paper presents an integralist approach to Jaina logic. This is built around an analysis of the pivotal notion of antarvyāpti in Jaina logic. It is shown in this connection why antarvyāpti needs to be considered the ‘Core Perspective/problem’ of Jaina logic. Next, it is shown how all the salient features of Jaina logic (as viewed from its language-oriented perspective and the epistemic perspective respectively) stand intimately related to the so-called core perspective. In the remaining sections of the paper topics (...) like relationship of the core perspective i) to various non-standard systems of logic [DL, FL, NMR etc.,], ii) to the four pillars and to the eight MPC’s of Jaina philosophy, iii) to some bluntly unimaginative ways of looking at Jaina logic [e.g., Ducko-Rabbitism], iv) to the scheme of classification of propositions in Jaina logic, v) to the resulting conceptual economies related to methodology, and especially to a unified theory of Hetvābhāsa and, finally, vi) to a re-assessment of Frege-Husserl discord in the light of the significance of Jñānātmakatā vs Vākyātmakatā in Jaina logic, etc., have been discussed. (shrink)

The application of in vivo genetic lineage tracing has advanced our understanding of cellular mechanisms for tissue renewal in organs with slow turnover, like the lung. These studies have identified an adult stem cell with very different properties than classically understood ones that maintain continuously cycling tissues such as the intestine. A portrait has emerged of an ensemble of cellular programs that replenish the cells that line the gas exchange (alveolar) surface, enabling a response tailored to the extent of cell (...) loss. A capacity for differentiated cells to undergo direct lineage transitions allows for local restoration of proper cell balance at sites of injury. We present these recent findings as a paradigm for how a relatively quiescent tissue compartment can maintain homeostasis throughout a lifetime punctuated by injuries ranging from mild to life‐threatening, and discuss how dysfunction or insufficiency of alveolar repair programs produce serious health consequences like cancer and fibrosis. (shrink)

The value-free ideal in science has been criticised as both unattainable and undesirable. We argue that it can be defended as a practical principle guiding scientific research even if the unattainability and undesirability of a value-free end-state are granted. If a goal is unattainable, then one can separate the desirability of accomplishing the goal from the desirability of pursuing it. We articulate a novel value-free ideal, which holds that scientists should act as if science should be value-free, and we argue (...) that even if a purely value-free science is undesirable, this value-free ideal is desirable to pursue. (shrink)

This is an Introduction to the special issue of Metaphilosophy entitled Philosophy as a Way of Life, giving a brief account of the genesis of the project, an overview of the topic, and a summary of the topics covered in the issue.

Phase transitions are an important instance of putatively emergent behavior. Unlike many things claimed emergent by philosophers, the alleged emergence of phase transitions stems from both philosophical and scientific arguments. Here we focus on the case for emergence built from physics, in particular, arguments based upon the infinite idealization invoked in the statistical mechanical treatment of phase transitions. After teasing apart several challenges, we defend the idea that phase transitions are best thought of as conceptually novel, but not ontologically or (...) explanatorily irreducible to finite physics; indeed, by looking at ongoing work on “smooth phase transitions” we even suggest that they’re not even conceptually novel. In the case of renormalization group theory, consideration of infinite systems and their singular behavior provides a central theoretical tool, but this is compatible with an explanatory reduction. Phase transitions may be “emergent” in some sense of this protean term, but not in a sense that is incompatible with the reductionist project broadly construed. (shrink)

In the ancient world, philosophy was understood to be a practical guide for living, or even itself a way of life. For philosophers today to ignore this dimension of philosophy is not to ignore an accidental subset of the subject that can be divorced from its essential nature - it is to ignore philosophy itself. The articulation of philosophy as a way of life and its pedagogical implementation advances the love of wisdom; it is not merely an addendum to it. (...) But how might we convey the love of wisdom as not only a body of dogmatic principles and axiomatic truths but also a lived exercise that can be practiced? This volume of essays brings historical views about philosophy as a way of life, coupled with their modern equivalents, more prevalently into the domain of the contemporary scholarly world. (shrink)