This chapter contains sections titled: The NBIC Fields Philosophical Implications of Convergence Conclusion References and Further Reading.

continent. 2.2 (2012): 155–158 Michel Serres. Biogea . Trans. Randolph Burks. Minneapolis: Univocal Publishing. 2012. 200 pp. | ISBN 9781937561086 | $22.95 Conveying to potential readers the significance of a book puts me at risk of glad handing. It’s not in my interest to laud the undeserving, especially on the pages of this journal. This is not a sales pitch, but rather an affirmation of a necessary work on very troubled terms: human, earth, nature, and the problematic world we (...) made. It is this world that aspirates the silence (so to speak), and therefore the subject which, along with the development of the “made world” exports the excess augmentation of the cosmically missing, this silence of the natural, et cetera. Had we learned from Locke that lesson of “labor,” to consume what we need… but perhaps we need more than what matters? Serres’ Biogea has several functions on this manner, if it is indeed a book to be consumed. First, readers searching for novelistic entertainment have a place to dwell. Biogea deserves a place in your back pocket; biographical generosity and poetic fluidity should satisfy most textual fetishes. For lay philosophers who want to refresh their acumen, Biogea deserves a place on the book shelf, one already reads a sorely needed postmodern tune-up here. Serres’ style is clearly French; he leaves few cheese crumbs on his words, rather preciseness and breathing in the work give way to a sweeping manner that breaks the narrative line of sight. A circular narrative and anachronistic fragmentation of terms allows an abyssal atmosphere to swell, if only to pump into the book the externality of its broader text. Biogea aspires to a higher standard and the book, at times, is thinking this negentropic problem too. Univocal, the publisher, has crafted a book appropriate for the hands to hold and the translations are an achievement of an otherwise difficult writer to translate. Terms are the conditions of a broader text. It is important to note that Serres’ content is as much a thinking of terminal ports. There is a regard for the transportation technology of the written word. For me, this is the mark of genius, a craftiness that tells of a book device that I may trust. Serres is an accomplished thinker and a necessary voice to check the putative trendiness of anti-postmodernist and market-driven theory of endless cultural liquidation. Offering interventions on subjectivity as an open system we are given a chance to affirm the human, not merely to discard it, but to engage its poetic image emotion, the calibratory silent sense of the analogic world; the terms on which we base our efforts. 1 The human is the center of its own negation, constantly mediating it. Something deeper at stake appears in the work then, and it is quite obvious from the onset. Certainly, a book is an intensification of possible text and those who brought this actual book into existence have captured a rarity in regards to the subject matter and artistic accomplishment. I mentioned terms as conditions, so let us understand Biogea as bio-yea, a yes to bios . An affirmation of living and accepting presence for all of its defiance of images, words, and things temporal. Therefore Serres’ existence and its existants plays parts; out of linearity and still like a porous bone pumping blood it manufactures into the fleshy life it becomes. Starting from a man named silence chaos emerges, or the man “Old Taciturn” takes up a journey anticipating a great flood. In other words, a development akin to the one in Genesis. In dealing with this ancestral occupation, fusing Genesis with contemporary philosophical terms, Serres initiates this anachronistic fragmentation under the forming subjectivity of his own autobiography. This mutation in the open system is precisely one of Serres’ terms. There an abyss is at work, stated, but also measured by heels on the ground—the abyss dispatching earthen tensions, that which plays our tunes, that which we abide by and recognize in volcanoes, rivers, oceans, earthquakes and weaponry in the battles of the world. Set in later stages of the book, such tensions are harnessed through scientific principles in an attempt to unify the terms of natural force if only to terminate the world. Thus the elevation of the earth into the world is clearly set forth. Here already, and few pages in, a resonance is set forth under appellations such as the river Garonne, a subjectivity as much as it is inhuman, the river is the inhuman that makes us human. I get the sense that Serres is taking up a challenge issued by Wallace Stevens; namely, that the great poems of heaven and hell have been written, but that only the poem of the earth has resisted composition. 2 On this level we cannot avoid the killing factor of silence, given that our cognition blocks its pure, radical obliteration. Thus a silence of attunement to the earth is in a novel dialectic of the rithmic and rhythm. A technological world, a triumph of termination is set forth. If a text imposes its will given the reader who authorizes it, it is made to convey or convect a presupposition to a reader or its inhabitant(s). Text is therefore both, in-content, contenting, contentedness, and in reading it, a way to navigate self-destruction (dis-content). Here then would one note that the “inhuman” reveals itself, “an aperiodic rhythm of lovers and beloved…the sea as our friend…but as our enemy…maternal vivifying sea.” The sea is an open book, or vaginal birth canal, where the engagement of text comes forth: “…woman sea, open vulva.” One sees like the sea, but only after it, when the uninhabitable truth of inhabiting it switches the polarity of the sailors soul: “I was seeing like the sea” (9-11). In other words, we are invited to embrace the nonsense of the visible. At this point I am taken to Jean-François Lyotard’s work The Inhuman , specifically the first entry on negentropy that would be congruent with Serres’ thematic. 3 The human being exports, deports, or transplants its relation through text, through the system— and this is its sense or relation to silence, to music. Unaware of Serres’ proximity to this work, the concept of gender interrelation as regards a solar catastrophe runs clear. It would be, on this basis, that Serres references his peers, the other texts that, as mentioned above, are discarded in philosophy today. For students of philosophy what we have here is perhaps a gift, a needed project. If silence and death are at work, there is a political valence to deal with, and here, much like the domain of the text and the dominion of the reader, we confront the world of natural, fluid violence. The anti-postmodernist critique is in part based on a weak idea that the loss of ideology, of a world vision, motivates the “correlationist” project. 4 Serres seems to offer another way to view this when he notes that whereas persons “sometimes kill,” it is clearly “the collective” that “always kills” (17). What is the collective today, if not an organizing function we never see yet acts in its favor in the name of truth? One feels a sense of enigma here, if only to link to what Stevens remarked of communism as a “grubby faith,” providing this applies for capitalism as well, namely any ideology of progress overly interested in absolutes. Here we get the sense that the inhuman, silence, this type of killing, always killing, could not be matched by human-made, political dynamos. Or that if it comes to an equilibrium, a catastrophe is never too far from us to read with our heels. We are left to note that the forces of nature presuppose and permeate political systems, the more these systems obtain force, the more the system takes upon itself the proper name of nature that motivates its dissemination, albeit falsely. This note, that in an age of ecocide and technological captivity (sustainability and transparency) political regimes won’t grow our soul-learning ears any larger than our tongues, stands clear to us. The promise of technological desubjectification is here pushed aside. Regarding politics, Serres illustrates this fact: Where did this corpse come from? Who was it? Who killed it? I don’t know. I won’t try to find out. I refuse to get vengeance for it. And I only see Garonne. For our victims, today, are the rivers, too. Their waters have irrigated my life, enchanted my thought, invigorated my body; I’ve known them to be threatening, untamable, as dangerous as the sea when it rages. Yes, murderous. They decided to control their courses; dams, sometimes senseless, destroying sites and valleys, reduced entire populations to servile displacements; programs for the irrigation of thirsty farmland, often beneficial of course, completed their drying up.(22) Serres enters into his idea concerning the captivity of language from the natural into a world system: For thousands of years, we have been licking things with our tongues, covering and daubing them so as to appropriate things for ourselves. If language boils down to a convention, this convention took place between the speakers without consulting the thing named, become as a result the property of those who covered it in this way with their drawn or voiced productions. Malfeasance analyzes these acts of appropriation. Thus every inert object, every living thing as well, sleeps under the covers of signs, a little in the way that, today, a thousand posters shouting messages and ugly riots of color drown, with their filthy flood, the landscapes, or better, exclude them from perception because the meaning, almost nil, of this false language and these base images forms an irresistible source of attraction to our neurons and eyes. This appropriation covers the world’s beauty with ugliness. (38-39) Technological concealment coming to bear, we begin to get a sense of another commentary on the condition of sensing, driving home the necessity of a text dealing with such subject matter to be what its terms insist. Thus toward new openings: The new opening. As low beneath our feet as you like, the Biogea opens us to another space, high enough for us to be able to acquire a wisdom there, that of redeveloping this same place differently from our fathers, this place that’s still politically cut up by old hatreds, beneath the flood of tears and blood that we call history. Without this soft place, spiritually very old, but newly conceived in this way, without the juridical construction of a common good, opposed to our filthy ownership, I don’t see how our planet, hard, will survive. Hardness that depends on a softness, material belonging that depends on this temporary rented location (51). Serres enters into a summit on the content and the structure of his work. Archimedes is brought in with the concept of three volcanoes. Meaning fire, but as well earth, water, air. For it was Archimedes’ war machines that sought to lift the earth, thus bringing in the question of principles of science: “can a principle be invented while controlling its consequences?” (66-7). May the earth be put in a sentence, terminated by terminology, appellations, gone wild? By means of these element-dominating laws, this old physicist began to tear nature away from the ancient myths; by a strange return, today we’re plunging our successes back into the anxieties and terrors from which that ancient physics was born. Yes, our new history of science and technology is plunging, today, as though in a loop, into the fundamental human myths from which Empedocles’ first laws came. A major progression and a regression on the nether side of the origins. Consequently, the contemporary time requires that we try to return to that unity in which the principles of hate and love are at the same time human, living, inert and global. We will never attain a deontology of our knowledge and actions without thinking the subjective, the objective, the collective, and the cognitive all together simultaneously. Here, hate and love are the result of these four components.(71) Working then on the concept of fire-starting mirrors to the atomic annihilation of the Second War, Serres works into the subjectivity in question on the matter of rhythm—say rithmic— precisely at that point: Knowledge is changing today. The all-political is dying; the monarchy of the sciences said to be hard is coming to a close. The science of the things of the world will have to communicate just as much as the things of the world do, which do it much better than humans do, who don’t always want to do it. Let’s celebrate two changes this morning. The first one strikes a new blow to our narcissism. No, knowledge and the world don’t resemble our analytical enjoyments of refined cutting up, of endless debates and of exclusions full of hate. They, on the contrary, form a bloc and a sum, alliance and alloys. Uniting the fields of knowledge among themselves the way the things are connected among themselves, the second newness puts into place sets united by interlacing, webs and simplexes that combine with the things of the world, themselves combined, the combined knowledge that understands them.(130-1) Biogea closes on its opening flood thematic, approaching the initial telos of Genesis. Here the trees are brought into a position with atmosphere, the opaque abyssal reservoir, the tomb of the sun, sea in the polarity of the earthen heaven and hell. The poem of the earth then is silent but deadly, indeed, as funny as that phrase is, mainly a tomb gas. The meaning of the living and the non-meaning of things converge in the muteness of the world; this meaning and non-meaning plunge there and come out, the ultimate eddy. Mundus patet: through a fissure, through an opening, a fault, a cleft come noises, calls as small as these apertures. I’m listening, attentive, I’m translating, I’m advancing in the scaled-down meaning and science. Mundus patet: should the world open greatly, it will launch me into its silence. The totality remains silent. Knowledge expanded in elation. White origin of meaning, fountain of joy. (198) Final Remarks One test of a review is the long term trajectory the referee thinks the book will have. I see Serres’ text lending greatly into the vision of Biogea . In fact, in the vision of the novel inquiries of Stephen Jay Gould’s work there is something to be thought on the level of the individual and the species; namely, that humanity and its uniqueness is in its deferral, its thinking and naming, a thinking surrounded by silence that filters into everything, that pulls us through the world, the kinetic pulse we recognize, and all of that we cleave away in the base philosophical maxim of difference itself. Unique individuals are spatial creatures: we dwell, and we ought to get good at it. Yet this is an imaginative space that, if you are crazy enough to believe it, de-term-ine the conditions of its own terms. That is why we are not merely creating spaces on the acceleration of time, or so this ignoramus thinks, to accidentally transcend. Imagination already has this insatiable silence that we drink up and fail to manifest. Space is timeless. The imagination itself, shared by humans for themselves, their objects, and the species as a whole, is a non-defined space of relation; a whole human trajectory as part of nature, and part of worlds that are the other side of thinking nature, the consequence of it, at least our attempt to do so. Our survival is based on our deliberation, our caution, our natural deconstructive sense toward this silence that is already part of the song, sung, singing of this century without end. Good books will let us inhabit this space and recognize a form of life. Serres’ text moves toward dwelling, as noted, in masterful and accessible ways. The pitched battles are the falling replays of anemic and dead politics. As soon as we realize there is humanity, we may be able to enjoy the end of it, our inhuman capability of listening to silence. NOTES 1. See Michel Serres. The Parasite . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 2007. 2. Wallace Stevens, “Imagination as Value” [ca. 1945], in Collected Poetry and Prose . New York: The Library of America. 1997. 724-39. 3. Jean-François Lyotard. The Inhuman: Reflections on Time . Trans. Geoffrey Bennington & Rachel Bowlby. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 1992. 4. See the introduction: Quentin Melliassoux. After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency . Trans. Ray Brassier. New York: Continuum. 2008. EDITOR'S NOTE: This review was updated on August 8, 2012. Substantial edits include block quotes from the book under review as well as the inclusion of comments from the author. (shrink)

This article aims to analyze the views of two pioneering Ḥanafī scholars, Abū Manṣūr al- Māturīdī and Abū Zayd al-Dabūsī, on the meaning of death and life in terms of their general doctrine of religion. In the first part, the general framework of Māturīdī and Dabūsī’s evidentialist conception of religion are drawn. In the second part, Māturīdī's views on the meaning of death and life and are explored. In the third part, the views of Abū Zayd al-Dabūsī on (...) the meaning of death and life, who establishes a striking connection between the divine order and existence, divine prohibition and non-existence, are examined, and a general evaluation is offered in the last section. Al-Māturīdī proposed a very original and systematic example of doing philosophy of religion, which still promising for the modern problems of the field, by opening the phenomenon of religion itself to discussion, and analyzing the nature and elements of religion. Māturīdī aims to place the problems on a universal and theoretical basis and to present a holistic, metaphysical understanding while discussing specific and particular issues in religion. Just as there are main notes in classical Western music that repeat throughout the symphony in baroque style, there are universal principles in al-Māturīdī’s metaphysics that cut all particular debates vertically. The basic principle of the al-Māturīdī’s metaphysics is based on this idea: God is a wise being, he does not do anything wise. Accordingly, it is absurd to create something to destroy; God did not create man to perish. The love of life and the fear of death are the deepest existential problems facing man as a finite being that goes towards death. Religion can be regarded as a powerful alternative to other worldviews to the extent that it provides a reasonable explanation for man’s deep concern about finitude. For al-Māturīdī, neither pessimistic understandings that emphasize only the fear of death nor hedonistic understandings that ignore death offer a reasonable solution. God created death as something that people fear the most and avoid, and life as something they love and desire. The testing of man is about being between the fear of death and the desire to live in the world. According to al-Māturīdī, this dilemma that man is facing also shows him the way out. If people do good and useful deeds because of their love for life, and avoid nonsense and ugly deeds because of their afraid of death, they can make their life eternal with their own efforts and escape from eternal/permanent death. The other Hanafī thinker, a philosopher of law Abū Zayd al-Dabūsī’s views on the meaning of death and life are parallel to Māturīdī's. According to al-Dabūsī, to test man, what God has placed in human nature is not only the soul and reason but also the spirit (al-nafs) and whim (al-hawa). While the spirit and whim invites man to the temporary by ignorance, it calls the soul and reason to the permanent by knowledge. The test for human beings is to choose between the temporary and the eternal life. For al-Dabūsī, man’s saving himself from falling into nothingness and gaining the eternal life depends on his use of reason. In other words, the reason binds human beings to life, and the whim leads them to nothingness. Drawing a parallel between reasoning and existence, ignorance and absence, Dabūsī defines the terms divine command and divine prohibition in a very original way. For him, the divine command is the things that must exist, and the divine prohibition is the things that must not exist. If the man helps exist the things that God wills to exist, he can make his own existence eternal. If the man helps exist the things that God does not will to exist, he puts himself into nothingness. Lastly, both for al-Māturīdī and al-Dabūsī, life is a divine grace bestowed on human being to gain eternal life through the good deeds he does at any moment. In short, reason is necessary in religion because its use is a preference of existence to non-existence. This metaphysical system, which sees goodness as a bridge from this finite world to heaven and eternity and makes a connection between faith and deeds on the ontological and ethical level is the essence of the worldview of the Hanafī-Māturīdī tradition. (shrink)

This paper explores the ethical insights provided by Anne Truitt's minimalist sculptures, as viewed through the phenomenological lenses of Hannah Arendt's investigations into the co-constitution of reality and Maurice Merleau-Ponty's investigations into perception. Artworks in their material presence can lay out new ways of relating and perceiving. Truitt's works accomplish this task by revealing the interactive motion of our embodied relations and how material objects can actually help to ground our reality and hence human potentiality. Merleau-Ponty shows how our prereflective (...) bodies allow incompossible perceptions to coexist. Yet this same capacity of bodies to gather multiple perceptions together also lends itself to the illusion that we see from only one perspective. If an ethical perspective becomes reified into one position, it then becomes detached from reality, and the ethical potential is actually lost. At the same time, phenomenologically understood, the real world does not exist in terms of static matter, but is instead a web of contextual relations and meanings. An ethics that does not take embodied relations into account—that allows for only one perspective—ultimately loses its capacity for flexibility, and for being part of a common and shared reality. (shrink)

Over the past 50 years the diversity of higher education faculty in the mathematical, physical, computer, and engineering sciences has advanced very little at 4-year universities in the United States. This is despite laws and policies such as affirmative action, interventions by universities, and enormous financial investment by federal agencies to diversify science, technology, mathematics, and engineering career pathways into academia. Data comparing the fraction of underrepresented minority postdoctoral scholars to the fraction of faculty at these institutions (...) offer a straightforward empirical explanation for this state of affairs. URM postdoc appointments lag significantly behind progress in terms of both undergraduate and Ph.D.-level STEM student populations. Indeed, URM postdoc appointments lag well-behind faculty diversity itself in the MPCES fields, most of which draw their faculty heavily from the postdoctoral ranks, particularly at research-intensive universities. Thus, a sea-change in how postdocs are recruited, how their careers are developed, and how they are identified as potential faculty is required in order to diversify the nation’s faculty, and particularly the R1 MPCES professoriate. Our research shows that both Ph.D. students and postdocs benefit from intentional structure at various levels of their respective “apprentice” experiences, a factor that we believe has been neglected. Several key structural approaches are highly effective in these regards: A collaborative approach in which leading research universities collectively identify outstanding URM candidates; Faculty engagement in recruiting and supporting these postdocs; Inter-institutional exchange programs to heighten the visibility and broaden the professional experiences of these postdocs; Community-building activities that create a sense of belonging and encourage continuing in academia for each cohort; and Continuing research based on outcomes and new experimental approaches. The California Alliance, consisting of UC Berkeley, UCLA, Caltech, and Stanford, has been engaged in such a program for almost a decade now, with most of the California Alliance URM postdocs now in tenure track positions or on the path toward careers as faculty at research intensive institutions. If this approach was brought to scale by involving the top 25 or so URM Ph.D.-producing R1 institutions in the MPCES fields, about 40% of the national URM postdoctoral population in these fields could be affected. Although this impact would fall short of bringing URM MPCES faculty ranks up to full representation of the United States population as a whole, it would vastly improve the outlook for URM students and their aspirations to take on leadership roles as scientists and engineers. (shrink)

In recent years an uneasy peace has descended in U.S. academe between those who feel research universities have done too little to advance the representation of minority groups and women and those who feel that the administrative policies developed to improve representation can and sometimes do come into conflict with core intellectual commitments of universities. Using quantitative and qualitative evidence from interviews with 47 natural sciences, engineering, and mathematics faculty members at a U.S. research university, the paper examines the (...) background characteristics of three sets of protagonists - academic progressives, academic traditionalists, and those whose views bridge the divide - and the way respondents discussed and justified their viewpoints. The paper draws on the theory of strategic action fields to illuminate the structure and dynamics of the conflict and suggests modifications to the theory that would improve its explanatory power for this case. (shrink)

In this book, I will discuss three main topics: the roots and aims of scientific knowledge, scientific knowledge in society, and science and values I understand scientific knowledge as being a planned and continuous production of the general and common knowledge of scientific communities. I begin my discussion with a brief analysis of the main differences between sciences, on the one hand, and everyday experience, philosophies, religions, and ideologies, on the other. I define the concept of science as a (...) set of family resemblances (in Wittgenstein's sense). The sciences can be distinguished along three lines, in terms of the difference between empirical and non-empirical sciences, differences in degrees of theoretical and methodological structure among individual sciences and scientific disciplines. Scientific knowledge is based upon some grounds, paradigmatic knowledge bases. Scientific knowledge is founded on a unified paradigmatic knowledge base. The latter includes fundamental theories, basic facts, generally accepted empirical regularities (laws), scientific research methods, scientific explanations, and established relations to other sciences. Scientific knowledge in general is defined well in classical terms by the definition that knowledge is a true and rationally-justified belief. In this connection, scientific truth is relative, depending on the given paradigmatic knowledge base and on the precision and accessibility of the measurements and observations involved. In the book's first part, I consider the production and testing of scientific hypotheses, scientific explanations, the structure of scientific theories, and the problem of scientific realism. I consider explanation an integral part of a wider nexus of heuristic and theoretical activities in science like giving reasons, understanding, clarification, and founding. Continuous production of scientific explanations is a necessary condition for the systematic reproduction of scientific knowledge. Accordingly, it does not suffice to describe them in terms of the logical structure of the arguments on which they are based, but rather, scientific explanations ought to be given complete with an epistemic and pragmatic context of the explanation. I consider especially deductive-nomological, inductive-statistical, dispositional, teleological-functional, and genetic explanations. I emphasize the ever-increasing importance of explanations by analogy and by model. Orthogonal to these distinctions lies the distinction between causal and epistemic explanation. Epistemic explanations relate scientific discoveries to epistemic progress, and causal explanations are these epistemic explanations that relate scientific discoveries to reality too. Causal explanations inform us that certain changes occur in the world as agents of other changes, or rather, that certain changes are real consequences of other changes. Thus, by having explanations of causes, we can intervene in the world to induce by design certain changes in some course of phenomena. I consider scientific theories as logically and epistemically ordered wholeness of scientific knowledge in a realm of research that enables us to construct useful models of reality. After the discussion of different 'statement' views on theories and different interpretations of the theory-experience relation, I introduce the 'model' theoretical (non-statement) views on theories, especially the structural theory of science. The model views on theories transcend the realism-antirealism dualism by introducing models between theory and reality. Therefore, the question of scientific realism is not merely whether and, if so, which element(s), of scientific theories represent reality, but rather which conditions suffice to infer from a theory that one of its models truly expresses reality. In other words, under which conditions do models of a theory represent models of reality? Generally, models are just as much images of reality in a theory as they are images of a theory in reality. The actual problem of scientific realism doesn't originate in the observable-unobservable distinction (even if this distinction is otherwise theoretically loaded), but rather in ontological quandaries, of the sort especially encountered in modern physical theories such as quantum mechanics, relativity theory, and cosmological theories, although they are known to arise in other sciences as well. Scientific theories may be real, even if they describe nothing about the world. However, such theories can be given this status only if their formal, mathematical postulates exhibit some formal homology between reality and mathematical forms. The very fact that it is possible to describe reality with the help of mathematics even in cases, where every (representational, conceptual) language and thought fall short, would indicate that even mathematics itself is, in some sense, a part of reality, although 'outside' of the empirical world. It follows we have to distinguish the non-empirical reality and the empirical world. Formal objectivity and non-arbitrariness of theories do not emerge from either our language or thoughts, or from the world of facts, causes, and effects, but rather from non-empirical reality, which frames the world as some kind of objective transcendental condition for the possibility of the existence of the world, thoughts, and language. In the second part of the book, I consider the incorporation of scientific work and scientific knowledge into modern society and its relations to values and ethics. Production of scientific knowledge goes on as a parallel distributed process of a special kind of social (shared) cognition. The central part of this cognition is the presentation of parts of the world by scientific (theoretical) models which are warranted by the shared and public practice of justification, and in reflective acting in the world as it would. I consider various formal concepts of collective propositional knowledge (distributed, mutual, common knowledge). Scientific knowledge is an achievement to be ascribed to a scientific community or, indirectly, to all those who apply or expand it, rather than to individuals per se. It presents the continuous and partially planned production of non-trivial common knowledge of the research communities in modern societies. However, besides common knowledge, shared dispositional knowledge (knowledge how of scientific teams) and shared knowledge by acquiring (knowledge of fundamental similarities and differences in scientific teams) are parts of the real body of scientific knowledge. Scientific common knowledge implies the projection into idealized universal knowledge of all real or potentially rational and well-informed individuals. The respect of scientific knowledge thus presents the norm of rationality. Science as the intensively shared and socially distributed kind of cognition enters into modern society as a special kind of work (general work), as a productive force (social invention drive), and as a form of capital (human, social, cultural, informational, etc.). However any of these categories can adequately represent the socio-economical role of science in modern societies, and we are still waiting for a more adequate general concept that would theoretically cover the 'scientification' of modern societies. My thesis is that the most important general effect of scientification is (and will be) the growth of social processes that structurally resemble parallel distributed shared social cognition of science, and not so much the rise of the use of scientific knowledge and scientifically based information in all kinds of production. Scientification of modern societies inevitably includes a much stronger need for moral and social responsibility of scientists for their work and its effects in their local society and the global world. This need comes in contradiction with the quite large accepted idea (and even the 'norm') on value-free research. I discuss to some degree different arguments for the absence of non-epistemic values and ethical reasoning from science and find them non-convincing. The sound idea of value-free research lies in the need for the absence of categorical value statements from scientific explanations and theoretical deductions. Values and ethical judgment have, and sometimes they even have to play an important role in another part of research and its application in science or outside it. Not the value-loudness of research is a danger for science but its blind, non-reflective use. It leads to the ideologization and politicization of science. A similar danger lies in the purely value-neutrality of research. It leads to the instrumentalization of science to the technical or bureaucratic means for 'any' aims. (shrink)

continent. 1.1 : 3-13. / 0/ – Introduction I want to propose, as a trajectory into the philosophically weird, an absurd theoretical claim and pursue it, or perhaps more accurately, construct it as I point to it, collecting the ground work behind me like the Perpetual Train from China Mieville's Iron Council which puts down track as it moves reclaiming it along the way. The strange trajectory is the following: Kant's critical philosophy and much of continental philosophy which has followed, (...) has been a defense against horror and madness. Kant's prohibition on speculative metaphysics such as dogmatic metaphysics and transcendental realism, on thinking beyond the imposition of transcendental and moral constraints, has been challenged by numerous figures proceeding him. One of the more interesting critiques of Kant comes from the mad black Deleuzianism of Nick Land stating, “Kant’s critical philosophy is the most elaborate fit of panic in the history of the Earth.” And while Alain Badiou would certainly be opposed to the libidinal investments of Land's Deleuzo-Guattarian thought, he is likewise critical of Kant's normative thought-bureaucracies: Kant is the one author for whom I cannot feel any kinship. Everything in him exasperates me, above all his legalism—always asking Quid Juris? Or ‘Haven’t you crossed the limit?’—combined, as in today’s United States, with a religiosity that is all the more dismal in that it is both omnipresent and vague. The critical machinery he set up has enduringly poisoned philosophy, while giving great succour to the academy, which loves nothing more than to rap the knuckles of the overambitious [….] That is how I understand the truth of Monique David-Menard’s reflections on the properly psychotic origins of Kantianism. I am persuaded that the whole of the critical enterprise is set up to to shield against the tempting symptom represented by the seer Swedenborg, or against ‘diseases of the head’, as Kant puts it. An entire nexus of the limits of reason and philosophy are set up here, namely that the critical philosophy not only defends thought from madness, philosophy from madness, and philosophy from itself, but that philosophy following the advent of the critical enterprise philosophy becomes auto-vampiric; feeding on itself to support the academy. Following Francois Laruelle's non-philosophical indictment of philosophy, we could go one step further and say that philosophy operates on the material of what is philosophizable and not the material of the external world. [1] Beyond this, the Kantian scheme of nestling human thinking between our limited empirical powers and transcendental guarantees of categorical coherence, forms of thinking which stretch beyond either appear illegitimate, thereby liquefying both pre-critical metaphysics and the ravings of the mad in the same critical acid. In rejecting the Kantian apparatus we are left with two entities – an unsure relation of thought to reality where thought is susceptible to internal and external breakdown and a reality with an uncertain sense of stability. These two strands will be pursued, against the sane-seal of post-Kantian philosophy by engaging the work of weird fiction authors H.P. Lovecraft and Thomas Ligotti. The absolute inhumanism of the formers universe will be used to describe a Shoggothic Materialism while the dream worlds of the latter will articulate the mad speculation of a Ventriloquil Idealism. But first we must address the relation of philosophy to madness as well as philosophy to weird fiction. /1/ – Philosophy and Madness There is nothing that the madness of men invents which is not either nature made manifest or nature restored. Michel Foucault. Madness and Civilization. The moment I doubt whether an event that I recall actually took place, I bring the suspicion of madness upon myself: unless I am uncertain as to whether it was not a mere dream. Arthur Schopenhauer. The World as Will and Idea, Vol. 3. Madness is commonly thought of as moving through several well known cultural-historical shifts from madness as a demonic or otherwise theological force, to rationalization, to medicalization psychiatric and otherwise. Foucault's Madness and Civilization is well known for orientating madness as a form of exclusionary social control which operated by demarcating madness from reason. Yet Foucault points to the possibility of madness as the necessity of nature at least prior to the crushing weight of the church. Kant’s philosophy as a response to madness is grounded by his humanizing of madness itself. As Adrian Johnston points out in the early pages of Time Driven pre-Kantian madness meant humans were seized by demonic or angelic forces whereas Kantian madness became one of being too human. Madness becomes internalized, the external demonic forces become flaws of the individual mind. Foucault argues that, while madness is de-demonized it is also dehumanized during the Renaissance, as madmen become creatures neither diabolic nor totally human reduced to the zero degree of humanity. It is immediately clear why for Kant, speculative metaphysics must be curbed – with the problem of internal madness and without the external safeguards of transcendental conditions, there is nothing to formally separate the speculative capacities for metaphysical diagnosis from the mad ramblings of the insane mind – both equally fall outside the realm of practicality and quotidian experience. David-Menard's work is particularly useful in diagnosing the relation of thought and madness in Kant's texts. David-Menard argues that in Kant's relatively unknown “An Essay on the Maladies of the Mind” as well as his later discussion of the Seer of Swedenborg, that Kant formulates madness primarily in terms of sensory upheaval or other hallucinatory theaters. She writes: “madness is an organization of thought. It is made possible by the ambiguity of the normal relation between the imaginary and the perceived, whether this pertains to the order of sensation or to the relations between our ideas” Kant's fascination with the Seer forces Kant between the pincers of “aesthetic reconciliation” – namely melancholic withdrawal – and “a philosophical invention” – namely the critical project. Deleuze and Guattari's schizoanalysis is a combination and reversal of Kant's split, where an aesthetic over engagement with the world entails prolific conceptual invention. Their embrace of madness, however, is of course itself conceptual despite all their rhizomatic maneuvers. Though they move with the energy of madness, Deleuze and Guattari save the capacity of thought from the fangs of insanity by imbuing materiality itself with the capacity for thought. Or, as Ray Brassier puts it, “Deleuze insists, it is necessary to absolutize the immanence of this world in such a way as to dissolve the transcendent disjunction between things as we know them and as they are in themselves”. That is, whereas Kant relied on the faculty of judgment to divide representation from objectivity Deleuze attempts to flatten the whole economy beneath the juggernaut of ontological univocity. Speculation, as a particularly useful form of madness, might fall close to Deleuze and Guattari’s shaping of philosophy into a concept producing machine but is different in that it is potentially self destructive – less reliant on the stability of its own concepts and more adherent to exposing a particular horrifying swath of reality. Speculative madness is always a potential disaster in that it acknowledges little more than its own speculative power with the hope that the gibbering of at least a handful of hysterical brains will be useful. Pre-critical metaphysics amounts to madness, though this may be because the world itself is mad while new attempts at speculative metaphysics, at post-Kantian pre-critical metaphysics, are well aware of our own madness. Without the sobriety of the principle of sufficient reason we have a world of neon madness: “we would have to conceive what our life would be if all the movements of the earth, all the noises of the earth, all the smells, the tastes, all the light – of the earth and elsewhere, came to us in a moment, in an instant – like an atrocious screaming tumult of things”. Speculative thought may be participatory in the screaming tumult of the world or, worse yet, may produce its spectral double. Against theology or reason or simply commonsense, the speculative becomes heretical. Speculation, as the cognitive extension of the horrorific sublime should be met with melancholic detachment. Whereas Kant's theoretical invention, or productivity of thought, is self -sabotaging, since the advent of the critical project is a productivity of thought which then delimits the engine of thought at large either in dogmatic gestures or non-systematizable empirical wondrousness. The former is celebrated by the fiction of Thomas Ligotti whereas the latter is espoused by the tales of H.P. Lovecraft. /2/ – Weird Fiction and Philosophy. Supernatural horror, in all its eerie constructions, enables a reader to taste treats inconsistent with his personal welfare. Thomas Ligotti Songs of a Dead Dreamer. I choose weird stories because they suit my inclination best—one of my strongest and most persistent wishes being to achieve,momentarily, the illusion of some strange suspension or violation of the galling limitations of time, space, and natural law which forever imprison us and frustrate our curiosity about the infinite cosmic spaces beyond the radius of our sight and analysis H.P. Lovecraft. “Notes on Writing Weird Fiction” Lovecraft states that his creation of a story is to suspend natural law yet, at the same time, he indexes the tenuousness of such laws, suggesting the vast possibilities of the cosmic. The tension that Lovecraft sets up between his own fictions and the universe or nature is reproduced within his fictions in the common theme of the unreliable narrator; unreliable precisely because they are either mad or what they have witnessed questions the bounds of material reality. In “The Call of Cthulhu” Lovecraft writes: The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age. Despite Lovecraft's invocations of illusion, he is not claiming that his fantastic creations such as the Old Ones are supernatural but, following Joshi, are only ever supernormal. One can immediately see that instead of nullifying realism Lovecraft in fact opens up the real to an unbearable degree. In various letters and non-fictional statements Lovecraft espoused strictly materialist tenets, ones which he borrowed from Hugh Elliot namely the uniformity of law, the denial of teleology and the denial of non-material existence. Lovecraft seeks to explore the possibilities of such a universe by piling horror upon horror until the fragile brain which attempts to grasp it fractures. This may be why philosophy has largely ignored weird fiction – while Deleuze and Guattari mark the turn towards weird fiction and Lovecraft in particular, with the precursors to speculative realism as well as contemporary related thinkers have begun to view Lovecraft as making philosophical contributions. Lovecraft's own relation to philosophy is largely critical while celebrating Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. This relationship of Lovecraft to philosophy and philosophy to Lovecraft is coupled with Lovecraft's habit of mercilessly destroying the philosopher and the figure of the academic more generally in his work, a destruction which is both an epistemological destruction and an ontological destruction. Thomas Ligotti's weird fiction which he has designated as a kind of “confrontational escapism” might be best described in the following quote from one of his shortstories, “The human phenomenon is but the sum of densely coiled layers of illusion each of which winds itself on the supreme insanity. That there are persons of any kind when all there can be is mindless mirrors laughing and screaming as they parade about in an endless dream”. Whereas Lovecraft's weirdness draws predominantly from the abyssal depths of the uncharted universe, Ligotti's existential horror focuses on the awful proliferation of meaningless surfaces that is, the banal and every day function of representation. In an interview, Ligotti states: We don't even know what the world is like except through our sense organs, which are provably inadequate. It's no less the case with our brains. Our whole lives are motored along by forces we cannot know and perceptions that are faulty. We sometimes hear people say that they're not feeling themselves. Well, who or what do they feel like then? This is not to say that Ligotti sees nothing beneath the surface but that there is only darkness or blackness behind it, whether that surface is on the cosmological level or the personal. By addressing the implicit and explicit philosophical issues in Ligotti's work we will see that his nightmarish take on reality is a form of malevolent idealism, an idealism which is grounded in a real, albeit dark and obscure materiality. If Ligotti's horrors ultimately circle around mad perceptions which degrade the subject, it takes aim at the vast majority of the focus of continental philosophy. While Lovecraft's acidic materialism clearly assaults any romantic concept of being from the outside, Ligotti attacks consciousness from the inside: Just a little doubt slipped into the mind, a little trickle of suspicion in the bloodstream, and all those eyes of ours, one by one, open up to the world and see its horror [...] Not even the solar brilliance of a summer day will harbor you from horror. For horror eats the light and digests it into darkness. Clearly, the weird fiction of Lovecraft and Ligotti amount to a anti-anthrocentric onslaught against the ramparts of correlationist continental philosophy. /3/ – Shoggothic Materialism or the Formless Formless protoplasm able to mock and reflect all forms and organs and processes—viscous agglutinations of bubbling cells—rubbery fifteen-foot spheroids infinitely plastic and ductile—slaves of suggestion, builders of cities—more and more sullen, more and more intelligent, more and more amphibious, more and more imitative—Great God! What madness made even those blasphemous Old Ones willing to use and to carve such things? H.P. Lovecraft. “At the Mountains of Madness” On the other hand, affirming that the universe resembles nothing and is only formless amounts to saying that the universe is something like a spider or spit. Georges Bataille. “Formless”. The Shoggoths feature most prominently in H.P. Lovecraft's shortstory “At the Mountains of Madness” where they are described in the following manner: It was a terrible, indescribable thing vaster than any subway train – a shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self -luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and un-forming as pustules of greenish light all over the tunnel-filling front that bore down upon us, crushing the frantic penguins and slithering over the glistening floor that it and its kind had swept so evilly free of all litter. The term is a litmus test for materialism itself as the Shoggoth is an amorphous creature. The Shoggoths were living digging machines bio engineered by the Elder Things, and their protoplasmic bodies being formed into various tools by their hypnotic powers. The Shoggoths eventually became self aware and rose up against their masters in an ultimately failed rebellion. After the Elder Ones retreated into the oceans leaving the Shoggoths to roam the frozen wastes of the Antarctic. The onto-genesis of the Shoggoths and their gross materiality, index the horrifyingly deep time of the earth a concept near and dear to Lovecraft's formulation of horror as well as the fear of intelligences far beyond, and far before, the ascent of humankind on earth and elsewhere. The sickly amorphous nature of the Shoggoths invade materialism at large, where while materiality is unmistakably real ie not discursive, psychological, or otherwise overly subjectivist, it questions the relation of materialism to life. As Eugene Thacker writes: The Shoggoths or Elder Things do not even share the same reality with the human beings who encounter them—and yet this encounter takes place, though in a strange no-place that is neither quite that of the phenomenal world of the human subject or the noumenal world of an external reality. Amorphous yet definitively material beings are a constant in Lovecraft's tales. In his tale “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadatth” Lovecraft describes Azathoth as, “that shocking final peril which gibbers unmentionably outside the ordered universe,” that, “last amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blashphemes and bubbles at the centre of all infinity,” who, “gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time”. Azathoth's name may have multiple origins but the most striking is the alchemy term azoth which is both a cohesive agent and a acidic creation pointing back to the generative and the decayed. The indistinction of generation and degradation materially mirrors the blur between the natural and the unnatural as well as life and non-life. Lovecraft speaks of the tension between the natural and the unnatural is his short story “The Unnameable.” He writes, “if the psychic emanations of human creatures be grotesque distortions, what coherent representation could express or portray so gibbous and infamous a nebulousity as the spectre of a malign, chaotic perversion, itself a morbid blasphemy against Nature?”. Lovecraft explores exactly the tension outlined at the beginning of this chapter, between life and thought. At the end of his short tale Lovecraft compounds the problem as the unnameable is described as “a gelatin—a slime—yet it had shapes, a thousand shapes of horror beyond all memory”. Deleuze suggests that becoming-animal is operative throughout Lovecraft's work, where narrators feel themselves reeling at their becoming non-human or of being the anomalous or of becoming atomized. Following Eugene Thacker however, it may be far more accurate to say that Lovecraft's tales exhibit not a becoming-animal but a becoming-creature. Where the monstrous breaks the purportedly fixed laws of nature, the creature is far more ontologically ambiguous. The nameless thing is an altogether different horizon for thought. The creature is either less than animal or more than animal – its becoming is too strange for animal categories and indexes the slow march of thought towards the bizarre. This strangeness is, as aways, some indefinite swirling in the category of immanence and becoming. Bataille begins “The Labyrinth” with the assertion that being, to continue to be, is becoming. More becoming means more being hence the assertion that Bataille's barking dog is more than the sponge. This would mean that the Shoggotth is altogether too much being, too much material in the materialism. Bataille suggests that there is an immanence between the eater and the eaten, across the species and never within them. That is, despite the chaotic storm of immanence there must remain some capacity to distinguish the gradients of becoming without reliance upon, or at least total dependence upon, the powers of intellection to parse the universe into recognizable bits, properly digestible factoids. That is, if we undo Deleuze's aforementioned valorization of sense which, for his variation of materialism, performed the work of the transcendental, but refuse to reinstate Kant's transcendental disjunction between thing and appearance, then it must be a quality of becoming-as-being itself which can account for the discernible nature of things by sense. In an interview with Peter Gratton, Jane Bennett formulates the problem thusly: What is this strange systematicity proper to a world of Becoming? What, for example, initiates this congealing that will undo itself? Is it possible to identify phases within this formativity, plateaus of differentiation? If so, do the phases/plateaus follow a temporal sequence? Or, does the process of formation inside Becoming require us to theorize a non-chronological kind of time? I think that your student’s question: “How can we account for something like iterable structures in an assemblage theory?” is exactly the right question. Philosophy has erred too far on the side of the subject in the subject-object relation and has furthermore, lost the very weirdness of the non-human. Beyond this, the madness of thought need not override. /4/ - Ventriloquial Idealism or the Externality of Thought My aim is the opposite of Lovecraft's. He had an appreciation for natural scenery on earth and wanted to reach beyond the visible in the universe. I have no appreciation for natural scenery and want the objective universe to be a reflection of a character. Thomas Ligotti. “Devotees of Decay and Desolation.” Unless life is a dream, nothing makes sense. For as a reality, it is a rank failure [….] Horror is more real than we are. Thomas Ligotti. “Professor Nobody's Little Lectures on Supernatural Horror”. Thomas Ligotti's tales are rife with mannequins, puppets, and other brainless entities which of replace the valorized subject of philosophy – that of the free thinking human being. His tales such as “The Dream of the Manikin” aim to destroy the rootedness of consciousness. James Trafford has connected the anti-egoism of Ligotti to Thomas Metzinger – where the self is at best an illusion and we plead desperately for someone else to acknowledge that we are real. Trafford has stated it thus, “Life is played out as an inescapable puppet show, an endless dream in which the puppets are generally unaware that they are trapped within a mesmeric dance of whose mechanisms they know nothing and over which they have no control”. An absolute materialism, for Ligotti, implies an alienation of the idea which leads to a ventriloquil idealism. As Ligotti notes in an interview, “the fiasco and nightmare of existence, the particular fiasco and nightmare of human existence, the sense that people are puppets of powers they cannot comprehend, etc.” And then further elaborates that,“[a]ssuming that anything has to exist, my perfect world would be one in which everyone has experienced the annulment of his or her ego. That is, our consciousness of ourselves as unique individuals would entirely disappear”. The externality of the idea leads to the unfortunate consequence of consciousness eating at itself through horror which, for Ligotti, is more real than reality and goes beyond horror-as-affect. Beyond this, taking together with the unreality of life and the ventriloquizing of subjectivity, Ligotti's thought becomes an idealism in which thought itself is alien and ultimately horrifying. The role of human thought and the relation of non-relation of horror to thought is not completely clear in Ligotti's The Conspiracy Against the Human Race. Ligotti argues in his The Conspiracy Against the Human Race,that the advent of thought is a mistake of nature and that horror is being in the sense that horror results from knowing too much. Yet, at the same time, Ligotti seems to suggest that thought separates us from nature whereas, for Lovecraft, thought is far less privileged – mind is just another manifestation of the vital principal, it is just another materialization of energy. In his brilliant “Prospects for Post-Copernican Dogmatism” Iain Grant rallies against the negative definition of dogmatism and the transcendental, and suggests that negatively defining both over-focuses on conditions of access and subjectivism at the expense of the real or nature. With Schelling, who is Grant's champion against the subjectivist bastions of both Fichte and Kant, Ligotti's idealism could be taken as a transcendental realism following from an ontological realism. Yet the transcendental status of Ligotti's thought move towards a treatment of the transcendental which may threaten to leave beyond its realist ground. Ligotti states: Belief in the supernatural is only superstition. That said, a sense of the supernatural, as Conrad evidenced in Heart of Darkness, must be admitted if one's inclination is to go to the limits of horror. It is the sense of what should not be- the sense of being ravaged by the impossible. Phenomenally speaking, the super-natural may be regarded as the metaphysical counterpart of insanity, a transcendental correlative of a mind that has been driven mad. Again, Ligotti equates madness with thought, qualifying both as supernatural while remaining less emphatic about the metaphysical dimensions of horror. The question becomes one of how exactly the hallucinatory realm of the ideal relates to the black churning matter of Lovecraft's chaos of elementary particles. In his tale “I Have a Special Plan for This World” Ligotti formulates thus: A: There is no grand scheme of things. B: If there were a grand scheme of things, the fact – the fact – that we are not equipped to perceive it, either by natural or supernatural means, is a nightmarish obscenity. C: The very notion of a grand scheme of things is a nightmarish obscenity. Here Ligotti is not discounting metaphysics but implying that if it does exist the fact that we are phenomenologically ill-equipped to perceive that it is nightmarish. For Ligotti, nightmare and horror occur within the circuit of consciousness whereas for Lovecraft the relation between reality and mind is less productive on the side of mind. It is easier to ascertain how the Kantian philosophy is a defense against the diseases of the head as Kant armors his critical enterprise from too much of the world and too much of the mind. The weird fiction of both Lovecraft and Ligotti demonstrates that there is too much of both feeding into one another in a way that corrodes the Kantian schema throughly, breaking it down into a dead but still ontologically potentiated nigredo. The haunting, terrifying fact of Ligotti's idealism is that the transcendental motion which brought thought to matter, while throughly material and naturalized, brings with it the horror that thought cannot be undone without ending the material that bears it either locally or completely. Thought comes from an elsewhere and an elsewhen being-in-thought. The unthinkable outside thought is as maddening as the unthought engine of thought itself within thought which doesn't exist except for the mind, the rotting décor of the brain. /5/ - Hyperstitional Transcendental Paranoia or Self -Expelled Thought Weird fiction has been given some direct treatment in philosophy in the mad black Deleuzianism of Nick Land. Nick Land along with others in the 1990s created the Cyber Culture Research Unit as well as the research group Hyperstition. The now defunct hyperstitional website, an outgrowth of the Cyber Culture Research Unit, defined hyperstition in the following fourfold: 1-Element of effective culture that makes itself real. 2-Fictional quantity functional as a time-traveling device. 3-Coincidence intensifier. 4-Call to the Old Ones. The distinctively Lovecraftian character of hyperstition is hard to miss as is its Deleuzo-Guattarian roots. In the opening pages of A Thousand Plateaus Deleuze and Guattari write, “We have been criticized for over-quoting literary authors. But when one writes, the only question is which other machine the literary machine can be plugged into”. The indisinction of literature and philosophy mirrors the mess of being and knowing as post-correlationist philosophy, where philosophy tries to make itself real where literature, especially the weird, aims itself at the brain-circuit of horror. The texts of both Lovecraft and Ligotti work through horror as epistemological plasticity meeting with proximity as well as the deep time of Lovecraft and the glacially slow time of paranoia in Ligotti. Against Deleuze, and following Brassier, we cannot allow the time of consciousness, the Bergsonian time of the duree, to override natural time, but instead acknowledge that it is an unfortunate fact of existence as a thinking being. Horror-time, the time of consciousness, with all its punctuated moments and drawn out terrors, cannot compare to the deep time of non-existence both in the unreachable past and the unknown future. The crystalline cogs of Kant's account of experience as the leading light for the possibility of metaphysics must be throughly obliterated. His gloss of experience in Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics could not be more sterile: Experience consists of intuitions, which belong to the sensibility, and of judgments, which are entirely a work of the understanding. But the judgments which the understanding makes entirely out of sensuous intuitions are far from being judgments of experience. For in the one case the judgment connects only the perceptions as they are given in sensuous intuition [....] Experience consists in the synthetic connection of appearances in consciousness, so far as this connection is necessary. Here it is difficult to dismiss the queasiness that Kant's legalism induces upon sight for both Badiou and David-Menard. Kant's thought becomes, as Foucault says when reflecting on Sade's text in relation to nature, “the savage abolition of itself”. For Badiou, Kant's philosophy simply closes off too much of the outside, freezing the world of thought in an all too limited formalism. Critical philosophy is simply the systematized quarantine on future thinking, on thinking which would threaten the formalism which artificially grants thought its own coherency in the face of madness. Even the becoming-mad of Deleuze, while escaping the rumbling ground, makes grounds for itself, mad grounds but grounds which are thinkable in their affect. The field of effects allows for Deleuze's aesthetic and radical empiricism, in which effects and/or occasions make up the material of the world to be thought as a chaosmosis of simulacra. Given a critique of an empiricism of aesthetics, of the image, it may be difficult to justify an attack on Kantian formalism with the madness of literature, which does not aim to make itself real but which we may attempt to make real. That is, how do Lovecraft's and Ligotti's materials, as materials for philosophy to work on, differ from either the operative formalisms of Kant or the implicitly formalized images of Deleuzian empiricism? It is simply that such texts do not aim to make themselves real, and make claims to the real which are more alien to us than familiar, which is why their horror is immediately more trustworthy. This is the madness which Blanchot discusses in The Infinite Conversation through Cervantes and his knight – the madness of book-life, of the perverse unity of literature and life a discussion which culminates in the discussion of one of the weird's masters, that of Kafka. The text is the knowing of madness, since madness, in its moment of becoming-more-mad, cannot be frozen in place but by the solidifications of externalizing production. This is why Foucault ends his famous study with works of art. Furthermore extilligence, the ability to export the products of our maligned brains, is the companion of the attempts to export, or discover the possibility of intelligences outside of our heads, in order for philosophy to survive the solar catastrophe. To borrow again from Deleuze, writing is inseparable from becoming. The mistake is to believe that madness is reabsorbed by extilligence, by great works, or that it could be exorcised by the expelling of thought into the inorganic or differently organic. Going out of our heads does not guarantee we will no longer mean we cannot still go out of our minds. This is simply because of the outside, of matter, or force, or energy, or thing-in-itself, or Schopenhauerian Will. In Lovecraft’s “The Music of Erich Zahn” an “impoverished student of metaphysics” becomes intrigued by strange viol music coming from above his room. After meeting the musician the student discovers that each night he plays frantic music at a window in order to keep some horridness at bay, some “impenetrable darkness with chaos and pandemonium”. The aesthetic defenses provided by the well trained brain can bear the hex of matter for so long, the specter of unalterability within it which too many minds obliterate, collapsing everything before the thought of thought as thinkable or at least noetically mutable on our own terms. Transcendental paranoia is the concurrent nightmare and promise of Paul Humphrey's work, of being literally out of our minds. It is the gothic counterpart of thinking non-conceptually but also of thinking never belonging to any instance of purportedly solid being. As Bataille stated, “At the boundary of that which escapes cohesion, he who reflects within cohesion realizes there is no longer any room for him” Thought is immaterial only to the degree that it is inhuman, it is a power that tries, always with failure, to ascertain its own genesis. Philosophy, if it can truly return to the great outdoors, if it can leave behind the dead loop of the human skull, must recognize not only the non-priority of human thought, but that thought never belongs to the brain that thinks it, thought comes from somewhere else. To return to the train image from the beginning “a locomotive rolling on the surface of the earth is the image of continuous metamorphosis” this is the problem of thought, and of thinking thought, of being no longer able to isolate thought, with only a thought-formed structure. [1] One of the central tenets of Francois Laruelle's non-philosophy is that philosophy has traditionally operated on material already presupposed as thinkable instead of trying to think the real in itself. Philosophy, according to Laruelle, remains fixated on transcendental synthesis which shatters immanence into an empirical datum and an a prori factum which are then fused by a third thing such as the ego. For a critical account of Laruelle's non-philosophy see Ray Brassier's Nihil Unbound. (shrink)

The paper distinguishes two approaches to understanding the representational content of sentences and intentional states, and its role in describing people, predicting and explaining their behavior, and so forth. It sets forth the case for one of these approaches, the “egocentric” one, initially on the basis of its ability to explain the near‐indefeasibility of ascriptions of content to our own terms (“‘dogs’ as I use it means dogs”), but more generally on the basis of its providing an attractive overall picture (...) of the descriptive and explanatory role of representational content. In doing this, the paper relates the egocentric view to an “immanent” or “deflationary” view of reference and truth conditions, and also to the view of reference‐talk and truth‐talk as anaphoric devices. It discusses the indeterminacy of content ascriptions to those in communities with radically different theories, a phenomenon that is unsurprising on the egocentric approach, and connects this to the thesis of the normativity of meaning. (It does all this in rather broad brush: many strands of the egocentric account will be familiar, and are the subject of familiar controversies; the point of the paper is less to address these controversies individually than to tie the strands together into what is hoped to be an appealing package.). (shrink)

An equation proposed by Levy, Perdew and Sahni (Phys. Rev. A 30:2745, 1984) is an orbital-free formulation of density functional theory. However, this equation describes a bosonic system. Here, we analyze on a very fundamental level, how this equation could be extended to yield a formulation for a general fermionic distribution of charge and spin. This analysis starts at the level of single electrons and with the question, how spin actually comes into a charge distribution in a non-relativistic (...) model. To this end we present a space-time model of extended electrons, which is formulated in terms of geometric algebra. Wave properties of the electron are referred to mass density oscillations. We provide a comprehensive and non-statistical interpretation of wavefunctions, referring them to mass density components and internal field components. It is shown that these wavefunctions comply with the Schrödinger equation, for the free electron as well as for the electron in electrostatic and vector potentials. Spin-properties of the electron are referred to intrinsic field components and it is established that a measurement of spin in an external field yields exactly two possible results. However, it is also established that the spin of free electrons is isotropic, and that spin-dynamics of single electrons can be described by a modified Landau-Lifshitz equation. The model agrees with the results of standard theory concerning the hydrogen atom. Finally, we analyze many-electron systems and derive a set of coupled equations suitable to characterize the system without any reference to single electron states. The model is expected to have the greatest impact in condensed matter theory, where it allows to describe an N-electron system by a many-electron wavefunction Ψ of four, instead of 3N variables. The many-body aspect of a system is in this case encoded in a bivector potential. (shrink)

This book, written by two central figures of generative grammar, represent the culmination of some ten years work on phonological theory and specifically on the sound system of English. As such, it is of interest to anyone concerned with phonology in general no less than to the student of English. Their description of the phonological structure of modern English, while not claiming to be exhaustive, reveals the deep and hitherto largely uncharacterized, regularities underlying this system in at least two (...) major areas: in the analysis of English stress, which is shown to be in large measure predictable at the level of both word and phrase; and in the account of vowel and consonant alternations in such cases as sane-sanity, deceive-deception, decide-decision, cone-conic and democrat-democracy respectively. Secondly the book constitutes a major contribution to general phonological theory. Thus, for example, the note of the phonological component of a generative grammar is viewed as the mapping of the abstract string of formatives that constitute the surface structure output of the syntax onto concrete phonetic space, via a series of carefully formalized rules; a clearly-defined, highly abstract view is taken of underlying phonological representations, which in turn are related in a non-arbitrary fashion to the actual phonetic output; and the choice of phonological primes is motivated in terms of certain crucial departures from the earlier set of distinctive features established by Roman Jakobson--to whom the book is dedicated. Thirdly, the book is of major importance for general linguistic theory, as it makes substantive contributions to areas such as: language change and the relation between diachrony and synchrony; the nature and ordering of grammatical rules ; or the key notion of the "cyclical" applications of rules--first introduced in this work in order to handle the assignment of English stress to words and phrases beyond the single-morpheme level, and by now a crucial feature of the transformational rules of generative syntax. In their preface, the authors describe The Sound Pattern of English as "an interim report on work in progress." That this is true is attested to by the debate now being waged on nearly every aspect of phonological theory by followers of Chomsky and Halle. The book has already given rise to considerable critical discussion, ranging from specific points such as the correctness of the particular set of distinctive features established by the authors, to far deeper issues concerning the abstractness of phonological representations, the inter-relation between phonology and the syntactic and semantic components of grammar, the place of phonetics within the field of linguistics. These very controversies should insure this book its place as a central text for all serious students of English, phonology, and language.--R. A. (shrink)

To understand how the photoreceptor protein rhodopsin performs in its role as a receptor, its structure needs to be determined at the atomic level. Upon receiving a photon of light, rhodopsin undergoes a change in conformation that allows it to bind and activate the C-protein, transducin. An important future goal should be to determine the structure of both the inactive and the photoactivated state of rhodopsin, R*. This should provide the groundwork necessary for experiments on how rhodopsin achieves its signaling (...) state R*, and how R* functions to activate transducin. To do this, the crystal structure of both rhodopsin and R* must be determined. Few membrane proteins have been successfully crystallized, so this is not a trivial undertaking. Two- or three dimensional crystals of rhodopsin must be prepared that are well ordered, to produce a high-resolution structure. Rhodopsin must be purified to homogeneity and the appropriate detergent(s) selected for crystallization experiments. Long-term thermal stability of the rhodopsin-detergent complex must be achieved in the presence of a precipitant. Two-dimensional crystals may offer advantages in investigating the structure of R*, but the structure obtained may be limited in resolution. It is necessary to work with rhodopsin in the dark, unless suitable light-stable retinal derivatives are developed. Protein engineering of rhodopsin offers attractive opportunities to improve its ability to crystallize, but is presently hindered by the absence of a high-yielding expression system. Knowledge of the structure of rhodopsin will have general importance. Because rhodopsin is a member of the family of C-protein-coupled receptors, knowledge of the structure and the mechanism of action of rhodopsin suggests by analogy how other members of the receptor family may function. (shrink)

Software application ontologies have the potential to become the keystone in state-of-the-art information management techniques. It is expected that these ontologies will support the sort of reasoning power required to navigate large and complex terminologies correctly and efficiently. Yet, there is one problem in particular that continues to stand in our way. As these terminological structures increase in size and complexity, and the drive to integrate them inevitably swells, it is clear that the level of consistency required for such (...) navigation will become correspondingly difficult to maintain. While descriptive semantic representations are certainly a necessary component to any adequate ontology-based system, so long as ontology engineers rely solely on semantic information, without a sound ontological theory informing their modeling decisions, this goal will surely remain out of reach. In this paper we describe how Language and Computing nv (L&C), along with The Institute for Formal Ontology and Medical Information Sciences (IFOMIS), are working towards developing and implementing just such a theory, combining the open software architecture of L&C’s LinkSuiteTM with the philosophical rigor of IFOMIS’s Basic Formal Ontology. In this way we aim to move beyond the more or less simple controlled vocabularies that have dominated the industry to date. (shrink)

This useful anthology comprises seventy-nine selections arranged under three headings. Part I is titled "Ancient and Classical Ideas of Space"; part II, "The Classical and Ancient Concepts of Time"; part III, "Modern Views of Space and Time and their Anticipations." According to the general editors of the Boston series, R. S. Cohen and Marx W. Wartofsky, Capek’s choice of contents was governed by the desire to show that "parts of our view of nature greatly and mutually influence other parts, (...) and that our conception of the world keeps evolving. Thus, ideas of time intertwine with ideas of space, and both with ideas of matter and force." F. M. Cornford’s essays, "The Invention of Space" and "The Elimination of Time by Parmenides," introduce parts I and II respectively. In part I, while Descartes, Pascal, Gassendi, Newton, etc., speak for themselves, the ancients and medievals are given other mouthpieces—Duhem’s monumental Le système du monde, for Plato, Aristotle, and the medievals; C. Bailey, for Leucippus, Epicurus and Lucretius; Koyré, Höffding, Jammer, for the period from Bradwardine to William Gilbert. On the subject of time, however, both ancient and classical authors are allowed to express their opinions in their own words, with the understandable exception of the Stoics. Part III begins with the prerelativistic critique of Newton as well as the well-known Clarke-Leibniz discussion on the nature of space and time. This third part, however, is dominated largely by the implications of Einstein’s general and special relativity theories. For instance, we have Minkowski’s "Union of Space and Time." Four items, at least, are devoted to the twin-paradox. Some argue for a static, subjective, or even idealistic conception of space-time whereas positivists like Frank attack Sir James Jeans’ and other idealistic interpretations of relativity as instances of meaningless metaphysics. Part III concludes with Weyl’s objectivistic interpretation of quantum-mechanical indeterminacy. While it is difficult to find an anthology that will please all readers or teachers, this work goes far towards dealing comprehensively with the subject of space and time. As Cohen and Wartofsky note, what is distinctive of Capek’s approach within the field of philosophy of nature and its history is that "he is greatly appreciative of Bergson, James, Peirce and Whitehead" and though influenced by them, he is also critical because of the "understanding of the philosophical import that contemporary physics brings into our picture of the world." In a lengthy introduction, the editor explains his rationale for each item he includes. In general this is very helpful, but in some instances the suggested historical connections are misleading at best, if not simply false or questionable. Einstein for instance is said to have "rejected any absolute frame of reference which would be a substrate of absolutely simultaneous events... within the context of Michelson’s vain search for the absolute motion of the earth." This seems to imply—as many others have claimed—that the negative results of the ether-drift experiment influenced Einstein in formulating his relativity theory, whereas historians have pointed out that if Einstein referred to the experiment, it would have to be as a confirmation of his theory, since he did not learn of the results obtained by Michelson and Morley until after the publication of his revolutionary paper in 1905. Though there are other generalizations in the introduction which might be open to dispute, Capek’s prefatory remarks are in general helpful, and the essay collection as a whole stands on its own feet. It is valuable, if for no other reason, that a number of the selections appear in English translation for the first time.—A.B.W. (shrink)

This paper deals with an analysis of debris produced during the polishing of diamond. The debris is carefully collected 'as ejected' to shorten the history of the freshly removed material. Using high-resolution electron microscopy as well as electron-energy-loss spectroscopy, the structure of the material is revealed and analysed in terms of density, percentage of sp 2 hybridized carbon, and oxygen content. Debris from polishing in the so-called hard and soft directions were involved in this investigation. Overall the structure of all (...) debris is amorphous carbon. The material appears to be composed of small clusters, some nanometres in diameter, in which the graphite basal planes can be recognized. Very few and very small nanometre-sized diamond particles were found in the debris from polishing in the hard direction. The results support a polishing mechanism based on a mechanically induced transformation of diamond to graphite, after which material removal easily occurs. The well-known anisotropy observed in polishing can be explained satisfactorily on the basis of this model. Finally, in appendices, the art of polishing and the role of the black powder during preparation of the scaife are discussed. (shrink)

The concepts of habitus and capital are crucial in the research tradition of social and cultural reproduction. This article applies both terms to an analysis of aspects of the life histories of low-income African American men. In exploring how their past experiences relate to their present-day statuses as nonmobile individuals, this article also revisits and redefines the utility of habitus and capital as conceptual devices for the study of social inequality. It expands the empirical terrain covered by the concept (...) of capital to include that which allows low-income individuals to manage their existence in socioeconomically disadvantaged communities while also hindering their mobility in the broader social world. One implication of this approach is an improved cultural analysis of low-income individuals. The improvement lies in that their behavior can be better understood as reflections of their readings of social reality, which are based upon the material and ideational resources that they have accumulated throughout their lives, and not simply as manifestations of flawed value-systems or normative orientations. (shrink)

At the beginning of the pandemic, many music ensembles had to stop their activities due to the confinement. While some found creative ways to start making music again with the help of technologies, the transition from “real” rehearsals to “online” rehearsals was challenging, especially among older amateur musicians. The aim of this case study was to examine the effects of this transition on three community band conductors and three older amateur musicians. Specific objectives were to explore intergenerational relationships to support (...) online group music-making; digital literacy and access in later life; and online music-making in a COVID-19 context. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and theoretical thematic analysis was undertaken. Results were analyzed from the conductors’ and older musicians’ perspectives, and common trends were combined to facilitate interpretation. The first theme showed that being part of an intergenerational ensemble contributed positively to the learning experience online. The second theme demonstrated that because both conductors and musicians were new to the online rehearsals, it contributed to attenuate the age-related digital divide that may have been observed in other studies. Regarding access in later-life, older musicians reported benefits associated with rehearsing online, specifically in terms of distance/commute, time, energy, and cost. However, for those who did not already have internet and electronic devices, the cost of acquiring all the necessary equipment to make music online could have been too high. Finally, the third theme revealed that musicians appreciated the opportunity to make music online and indicated that it was definitely better than having nothing, especially for its social aspects. In conclusion, while participants noted several challenges associated with online music-making, they were also appreciative of the opportunity to continue making music at a time when in-person rehearsals were not possible. Pedagogical implications are discussed, specifically the importance of the support network, of meeting people where they are, of learning to adapt, and of collaborative teaching. (shrink)

In this volume we situate the future directions of feminist phenomenology in the here and now. We contend that in this moment feminist phenomenology is well positioned to take a leading role, not simply in terms of consolidating existing feminist methodologies but also in engaging the difficult task of thinking through the actual in the fullness of its relational, agential, ontological, experiential, and fleshly being, thereby opening up future possibilities. We also think there is some urgency to this claim. For (...) many, faith in the rational human subject has been shattered by the events of twentieth and twenty-first centuries’ worldwide conflicts and increasing sectarianism. The concept of the subject as such is either obsolete or needs to be dynamically rethought. The current options appear to include resuscitating the rational liberal subject or agent, acknowledging limited agency in the performativity of language and gesture, or recognizing the agency of matter. We want to argue instead for a feminist phenomenological approach that begins with multiple, meaningful points of view on relational being. (shrink)

In order to open new possibilities for bioethics, I argue that we need to rethink our concept of nature. The established cognitive framework determines in advance how new technologies will become visible. Indeed, in this dualistic approach of metaphysics, nature is posited as limitless, as material endowed with force which causes us to lose the sense of nature as arising out of itself, of having limits, an end. In contrast, drawing upon the example of the gender assignment and construction of (...) intersexed infants, I want to suggest for bioethics an understanding of nature that arises not from our scientific explorations, but rather from attending to our situated perceptual encounters with the world which underlie such experimentation; these encounters are too easily overlooked, and yet they are crucial for opening up new ways of thinking. (shrink)

Ultrasonic excitation has been widely used in the detection of microcracks on metal surfaces, but there are problems such as poor excitation effect of ultrasonic pulse, long time to reach the best excitation, and difficult to find microcracks. In this paper, an adaptive ultrasonic pulse excitation device and infrared thermal imaging technology have been combined, as well as their control method, to solve the problem. The adaptive ultrasonic pulse excitation device adds intelligent modules to realize automatic adjustment of detection parameters, (...) which can quickly obtain reliable excitation; the multidegree-of-freedom base realizes the three-dimensional direction change of the ultrasonic gun to adapt to different excitation occasions. When the appropriate ultrasonic excitation makes microcracks in the resonance state, the microcracks can be frictionated, which produce heat rise with the temperature. Then, the microcrack defect can be detected by the infrared thermal instrument through the different surface temperatures with imaging recognition method. Our detection experiments of the titanium alloy plates and the aluminum alloy profiles of marine engineering show that the method can get reliable detection parameters in a short time and measure the crack length effectively. It can be used in many aspects such as crack detection in mechanical structures or complex equipment operating conditions and industrial production processes. (shrink)

I explore the possibility that the feminine, like art, can be thought in terms of Jean-Luc Nancy’s concept of the singular plural. In Les Muses, Nancy claims that art provides for the rethinking of a technë not ruled by instrumentality. Specifically, in rethinking aesthetics in terms of the debates laid out by Kant, Hegel and Heidegger, he resituates the ontological in terms of the specificity of the techniques of each particular artwork; each artwork establishes relations particular to its world or (...) worlds. What is at stake in the singular plural is the multiplicity of relations that are lost in the unifying gestures that arise out of radical oppositions. I rethink the singular plural through a phenomenological encounter with Barb Hunt’s artwork, Antipersonnel, a collection of hand-knitted replicas of antipersonnel landmines. (shrink)

As people age their actions often become entrenched—we might say they are not open to the new; they are less able to adapt; they are stuck in a rut. Indeed, in The Coming of Age (La Vieillesse) Simone de Beauvoir writes that to be old is to be condemned neither to freedom nor to meaning, but rather to boredom (Beauvoir 1996, 461; 486). While in many ways a very pessimistic account of ageing, the text does provide promising moments where (...) her descriptions do capture other possibilities for aged existence. In particular, I turn to Beauvoir’s suggestion that habit can take on a “kind of poetry” since it merges past, present and future in a sense of eternity that the present moment now lacks with its limited futural horizon (468; 492). In this paper, I draw out, delineate, and further explore this phenomenological reconfiguration of the present that she gestures towards through a consideration of the intensification and modification of the present through habit. Drawing as well upon Merleau-Ponty’s insights into the phenomenal body, I argue that poetical habit is an active passivity that allows for the spontaneity of the new out of the sedimentation of corporeal memory, and for the attentive perception of what appears in the present. To disrupt someone’s habitual life is to unanchor that life from the world, from an identity shaped by repetition, by the constancy of a shared reality of things, that is, from the spatial-temporal process of inhabitation, and thus from her ability to engage with others and to disclose the world. (shrink)

This article arises indirectly out of the development of a particular approach, called ATT-Meta, to the understanding of some types of metaphorical utterance. However, the specifics of the approach are not the focus of the present article, which concentrates on some general issues that have informed, or arisen from, the development of the approach. The article connects those issues to the questions of metaphorical meaning and truth. -/- A large part of the exploration of metaphor in fields such (...) as Cognitive Linguistics and natural language Pragmatics takes metaphor to rest on complex mappings between a target subject matter and a source subject matter (see, e.g., Lakoff 1993, 2008). This is one main way in which some aspects of the source, generally including some structural aspects, can have parallels in the target. It is typical for much, and perhaps the whole, of the meaning of a metaphorical expression to be explained by means of these parallels. We will talk about “parallelism” rather than “isomorphism,” or even “analogy,” because “isomorphism” implies a strict one-to-one correspondence between items in the source scenario and items in the target scenario, and analogy theorists often hold that analogy rests on isomorphism. We wish not to prejudge the question of whether looser, messier forms of parallelism are sometimes needed. Also, we will talk about parallels rather than mappings, because our discussion will embrace the question of parallelism that may be discernible, albeit implicitly, in accounts of metaphor that are not presented as being based on mappings. Three main cases of such accounts are Relevance Theory (RT: e.g., Sperber & Wilson 2008, Wilson & Carston 2006), the categorization-based or "class-inclusion“ approach (Glucksberg 2008), and Ritchie’s (2006) CLST account (Context-Limited Simulation Theory). -/- One main issue we will address is that of substantial non-parallelism that can exist between source and target subject-matters in metaphor: more precisely, the issue that there may be source aspects that are exploited by the utterance and have a deep effect on metaphorical interpretation but that do not themselves have a natural parallel in the target subject-matter (although we will point out that artificial parallels can generally be created). This is part of a broader point that the content of metaphorical discourse should often be seen as being derived in a rather holistic way from several metaphorical bits of the discourse, which conspire to describe some source-domain scenario, rather than being derived by putting together metaphorical meanings of each metaphorical bit (even if each bit could in principle be assigned its own separate metaphorical meaning). As a result, we suggest that it is misguided to think of the propositions making up the content (or, if you like, "meaning“) about the target scenario that is being described is a matter of metaphorical meaning of specific grammatical units such as sentences, clauses or other constituents that a traditional semantic theory would assign propositional meaning to. Rather, grammatical units (that are to be taken metaphorically) have meanings in source-domain terms; content in target-domain terms is derived from the source-domain scenario depicted by those units and fleshed out through inference; and the target-domain content is only (in general) fuzzily relatable to particular grammatical units. This view is on a spectrum at whose extreme point we could place Davidson’s (1984) view that metaphors only have literal (i.e., source-domain) meanings, with other effects on the understander not being a matter of propositional content. However, on our view it is proper to take metaphorical discourse as having non-literal meaning, couched as a collection of propositions, among other things possibly; it is just that the propositions are not to be thought of (in general) as meaning of specific sentences, clauses or other grammatical units rather than of a possibly only fuzzily delineated piece of discourse. -/- A second main concern of the article is the question of how much, and what types of, inference are involved in the derivation of metaphorical meaning. While our own ATT-Meta approach accords with, amongst other accounts, Relevance Theory (RT) as to the centrality of inference in metaphor interpretation, we disagree with RT on its claim that metaphor interpretation is a matter of (a relatively high degree of) concept "broadening“ and (often) "narrowing“. We argue that almost all inference can in fact be theoretically re-described as concept broadening and/or narrowing, and what is left over should be included in the metaphor interpretation process anyway. Thus, the RT claim about broadening and narrowing really just says that inference, of unrestricted type, is involved in metaphor understanding, in accord with what ATT-Meta claims. (shrink)

Distinguished feminist philosophers consider the future of feminist phenomenology and chart its political and ethical future in this forward-looking volume. Engaging with themes such as the historical trajectory of feminist phenomenology, ways of perceiving and making sense of the contemporary world, and the feminist body in health and ethics, these essays affirm the base of the discipline as well as open new theoretical spaces for work that bridges bioethics, social identity, physical ability, and the very nature and boundaries of (...) the female body. Entanglements with thinkers such as Arendt, Beauvoir, Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger and Deleuze are evident as they reveal new directions for productive philosophical work. Grounded in the richness of the feminist philosophical tradition, this lively volume represents a significant opening to the possible futures of feminist phenomenological research. (shrink)

Traditionally, plant viruses are viewed as harmful, undesirable pathogens. However, their genomes can provide several useful ‘designer functions’ or ‘sequence modules’ with which to tailor future gene vectors for plant or general biotechnology.The majority (77 %) of known plant viruses have single‐stranded RNA of the messenger (protein coding) sense as their genetic material. Over the past 4 years, improved in vitro transcription systems and the construction of partial of fulllength DNA copies of several plant RNA viruses have enhanced our (...) ability to manipulate and study their genomes, particularly in the context of their pathogenic interactions with host plants.Recently, two forms of genetically engineered protection against plant virus infections have been reported. In both, a virus‐related ‘interfering’ molecule was stably introduced into plants via the DNA‐transfer mechanism of Agro‐bacterium tumefaciens. To date, the choice of ‘interfering’ molecule has been guided by empirical field‐observations and each is effective against only a narrow range of closely‐related viruses. As yet, we do not fully understand the molecular mechanism(s) responsible for the observed protection.The ability to manipulate the plant–pathogen relationship is a powerful tool to increase our knowledge and improve future strategies for uncoventional cropprotection by genetic engineering techniques. (shrink)

Parallel to the public discussion on the benefits and risks of nanotechnology, a debate on the ethics of nanotechnology has begun. It has been postulated that a new “nano-ethics” is necessary. In this debate, the — positive as well as negative — visionary and speculative innovations which are brought into connection with nanotechnology stand in the foreground. In this contribution, an attempt is made to discover new ethical aspects of nanotechnology in a more systematic manner than (...) has been the case. It turns out that there are hardly any completely new ethical aspects raised by nanotechnology. It is much rather primarily a case of gradual shifts of emphasis and of relevance in questions which, in principle, are already known and which give reason for ethical discussions on nanotechnology. In a certain manner, structurally novel ethical aspects arise through the important role played by visions in the public discourse. New questions are also posed by the fact that previously separate lines of ethical reflection converge in the field of nanotechnology. The proposal of an independent “nano-ethics”, however, seems exaggerated. (shrink)

Types are fundamental for conceptual modeling and knowledge representation, being an essential construct in all major modeling languages in these fields. Despite that, from an ontological and cognitive point of view, there has been a lack of theoretical support for precisely defining a consensual view on types. As a consequence, there has been a lack of precise methodological support for users when choosing the best way to model general terms representing types that appear in a domain, and for (...) building sound taxonomic structures involving them. For over a decade now, a community of researchers has contributed to the development of the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO) - aimed at providing foundations for all major conceptual modeling constructs. At the core of this enterprise, there has been a theory of types specially designed to address these issues. This theory is ontologically well- founded, psychologically informed, and formally characterized. These results have led to the development of a Conceptual Modelling language dubbed OntoUML, reflecting the ontological micro-theories comprising UFO. Over the years, UFO and OntoUML have been successfully employed on conceptual model design in a variety of domains including academic, industrial, and governmental settings. These experiences exposed improvement opportunities for both the OntoUML language and its underlying theory, UFO. In this paper, we revise the theory of types in UFO in response to empirical evidence. The new version of this theory shows that many of OntoUML’s meta-types (e.g. kind, role, phase, mixin) should be considered not as restricted to substantial types but instead should be applied to model endurant types in general, including relator types, quality types, and mode types. We also contribute with a formal characterization of this fragment of the theory, which is then used to advance a new metamodel for OntoUML (termed OntoUML 2). To demonstrate that the benefits of this approach are extended beyond OntoUML, the proposed formal theory is then employed to support the definition of UFO-based lightweight Semantic Web ontologies with ontological constraint checking in OWL. Additionally, we report on empirical evidence from the literature, mainly from cognitive psychology but also from linguistics, supporting some of the key claims made by this theory. Finally, we propose a computational support for this updated metamodel. (shrink)

Doctoral programs at U.S. universities play a critical role in the development of human resources both in the United States and abroad. This volume reports the results of an extensive study of U.S. research-doctorate programs in five broad fields: physical sciences and mathematics, engineering, social and behavioral sciences, biological sciences, and the humanities. Research-Doctorate Programs in the United States documents changes that have taken place in the size, structure, and quality of doctoral education since the widely used 1982 (...) editions. This update provides selected information on nearly 4,000 doctoral programs in 41 subdisciplines at 274 doctorate-granting institutions. This volume also reports the results of the National Survey of Graduate Faculty, which polled a sample of faculty for their views on the scholarly quality of program faculty and the effectiveness of doctoral programs in preparing research scholars/scientists. This much-anticipated update of such an essential reference will be useful to education administrators, university faculty, and students seeking authoritative information on doctoral programs. (shrink)

Responsible Research and Innovation provides a framework for judging the ethical qualities of innovation processes, however guidance for researchers on how to implement such practices is limited. Exploring RRI in the context of nanotechnology, this paper examines how the dispersed and interdisciplinary nature of the nanotechnology field somewhat hampers the abilities of individual researchers to control the innovation process. The ad-hoc nature of the field of nanotechnology, with its fluid boundaries and elusive membership, has thus far failed (...) to establish a strong collective agent, such as a professional organization, through which researchers could collectively steer technological development in light of social and environmental needs. In this case, individual researchers cannot innovate responsibly purely by themselves, but there is also no structural framework to ensure that responsible development of nanotechnologies takes place. We argue that, in such a case, individual researchers have a duty to collectivize. In short, researchers in situations where it is challenging for individual agents to achieve the goals of RRI are compelled to develop organizations to facilitate RRI. In this paper we establish and discuss the criteria under which individual researchers have this duty to collectivize. (shrink)

The integration of information resources in the life sciences is one of the most challenging problems facing bioinformatics today. We describe how Language and Computing nv, originally a developer of ontology-based natural language understanding systems for the healthcare domain, is developing a framework for the integration of structured data with unstructured information contained in natural language texts. L&C’s LinkSuite™ combines the flexibility of a modular software architecture with an ontology based on rigorous philosophical and logical principles that is designed to (...) comprehend the basic formal relationships that structure both reality and the ways humans perceive and communicate about reality. (shrink)

The central hypothesis of the collaboration between Language and Computing (L&C) and the Institute for Formal Ontology and Medical Information Science (IFOMIS) is that the methodology and conceptual rigor of a philosophically inspired formal ontology greatly benefits application ontologies.[1] To this end LinKBase®, L&C’s ontology, which is designed to integrate and reason across various external databases simultaneously, has been submitted to the conceptual demands of IFOMIS’s Basic Formal Ontology (BFO).[2] With this project we aim to move beyond the level of (...) controlled vocabularies to yield an ontology with the ability to support reasoning applications. Our general procedure has been the implementation of a meta-ontological definition space in which the definitions of all the concepts and relations in LinKBase® are standardized in a framework of first-order logic. In this paper we describe how this standardization has already led to an improvement in the LinKBase® structure that allows for a greater degree of internal coherence than ever before possible. We then show the use of this philosophical standardization for the purpose of mapping external databases to one another, using LinKBase® as translation hub, with a greater degree of success than possible hitherto. We demonstrate how this offers a genuine advance over other application ontologies that have not submitted themselves to the demands of philosophical scrutiny. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to justify the belief that there are biological normative mechanisms that fulfill non-trivial causal roles in the explanations (as formulated by researchers) of actions and behaviors present in specific systems. One example of such mechanisms is the predictive mechanisms described and explained by predictive processing (hereinafter PP), which (1) guide actions and (2) shape causal transitions between states that have specific content and fulfillment conditions (e.g. mental states). Therefore, I am guided by a specific (...) theoretical goal associated with the need to indicate those conditions that should be met by the non-trivial theory of normative mechanisms and the specific models proposed by PP supporters. In this work, I use classical philosophical methods, such as conceptual analysis and critical reflection. I also analyze selected studies in the field of cognitive science, cognitive psychology, neurology, information theory and biology in terms of the methodology, argumentation and language used, in accordance with their theoretical importance for the issues discussed in this study. In this sense, the research presented here is interdisciplinary. My research framework is informed by the mechanistic model of explanation, which defines the necessary and sufficient conditions for explaining a given phenomenon. The research methods I chose are therefore related to the problems that I intend to solve. In the introductory chapter, “The concept of predictive processing”, I discuss the nature of PP as well as its main assumptions and theses. I also highlight the key concepts and distinctions for this research framework. Many authors argue that PP is a contemporary version of Kantianism and is exposed to objections similar to those made against the approach of Immanuel Kant. I discuss this thesis and show that it is only in a very general sense that the PP framework is neo-Kantian. Here we are not dealing with transcendental deduction nor with the application of transcendental arguments. I argue that PP is based on reverse engineering and abduction inferences. In the second part of this chapter, I respond to the objection formulated by Dan Zahavi, who directly accuses this research framework of anti-realistic consequences. I demonstrate that the position of internalism, present in the so-called conservative PP, does not imply anti-realism, and that, due to the explanatory role played in it by structural representations directed at real patterns, it is justified to claim that PP is realistic. In this way, I show that PP is a non-trivial research framework, having its subject, specific methods and its own epistemic status. Finally, I discuss positions classified as the socalled radical PP. In the chapter “Predictive processing as a Bayesian explanatory model” I justify the thesis according to which PP offers Bayesian modeling. Many researchers claim that the brain is an implemented statistical probabilistic network that is an approximation of the Bayesian 7 rule. In practice, this means that all cognitive processes are to apply Bayes' rule and can be described in terms of probability distributions. Such a solution arouses objections among many researchers and is the subject of wide criticism. The purpose of this chapter is to justify the thesis that Bayesian PP is a non-trivial research framework. For this purpose, I argue that it explains certain phenomena not only at the computational level described by David Marr, but also at the level of algorithms and implementation. Later in this chapter I demonstrate that PP is normative modeling. Proponents of the use of Bayesian models in psychology or decision theory argue that they are normative because they allow the formulation of formal rules of action that show what needs to be done to make a given action optimal. Critics of this approach emphasize that such thinking about the normativity of Bayesian modeling is unjustified and that science should shift from prescriptive to descriptive positions. In a polemic with Shira Elqayam and Jonathan Evans (2011), I show that the division they propose into prescriptivism and Bayesian descriptivism is apparent, because, as I argue, there are two forms of prescriptivism, i.e. the weak and the strong. I argue that the weak version is epistemic and can lead to anti-realism, while the strong version is ontic and allows one to justify realism in relation to Bayesian models. I argue that a weak version of prescriptivism is valid for PP. It allows us to adopt anti-realism in relation to PP. In practice, this means that you can explain phenomena using Bayes' rule. This does not, however, imply that they are Bayesian in nature. However, the full justification of realism in relation to the Bayesian PP presupposes the adoption of strong prescriptivism. This position assumes that phenomena are explained by Bayesian rule because they are Bayesian as such. If they are Bayesian in nature, then they should be explained using Bayesian modeling. This thesis will be substantiated in the chapters “Normative functions and mechanisms in the context of predictive processing” and “Normative mechanisms and actions in predictive processing”. In the chapter “The Free Energy Principle in predictive processing”, I discuss the Free Energy Principle (hereinafter FEP) formulated by Karl Friston and some of its implications. According to this principle, all biological systems (defined in terms of Markov blankets) minimize the free energy of their internal states in order to maintain homeostasis. Some researchers believe that PP is a special case of applying this principle to cognition, and that predictive mechanisms are homeostatic mechanisms that minimize free energy. The discussion of FEP is important due to the fact that some authors consider it to be important for explanatory purposes and normative. If this is the case, then FEP turns out to be crucial in explaining normative predictive mechanisms and, in general, any normative biological mechanisms. To define the explanatory possibilities of this principle, I refer to the discussion of its supporters on the issue they define as the problem of continuity and discontinuity between life and mind. A critical analysis of this discussion and the additional arguments I have formulated have allowed me to revise the explanatory ambitions of FEP. I also reject the belief that this principle is necessary to explain the nature of predictive mechanisms. I argue that the principle formulated and defended by Friston is an important research heuristic for PP analysis. 8 In the chapter “Normative functions and mechanisms in predictive processing”, I start my analyzes by formulating an answer to the question about the normative nature of homeostatic mechanisms. I demonstrate that predictive mechanisms are not homeostatic. I defend the view that a full explanation of normative mechanisms presupposes an explanation of normative functions. I discuss the most important proposals for understanding the normativity of a function, both from a systemic and teleosemantic perspective. I conclude that the non-trivial concept of a function must meet two requirements which I define as explanatory and normative. I show that none of the theories I have invoked satisfactorily meets both of these requirements. Instead, I propose a model of normativity based on Bickhard's account, but supplemented by a mechanistic perspective. I argue that a function is normative when: (1) it allows one to explain the dysfunction of a given mechanism; (2) it contributes to the maintenance of the organism's stability by shaping and limiting possible relations, processes and behaviors of a given system; and when (3) (according to the representational and predictive functions) it enables explaining the attribution of logical values of certain representations / predictions. In such an approach, a mechanism is normative when it performs certain normative functions and when it is constitutive for a specific action or behavior, despite the fact that for some reason it cannot realize it either currently or in the long-term. Such an understanding of the normativity of mechanisms presupposes the acceptance of the epistemic hypothesis. I argue that this hypothesis is not cognitively satisfactory, and therefore the ontic hypothesis should be justified, which is directly related to adopting the position of ontic prescriptivism. For this reason, referring to the mechanistic theory of scientific explanations, I formulate an ontical interpretation of the concept of a normative mechanism. According to this approach, a mechanism or a function is normative when they perform such and such causal roles in explaining certain actions and behaviors. With regard to the normative properties of predictive mechanisms and functions, this means that they are the causes of specific actions an organism carries out in the environment. In this way, I justify the necessity of accepting the ontic hypothesis and rejecting the epistemic hypothesis. The fifth chapter, “Normative mechanisms and actions in predictive processing”, is devoted to the dark room problem and the related exploration-exploitation trade-off. A dark room is the state that an agent could be in if it minimized the sum of all potential prediction errors. I demonstrate that, in accordance with the basic assumption of PP about the need for continuous and long-term minimization of prediction errors, such a state should be desirable for the agent. Is it really so? Many authors believe it is not. I argue that the test of the value of PP is the possibility of a non-trivial solution of this problem, which can be reduced to the choice between active and uncertainty-increasing exploration and safe and easily predictable exploitation. I show that the solution proposed by PP supporters present in the literature does not enable a fully satisfactory explanation of this dilemma. Then I defend the position according to which the full explanation of the normative mechanisms, and, subsequently, the solution to the dilemma of exploration and exploitation, involves reference to the existence of constraints present in the environment. The constraints 9 include elements of the environment that make a given mechanism not only causal but also normative. They are therefore key to explaining the predictive mechanisms. They do not only play the role of the context in which the mechanism is implemented, but, above all, are its constitutive component. I argue that the full explanation of the role of constraints in normative predictive mechanisms presupposes the integration of individual models of specific cognitive phenomena, because only the mechanistic integration of PP with other models allows for a non-trivial explanation of the nature of normative predictive mechanisms that would have a strong explanatory value. The explanatory monism present in many approaches to PP makes it impossible to solve the problem of the dark room. Later in this chapter, I argue that the Bayesian PP is normative not because it enables the formulation of such and such rules of action, but because the predictive mechanisms themselves are normative. They are normative because they condition the choice of such and such actions by agents. In this way, I justify the hypothesis that normative mechanisms make it possible to explain the phenomenon of agent motivation, which is crucial for solving the dark room problem. In the last part of the chapter, I formulate the hypothesis of distributed normativity, which assumes that the normative nature of certain mechanisms, functions or objects is determined by the relations into which these mechanisms, functions or objects enter. This means that what is normative (in the primary sense) is the relational structure that constitutes the normativity of specific items included in it. I suggest that this hypothesis opens up many areas of research and makes it possible to rethink many problems. In the “Conclusion”, I summarize the results of my research and indicate further research perspectives. (shrink)

Dependence in nanotechnology on external funding and academic-industry relationships has led to questions concerning its influence on research directions, as well as the potential for conflicts of interest to arise and impact scientific integrity and public trust. This study uses a survey of 193 nanotechnology industry and academic researchers to explore whether they share similar concerns. Although these concerns are not unique to nanotechnology, its emerging nature and the prominence of industry funding lend credence to understanding its (...) researchers’ views, as these researchers are shaping the norms and direction of the field. The results of the survey show general agreement that funding sources are influencing research directions in nanotechnology; many respondents saw this influence in their own work as well as other researchers’ work. Respondents also agreed that funding considerations were likely to influence whether researchers shared their results. Irrespective of their institutional affiliation or funding status, twice as many researchers as not considered financial conflicts of interest a cause for concern, and three times as many respondents as not disagreed financial conflicts of interest in nanotechnology were uncommon. Only a third was satisfied with the way that conflicts of interest are currently managed and believed current procedures would protect the integrity of nanotechnology research. The results also found differences in views depending on researchers’ institutional affiliation and funding status. (shrink)

This book represents an attempt to combine humanistic concern and pedagogic relevance in a systematic introductory textbook. A brief but enthusiastic introduction by Steve Allen asserts the importance of philosophic problems and Katen’s success at popularizing them in an entertaining fashion. The text itself is divided into three parts, dealing with the life, work, and persecution and death of the philosopher. Part I consists of a single short chapter which grants the poor public image of philosophers, but argues that philosophizing (...) is still an important activity. Part II is composed of three major chapters on the basic fields of epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics—logic and aesthetics are judged inappropriate for treatment here—plus two short chapters, "A Little Reflection on Some Big Questions", and "The Role of Philosophy in the Space Age". Part III offers a brief final chapter on "Philosophy, Human Freedom, and Tragedy" stressing philosophy as a way of life and the claim that no harm comes to good men since the good they do lives on even after their deaths. A few pictures and diagrams illustrate the text and each chapter concludes with a summary of points covered. There is a glossary of terms and an index, but no bibliography or list of suggested readings. The central discussion of major issues and viewpoints is quite traditional and generally competent. Relevance is sought mainly in the introductory sections and through such devices as catchy titles, contemporary idiom and references, puns, and double entendre. Lacking spontaneity, much of this appears forced, artificial, and dated, both chronologically and in its perceptions.—C.A.C. (shrink)

The paper analysis the strategies and concepts developed in the world in modern directions: innova- tive economy, digital economy, artificial intelligence, Industry 4.0 and others. The problem is to determine the initial fundamental parameters of order and their prospects in the global world, the definition and principles of artificial intel- ligence systems, its structure and important aspects and principles of future science and technology in analysis and synthesis based on synergetic approaches, innovative, information, converged technologies, taking into account the design (...) of future and viable and safe and sustainable development in the context of Industry 4.0, digital economy and Society 5.0. The general scheme of the integrated model of sustainable and socio-humanitarian development in the global system is proposed, which the authors call the noosphere model of sustainable and safe development as an important fundamental platform for the design and creation of AIS. In the XXI century education, science and innova- tive technologies becomes the «basis» of the spiritual and material reproduction of man, transforming the society of the XXI century into an educational society, ensures compliance with the law of advanced development of human quality, quality of social intelligence and quality of educational systems in society. noosphere evolution. Industry 4.0 is the next stage in the digitalization of production technologies with the accelerated introduction of new developments and cyberphysical systems, which is changing business models. Accordingly, Industry 4.0 as a separate segment of digital manufacturing technologies takes its place among other digital sectors. The analysis of the Strategies and Concepts developed in the world in modern directions: innovative economy, digital economy, artificial intelli- gence, Industry 4.0 and others is carried out in the work. The problem is to determine the initial fundamental para- meters of order and their prospects in the global world, the definition and principles of artificial intelligence systems, its structure and important aspects and principles of future science and technology in analysis and synthesis ba- sed on synergetic approaches, innovative, information, converged technologies, taking into account the design of future and viable and safe and sustainable development in the context of Industry 4.0, DE and Society 5.0. The main scientific and technological factors in the 21st century will be the development of: Artificial Intelligence, Nano Technologies, Bio-Media Technologies, Cognitive Technologies and Socio-Humanitarian Technologies. More specifically – this is the modern development of Innovative Technologies: «NBIC SH». Therefore, it is necessary to note the importance of taking into account the principle of I2K2+SH, ie: Intellectualization, Integration, Convergence, Coevolution and Socio- humanitarian technologies. It is important and necessary to take into account modern principles of designing a su- stainable and secure AIS and solving the problem of Harmonization between 2 worlds: Real and Virtual, especially in their hybridization. Our immediate future is a hybrid nonlinear world. Note that digitalization, artificial intelligence and robotics will be the main drivers of global economic growth by 2030E. An important paradigm and platform is the Integrated System: for Industry 4.0, DE and AI, taking into account the complex principle of I2K2+SH. If the transition of the Ukrainian economy to an innovative one does not take place in the next 3-5 years, Ukraine will remain in the backyard of civilization. (shrink)

It may soon become possible not just to replace, but to re-grow healthy tissues after injury or disease, because of innovations in the field of Regenerative Medicine. One particularly promising innovation is a regenerative valve implant to treat people with heart valve disease. These implants are fabricated from so-called ‘smart’, ‘lifelike’ materials. Implanted inside a heart, these implants stimulate re-growth of a healthy, living heart valve. While the technological development advances, the ethical implications of this new technology are still unclear (...) and a clear conceptual understanding of the notions ‘smart' and ‘lifelike' is currently lacking. In this paper, we explore the conceptual and ethical implications of the development of smart lifelike materials for the design of regenerative implants, by analysing heart valve implants as a showcase. In our conceptual analysis, we show that the materials are considered ‘smart’ because they can communicate with human tissues, and ‘lifelike’ because they are structurally similar to these tissues. This shows that regenerative valve implants become intimately integrated in the living tissues of the human body. As such, they manifest the ontological entanglement of body and technology. In our ethical analysis, we argue this is ethically significant in at least two ways: It exacerbates the irreversibility of the implantation procedure, and it might affect the embodied experience of the implant recipient. With our conceptual and ethical analysis, we aim to contribute to responsible development of smart lifelike materials and regenerative implants. (shrink)

Applications of learning to autonomous agents (simulated or real) have often been restricted to learning a mapping from perceived state of the world to the next action to take. Often this is couched in terms of learning from no previous knowledge. This general case for real autonomous robots is very difficult. In any case, when building a real robot there is usually a lot of a priori knowledge (e.g., from the engineering that went into its design) which (...) doesn’t need to be learned. We describe the behavior-based approach to autonomous robots, and then examine four classes of learning problems associated with such robots. (shrink)

For his contribution to the general series of Harper Essays in Philosophy, Hilary Putnam selects only one of several philosophical problems in the interrelated fields of logic and/or mathematics that have interested him, viz. the nominalism-realism issue: Are the "abstract entities" spoken of in these sciences, such as classes, number, functions from various kinds of things to real numbers, things that "really exist" or not? He is concerned to present a detailed argument for his own "qualified realism" rather (...) than a survey of current opinions. He argues persuasively that while a nominalist would like to eliminate all talk of logical classes such as S, M and P in favor of such circumlocutions as "The following schema turns out to be true no matter what words or phrases of the appropriate kind one may substitute for the letters S, M and P," etc., such descriptions avoid references to classes only by replacing them with equally nonphysical entities such as "all possible words, strings of letters, formalized languages," etc., and that the notion of truth or validity itself cannot be applied to physical objects or material inscriptions, but to what sentences mean or say, and the things they say are not physical. He rejects Quine's distinction that first order statements or arguments such as "All crows are black; all back things absorb light, therefore," etc., are logical truths, whereas "For all classes S, M and P, if all S is M and all M is P, then all S is P," are mathematical. This runs counter, he says, to the whole logical tradition. The natural intention of the logician in setting down first-order schemata is to assert implicitly their validity and that itself is a second-order assertion. All logic, therefore, including quantification theory, involves references to classes. This also highlights the difficulty of distinguishing between logic and mathematics in terms of first and second order logic, for if only the former is stipulated to be the proper domain of logic, then we must accept the awkward consequence that validity and implication turn out to be notions that belong to mathematics rather than logic. Since the nominalistic position presents the same problems for mathematics as for logic, Putnam sees no point in trying to draw any sharp distinction between the two, which explains his initial broad interpretation of logic as including all of pure mathematics and also the title of the book. To avoid some of the classical objections to a realistic interpretation of sets, he points up the distinction between a predicative and impredicative conception of set. Whereas the latter speaks of all sets of individuals as a well-defined totality, the former defines "set" only for a particular language N or a hierarchic series of languages, N, N', N", etc. in which it is still nonsensical to speak of "all sets" without qualification, though one can speak of "all" up to any given level in the series. While some form of set theory is necessary for all the sciences, both formal and physical, one can get along with predicative set theory. Putnam's basic argument for realism then comes down to this. Quantification over mathematical entities such as things, real numbers and functions is indispensable for logic, mathematics and the physical sciences and this commits one to accept the existence of such entities. In the final stages of the argument he examines and rejects the alternative options to realism, namely that realistic locutions about such entities represent logically deviant forms of speech, or that mathematical truths are "true by pure convention" or that such "entities" are useful fictions. In the closing paragraphs he indicates two other philosophical problems in logic that merit extensive discussion, namely the problem of equivalent constructions which is relevant to the question of whether mathematics needs "foundations" and the problem of whether we may not have to revise logical principles as we have geometrical ones on the grounds that in some sense logic may have empirical foundations.--A. B. W. (shrink)

A surge in post-publication activity related to editing, including by technical editors and copyeditors, is worthy of some discussion. One of these issues involves the issue of 'tortured phrases', which are bizarre terms and phrases in academic papers that replace standard English expressions or jargon. This phenomenon may reveal an attempt to avoid the detection of textual similarity or to masquerade plagiarism, and yet remain undetected by editors, peer reviewers and text editors. Potentially thousands of cases have already been discovered (...) and reported publicly on the post-publication platform PubPeer. In this opinion paper, 35 cases from ranked scholarly journals are presented, mainly the fields of materials, computer and engineering sciences. This collation serves to expand discussion about this integrity-related phenomenon and to increase educational awareness of the topic. (shrink)

A structure which generalizes formulas by including substitution terms is used to represent proofs in classical logic. These structures, called expansion trees, can be most easily understood as describing a tautologous substitution instance of a theorem. They also provide a computationally useful representation of classical proofs as first-class values. As values they are compact and can easily be manipulated and transformed. For example, we present an explicit transformations between expansion tree proofs and cut-free sequential proofs. A theorem prover which (...) represents proofs using expansion trees can use this transformation to present its proofs in more human-readable form. Also a very simple computation on expansion trees can transform them into Craig-style linear reasoning and into interpolants when they exist. We have chosen a sublogic of the Simple Theory of Types for our classical logic because it elegantly represents substitutions at all finite types through the use of the typed -calculus. Since all the proof-theoretic results we shall study depend heavily on properties of substitutions, using this logic has allowed us to strengthen and extend prior results: we are able to prove a strengthen form of the firstorder interpolation theorem as well as provide a correct description of Skolem functions and the Herbrand Universe. The latter are not straightforward generalization of their first-order definitions. (shrink)

The title of this collection of studies alludes to the revolt against formalism in modern art, as opposed to the various kinds of formalized analysis to which art is today subjected, both by the critic and by the aesthetician. Although the names of the contributors—Alquié, Zolla, Brun, Dufrenne, Giorgi, Olivetti—are all remembered in connection with outstanding materials in this field, the contributions to this volume are unequal in value. Those of Dufrenne and Giorgi make the book required reading for anyone (...) attempting to go beyond the more heavy-handed formalism of much of the Aristotelian, Kantian and even pragmatist literature on aesthetics. Dufrenne's chapter deals with the a priori of the imagination, which for him is realistic, thanks to the affinity between the expressive power of the cosmic and the semantic core of the word. This affinity crystallizes in what he calls ontological qualities. Four of these latter qualities are studied, viz., elementariness or naturality, potency, depth and purity. Giorgi defends the thesis of the linguistic character of artistic expression. She is well aware of the ambiguity factor in symbols, but this is overcome by the relationality of the latter, a relationality that allows them to act as interpretants of objects in a representative role. In the study of the process of recognition of semantic value in artistic structures, Giorgi shows a resourceful command of suggestions from information theory, linguistics, visual arts and mythical thought. The flexibility acquired through these means of analysis justifies perhaps a critical attitude towards the more formalistic conceptions of metaphor and of artistic categories.—A. M. (shrink)

The naive theory of properties states that for every condition there is a property instantiated by exactly the things which satisfy that condition. The naive theory of properties is inconsistent in classical logic, but there are many ways to obtain consistent naive theories of properties in nonclassical logics. The naive theory of classes adds to the naive theory of properties an extensionality rule or axiom, which states roughly that if two classes have exactly the same members, they are identical. In (...) this paper we examine the prospects for obtaining a satisfactory naive theory of classes. We start from a result by Ross Brady, which demonstrates the consistency of something resembling a naive theory of classes. We generalize Brady’s result somewhat and extend it to a recent system developed by Andrew Bacon. All of the theories we prove consistent contain an extensionality rule or axiom. But we argue that given the background logics, the relevant extensionality principles are too weak. For example, in some of these theories, there are universal classes which are not declared coextensive. We elucidate some very modest demands on extensionality, designed to rule out this kind of pathology. But we close by proving that even these modest demands cannot be jointly satisfied. In light of this new impossibility result, the prospects for a naive theory of classes are bleak. (shrink)

The general aim of this project is to fundamentally re-think the design of teaching materials in view of what is now known about cognitive deficits and about what Howard Gardner has termed ‘multiple intelligences’. The applicant has implemented this strategy in two distinct areas, the first involving the writing of an English language programme for Chinese speakers, the second involving the construction of specialized equipment for teaching elementary logic to blind students. The next phase is to test the effectiveness (...) of the logic device, because in theory – the one to be tested – materials the design of which is informed by the above rationale will provide a richer learning experience for non-impaired users. (shrink)

In this Habilitationsschrift a comparison is drawn between the concept of truth in Husserl and in Heidegger in order to elucidate the problem of truth in our time. According to Tugendhat, truth in the nominalistic sense of neo-positivism and truth in the vague mysticism of Heidegger have moved so far apart that it is now impossible to speak of either of them in terms of the other. Furthermore they have both lost their guiding role in human life. Tugendhat is convinced (...) that the reason for this dissolution of truth is the absence of precisely that sense of critical responsibility which he finds so conspicuous in Husserl--and of which the sixth volume of his Logical Investigation is a good example. Though the emphasis on this investigation is fully justified, the promise of far-reaching analysis never materializes. The comparison of logical and linguistic terminology and doctrine is confined to a few side remarks, the most interesting of which are about C. I. Lewis. The treatment of Heidegger is based primarily on Being and Time, On the Essence of Ground, and On the Essence of Truth, with some negligible references to later writings. Heidegger's theory of language is very much neglected. Even the question of propositional truth, which the author is avowedly trying to keep in the foreground, receives keener exposition than commentary.--A. M. (shrink)

Nanomedicine is yielding new and improved treatments and diagnostics for a range of diseases and disorders. Nanomedicine applications incorporate materials and components with nanoscale dimensions where novel physiochemical properties emerge as a result of size-dependent phenomena and high surface-to-mass ratio. Nanotherapeutics and in vivo nanodiagnostics are a subset of nanomedicine products that enter the human body. These include drugs, biological products, implantable medical devices, and combination products that are designed to function in the body in ways unachievable at larger (...) scales. Nanotherapeutics andin vivonanodiagnostics incorporate materials that are engineered at the nanoscale to express novel properties that are medicinally useful. These nanomedicine applications can also contain nanomaterials that are biologically active, producing interactions that depend on biological triggers. Examples include nanoscale formulations of insoluble drugs to improve bioavailability and pharmacokinetics, drugs encapsulated in hollow nanoparticles with the ability to target and cross cellular and tissue membranes and to release their payload at a specific time or location, imaging agents that demonstrate novel optical properties to aid in locating micrometastases, and antimicrobial and drug-eluting components or coatings of implantable medical devices such as stents. (shrink)

Postphenomenology is not a critique of phenomenology, but a practical interpretive epistemology where technological artifacts and practices are studied. These new researchers can be called ‘R&D postphenomenologists’. Over the past 25 years, the expanding hermeneutics of postphenomenology has been undertaken by classical phenomenologists, cultural anthropologists, media/communications writers and performance artists. But these face Scharff’s challenge of ‘insufficient critical consideration’ and an entire world of artifice experienced through embodied mobile devices. In response there is a ‘weaving metaphor’ and performance art (...) with the intentional use of artifice/illusion to allow for multistability and ‘implicit idealism’ in a complex and unpredictable sensory world of ontological experiments and case studies. Allowing for multistable interpretations, variational theory, and the study of illusions, technoscience researchers and users of emerging technologies can develop heuristics for interpreting the world through devices, if programmers of these technologies make the hermeneutics accessible and visually interpretable. Both groups must expand the purview of the ‘readable technologies’ of Patrick Heelan, allowing for an expanding material hermeneutics of postphenomenology that is poised to become a praxis of perception for users of ubiquitous digital technologies and devices. (shrink)

A correspondence theory of truth explains truth in terms of various correspondence relations (e.G., Reference) between words and the extralinguistic world. What are the consequences of quine's doctrine of indeterminacy for correspondence theories? in "ontological relativity" quine implicitly claims that correspondence theories are impossible; that is what the doctrine of 'relative reference' amounts to. But quine's doctrine of relative reference is incoherent. Those who think the indeterminacy thesis valid should not try to relativize reference, They should abandon the relation and (...) replace it by certain more general correspondence relations between words and extralinguistic objects. Doing so will not interfere with the task of defining truth in terms of correspondence relations. (shrink)

Argumentation theory is a distinctly multidisciplinary field of inquiry. It draws its data, assumptions, and methods from disciplines as disparate as formal logic and discourse analysis, linguistics and forensic science, philosophy and psychology, political science and education, sociology and law, and rhetoric and artificial intelligence. This presents the growing group of interested scholars and students with a problem of access, since it is even for those active in the field not common to have acquired a familiarity with relevant aspects of (...) each discipline that enters into this multidisciplinary matrix. This book offers its readers a unique comprehensive survey of the various theoretical contributions which have been made to the study of argumentation. It discusses the historical works that provide the background to the field and all major approaches and trends in contemporary research. Argument has been the subject of systematic inquiry for twenty-five hundred years. It has been graced with theories, such as formal logic or the legal theory of evidence, that have acquired a more or less settled provenance with regard to specific issues. But there has been nothing to date that qualifies as a unified general theory of argumentation, in all its richness and complexity. This being so, the argumentation theorist must have access to materials and methods that lie beyond his or her "home" subject. It is precisely on this account that this volume is offered to all the constituent research communities and their students. Apart from the historical sections, each chapter provides an economical introduction to the problems and methods that characterize a given part of the contemporary research program. Because the chapters are self-contained, they can be consulted in the order of a reader's interests or research requirements. But there is value in reading the work in its entirety. Jointly authored by the very people whose research has done much to define the current state of argumentation theory and to point the way toward more general and unified future treatments, this book is an impressively authoritative contribution to the field. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Section 1 discusses properties and propositions, and some of the motivation for an account in which property instantiation and propositional truth behave ‘naively’. Section 2 generalizes a standard Kripke construction for naive properties and propositions, in a language with modal operators but no conditionals. Whereas Kripke uses a 3-valued value space, the generalized account allows for a broad array of value spaces, including the unit interval [0,1]. This is put to use in Section 3, where I add to the (...) language a conditional suitable for restricting quantification. The shift from a value space based on the ‘mini-space’ {0,, 1} to one based on the ‘mini-space’ [0,1] leads to more satisfactory results than I was able to achieve in previous work: a vast variety of paradoxical sentences can now be treated very simply. In Section 4 I make a further addition to the language, a conditional modeled on the ordinary English conditional, paying particular attention to how it interacts with the restricted quantifier conditional. This is all done in the [0,1] framework, and two alternatives are considered for how the ordinary conditional is to be handled; one of them results from adding a tweak to a construction by Ross Brady. Section 5 discusses a further alternative, a standard relevance conditional (for the ordinary conditional, perhaps for use with a different quantifier-restricting conditional), but argues that it is not promising. Section 6 discusses the identity conditions of properties and propositions (again in the setting of a value space based on [0,1]); the issue of achieving naivety for coarse-grained properties is seen to be more complicated than some brief remarks in Field [2010] suggested, but a way to get a fair degree of coarse-grainedness is shown. (shrink)

THIS paper seeks to elucidate the phenomenon known in psychology as 'the specious present,' by postulating a two-dimensional theory of the extensional aspects of time. On this theory, the usual logical and psychological difficulties, encountered in current accounts of this phenomenon, can be resolved. For, when there are two dimensions of time, the same event may be without extension in one of these dimensions ('transition-time'), while it is nevertheless finitely extended in the other of these dimensions ('phase-time'); so that in (...) a definable sense the phases of a finitely enduring event, though successive in one time-order, yet are contemporary in the other. The epistemological standpoint implicit in the paper is generally similar to the one Bertrand Russell has put forward, in his Physics and Experience (Cambridge, 1946), and his Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (London, 1948) (allowing for the changes which would be required in Russell's theory to take into account a second time dimension). A 'psycho-neural parallelism,' or one-one correspondence, is postulated between features of certain 'experiential events' (namely, those experiential events normally held to be happening to some person's mind, which are describable in the language of psychology); and features of certain 'physical events' (namely, those events described in the language of physics, chemistry and physiology, which are ordinarily conceived as happenings in that same person's body). These physical events are conceived of as being causally connected with events in the physical world outside the experient's body, by means of the concepts of light waves, sound waves, chemical stimuli, and consequential processes in the nervous system (central and peripheral) and sense-organs, in the usual way. In terms of this psycho-neural parallelism the physical correlate of the finite temporal span of the specious, or experiential present, is to be found in certain consequences of the uncertainty principle in quantum physics; according to which there is a finite interval of time necessarily associated with a nearly precise determination of energy levels, and of transitions between them. Some of the physical implications of this theory, applied to processes in the material structure of the human body, are discussed qualitatively. But, for the reasons given in the last section of the paper, a quantitative treatment is not yet possible. The paper is greatly indebted in regard to the physical application of the two-dimensional theory of time, to the discussion of the pentadic group structure in Eddington's Fundamental Theory (Cambridge, 1946 and 1950); and in particular to the treatment there of the phase-variable as the 'time-analogue' in the quantum statistics of stationary states. (shrink)