Is the quantum state part of the furniture of the world? Einstein found such a position indigestible, but here I present a different understanding of the wavefunction that is easy to stomach. First, I develop the idea that the wavefunction is nomological in nature, showing how the quantum It or Bit debate gets subsumed by the corresponding It or Bit debate about laws of nature. Second, I motivate the nomological view by casting quantum mechanics in a “classical” formalism (Hamilton–Jacobi (...) theory) and classical mechanics in a “quantum” formalism (Koopman–von Neumann theory) and then comparing and contrasting classical and quantum wave functions. I argue that Humeans about laws can treat classical and quantum wave functions on a par and that doing so yields many benefits. (shrink)

In a new preface, Peter Singer discusses the prospects for the ethical approach he advocates."--BOOK JACKET.

_One World Now_ seamlessly integrates major developments of the past decade into Peter Singer's classic text on the ethics of globalization, _One World_. Singer, often described as the world's most influential philosopher, here addresses such essential concerns as climate change, economic globalization, foreign aid, human rights, immigration, and the responsibility to protect people from genocide and crimes against humanity, whatever country they may be in. Every issue is considered from an ethical perspective. This thoughtful and important study poses (...) bold challenges to narrow nationalistic views and offers valuable alternatives to the state-centric approach that continues to dominate ethics and international theory. Singer argues powerfully that we cannot solve the world’s problems at a national level, and shows how we should build on developments that are already transcending national differences. This is an instructive and necessary work that confronts head-on both the perils and the potentials inherent in globalization. (shrink)

If we agree with the notion of a global community, then we must extend our concepts of justice, fairness, and equity beyond national borders by supporting measures to decrease global warming and to increase foreign aid, argues Peter Singer.

Open peer commentary on the article “Perception-Action Mutuality Obviates Mental Construction” by Martin Flament Fultot, Lin Nie & Claudia Carello. Upshot: We extend the authors’ arguments on direct perception, specificity, and foundational principles to concerns for theories of joint action. We argue for the usefulness of the affordance concept in an ecological theory of social interaction; highlighting linkages between theories of affordance-based behavior and fundamental, physical principles.

One of our most sophisticated accounts of objective chance in quantum mechanics involves the Deutsch-Wallace theorem, which uses state-space symmetries to justify agents’ use of the Born rule when the quantum state is known. But Wallace argues that this theorem requires an Everettian approach to measurement. I find that this argument is unsound. I demonstrate a counter-example by applying the Deutsch-Wallace theorem to the de Broglie-Bohm pilot-wave theory.

The one world, one science argument (so named by Rescher) is advanced by Carl Sagan and others to support the thesis that we will be able to learn to converse with intelligent extraterrestrials if and when we encounter them. The prima facie obstacle to extraterrestrial communication is that the aliens’ culture and geography are bound to be so different from ours that we would find it extremely difficult, if not practically impossible, to find a common topic on which we (...) can both converse. Sagan's rebuttal is that we will share mathematics and the laws of physics, these being the same for all intelligent beings regardless of local cultural and geographical variations. I show that this argument fails even if its contentious assumptions about science and the world are granted—that is to say, it fails on uncontentious grounds. 1 OWOS 2 OWOS and Social Constructivism 3 OWOS and Conceptual Relativism 4 OWOS and the Selection Problem 5 The Fundamental Laws Solution 6 The Mathematics Solution 7 The Radio Solution 8 The Common Conditions Solution 9 The Intractability of the Selection Problem 10 The Superfluity of OWOS CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

The following response to the essays by Dietrich, Kesselring and Schefczyk discusses impartiality and foundations of special duties; utilitarianism, foreign aid, NGOs and human rights; and ethical aspects of free trade and the World Trade Organization.

This essay appeared as a contribution to a special issue of European Journal of Philosophy to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of P. F. Strawson’s The Bounds of Sense. In that book Strawson asks whether we should agree with Kant's claim, in his Critique of Pure Reason, that there can be only one world. What Kant means by this claim is that the four-dimensional realm that we inhabit must constitute the whole of empirical reality. Strawson gives reasons (...) for challenging this claim. This essay raises the question whether, even if Strawson is right, we may nevertheless have reason to believe that there can be only one world on a broader understanding of ‘world’. The aim is as much to clarify the issue as to settle it, although an attempt is made to motivate the view that there can indeed be only one world on this broader understanding. (shrink)

This is an introduction to world affairs in 1961 and after. It shows in bold outline how our rather small, increasingly overpopulated world has come to be dominated by the two giants powers, the USA and the USSR, with a new class of neutralist ex-colonial countries holding an increasingly important position. While Mr Pearson shows the part played by European or Western influence in creating one world, he also stresses that the outlying parts of the world (...) are now independent and dynamic, and that they have their own personality, aspirations and interests. Mr Pearson begins with the 'European springboard', showing how the Europe of the sixteenth century and after was a kind of powerhouse sending out currents of intellectual and political activity all over the world. Then he goes straight to the USA and the USSR and outlines their development. Next he turns to the time of European dominance and imperialism up to 1914; then to the course and effects of the two world wars; then to the decisive rise of the Asian contenders for great-power status and the decline of colonialism. Final chapters outline the history of the Middle East and comment on the 'lands of the future', especially Africa. (shrink)

One of the world’s most influential philosophers here considers the ethical issues surrounding globalization. Peter Singer discusses climate change, the role of the World Trade Organization, human rights and humanitarian intervention, and foreign aid, showing how a global ethic rather than a nationalistic approach can provide illuminating answers to important problems. The book encompasses four main global issues: climate change, the role of the World Trade Organization, human rights and humanitarian intervention, and foreign aid. Singer addresses each (...) vital issue from an ethical perspective and offers alternatives to the state-centric approach that characterizes international theory and relations today. Posing a bold challenge to narrow or nationalistic views, Singer presents a realistic, new way of looking at contemporary global issues—through a prism of ethics. (shrink)

This article aims to delineate a model of religion-science relationship from an East Asian perspective. The East Asian way of thinking is depicted as nondualistic, relational, and inclusive. From this point of view, most current Western discourses on the religion-science relationship, including the interconnected models of Pannenberg and Haught, are hierarchical, intellectually centered, and have dualistic tendencies. Taking religion and science as mapping activities, “a multi-map model” presents nonhierarchical, historical, social, multidimensional, communal, and intimate dimensions of the religion-science relationship.

The paper analyses the role of Albert Schweitzer in the antinuclear movement during the 1950s and 1960s. Having come face to face with the unthinkable threat of nuclear destruction, Schweitzer joins with renowned scientists to raise public awareness about the necessity of banning nuclear testing. Schweitzer applies the view summed up in the concept of reverence for life to a question of global importance, insisting on the personal responsibility of each individual for the present and future generations. His contribution to (...) the antinuclear movement also sheds light on the decisive role of the movement in the formation of the field of bioethics. In conclusion, the authoress points to the need for redefining the origins of bioethics.Das Paper analysiert die Rolle Albert Schweitzers im Rahmen der Anti-Atomkraft-Bewegung der 50er- bzw. 60er-Jahre. Konfrontiert mit einer bis dahin undenkbaren Bedrohung der atomaren Zerstörung gesellt sich Schweitzer den namhaften Wissenschaftlern hinzu, um die Bewusstseinsbildung der Öffentlichkeit für die Unabdingbarkeit einer Atomtestsperre zu stärken. Schweitzer appliziert die im Konzept der Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben resümierte Anschauung auf eine Frage von weltumspannendem Belang, indem er hierbei auf individueller Verantwortung eines jeglichen Einzelnen für gegenwärtige und angehende Generationen beharrt. Sein Beitrag zur Anti-Atomkraft-Bewegung bringt Licht in die ausschlaggebende Rolle dieser Front in der Formung des Bereichs der Bioethik. Abschließend weist die Autorin auf das Erfordernis einer Neubestimmung des Ursprungs der Bioethik. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIt is conventional wisdom that the laws of physics that govern our everyday world are different from those that explain the smallest particles and forces. Alexander Wendt argues that, to the contrary, quantum theory in fact can apply to the larger-scale world, and to human behavior as well. An alluring possibility to be sure, but we may need multiple theories of different types to explain diverse human behavior and behavioral patterns. Theories, furthermore, can be self-confirming or self-denying. In (...) quantum theory, classical physics, and social life, uncertainty looms large and political leaders in particular face multiple choices in dealing with it, including whether attempts to reduce uncertainty will change the world to their detriment. In these efforts, they often conflate estimates of likelihood with judgments of confidence and incorrectly assume that an estimate that an event is unlikely is flawed if the event actually occurs. (shrink)

Sir Julian Huxley (1887-1975), celebrated British scientist and philosopher, strove through most of his career to establish a non-theistic, rationalist belief system to replace Christianity and other world religions. Believing that the twentieth century provided a unique opportunity for this to happen, evolutionary humanism, as he termed his secular faith, gave direction to most of Huxley's diverse activities as a public intellectual. Rooted in evolutionary science, combined with Idealism, liberal values and a profound belief in progress, Huxley's vision was (...) also suffused with a strong desire for unity in human affairs. This paper examines that quest for unity, the purposes it served, and its reception. (shrink)

Reverse from many other theories of globalisation postulating or implying more and more unified world, the author in this paper points out twofoldness of globalisation process. Just in economical view, economy being the sample for globalisation, we can show how the world is not just one but is consisted of many worlds . Equally this stands for political philosophy which speculates about worldly republic or even a worldly state. Again, arguments of moral philosophy stand here for the thesis (...) that modernity has got not just universal moral but also has one ethics reflecting traditions. (shrink)

The following response to the essays by Dietrich, Kesselring and Schefczyk discusses impartiality and foundations of special duties; utilitarianism, foreign aid, NGOs and human rights; and ethical aspects of free trade and the World Trade Organization.

‘Explanations’ are of various kinds. They vary with the needs that call for them. The current need to ‘explain consciousness’ expresses not only curiosity about its causes but a wider uncertainty about its place in the general scheme of things. For much of this century, naive dogmatic materialism suggested that consciousness is a trivial matter with effectively no place in the world. Yet the behaviourists’ attempt to ignore our experience altogether has not proved workable. Scientists are therefore now trying (...) to give it reputable standing by squeezing it in at the margins either of neurobiology or of some branch of physics, in the hope that this will make it ‘scientific’. (shrink)

The subject of this thesis is physicalism, understood not as some particular doctrine pertaining narrowly to the philosophy of mind, but rather as a quite general metaphysical claim to the effect that everything is, or is fundamentally, physical. Thus physicalism explicates the thought that in some sense physics is the basic science. The aim of the thesis is to defend a particular brand of physicalism, which I call eliminative type physicalism. It claims, roughly, that every property is a physical property, (...) a property mentioned in the laws of physics, and hence that any putative property not identifiable with a physical property must be eliminated from our ontology. Eliminative type physicalism is apt to face three objections, and so my thesis, like Caesar's Gaul, falls into three parts. In the first, I argue against the idea that there are tenable positions, both physicalist and non-physicalist, alternative to eliminative type physicalism. I argue that each of these positions token physicalism (Fodor, middle Putnam), supervenience physicalism (Lewis, Horgan) and and a non-physicalist view I call pluralism (Goodman, late Putnam) is defective. In the second part, responding to the objection that there is just no reason to be a physicalist, I develop a positive argument for eliminative type physicalism, an argument resting upon a strong version of the explanatory test for reality according to which only explanatorily indispensable properties can justifiably be said to exist. In the third and final part, I argue, against the charge that eliminative type physicalism cannot accommodate what I call phenomenal properties (qualia, raw feels etc.), that there is no good reason to deny, and one good reason to affirm, that phenomenal properties just are physical properties. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: A Cosmopolitan Law? Global Responsibilities Global Politics Morality in International Relations.

The goal of this paper is to sketch an account of Kant’s signature metaphysical doctrine (transcendental idealism) that (a) has no supporters – as far as I am aware – in the contemporary literature, and (b) draws its primary motivation (as interpretation) from considerations regarding our practical situation and needs as agents. -/- The consideration I focus on here is that people not only have mental and moral features, but they also appear to us – in our daily experience – (...) to have such features: “[w]e can perceive virtue in our experience (Wir können in der Erfahrung wohl Tugend wahrnehmen)” (24: 906). The same presumably goes for vice: When I see you casually torturing a cat, you appear to me to be brown-haired, wearing jeans, moving your arms, laughing, and so on, but you also appear to me to be vicious and cruel. Your character shines through in your actions. I can then make a defeasible inference from those appearances to the moral reality. -/- Such appearances and inferences play a central role in our practices of praise, blame, forgiveness, and punishment. An interpretation of transcendental idealism that gives primacy to the practical will thus seek to analyze the concepts of experience, acquaintance, and appearance/phenomenon in a capacious-enough way that they can apply to mental and moral features too. If successful, such an interpretation would have a clear practical advantage over those that leave us merely conjecturing from experiences of bodies, gestures, and secondary qualities to moral features that do not appear, or even to the non-appearing features of a distinct set of things. (shrink)

Contingentism is the claim that the history of a particular field of science could have taken a different route from the actual one, and that the resulting imaginary science could have been both as successful as the real one and, in a non-trivial way, incompatible with it. Inevitabilism consists in the denial of this claim. In this paper, I try both to give a clear content to contingentism, especially in the field of physics, and to argue for its plausibility, while (...) acknowledging that it is extremely hard to give an argument that establishes its validity in a compelling way. By contrasting the history of science with that of geographic discoveries and the difficulties faced by any inevitabilist account of the former, I consider three different characterizations of the success of science, truth, adequacy to the phenomena, and robust fit, and analyze their consequences for the meaning and plausibility of contingentism. I retain the third characterization of scientific success and argue that the role played by creativity in scientific activities and the fact that there is a multiplicity of paths that researchers can legitimately follow in order to obtain a robust fit jointly support a qualified version of contingentism.Keywords: Inevitabilism; Contingentism; Success of science; Stability; Historical emergence; Robust fit. (shrink)

In this book the author presents an original argument for constitutive and ontological realism, developed against the backdrop of a reconstruction of Kantian philosophy. The first chapter argues that Kant does not primarily reject the epistemological principles of classical empiricism--that there are only two species of epistemic warrant possible for any judgment: logical warrants as analytic entailments and evidential warrants. Rather, Kant rejects its tacit commitment to an epistemological atomism, substituting for this a species of representational holism. The primary question (...) of legitimacy attaches not to individual concepts or judgments but to a larger conceptual structure in which they are embedded as logically indispensable features. Kant's transcendental deduction thus consists in the demonstrations of a family of analytic entailments which collectively secure a logical warrant for meta-judgments expressing the applicability of categorial concepts to, and the truth of corresponding judgments about, a world as a systematic experiential unity. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to critically assess the ‘three-world theory’ as it is presented—with some slight but decisive differences—by Jürgen Habermas and Karl Popper. This theory presents the philosophy of science with a conceptual and material problem, insofar as it claims that science has no single access to all aspects of the world. Although I will try to demonstrate advantages of Popper’s idea of ‘the third world’ of ideas, the shortcomings of his ontological stance become (...) visible from the pragmatic point of view in Habermas’s theory of communicative acts. With regard to the critique that the three-world theory has met in both its pragmatic and ontological versions, I will take a closer look at John Searle’s naturalistic counter-position. By teasing out some problematic implications in his theory of causation, I aim to show that Searle’s approach is, in fact, much closer to Popper’s than he might think. Finally, while condoning Habermas’s distinction between the natural world and the lifeworld, I will opt for a pragmatically differentiated view of ‘the real’, rather than speaking of different worlds. (shrink)