This paper investigates ‘exterminous hypertime’, a model of time travel in which time travellers can change the past in virtue of there being two dimensions of time. This paper has three parts. Part one discusses the laws which might govern the connection between different ‘hypertimes’, showing that there are no problems with overdetermination. Part two examines a set of laws that mean changes to history take a period of hypertime to propagate through to the present. Those laws are of interest (...) because: (i) at such worlds, a particular problem for non-Ludovician time travel (‘the multiple time travellers’ problem) is avoided; and (ii) they allow us to make sense of certain fictional narratives. Part three discusses how to understand expectations and rational decision making in a world with two dimensions of time. I end with an appendix discussing how the different theories in the metaphysics of time (e.g., tensed/tenseless theories and presentism/eternalism/growing block theory) marry up with exterminous hypertime. (shrink)

The Reign of Quantity gives a concise but comprehensive view of the present state of affairs in the world, as it appears from the point of view of the 'ancient wisdom', formerly common both to the East and to the West, but now almost entirely lost sight of. The author indicates with his fabled clarity and directness the precise nature of the modern deviation, and devotes special attention to the development of modern philosophy and science, and to the part played (...) by them, with their accompanying notions of progress and evolution, in the formation of the industrial and democratic society which we now regard as 'normal'. Guénon sees history as a descent from Form (or Quality) toward Matter (or Quantity); but after the Reign of Quantity-modern materialism and the 'rise of the masses'-Guénon predicts a reign of 'inverted quality' just before the end of the age: the triumph of the 'counter-initiation', the kingdom of Antichrist. This text is considered the magnum opus among Guénon's texts of civilizational criticism, as is Symbols of Sacred Science among his studies on symbols and cosmology, and Man and His Becoming according to the Vedanta among his more purely metaphysical works. (shrink)

QUALITY AND QUANTITY are fairly generally regarded as complementary terms, although the profound reason for their comple- mentarism is often far from being understood, this reason lying in the 'polar' correspondence referred to toward ...

A study of the constitution and development of the human being from the metaphysical point of view, with special reference to Vedantic doctrine.

The concluding chapter lays down the essential conditions for any genuine understanding between East and West, which can only come through the work of those who have attained, at least in some degree, to the realization of 'wisdom uncreate' ...

Publié pour la première fois en 1945, ce texte oppose aux religions historiques la tradition unique et originelle de la connaissance ésotérique. Le monde moderne est décrit comme une monstruosité qui ne reconnaît aucune transcendance et privilégie le règne de la contingence, du quantitatif et de l'individualisme.

Description: Contents: Preface 1. General Remarks on the Vedanta 2. Fundamental Distinction Between The Self and the Ego 3. The Vital Centre of the Human Being, Seat of Brahma 4. Purusha and Prakriti 5. Purusha Unaffected by Individual Modifications 6. The Degrees of Individual Manifestation 7. Buddhi or the Higher Intellect 8. Manas or the Inward Sense : The Ten External Faculties of Sensation and Action 9. The Envelopes of the Self ; The Five Vayus or Vital Functions 10. The (...) Essential Unity and Identity of the Self in all the States of the Being 11. The Different Conditions of Atma in the Human Being 12. The Waking State or the Condition of Vaishwanara 13. The Dream State or the Condition of Taijasa 14. The State of Deep Sleep or the Condition of Prajna 15. The Unconditioned State of Atma 16. The Symbolical Representation of Atma and its Conditions by the Sacred Monosyllable Om 17. The Posthumous Evolution of the Human Being 18. The Reabsorption of the Individual Faculties 19. Differences in the Posthumous Conditions According to the Degrees of Knowledge 20. The Coronal Artery and the Solar Ray 21. The Divine Journey of the Being on the Path of Liberation 22. Final Deliverance 23. Videha-mukti and Jivana-mukti 24. The Spiritual State of the Yogi : The Supreme Identity. (shrink)

Buddhist concepts of personal life and responsibilities.

The fundamental, irreplaceable exposition of general semantics. In this work Korzybski developed important lines of formulating neglected by subsequent authors. A must-have for the student of general semantics interested in the original formulations of Alfred Korzybski. The sixth edition of Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics includes a new preface by Lance Strate, President of the Institute of General Semantics.

– We offer a new motivation for imprecise probabilities. We argue that there are propositions to which precise probability cannot be assigned, but to which imprecise probability can be assigned. In such cases the alternative to imprecise probability is not precise probability, but no probability at all. And an imprecise probability is substantially better than no probability at all. Our argument is based on the mathematical phenomenon of non-measurable sets. Non-measurable propositions cannot receive precise probabilities, but there is a natural (...) way for them to receive imprecise probabilities. The mathematics of non-measurable sets is arcane, but its epistemological import is far-reaching; even apparently mundane propositions are liable to be affected by non-measurability. The phenomenon of non-measurability dramatically reshapes the dialectic between critics and proponents of imprecise credence. Non-measurability offers natural rejoinders to prominent critics of imprecise credence. Non-measurability even reverses some of the critics’ arguments—by the very lights that have been used to argue against imprecise credences, imprecise credences are better than precise credences. (shrink)

The scope of noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT) could expand in the future to include detailed analysis of the fetal genome. This will allow for the testing for virtually any trait with a genetic contribution, including “non-medical” traits. Here we discuss the potential use of NIPT for these traits. We outline a scenario which highlights possible inconsistencies with ethical decision-making. We then discuss the case against permitting these uses. The objections include practical problems; increasing inequities; increasing the burden of choice; negative (...) impacts on the child, family, and society; and issues with implementation. We then outline the case for permitting the use of NIPT for these traits. These include arguments for reproductive liberty and autonomy; questioning the labeling of traits as “non-medical”; and the principle of procreative beneficence. This summary of the case for and against can serve as a basis for the development of a consistent and coherent ethical framework. (shrink)

The scope of noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT) could expand in the future to include detailed analysis of the fetal genome. This will allow for the testing for virtually any trait with a genetic contribution, including “non-medical” traits. Here we discuss the potential use of NIPT for these traits. We outline a scenario which highlights possible inconsistencies with ethical decision-making. We then discuss the case against permitting these uses. The objections include practical problems; increasing inequities; increasing the burden of choice; negative (...) impacts on the child, family, and society; and issues with implementation. We then outline the case for permitting the use of NIPT for these traits. These include arguments for reproductive liberty and autonomy; questioning the labeling of traits as “non-medical”; and the principle of procreative beneficence. This summary of the case for and against can serve as a basis for the development of a consistent and coherent ethical framework. (shrink)

This paper discusses the issue of overriding the right of individual consent to participation in cluster randomised trials (CRTs). We focus on CRTs testing the efficacy of non-pharmaceutical interventions. As an example, we consider school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic. In Norway, a CRT was promoted as necessary for providing the best evidence to inform pandemic management policy. However, the proposal was rejected by the Norwegian Research Ethics Committee since it would violate the requirement for individual informed consent. This sparked (...) debate about whether ethics stand in the way of evidence-based health policy, since the Norwegian Research Ethics law’s strict requirements for individual consent make it practically impossible to carry out CRTs of public health interventions. We argue that, in the case of the school closure trial, the suggested CRT would not have eliminated an epistemic gap and thus would not have justified the violation of consent rights. First, we focus on the methodological challenges to estimating quantifiable effects of school closures in the specific case of an airborne infectious disease. Second, in line with Evidential Pluralism, we highlight the value of alternative lines of evidence for informing school closure policy in a pandemic. In general, we propose that a trial requiring the waiver of participants’ consent rights must be highly likely to eliminate an epistemic gap. We elaborate on the practical aspects of this criterion and discuss the potential advantages of adding it to the Ottawa Statement on the Ethical Design and Conduct of Cluster Randomized Trials. (shrink)

It is sometimes argued that contextualism cannot explain (dis)agreements concerning matters of personal taste because it treats sentences involving predicates of taste as indexical. I aim to weaken this charge. Given the idea that people sometimes use indexical sentences to express (dis)agreements about taste, two kinds of (dis)agreement are distinguished, namely doxastic and non-doxastic. Taste (dis)agreements are better explained in terms of the later kind, in which case they become amenable to contextualist treatment. It is argued that if something instantiates (...) a taste property (like being tasty for A), it has to instantiate a corresponding attitudinal property (like being liked by A). Based on this, utterances of taste sentences express propositions that concern tastiness of something (e.g., that X is tasty for A) and these propositions entail other propositions that concern non-doxastic attitudes the speakers bear toward something (e.g., that X is liked by A). One speaker is claimed to (dis)agree with another speaker provided their respective entailed propositions feature (in)compatible non-doxastic attitudes. Although this explanation is similar to hybrid accounts that are currently growing in popularity, it departs from them in some notable respects. (shrink)

This paper is a systematic exploration of non-wellfounded mereology. Motivations and applications suggested in the literature are considered. Some are exotic like Borges’ Aleph, and the Trinity; other examples are less so, like time traveling bricks, and even Geach’s Tibbles the Cat. The authors point out that the transitivity of non-wellfounded parthood is inconsistent with extensionality. A non-wellfounded mereology is developed with careful consideration paid to rival notions of supplementation and fusion. Two equivalent axiomatizations are given, and are compared to (...) classical mereology. We provide a class of models with respect to which the non-wellfounded mereology is sound and complete. (shrink)