We propose a new quantum ontology, in which properties are the fundamental building blocks. In this property ontology physical systems are defined as bundles of type-properties. Not all elements of such bundles are associated with definite case-properties, and this accommodates the Kochen and Specker theorem and contextuality. Moreover, we do not attribute an identity to the type-properties, which gives rise to a novel form of the bundle theory. There are no “particles” in the sense of classical individuals in this ontology, (...) although the behavior of such individuals is mimicked in some circumstances. This picture leads in a natural way to the symmetrization postulates for systems of many “identical particles”. (shrink)

To which ontological category do quantum systems belong? Although we usually speak of particles, it is well known that these peculiar items defy several traditional metaphysical principles. In the present chapter these challenges will be discussed in the light of certain distinctions usually not taken into account in the debate about the ontological nature of quantum systems. On this basis, it will be argued that an ontology of properties without individuals, framed in the algebraic formalism of quantum mechanics, provides adequate (...) answers to the ontological challenges raised by the theory.What kind of item is a quantum system? In the practice of physics it is common to speak of quantum particles, as if they were items of a similar nature to classical items, but obeying different laws of motion. However, as is well known, quantum systems have such peculiar features that they challenge certain ontological principles and categories as understood in traditional metaphysics. In general, these features are analyzed in the context of the so-called problem of indistinguishability, which is a consequence of the particular statistical behavior of quantum systems. But the fact that certain items are “indistinguishable” is not the only difficulty to be overcome in order to elucidate the ontological category of quantum systems. (shrink)

The new edition of this manual brings together a decade's teaching in bioethics. It confronts new questions and monitors the latest far reaching experiments, whose results and publications need to be properly understood.

This book aims to introduce the Armenian version of Philo's writings also to those scholars not acquainted with Armenian Studies. The subject is approached from different perspectives - historical, hermeneutical, philological, linguistic - with special attention given to the reception of Philo in Armenian Christianity.

The conflict and dissociation between the Body and the Mind have determinant implications in the context of our current clinical practice, and are an important source of internal and relational disturbances. Body-Mind Dissociation in Psychoanalysis proposes the concept as a new hypothesis, different from traumatic dissociation or states of splitting. This approach opens the door to a clinical confrontation with extreme forms of mental disturbance, such as psychosis or borderline disorders, and strengthens the relational power of the analytic encounter, through (...) a focus on the internal sensory/emotional axis in both analyst and analysand. The book details this importance of the analyst's intrasubjective relationship with the analysand in constructing new developmental horizons, starting from the body-mind exchange of the two participants. Body-Mind Dissociation in Psychoanalysiswill be of use to students, beginners in psychotherapy, mental health practitioners and seasoned psychoanalysts. (shrink)

El siguiente artículo busca presentar una visión fenomenológica de la identidad personal en tanto fenómeno complejo y multidimensional, tomando como punto de partida el pensamiento del filósofo danés Dan Zahavi. Mientras que Zahavi presenta la dimensión experiencial del yo como fundamento y núcleo del yo, y por ende de la identidad, cabe preguntarse si este yo experiencial no puede ser complementado con una noción de yo más fuerte, que yo llamo núcleo personal. En primer lugar, se presentará la visión de (...) identidad personal de acuerdo con el pensamiento de Zahavi. En segundo lugar, se propondrá que tal núcleo personal se da como un hecho fenomenológico, es decir, revelado por la experiencia misma del yo. Finalmente, se sostendrá que dicho núcleo personal, que es el fundamento de las otras dimensiones del yo y de la identidad personal, se puede complementar con las otras dos dimensiones del yo desarrolladas por Zahavi. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Berger and Nanay consider, and reject, three ways of addressing the phenomenon of unconscious perception within a naïve realist framework. Since these three approaches seem to exhaust the options open to naïve realists, and since there is said to be excellent evidence that perception of the same fundamental kind can occur, both consciously and unconsciously, this is seen to present a problem for the view. We take this opportunity to show that all three approaches considered remain (...) perfectly plausible ways of addressing unconscious perception within a naïve realist framework. So far from undermining the credibility of naïve realism, Berger and Nanay simply draw our attention to an important question to be considered by naïve realists in future work. Namely, which of the approaches considered is most likely to provide an accurate account of unconscious perception in each of its purported incarnations? (shrink)

The aim of our experiment was to analyse the effect of the emotional valence (positive, negative, or neutral) on true and false recognition, matching the arousal, frequency, concreteness, and associative strength of the study and recognition words. Fifty younger adults and 46 healthy older adults performed three study tasks (with words of different valence: positive, negative, neutral) and their corresponding recognition tests. Two weeks later, they performed the three recognition tests again. The results show that words with a negative valence (...) produced less true recognition and less false recognition than words with a positive or neutral valence, in both younger and older adults, on the immediate recognition test. This pattern of results was also found in the younger adults on the delayed recognition test, whereas in the older participants, these differences disappeared. Thus, when arousal is controlled, both younger and older adults tend to recognise negative information worse than positive or neutral information, but they also commit fewer errors. Results would suggest that the greater arousal commonly associated with negative stimuli, rather than their own valence, could explain some of the contradictory results found in the literature. (shrink)

By moving away from the traditional reductionist reading of the quantum theory of atoms in molecules, in this paper we analyze the role played by QTAIM in the relationship between molecular chemistry and quantum mechanics from an emergentist perspective. In particular, we show that such a relationship involves two steps: an intra-domain emergence and an inter-domain emergence. Intra-domain emergence, internal to quantum mechanics, results from the fact that the electron density, from which all the other QTAIM’s concepts are defined, arises (...) from the wavefunction as a coarse-grained magnitude. Inter-domain emergence involves an analogical link, a mapping, between QTAIM’s entities, such as topological atoms and bond paths, and the entities that populate the molecular-chemistry domain, such as chemical atoms and chemical bonds. (shrink)

Focusing on Shannon information, this article shows that, even on the basis of the same formalism, there may be different interpretations of the concept of information, and that disagreements may be deep enough to lead to very different conclusions about the informational characterization of certain physical situations. On this basis, a pluralist view is argued for, according to which the concept of information is primarily a formal concept that can adopt different interpretations that are not mutually exclusive, but each useful (...) in a different specific context. (shrink)

This paper has two sections: first, I am going to analyze two criteria to differentiate between argumentation and formal demonstration. According to Perelman (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1989) argumentation is based on persuasion, and that is the reason why argumentation is polysemic, ambiguous; on the other hand, it is said that argumentation depends on the additional information that someone gives to us, while demonstration does not depend to the additional information. I will show that no criteria invoked to justify the disctintion (...) between demostration and argumentation is kept. In the second section I will show that persuasion is not necessarily associated to the speech act of argumentation, in the same way that the atempt of convincing is not necessarily associated with the act of asserting something. Thus, someone cannot use persuasion to define the argumentative exercise. (shrink)

In this paper I will present a visual method that I have created to demonstrate the validity of propositional arguments and predicates, based on the traditional Venn diagrams. This idea was born after becoming aware of how useful visual methods are in other scientific fields, such as geometrical representations of arithmetic and algebraic concepts. This method illustrates the relationship between propositional logic, predicate logic and set theory, and it can be used to explain linguistic semantic concepts such as synonymy, antonymy, (...) hyponymy, entailment, and lexical substitution. (shrink)

Mit dem Untertitel »Streitfragen« bringt dieser Band 44 der Fichte-Studien eine Gruppe von Beiträgen, die das Hauptthema »Fichte und seine Zeit« behandeln und es aus unterschiedlichen Gesichtspunkten entfalten.

Dieser Band ist in vier Teile gegliedert, die dem theoretischen, praktischen und politischen Gedanken des Philosophen gewidmet sind. Diesen folgen im vierten Teil Beiträge, die Fichtes philosophische Ansätze in den Dialog mit gegenwärtigen Autoren und Fragen der Philosophie bringen.

Die 38 im Jahre 1811 vorgetragen Vorlesungen über die Wissenschaftslehre sind eine vollkommene und besonders gut artikulierte Darstellung Fichtes Systems in der Zeit seiner Tätigkeit an der neu gegründeten Universität zu Berlin. Der Öffentlichkeit sind sie erst 1999 bekannt geworden, als sie in der_J. G. Fichte Gesamtausgabe_ der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften aufgenommen wurden, denn bis dahin wurden sie von den jeweiligen Editoren des Fichte-Nachlasses nie erwähnt. Fichte nimmt in dieser Darstellung seines Systems gegen beide Formen des Nihilismus Stellung - (...) den theoretischen sowie den mit diesem zusammenhängenden praktischen. Um seine systematische Position formulieren und vertreten zu können, setzt er sich vor allem mit Spinoza und Kant nochmals auseinander. Spinoza stellt nämlich nach Fichte die Grundfrage der Philosophie, wie neben dem Sein auch ein Dasein denkbar sein kann, während Kant ihm im Begriff der Erscheinung den Weg zu ihrer Lösung aufzeigt. Aber zwei weitere Probleme ergeben sich für Fichte aus der kritischen Philosophie Kants: wie kann man das Bewußtsein beschreiben, wenn man sich nicht aus seinem Zirkel bewegen kann, und wie kann man die in dieser Beschreibung faktisch entdeckte Ursprünglichkeit der Synthesis rechtfertigen? Für Fichte hatte der Begründer der Transzendentalphilosophie die grundlegende synthetische Tätigkeit des Bewußtseins nur noch als ein Faktum des Bewußtseins angenommen. Der Beweis ihrer Möglichkeit ist nach Fichte letztlich nur zu führen, indem man sie auf eine Erscheinungsform der Freiheit als Inbegriff Gottes zurückführt. Diesen Beweisgang versteht nun Fichte als Vervollständigung des transzendentalphilosophischen Programms und zugleich als Mittel, um aus dem Wissen in die Weisheit überzugehen. (shrink)

What ethical framework should be used as a basis for teaching business ethics? Should business ethics be taught by ethicists in a separate course, by business faculty in business courses, or perhaps by both? These are some of the issues this paper will address. The paper begins with a review of the literature concerning approaches to teaching business ethics. Next, some ethical frameworks for teaching business ethics are considered. Finally, the paper proposes that students should apply their own personal values (...) to business ethical issues in the classroom, thus providing future business leaders with a process for resolving ethical dilemmas. (shrink)

Una aproximación a la concepción viquiana del Derecho Romano que, desde la "soledad" vivida por el filósofo napolitano, asume como modo original de afrontar el derecho una poética jurídica y la búsqueda de una lengua articulada universal .An approach to Vico's conception of Roman Law that, from the "loneliness" of the napolitan philosopher, assumes juridical poetics as an original way of facing law, and the search of an articulated universal language.

This paper articulates and argues for the plausibility of the Presentation View of Perceptual Knowledge, an under-discussed epistemology of perception. On this view, a central epistemological role of perception is that of making subjects aware of their surroundings. By doing so, perception affords subjects with reasons for world-directed judgments. Moreover, the very perceived concrete entities are identified as those reasons. The former claim means that the position is a reasons-based epistemology; the latter means that it endorses a radically anti-psychologist conception (...) of reasons. First, I articulate and motivate the Presentation View. Then, I defend the view from three incarnations of a major objection levelled within the ranks of reasons-based epistemologies: McDowell’s version of the accusation that a view like this falls prey to the Myth of the Given. I argue that all three incarnations fail to show the Presentation View to be inadequate. The first version holds that a general characterization of the Myth clearly shows that it is an incoherent idea. The second version holds that endorsing the Myth makes it impossible to construe non-conceptual items as items that can stand in rational relations to judgements and beliefs. The third version holds that endorsing the Myth leads to a conception where perceptual experiences merely cause, but do not warrant, our perceptual beliefs and judgements. I explain in detail how the Presentation View has the elements to respond to each of these objections. (shrink)

Our purpose in this paper is to delineate an ontology for quantum mechanics that results adequate to the formalism of the theory. We will restrict our aim to the search of an ontology that expresses the conceptual content of the recently proposed modal-Hamiltonian interpretation, according to which the domain referred to by non-relativistic quantum mechanics is an ontology of properties. The usual strategy in the literature has been to focus on only one of the interpretive problems of the theory and (...) to design an interpretation to solve it, leaving aside the remaining difficulties. On the contrary, our aim in the present work is to formulate a “global” solution, according to which different problems can be adequately tackled in terms of a single ontology populated of properties, in which systems are bundles of properties. In particular, we will conceive indistinguishability between bundles as a relation derived from indistinguishability between properties, and we will show that states, when operating on combinations of indistinguishable bundles, act as if they were symmetric with no need of a symmetrization postulate. (shrink)

Medical discoveries have led to an unprecedented level of competence in the field, but it is as if the patient is finding it increasingly difficult to get the right holistic care. Medicine must be put on a path towards being humanised.

L’alternative « soins ordinaires », « soins extraordinaires » en fin de vie nous place au cœur d’un débat très actuel de pratique et d’éthique médicales. L’article examine les difficultés de la médecine de fin de vie et met en évidence certaines insuffisances des analysesmises en œuvre pour prendre les décisions appropriées. La lecture des textes magistériels sur ces questions amènent pareillement à se demander si la science bioéthique n’est pas dans une impasse.

Some authors, inspired by the theoretical requirements for the formulation of a quantum theory of gravity, proposed a relational reconstruction of the quantum parameter-time—the time of the unitary evolution, which would make quantum mechanics compatible with relativity. The aim of the present work is to follow the lead of those relational programs by proposing a relational reconstruction of the event-time—which orders the detection of the definite values of the system’s observables. Such a reconstruction will be based on the modal-Hamiltonian interpretation (...) of quantum mechanics, which provides a clear criterion to select which observables acquire a definite value and to specify in what situation they do so. (shrink)

The merging/fusion of belief/data collections in propositional logic form is a topic that has received due attention within the domains of database and AI research. A distinction can be made between two types of scenarios to which the process of merging can be applied. In the first type, the collections represent preferences, such as the voting choices of a group of people, that need to be aggregated so as to give a consistent result that in some way best represents the (...) collective judgement of the group. In the second type, the collections represent factual data that is to be aggregated with an aim of obtaining a result that maximises factual correctness. After introducing a general framework for belief merging via some prominent literature on the topic, this paper then introduces and considers a method for belief merging with the second type of scenario in mind. Its suitability is corroborated by demonstrating how it can be seen as a special case of a merging procedure that combines aggregation of probabilities and maximisation of expected truthlikeness. (shrink)

In the present paper we address the problem of optical isomerism embodied in the socalled “Hund’s paradox”, which points to the difficulty to account for chirality by means of quantum mechanics. In particular, we explain the answer to the problem proposed by the theory of decoherence. The purpose of this article is to challenge this answer on the basis of a conceptual analysis of the phenomenon of decoherence, that reveals the limitations of the theory of decoherence to solve the difficulties (...) posed by optical isomerism and, in general, by quantum measurement. (shrink)

Riassunto : Questo articolo propone un confronto tra la teoria mente-corpo di Henri Bergson e gli ultimi sviluppi della filosofia della mente e, più specificamente, con il cosiddetto “esternalismo”. Lo scopo è duplice. In primo luogo, si vuole sostenere che l’opera del filosofo francese ha anticipato i principali punti teorici dell’esternalismo: la teoria della percezione di Bergson, infatti, ha molti e rilevanti tratti in comune con la cosiddetta 4E Cognition, che finora non sono stati adeguatamente riconosciuti. In secondo luogo, l’articolo (...) intende anche mostrare come il quadro ontologico in cui Bergson colloca la propria interpretazione dell’esperienza cosciente, possa fungere da utile riferimento per il modello esternalista, al fine di sistematizzare i dati sperimentali entro un orizzonte teorico coerente. La teoria della "percezione pura" di Bergson, infatti, supera il modello correlazionista dell’esperienza, rilevando come quest’ultima, allo stato puro, si collochi nelle cose stesse, a un livello di realtà che precede la divaricazione dell’esperienza tra soggetto e oggetto, livello che deve essere pensato come l’origine impersonale della coscienza soggettiva. Parole chiave: Esternalismo; Percezione; Azione; Problema mente/corpo The mind/body problem in Henri Bergson e the externalism in philosophy of mind. Towards an ontological model: In this article we contrast Henri Bergson’s mind-body theory with the latest developments in Philosophy of Mind, more specifically, in so-called “Externalism”. This paper has two specific aims. First, we argue that the work of this French philosopher anticipated the main theoretical concepts of Externalism. Indeed, Bergson’s theory of perception shares many important features, which have not been adequately recognized until now, with so-called 4E Cognition. Second, we show how Bergson’s basic ontology, which frames his interpretation of conscious experience, could offer a coherent theoretical framework to systematize experimental data in an externalist model. Bergson’s theory of “pure perception” goes beyond correlation, showing that our experience, in its purest state, takes place within things themselves, at a level of reality that precedes the bifurcation of experience into a subject and an object. This undivided level of reality can be considered the impersonal origin of subjective consciousness. Keywords: Externalism; Perception; Action; Mind/Body Problem. (shrink)

In this paper I propose a set-theoretical interpretation of the logical square of opposition, in the perspective opened by generalized quantifier theory. Generalized quantifiers allow us to account for the semantics of quantificational Noun Phrases, and of other natural language expressions, in a coherent and uniform way. I suggest that in the analysis of the meaning of Noun Phrases and Determiners the square of opposition may help representing some semantic features responsible to different logical properties of these expressions. I will (...) conclude with some consideration on scope interactions between quantifiers. (shrink)

RESUMEN: Objetivo. En este trabajo se plantea como objetivo examinar y comparar las diferentes concepciones de responsabilidad y relación con “el Otro” en dos diferentes autores representativos que han tratado de forma notable estos conceptos, profundizando en la subjetividad, libertad y la experiencia del mundo y de la propia existencia. Diseño. Se trata de un Estudio en forma de breve ensayo con un análisis crítico de la temática analizada. Originalidad /valor. Se trata de un análisis comparativo entre dos grandes filósofos (...) enmarcados en la fenomenología de la existencia en aspectos concretos de su pensamiento. Hallazgos. Los dos autores que analizaremos han conocido la fenomenología de Husserl y Heidegger, que fue para ellos un punto de partida con gran influencia en su pensamiento, no obstante, ambos autores tuvieron un posicionamiento y desarrollo propio y en parte divergente entre ellos en gran parte de su pensamiento, llegando a constituirse como auténticas referencias de su tiempo y que actualmente mantienen un gran interés e influencia en la filosofía contemporánea. Analizaré comparativamente dos grandes autores como son, Emmanuel Lévinas y Jean Paul Sartre. Conclusiones. En ellos veremos formas diferentes y hasta cierto punto complementarias de abordar la libertad, responsabilidad y la relación con el otro, en uno de forma más ontológica y en el otro con una visión desde la ética. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to look at some existing methods of semantic information quantification and suggest some alternatives. It begins with an outline of Bar-Hillel and Carnap’s theory of semantic information before going on to look at Floridi’s theory of strongly semantic information. The latter then serves to initiate an in-depth investigation into the idea of utilising the notion of truthlikeness to quantify semantic information. Firstly, a couple of approaches to measure truthlikeness are drawn from the literature and (...) explored, with a focus on their applicability to semantic information quantification. Secondly, a similar but new approach to measure truthlikeness/information is presented and some supplementary points are made. (shrink)