Perfect adaptation in a dynamical system is the phenomenon that one or more variables have an initial transient response to a persistent change in an external stimulus but revert to their original value as the system converges to equilibrium. With the help of the causal ordering algorithm, one can construct graphical representations of dynamical systems that represent the causal relations between the variables and the conditional independences in the equilibrium distribution. We apply these tools to formulate sufficient graphical conditions for (...) identifying perfect adaptation from a set of first-order differential equations. Furthermore, we give sufficient conditions to test for the presence of perfect adaptation in experimental equilibrium data. We apply this method to a simple model for a protein signalling pathway and test its predictions in both simulations and using real-world protein expression data. We demonstrate that perfect adaptation can lead to misleading orientation of edges in the output of causal discovery algorithms. (shrink)

This book deals with the history of the problem whether or not time can fully exist without the mind. This has been a vital issue in the philosophy of time, with intriguing arguments and solutions, from Aristotle to the present.

Anachronistic values A value becomes anachronistic when it no longer fits current historical conditions (institutions, technology, culture, etc.). From an ‘idealist’ perspective, this fact does not tell against the old value (accepted as true), but rather against the new conditions. However, from a ‘naturalist’ perspective which takes values to be the product of human interests and (therefore) as interconnected with a given historical context, such a conflict seems to make a value obsolete. But this is neither an empirical law nor (...) a normative rule. A defence of anachronistic values might still be perfectly reasonable. It is argued that such reasonableness depends mainly on three criteria: (un)certainty, scope and weight. (shrink)

Ecologists are challenged by the need to bridge and synthesize different approaches and theories to obtain a coherent understanding of ecosystems in a changing world. Both food web theory and regime shift theory shine light on mechanisms that confer stability to ecosystems, but from different angles. Empirical food web models are developed to analyze how equilibria in real multi-trophic ecosystems are shaped by species interactions, and often include linear functional response terms for simple estimation of interaction strengths from observations. Models (...) of regime shifts focus on qualitative changes of equilibrium points in a slowly changing environment, and typically include non-linear functional response terms. Currently, it is unclear how the stability of an empirical food web model, expressed as the rate of system recovery after a small perturbation, relates to the vulnerability of the ecosystem to collapse. Here, we conduct structural sensitivity analyses of classical consumer-resource models in equilibrium along an environmental gradient. Specifically, we change non-proportional interaction terms into proportional ones, while maintaining the equilibrium biomass densities and material flux rates, to analyze how alternative model formulations shape the stability properties of the equilibria. The results reveal no consistent relationship between the stability of the original models and the proportionalized versions, even though they describe the same biomass values and material flows. We use these findings to critically discuss whether stability analysis of observed equilibria by empirical food web models can provide insight into regime shift dynamics, and highlight the challenge of bridging alternative modelling approaches in ecology and beyond. (shrink)

This book is intended to contribute towards a justification of the human sciences.

Bundel filosofische essays over literatuurwetenschap.

The theories on symbolization of the Neo-Kantian philosopher Ernst Cassirer and the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan are described and compared. Their common conception of man as an _animal symbolicum_ has been applied to a number of topics within the humanities to offer proof for its fruitfulness.

This article discusses a number of metaphors about the nature of science, in connection with three types of metaphysical realism: minimal, moderate and essentialistic realism. From the beginning, Kuipers accepts the first and rejects the third type of realism, but it is only later on that he endorses the second type. It is argued that this makes his remarks on essentialistic realism somewhat misleading; and his moderate realism is compared with some realist positions taken by other philosophers. It is further (...) argued that the metaphors of the mirror, the net and the map correspond to essentialistic, minimal and moderate realism, respectively. This explains why the map metaphor is by far the most suitable one in the context of Kuipers' theory of science. This does not imply, however, that it is the (only) true one and that the others are false. (shrink)

The situation of present day psychiatry is described as being dominated by an empiricist perspective. The limitations of this perspective are analyzed and a rough sketch of the hermeneutical approach in psychiatry is offered. It is argued that a fully developed hermeneutical psychiatry implies a reference towards anthropological themes. Three of them, time, historicity and corporality, are investigated.

al-Mujallad al-awwal. Fī al-manṭiq -- al-mujallad al-thānī. Fī al-ṭabīʻīyāt -- al-mujallad al-thālith. Fī al-Ilāhīyāt.

In the Islamic period, Apollonius of Tyana was well known both as “Lord of the Talismans” and as a Neo-Pythagorean-Hermetic philosopher. In his Kitāb al-Aḥjār, Jābir b. Ḥayyān cites “the Muslim advocates of Apollonius”. The reference shows that Apollonius’ most prominent work, Sirr alkhalīqa, was already famous in the Arabicspeaking world from very early on. This article gives an overview of citations of Apollonius in Islamic sources from different fields and of the works generally attributed to him. Furthermore, I review (...) Sirr al-khalīqa, its influences on the Jābirian works and its reception in the Ismā‘īlī tradition. This article additionally discusses an Arabic commentary of Sirr al-khalīqa by ‘Awn b. al-Mundhir, which is extant in a unique manuscript, and its hitherto unknown Persian translation. This Persian translation covers parts of Ibn al-Mundhir’s work not available in the Arabic excerpt and is therefore an important source for the history of Islamic alchemy. An edition of the Persian translation is given as an appendix. (shrink)

This book is the first of two volumes devoted to the work of Theo Kuipers, a leading Dutch philosopher of science. Philosophers and scientists from all over the world, thirty seven in all, comment on Kuipers' philosophy, and each of their commentaries is followed by a reply from Kuipers. The present volume focuses on Kuipers' views on confirmation, empirical progress, and truth approximation, as laid down in his From Instrumentalism to Constructive Realism (Kluwer, 2000). In this book, Kuipers offered a (...) synthesis of Carnap's and Hempel's confirmation theory on the one hand, and Popper's theory of truth approximation on the other. The key element of this synthesis is a sophisticated methodology, which enables the evaluation of theories in terms of their problems and successes (even if the theories are already falsified), and which also fits well with the claim that one theory is closer to the truth than another. Ilkka Niiniluoto, Patrick Maher, John Welch, Gerhard Schurz, Igor Douven, Bert Hamminga, David Miller, Johan van Benthem, Sjoerd Zwart, Thomas Mormann, Jesús Zamora Bonilla, Isabella Burger & Johannes Heidema, Joke Meheus, Hans Mooij, and Diderik Batens comment on these ideas of Kuipers, and many present their own account. The present book also contains a synopsis of From Instrumentalism to Constructive Realism. It can be read independently of the second volume of Essays in Debate with Theo Kuipers, which is devoted to Kuipers' Structures in Science (2001). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Kant’s Theory of SelfApaar KumarArthur Melnick. Kant’s Theory of Self. New York-London: Routledge, 2009. Pp. viii + 186. Cloth, $118.00.Melnick interprets the Kantian self from the first-person perspective as real abiding intellectual action. It unfolds in time but does not arise in inner or outer attending. Hence, it is neither a noumenal entity nor Kantian intuitable substance. Melnick thinks that his interpretation not only clarifies Kant’s arguments in (...) the Paralogisms of the first Critique, but also illuminates Kant’s positive theory of self.Melnick argues that a thought is inchoate, unformed, and unsettled until the thinking self as intellectual marshaling action brings it into focus and “coalesces” around it a series of related but out-of-focus thoughts ready to replace the focal thought if necessary. This marshaling action is temporal because it shifts/adjusts (“accompanies”) progressive attending but cannot be intuited in time. Its shifting/adjusting constitutes its only reality, for it would have to be in objective time if it were intrinsically real, which Kant’s transcendental idealism does not allow.As intellectual marshaling action, the thinking self cannot know itself as simple substantial entity. Instead, it knows itself as always-subject-and-never-predicate because it is constant and never swallowed up by particular thoughts, and as indivisible because its self-awareness as marshaling action in a whole thought is not the sum of its self-awareness in each part of that thought. Self-consciousness is a structural possibility of this marshaling action. It occurs when the subject has to report its thoughts, which it does by distancing-itself-from-but-still-encompassing its thought/s in reflection.The same marshaling action makes for the identity of the cognizing subject by constantly regulating thinking. Thinking is “proneness” to standardize or regulate. If I am unifying/regulating a synthesis of outer apprehension (empirical-object-dog) through my prior grasp of a thought or rule (empirical-dog-concept), I am self-identical in empirical apperception. If I am unifying/regulating outer or inner attending per se according to pure rules of space and time in a synthesis of outer apprehension, then I am self-identical in pure apperception.In the synthesis of inner apprehension, I can be self-identical only if I, as intellectual marshaling action, set representations of inner sense in time. Personal identity is the extension of this identity. It is to be construed as a “thin” capacity contingent upon the fulfillment of its activation conditions, rather than as a metaphysical entity. Given that time-consciousness [End Page 535] demands outer bodily representations in Kant, and bracketing his abstraction from the body, self-identical persons must necessarily be construed as embodied. Finally, contra the rationalists, intellectual marshaling action is neither material nor separable from material reality, and our capacity for such action relates immediately to the capacity of material things to affect us.The problem with this argument, which Melnick admits Kant himself never articulated, is that at key moments, it is neither a comprehensive interpretation of Kant (especially since Melnick relies principally on the first Critique, but not exhaustively so: for instance, he does not discuss the important distinction between the analytic and synthetic unity of apperception, etc.), nor a stand-alone first-person account of the self.First, Melnick’s use of several Kant-independent spatial analogies to explain crucial mental concepts is disconcerting: to some extent, self as “marshaling” action, consciousness as “awning” that envelops affection from outside, and (most obscurely) self-conscious subjects ostensibly require reflection to “mirror” a thought into a verbal report (56–57), but it remains unclear what mirroring into involves.Second, Melnick uncritically accepts Kant’s obscure equation of the unities of act and consciousness (7–8, 97), and hence sidesteps the thorny problem of relating/distinguishing activity and consciousness. Since he categorically interprets self as activity, Melnick appears to presuppose the priority of activity over consciousness. But this needs justification, which, in turn, requires further investigating the relationship between attention, consciousness, and intellectual marshaling action.Finally, although Kant never says this, Melnick offers a two-step argument that we possess a capacity for personhood, which seems rather unconvincing... (shrink)