The Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics divides naturally into two parts: first, the interpretation of the structure of the quantum state, in terms of branching, and second, the interpretation of this branching structure in terms of probability. This is the second of two reviews of the Everett interpretation, and focuses on probability. Branching processes are identified as chance processes, and the squares of branch amplitudes are chances. Since branching is emergent, physical probability is emergent as well.

This is a systematic review of the concept of indistinguishability, in both classical and quantum mechanics, with particular attention to Gibbs paradox. Section 1 is on the Gibbs paradox; section 2 is a defense of classical indistinguishability, notwithstanding the widely-held view, that classical particles can always be distinguished by their trajectories. The last section is about the notion of object more generally, and on whether indistinguishables should be thought of as objects at all.

Ethics, religion, and spirituality -- Spirituality in care -- Spirituality and ethics -- Love -- The community of care : fit for purpose -- Values, virtues, and the patient -- Challenging faith -- Spirituality and the domain of justice.

According to the Everett interpretation, branching structure and ratios of norms of branch amplitudes are the objective correlates of chance events and chances; that is, 'chance' and 'chancing', like 'red' and 'colour', pick out objective features of reality, albeit not what they seemed. Once properly identified, questions about how and in what sense chances can be observed can be treated as straightforward dynamical questions. On that basis, given the unitary dynamics of quantum theory, it follows that relative and never absolute (...) chances can be observed; that only on repetition of a large numbers of similar trials can relative probabilities be measured; and so on. The epistemology of objective chances can in this way be worked out from the dynamics. its curious features are thus explained. But one aspect of chance set-ups seems to resist this subsuming of chancing to branching: how is it that chance involves uncertainty? And if that is not possible, on Everettian lines, then the whole project is doomed. I argue that in fact there is no difficulty in making sense of uncertainty in the face of branching. Contrary to initial impressions, the unitary formalism is consistent with a well-defined notion of self-locating uncertainty. It is also consistent without: the mathematics under-determines the metaphysics in these respects. (shrink)

Fermi-Dirac statistics are one of two kinds of statistics exhibited by !identical quantum particles, the other being !Bose-Einstein statistics. Such particles are called fermions and bosons respectively (the terminology is due to Dirac [1902-1984] [1]). In the light of the !spin-statistics theorem, and consistent with observation, fermions are invariably spinors (of half-integral spin), whilst bosons are invariably scalar or vector particles (of integral spin). See !spin.

I heard about and laid hold of the idea of a four dimensional frame for a fresh apprehension of physical phenomena, which afterwards led me to send a paper, ‘The Universe Rigid’, to the Fortnightly Review, and gave me a frame for my …rst scienti…c fantasia, The Time Machine. If there was a Universe rigid, and hitherto uniform, the character of the consequent world would depend entirely, I argued along strictly materialist lines, upon the velocity of this initial displacement. The (...) disturbance would spread outward with everincreasing complication. But I discovered no way, and there was no one to show me a way to get on from such elementarystruggles with primary concepts, to a sound understanding of contemporary experimental physics.”. (shrink)

This is an essential guide to an thinker. Frederic Jameson sees Lyotard as responding to a contemporary "crisis of representation" in the sciences -- a crisis which calls into question "an essentially realistic epistemology, which conceives of representation as the reproduction, for subjectivity, of an objectivity that lies outside it -- projects a mirror theory of knowledge and art, whose fundamental evaluative categories are those of adequacy, accuracy, and Truth itself.".

Since 1995, the annual Graz Schumpeter lectures have been delivered by eminent economists such as Stanley J. Metcalfe, Nathan Rosenberg and Duncan Foley. Routledge are proud to publish the lectures as new books each year. The latest book in this series come from Simon Gächter, an expert in the psychology of economic decision making. Gächter analyses the latest scientific research on human and social cognitive and emotial biases which help to better understand economic decisions and how they affect the (...) market. Research in this area is at the cutting edge of economics and this volume will be of interest to all serious economists across the globe. (shrink)

The Born rule is derived from operational assumptions, together with assumptions of quantum mechanics that concern only the deterministic development of the state. Unlike Gleason’s theorem, the argument applies even if probabilities are de…ned for only a single resolution of the identity, so it applies to a variety of foundational approaches to quantum mechanics. It also provides a probability rule for state spaces that are not Hilbert spaces.

If critical momentum in European philosophy and theory has seemed to shift away from deconstruction over the past decade or so, nevertheless the indebtedness of contemporary key thinkers to Derrida's writing and the entire project of deconstruction is unquestionable, regardless of whether it is always fully acknowledged, and whether or not Derrida's influence manifests itself as a source of inspiration or the grounds of critical antagonism or opposition. Many of those who now reject deconstruction continue to write texts that engage (...) with Derrida's work, whether dismissively or not. In this context, how best to recall deconstruction as a continuing 'voice' across the various fields of the critical humanities, theory and philosophy? The starting point for this collection of essays is the idea that, rather than reduce deconstruction to an object of historical importance or memory, one might more fruitfully analyze its significance in terms of complex matrices of desire in which it continues to figure; ceaselessly provoked in this way, deconstruction may neither be dismissed as simply 'dead', nor unproblematically defended as still alive and well. Instead, it asks to be repositioned on the threshold of life-death (about which deconstruction has always had much to say), an intricate threshold which profoundly complicates its relationship to the 'present' field of critical thought. This is a field which-according to a highly complex set of desires-still struggles to memorialize, to inter, or indeed to cremate, reduce to ashes, the deconstructive corpus. This collection therefore brings together leading voices at the forefront of their critical fields, in order to address the question of the desires of deconstruction, in precisely these multiple senses. With contributions from Etienne Balibar, Catherine Malibou and Martin Hagglund, the volume includes key thinkers across various generations of scholarship: those whose careers took off in the 1960s, at the same time Derrida's importance was gaining acknowledgement; those who played their part in the Anglo-American reception and translation of Derrida in the subsequent two or three decades; those taught by him; and those who, without undue discipleship or hagiography, now seek to critically re-evaluate his work. (shrink)

Mindfulness meditation seems to generate the following puzzle: On one hand, mindfulness reveals to the meditator that many of their thoughts are outside of their control and leads to a diminished sense of self; on the other, regular mindfulness practice is supposed to lead to greater self-awareness and self-control. In this article, the author develops an agent-causal account of agential control that explains both claims. It is suggested that the work of phenomenologist Hans Reiner shows us why the feeling of (...) agency extends further than that which is directly controlled; this provides a way of addressing the puzzle above, while also explaining why many beginner meditators are surprised that much conscious thought is uncontrolled. The author then extends the account by appealing to William James’s notion of the fringe of consciousness, a notion that has been extensively developed by thinkers in the phenomenological tradition, in particular, Aron Gurwitsch. Inspired by Bruce Mangan’s use of the fringe in service of “explanatory phenomenology,” the author argues that Gurwitsch’s model of awareness suggests that the fringe makes possible a distinctive type of choice. This facilitates an account of agency that can explain the types of control possessed during different stages of mindfulness practice. (shrink)

Psychological literature indicates that actions performed with the assistance of cognition‐enhancing biomedical technologies are often deemed to be less praiseworthy than similar actions performed without such assistance. This study examines (i) whether this result extends to the bioenhancement of moral capacities, and (ii) if so, what explains the effect of moral bioenhancement on perceived praiseworthiness. The findings indicate that actions facilitated by morally bioenhanced individuals are considered less deserving of praise than similar actions facilitated by ‘traditional’ moral enhancement—for example, moral (...) self‐education. This diminished praise does not seem to be driven by an aversion to (moral) bioenhancement per se. Instead, it appears to be primarily attributable to a perceived lack of effort exerted by bioenhanced individuals in the course of their moral enhancement. Our findings advance the philosophical discourse on the foundations of praise in the context of moral bioenhancement by elucidating the empirical basis underlying some assumptions commonly employed to argue for or against the permissibility of moral bioenhancement. (shrink)

In this paper I consider recent developments in neo-pragmatism, and in particular the degree of convergence between such approaches and those placing greater emphasis on truth and truth-makers. I urge that although a global pragmatism has its merits, it by no means closes the space for a more Wittgensteinian, finer-grained, approach to the diversity of functions served by modal, causal, moral, or other modes of thought.

No piece of the present conjuncture is more alarming than the explosive growth of the American prison population since the late 1970s. The prison has been a critical element of American government since the early 19th century, but the mentalities of rule and the technologies of power linked to the prison, have changed several times during that history. Building more prison cells, therefore, does not have the same constancy of meaning that building more tanks or more strategic bombers does. While (...) the prison has played a crucial role in construction of successful political orders since the American Revolution, its role at present is unprecedented. In the current era of the neo_liberal, neo_conservative, post_New Deal state, which we can call for shorthand, the "Carceral State," the prison has become the very meaning of sovereignty: a steel leviathan in which an increasingly hollowed out version of the state comes to rest with brutal force on selected parts of the population. (shrink)

The Gibbs Paradox is essentially a set of open questions as to how sameness of gases or fluids are to be treated in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. They have a variety of answers, some restricted to quantum theory, some to classical theory. The solution offered here applies to both in equal measure, and is based on the concept of particle indistinguishability. Correctly understood, it is the elimination of sequence position as a labelling device, where sequences enter at the level of (...) the tensor product of one-particle state spaces. In both cases it amounts to passing to the quotient space under permutations. ‘Distinguishability’, in the sense in which it is usually used in classical statistical mechanics, is a mathematically convenient, but physically muddled, fiction. (shrink)

Transformative theories of human nature posit that the genus of animality is wholly transformed by the specific difference of reason. The aim of this paper is to show that the two most prominent transformative approaches, ‘resolute’ and dialectical’, face a dialectical impasse that Helmuth Plessner’s philosophical anthropology is able to resolve. First, I outline objections to the resolute approach which motivate the ‘dialectical’ turn to second nature. Second, I show that the dialectical approach faces a dilemma. It either runs into (...) an internal ‘interaction problem’ by its qualitative distinction of nature and spirit. Or it assimilates both in a way that either amounts to a collapse into the resolute approach or which creates the problem of a merely ‘artificial naturalness’. Third, I reconstruct Plessner’s ‘form-typological’ approach to how the genus living being is differentiated into structural types. This enables a dilemma-free rendition of transformation as ‘natural artificiality’: it is human first nature to seek embodied expression in second nature. (shrink)

Nick Hopwood, Simon Schaffer and Jim Secord, “Seriality and scientific objects in the nineteenth century”, History of Science, xlviii. Series represent much that was new and significant in the sciences between the French Revolution and the First World War. From periodical publication to the cinema, tabulation to industrialized screening, series feature in major innovations in scientific communication and the organization of laboratories, clinics, libraries, museums and field - XIXe siècle – Nouvel article.

A paradigm of a meme, in its contemporary sense, is an image macro – an image copied by users, who customize it by adding their own text according to implicitly prescribed norms. The native medium of philosophy is language, generally in the form of either discursive text or Socratic discussion. This chapter suggests there are two features of human existence that stand to meme‐making in something of the same relation as spontaneous dance does to choreography. These features are bricolage and (...) ownership. In such memes, figures, despite some superficial appearance of belonging to another mythological type, actually exemplify the trickster. Ownership is a fundamental feature of human life. It extends well beyond material possessions to encompass our words, ideas, and actions. Many meme templates originate in the unrestricted web and are subsequently “normified” as they move to the restricted web where most of us encounter them. (shrink)

This article contributes to ongoing discussions in the social sciences about how to interpret the incorporation of gender equality into integration policies – is it a form of state feminism or femonationalism? Drawing upon intersectionality, we analyse how gender equality is presented, discussed and negotiated in relation to ethnicity and nationality in Sweden. Methodologically, we employ a bifocal lens that combines (1) a quantitative investigation of representations of civic orientation programmes in Swedish policy documents and mainstream media, and (2) a (...) qualitative analysis of ethnographic data collected in six civic orientation courses – three in English and three in Arabic – in three large municipalities. Such a two-pronged approach, which connects policy and media discourses with interactions in civic orientation classes, offers a granular picture of the complex and often ambivalent intersections of ethnicity and gender in relation to migration in Sweden. Ultimately, the co-optation of feminist values brings with it the risk of warping feminism into a trait of national/ethnic distinctiveness. Crucially, femonationalism is not the prerogative of far-right parties but is already becoming institutionalised, informing both mainstream media and educational practices in a feminist state like Sweden. (shrink)

Bringing together evidence from natural and social sciences, the work introduces the non-reductionist Instruction Grammar programme. Viewed from within the practicalities of the lifeworld, utterances are described as instructions to simulate perceptions and attributions for action. The approach provides solutions to long-standing philosophical problems of cognitive grammar theories and traditionally puzzling syntactic phenomena.

This article is concerned with the philosophical question of what it is like to experience an adventure. It draws from four works that discuss this question, namely Georg Simmel’s “The Adventure,” Jean-Paul Sartre’s “Nausea,” de Beauvoir’s “Ethics of Ambiguity,” and Vladimir Jankélévitch’s “Adventure, Boredom, Seriousness.” From these works, three characteristics of adventurous experiences are drawn. The first is that adventure is something that can only exist in contrast with everyday life. The second is that adventure has a goal-directed structure. The (...) last is that adventures have a different structure in hindsight than they have in the moments that they are lived. These characteristics are used to shed new light on the desire for adventure and a meaningful life in contemporary society. (shrink)

In ‘Geschlecht: Sexual Difference, Ontological Difference’, Derrida develops a reading of Heidegger’s ‘neutral’ term ‘Dasein’ that highlights its openness to a conception of sexual difference that is not yet binary. I explore this theme in relation to two further lines of thought. The first draws Heidegger’s remarks on Dasein’s factually concrete existence into correspondence with the European humanist tradition and the implications this reveals concerning a still binary determination of sex difference in Heidegger’s conception of existence in its sexual being. (...) The second engages with Derrida’s own affirmation of a beyond binary conception of existence in its sexual being, a conception elaborated in this article in terms of singular sexual styles that are strictly irreducible to the organic bodily characteristics and behaviour of a living human being. (shrink)

In this truly interdisciplinary study that reflects the author's work in philosophy, political science, law, and policy studies, Thomas W. Simon argues that democratic theory must address the social injustices inflicted upon disadvantaged groups. By shifting theoretical sights from justice to injustice, Simon recasts the nature of democracy and provides a new perspective on social problems. He examines the causes and effects of injustice, victims' responses to injustice, and historical theories of disadvantage, revealing that those theories have important (...) repercussions for contemporary policy debates. Finally, Simon considers which institutions and practices come within the grasp of democracy and discusses the concept of a 'Negative Utopia,' or a future without injustice. (shrink)