It is commonly thought that before the introduction of quantum mechanics, determinism was a straightforward consequence of the laws of mechanics. However, around the nineteenth century, many physicists, for various reasons, did not regard determinism as a provable feature of physics. This is not to say that physicists in this period were not committed to determinism; there were some physicists who argued for fundamental indeterminism, but most were committed to determinism in some sense. However, for them, (...) determinism was often not a provable feature of physical theory, but rather an a priori principle or a methodological presupposition. Determinism was strongly connected with principles of causality and continuity and the principle of sufficient reason; this thesis examines the relevance of these principles in the history of physics. Moreover, the history of determinism in this period shows that there were essential changes in the relation between mathematics and physics: whereas in the eighteenth century, there were metaphysical arguments which lent support to differential calculus, by the early twentieth century the development of rigorous foundations of differential calculus led to concerns about its applicability in physics. The thesis consists of six papers. In the first paper, "On the origins and foundations of Laplacian determinism", I argue that Laplace, who is usually pointed out as the first major proponent of scientific determinism, did not derive his statement of determinism directly from the laws of mechanics; rather, his determinism has a background in eighteenth century Leibnizian metaphysics, and is ultimately based on the law of continuity and the principle of sufficient reason. These principles also provided a basis for the idea that one can find laws of nature in the form of differential equations which uniquely determine natural processes. In "The Norton dome and the nineteenth century foundations of determinism", I argue that an example of indeterminism in classical physics which has attracted attention in philosophy of physics in recent years, namely the Norton come, was already discussed during the nineteenth century. However, the significance which this type of indeterminism had back then is very different from the significance which the Norton dome currently has in philosophy of physics. This is explained by the fact that determinism was conceived of in an essentially different way: in particular, the nineteenth century authors who wrote about this type of indeterminism regarded determinism as an a priori principle rather than as a property of the equations of physics. In "Vital instability: life and free will in physics and physiology, 1860-1880", I show how Maxwell, Cournot, Stewart and Boussinesq used the possibility of unstable or indeterministic mechanical systems to argue that the will or a vital principle can intervene in organic processes without violating the laws of physics, so that a strictly dualist account of life and the mind is possible. Moreover, I show that their ideas can be understood as a reaction to the law of conservation of energy and to the way it was used in physiology to exclude vital and mental causes. In "The nineteenth century conflict between mechanism and irreversibility", I show that in the late nineteenth century, there was a widespread conflict between the aim of reducing physical processes to mechanics and the recognition that certain processes are irreversible. Whereas the so-called reversibility objection is known as an objection that was made to the kinetic theory of gases, it in fact appeared in a wide range of arguments, and was susceptible to very different interpretations. It was only when the project of reducing all of physics to mechanics lost favor, in the late nineteenth century, that the reversibility objection came to be used as an argument against mechanism and against the kinetic theory of gases. In "Continuity in nature and in mathematics: Boltzmann and Poincaré", I show that the development of rigorous foundations of differential calculus in the nineteenth century led to concerns about its applicability in physics: through this development, differential calculus was made independent of empirical and intuitive notions of continuity and was instead based on mathematical continuity conditions, and for Boltzmann and Poincaré, the applicability of differential calculus in physics depended on whether these continuity conditions could be given a foundation in intuition or experience. In the final paper, "Determinism around 1900", I briefly discuss the implications of the developments described in the previous two papers for the history of determinism in physics, through a discussion of determinism in Mach, Poincaré and Boltzmann. I show that neither of them regards determinism as a property of the laws of mechanics; rather, for them, determinism is a precondition for science, which can be verified to the extent that science is successful. (shrink)

The general theme of this article is the actual practice of how definitions are justified and formulated in mathematics. The theoretical insights of this article are based on a case study of topological definitions of chaos. After introducing this case study, I identify the three kinds of justification which are important for topological definitions of chaos: natural-world-justification, condition-justification and redundancy-justification. To my knowledge, the latter two have not been identified before. I argue that these three kinds of justification are widespread (...) in mathematics. After that, I first discuss the state of the art in the literature about the justification of definitions in the light of actual mathematical practice. I then go on to criticize Lakatos’s account of proof-generated definitions—the main account in the literature on this issue—as being limited and also misguided: as for topological definitions of chaos, in nearly all mathematical fields various kinds of justification are found and are also reasonable. (shrink)

Legendary since his own time as a universal genius, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) contributed significantly to almost every branch of learning. One of the creators of modern mathematics, and probably the most sophisticated logician between the Middle Ages and Frege, as well as a pioneer of ecumenical theology, he also wrote extensively on such diverse subjects as history, geology, and physics. But the part of his work that is most studied today is probably his writings in metaphysics, which have been (...) the focus of particularly lively philosophical discussion in the last twenty years or so. The writings contain one of the great classic systems of modern philosophy, but the system must be pieced together from a vast and miscellaneous array of manuscripts, letters, articles, and books, in a way that makes especially strenuous demands on scholarship. This book presents an in-depth interpretation of three important parts of Leibniz's metaphysics, thoroughly grounded in the texts as well as in philosophical analysis and critique. The three areas discussed are the metaphysical part of Leibniz's philosophy of logic, his essentially theological treatment of the central issues of ontology, and his theory of substance (the famous theory of monads). (shrink)

A strongly deterministic theory of physics is one that permits exactly one possible history of the universe. In the words of Penrose (1989), "it is not just a matter of the future being determined by the past; the entire history of the universe is fixed, according to some precise mathematical scheme, for all time.” Such an extraordinary feature may appear unattainable in a world like ours. In this paper, I show that it can be achieved in a simple way and (...) discuss its implications for metaphysics and philosophy of science, including natural properties, free will, explanation, and modality. First, I propose a precise definition of strong determinism. Next, I discuss its philosophical ramifications and a toy example. Finally, I provide a realistic example of a strongly deterministic (and simple) physical theory---the Everettian Wentaculus. A surprising consequence is that whether or not our world is strongly deterministic may be empirically underdetermined. (shrink)

The central question of this paper is: are deterministic and indeterministic descriptions observationally equivalent in the sense that they give the same predictions? I tackle this question for measure-theoretic deterministic systems and stochastic processes, both of which are ubiquitous in science. I first show that for many measure-theoretic deterministic systems there is a stochastic process which is observationally equivalent to the deterministic system. Conversely, I show that for all stochastic processes there is a measure-theoretic deterministic system which is observationally equivalent (...) to the stochastic process. Still, one might guess that the measure-theoretic deterministic systems which are observationally equivalent to stochastic processes used in science do not include any deterministic systems used in science. I argue that this is not so because deterministic systems used in science even give rise to Bernoulli processes. Despite this, one might guess that measure-theoretic deterministic systems used in science cannot give the same predictions at every observation level as stochastic processes used in science. By proving results in ergodic theory, I show that also this guess is misguided: there are several deterministic systems used in science which give the same predictions at every observation level as Markov processes. All these results show that measure-theoretic deterministic systems and stochastic processes are observationally equivalent more often than one might perhaps expect. Furthermore, I criticise the claims of the previous philosophy papers Suppes (1993, 1999), Suppes and de Barros (1996) and Winnie (1998) on observational equivalence. (shrink)

This is the only book to chart the history and development of modern probability theory. It shows how in the first thirty years of this century probability theory became a mathematical science. The author also traces the development of probabilistic concepts and theories in statistical and quantum physics. There are chapters dealing with chance phenomena, as well as the main mathematical theories of today, together with their foundational and philosophical problems. Among the theorists whose work is treated at some length (...) are Kolmogorov, von Mises and de Finetti. The principal audience for the book comprises philosophers and historians of science, mathematicians concerned with probability and statistics, and physicists. The book will also interest anyone fascinated by twentieth-century scientific developments because the birth of modern probability is closely tied to the change from a determinist to an indeterminist world-view. (shrink)

The hole argument concludes that substantivalism about spacetime entails the radical indeterminism of the general theory of relativity (GR). In this paper, I amend and defend a response to the hole argument first proposed by Butterfield (1989) that relies on the idea of counterpart substantivalism. My amendment clarifies and develops the metaphysical presuppositions of counterpart substantivalism and its relation to various definitions of determinism. My defence consists of two claims. First, contra Weatherall (2018) and others: the hole argument is (...) not a blunder resulting from a mistaken view on how mathematical physics works, and requires a developed (meta)metaphysical response. Second, contra Melia (1999) and others: one can be content with a notion of determinism for GR which is not sensitive to merely haecceitistic differences. (shrink)

This is the only book to chart the history and development of modern probability theory. It shows how in the first thirty years of this century probability theory became a mathematical science. The author also traces the development of probabilistic concepts and theories in statistical and quantum physics. There are chapters dealing with chance phenomena, as well as the main mathematical theories of today, together with their foundational and philosophical problems. Among the theorists whose work is treated at some length (...) are Kolmogorov, von Mises and de Finetti. The principal audience for the book comprises philosophers and historians of science, mathematicians concerned with probability and statistics, and physicists. The book will also interest anyone fascinated by twentieth-century scientific developments because the birth of modern probability is closely tied to the change from a determinist to an indeterminist world-view. (shrink)

A longstanding question at the intersection of science, philosophy, and theology is how God might act, or not, when governing the universe. Many believe that determinism would prevent God from acting at all, since to do so would require violating the laws of nature. However, when a robust view of these laws is coupled with the kind of determinism now used in dynamics, a new model of divine action emerges. This book presents a new approach to divine (...) action beyond the current focus on quantum mechanics and esoteric gaps in the causal order. It bases this approach on two general points. First, that there are laws of nature is not merely a metaphor. Second, laws and physical determinism are now understood in mathematically precise ways that have important implications for metaphysics. The explication of these two claims shows not only that nonviolationist divine action is possible, but there is considerably more freedom available for God to act than current models allow. By bringing a philosophical perspective to an issue often dominated by theologians and scientists, this text redresses an imbalance in the discussion around divine action. It will, therefore, be of keen interest to scholars of Philosophy and Religion, the Philosophy of Science, and Theology. (shrink)

Determinism and chance seem to be irreconcilable opposites: either something is chancy or it is deterministic but not both. Yet there are processes which appear to square the circle by being chancy and deterministic at once, and the appearance is backed by well-confirmed scientific theories such as statistical mechanics which also seem to provide us with chances for deterministic processes. Is this possible, and if so how? In this essay I discuss this question for probabilities as they occur in (...) the empirical sciences, setting aside metaphysical questions in connection with free will, divine intervention and determinism in history. (shrink)

We propose a distinction between two different concepts of time that play a role in physics: geometric time and creative time. The former is the time of deterministic physics and merely parametrizes a given evolution. The latter is instead characterized by real change, i.e. novel information that gets created when a non-necessary event becomes determined in a fundamentally indeterministic physics. This allows us to give a naturalistic characterization of the present as the moment that separates the potential future from the (...) determined past. We discuss how these two concepts find natural applications in classical and intuitionistic mathematics, respectively, and in classical and multivalued tensed logic, as well as how they relate to the well-known A- and B-theories in the philosophy of time. (shrink)

We investigate two large families of logics, differing from each other by the treatment of negation. The logics in one of them are obtained from the positive fragment of classical logic (with or without a propositional constant ff for “the false”) by adding various standard Gentzen-type rules for negation. The logics in the other family are similarly obtained from LJ+, the positive fragment of intuitionistic logic (again, with or without ff). For all the systems, we provide simple semantics which is (...) based on non-deterministic four-valued or three-valued structures, and prove soundness and completeness for all of them. We show that the role of each rule is to reduce the degree of non-determinism in the corresponding systems. We also show that all the systems considered are decidable, and our semantics can be used for the corresponding decision procedures. Most of the extensions of LJ+ (with or without ff) are shown to be conservative over the underlying logic, and it is determined which of them are not. (shrink)

In a paper fifteen years ago about the meaning and the possibility of the beginning and end of time, our redoubtable session chair, John Earman, ended up like this:…[T]he answers to the questions posed at the outset lie somewhere in a thicket of problems growing out of the intersection of mathematics, physics, and metaphysics. This paper has only located the thicket and engaged in a little initial bush beating. This is not much progress, but knowing which bushes to beat is (...) a necessary first step.Some philosophers will be disappointed that the thicket is populated by so many problems of a technical and scientific nature. On the contrary, I am encouraged by this result because it shows that a long-standing philosophical problem has a nontrivial and, indeed, a surprisingly large content. Moreover, this result is a good illustration of the artificiality and danger of trying to separate philosophy from science. (Earman 1977, p. 131-2)These remarks are a kind of manifesto of an approach to philosophical questions about space and time dating from the late 1960’s. (shrink)

The paper revisits the old controversy over causality and determinism and argues, in the first place, that non˗deterministic theories of modern science are largely irrelevant to the philosophical issue of the causality principle. As it seems to be the ‘moral’ of the uncertainty principle, the reason why a deterministic theory cannot be applied to the description of certain physical systems is that it is impossible to capture such properties of the system, which are required by a desired theory. These (...) properties constitute what is called ‘the state’ of a system. However, the notion of a state of a system is relative: it depends on a particular theory which one would like to use to describe given kinds of phenomena. This implies that, even in the case where the desired state of a system is fundamentally impossible to be captured, neither ontological nor epistemological determinism may be excluded. Some following critical considerations are also offered with regard to the claim that uncertainty is “rooted in the things themselves”. The cradle of modern discussions about causality and determinism is, of course, quantum mechanics. Because, as it appears, a judgment on deterministic or non˗deterministic character of a theory can be made only after some interpretation of this theory has been given, the paper briefly reminds some chosen interpretations of quantum mechanics (Schrödinger's, probabilistic, statistical, Copenhagen, and the interpretation of quantum ensembles). Many of such interpretations, offered in the past, have now been rejected, and some gained more credibility than the others. Nonetheless, even the claim that indeterminism is irremovable from the description of the micro-world doesn't imply the rejection of the most general formula of the philosophical causality principle. There is no direct implication between theses of the epistemology of scientific knowledge and those of the ontology of the real world. (shrink)

Schistosomiasis, a vector-borne chronically debilitating infectious disease, is a serious public health concern for humans and animals in the affected tropical and sub-tropical regions. We formulate and theoretically analyze a deterministic mathematical model with snail and bovine hosts. The basic reproduction number R0\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$R_0$$\end{document} is computed and used to investigate the local stability of the model’s steady states. Global stability of the endemic equilibrium is carried out by constructing a suitable Lyapunov function. (...) Sensitivity analysis shows that the basic reproduction number is most sensitive to the model parameters related to the contaminated environment, namely: shedding rate of cercariae by snails, cercariae to miracidia survival probability, snails-miracidia effective contact rate and natural death rate of miracidia and cercariae. Numerical results show that when no intervention measures are implemented, there is an increase of the infected classes, and a rapid decline of the number of susceptible and exposed bovines and snails. Effects of the variation of some of the key sensitive model parameters on the schistosomiasis dynamics as well as on the initial disease transmission threshold parameter R0\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$R_0$$\end{document} are graphically depicted. (shrink)

Because climate change can be seen as the blind spot of contemporary philosophy of technology, while the destructive side effects of technological progress are no longer deniable, this article reflects on the role of technologies in the constitution of the (post)Anthropocene world. Our first hypothesis is that humanity is not the primary agent involved in world-production, but concrete technologies. Our second hypothesis is that technological inventions at an ontic level have an ontological impact and constitutes world. As we object (...) to classical philosophers of technology like Ihde and Heidegger, we will sketch the progressive contribution of our conceptuality to understand the role of technology in the Anthropocene world. Our third hypothesis is that technology has emancipatory potential and in this respect, can inaugurate a post-Anthropocene World. We consider these three hypotheses to develop a philosophical account of the ontology of technology beyond an abstract and deterministic understanding. This concept enables us to philosophically reflect on the role of technology in the Anthropocene World in general, and its contribution to the transition to the post-Anthropocene World in particular. (shrink)

The notion of (deterministic) chaos is frequently used in an increasing number of scientific (as well as non-scientific) contexts, ranging from mathematics and the physics of dynamical systems to all sorts of complicated time evolutions, e.g., in chemistry, biology, physiology, economy, sociology, and even psychology. Despite (or just because of) these widespread applications, however, there seem to fluctuate around several misunderstandings about the actual impact of deterministic chaos on several problems of philosophical interest, e.g., on matters of prediction and computability, (...) and determinism and the free will. In order to clarify these points a survey of the meaning variance of the concept(s) of deterministic chaos, or the various contexts in which it is applied, is given, and its actual epistemological implications are extracted. In summary, it turns out that the various concepts of deterministic chaos do not constitute a “new science”, or a “revolutionary” change of the “scientific world picture”. Instead, chaos research provides a sort of toolbox of methods which are certainly useful for a more detailed analysis and understanding of such dynamical systems which are, roughly speaking, endowed with the property of exponential sensitivity on initial conditions. Such a property, then, implies merely one, but quantitatively strong type of limitation of long-time computability and predictability, respectively. (shrink)

The determinism-free will debate is perhaps as old as philosophy itself and has been engaged in from a great variety of points of view including those of scientific, theological, and logical character. This chapter focuses on two arguments from logic. First, there is an argument in support of determinism that dates back to Aristotle, if not farther. It rests on acceptance of the Law of Excluded Middle, according to which every proposition is either true or false, no (...) matter whether the proposition is about the past, present or future. In particular, the argument goes, whatever one does or does not do in the future is determined in the present by the truth or falsity of the corresponding proposition. The second argument coming from logic is much more modern and appeals to Gödel's incompleteness theorems to make the case against determinism and in favour of free will, insofar as that applies to the mathematical potentialities of human beings. The claim more precisely is that as a consequence of the incompleteness theorems, those potentialities cannot be exactly circumscribed by the output of any computing machine even allowing unlimited time and space for its work. The chapter concludes with some new considerations that may be in favour of a partial mechanist account of the mathematical mind. (shrink)

In this article I examine two mathematical definitions of observational equivalence, one proposed by Charlotte Werndl and based on manifest isomorphism, and the other based on Ornstein and Weiss’s ε-congruence. I argue, for two related reasons, that neither can function as a purely mathematical definition of observational equivalence. First, each definition permits of counterexamples; second, overcoming these counterexamples will introduce non-mathematical premises about the systems in question. Accordingly, the prospects for a broadly applicable and purely mathematical definition of observational equivalence (...) are unpromising. Despite this critique, I suggest that Werndl’s proposals are valuable because they clarify the distinction between provable and unprovable elements in arguments for observational equivalence. (shrink)

"This book develops a rigorous theory of indeterminism as a local and modal concept. Its crucial insight is that our world contains events or processes with alternative, really possible outcomes. The theory aims at clarifying what this assumption involves, and it does it in two ways. First, it provides a mathematically rigorous framework for local and modal indeterminism. Second, we support that theory by spelling out the philosophically relevant consequences of this formulation and by showing its fruitful applications in metaphysics. (...) To this end, we offer a formal analysis of modal correlations and of causation, which is applicable in indeterministic and non-local contexts as well. We also propose a rigorous theory of objective single-case probabilities, intended to represent degrees of possibility. In a third step, we link our theory to current physics, investigating how local and modal indeterminism relates to issues in the foundations of physics, in particular, quantum non-locality and spatio-temporal relativity. The book also ventures into the philosophy of time, showing how the theory's resources can be used to explicate the dynamic concept of the past, present, and future based on local indeterminism"--. (shrink)

In computational complexity theory, decision problems are divided into complexity classes based on the amount of computational resources it takes for algorithms to solve them. In theoretical computer science, it is commonly accepted that only functions for solving problems in the complexity class P, solvable by a deterministic Turing machine in polynomial time, are considered to be tractable. In cognitive science and philosophy, this tractability result has been used to argue that only functions in P can feasibly work as (...) computational models of human cognitive capacities. One interesting area of computational complexity theory is descriptive complexity, which connects the expressive strength of systems of logic with the computational complexity classes. In descriptive complexity theory, it is established that only first-order systems are connected to P, or one of its subclasses. Consequently, second-order systems of logic are considered to be computationally intractable, and may therefore seem to be unfit to model human cognitive capacities. This would be problematic when we think of the role of logic as the foundations of mathematics. In order to express many important mathematical concepts and systematically prove theorems involving them, we need to have a system of logic stronger than classical first-order logic. But if such a system is considered to be intractable, it means that the logical foundation of mathematics can be prohibitively complex for human cognition. In this paper I will argue, however, that this problem is the result of an unjustified direct use of computational complexity classes in cognitive modelling. Placing my account in the recent literature on the topic, I argue that the problem can be solved by considering computational complexity for humanly relevant problem solving algorithms and input sizes. (shrink)

A tension between perspectives that emphasize deterministic versus stochastic processes has sparked controversy in ecology since pre-Darwinian times. The most recent manifestation of the contrasting perspectives arose with Hubbell’s proposed “neutral theory”, which hypothesizes a paramount role for stochasticity in ecological community composition. Here we shall refer to the deterministic and the stochastic perspectives as the niche-based and neutral-based research programs, respectively. Our goal is to represent these perspectives in the context of Lakatos’ notion of a scientific research program. We (...) argue that the niche-based program exhibits all the characteristics of a robust, progressive research program, including the ability to deal with disconfirming data by generating new testable predictions within the program. In contrast, the neutral-based program succeeds as a mathematical tool to capture, as epiphenomena, broad-scale patterns of ecological communities but appears to handle disconfirming data by incorporating hypotheses and assumptions from outside the program, specifically, from the niche-based program. We conclude that the neutral research program fits the Lakatosian characterization of a degenerate research program. (shrink)

The domain of nonlinear dynamical systems and its mathematical underpinnings has been developing exponentially for a century, the last 35 years seeing an outpouring of new ideas and applications and a concomitant confluence with ideas of complex systems and their applications from irreversible thermodynamics. A few examples are in meteorology, ecological dynamics, and social and economic dynamics. These new ideas have profound implications for our understanding and practice in domains involving complexity, predictability and determinism, equilibrium, control, planning, individuality, responsibility (...) and so on. Our intention is to draw together in this volume, we believe for the first time, a comprehensive picture of the manifold philosophically interesting impacts of recent developments in understanding nonlinear systems and the unique aspects of their complexity. The book will focus specifically on the philosophical concepts, principles, judgments and problems distinctly raised by work in the domain of complex nonlinear dynamical systems, especially in recent years. -Comprehensive coverage of all main theories in the philosophy of Complex Systems -Clearly written expositions of fundamental ideas and concepts -Definitive discussions by leading researchers in the field -Summaries of leading-edge research in related fields are also included. (shrink)

This volume contains monologues and dialogues in which the most basic questions of psychoanalysis, philosophy, and logic are given clear and cogent answers. Table of Contents: 30 Laws of Logic Different Kinds of Mathematical Functions: A Dialogue Functions, Bijections, and Mapping-relations What is Logic? Outline of a Theory of Knowledge Determinism, Indeterminism, and Personal Freedom A Dialogue Neurosis vs. Psychosis What determines whether one is happy? Compulsive Work Stuttering How men and women are different One learns from adversity, (...) not from failure Does everybody want money? The #1 Rule of Writing Lack of Coordination Mental Illness: The Ultimate Litmus Test The #1 Rule of Business Honesty and Integrity A Dialogue Anger A Dialogue What is Bullshit? A Short Treatise on Causality Part 1: Causality and Continuity Part 2 : Causation and Explanation Part 3: Causation and Counterfactual Truth Part 4: Program-causation Part 5: The four different kinds of causes involved in the development of mental illness Part 6: Singular Causation Obsessions and Compulsions A Dialogue concerning OCD Writing Animated Dialogues as Self-Analysis: A Dialogue Neurotic Anxiety as Rational Fear: A Dialogue Agency Analyticity Anomalous Monism Bullshit Two Kinds of Insanity Ignorance of the Future Justice Proof that Time-Travel is Impossible Rationality vs. Intelligence: A Dialogue. (shrink)

The Philosophy of Freedom describes Rudolf Steiner's path to freedom. It contains the nonconformist ideals of his youth that result from his study of mathematics, science, and philosophy culminating in a philosophy of life founded upon individualistic truth and ethical individualism. This is the first English translation and the only one sanctioned by Rudolf Steiner himself. Joint translators Prof. and Mrs. R. F. Alfred Hoernlé were selected for their outstanding qualifications. First published in 1916, it is based (...) on the original 1894 German "Die Philosophie der Freiheit". Other translations have been based on the 1918 revised German edition and renamed "The Philosophy Of Spiritual Activity" and "Intuitive Thinking As A Spiritual Path". This original edition includes inspiring passages about individualism that were removed from the book in 1918 and are missing in later translations: "We no longer believe that there is a norm to which we must all strive to conform." "If only we probe deep enough into the very heart of our being, there dwells something noble, something worthy of development." Learn all about Rudolf Steiner's The Philosophy Of Freedom at https: //philosophyoffreedom.com/. (shrink)

Arguments pertaining to the mind-brain connection and to the physical effectiveness of our conscious choices have been presented in two recent books, one by John Searle, the other by Jaegwon Kim. These arguments are examined, and it is explained how the encountered difficulties arise from a defective understanding and application of a pertinent part of contemporary science, namely quantum mechanics. The principled quantum uncertainties entering at the microscopic levels of brain processing cannot be confined to the micro level, but percolate (...) up to the macroscopic regime. To cope with the conflict between the resulting macroscopic indefiniteness and the definiteness of our conscious experiences, orthodox quantum mechanics introduces the idea of agent-generated probing actions, each of which specifies a definite set of alternative possible empirically/experientially distinguishable outcomes. Quantum theory then introduces the mathematical concept of randomness to describe the probabilities of the various alternative possible outcomes of the chosen probing action. But the agent-generated choice of which probing action to perform is not governed by any known law or rule, statistical or otherwise. This causal gap provides a logical opening, and indeed a logical need, for the entry into the dynamical structure of nature of a process that goes beyond the currently understood quantum mechanical statistical generalization of the deterministic laws of classical physics. The well-known quantum Zeno effect can then be exploited to provide a natural process that establishes a causal psychophysical link within the complex structure consisting of a stream of conscious experiences and certain macroscopic classical features of a quantum mechanically described brain. This naturally created causal link effectively allows consciously felt intentions to affect brain activity in a way that tends to produce the intended feedback. This quantum mechanism provides an eminently satisfactory alternative to the classical physics conclusion that the physical present is 1 completely determined by the physical past, and hence provides a physicsbased way out of the dilemma that Searle and Kim tried to resolve by philosophical analysis.. (shrink)

I have argued here for a change in a scientific world-view, from that of the study of forms to that of process. In doing so we need to understand as to how process creates form. In showing this I have at first drawn from the history of Buddhist philosophy; with its concepts of ‘Sunyata’ (Emptiness) and radical interdependency (Huayen). Then showed its parallel with modern Fractal geometries, which thru’ rather simple mathematics, shows as to how process could derive form. (...) I have then gone on to Quantum constructions, which is without doubt the most advanced scientific development in modern times, and attempted to show two vital directions which contradict the classical scientific world view. The usual scientific view retains a Descartian, ‘out there’ deterministic framework. I argue that with the break down of determinism, and the non locality of phenomena suggested by Quantum Mechanics allows for an independent functioning of consciousness; which then is not a mere epiphenomena of neural activity within the brain. Such a view has wide implications on how we live and how we die. (shrink)

This critical response to Dominic Smith’s ‘Taking Exception: Philosophy of Technology as a Multidimensional Problem Space’ begins by outlining the key contributions of his essay, namely his insightful approach to the transcendental, on the one hand, and his introduction of the topological problem space as an image for thought, on the other. The response then suggests ways of furthering this approach by addressing potential reservations about determinism. The response concludes by suggesting a way out of these questions of (...) determinism by thinking the transcendental in concert with the agonistic. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Philosophy of PhysicsMartin CurdRoberto Torretti. The Philosophy of Physics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Pp. xvi + 512. Cloth, $64.95. Paper, $23.95.This is the first volume in a new Cambridge series, "The Evolution of Modern Philosophy." It is a historical work, tracing the interaction between physics and philosophy from the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century through general relativity and quantum mechanics in (...) the twentieth century. The emphasis is on the philosophy in physics (rather than philosophizing about physics) and, with the exceptions noted below, the focus is on scientists (scientist-philosophers in many cases) rather than philosophers outside of science. Most of the book is about the conceptual and mathematical development of the core branches of physics (mainly mechanics, but also geometry, thermodynamics, and field theory). There are seven chapters plus three supplements giving the mathematical essentials of vector analysis, lattice theory, and topology.The hero of chapter one is Galileo who, more than anyone else prior to Newton, set physics on its modern path towards mathematization and away from Aristotle. Also discussed in chapter one are Descartes, Huyghens, and Leibniz. Chapter two is devoted to Newton (both the foundations of Newtonian mechanics and the derivation of the law of universal gravitation) and follows the development of analytical mechanics up to Lagrange and Hamilton. Chapter three, appropriately entitled "Kant," is the only chapter devoted to a philosopher. After a brief discussion of Leibniz, Berkeley, and Kant's pre-critical writings, it covers the important scientific topics in the Critique of Pure Reason (space, time, the three Analogies) but avoids the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (referring the reader to Michael Friedman's Kant and the Exact Sciences). Chapter four looks at scientific developments in three areas that proved to be important for twentieth-century physics: non-Euclidean geometry from Lobachevsky to Riemann, electromagnetic field theory (Maxwell), and thermal physics (classical thermodynamics, the kinetic theory, and statistical mechanics) from Carnot to Boltzmann. The chapter concludes, somewhat untidily, with a section on four philosophers of science (Whewell, Peirce, Mach, and Duhem), selected, we are told, because of their influence on philosophy of science in the second half of the twentieth century. (For the "two great philosopher-scientists" Helmholtz and Poincaré, the reader is referred to Torretti's earlier books, Philosophy of Geometry from Riemann to Poincaré, and Relativity and Geometry.) Chapter five covers both the special and general theory of relativity. After a masterful exposition of the special theory and its Minkowski spacetime representation, the usual topics of philosophical interest are discussed; these include the conventionality of simultaneity thesis, the twin paradox, the relativistic concept of mass, and determinism. The rather brief treatment of the general theory is, unavoidably, mathematically demanding and carries the subject through to recent inflationary cosmological models. Chapter six (also mathematically demanding at times) examines the development and structure of quantum mechanics, aptly praised as "one of the most elegant creations of the human spirit" (340). Torretti wisely ignores the complexities of quantum field theory since the philosophical problems discussed—measurement, the EPR paradox, the interpretation of the y-function—remain when quantum mechanics is made Lorentz invariant; but he urges philosophers of science to follow the lead of Michael Redhead and [End Page 602] Paul Teller in exploring its metaphysical ramifications. Of special note are the author's trenchant criticisms of attempts to solve the quantum mysteries by Bohr (complementarity), Bohm (hidden variables), Putnam (quantum logic), and Everett (the many worlds interpretation). The book concludes with the author's reflections on issues in the philosophy of science. Torretti defends the structuralist explication of physical theories (more familiarly known as the semantic conception or the model-theoretic view) that informs much of his book, arguing that it succeeds where the "received view" of logical empiricism failed while avoiding Kuhnian incommensurability—"a pseudoproblem that made philosophy of science the laughing stock of practicing physicists" (404). The chapter ends with an attack on inductive logic: "one of the blindest alleys in twentieth-century philosophy" (437).The writing is admirably clear and the author has done a commendable job of explaining the arguments of historical scientists while presenting their theories in a clear... (shrink)

When, in recent years, philosophers of science attend to the physical sciences, their activity centers on the analysis and clarification of the methods and theories of these sciences. Thus philosophers have made remarkable contributions to our understanding of mechanics, the relativity theory, the quantum theory, probability, and geometry, as well as to the foundations of mathematics. More general discussions about theory construction, explanation, and concept formation always are illustrated and illuminated by reference to specific theories within science. In our generation, (...) most philosophers of science have taken for granted that physical science is descriptive, empirical, functional, and—leaving aside controversial interpretations of quanta—deterministic. (shrink)

Kant held the moral law to be an objective imperative, an entity in its own right. It carries with it prescriptive force, in parallel to other principles of pure reason, like those of logic and mathematics. Objective imperatives therefore do not derive their authority from any other source,such as common consensus or the will of God. In Objective Imperatives, Ralph C. S. Walker seeks to show that this is a highly defensible view: Kant's Categorical Imperative, properly understood, is broadly right. (...) The key to it is rationality, and not universality, which functions only as anapproximate test. Often, Kant sets the matter out badly, and most of the common objections to him can be shown to be due to misunderstandings. A morality that gives us an objective imperative does appear incompatible with the determinism to which Kant commits himself, but Walker argues that thisappearance is misleading. (shrink)

The philosophical problems discussed by the author of this scientifically erudite work concern the usual and much debated questions of the role of causality in microphysics and the "completeness" and "indeterminism" of statistical theories in natural science. Blokhintsev, the author of a highly-regarded Russian text on quantum theory, advocates the direct opposite of the Einsteinian thesis; and furthermore, he seems to interpret the alleged irreducibly statistical nature of physical theory in a quite literal ontological sense. "We must now accept," he (...) says, "that we cannot ignore the element of games of chance in the behavior of the universe." The materials adduced in support of this thesis consist almost entirely of various essays in theoretical physics, which, while undoubtedly relevant to the question at issue, will be accessible in their details and content only to those philosophers with better than average mathematical acumen, particularly in classical analysis. Unfortunately, as so often happens in discussions of this type, the author's scientific expertise is not matched by his degree of philosophical rigor and awareness of important conceptual distinctions. Thus, although the concept of measurement in quantum mechanics and the differences between "direct" and "derived" measurement play a central role in his argument, the author seems unaware of the important logical differences which are brought out by rigorous postulational treatments of measurement theory. Moreover, when the author argues, convincingly enough, that even classical Newtonian mechanics is not a fit candidate for the label of "deterministic theory" if such factors as random fluctuations in the initial conditions and lack of isolation of actual physical systems are taken into account, he seems to forget that this is not the basis on which deterministic status is properly assigned to classical physical theory in the first place. It is physical theory as applied to suitably idealized physical systems which is held to be deterministic, and the same sort of idealizations are commonly assumed when quantum mechanics is said to be indeterministic.--H. P. K. (shrink)

The book deals with the changing nature and with the history of the concept of scientific determinism from the classical mechanics until the time immediately preceding quantum mechanics: such a historical-philosophical reconstruction is aimed at (1) signalizing and overcoming the deficiencies of the received opinion on the topic and (2) understanding better a concept which has influenced science from the beginning. -/- Before dealing with historical matters I develop in the first Chapter a kind of new, three-dimensional “measurement system” (...) for analyzing any concept of scientific determinism: many different concepts have been developed in the course of history, and we need a classification system which, on the one hand, is inclusive and broad enough to deal with different concepts; on the other hand, which makes possible to differentiate with some precision between them. My “measurement system” has three dimension or parameter: the “strength” (of the determining link between different states of the physical system), the “depth” (depending on how strong the ontological commitment of the particular concept of scientific determinism is), and the breadth (referring to the domain or the object, to which a deterministic evolution is ascribed). -/- In the second chapter I discuss briefly some main shortcomings of the received opinion about scientific determinism. Then I try to identify the “core” of scientific determinism at its origins while at the same time embedding it in the broader historical-cultural context especially of the Renaissance. On the one hand I show how the core of scientific determinism was mathematical, and this distinguished it from other related concepts, as mechanism, the principle of sufficient reason, and the aristotelic conception of science. On the other hand, precisely the support which these related concepts provided to scientific determinism, together with its mathematical nature, endowed it with an incredible resistance against empirical classification. -/- In the following three chapters I analyze the historic-philosophical development of scientific determinism along the three parameter of my measurement system. -/- In the third Chapter I reconstruct the weakening of scientific determinism with respect to its depth: the starting point is the question about the extent in which the deterministic mathematical descriptions do refer. In the development of mechanics into analytical mechanics the more and more formal character of its mathematical descriptions became evident and it became less obvious that these formal, deterministic structures also have an immediate material truth. Parallel developments within epistemology, starting with Kantian philosophy (which I deal with quite in detail), let the deterministic structures (principle, laws, equations, causal relations) appear less absolute and real and more as a product of reason, as conventions, or as models. A brief consideration of the interpretation of mechanics and its principles by Jacobi, Hertz, Mach and Poincaré shows the implications of these developments. -/- The fourth chapter reconstructs the weakening of scientific determinism with respect to the strength of the determining link: here my work deepens the track which has been opened by Ian Hacking, who interpreted the so-called “probabilistic revolution” in the 19th Century as the main reason for the erosion of determinism. The increasing pervasiveness of statistical methods in the social and natural sciences in the course of the 19th Century gave rise to a conception of scientific laws which could dispense with strict determinism. A new, empirical interpretation of probability (Frequentism) and the statistical explanation of thermodynamic phenomena in physics even suggested chance phenomena to be a necessary condition for the emergence of natural laws. -/- The last part of my work (Ch. 5, 6 and 7) considers the period (2nd half of the 19th century until ca. 1920) in which the concept of scientific determinism became explicit and was discussed as a world-picture or a world-view – that is, in its maximal breadth. I argue that there were two main reasons for the emergence of an explicit and ideological opposition “determinism vs. indeterminism” at that time: the first was the successful application of the deterministic paradigm to sociology, history, physiology and psychology in the course of the 19th Century, which provided scientific determinism with ethical implications (in particular with respect to the problem of free will, which scientific determinism seemed to deny). The second, related reason is that in the 19th Century natural scientists became public men, science was increasingly popularized and scientific issues were increasingly related to life-issues, to worldview-questions, and even to politics. In Chapter 6 I reconstruct the debates on the issue “determinism vs. indeterminism” in such a public, ideological and sometimes even political context. Among the discussants were Fechner, Du Bois-Reymond, Helmholtz, Bernard, Ostwald, Haeckel, Boussinesq, Maxwell, Boutroux, Poincaré, Renouvier, James und Peirce. Also in Vienna the debate on the issue of determinism was fervid and took ideological and political connotations: Michael Stöltzner and Deborah Coen have pointed to a particular tradition of “Vienna Indeterminism” (Stöltzner), or Viennese liberal probabilism (Coen), which was characterized by a strongly empirical conception of science and by the full acceptance and appreciation of statistical thinking in science. In the last Chapter of my work I focus on the early philosophy of Edgar Zilsel, a philosopher who stood near to the Vienna Circle and who has been much neglected in the literature by now, and I suggest considering it as part of the “Vienna Indeterminism”. First, I show how he gave an indeterministic foundation both to statistical and causal knowledge as well as to irreversibility in physics. Second, I inquire into his philosophy of probability and show how it developed in parallel to the ones of Hans Reichenbach and Richard von Mises. Finally, Zilsel happens to be a further, relevant case-study for pointing to the ideological and political side of the issue of determinism. -/- At the end of this reconstruction it should have become clear how no physical theory, no empirical evidence and no experimental confirmation can support or contradict scientific determinism in its non-trivial formulations. The validity of any such formulation depends strongly not only (from the systematical point of view) from the definition of other concepts (like time, physical state, causality etc.), but also from the particular conception of science which more or less implicitly constitutes its background, and which is subjected to historical change. -/- (ISBN: 9783495491034). (shrink)

The Empire of Chance tells how quantitative ideas of chance transformed the natural and social sciences, as well as daily life over the last three centuries. A continuous narrative connects the earliest application of probability and statistics in gambling and insurance to the most recent forays into law, medicine, polling and baseball. Separate chapters explore the theoretical and methodological impact in biology, physics and psychology. Themes recur - determinism, inference, causality, free will, evidence, the shifting meaning of probability - (...) but in dramatically different disciplinary and historical contexts. In contrast to the literature on the mathematical development of probability and statistics, this book centres on how these technical innovations remade our conceptions of nature, mind and society. Written by an interdisciplinary team of historians and philosophers, this readable, lucid account keeps technical material to an absolute minimum. It is aimed not only at specialists in the history and philosophy of science, but also at the general reader and scholars in other disciplines. (shrink)

From the physical, mathematical, and conceptual points of view, Roger Joseph Boscovich’s original 1758 formulation of the principle of physical determinism and Pierre-Simon Laplace’s later 1814 ren...

In this important new study Ian Hacking continues the enquiry into the origins and development of certain characteristic modes of contemporary thought undertaken in such previous works as his best selling Emergence of Probability. Professor Hacking shows how by the late nineteenth century it became possible to think of statistical patterns as explanatory in themselves, and to regard the world as not necessarily deterministic in character. Combining detailed scientific historical research with characteristic philosophic breath and verve, The Taming of Chance (...) brings out the relations among philosophy, the physical sciences, mathematics and the development of social institutions, and provides a unique and authoritative analysis of the "probabilization" of the Western world. (shrink)

Quantum mechanics studies physical phenomena on a microscopic scale. These phenomena are far beyond the reach of our observation, and the connection between QM's mathematical formalism and the experimental results is very indirect. Furthermore, quantum indeterminism defies common sense. Microphysical experiments have shown that, according to the empirical context, electrons and quanta of light behave as waves and other times as particles, even though it is impossible to design an experiment that manifests both behaviors at the same time. Unlike Newtonian (...) physics, the properties of quantum systems are not all well-defined simultaneously. Moreover, quantum systems are not characterized by their properties, but by a wave function. Although one of the principles of the theory is the uncertainty principle, the trajectory of the wave function is controlled by the deterministic Schrödinger equations. But what is the wave function? Like other theories of the physical sciences, quantum theory assigns states to systems. The wave function is a particular mathematical representation of the quantum state of a physical system, which contains information about the possible states of the system and the respective probabilities of each state. (shrink)

This book analyzes the origins of statistical thinking as well as its related philosophical questions, such as causality, determinism or chance. Bayesian and frequentist approaches are subjected to a historical, cognitive and epistemological analysis, making it possible to not only compare the two competing theories, but to also find a potential solution. The work pursues a naturalistic approach, proceeding from the existence of numerosity in natural environments to the existence of contemporary formulas and methodologies to heuristic pragmatism, a concept (...) introduced in the book's final section. This monograph will be of interest to philosophers and historians of science and students in related fields. Despite the mathematical nature of the topic, no statistical background is required, making the book a valuable read for anyone interested in the history of statistics and human cognition. (shrink)

Every scientific or intellectual movement rests on central premises and assumptions that shape its philosophy. The purpose of this study is to review a brief account of the main philosophical bases of grey systems theory (GST) and the paradigm governing its principles. So, the recent studies on the philosophical foundations of GST have been reviewed and tried to pay attention to some key ambiguities in the previous studies and give more and clearer explanations in this paper. Also, this paper (...) tries to fill the gap among the previous studies and to provide a purposeful connection between them by expressing two key concepts: complete information and imbalance knowledge. Primarily, the study addresses the theoretical foundations of uncertainty and the concept of greyness. Next, it focuses on the notion of “complete information” and challenges to it. Then, it reviews such processes as perception, cognition, and understanding, as well as their dynamic nature. It explains how knowledge is produced through understanding and interpreting information/data and the dynamics governing the whole process. Also, the study describes any dataset, no matter how large it may be, will remain incomplete, imperfect, and grey, so humans only rely on incomplete datasets to interpret the world. As such, information and knowledge are always grey and uncertain because they are basically contingent on subjective understandings and interpretations and imperfect inputs and data. Finally, as a key development, this study also demonstrates that human grey knowledge remains imbalanced across different disciplines and spheres. In the end, a brief overview of the philosophical paradigm of GST is also provided. GST is depicted as an anti-realistic, anti-positivistic, and non-deterministic approach, which is inherently pluralistic and ideographic. According to GST principles, dynamicity and change are essential parts of human narratives of the world and systems, and human knowledge is constantly reproduced through collecting new information. As a result, knowledge, theories, narratives, and scientific laws dynamically change. Given this premise, one could argue that GST is considerably compatible with the postulates of post-modern thinking. (shrink)

The motivating question of this paper is: ‘How are our beliefs in the theorems of mathematics justified?’ This is distinguished from the question ‘How are our mathematical beliefs reliably true?’ We examine an influential answer, outlined by Russell, championed by Gödel, and developed by those searching for new axioms to settle undecidables, that our mathematical beliefs are justified by ‘intuitions’, as our scientific beliefs are justified by observations. On this view, axioms are analogous to laws of nature. They are postulated (...) to best systematize the data to be explained. We argue that there is a decisive difference between the cases. There is agreement on the data to be systematized in the scientific case that has no analog in the mathematical one. There is virtual consensus over observations, but conspicuous dispute over intuitions. In this respect, mathematics more closely resembles stereotypical philosophy. We conclude by distinguishing two ideas that have long been associated -- realism (the idea that there is an independent reality) and objectivity (the idea that in a disagreement, only one of us can be right). We argue that, while realism is true of mathematics and philosophy, these domains fail to be objective. One upshot of the discussion is that even questions of fundamental physics may fail to be objective in roughly the sense that the question, ‘Is the Parallel Postulate is true?’, understood as one of pure mathematics, fails to be. Another is a kind of pragmatism. Factual questions in mathematics, modality, logic, and evaluative areas go proxy for non-factual practical ones. -/- . (shrink)

Taken together with my previous articles [77], [80] devoted to the history of finite random sums and to Laplace's theory of errors, this paper sheds sufficient light on the whole work of Laplace in probability. Laplace's theory of probability is subdivided into theory of probability proper, limit theorems and mathematical statistics (not yet distinguished as a separate entity). I maintain that in its very design Laplace's theory of probability is a discipline pertaining to natural science rather than to mathematics. I (...) maintain also the idea that the so-called Laplacian determinism was no hindrance to applications of his theory of probability to natural science and that one of his utterances in this connection could have well been made by Maxwell's contemporaries. Two possible reasons why the theory of probability stagnated after Laplace's work are singled out: the absence of new fields of application and, also, the insufficient level of mathematical abstraction used by Laplace. For all his achievements, I reach the general conclusion that he did not originate the theory of probability as it is now known. (shrink)

Theology and the Cartesian Doctrine of Freedom, now for the first time available in English,was Étienne Gilson's doctoral thesis and part of a larger project to show the medieval roots of Descartes at a time when the very existence of medieval philosophy was often ignored. Young Descartes was sent to La Flèche, one of the Jesuits schools that offered a complete philosophical program, and Descartes would have had the same philosophical training as a Jesuit. There is some controversy about (...) the exact dates of Descartes's stay at La Flèche and consequently about his philosophy instructor. By Gilson's calculations François Véron taught Descartes for three years. Véron eventually left the Jesuits to be free to engage in extraordinarily aggressive anti-Calvinist polemics. If anything, Véron's overbearing manner may have contributed to Descartes antipathy toward Scholastic philosophy. (Whatever Descartes's objections to its philosophy curriculum, later in life he recommended la Flèche as the best school in France.) Descartes,s great intellectual mission in life was not his mathematics but his physics, which was understood as a part of philosophy. We see him navigate the shoals of heated theological and religious strife in his attempt to articulate the metaphysical foundations(and in particular a philosophical vision of God) for his physics or theory of nature. As a layman, he always pleaded ignorance in technically theological matters. He presented himself as a loyal Catholic, quite sincerely in the portrait Gilson paints. (shrink)

Plotinus stands at a crossroads in ancient philosophy, between the more than 600 years of philosophy that came before him and the new Platonic tradition. He was the first and perhaps the greatest systematizer of Plato's thought, and all later students of Plato in the following centuries approached Plato through him. This Companion from a new generation of ancient philosophy scholars reflects the current state of research on Plotinus, with chapters on topics including mathematics, fate and (...) class='Hi'>determinism, happiness, the theory of forms, categories of reality, matter and evil, and Plotinus' legacy. The volume offers an accessible overview of the thought of one of the pivotal figures in the history of philosophy, and reveals his importance as a thinker whose impact goes far beyond his importance as an interpreter of Plato. (shrink)

The big news about chaos is supposed to be that the smallest of changes in a system can result in very large differences in that system's behavior. The so-called butterfly effect has become one of the most popular images of chaos. The idea is that the flapping of a butterfly's wings in Argentina could cause a tornado in Texas three weeks later. By contrast, in an identical copy of the world sans the Argentinian butterfly, no such storm would have arisen (...) in Texas. The mathematical version of this property is known as sensitive dependence. However, it turns out that sensitive dependence is somewhat old news, so some of the implications flowing from it are perhaps not such “big news” after all. Still, chaos studies have highlighted these implications in fresh ways and led to thinking about other implications as well. -/- In addition to exhibiting sensitive dependence, chaotic systems possess two other properties: they are deterministic and nonlinear (Smith 2007). This entry discusses systems exhibiting these three properties and what their philosophical implications might be for theories and theoretical understanding, confirmation, explanation, realism, determinism, free will and consciousness, and human and divine action. (shrink)

PLEASE NOTE: This is the corrected 2nd eBook edition, 2021. ●●●●● _Critique of Impure Reason_ has now also been published in a printed edition. To reduce the otherwise high price of this scholarly, technical book of nearly 900 pages and make it more widely available beyond university libraries to individual readers, the non-profit publisher and the author have agreed to issue the printed edition at cost. ●●●●● The printed edition was released on September 1, 2021 and is now available through (...) all booksellers, including Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and brick-and-mortar bookstores under ISBN 978-0-578-88646-6. ●●●●● In light of the length of this book, readers who would like to have a more detailed description of the book's objectives and method may find it helpful to read the detailed and clearly written Wikipedia entry about this work: From the Wikipedia search page, use the search phrase "Critique of Impure Reason". At least at the time of this writing (11/29/2021), the Wikipedia entry is well-researched and accurate. ●●●●● In addition, a "Primer on Bartlett's CRITIQUE OF IMPURE REASON" has been made available by the author. It is available under its title through PhilPapers and other philosophy online archives. ●●●●● COMMENDATIONS OF THIS WORK, from the back cover of the published edition: ●●●●● “I admire its range of philosophical vision.” – Nicholas Rescher, Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh, author of more than 100 books. ●●●●● “Bartlett’s _Critique of Impure Reason_ is an impressive, bold, and ambitious work. Careful scholarship is balanced by original analyses that lead the reader to recognize the limits of meaning, knowledge, and conceptual possibility. The work addresses a host of traditional philosophical problems, among them the nature of space, time, causality, consciousness, the self, other minds, ontology, free will and determinism, and others. The book culminates in a fascinating and profound new understanding of relativity physics and quantum theory.” – Gerhard Preyer, Professor of Philosophy, Goethe-University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, author of many books including _Concepts of Meaning_, _Beyond Semantics and Pragmatics_, _Intention and Practical Thought_, and _Contextualism in Philosophy_. ●●●●● “[This work’s] goal is of a unique and difficult species: Dr. Bartlett seeks to develop a formal logical calculus on the basis of transcendental philosophical arguments; in fact, he hopes that this calculus will be the formal expression of the transcendental foundation of knowledge.... I consider Dr. Bartlett’s work soundly conceived and executed with great skill.” – C. F. von Weizsäcker, philosopher and physicist, former Director, Max-Planck-Institute, Starnberg, Germany. ●●●●● “Bartlett has written an American “Prolegomena to All Future Metaphysics.” He aims rigorously to eliminate meaningless assertions, reach bedrock, and place philosophy on a firm foundation that will enable it, like science and mathematics, to produce lasting results that generations to come can build on. This is a great book, the fruit of a lifetime of research and reflection, and it deserves serious attention.” — Martin X. Moleski, former Professor, Canisius College, Buffalo, NY, studies of scientific method, the presuppositions of thought, and the self-referential nature of epistemology. ●●●●● “Bartlett has written a book on what might be called the underpinnings of philosophy. It has fascinating depth and breadth, and is all the more striking due to its unifying perspective based on the concepts of reference and self-reference.” – Don Perlis, Professor of Computer Science, University of Maryland, author of numerous publications on self-adjusting autonomous systems and philosophical issues concerning self-reference, mind, and consciousness. ●●●●● ●●●●● The _Critique of Impure Reason: Horizons of Possibility and Meaning_ comprises a major and important contribution to philosophy. Thanks to the generosity of its publisher, this massive 885-page volume has been published as a free open access eBook (3.75MB) as well as an open access printed edition. It inaugurates a revolutionary paradigm shift in philosophical thought by providing compelling and long-sought-for solutions to a wide range of philosophical problems. In the process, the work fundamentally transforms the way in which the concepts of reference, meaning, and possibility are understood. The book includes a Foreword by the celebrated German philosopher and physicist Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker. ●●●●● In Kant’s _Critique of Pure Reason_ we find an analysis of the preconditions of experience and of knowledge. In contrast, but yet in parallel, the new _Critique_ focuses upon the ways—unfortunately very widespread and often unselfconsciously habitual—in which many of the concepts that we employ _conflict_ with the very preconditions of meaning and of knowledge. ●●●●● This is a book about the boundaries of frameworks and about the unrecognized conceptual confusions in which we become entangled when we attempt to transgress beyond the limits of the possible and meaningful. We tend either not to recognize or not to accept that we all-too-often attempt to trespass beyond the boundaries of the frameworks that make knowledge possible and the world meaningful. ●●●●● The _Critique of Impure Reason_ proposes a bold, ground-breaking, and startling thesis: that a great many of the major philosophical problems of the past can be solved through the recognition of a viciously deceptive form of thinking to which philosophers as well as non-philosophers commonly fall victim. For the first time, the book advances and justifies the criticism that a substantial number of the questions that have occupied philosophers fall into the category of “impure reason,” violating the very conditions of their possible meaningfulness. ●●●●● The purpose of the study is twofold: first, to enable us to recognize the boundaries of what is referentially forbidden—the limits beyond which reference becomes meaningless—and second, to avoid falling victims to a certain broad class of conceptual confusions that lie at the heart of many major philosophical problems. As a consequence, the boundaries of _possible meaning_ are determined. ●●●●● Bartlett, the author or editor of more than 20 books, is responsible for identifying this widespread and delusion-inducing variety of error, _metalogical projection_. It is a previously unrecognized and insidious form of erroneous thinking that undermines its own possibility of meaning. It comes about as a result of the pervasive human compulsion to seek to transcend the limits of possible reference and meaning. ●●●●● Based on original research and rigorous analysis combined with extensive scholarship, the _Critique of Impure Reason_ develops a self-validating method that makes it possible to recognize, correct, and eliminate this major and pervasive form of fallacious thinking. In so doing, the book provides at last provable and constructive solutions to a wide range of major philosophical problems. ●●●●● CONTENTS AT A GLANCE ▪▪▪▪▪ Preface ▪▪▪▪▪ Foreword by Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker ▪▪▪▪▪ Acknowledgments ▪▪▪▪▪ Avant-propos: A philosopher’s rallying call ▪▪▪▪▪ Introduction ▪▪▪▪▪ A note to the reader ▪▪▪▪▪ A note on conventions ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ PART I ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ WHY PHILOSOPHY HAS MADE NO PROGRESS AND HOW IT CAN ▪▪▪▪▪ 1 Philosophical-psychological prelude ▪▪▪▪▪ 2 Putting belief in its place: Its psychology and a needed polemic ▪▪▪▪▪ 3 Turning away from the linguistic turn: From theory of reference to metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 4 The stepladder to maximum theoretical generality ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ PART II ▪▪▪▪▪ THE METALOGIC OF REFERENCE ▪▪▪▪▪ A New Approach to Deductive, Transcendental Philosophy ▪▪▪▪▪ 5 Reference, identity, and identification ▪▪▪▪▪ 6 Self-referential argument and the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 7 Possibility theory ▪▪▪▪▪ 8 Presupposition logic, reference, and identification ▪▪▪▪▪ 9 Transcendental argumentation and the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 10 Framework relativity ▪▪▪▪▪ 11 The metalogic of meaning ▪▪▪▪▪ 12 The problem of putative meaning and the logic of meaninglessness ▪▪▪▪▪ 13 Projection ▪▪▪▪▪ 14 Horizons ▪▪▪▪▪ 15 De-projection ▪▪▪▪▪ 16 Self-validation ▪▪▪▪▪ 17 Rationality: Rules of admissibility ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ PART III ▪▪▪▪▪ PHILOSOPHICAL APPLICATIONS OF THE METALOGIC OF REFERENCE ▪▪▪▪▪ Major Problems and Questions of Philosophy and the Philosophy of Science ▪▪▪▪▪ 18 Ontology and the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 19 Discovery or invention in general problem-solving, mathematics, and physics ▪▪▪▪▪ 20 The conceptually unreachable: “The far side” ▪▪▪▪▪ 21 The projections of the external world, things-in-themselves, other minds, realism, and idealism ▪▪▪▪▪ 22 The projections of time, space, and space-time ▪▪▪▪▪ 23 The projections of causality, determinism, and free will ▪▪▪▪▪ 24 Projections of the self and of solipsism ▪▪▪▪▪ 25 Non-relational, agentless reference and referential fields ▪▪▪▪▪ 26 Relativity physics as seen through the lens of the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 27 Quantum theory as seen through the lens of the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 28 Epistemological lessons learned from and applicable to relativity physics and quantum theory ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ PART IV ▪▪▪▪▪ HORIZONS ▪▪▪▪▪ 29 Beyond belief ▪▪▪▪▪ 30 _Critique of Impure Reason_: Its results in retrospect ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ SUPPLEMENT ▪▪▪▪▪ The Formal Structure of the Metalogic of Reference ▪▪▪▪▪ APPENDIX I ▪▪▪▪▪ The Concept of Horizon in the Work of Other Philosophers ▪▪▪▪▪ APPENDIX II ▪▪▪▪▪ Epistemological Intelligence ▪▪▪▪▪ References ▪▪▪▪▪ Index ▪▪▪▪▪ About the author. 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Canonical Propositional Gentzen-type systems are systems which in addition to the standard axioms and structural rules have only pure logical rules with the sub-formula property, in which exactly one occurrence of a connective is introduced in the conclusion, and no other occurrence of any connective is mentioned anywhere else. In this paper we considerably generalize the notion of a “canonical system” to first-order languages and beyond. We extend the Propositional coherence criterion for the non-triviality of such systems to rules with (...) unary quantifiers and show that it remains constructive. Then we provide semantics for such canonical systems using 2-valued non-deterministic matrices extended to languages with quantifiers, and prove that the following properties are equivalent for a canonical system G: (1) G admits Cut-Elimination, (2) G is coherent, and (3) G has a characteristic 2-valued non-deterministic matrix. (shrink)

Reductionism remains the dominant philosophical framework of modern science. Within reductionism, the universe is conceived as a probabilistic and deterministic system guided solely by the laws of physics and mathematics. Under the guidance of reductionist thought, the development of the modern atomic theory and quantum mechanics has drastically changed science, medicine, and philosophy. In particular, the standard model of particle physics remains the crowning achievement of over three hundred years of reductionist thought in both physics and chemistry. Yet developments (...) within chemistry suggest a new paradigm is required to overcome the limitations of reductionism and provide chemists a more fruitful model. This article will argue that a version of relational ontology provides an avenue for elucidating and predicting chemical and atomic phenomena. In relational ontology, the ontological status of an enduring entity in any moment is viewed as a composite of its own inherited properties and the influences of other entities, especially those closely related to it within a system. This view encompasses the causal aspects of the world without denying its dynamic and creative nature while providing a richer understanding of chemistry and other scientific fields. (shrink)