If an asymmetry in time does not arise from the fundamental dynamical laws of physics, it may be found in special boundary conditions. The argument normally goes that since thermodynamic entropy in the past is lower than in the future according to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, then tracing this back to the time around the Big Bang means the universe must have started off in a state of very low thermodynamic entropy: the Thermodynamic Past Hypothesis. In this paper, we (...) consider another boundary condition that plays a similar role, but for the decoherent arrow of time, i.e. the quantum state of the universe is more mixed in the future than in the past. According to what we call the Entanglement Past Hypothesis, the initial quantum state of the universe had very low entanglement entropy. We clarify the content of the Entanglement Past Hypothesis, compare it with the Thermodynamic Past Hypothesis, and identify some challenges and open questions for future research. (shrink)

When making substituted judgments for incapacitated patients, surrogates often struggle to guess what the patient would want if they had capacity. Surrogates may also agonize over having the (sole) responsibility of making such a determination. To address such concerns, a Patient Preference Predictor (PPP) has been proposed that would use an algorithm to infer the treatment preferences of individual patients from population-level data about the known preferences of people with similar demographic characteristics. However, critics have suggested that even if such (...) a PPP were more accurate, on average, than human surrogates in identifying patient preferences, the proposed algorithm would nevertheless fail to respect the patient’s (former) autonomy since it draws on the ‘wrong’ kind of data: namely, data that are not specific to the individual patient and which therefore may not reflect their actual values, or their reasons for having the preferences they do. Taking such criticisms on board, we here propose a new approach: the Personalized Patient Preference Predictor (P4). The P4 is based on recent advances in machine learning, which allow technologies including large language models to be more cheaply and efficiently ‘fine-tuned’ on person-specific data. The P4, unlike the PPP, would be able to infer an individual patient’s preferences from material (e.g., prior treatment decisions) that is in fact specific to them. Thus, we argue, in addition to being potentially more accurate at the individual level than the previously proposed PPP, the predictions of a P4 would also more directly reflect each patient’s own reasons and values. In this article, we review recent discoveries in artificial intelligence research that suggest a P4 is technically feasible, and argue that, if it is developed and appropriately deployed, it should assuage some of the main autonomy-based concerns of critics of the original PPP. We then consider various objections to our proposal and offer some tentative replies. (shrink)

Hutto and Myin claim that teleosemantics cannot account for mental content. In their view, teleosemantics accounts for a poorer kind of relation between cognitive states and the world but lacks the theoretical tools to account for a richer kind. We show that their objection imposes two criteria on theories of content: a truth-evaluable criterion and an intensionality criterion. For the objection to go through, teleosemantics must be subject to both these criteria and must fail to satisfy them. We argue that (...) teleosemantics meets the truth-evaluable criterion and is not required to meet the intensionality criterion. We conclude that Hutto and Myin’s objection fails. (shrink)

The free energy principle is notoriously difficult to understand. In this paper, we relate the principle to a framework that philosophers of biology are familiar with: Ruth Millikan’s teleosemantics. We argue that: systems that minimise free energy are systems with a proper function; and Karl Friston’s notion of implicit modelling can be understood in terms of Millikan’s notion of mapping relations. Our analysis reveals some surprising formal similarities between the two frameworks, and suggests interesting lines of future research. We hope (...) this will aid further philosophical evaluation of the free energy principle. (shrink)

This essay is written in two parts. The first is a commentary on the affective politics of philosophy as a discipline. The theme here is philosophy’s reverence problem, an affective bond to the teacher and the text, which is threatened or even injured by feminist philosophy. Feminist philosophy emerges as disruptive irreverence in the midst of the discipline, and injured reverence becomes a powerful prereflective motivation for resistance to feminist thought. The second part of the essay is an exploration of (...) the field of inquiry called feminist phenomenology. Is feminist phenomenology simply phenomenology from another point of view, that of the embodied female subject? Is it conducted, in other words, in a space beyond politics and power where the difference of this subject discloses values and meanings that have not yet been thematized in phenomenological inquiry, but which phenomenology is already competent to pursue? Or does feminist phenomenology disrupt or transform phenomenological practice as we traditionally understand it? In this paper, I claim that phenomenology must be critical in order to be feminist, that it must disrupt phenomenological practice rather than simply “applying” it to a new object, “woman.” In the work of Simone de Beauvoir we find a different phenomenological practice that feminists can count as a positive inheritance. The real difference of feminist phenomenology, however, only emerges in the practice itself. In order to capture something about this difference I take the phenomenon of shame as a case study, and compare three recent phenomenological accounts of shame. (shrink)

This paper offers a discussion of the rationale for the creation of sports categorization criteria based on sporting genealogy and the gendered body, as proposed by Torres et al. in their article ‘Beyond Physiology: Embodied Experience, Embodied Advantage, and the Inclusion of Transgender Athletes in Competitive Sport’. The strength of their ‘phenomenological’ account lies in its complex account of human experience; but this is also what makes it impractical and difficult to operationalize. Categorization rather requires simplicity and practicability, if it (...) is to be applied to all athletes (and not exceptionally to transgender athletes). This discussion helps us to formulate three general principles for the process of categorization of athletes, relating to fairness, verifiability and practicability. (shrink)

This paper offers a discussion of the rationale for the creation of sports categorization criteria based on sporting genealogy and the gendered body, as proposed by Torres et al. in their article ‘Beyond Physiology: Embodied Experience, Embodied Advantage, and the Inclusion of Transgender Athletes in Competitive Sport’. The strength of their ‘phenomenological’ account lies in its complex account of human experience; but this is also what makes it impractical and difficult to operationalize. Categorization rather requires simplicity and practicability, if it (...) is to be applied to all athletes (and not exceptionally to transgender athletes). This discussion helps us to formulate three general principles for the process of categorization of athletes, relating to fairness, verifiability and practicability. (shrink)

In cases where the claims of different groups of people compete, the Relevance View occupies a middle ground between aggregation and nonaggregation. It allows weaker claims to aggregate to outweigh a stronger claim just when the competing claims, compared pairwise, are sufficiently close in strength. The view has strong intuitive appeal when applied to simple binary choices, but I argue that attempts to extend it to nonbinary choices have been unsuccessful. I propose a new extension of the Relevance View to (...) nonbinary choices based on a “binary contrastive” account of the moral reasons that obtain in the cases of interest. (shrink)

Whilst hermeneutics had been traditionally associated with the interpretation of texts, Martin Heidegger gave it a new meaning, associating it with the interpretation of the existence of Dasein. This paper will explain the Heideggerian understanding of hermeneutics, based on the early work of Heidegger which focuses on the analysis of the being of Dasein. His main contribution was a shift of focus from the interpretation of an unknown object to the interpretation of the human being, which Heidegger sees as primary, (...) since it is on the basis of Dasein’s understanding that other things and beings are interpreted. Firstly, the paper discusses hermeneutics in relation to human being, with a brief introduction to the main characteristics of Dasein, showing the place of hermeneutics within Dasein’s existence, together with Heidegger’s re-interpretation of the hermeneutic circle. Secondly, this understanding is applied to sport, focusing on the experience of athletes and on the possibilities for interpretations towards authentic existence, including its ethical aspect. (shrink)

Prominent views about representation share a premise: that mathematical communication theory is blind to representational content. Here I challenge that premise by rejecting two common misconceptions: that Claude Shannon said that the meanings of signals are irrelevant for communication theory (he didn't and they aren't), and that since correlational measures can't distinguish representations from natural signs, communication theory can't distinguish them either (the premise is true but the conclusion is false; no valid argument can link them).

The gradual appearance and relative stabilisation of the names of different kinds of martial activities in different cultures and contexts has led to confusion and to an unhelpful and unjustifiable elision of meanings, which merges different modes of combat and other martial activities. To gain a clearer perspective on this area, we must enquire into the criteria according to which the various kinds of martial activities are classified. Our assessment of the literature suggests that there is no satisfactory and well-justified (...) overall cross-cultural account of the classification of martial activities. This paper provides a revisionary classification and offers an explanation and a justification of the five main categories identified: close combat, warrior arts, martial paths, martial arts and martial sports; as well as some minor ones, such as martial training, martial therapy, martial display, martial games and martial dance. (shrink)

The 2023 doctors’ strikes in the UK have elicited a familiar moral outcry that such strikes are morally wrong. We consider five arguments that might be thought to show doctors’ strikes are morally impermissible but show that they all fail. The most we can conclude from such arguments is that doctors’ strikes are morally permissible in a narrower range of circumstances than strikes in other sectors.We then outline two independent but compatible justifications for doctors’ strikes, one that appeals to doctors’ (...) interests in fair pay and working conditions and one that appeals to doctors’ duty to protect public health. We also suggest that doctors’ strikes can be supererogatory when they aim to correct a government failing in its own duty to protect public health. Finally, we assess the 2023 UK doctors’ strikes. We conclude that they are justified and there is a case for considering them supererogatory. (shrink)

The paper describes four dialogue systems, developed in the tradition of Charles Hamblin. The first system provides an answer for Achilles in Lewis Carroll's parable, the second an analysis of the fallacy of begging the question, the third a non-psychologistic account of conversational implicature, and the fourth an analysis of equivocation and of objections to it. Each avoids combinatorial explosions, and is intended for real-time operation.

Positive monotone modal logic is the negation- and implication-free fragment of monotone modal logic, i.e., the fragment with connectives and. We axiomatise positive monotone modal logic, give monotone neighbourhood semantics based on posets, and prove soundness and completeness. The latter follows from the main result of this paper: a duality between so-called \-spaces and the algebraic semantics of positive monotone modal logic. The main technical tool is the use of coalgebra.

This excellent book is a revision of Kretzmann’s Wilde Lectures in Comparative and Natural Religion delivered at Oxford in 1994. As the subtitle suggests, the book is a study of book 1 of Aquinas’s Summa contra gentiles. Kretzmann envisions the book as the first in a trilogy on SCG, with one volume devoted to each of SCG’s first three books.

Some public health behavioral intervention research studies involve deception. A methodological imperative to minimize bias can be in conflict with the ethical principle of informed consent. As a case study, we examine the specific forms of deception used in three online randomized controlled trials evaluating brief alcohol interventions. We elaborate our own decision making about the use of deception in these trials, and present our ongoing findings and uncertainties. We discuss the value of the approach of pragmatism for examining these (...) kinds of ethical issues that can arise in research on public health interventions. (shrink)

The various forms of accounting practice have a long history. However, the focus of historical accounting scholarship examining premodern times has tended to be the genesis of double-entry book-keeping techniques. In particular, very few scholars have examined influences on the adoption of management accounting techniques in the ancient periods of India’s long history. We respond to this lacuna by examining management accounting at an organizational level within an ancient and economically successful society, namely the Mauryan period. The aim is to (...) explore management accounting practices implicated in the enforcement of economic and ethical behavior in the daily lives of Mauryan organizational actors. Drawing on a translation of original records in the form of a collection of texts known as the Arthasastra, this paper explores the intended uses of management accounting and, in particular, controls to persuade organizational actors to adapt the values and norms of wealth generation within the boundaries of socially acceptable roles. Our contribution is to highlight the society-oriented role of management accounting within Mauryan organizations. (shrink)

How best to introduce philosophical ideas? Is the best and only way by studying the history of philosophy and its rational arguments and discussions? But can literature, usually hived off from philosophy, be used instead and can this be as effective as rational argument? This paper explores these questions. First it considers a text which introduces philosophy through the analysis of literature, in particular James Joyce's 'Araby', arguing that the traditional analytic approach employed by the text, by concentrating on epistemology, (...) obscures other philosophical insights offered by Joyce. It then turns to French philosophy and literature and suggests that Sartre, Beauvoir and Camus by 'blurring' the analytic distinction between philosophy and literature have much to offer to the grasping and understanding of philosophical ideas and principles. (shrink)

The concept of political obligation has not attracted much attention within Heideggerian scholarship. In this paper, we identify and explicate Heidegger’s conception of political obligation embedded in his pre-Kehre works. It will be argued that Heidegger’s magnum opus Being and Time and his address as Rector of Freiburg contain a latent associative account of political obligation. We argue that the ontological framework disclosed in Being and Time and the more concrete policy prescriptions of the Rectoral Address reveal a communitarian ethos (...) which animates the early Heideggerian canon and grounds his account of political obligation. For Heidegger, Dasein must be connected to a particular community’s ontological heritage in order to delimit its ontical possibilities in concrete situations. It will be argued that this relationship between ontological heritage and ontical possibilities is what defines political obligation for Heidegger. (shrink)

We show how Berry phase can be used to construct a precision quantum thermometer. An important advantage of our scheme is that there is no need for the thermometer to acquire thermal equilibrium with the sample. This reduces measurement times and avoids precision limitations. We also discuss how such methods can be used to detect the Unruh effect.

Ours is a time of dramatic and confusing transformations in everyday life, many of them originating in the social enfranchisement of women that has occurred over the past twenty-five years. Sociologist Arlie Hochschild demonstrates a widespread phenomenon of work-family imbalance in our society, experienced by people in terms of a time bind, and a devaluation of familial relationships. As large numbers of women have moved into the workplace, familial relations of all sorts have been colonized by what Virginia Held critically (...) refers to as the contractual paradigm. Even the mother/child relationship, representing for Held an alternative feminist paradigm of selfhood and agency, has been in large part "outsourced." I believe that an Arendtian conception of speech and action might enable us to assert anew the grounds for familial relations. If we require a new site upon which to address our human plurality and natality, the postpatriarchal family may provide that new site upon which individuals can freely act to recreate the fabric of human relationships. It would seem to be our moral and political responsibility as social philosophers today to speculatively contribute to the difficult yet imperative task of reconfiguring the family. In this paper, I attempt to articulate the basic assumptions from which such a reconfiguration must begin. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Gymnasium as a “School for Mankind” Altertumswissenschaft and the Fate of Classicism.

In the 150 years since Schöll's seminal work, the Prytaneion Decree has been studied frequently. Of the groups of honourees mentioned in the decree, the agonistic victors have received the least attention. Most scholars have simply attributed them, without further discussion, to the sphere of war or to the sphere of religion. In this article, athletics is understood as a sphere of action with its own logic: the passages on athletes in the decree are examined in detail and situated within (...) the debate in classical Athens about whether victors of the Panhellenic Games should be honoured by the polis and to what extent. The strange duplication in the decree, which first regulates honours for agonistic victors in general and, in a second paragraph, honours for hippic victors, is related to some texts that viewed hippic victories more critically than gymnic ones. A precise dating of the decree is not possible, but there were several events in the fifth century that might have created the desire among Athenians for a general regulation of sitêsis for athletes. (shrink)

We investigate bisimulations for instantial neighbourhood logic and an \-indexed collection of its fragments. For each of these logics we give a Hennessy-Milner theorem and a Van Benthem-style characterisation theorem.

Frege argued that though it is logically possible for an illogical community to exist, It is not possible that it should be right. Neither the assertion of false statements nor the acceptance of invalid arguments suffices to render a community illogical. The kinds of behavior which would suffice prove, On examination, To be very rare, But to justify frege's rather obscure remarks on illogicality and the universality of logical laws. The laws of logic are to be understood as constraints on (...) the kinds of rules governing linguistic exchanges needed if the language is to accommodate attempts to prove. (edited). (shrink)

ABSTRACT Recent discussions of practice in this Journal have appealed to what they describe as the classical concept of practice. In this paper, it is argued that if there is a single classical concept of practice, it has not been described with sufficient clarity for it to be of use in illuminating or correcting anything, even our ‘radically ambiguous’ common-sense understanding of educational practice; and that there are writers today whose understanding of practical wisdom is far superior to that of (...) the modern philosophers whose treatment of the topic has been relied upon. (shrink)

Gilbert Harman, in Logic and Reasoning (Synthese 60 (1984), 107–127) describes an unsuccessful attempt ... to develop a theory which would give logic a special role in reasoning. Here reasoning is psychological, a procedure for revising one''s beliefs. In the present paper, I construe reasoning sociologically, as a process of linguistic interaction; and show how both reasoning in the psychologistic sense and logic are related to that process.

Michael Hand, in his recent ‘Religious upbringing reconsidered’ in this journal, has claimed to find a logical problem neglected by earlier writers on religious upbringing and parental rights. In this paper, I argue that he has mis-described the terms in which he poses the alleged problem.

"Complementing Harker's photographs are vignettes by poet and writer Jim Heynen. Both whimsical and endearing, each vignette treats barns as organic and intelligent entities, reflecting the living history that can be found inside each rural structure."--BOOK JACKET.

As we face an uncertain future for our country, philosophers – the so-called lovers of wisdom - are tasked to revisit our role in shaping our country's future and molding the consciousness of our people, especially the young. In this paper, I focus on the evolution of philosophy in the Philippines, what we have done as teachers and philosophers in and for the academe, and what else we need to do not only for the future of philosophy in our country (...) but for the future of our country as well. In this last point, I stress that we need to contribute to shaping the critical consciousness of our people as our contribution to nation-building. That must be the future of philosophy in the Philippines and its critical role in the future of our beloved country. (shrink)

On 26 March 20091, I introduced in the U.S. Senate a piece of legislation designed to establish a National Criminal Justice Commission. The Presidential level blue-ribbon commission would be charge...

Visual analogy is believed to be important in human problem solving. Yet, there are few computational models of visual analogy. In this paper, we present a preliminary computational model of visual analogy in problem solving. The model is instantiated in a computer program, called Galatea, which uses a language for representing and transferring visual information called Privlan. We describe how the computational model can account for a small slice of a cognitive-historical analysis of Maxwell’s reasoning about electromagnetism.

In der gegenwärtigen Forschung wird die Hervorbringung von Kunst und Wissenschaften vor allem unter dem Gesichtspunkt der Abhängigkeit thematisiert, in der sie von ihren Auftrag- bzw. Geldgebern steht. Das Augenmerk gilt den partikularen Interessen, die politisch Mächtige verfolgen, wenn sie Künstler oder Gelehrte alimentieren: Repräsentation, Legitimierung von Herrschaftsansprüchen, Distinktion mit Hilfe von kulturellem Kapital lauten die gängigen Stichworte. Demgegenüber wird in diesem Band gezeigt, dass umgekehrt auch die Mächtigen von den Kulturschaffenden abhängig sind. Denn Wissenschaft und Kunst können -- statt (...) als Propaganda und schöner Schein -- auch als spezifische Formen universalistischer Rationalität aufgefasst werden. So begriffen, sind sie es, die in ihren Ausdrucksformen und Diskursen über die Vernünftigkeit einer Herrschaft verhandeln. Indem sie politische, wirtschaftliche und soziale Geltungsansprüche argumentativ bzw. ästhetisch durchdeklinieren, stellen sie diese zugleich auf den Prüfstand und sie geben als Experten für die Erzeugung von Neuem den Herrschern unbekannte, fremdartige Ideen. (shrink)

: Liberal philosopher James Mill has been understood as being unambiguously antifeminist. However, Terence Ball, supposedly informed by a feminist perspective, has argued for a new interpretation. Ball has reconceptualized Mill as a feminist and the sole source of the feminism of his son (J. S. Mill), suggesting a revision of the received wisdom about their relationship to the development of nineteenth century feminist thought. This paper takes issue with Ball's "new interpretation" and its presumed feminist basis.