If $\mathcal{A}$ (V) is a net of local von Neumann algebras satisfying standard axioms of algebraic relativistic quantum field theory and V 1 and V 2 are spacelike separated spacetime regions, then the system ( $\mathcal{A}$ (V 1 ), $\mathcal{A}$ (V 2 ), φ) is said to satisfy the Weak Reichenbach's Common Cause Principle iff for every pair of projections A∈ $\mathcal{A}$ (V 1 ), B∈ $\mathcal{A}$ (V 2 ) correlated in the normal state φ there exists a projection C (...) belonging to a von Neumann algebra associated with a spacetime region V contained in the union of the backward light cones of V 1 and V 2 and disjoint from both V 1 and V 2 , a projection having the properties of a Reichenbachian common cause of the correlation between A and B. It is shown that if the net has the local primitive causality property then every local system ( $\mathcal{A}$ (V 1 ), $\mathcal{A}$ (V 2 ), φ) with a locally normal and locally faithful state φ and suitable bounded V 1 and V 2 satisfies the Weak Reichenbach's Common Cause Principle. (shrink)

Although it is known that reachability in undirected finite graphs can be expressed by an existential monadic second-order sentence, our main result is that this is not the case for directed finite graphs (even in the presence of certain "built-in" relations, such as the successor relation). The proof makes use of Ehrenfeucht-Fraisse games, along with probabilistic arguments. However, we show that for directed finite graphs with degree at most k, reachability is expressible by an existential monadic second-order sentence.

This paper argues for a reappraisal of extant scholarship on delegation in the domain of financial regulation. Through an examination of Japan's experience with financial regulation between 1992 and 2003, it is demonstrated that crisis-induced institutional development entails a shift toward a more flexible, trustee-type bureaucratic structure. While the logic presented in this paper is far from a universally applicable theory of institutional change, it calls into question the relevance of more conventional approaches to the origins of delegation of authority, (...) notably the approach that uses unified and divided government as a key variable. A renewed emphasis on the role of extra-political sources of transfers of authority inside the executive, and also between the legislature and the executive, therefore, is in order. (shrink)

Simone Weil is one of the major religious writers of the twentieth century. Hers is a unique blend of spiritual experience, social concern, and philosophical theory. She had marvelous command of the Western philosophical tradition, yet she also had profound insights into Oriental philosophies. Since its publication in France, Veto's book has been considered by most scholars as the standard work on Simone Weil. Now this important book is available in English. It is the only available reconstruction of the entire (...) philosophy of Simone Weil. It operates out of the perspective of the spiritual concerns of her maturity, yet it never fails to return to the issues and the positions of the early texts. It carries out the reconstruction according to some major philosophical themes, but gives its due share to the French thinkers' social and political preoccupations as well. The book is erudite, yet simple, written in a clear, concise and yet often eloquent language. (shrink)

In this paper, I critically analyze Andrea Sangiovanni’s approach to international justice in the EU that he labels Reciprocity-based Internationalism (RBI). I aim to show that the type of reciprocity RBI operates with is not a morally attractive ground for distributive justice because it cannot cope with the case of member states’ inability to reciprocate the production of collective goods at the EU level. I illustrate this with the case of disability. I contrast RBI’s understanding of reciprocity with Christie Hartley’s (...) ‘relationship model’. I argue that the relationship model of reciprocity should characterize the EU, whose two core normative features are fraternity and equal status. The advantage of the relationship model is that it calls for a stronger type of solidarity than RBI does. That not only entails the willingness to support those worse-off members that cannot productively reciprocate other member states’ efforts at the EU level but also calls for a higher redistribution rate within the EU. In the paper, I make three comparisons between RBI’s ‘productive reciprocity’ and the relationship model. The first concerns non-EU-integration-related disadvantages; the second concerns membership cases, such as accession to federations and supranational unions, while the third comparison examines EU-integration-related disadvantages. I argue that the relationship model is a better alternative to RBI in both integration-related and non-integration-related disadvantages. Also, the relationship model can justify accession cases where previous historical ties are relevant, which are outside of the purview of RBI. (shrink)

John von Neumann (1903-1957) was undoubtedly one of the scientific geniuses of the 20th century. The main fields to which he contributed include various disciplines of pure and applied mathematics, mathematical and theoretical physics, logic, theoretical computer science, and computer architecture. Von Neumann was also actively involved in politics and science management and he had a major impact on US government decisions during, and especially after, the Second World War. There exist several popular books on his personality and various collections (...) focusing on his achievements in mathematics, computer science, and economy. Strangely enough, to date no detailed appraisal of his seminal contributions to the mathematical foundations of quantum physics has appeared. Von Neumann's theory of measurement and his critique of hidden variables became the touchstone of most debates in the foundations of quantum mechanics. Today, his name also figures most prominently in the mathematically rigorous branches of contemporary quantum mechanics of large systems and quantum field theory. And finally - as one of his last lectures, published in this volume for the first time, shows - he considered the relation of quantum logic and quantum mechanical probability as his most important problem for the second half of the twentieth century. The present volume embraces both historical and systematic analyses of his methodology of mathematical physics, and of the various aspects of his work in the foundations of quantum physics, such as theory of measurement, quantum logic, and quantum mechanical entropy. The volume is rounded off by previously unpublished letters and lectures documenting von Neumann's thinking about quantum theory after his 1932 Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics. The general part of the Yearbook contains papers emerging from the Institute's annual lecture series and reviews of important publications of philosophy of science and its history. (shrink)

Contemporary Complex Cinema. Complex conditions: the resurgence of narrative complexity ; Complex cinema as brain-candy for the empowered viewer ; Narrative taxonomies: simple, complex, puzzle plots -- Cognitive Approach to Contemporary Complex Cinema. Why an (embodied-)cognitive approach? ; Various forms of complexity and their effects on sense making ; Problematizing narrative linearity ; Complicating narrative structures and ontologies ; Under-stimulation and cognitive overload ; Contradictions and unreliabilities ; A cognitive approach to classifying complexity ; Deceptive unreliability and the twist film (...) ; Disorienting but solvable puzzle films ; Impossible puzzle films -- Narrative Complexity and Dissonant Cognitions. The concept of cognitive dissonance ; Cognitions in dissonance: from social psychology to narrative engagement ; Types of dissonance in narrative comprehension ; Narrative incongruities ; Narrative impossibilities ; Cognitive access to impossible storyworlds: immersed and reflected operations ; 'Impossibilities' and embodied cognition ; Disrupting viewers' reliance on image schemas by perceptual impossibility ; Disrupting viewers' reliance on image schemas by formal impossibility -- Taming Dissonance: Cognitive Operations and Interpretive Strategies. Cognitive dissonance versus narrative coherence ; Reducing dissonance: interpretation and naturalization ; Foregrounding ; Narrating agency and authorship ; Artefact emotions and metareflexive appreciation ; Interpretation as dissonance reduction ; Coping with dissonance: frame-switches and poetic and aesthetic readings ; Frame-switching as hermeneutic play in impossible puzzle films ; Switching between narrative and symbolical readings: Enemy and Mulholland Drive ; Cognitive hesitation and the fantastic -- Impossible Puzzle Films: Between Art-Cinema and (Post-) Classical Narration. From art-cinema to puzzle films ; Art-cinema as a narrative mode ; Dissonance in modernist art-cinema ; Art-cinema as a cognitive reception frame ; Narrative complexity and meaning-making in art-cinema ; Impossible puzzle films and (post-)classical narration ; High degree of tellability ; Identification with goal-oriented characters ; Strong reliance on classical genre elements ; Adherence to classical narrative cohesion devices ; Inclusion of quasi-rational frames of naturalization -- Wallowing in Dissonance: The Attractiveness of Impossible Puzzles. Hermeneutic play and interpretive multiplicity ; Orientation, navigation, mapping ; Game logic and the fascination in failure ; Effort justification ; Diegetization of decoupling ; Fascination in infinity ; Destabilized ontological certainty ; Eudaimonic motivations and intrinsic needs. (shrink)

Most philosophers believe that a person can have an obligation only insofar as she is able to fulfil it, a principle generally referred to as “Ought Implies Can”. Arguably, this principle reflects something basic about the ordinary concept of obligation. However, in a paper published recently in this journal, Wesley Buckwalter and John Turri presented evidence for the conclusion that ordinary people in fact reject that principle. With a series of studies, they claimed to have demonstrated that, in people’s judgements, (...) obligations persist irrespective of whether those who hold them have the ability to fulfil them. We argue in this paper that due to some problems in their design, Buckwalter & Turri’s conclusions may not be war- ranted. We present the results of a series of studies demonstrating the problems with their design and showing that, with an improved design, people judge that obligation depends on ability after all. (shrink)

The common cause principle says that every correlation is either due to a direct causal effect linking the correlated entities or is brought about by a third factor, a so-called common cause. The principle is of central importance in the philosophy of science, especially in causal explanation, causal modeling and in the foundations of quantum physics. Written for philosophers of science, physicists and statisticians, this book contributes to the debate over the validity of the common cause principle, by proving results (...) that bring to the surface the nature of explanation by common causes. It provides a technical and mathematically rigorous examination of the notion of common cause, providing an analysis not only in terms of classical probability measure spaces, which is typical in the available literature, but in quantum probability theory as well. The authors provide numerous open problems to further the debate and encourage future research in this field. (shrink)

Mutually beneficial exchanges in markets can be exploitative because one party takes advantage of an underlying injustice. For instance, employers of sweatshop workers are often accused of exploiting the desperate conditions of their employees, although the latter accept the terms of their employment voluntarily. A weakness of this account of exploitation is its tendency for over-inclusiveness. Certainly, given the prevalence of global and domestic socioeconomic inequalities, not all exchanges that take place against background injustices should be considered exploitative. This paper (...) offers a framework to identify exploitation in mutually beneficial exchange, focusing on the case of sweatshop labor. It argues that an employer can be viewed as taking unfair advantage of an underlying injustice if and only if the employer’s surplus from the exchange in the unjust state of affairs exceeds the surplus it could maximally obtain in a just state of affairs. The paper illustrates the applicability of this framework using three different conceptions of justice and argues that it is superior to microlevel accounts of exploitation that regard background justice as irrelevant. The paper concludes by describing some normative implications that follow from judging an exchange exploitative. (shrink)

The purpose of this research was to describe attitudes of nursing students (and paramedic officers) towards marginalized clients. Convenience quota sampling in a major health faculty was employed. Students participated on a voluntary basis. A 58-item Likert scale, developed by the authors, assessed the student nurses’ attitudes. In general, attitudes towards homeless clients were neutral; detailed analyses, however, revealed that student nurses would decline to care for homeless clients in various situations. Personal experience with homeless patients and positive attitudes of (...) nurses significantly contributed to increased quality of care and equality of treatment for homeless clients. Certain student nurse behaviors warrant immediate attention to prevent marginalized patients from being exposed to unfair, inaccessible and biased nursing care. Based on our results, we recommend that further research attention be paid to the role of ethics education and faculty behaviors, as faculty members serve as role models for professionalization. (shrink)

Reichenbach’s Common Cause Principle is the claim that if two events are correlated, then either there is a causal connection between the correlated events that is responsible for the correlation or there is a third event, a so called common cause, which brings about the correlation. The paper reviews some results concerning Reichenbach’s notion of common cause, results that are directly relevant to the problem of how one can falsify Reichenbach’s Common Cause Principle. Special emphasis will be put on the (...) question of whether EPR-type correlations can have an explanation in terms of Reichenbachian common causes. Most of the results to be recalled indicate that falsifying Reichenbach’s Common Cause Principle is much more tricky than one may have thought and that, contrary to some claims in the literature, there is no conclusive proof yet that the EPR correlations predicted by ordinary, non-relativistic quantum mechanics cannot have a common cause; furthermore, recent results about possible Reichenbachian common causes of correlations predicted by quantum field states between spacelike separated local observable algebras in algebraic quantum field theory strongly indicate that there may very well exist Reichenbachian common causes of superluminal correlations predicted by quantum field theory. (shrink)

Reichenbach's principles of a probabilistic common cause of probabilistic correlations is formulated in terms of relativistic quantum field theory, and the problem is raised whether correlations in relativistic quantum field theory between events represented by projections in local observable algebrasA(V1) andA(V2) pertaining to spacelike separated spacetime regions V1 and V2 can be explained by finding a probabilistic common cause of the correlation in Reichenbach's sense. While this problem remains open, it is shown that if all superluminal correlations predicted by the (...) vacuum state between events inA(V1) andA(V2) have a genuinely probabilistic common cause, then the local algebrasA(V1) andA(V2) must be statistically independent in the sense of C*-independence. (shrink)

Relativistic locality is interpreted in this paper as a web of conditions expressing the compatibility of a physical theory with the underlying causal structure of spacetime. Four components of this web are distinguished: spatiotemporal locality, along with three distinct notions of causal locality, dubbed CL-Independence, CL-Dependence, and CL-Dynamic. These four conditions can be regimented using concepts from the categorical approach to quantum field theory initiated by Brunetti, Fredenhagen, and Verch (2003). A covariant functor representing a general quantum field theory is (...) defined to be causally local if it satisfies the three CL conditions. Any such theory is viewed as fully compliant with relativistic locality. We survey current results indicating the extent to which an algebraic quantum field theory satisfying the Haag–Kastler axioms is causally local. (shrink)

Butterfield's (1992a,b,c) claim of the equivalence of absence of Lewisian probabilistic counterfactual causality (LC) to Hellman's stochastic Einstein locality (SEL) is questioned. Butterfield's assumption on which the proof of his claim is based would suffice to prove that SEL implies absence of LC also for appropriately given versions of these notions in algebraic quantum field theory, but the assumption is not an admissible one. The conclusion must be that the relation of SEL and absence of LC is open, and that (...) they may be independent. (shrink)

Moti Mizrahi provides experimental evidence according to which subjects judge that a person ought to ? even when she cannot ?. He takes his results to constitute a falsification of the alleged intuitiveness of the ‘Ought Implies Can’ principle. We point out that in the light of the fact that (a) ‘ought’ is multiply ambiguous, that (b) only a restricted set of readings of ‘ought’ will be relevant to the principle, and that (c) he did not instruct his subjects appropriately (...) – or otherwise ensure that in their ‘ought’ judgements they applied the relevant concept(s) – Mizrahi’s conclusions appear premature. We suggest two ways in which the experimental design could be adjusted or supplemented. First, Mizrahi could instruct (or prime) subjects to read the ‘ought’ question in a particular way. Second, he could complement his experiment by asking follow-up questions aimed at uncovering the implications for blame of subjects’ judgements. Once these adjustments are applied, an experiment with a similar outcome would be more significant. (shrink)

Our paper consists of three parts. In the first part we explain the concept of mental fictionalism. In the second part, we present the various versions of fictionalism and their main sources of motivation.We do this because in the third part we argue that mental fictionalism, as opposed to other versions of fictionalism, is a highly undermotivated theory.

This article shows that we can identify a subset of religious and cultural accommodation cases that follow the structure of a particular disability model: the Human Variation Model. According to this model, disadvantageous disability arises because most social arrangements are tailored to the needs of individuals with typical characteristics; people with atypical features are frequently left out from these arrangements. Hence, the latter need personalised resources tailored to them, or their social and/or material environment ought to change according to their (...) atypical characteristics. I argue, however, that not everyone's claim stemming from an atypical characteristic merits accommodation – it would be simply unreasonable to provide personalised resources to everyone or modify the environment to accommodate everyone's needs. In other words, these human variation claimants must be ‘reasonably accommodated’. Nevertheless, members of certain social groups have a justifiable claim to receive such accommodation and those in religious and cultural groups could be among them for two specific sociological reasons. (shrink)

Three classes are introduced which are closely related to the class included in the title. It is proven that the class obtained from by replacing axiom C4 by the commutativity of single substitutions can be considered as the abstract class in the Resek–Thompson theorem, thus it is representable by set algebras. Then the class is defined and it is shown that the necessary and sufficient condition for neat embeddability of an algebra in CAα into is the validity of the merry-go-round (...) properties. Finally, the class is introduced which class is a counterpart of among the polyadic like algebras. (shrink)

Based partly on proving that algebraic relativistic quantum field theory (ARQFT) is a stochastic Einstein local (SEL) theory in the sense of SEL which was introduced by Hellman (1982b) and which is adapted in this paper to ARQFT, the recently proved maximal and typical violation of Bell's inequalities in ARQFT (Summers and Werner 1987a-c) is interpreted in this paper as showing that Bell's inequalities are, in a sense, irrelevant for the problem of Einstein local stochastic hidden variables, especially if this (...) problem is raised in connection with ARQFT. This leads to the question of how to formulate the problem of local hidden variables in ARQFT. By giving a precise definition of hidden-variable theory within the operator algebraic framework of quantum mechanics, it will be argued that the aim of hidden-variable investigations is to determine those classes of quantum theories whose elements represent a statistical content that cannot be reduced in a given way. In some particular way to be stated, a proposition will be stated which distinguishes quantum field theories whose statistical content cannot be reduced without violating some relativistic locality principle. (shrink)

Cognitive control is a set of mechanisms that help us process conflicting stimuli and maintain goal-relevant behaviour. According to the Affective Signalling Hypothesis, conflicting stimuli are aversive and thus elicit (negative) affect, moreover – to avoid aversive signals – affective and cognitive systems work together by increasing control and thus, drive conflict adaptation. Several studies have found that affective stimuli can indeed modulate conflict adaptation, however, there is currently no evidence that phasic affective states not triggered by conflict also trigger (...) improved cognitive control. To investigate this possibility, we intermixed trials of a conflict task and trials involving the passive viewing of emotional words. We tested whether affective states induced by affective words in a given trial trigger improved cognitive control in a subsequent conflict trial. Applying Bayesian analysis, the results of four experiments supported the lack of adaptation to aversive signals, both in terms of valence and arousal. These results suggest that phasic affective states by themselves are not sufficient to elicit an increase in control. (shrink)

By quoting extensively from unpublished letters written by John von Neumann to Garret Birkhoff during the preparatory phase (in 1935) of their ground-breaking 1936 paper that established quantum logic, the main steps in the thought process leading to the 1936 Birkhoff–von Neumann paper are reconstructed. The reconstruction makes it clear why Birkhoff and von Neumann rejected the notion of quantum logic as the projection lattice of an infinite dimensional complex Hilbert space and why they postulated in their 1936 paper that (...) the quantum propositional system should be isomorphic to an abstract projective geometry. Looking at the paper now I see, that I forgot to say this, which should be said somewhere in the first §: That while common logics did apply to quantum mechanics, if the notion of simultaneous measurability is introduced as an auxiliary notion, we wished to construct a logical system, which applies directly to quantum mechanics – without any extraneous secondary notions like simultaneous measurability. And in order to have such a consequent, one-piece system of logics, we must change the classical class calculus of logics. (J. von Neumann to G. Birkhoff, November 21, 1935). (shrink)

Gabriel Marcel a été l'un des plus grands penseurs du XXe siècle. Antérieurement et parallèlement à la Phénoménologie, il a élaboré une philosophie concrète où il traite avec une grande rigueur conceptuelle des notions que la métaphysique de l'Occident n'a pas su ou voulu thématiser. Opposant être et avoir, problème et mystère, dénonçant les erreurs et les travers de l'objectivation, il pense et repense, grâce à une seconde réflexion, la philosophie morale aussi bien que l'univers de l'intersubjectivité. Il soumet à (...) un nouvel éclairage la fidélité, la trahison, le don. Il analyse avec profondeur la famille, le mariage, la paternité. Contre l'arrière-fond des totalitarismes de son temps, il énonce inlassablement la pertinence et la validité des vertus de l'individu. Penseur chrétien, il présente des méditations d'une nouveauté inentamée sur la foi, sur l'immortalité, sur Dieu comme le Toi absolu. Dans les quatre décennies qui ont suivi sa disparition, la grande figure de Gabriel Marcel a subi une éclipse, voire un quasi-oubli. Or tout récemment, cette pensée riche et profonde recommence à attirer. Après l'édition d'une partie de sa correspondance, la parution des actes d'un colloque et d'un important recueil d'études sur sa philosophie, le livre de Miklos Vetö se veut une introduction systématique aux thèmes majeurs de ce socratisme chrétien. (shrink)

We investigate the general properties of general Bayesian learning, where ``general Bayesian learning'' means inferring a state from another that is regarded as evidence, and where the inference is conditionalizing the evidence using the conditional expectation determined by a reference probability measure representing the background subjective degrees of belief of a Bayesian Agent performing the inference. States are linear functionals that encode probability measures by assigning expectation values to random variables via integrating them with respect to the probability measure. If (...) a state can be learned from another this way, then it is said to be Bayes accessible from the evidence. It is shown that the Bayes accessibility relation is reflexive, antisymmetric and non-transitive. If every state is Bayes accessible from some other defined on the same set of random variables, then the set of states is called weakly Bayes connected. It is shown that the set of states is not weakly Bayes connected if the probability space is standard. The set of states is called weakly Bayes connectable if, given any state, the probability space can be extended in such a way that the given state becomes Bayes accessible from some other state in the extended space. It is shown that probability spaces are weakly Bayes connectable. Since conditioning using the theory of conditional expectations includes both Bayes' rule and Jeffrey conditionalization as special cases, the results presented generalize substantially some results obtained earlier for Jeffrey conditionalization. (shrink)

ABSTRACT As is well-known, a classical representation theorem of the theory of cylindric algebras is: A ε IGwsa if and only if A ε SNrαCAα+ε. The part “only if” is trivial. Regarding to the other part “A ε SNrαCAα+ε then A ε IGwsα“ the following question arises: is it possible to replace the class CA in the hypothesis A ε SNrαCAα+ε by a larger class so that the theorem still holds. Such a larger class Kα β is defined. The class (...) Kα β is the best possible, in a sense to be made precise. Representability of set algebras is investigated, too. (shrink)

An open question in the semantics of modality is what relations there are among different modal flavours. In this article, we consider the thorny issue of whether ascribing to an agent the obligation to φ implies that it is possible for the agent to φ. Traditionally, this issue has been interpreted as whether ‘ought’ implies ‘can’. But another linguistic interpretation is available as well, namely, whether ‘must’ implies ‘can’ (MIC). We show that ‘must’ does imply ‘can’ via a convergent argument. (...) The first strand of the argument is theoretical: it consists in proving MIC from a well-established theory of modality in natural language, i.e., that proposed by Kratzer. The second strand is empirical: we present novel acceptability judgment studies showing that MIC predicts and explains the linguistic behaviour of native English speakers. (shrink)

The main claim of this talk is that mathematical physics and philosophy of physics are not different. This claim, so formulated, is obviously false because it is overstated; however, since no non-tautological statement is likely to be completely true, it is a meaningful question whether the overstated claim expresses some truth. I hope it does, or so I’ll argue. The argument consists of two parts: First I’ll recall some characteristic features of von Neumann’s work on mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics (...) and will claim that von Neumann’s motivation and results are essentially philosophical in their nature; hence, to the extent von Neumann’s work exemplifies what is considered to be mathematical physics, mathematical physics appears as formally explicit philosophy of physics. The second argument is based on a rather trivial interpretation of what mathematical physics is. That interpretation implies that mathematical physics shares some key characteristic features with philosophy of physics which make the two almost indistinguishable. (shrink)

The main claim of this talk is that mathematical physics and philosophy of physics are not different. This claim, so formulated, is obviously false because it is overstated; however, since no non-tautological statement is likely to be completely true, it is a meaningful question whether the overstated claim expresses some truth. I hope it does, or so I’ll argue. The argument consists of two parts: First I’ll recall some characteristic features of von Neumann’s work on mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics (...) and will claim that von Neumann’s motivation and results are essentially philosophical in their nature; hence, to the extent von Neumann’s work exemplifies what is considered to be mathematical physics, mathematical physics appears as formally explicit philosophy of physics. The second argument is based on a rather trivial interpretation of what mathematical physics is. That interpretation implies that mathematical physics shares some key characteristic features with philosophy of physics which make the two almost indistinguishable. (shrink)

Beaucoup de livres ont été écrits sur la vie héroïque de Simone Weil et de nombreuses études consacrées à sa pensée religieuse et sociale. Cet ouvrage, traduit en américain, en italien, en hongrois et en japonais, dont nous donnons ici la troisième édition reste à ce jour le seul qui reconstitue les grands moments de l'oeuvre weilienne tout entière à partir d'un point de vue proprement philosophique.

Recently, new types of independence of a pair of C *- or W *-subalgebras (1,2) of a C *- or W *-algebra have been introduced: operational C *- and W *-independence (Rédei and Summers, http://arxiv.org/abs/0810.5294, 2008) and operational C *- and W *-separability (Rédei and Valente, How local are local operations in local quantum field theory? 2009). In this paper it is shown that operational C *-independence is equivalent to operational C *-separability and that operational W *-independence is equivalent to (...) operational W *-separability. Specific further sub-types of both operational C *- and W *-separability and operational C *- and W *-independence are defined and the problem of characterization of the logical interdependencies of the independence notions is raised. (shrink)

To mitigate the Look Elsewhere Effect in multiple hypothesis testing using _p_-values, the paper suggests an “entropic correction” of the significance level at which the null hypothesis is rejected. The proposed correction uses the entropic uncertainty associated with the probability measure that expresses the prior-to-test probabilities expressing how likely the confirming evidence may occur at values of the parameter. When the prior-to-test probability is uniform (embodying maximal uncertainty) the entropic correction coincides with the Bonferroni correction. When the prior-to-test probability embodies (...) maximal certainty (is concentrated on a single value of the parameter at which the evidence is obtained), the entropic correction overrides the Look Elsewhere Effect completely by not requiring any correction of significance. The intermediate situation is illustrated by a simple hypothetical example. Interpreting the prior-to-test probability subjectively allows a Bayesian spirit enter the frequentist multiple hypothesis testing in a disciplined manner. If the prior-to-test probability is determined objectively, the entropic correction makes possible to take into account in a technically explicit way the background theoretical knowledge relevant for the test. (shrink)

Arguments from fairness as described in Aristotle’s _Rhetoric_ are usually taken to aim at mitigating the strictness of the law or, in terms of procedure, to favour the defendant. This paper considers a more inclusive interpretation, that is, that arguments from fairness can work both ways. In the example given in the _Rhetoric,_ arguments from fairness are directed at a restrictive interpretation of the text. That may not be necessary however. Likewise, fairness may speak for the claimant. Two examples may (...) support this conclusion: a judicial speech by Hyperides, and the doctrine of issues appearing in Hellenistic school rhetoric. (shrink)

In diesem Aufsatz erläutere ich Leibniz' Versuche, seinen Infinitesimalkalkül zu rechtfertigen. Die Untersuchung zielt ab auf ein klareres Verständnis, wie tief Leibniz die Begriffe, Ziele und Methoden im Hinblick auf das fragliche Problem faßte. Mein Überblick ist in zwei Teile gegliedert. Der erste stellt die Definition und den Gebrauch einiger Leibnizscher Begriffe dar, die bei der Rechtfertigung des Calculus eine wichtige Rolle spielen. Im zweiten skizziere ich, auf welche Weise Leibniz die Infinitesimalrechnung zu rechtfertigen versuchte.

The projection latticesP(ℳ1),P(ℳ2) of two von Neumann subalgebras ℳ1, ℳ2 of the von Neumann algebra ℳ are defined to be logically independent if A ∧ B≠0 for any 0≠AεP(ℳ1), 0≠BP(ℳ2). After motivating this notion in independence, it is shown thatP(ℳ1),P(ℳ2) are logically independent if ℳ1 is a subfactor in a finite factor ℳ andP(ℳ1),P(ℳ2 commute. Also, logical independence is related to the statistical independence conditions called C*-independence W*-independence, and strict locality. Logical independence ofP(ℳ1,P(ℳ2 turns out to be equivalent to the (...) C*-independence of (ℳ1,ℳ2) for mutually commuting ℳ1,ℳ2 and it is shown that if (ℳ1,ℳ2) is a pair of (not necessarily commuting) von Neumann subalgebras, thenP(ℳ1,P(ℳ2 are logically independent in the following cases: ℳ is a finite-dimensional full-matrix algebra and ℳ1,ℳ2 are C*-independent; (ℳ1,ℳ2) is a W*-independent pair; ℳ1,ℳ2 have the property of strict locality. (shrink)

The book then discusses another group of issues ("whether it is, what it is, how and why it is"), which determined the argumentation, the axiomatic ordering of the sciences, and concludes with a demonstration on the basis of concrete ...

This chapter describes how philosophical theorizing about justice can be connected with empirical research in the social sciences. We begin by drawing on some received distinctions between ideal and non-ideal approaches to theorizing justice along several different dimensions, showing how non-ideal approaches are needed to address normative aspects of real-world problems and to provide practical guidance. We argue that there are advantages to a transitional approach to justice focusing on manifest injustices, including the fact that it enables us to set (...) aside some reasonable disagreements about justice. The ‘bottom-up’ approach we advocate, for which we borrow Wolff’s term ‘real-world political philosophy’, is an empirically-informed normative analysis that attends to specific, identifiable injustices, and thus is partial, though not isolationist. We illustrate our approach by considering how different models of the nature of disability suggest different kinds of remedy for injustices faced by persons living with disabilities. We reflect on the nature and significance of vulnerabilities, and we assess the role of public opinion in normative theorizing, suggesting a particular significance for the opinions and experiences of marginalized groups. We finally reflect on the relevance of European legal and institutional frameworks for theorizing justice in Europe. (shrink)