A new, easy-to-grasp map of human consciousness against which the various therapies from both Western and Eastern sources are introduced. Designed to help individuals understand the practice of each therapy.

This work attempts to respond to Tomas Aquinas' Cosmological Argument in a way that combines Set Theory with the idea of the ‘Book of Change’. The study defines the ith Cause Set on which to operate on, which leads to the ontological commitment of austerity that the ‘First Cause's Compromise with emergence’ cannot be avoided. It is argued in the present paper that the concept that ‘emergence only consists of Synchronic Emergence and Diachronic Emergence’ should be extended to a broader (...) notion of emergence, which is made up of the two discussed elements and a third one ‘No-Boundary Emergence’ (beyond the time dimension). The article defines the concept of No-Boundary Emergence, proves why it is a type of emergence that differs from the traditional two types, and asserts that it underlies the bottom layer of the cosmos. This study describes the common feature of all emergence as communication protocols between layers. The assemblage of all emergences behaves similar to a distributed system that cannot be restricted by Gödel's theorem. The paper provides evidence (in Big Bang Cosmology, Conformal Cyclic Cosmology, Superstring Theory, Quantum Gravity) for this point of view, and notes that emergence (in the context of No-Boundary Emergence) is not only a simple scientific theory but also a progressive scientific research programme that can spontaneously grow from scientific theory based on Platonism at the expense of a degenerating shift to the ontological commitment of austerity. This paper proposes an improved model of Schrödinger Cat that provides a new explanation for quantum measurement and argues that there must be a forbidden zone of thought experiments. The study also introduces the implications of ancient Chinese thoughts (namely, the ‘Book of Change’ and Confucius). The paper comes to the conclusion that emergence (crossing the gap between ‘being’ and ‘nothing’, while ignoring the forbidden zone of thought experiments) relieves ‘cosmological insufficiency’ in the sense of Neo-Aristotelism. (shrink)

In recent years a number of important studies have explored the new international division of reproductive labor, but those works have concentrated, for the most part, on one end of the life cycle: nannies and childcare. This article focuses on the other end of it, home eldercare work. Jobs falling under this label encompass a variety of work situations but the title suggests a job that is more homogeneous than the occupation actually is. This article explores, through the narratives of (...) the workers and the exploration of this 24-hour job, what it means to work as a home eldercare assistant. (shrink)

How should we think about the beginnings and endings of humans' biological lives? Is an ethical system based on natural law the only way to safeguard the value of individual human life? Does holding a secular perspective on the boundaries of human life necessarily leave one on a slippery slope? With Peter Caws and Sr. Regina Geiger.

According to Brentano's theory of boundaries, no boundary can exist without being connected with a continuum. But there is no specifiable part of the continuum, and no point, which is such that we may say that it is the existence of that part or of that point which conditions the boundary. - An adequate theory of the continuum must now recognize that boundaries be boundaries only in certain directions and not in others. This leads to consequences in other (...) areas, too. (shrink)

No descriptive material is available for this title.

Talmy divided the world’s languages according to how they express movement. Spanish, a verb-framed language, purportedly constrains the use of motion verbs expressing the manner of movement (such as roll) to contexts in which no spatial boundary is crossed. Previous research suggests that this constraint sometimes does not apply. We report the first large-scale investigation of the constraint and its modulating factors (movement direction, verb type, entering/exiting, Ground size, the preposition used) across different Spanish-speaking communities. A task with open-ended (...) description of animated videos, a sentence interpretation task, and a rating task found that Spanish and Latin American speakers (n = 180 in total) often use manner verbs to describe boundary-crossing situations (especially entering a place), although this is modulated by the preposition following the verb (more with a than en). Better understanding of this constraint in verb-framed languages has applications in, for instance, L2 acquisition research. (shrink)

The tacit standard view that development ends once reproductive capacity is acquired (reproductive boundary, or ‘‘RB,’’ thesis) has recently been challenged by biologists and philosophers of biology arguing that development continues until death (death boundary, or ‘‘DB,’’ thesis). The relevance of these two theses is difficult to assess because the fact that there is no precise definition of development makes the determination of its temporal boundaries problematic. Taking into account this difficulty, this article tries to develop a new (...) species-dependent perspective on temporal boundaries of development. This species-dependent account stands against both RB and DB theses since neither of them reflects the differences between species in the temporality of their development. In this perspective, I propose to use stem cells as a tool to analyze (1) the different developmental capacities of an organism during its life; and (2) the different developmental temporal capacities between species. In particular, I will show that stem cells enable four distinct temporal developmental patterns to be distinguished, i.e., four distinct temporal boundaries of development in the living. I show how these four patterns can be interpreted differently depending on the perspective one has on the definition of development. (shrink)

This paper defends the idea that there must be some joints in reality, some correct way to classify or categorize it. This may seem obvious, but we will see that there are at least three conventionalist arguments against this idea, as well as philosophers who have found them convincing. The thrust of these arguments is that the manner in which we structure, divide or carve up the world is not grounded in any natural, genuine boundaries in the world. Ultimately they (...) are supposed to pose a serious threat to realism. The first argument that will be examined concerns the claim that there are no natural boundaries in reality, the second one focuses on the basis of our classificatory schemes, which the conventionalist claims to be merely psychological, and the third considers the significance of our particular features in carving up the world, such as physical size and perceptual capabilities. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that none of these objections succeed in undermining the existence of genuine joints in reality. (shrink)

In this paper, we identify the way in which various forms of legal personhood can be differentiated from one another by comparing these entities with a—not too farfetched—hypothetical situation in which intelligence spontaneously evolves within the internet: spontaneous intelligence. In these terms, we consider the challenges that may arise where SI as an entity: has no owner, no designer, and no controller; has evolved into existence as a non-human created intelligence; is autonomous; has no physical form; and, although it exists (...) around the world, exists in no particular jurisdiction. Based on this refined notion of SI, we consider issues related to the recognition of such an entity’s legal personhood. By briefly exploring the attribution of legal personality to various entities—including, humans, corporations, artificial intelligence and higher forms of animal life—we differentiate SI from these other forms of intelligence whilst illustrating it shares most characteristics with human intelligence and not, as may intuitively be thought, with various forms of AI. After critically evaluating the classification of these various forms of intelligence, we briefly suggest some ramifications of these differences and suggest that the approach adopted may assist in drawing more effective boundaries between the entities that are already recognised as legal persons, as well as between sub-categories of entities, such as various forms of AI. (shrink)

Drawing on postmodernist analyses, Leaky Bodies and Boundaries presents a feminist investigation into the marginalization of women within western discourse that denies both female moral agency and bodylines. With reference to contemporary and historical issues in biomedicine, the book argues that the boundaries of both the subject and the body are no longer secure. The aim is both to valorize women and to suggest that "leakiness" may be the very ground for a postmodern feminist ethic. The contribution made by Margrit (...) Shildrick is to go beyond modernist feminisms to radically displace the mechanisms by which women are devalued. The anxiety that postmodernism cannot yield an ethics, nor advance feminist concerns is addressed. (shrink)

This paper defends the idea that there must be some joints in reality, some correct way to classify or categorize it. This may seem obvious, but we will see that there are at least three conventionalist arguments against this idea, as well as philosophers who have found them convincing. The thrust of these arguments is that the manner in which we structure, divide or carve up the world is not grounded in any natural, genuine boundaries in the world. Ultimately they (...) are supposed to pose a serious threat to realism. The first argument that will be examined concerns the claim that there are no natural boundaries in reality, the second one focuses on the basis of our classificatory schemes, which the conventionalist claims to be merely psychological, and the third considers the significance of our particular features in carving up the world, such as physical size and perceptual capabilities. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that none of these objections succeed in undermining the existence of genuine joints in reality. (shrink)

The subject of mental processes or mental states is usually assumed to be an individual, and hence the boundaries of mental features – in a strict or metaphorical sense – are naturally regarded as reaching no further than the boundaries of the individual. This chapter addresses various philosophical developments in the 20th and 21st century that questioned this natural assumption. I will frame this discussion by fi rst presenting a historically infl uential commitment to the individualistic nature of the mental (...) in Descartes’ theory. I identify various elements in the Cartesian conception of the mind that were subsequently criticized and rejected by various externalist theories, advocates of the extended mind hypothesis and defenders of embodied cognition. Then I will indicate the main trends in these critiques. (shrink)

McCullough et al 1 confront a challenge that no organisation has fully eradicated: incivility. They emphasise that civility is not merely a matter of common decency and good conduct but also a moral imperative, an aspirational value that should be promoted and modelled by all the members of the institutions and throughout all the stages of practitioners’ careers. In their fusion of ancient wisdom and philosophical classics with their own insights on contemporary workplaces, they forward a defensible case for why (...) civility matters and is worthy of continuous contemplation. Given the clarity and persuasion of their piece, I do not seek to challenge their claims. Instead, I will complement their argument with a perspective highlighting the difficulties of identifying low-level workplace mistreatments and responding to them impartially. While organisations should certainly not skimp on their efforts to promote civility and hold their transgressors accountable, there are nonetheless boundaries to good intentions.2 The unexamined pursuit of civility, if characterised by inconsistent definitions of harm and inappropriate allegations of uncivil acts, runs the risk of fostering its own toxicity spirals. With the hope of contributing to the exchange initiated by McCullough and colleagues, I briefly highlight …. (shrink)

A collection of several articles on African moral and political philosophy by Thaddeus Metz, translated into French by Emmanuel Fopa, and edited and introduced by Pius Mosima of the University of Bamenda, Cameroon.

Biological boundaries are important because of what they reveal about the evolution of a lineage, the relationship between organisms of different lineages, the structure and function of particular subsystems of the organism, the interconnection between an organism and its environment, and a myriad of other important issues related to individuality, development, and evolution. Since there is no single unifying theory for all biological sciences, there are various possible theoretical characterizations of what counts as a biological boundary. Theoretical specificity is (...) crucial for the full characterization of a boundary; to this end, it is useful to begin with general properties and then to compare these to those properties specific to a particular biological boundary. This dual heuristic approach—top-down and bottom-up—can then be repeated to increase the robustness of the boundary characterization. In what follows, I explore both the general structural and functional aspects of biological boundaries and those specific to a biological subsystem, which itself is critical to boundary formation, maintenance, and evolution—the vertebrate immune system. It is a remarkable and sobering regularity of nature that organisms remain whole because their parts are constantly being built up and broken down, and this is no less true of their boundaries. The vertebrate immune system is at the center of this process of biological boundary maintenance and breakdown. (shrink)

This paper argues that no legal order is possible unless it is bounded in space, time, membership and content, ie that boundaries are an intrinsic feature of the concept of law. In particular, while the organisation of the inside/outside distinction in terms of domestic and foreign state orders is certainly contingent, not so the distinction between inside/outside in terms of the contrast between a space deemed to be a collective's own space and strange places, which is constitutive for any possible (...) legal order. The constitutive role of boundaries for legal order becomes apparent in the face of a-legal behaviour, ie behaviour that contests the distinction between legality and illegality as drawn in the spatial, temporal, subjective and material boundaries of the legal. (shrink)

(2000). The Boundaries of Belief: territories of encounter between indigenous peoples and Western philosophies. Educational Philosophy and Theory: Vol. 32, No. 1, pp. 15-24.

(2000). The Boundaries of Belief: territories of encounter between indigenous peoples and Western philosophies. Educational Philosophy and Theory: Vol. 32, No. 1, pp. 15-24.

Almost seventy years after the seminal decision of the House of Lords in Donoghue v. Stevenson, the boundaries of negligence are still as blurred as ever. Some of the vagueness surrounding this tort is inescapable. It is an unavoidable price paid for the reliance on abstract, open-ended, amorphous, and incoherent notions. Indeed, there is no universal agreement even as to the meanings to be attached to the various components of this tort, such as the "reasonable person," proximity, and reliance. The (...) boundaries of negligence are determined particularly through the filter of the duty of care. This article discusses the development of the concept of duty of care and the nature of negligence as analyzed through the prism of this duty. (shrink)

Local gauge theories are in a complicated relationship with boundaries. Whereas fixing the gauge can often shave off unwanted redundancies, the coupling of different bounded regions requires the use of gauge-variant elements. Therefore, coupling is inimical to gauge-fixing, as usually understood. This resistance to gauge-fixing has led some to declare the coupling of subsystems to be the \textit{raison d'\^etre} of gauge \cite{RovelliGauge2013}. Indeed, while gauge-fixing is entirely unproblematic for a single region without boundary, it introduces arbitrary boundary conditions (...) on the gauge degrees of freedom themselves---these conditions lack a physical interpretation when they are not functionals of the original fields. Such arbitrary boundary choices creep into the calculation of charges through Noether's second theorem, muddling the assignment of physical charges to local gauge symmetries. The confusion brewn by gauge at boundaries is well-known, and must be contended with both conceptually and technically. It may seem natural to replace the arbitrary boundary choice with new degrees of freedom, for using such a device we resolve some of these confusions while leaving no gauge-dependence on the computation of Noether charges \cite{DonnellyFreidel}. But, concretely, such boundary degrees of freedom are rather arbitrary---they have no relation to the original field-content of the field theory. How should we conceive of them? Here I will explicate the problems mentioned above and illustrate a possible resolution: in a recent series of papers \cite{GomesRiello2016, GomesRiello2018, GomesHopfRiello} the notion of a connection-form was put forward and implemented in the field-space of gauge theories. Using this tool, a modified version of symplectic geometry---here called `horizontal'---is possible. Independently of boundary conditions, this formalism bestows to each region a physically salient, relational notion of charge: the horizontal Noether charge. Meanwhile, as required, the connection-form mediates an irenic composition of regions, one compatible with the attribution of horizontal Noether charges to each region. Thes aims of this paper are to highlight the boundary issues in the treatment of gauge, and to discuss how gauge theory may be conceptually clarified in light of a resolution to these issues. (shrink)

In his article "How Certain Boundaries and Ethics Diminish Therapeutic Effectiveness", Lazarus asserts that many clinicians are adhering to strict therapeutic boundaries and ethics in a fear-driven effort to avoid unwarranted malpractice claims. Although I agree that maintenance of conventional therapeutic boundaries is apt to minimize malpractice claims in most cases, I believe that is because such boundaries are critical to protect patients' welfare and thereby promote effective treatment. My reasoning, discussed next, revolves around the following premises: 1. For many, (...) if not most, types of patient problems and patient populations, boundaries and the personal meaning of the therapeutic boundaries are an arena in which critical emotional issues are manifested and worked through. 2. Clear, consistent boundaries provide a structure and safety for many patients that is a curative factor in itself. 3. Patients' reactions to alterations in usual therapeutic boundaries are often unpredictable ahead of time (even if requested by the patient) and typically complex, ambivalent, and heavily colored by transferential meaning. 4. Because alterations in therapeutic boundaries typically add a new therapist role or activity that involves potential gratification of personal needs of the therapist, objectivity in evaluating such a change may be compromised by the inherent self-interest. 5. Consistent, clear boundaries need have no impact on therapist warmth and empathy. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

In this article I shall consider two seemingly contradictory claims: first, the claim that everybody who thinks that there are ordinary objects has to accept that they are vague, and second, the claim that everybody has to accept the existence of sharp boundaries to ordinary objects. The purpose of this article is of course not to defend a contradiction. Indeed, there is no contradiction because the two claims do not concern the same ‘everybody’. The first claim, that all ordinary objects (...) are vague, is a claim that stems both from common sense intuitions as well as from various types of ontologies of ordinary objects. This puts then pressure on theories of vagueness to account for the vague nature of ordinary objects – but, as we shall see, all theories of vagueness have to accept the existence of sharp thresholds. This is obvious in the case of epistemicism, and it is a well-known defect of supervaluationism, but as we will see friends of metaphysical vagueness do have to endorse the existence of sharp thresholds in their theory as well. Consequently, there are reasons for dissatisfaction with these accounts, since they do not seem to be able to do the job we asked them to do. (shrink)

In this article I shall consider two seemingly contradictory claims: first, the claim that everybody who thinks that there are ordinary objects has to accept that they are vague, and second, the claim that everybody has to accept the existence of sharp boundaries to ordinary objects. The purpose of this article is of course not to defend a contradiction. Indeed, there is no contradiction because the two claims do not concern the same ‘everybody’. The first claim, that all ordinary objects (...) are vague, is a claim that stems both from common sense intuitions as well as from various types of ontologies of ordinary objects. This puts then pressure on theories of vagueness to account for the vague nature of ordinary objects – but, as we shall see, all theories of vagueness have to accept the existence of sharp thresholds. This is obvious in the case of epistemicism, and it is a well‐known defect of supervaluationism, but as we will see friends of metaphysical vagueness do have to endorse the existence of sharp thresholds in their theory as well. Consequently, there are reasons for dissatisfaction with these accounts, since they do not seem to be able to do the job we asked them to do.†. (shrink)

The concept of plasticity has always been present in the history of developmental biology, both within the theory of epigenesis and within morphogenesis studies. However this tradition relies also upon a genetic conception of plasticity. Founded upon the concepts of ‘‘phenotypic plasticity’’ and ‘‘reaction norm,’’ this genetic conception focuses on the array of possible phenotypic change in relation to diversified environments. Another concept of plasticity can be found in recent publications by some developmental biologists (Gilbert, West-Eberhard). I argue that these (...) authors adopt a ‘‘broad conception of plasticity’’ that is closely related to a notion of development as something that is ongoing throughout an organism’s lifecycle, and has no clear-cut boundaries. However, I suggest that given a narrow conception of plasticity, one can define temporal boundaries for development that are linked to specific features of the morphological process, which are different from behavioral and physiological processes. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Transgressing the Boundaries: An Afterword*Alan D. SokalAlas, the truth is out: my article, “Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity,” which appeared in the spring/summer 1996 issue of the cultural-studies journal Social Text, is a parody. 1 Clearly I owe the editors and readers of Social Text, as well as the wider intellectual community, a non-parodic explanation of my motives and my true views. One of (...) my goals here is to make a small contribution toward a dialogue on the Left between humanists and natural scientists—“two cultures” which, contrary to some optimistic pronouncements (mostly by the former group), are probably farther apart in mentality than at any time in the past fifty years.Like the genre it is meant to satirize—myriad exemplars of which can be found in its reference list—my article is a mélange of truths, half-truths, quarter-truths, falsehoods, non sequiturs, and syntactically correct sentences that have no meaning whatsoever. (Sadly, there are only a handful of the latter: I tried hard to produce them, but I found that, save for rare bursts of inspiration, I just didn’t have the knack.) I also employed some other strategies that are well-established (albeit sometimes inadvertently) in the genre: appeals to authority in lieu of logic; speculative theories passed off as established science; strained and even absurd analogies; rhetoric that sounds good but whose meaning is [End Page 338] ambiguous; and confusion between the technical and everyday senses of English words (for example: linear, nonlinear, local, global, multidimensional, relative, frame of reference, field, anomaly, chaos, catastrophe, logic, irrational, imaginary, complex, real, equality, choice).I should emphasize that all works cited in my article are real, and all quotations are rigorously accurate; none are invented. Indeed, the most hilarious passages in my article were not written by me: they are direct quotes from the Masters.But why did I do it? I confess that I’m an unabashed Old Leftist who never quite understood how deconstruction was supposed to help the working class. And I’m a stodgy old scientist who believes, naively, that there exists an external world, that there exist objective truths about that world, and that my job is to discover some of them. (If science were merely a negotiation of social conventions about what is agreed to be “true,” why would I bother devoting a large fraction of my all-too-short life to it? I don’t aspire to be the Emily Post of quantum field theory.)But my main concern isn’t to defend science from the barbarian hordes of lit crit. Rather, my concern is explicitly political: to combat a currently fashionable postmodernist/poststructuralist/social-constructivist discourse—and more generally a penchant for subjectivism—which is, I believe, inimical to the values and future of the Left. 2 Alan Ryan said it well:It is, for instance, pretty suicidal for embattled minorities to embrace Michel Foucault, let alone Jacques Derrida. The minority view was always that power could be undermined by truth.... Once you read Foucault as saying that truth is simply an effect of power, you’ve had it.... But American departments of literature, history and sociology contain large numbers of self-described leftists who have confused radical doubts about objectivity with political radicalism, and are in a mess. 3Likewise, Eric Hobsbawm has decriedthe rise of “postmodernist” intellectual fashions in Western universities, particularly in departments of literature and anthropology, which imply that all “facts” claiming objective existence are simply intellectual constructions. In short, that there is no clear difference between fact and fiction. But there is, and for historians, even for the most militantly antipositivist ones among us, the ability to distinguish between the two is absolutely fundamental. 4 [End Page 339](Hobsbawm goes on to show how rigorous historical scholarship can refute the fictions propounded by reactionary nationalists in India, Israel, the Balkans and elsewhere.) And as the acerbic sociologist Stanislav Andreski noted long ago,So long as authority inspires awe, confusion and absurdity enhance conservative tendencies in society. Firstly, because clear and logical thinking leads to a cumulation of knowledge (of which the progress of... (shrink)

When a reasonable agent deliberates about what to do, she entertains only a limited range of possible courses of action. A theory of practical reasoning must therefore include an account of deliberative attention: an account that both explains the patterns of deliberative attention that reasonable agents typically display and allows us to see why these patterns of deliberative attention are reasonable. I offer such an account, built around two, central claims. A reasonable agent who cares about some end is disposed (...) to exclude courses of action which she believes to be incompatible with that end from the range of possibilities that she will entertain as options in practical deliberation. As I shall put it, an agent’s cares establish deliberative boundaries for her practical thought. The stability of a deliberative boundary varies with the depth of the care that explains it. These two claims motivate the Boundary-Driven Model of the path that a reasonable agent’s deliberative attention will take in temporally extended deliberation. If we locate the model within a maximizing conception of practical rationality, then boundary-driven deliberation, of the sort that the model describes, can be understood and justified instrumentally, as a heuristic device. But if we suppose that there is no single index of value that successful practical choice maximizes, then boundary-driven deliberation is partly constitutive of reasonableness in practical thought. It allows an agent facing plural and incommensurable values to frame her deliberative problems narrowly enough that, in conjunction with deliberative devices which are not part of the model but which are compatible with it, she may be able to reach a non-arbitrary decision – and so give a determinate, verdictive sense to the phrase “the best course of action available to me” in cases in which a determinate meaning for this phrase would otherwise be lacking. (shrink)

Michael Walzer has argued that `distributive justice presupposes a bounded world', but what counts as a relevant boundary? The article criticizes two arguments holding that boundaries should not count at all: a negative argument that there is no relevant difference between human relationships within and across state borders and a positive argument that principles of justice must, as a matter of logic, be universal in scope. It then examines three rival accounts of the bounded scope of distributive justice : (...) the cooperative practice view, the political coercion view, and the common identity view. Although each has plausible arguments to support it, none turns out to give necessary and sufficient conditions for principles of distributive justice to apply. Importantly, however, the idea of social justice has emerged within political units that to a large extent combine the three features in question. To the extent that this overlap breaks down, we will need to develop new theories of transnational justice. (shrink)

I try to identify elements of our mental capacities that separate us from animals. I focus on our command of logical concepts, demonstrable already in children in the second or third year of their life, which to date no animal has been shown to master. I draw various conclusions about the behavioural, intellectual, emotional, and moral capacities that depend on this mastery, and discuss recent empirical research that either supports or apparently disagrees with the claim that animals, even those we (...) consider intelligent, are limited in these respects. My discussion is built around observations extracted from Wittgenstein. (shrink)

ABSTRACT When applying moral principles to concrete cases, we assume a background shared understanding of the boundaries of the persons to whom the principles apply. In most contexts, this assumption is unproblematic. However, in end‐of‐life contexts, when patients are receiving ‘artificial’ life‐support, judgments about where a person's self begins and ends can become controversial. To illustrate this possibility, this paper presents a case in which a decision must be made whether to deactivate a patient's pacemaker as a means to hasten (...) his death. After discussing some common moral principles that are often applied to resolve ethical problems at the end of life and after explaining why they are of no help here, the paper argues that the correct analysis of this case, and of cases of this sort, turns on considerations that relate to the constitution of the self. These considerations, the paper further argues, sometimes resist resolution. The constitution of the self is fixed in large measure by our concepts and social conventions, and these do not always provide determinate grounds for delimiting the boundaries of the self. (shrink)

Introduction to vol 5, no. 2 This edition begins with a tribute to Brian Goodwin. Brian was not only an original member of the editorial board of Cosmos & History, but was the patron of the Joseph Needham Centre for Complex Processes Research from within which this journal was conceived. His work and life symbolizes all that the journal stands for. The central question that Brian was concerned with throughout his life was: What is life? It seems appropriate therefore to (...) retrospectively dedicate last year’s two volume special edition on this question to him. However, I believe that this edition of Cosmos & History would also meet with his approval. If there is a theme uniting the papers in this edition it is the problematic state of existing disciplines and the fruitfulness of transcending disciplinary boundaries, something that was of increasing concern to Brian. (shrink)

'Women on the Boundary' examines the issue of prostitution both as it is represented in the Bible, and as it is manifested in contemporary society -particularly Asia. Contemporary commercial sex work is a complex phenomenon, and women who engage in prostitution do so for a variety of reasons. It is no longer possible to describe prostitution as either simply or solely involving the oppression of women by men. The ambivalence of feminist attitudes towards sex workers, and the false assumptions (...) that can inform discussions of the topic, can be overcome by listening to the experiences of prostitutes and re-assessing the theological justifications for their condemnation. (shrink)

The philosophical world is indebted to Alvin Goldman for a number of reasons, and among them, his defense of the relevance of cognitive science for philosophy of mind. In Simulating minds , Goldman discusses with great care and subtlety a wide variety of experimental results related to mindreading from cognitive neuroscience, cognitive psychology, social psychology and developmental psychology. No philosopher has done more to display the resourcefulness of mental simulation. I am sympathetic with much of the general direction of Goldman’s (...) theory. I agree with him that mindreading is not a single system based on a single mechanism. And I admire his attempt to bring together the cognitive neuroscientific discovery of mirror system phenomena and the philosophical account of pretense within a unique theoretical framework of mental simulation. To do so, Goldman distinguishes two types of mindreading, respectively, based on low-level and high-level simulation. Yet, I wonder in what sense they are really two distinct processes. Here, I will confine myself largely to spelling out a series of points that take issue with the distinction between low-level and high-level mindreading. (shrink)

Intuitively, the totality of physical reality—the Cosmos—has a beginning only if (i) all parts of the Cosmos agree on the direction of time (the Direction Condition) and (ii) there is a boundary to the past of all non-initial spacetime points such that there are no spacetime points to the past of the boundary (the Boundary Condition). Following a distinction previously introduced by J. Brian Pitts, the Boundary Condition can be conceived of in two distinct ways: either (...) topologically, i.e., in terms of a closed boundary, or metrically, i.e., in terms of the Cosmos having a finite past. This article proposes that the Boundary Condition should be posed disjunctively, modifies and improves upon the metrical conception of the Cosmos’s beginning in light of a series of surprising yet simple thought experiments, and suggests that the Direction and Boundary Conditions should be thought of as more fundamental to the concept of the Cosmos’s beginning than classical Big Bang cosmology. (shrink)

In many applications of physics, boundary conditions have an essential role. The purpose of this paper is to examine from both a historical and philosophical perspective one such boundary condition, namely, the no-slip condition of fluid dynamics. The historical perspective is based on the works of George Stokes and serves as the foundation for the philosophical perspective. It is seen that historically the acceptance of the no-slip condition was problematic. Philosophically, the no-slip condition is interesting since the use (...) of the no-slip condition illustrates nicely the use of scientific models. But more importantly, both the use and justification of the no-slip condition illustrate clearly how theories can holistically approach the world through model construction. Further, since much of the debate over scientific realism occurs in the realm of models, a case is made that an understanding of the role of the no-slip condition has something to offer to this debate. (shrink)

The paper critically discusses two prominent arguments against closure principles for knowledge. The first one is the “argument from aggregation”, claiming that closure under conjunction has the consequence that, if one individually knows i premises, one also knows their i-fold conjunction—yet, every one of the premises might exhibit interesting positive epistemic properties while the i-fold conjunction might fail to do so. The second one is the “argument from concatenation”, claiming that closure under entailment has the consequence that, if one knows (...) a premise, one also knows each of its remote consequences one arrives at—yet, again, the premise might exhibit interesting positive epistemic properties while some of its remote consequences might fail to do so. The paper firstly observes that the ways in which these two arguments try to establish that the relevant closure principle has the relevant problematic consequence are strikingly similar. They both crucially involve showing that, given the features of the case, the relevant closure principle acts in effect as a soritical principle, which is in turn assumed to lead validly to the relevant problematic consequence. There are however nontransitive logics of vagueness where soritical principles do not have any problematic consequence. Assuming that one of these logics is the correct logic of vagueness, the paper secondly observes that both arguments describe situations where knowledge is arguably vague in the relevant respects, so that a tolerant logic should be used in reasoning about it, with the effect that the relevant soritical principle no longer validly leads to the relevant problematic consequence. This shows an interesting respect in which the gap between validity and good inference that arguably arises in a transitive framework can be bridged in a tolerant one, thereby approximating better certain features of our epistemic lives as finite subjects. Moreover, even for those who do not subscribe to tolerant logics, the paper’s two observations jointly indicate that, for all the arguments from aggregation and concatenation show, the status of the relevant closure principles should be no worse than that assigned by one’s favoured theory of vagueness to soritical principles, which only rarely is plain falsity and can indeed get arbitrarily close to full truth. (shrink)

In sentences like Every teacher laughed we think of every teacher as a unary (=type (1)) quantifier - it expresses a property of one place predicate denotations. In variable binding terms, unary quantifiers bind one variable. Two applications of unary quantifiers, as in the interpretation of No student likes every teacher, determine a binary (= type (2)) quantifier; they express properties of two place predicate denotations. In variable binding terms they bind two variables. We call a binary quantifier Fregean (or (...) reducible) if it can in principle be expressed by the iterated application of unary quantifiers. In this paper we present two mathematical properties which distinguish non-Fregean quantifiers from Fregean ones. Our results extend those of van Benthem (1989) and Keenan (1987a). We use them to show that English presents a large variety of non-Fregean quantifi ers. Some are new here, others are familiar (though the proofs that they are non-Fregean are not). The main point of our empirical work is to inform us regarding the types of quantification natural language presents - in particular (van Benthem, 1989) that it goes beyond the usual (Fregean) analysis which treats it as mere iterated application of unary quantifiers. Secondarily, our results challenge linguistic approaches to "Logical Form" which constrain variable binding operators to "locally" bind just one occurrence of a variable, e.g., the Bijection Principle (BP) of Koopman and Sportiche (1983). The BP (correctly) blocks analyses like For which x, x's mother kissed x? for Who did his mother kiss? since For which x would locally bind two occurrences of x. But some of our irreducible binary quantifiers are naturally represented by operators which do locally bind two variables. This paper is organized as follows: Section 1 provides an explicit formulation of our questions of concern. Section 2 classifies the English constructions which we show to be non-Fregean. Section 3 presents the mathematical properties which test for non-Fregean quantification and applies these tests to the constructions in Section 2. Proofs of the mathema tical properties are given in the Appendix. (shrink)

From Locke to Kierkegaard to those annoying car ads that promise “No Boundaries”— Is our use of the word 'freedom' still coherent? Was it ever coherent? Is it significant that this fuzzy term is so often used to carry so much rhetorical force? With Larry Hatab , David Walsh , and Mark Murphy.

Given what we know about the nature of knowledge and scientific work it no longer makes sense to think of scientific knowledge as demarcated from “ordinary” knowledge through its methods or the characteristics of the scientific community. As the social studies of science have shown, boundaries become ambiguous when viewed close up so that science merges with ordinary knowledge. But does this mean that distinctions between knowledge claims rest on nothing more than social conventions, powerful as these might be? The (...) articles in this special issue address this question from a variety of perspectives, while this introduction sets out this broader framework and highlights the themes that unite the individual articles. Our central argument is that although boundary work is difficult, complex, and contingent, it is too important to be left to chance or tradition. We need to rescue expertise from the antiessentialist consensus that there is nothing but attribution. (shrink)

Biological evolution is a complex blend of ever changing structural stability, variability and emergence of new phe- notypes, niches, ecosystems. We wish to argue that the evo- lution of life marks the end of a physics world view of law entailed dynamics. Our considerations depend upon dis- cussing the variability of the very ”contexts of life”: the in- teractions between organisms, biological niches and ecosys- tems. These are ever changing, intrinsically indeterminate and even unprestatable: we do not know ahead of (...) time the ”niches” which constitute the boundary conditions on selec- tion. More generally, by the mathematical unprestatability of the ”phase space”, no laws of mo- tion can be formulated for evolution. We call this radical emergence, from life to life. The purpose of this paper is the integration of variation and diversity in a sound concep- tual frame and situate unpredictability at a novel theoretical level, that of the very phase space. Our argument will be carried on in close comparisons with physics and the mathematical constructions of phase spaces in that discipline. The role of symmetries as invariant preserving transformations will allow us to under- stand the nature of physical phase spaces and to stress the differences required for a sound biological theoretizing. In this frame, we discuss the novel notion of ”enablement”. Life lives in a web of enablement and radical emergence. This will restrict causal analyses to differential cases. Mutations or other causal differ- ences will allow us to stress that ”non conservation princi- ples” are at the core of evolution, in contrast to physical dynamics, largely based on conservation principles as sym- metries. Critical transitions, the main locus of symmetry changes in physics, will be discussed, and lead to ”extended criticality” as a conceptual frame for a better understanding of the living state of matter. (shrink)