The philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty serves both as a ground and a site of departure for Levinas’ thinking. This essay takes up their relationship, with particular regard to the question of whether Merleau-Ponty’s later shift from phenomenology to ontology brings him under Levinas’ critique of ontology as a totalizing philosophy of power that ultimately either denies or negates the radical alterity of the other. Both thinkers are engaged in reconceiving the intersubjective relation, and focus much of their analyses on the (...) problem of Ianguage as the means by which this relation is expressed. However, though similar in scope, they arrive at fundamentally different positions regarding the self-other relationship, while jointly affirming the role paradox plays in the constitution of intersubjectivity. This essay considers not only their differences but their confluences in contributing to this existential question.La philosophie de Maurice Merleau-Ponty sert à la fois de fondement et de point de départ pour la pensée de Lévinas. Le présent article aborde la question de leur relation en cherchant à savoir si le tournant de Merleau-Ponty, qui le mène de la phénoménologie à I’ontologie, place ce dernier sous la critique lévinassienne de I’ontologie comme philosophie totalisante du pouvoir qui, ultimement, nie I’alteriteradicale de l’autre. Les deux penseurs sont engagés dans le projet de reconceptualisation de la relation intersubjective et du langage qui exprime cette relation. Bien que similaires dans leur portée, ils aboutissent à des positions fondamentalement différentes relativement à la question du rapport soi-autre, alors qu’ils reconnaissent tous deux le rôle du paradoxe dans la constitution de I’intersubjectivité. Cet article considère non seulement leurs differences, mais leurs convergences dans la contribution de la question existentielle. (shrink)

The philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty serves both as a ground and a site of departure for Levinas’ thinking. This essay takes up their relationship, with particular regard to the question of whether Merleau-Ponty’s later shift from phenomenology to ontology brings him under Levinas’ critique of ontology as a totalizing philosophy of power that ultimately either denies or negates the radical alterity of the other. Both thinkers are engaged in reconceiving the intersubjective relation, and focus much of their analyses on the (...) problem of Ianguage as the means by which this relation is expressed. However, though similar in scope, they arrive at fundamentally different positions regarding the self-other relationship, while jointly affirming the role paradox plays in the constitution of intersubjectivity. This essay considers not only their differences but their confluences in contributing to this existential question.La philosophie de Maurice Merleau-Ponty sert à la fois de fondement et de point de départ pour la pensée de Lévinas. Le présent article aborde la question de leur relation en cherchant à savoir si le tournant de Merleau-Ponty, qui le mène de la phénoménologie à I’ontologie, place ce dernier sous la critique lévinassienne de I’ontologie comme philosophie totalisante du pouvoir qui, ultimement, nie I’alteriteradicale de l’autre. Les deux penseurs sont engagés dans le projet de reconceptualisation de la relation intersubjective et du langage qui exprime cette relation. Bien que similaires dans leur portée, ils aboutissent à des positions fondamentalement différentes relativement à la question du rapport soi-autre, alors qu’ils reconnaissent tous deux le rôle du paradoxe dans la constitution de I’intersubjectivité. Cet article considère non seulement leurs differences, mais leurs convergences dans la contribution de la question existentielle. (shrink)

This paper aims to develop a framework for distributing risks. Based on a distinction between risks with reversible losses and risks with irreversible losses, I defend the following composite allocation principle: first, irreversible risks should be allocated on the basis of needs and only after some threshold level has been achieved can the remaining risks distributed in such a way that the total disvalue of these losses is minimized. An important advantage of this allocation framework is that it does not (...) require the aggregation of incommensurable values into one measure. (shrink)

Abstract:Should the process of ecological restoration be considered a type of moral reparation? In a recent issue of this journal, Ben Almassi (2017) has argued that ecological restoration should be understood as a moral repair, i.e., as "a model for rebuilding the moral conditions of relationships" (20). Ideas of restorative justice and moral repair are appropriate to address human injustice and wrongdoing. But these concepts are vacuous and lose their meaning when addressing the ethics of human activities regarding the natural (...) world because of the essential character of the restoration process: the replacement or substitution of new entities for pre-existing entities in an attempt to reverse the irreversible. At best, the idea of moral reparations to nature is a weak metaphor with no practical efficacy; at worst, it totally misconceives the relationship between human activity and the natural environment in the process of ecological restoration and provides yet another dangerous and disingenuous justification of human arrogance and domination of the natural world. In the guise of the act of moral reparations, humans are instead attempting to assume the powers of God, to control the natural and human world. My previous criticisms of the ethics and meaning of ecological restorations—especially regarding the substitution of new individuals and the artifactual nature of restorations—can be used to undermine Almassi's thesis of moral repair as a goal of ecological restoration practice. In addition an analysis of the Book of Job in the Old Testament demonstrates that not even God—much less humans—can restore and replace what has been destroyed. (shrink)

It is a remarkable fact that all processes occurring in the observable universe are irre- versible, whereas the equations through which the fundamental laws of physics are formu- lated are invariant under time reversal. The emergence of irreversibility from the funda- mental laws has been a topic of consideration by physicists, astronomers and philosophers since Boltzmann's formulation of his famous \H" theorem. In this paper we shall discuss some aspects of this problem and its connection with the dynamics of (...) space-time, within the framework of modern cosmology. We conclude that the existence of cosmological horizons allows a coupling of the global state of the universe with the local events deter- mined through electromagnetic processes. (shrink)

This paper explores a distinction among causal relationships that has yet to receive attention in the philosophical literature, namely, whether causal relationships are reversible or irreversible. We provide an analysis of this distinction and show how it has important implications for causal inference and modeling. This work also clarifies how various familiar puzzles involving preemption and over-determination play out differently depending on whether the causation involved is reversible.

Recent events have put the acceptability of the risks of nuclear energy production technologies under the spotlight. A focus on risks, however, could lead to the neglect of other aspects of NEPT, such as their irreversibility. I argue that awareness of the socio-historical development of NEPT is helpful for understanding their irreversibility. To this end, I conceptualize NEPT development as a process of structuration in which material, institutional and discursive elements are produced and/or reproduced by purposive social actors. (...) This conceptualization is used to structure an analysis of how irreversibility arose in the first decades of NEPT development in India, France and the USA, and how some NEPT have been reversed or partially reversed. Lastly, two general conditions for reversible NEPT are formulated based on this analysis. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to analyze time-asymmetric quantum mechanics with respect to the problems of irreversibility and of time's arrow. We begin with arguing that both problems are conceptually different. Then, we show that, contrary to a common opinion, the theory's ability to describe irreversible quantum processes is not a consequence of the semigroup evolution laws expressing the non-time-reversal invariance of the theory. Finally, we argue that time-asymmetric quantum mechanics, either in Prigogine's version or in Bohm's version, (...) does not solve the problem of the arrow of time because it does not supply a substantial and theoretically founded criterion for distinguishing between the two directions of time. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to analyze time-asymmetric quantum mechanics with respect to the problems of irreversibility and of time’s arrow. We begin with arguing that both problems are conceptually different. Then, we show that, contrary to a common opinion, the theory’s ability to describe irreversible quantum processes is not a consequence of the semigroup evolution laws expressing the non-time-reversal invariance of the theory. Finally, we argue that time-asymmetric quantum mechanics, either in Prigogine’s version or in Bohm’s version, (...) does not solve the problem of the arrow of time because it does not supply a substantial and theoretically founded criterion for distinguishing between the two directions of time. (shrink)

In this reply to David J Cole it is argued that the medical concept of death as an irreversible phenomenon is correct and that it does not conflict with ordinary concepts of death.

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is frequently described as a ‘reversible’ medical treatment, and the reversibility of DBS is often cited as an important reason for preferring it to brain lesioning procedures as a last resort treatment modality for patients suffering from treatment-refractory conditions. Despite its widespread acceptance, the claim that DBS is reversible has recently come under attack. Critics have pointed out that data are beginning to suggest that there can be non-stimulation-dependent effects of DBS. Furthermore, we lack long-term (...) data about other potential irreversible effects of neuromodulation. This has considerable normative implications for comparisons of DBS and brain lesioning procedures. Indeed, Devan Stahl and colleagues have recently argued that psychiatric DBS should be subject to the same legal safeguards as other forms of psychosurgery, supporting their position by forcibly criticising the claim that DBS is reversible. In this paper, I respond to these criticisms by first clarifying the descriptive and evaluative elements of the reversibility claim that supporters of DBS might invoke, and the different senses of ‘reversibility’ that we might employ in discussing the effects of medical procedures. I go on to suggest that it is possible to defend a nuanced version of the reversibility claim. To do so, I explain how DBS has some effects that are stimulation dependent in the short term, and argue that these effects can have significant normative implications for patient well-being and autonomy. I conclude that we should not abandon a nuanced version of the reversibility claim in the DBS debate. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to analyze time-asymmetric quantum mechanics with respect of its validity as a non time-reversal invariant, time-asymmetric theory as well as of its ability to determine an arrow of time.

Explaining the emergence of stochastic irreversible macroscopic dynamics from time-reversible deterministic microscopic dynamics is one of the key problems in philosophy of physics. The Mori-Zwanzig projection operator formalism, which is one of the most important methods of modern nonequilibrium statistical mechanics, allows for a systematic derivation of irreversible transport equations from reversible microdynamics and thus provides a useful framework for understanding this issue. However, discussions of the MZ formalism in philosophy of physics tend to focus on simple variants rather than (...) on the more sophisticated ones used in modern physical research. In this work, I will close this gap by studying the problems of probability and irreversibility using the example of Grabert’s time-dependent projection operator formalism. This allows to better understand how general proposals for understanding probability in statistical mechanics, namely quantum approaches and almost-objective probabilities, can be accomodated in the MZ formalism. Moreover, I will provide a detailed physical analysis, based on the MZ formalism, of various proposals from the philosophical literature, such as Robertson’s theory of justifying coarse-graining via autonomous macrodynamics, Myrvold’s problem of explaining autonomous macrodynamics, and Wallace’s simple dynamical conjecture. (shrink)

The reversibility problem (better known as the reversibility objection) is usually taken to be an internal problem in the kinetic theory of gases, namely the problem of how to account for the second law of thermodynamics within this theory. Historically, it is seen as an objection that was raised against Boltzmann's kinetic theory of gases, which led Boltzmann to a statistical approach to the kinetic theory, culminating in the development of statistical mechanics. In this paper, I show that (...) in the late nineteenth century, the reversibility problem had a much broader significance - it was widely discussed and certainly not only as an objection to Boltzmann's kinetic theory of gases. In this period, there was a conflict between mechanism and irreversibility in physics which was tied up with central issues in philosophy of science such as materialism, empiricism and the need for mechanistic foundations of physical theories, as well as with concerns about the heat death of the universe. I discuss how this conflict was handled by the major physicists of the period, such as Maxwell, Kelvin, Duhem, Poincaré, Mach and Planck, as well as by a number of lesser-known authors. (shrink)

The distinction between the "permanent" (will not reverse) and "irreversible" (cannot reverse) cessation of functions is critical to understand the meaning of a determination of death using circulatory–respiratory tests. Physicians determining death test only for the permanent cessation of circulation and respiration because they know that irreversible cessation follows rapidly and inevitably once circulation no longer will restore itself spontaneously and will not be restored medically. Although most statutes of death stipulate irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions, the accepted (...) medical standard is their permanent cessation because permanence is a perfect surrogate indicator for irreversibility, and using it permits a more timely declaration. Therefore, patients properly declared dead in donation after circulatory death (DCD) protocols satisfy the requirements of death statutes and do not violate the dead donor rule. The acronym DCD should represent organ "donation after circulatory death" to clarify that the death standard is the permanent cessation of circulation, not heartbeat. Heart donation in DCD does not retroactively negate the donor's death determination because circulation has ceased permanently. (shrink)

Two distinct conceptions for the relation between reversible, time-reversal invariant laws of nature and the irreversible behavior of physical systems are outlined. The standard, extrinsic concept of irreversibility is based on the notion of an open system interacting with its environment. An alternative, intrinsic concept of irreversibility does not explicitly refer to any environment at all. Basic aspects of the two concepts are presented and compared with each other. The significance of the terms extrinsic and intrinsic is discussed.

It has been a longstanding problem to show how the irreversible behaviour of macroscopic systems can be reconciled with the time-reversal invariance of these same systems when considered from a microscopic point of view. A result by Lanford shows that, under certain conditions, the famous Boltzmann equation, describing the irreversible behaviour of a dilute gas, can be obtained from the time-reversal invariant Hamiltonian equations of motion for the hard spheres model. Here, we examine how and in what sense Lanford’s theorem (...) succeeds in deriving this remarkable result. Many authors have expressed different views on the question which of the ingredients in Lanford’s theorem is responsible for the emergence of irreversibility. We claim that these interpretations miss the target. In fact, we argue that there is no time-asymmetric ingredient at all. (shrink)

The principle of Information Conservation or Determinism is a governing assumption of physical theory. Determinism has counterfactual consequences. It entails that if the present were different, then the future would be different. But determinism is temporally symmetric: it entails that if the present were different, the past would also have to be different. This runs contrary to our commonsense intuition that what has happened in the future depends on the past in a way the past does not depend on the (...) future. To understand how this can be so we observe that while the truth of some counterfactuals is guaranteed by the laws of logic or the laws of nature, some are not. It is among the latter contingent, counterfactuals that we find temporal asymmetry. It is this asymmetry that gives causation a temporal direction. The temporal asymmetry of these counterfactuals is explained by the fact that the dynamical laws of nature are logically irreversible functions from partial states of the world onto other partial states. (Logical reversibility is not to be confused, though it too often is, with time-reversal invariance). Though these irreversible laws are locally indeterministic, they can sum to give a globally deterministic description of the world. This combination of global determinism and local indeterminism gives rise to contingent counterfactual dependence and gives that dependence a direction. That direction is independent of the direction of entropy. The direction of contingent counterfactual dependence is time's arrow. (shrink)

There has recently been a good deal of controversy about Landauer's Principle, which is often stated as follows: The erasure of one bit of information in a computational device is necessarily accompanied by a generation of kTln2 heat. This is often generalised to the claim that any logically irreversible operation cannot be implemented in a thermodynamically reversible way. John Norton (2005) and Owen Maroney (2005) both argue that Landauer's Principle has not been shown to hold in general, and Maroney offers (...) a method that he claims instantiates the operation Reset in a thermodynamically reversible way. In this paper we defend the qualitative form of Landauer's Principle, and clarify its quantitative consequences (assuming the second law of thermodynamics). We analyse in detail what it means for a physical system to implement a logical transformation L, and we make this precise by defining the notion of an L-machine. Then we show that logical irreversibility of L implies thermodynamic irreversibility of every corresponding L-machine. We do this in two ways. First, by assuming the phenomenological validity of the Kelvin statement of the second law, and second, by using information-theoretic reasoning. We illustrate our results with the example of the logical transformation 'Reset', and thereby recover the quantitative form of Landauer's Principle. (shrink)

There has recently been a good deal of controversy about Landauer's Principle, which is often stated as follows: The erasure of one bit of information in a computational device is necessarily accompanied by a generation of kTln2 heat. This is often generalised to the claim that any logically irreversible operation cannot be implemented in a thermodynamically reversible way. John Norton and Owen Maroney both argue that Landauer's Principle has not been shown to hold in general, and Maroney offers a method (...) that he claims instantiates the operation Reset in a thermodynamically reversible way. In this paper we defend the qualitative form of Landauer's Principle, and clarify its quantitative consequences. We analyse in detail what it means for a physical system to implement a logical transformation L, and we make this precise by defining the notion of an L-machine. Then we show that logical irreversibility of L implies thermodynamic irreversibility of every corresponding L-machine. We do this in two ways. First, by assuming the phenomenological validity of the Kelvin statement of the second law, and second, by using information-theoretic reasoning. We illustrate our results with the example of the logical transformation 'Reset', and thereby recover the quantitative form of Landauer's Principle. (shrink)

This short comment confirms Longo’s observation about the importance of symmetries for understanding space and time, but raises the additional issue of the transition from reversible to irreversible transformations.

A recent proposal by Norton (2003) to show that a simple Newtonian system can exhibit stochastic acausal behavior by giving rise to spontaneous movements of a mass on the dome of a certain shape is examined. We discuss the physical significance of an often overlooked and yet important Lipschitz condition the violation of which leads to the existence of anomalous nontrivial solutions in this and similar cases. We show that the Lipschitz condition is closely linked with the time reversibility (...) of certain solutions in Newtonian mechanics and the failure to incorporate this condition within Newtonian mechanics may unsurprisingly lead to physically impossible solutions that have no serious metaphysical implications. ‡I thank Steven Savitt of the Philosophy Department at the University of British Columbia for drawing my attention to the Lipschitz condition, and Alexei Cheviakov of the Mathematics Department at the University of British Columbia for useful discussions. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z1, Canada; e-mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

There has recently been a good deal of controversy about Landauer's Principle, which is often stated as follows: The erasure of one bit of information in a computational device is necessarily accompanied by a generation of kT ln 2 heat. This is often generalised to the claim that any logically irreversible operation cannot be implemented in a thermodynamically reversible way. John Norton (2005) and Owen Maroney (2005) both argue that Landauer's Principle has not been shown to hold in general, and (...) Maroney offers a method that he claims instantiates the operation reset in a thermodynamically reversible way. In this paper we defend the qualitative form of Landauer's Principle, and clarify its quantitative consequences (assuming the second law of thermodynamics). We analyse in detail what it means for a physical system to implement a logical transformation L, and we make this precise by defining the notion of an L-machine. Then we show that logical irreversibility of L implies thermodynamic irreversibility of every corresponding L-machine. We do this in two ways. First, by assuming the phenomenological validity of the Kelvin statement of the second law, and second, by using information-theoretic reasoning. We illustrate our results with the example of the logical transformation 'reset', and thereby recover the quantitative form of Landauer's Principle. (shrink)

The author proposes to show that the actual crisis in microphysics is principally due to the fact that, as quantum mechanics is a theory of stationary states and reversible movements, it fundamentally ignores the notion of a transitory process. The essential characteristic of quantum theories is the result of an evolution of more than two centuries; a period of development essentially devoted to the description of stationary and reversible phenomena. The author's point of view, which reflects that of the school (...) of Louis de Broglie, is that microphysics must now cross a new threshold in giving up the description of stationary states and the calculation of their transition probabilities in favor of attempting to describe the transitions themselves and explain the origin and stability of stationary states. The future seems to him to be one of a microphysics based on irreversibility. (shrink)

Irreversible generalism, the view that reasons given for the evaluation of art are general and do not admit of exceptions, is defended from the criticisms levelled against it by George Dickie in ‘Reading Sibley’. The authors' view that Frank Sibley adhered to a form of reversible generalism, the view that reasons given for the evaluation of art are general but can sometimes become reasons to disvalue artworks, according to which there a criterion for distinguishing valenced from neutral aesthetic properties, is (...) also defended. (shrink)

Landauer's principle, often regarded as the basic principle of the thermodynamics of information processing, holds that any logically irreversible manipulation of information, such as the erasure of a bit or the merging of two computation paths, must be accompanied by a corresponding entropy increase in non-information-bearing degrees of freedom of the information-processing apparatus or its environment. Conversely, it is generally accepted that any logically reversible transformation of information can in principle be accomplished by an appropriate physical mechanism operating in a (...) thermodynamically reversible fashion. These notions have sometimes been criticized either as being false, or as being trivial and obvious, and therefore unhelpful for purposes such as explaining why Maxwell's Demon cannot violate the second law of thermodynamics. Here I attempt to refute some of the arguments against Landauer's principle, while arguing that although in a sense it is indeed a straightforward consequence or restatement of the Second Law, it still has considerable pedagogic and explanatory power, especially in the context of other influential ideas in nineteenth and twentieth century physics. Similar arguments have been given by Jeffrey Bub. (shrink)

This paper is about Sobel sequences, which are sequences of counterfactuals that supposedly display two interesting properties: first, they are consistent, as accounted for by the famous Lewis-Stalnaker analysis; but second, they are not consistent in the reverse order, which is not accounted for by Lewis-Stalnaker. I argue that there has been an empirical oversight in the literature on these sequences: there are consistent sequences, and there are irreversible sequences, but no sequence is both. The Lewis-Stalnaker theory neatly captures Sobel (...) sequences, and also captures the inconsistency of Lewis sequences. But there is still a dynamic asymmetry at work with Lewis sequences, which I account for by appeal to the pragmatic phenomenon of imprecision. Lewis sequences seem consistent because they do not belie factual disagreements, but rather metalinguistic disagreements about how precise to be. This also accounts for their irreversibility—such metalinguistic disagreements about the standard of precision are only possible in one direction, as famously observed by Lewis, who observed them in discourses not containing counterfactuals. (shrink)

The problem of the irreversibility’s origin in thermodynamic processes occupies a distinguished place among many and lasting attempts by researchers to derive irreversibility from molecular-mechanical principles. However, this problem is still open and no universally accepted solution may be given during any course. In this paper, I shall try to show that the examining of Maxwell’s demon thought experiment may provide insight into the difficulties that emerge, looking for this origin because: (i) it is connected with the notion (...) of irreversibility, and (ii) one of its functions is that of the “reversibility objection.” In order to illustrate this point, I study Boltzmann’s approach to the problem of a molecular-mechanical interpretation of irreversibility and I show that an auxiliary assumption (the selected direction of time) is responsible for producing irreversibility. But this result is accordant with the predictions of Maxwell’s demon thought experiment: the assumptions of this kind are not dictated by molecular-mechanical principles but are separate input in the model-systems used. (shrink)

The irreversibility effect implies that a decision maker who neglects the prospect of receiving more complete information at later stages of a sequential decision problem will in certain cases too easily take an irreversible decision, as he ignores the existence of a positive option value in favour of reversible decisions. This option value represents the decision maker's flexibility to adapt subsequent decisions to the obtained information. In this paper we show that the economic models dealing with irreversibility as (...) used in environmental and capital investment decision making can be extended to emergency response decisions that produce important irreversible effects. In particular, we concentrate on the decision whether or not to evacuate an industrial area threatened by a possible nuclear accident. We show in a simple two-period evacuation decision model that non-optimal conclusions may be drawn when evacuation is regarded as a `now or never decision'. The robustness of these results is verified by means of a sensitivity analysis of the various model parameters. The importance of `options thinking' in this decision context is illustrated in an example. (shrink)

There are currently two legally established criteria for death: the irreversible cessation of circulation and respiration and the irreversible cessation of neurologic function. Recently, there have been technological developments that could undermine the irreversibility requirement. In this paper, I focus both on whether death should be identified as an irreversible state and on the proper scope of irreversibility in the biological definition of death. In this paper, I tackle the distinction between the commonsense definition of death and the (...) biological definition of death to show that even the commonsense concept of death is specified by biological facts. Resting on this argument, I argue that any definition of death is a posteriori. Thus, irreversibility is part of any definition of death because the actual phenomenon of death is irreversible. In addition, I show that the proper domain of irreversibility in a definition of death is circumscribed by physical possibilities and that irreversibility in the definition of death refers to current possibilities for the reversal of relevant biological processes. I conclude that, despite recent technological advancements, death is still irreversible. (shrink)

This concluding section applies the results of the previous part to some important thermodynamical systems. Even if time reversibility is allowed, it is shown that the flow vectors used to derive Onsager reciprocity from time translational invariance is of questionable validity. The fundamental fluctuation dissipation theorem of Callen, Welton, Green and Kubo which underpin descriptions of irreversibility, insofar as they are derived from time translational invariance, is also questioned; from Part I, they cannot be derived properly from time (...) reversal symmetry. The common view of entropy as some type of caloric fluid flow is critiqued as not conforming to the Kelvin Clausius Planck definition. An example of developing reciprocal relations to any order in the coupling indices based on the peculiar physical and defining characteristics of conductive heat is given for the steady state whenever a temperature gradient is present, free from time reversible and translation assumptions. A major challenge in the theory is to extend it to isothermal states. It is concluded that other more deterministic views mediated by authentic work anamnesis may be needed for long term coherence. (shrink)

Adoption of an 'ethics of reversibility' can seem fashionably enlightened, even democratic, but appears less radical when issues of power are opened up. Adopting the motif of keeping , this paper sets its questioning of an on-going individuation of ethics within the context of an insidious reduction of institutional mores to business parlance. Keeping Derrida's 'philosophy of reversals' in view, the discussion resists the double bind of attempts to make higher-level decisions ever more 'irreversible' on the one hand, while (...) devolving ethical responsibilities for outcomes downwards on the other. In criss-crossing, back and forth, on variations of these themes, the aim of the paper is to contest a division of moral labour in which the more powerful style themselves as 'not for turning', while those dispossessed of authority are left to vacillate within the market agendas of flexibility and transparency. (shrink)

Adoption of an ‘ethics of reversibility’ can seem fashionably enlightened, even democratic, but appears less radical when issues of power are opened up. Adopting the motif of keeping, this paper sets its questioning of an on‐going individuation of ethics within the context of an insidious reduction of institutional mores to business parlance. Keeping Derrida's ‘philosophy of reversals’ in view, the discussion resists the double bind of attempts to make higher‐level decisions ever more ‘irreversible’ on the one hand, while devolving (...) ethical responsibilities for outcomes downwards on the other. In criss‐crossing, back and forth, on variations of these themes, the aim of the paper is to contest a division of moral labour in which the more powerful style themselves as ‘not for turning’, while those dispossessed of authority are left to vacillate within the market agendas of flexibility and transparency. (shrink)

The problem of the irreversibility's origin in thermodynamic processes occupies a distinguished place among many and lasting attempts by researchers to derive irreversibility from molecular-mechanical principles. However, this problem is still open and no universally accepted solution may be given during any course. In this paper, I shall try to show that the examining of Maxwell's demon thought experiment may provide insight into the difficulties that emerge, looking for this origin because: it is connected with the notion of (...) irreversibility, and one of its functions is that of the "reversibility objection." In order to illustrate this point, I study Boltzmann's approach to the problem of a molecular-mechanical interpretation of irreversibility and I show that an auxiliary assumption is responsible for producing irreversibility. But this result is accordant with the predictions of Maxwell's demon thought experiment: the assumptions of this kind are not dictated by molecular-mechanical principles but are separate input in the model-systems used. (shrink)

The ordinary concept of death is analysed and compared with revisionary medical definitions, especially those based on irreversible loss of brain function. Prior critics of revisionary definitions have focused on the locus, the brain; I am concerned with the irreversibility condition. I argue that 1) the irreversibility condition is ambiguous, 2) it has unacceptable epistemic and other consequences on any plausible construal, and 3) irreversibility is not part of the ordinary concept of death. I conclude that recent (...) medical definitions seek illegitimately to obtain the certainty of a weak construal of 'irreversible' along with the freedom from moral obligation of the strong construal. (shrink)

Physicists routinely claim that the fundamental laws of physics are 'time symmetric' or 'time reversal invariant' or 'reversible'. In particular, it is claimed that the theory of quantum mechanics is time symmetric. But it is shown in this paper that the orthodox analysis suffers from a fatal conceptual error, because the logical criterion for judging the time symmetry of probabilistic theories has been incorrectly formulated. The correct criterion requires symmetry between future-directed laws and past-directed laws. This criterion is formulated and (...) proved in detail. The orthodox claim that quantum mechanics is reversible is re-evaluated. The property demonstrated in the orthodox analysis is shown to be quite distinct from time reversal invariance. The view of Satosi Watanabe that quantum mechanics is time asymmetric is verified, as well as his view that this feature does not merely show a de facto or 'contingent' asymmetry, as commonly supposed, but implies a genuine failure of time reversal invariance of the laws of quantum mechanics. The laws of quantum mechanics would be incompatible with a time-reversed version of our universe. (shrink)

The development of nuclear energy technologies in the second half of the 20th century came with great hopes of rebuilding nations recovering from the devasta-tion of the Second World War or recently released from colonial rule. In coun-tries like France, India, the USA, Canada, Russia, and the United Kingdom, nuclear energy became the symbol of development towards a modern and technologically advanced future. However, after more than six decades of experi-ence with nuclear energy production, and in the aftermath of the (...) Fukushima nuclear disaster, it is safe to say that nuclear energy production is not without its problems.Some of these problems have their origins in the very materiality of the technolo-gies involved. For example, not only does the use of highly radioactive materials give rise to risks for the current generation (e.g., in the potential for disaster when reactors melt down) but high-level radioactive waste from nuclear energy production presents a serious intergenerational problem for which an acceptable final solution or its implementation remains elusive. Moreover, nuclear energy technologies have specific social and political consequences. For example, they have been said to be authoritarian technologies (Winner, 1980), requiring cen-tralized authority, secrecy, and technocratic decision-making. While some of these problems could have been foreseen before nuclear energy technologies were introduced, others only arose after these technologies were already integrated into the social and infrastructural fabric of our lives. Addition-ally, new technologies (e.g., Generation III, III+ and IV reactors) are still being developed, bringing with them new and uncertain hazards and risks. Ignorance and uncertainty about the possible deleterious effects of introducing a new technology are inevitable, especially if the technology is complex, large time-scales are involved, or risks depend on social or political factors unforeseen in the design stage. However, this should not deter us from developing and intro-ducing new technologies. Rather, it should motivate us to organize these ‘exper-iments’ with new technologies in society in such a way that we can learn about their possible hazards and risks as effectively and responsibly as possible (van de Poel, 2011, 2015). In this way, it is possible to minimize risks and avoid unwant-ed moral, social or political developments. However, organizing such experi-ments responsibly also means that one could come to the conclusion that continuing an experiment is no longer responsible or desirable. Should we be prepared for such a scenario, and if so, how could we do that? One possible strategy to tackle this issue is that the technology and its introduction should be reversible. The aim of this thesis is to further explore this strategy by answering the following main research question (RQ) and accompanying subquestions (SQ):RQ: What are the implications of reversibility for the responsible develop-ment and implementation of nuclear energy technologies?SQ1: Under what conditions can nuclear energy technologies be considered reversible?SQ2: Why should nuclear energy technologies be reversible?SQ3: If so, how could the reversibility of nuclear energy technologies be achieved?After the introductory chapter 1, the chapters that form the main body of this dissertation each provide a distinct contribution to answering the three subques-tions and, by extension, the main research question. Guided by three historical case studies of nuclear energy technology development (i.e., India, France and the USA), chapter 2 answers the first subquestion by formulating the two condi-tions under which it can be considered reversible, i.e., 1) the ability to stop the further development and deployment of a that technology in society, and 2) the ability to undo the undesirable outcomes (material, institutional or symbolic) of the development and deployment of the technology. Chapter 3 subsequently tackles the second subquestion by establishing the general desirability of technological reversibility by virtue of its relation to responsibility in Emmanuel Levinas’ ethical phenomenology. It argues that technology development is a legitimate response to responsibility but inevitably falls short of the responsibility that inspires it, incessantly calling for technological and political change in the process. Having thus argued that nuclear energy technologies should ideally be reversible, chap-ters 4 and 5 work towards specific strategies to achieve technological reversibil-ity. Chapter 4 first investigates the processes that make it difficult to stop the further development and implementation of a nuclear energy technology in society, thus provid-ing input on how to fulfill the first condition for the reversibility of nuclear energy technologies. To do so, it presents a phenomenological perspective on technology and its adoption based on the work of Alfred Schutz. It also explores different ways in which technology adoption drives the processes of path depend-ence towards technological lock-in. Chapter 5 examines the history of geological disposal of high-level radioactive waste in the USA. It identifies a number of concrete policy pitfalls that could lead to lock-in and that should consequently be avoided. It also presents a number of general design strategies that could facilitate the undoing of undesirable consequences of a technology, thus providing input on how to fulfill the second condition for the reversibility of nuclear energy technol-ogies.Chapter 6 summarizes the central findings of the thesis and explains how these help to answer the research questions. On top of this, it reflects on a number of complications connected to reversibility considerations. Based on this, it is concluded that the question of irreversibility and reversibility is context- and technology-specific and a matter of degree. The chapter concludes with a reflec-tion on generalizations and limitations of the results. Finally, chapter 7 discusses the implications of this dissertation’s results for responsibly experimenting with nuclear energy technologies in society. (shrink)

The popularization of the term “clinical death” for the absence of vital signs suggests the possibility of a radical change in our understanding of death. While death used to be considered something that we do not have the power to reverse, contemporary optimism suggests that we may be able to restore life to a dead organism. In this article, I examine how the term “death” is used today to clarify what kind of irreversibility we ought to assign to it. (...) I conclude that the kind of irreversibility closest to our concept of death is one that depends on implicit metaphysical commitments: we generally treat death as though it were metaphysically irreversible, and therefore not reversible by us. (shrink)

My analysis of temporal direction begins by establishing that time-reversal scenarios, scenarios in which the direction of time itself is reversed, whether locally or globally, are incoherent. Building on this conclusion, I argue that temporal directionality cannot be defined or explicated in terms of processes in time, such as the movements of celestial bodies, biological evolution or radioactive decay. In other words, while it is easy to imagine any process occurring in reverse, one cannot define the "earlier"/"later" relation by appeal (...) to the stages of a process, for example, the consecutive stages of radioactive decay. The second section of the paper turns to a study of our firsthand experiences, and qualifies this result by arguing that experiences constitute the one class of events that cannot so much as be conceived as reversed in time. In the third section I suggested that our firsthand experiences figure as a standard by means of which temporal direction is given to us. I further argue that, despite the pivotal role played by experience in this scheme, we are fully warranted in being realists with respect to temporal directionality. (shrink)

Most definitions of death – whether cardiopulmonary, whole brain and brain stem, or just upper brain – include an irreversibility condition. Cessation of function is not enough to declare death. Irreversibility should be limited to an organism's ability to ‘restart’ itself after vital organs have ceased to function. However, this would mean that every hour people who cannot be revived without the intervention of medical personnel and their technology are coming back from the dead. However, the alternative of (...) irreversibility being dependent upon technology will lead to even more counterintuitive results such as: some people are dead at a particular time and place, but others in more technologically advanced eras and locations are alive despite their being in identical physical states; in the future, millions of cryogenically frozen human beings could spend centuries in a non–dead state because of the future technological breakthroughs; or large numbers of ‘frozen’ people are dead for aeons but coroners are not able to declare them so because they are unaware of what biological conditions science will never be able to reverse. So death should be defined only in non–relational biological terms with a self–starting condition similar to that once advocated by Lawrence Becker. (shrink)

From both physical and epistemological viewpoints, the following theses, which nowadays are often discussed in the literature, are examined: Nonlinear thermodynamics renders it possible to grasp evolutionary physical processes; for thermodynamics it introduces, instead of idealized reversible time, a directed time into physics; thus a science is established that is nearer to reality than classical physics. To analyze these theses, the relation of thermodynamics to dynamical physics is considered. In particular, it is demonstrated that, in classical as well as in (...) modern thermodynamics, irreversibility is introduced via conditions which must be formulated in addition to the dynamical laws. To show the reason for this, the epistemological status of the physical time conception is analyzed, and its character as a physical measurement quantity is established. (shrink)

We present a new formalism for the microscopic classical electrodynamics of point charges in which the dynamic absence of self-interactions is enforced by the action principle, without eliminating the field degrees of freedom. In this context, free local radiation fields are dynamically prohibited. Instead radiation is carried by charge-field functionals of the current which have a negative parity under mathematical time reversal. This leads to the dynamic requirement of a physical time arrow in the equations of motion in order to (...) preserve the overall mathphysical time-reversal symmetry of the formalism. Since this physical time arrow emerges electrodynamically without the need of external thermodynamic or cosmological criteria, it offers a dynamical explanation for the origin of irreversibility in classical electrodynamic measurement processes. “Science, like the arts, admits aesthetic criteria; it seeks theories that display ‘a proper conformity of the parts to one another and to the whole’ while still showing some strangeness in their proportion”—S. Chandrasekar. (shrink)

The "four-wave mixer", a laser technique for reversing the motion direction of light waves so that they can be turned around and returned to their point of origin was the subject of my last Alternate View column (ANALOG, June-1985). In this AV column I want to go one step further by examining a hypothetical kind of time-reversed light wave which should actually go backward in time. As we shall see, such backward waves could be used to send information from the (...) present to the past, resulting in a sort of "poor man's" time travel. Recent science fiction novels like Jim Hogan's Thrice in Time and Greg Benford's Timescape have been based on backwards-in-time communication and the situations that might arise from it. In both books a world disaster is averted by sending a message to the past. In Timescape a side-effect of the signalling prevents Lee Harvey Oswald from assassinating President Kennedy, irreversibly altering the course of events after 1963. (shrink)

Some of the most imaginative analyses in contemporary science have been fostered by the paradox of irreversibility. Rendered as a question the paradox reads: How can the anisotropic macrophysical behavior of a system of molecules be reconciled with the underlying reversible molecular model? Attempts to resolve and dissolve the paradox have appealed to large numbers of particles, jammed correlations, unseen perturbations, hidden variables or constraints, uncertainty principles, averaging procedures (e.g., coarse graining and time smoothing), stochastic flaws, cosmological origins, etc. (...) While acknowledging these efforts as important articulations of basic ideas of statistical mechanics, we question their relevance to irreversibility as it occurs in nature. It seems to us that once the emergence of the phenomenon of equilibrium is understood in terms of molecular dynamics, the macroscopic appearance of irreversibility can also be understood in terms of the frequency of forced withdrawals from young equilibria. We believe that the paradox of irreversibility can be resolved in a simple, logically clear, and aesthetically pleasing manner. (shrink)

In this commentary, we discuss the nature of reversible and irreversible questions, that is, questions that may enable one to identify the nature of the source of their answers. We then introduce GPT-3, a third-generation, autoregressive language model that uses deep learning to produce human-like texts, and use the previous distinction to analyse it. We expand the analysis to present three tests based on mathematical, semantic, and ethical questions and show that GPT-3 is not designed to pass any of them. (...) This is a reminder that GPT-3 does not do what it is not supposed to do, and that any interpretation of GPT-3 as the beginning of the emergence of a general form of artificial intelligence is merely uninformed science fiction. We conclude by outlining some of the significant consequences of the industrialisation of automatic and cheap production of good, semantic artefacts. (shrink)

This book is an attempt to get to the bottom of an acute and perennial tension between our best scientific pictures of the fundamental physical structure of the world and our everyday empirical experience of it. The trouble is about the direction of time. The situation (very briefly) is that it is a consequence of almost every one of those fundamental scientific pictures--and that it is at the same time radically at odds with our common sense--that whatever can happen can (...) just as naturally happen backwards. Albert provides an unprecedentedly clear, lively, and systematic new account--in the context of a Newtonian-Mechanical picture of the world--of the ultimate origins of the statistical regularities we see around us, of the temporal irreversibility of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, of the asymmetries in our epistemic access to the past and the future, and of our conviction that by acting now we can affect the future but not the past. Then, in the final section of the book, he generalizes the Newtonian picture to the quantum-mechanical case and (most interestingly) suggests a very deep potential connection between the problem of the direction of time and the quantum-mechanical measurement problem. The book aims to be both an original contribution to the present scientific and philosophical understanding of these matters at the most advanced level, and something in the nature of an elementary textbook on the subject accessible to interested high-school students. Table of Contents: Preface 1. Time-Reversal Invariance 2. Thermodynamics 3. Statistical Mechanics 4. The Reversibility Objections and the Past-Hypothesis 5. The Scope of Thermodynamics 6. The Asymmetries of Knowledge and Intervention 7. Quantum Mechanics Appendix: Gedankenexperiments with Heat Engines Index Reviews of this book: The foundations of statistical mechanisms are often presented in physics textbooks in a rather obscure and confused way. By challenging common ways of thinking about this subject, Time and Chance can do quite a lot to improve this situation. --Jean Bricmont, Science Albert is perfecting a style of foundational analysis that is uniquely his own...It has a surgical precision...and it is ruthless with pretensions. The foundations of thermodynamics is a topic that has accumulated a good deal of dead wood; this is a fire that will burn and burn. --Simon W. Saunders, Oxford University As usual with Albert's work, the exposition is brisk and to the point, and exceptionally clear...The book will be an extremely valuable contribution to the literature on the subject of philosophical issues in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, a literature which has been thin on the ground but is now growing as it deserves to. --Lawrence Sklar, University of Michigan. (shrink)