The value-free ideal in science has been criticised as both unattainable and undesirable. We argue that it can be defended as a practical principle guiding scientific research even if the unattainability and undesirability of a value-free end-state are granted. If a goal is unattainable, then one can separate the desirability of accomplishing the goal from the desirability of pursuing it. We articulate a novel value-free ideal, which holds that scientists should act as if science should be value-free, and we argue (...) that even if a purely value-free science is undesirable, this value-free ideal is desirable to pursue. (shrink)

Este texto pretende-se um ensaio sobre a questão do Espiritual na teoria pictórica de Kandinsky. Nele busco evidenciar a idéia de que as concepções do pintor russo, em grande parte construída em consonância com o pensamento esotérico do fim do século XIX, aproximam-se bastante de um tipo de cosmologia mágica, que abriga uma perspectiva análoga àquela das categorias do pensamento mágico segundo Marcel Mauss. No centro desta cosmologia encontra-se a arte, síntese do Espiritual, cuja noção central é a de gênio (...) que creio ser herdada em grande medida de Kant. (shrink)

Phase transitions are an important instance of putatively emergent behavior. Unlike many things claimed emergent by philosophers, the alleged emergence of phase transitions stems from both philosophical and scientific arguments. Here we focus on the case for emergence built from physics, in particular, arguments based upon the infinite idealization invoked in the statistical mechanical treatment of phase transitions. After teasing apart several challenges, we defend the idea that phase transitions are best thought of as conceptually novel, but not ontologically or (...) explanatorily irreducible to finite physics; indeed, by looking at ongoing work on “smooth phase transitions” we even suggest that they’re not even conceptually novel. In the case of renormalization group theory, consideration of infinite systems and their singular behavior provides a central theoretical tool, but this is compatible with an explanatory reduction. Phase transitions may be “emergent” in some sense of this protean term, but not in a sense that is incompatible with the reductionist project broadly construed. (shrink)

If we cannot directly empirically test the claims of particular scientific theory, then it would be nice to have some other criteria with which to assess its viability. In his 2013 book, String Theory and the Scientific Method, Richard Dawid aims to develop such criteria, with an eye to vindicating research programs in disciplines where direct empirical data is scant or non-existent. In an accompanying paper, Dawid, Hartmann and Sprenger formalise Dawid’s so-called ‘No Alternatives Argument’ using a generalised Bayesian framework, (...) as a first step towards formalising Dawid’s entire re- search programme. In this paper, I argue that the formalisation of the NAA cannot play the central role in Dawid’s programme as intended. This is based on the observation that not all confirmation is non-negligible confirmation. For Dawid’s programme to be useful, it must demonstrate the viability not just of non-empirical theory confirmation, but of non-negligible non-empirical theory confirmation. I argue that Dawid et al.’s appeal to Bayesian confirmation theory to formalise his NAA cannot guarantee non-negligible confirmation. As a result, I conclude that if Dawid’s overall project is to succeed, it must do so without the NAA formalised in this way. (shrink)

For Knox, ‘spacetime’ is to be defined functionally, as that which picks out a structure of local inertial frames. Assuming that Knox is motivated to construct this functional definition of spacetime on the grounds that it appears to identify that structure which plays the operational role of spacetime—i.e., that structure which is actually surveyed by physical rods and clocks built from matter fields—we identify in this paper important limitations of her approach: these limitations are based upon the fact that there (...) is a gap between inertial frame structure and that which is operationally significant in the above sense. We present five concrete cases in which these two notions come apart, before considering various ways in which Knox’s spacetime functionalism might be amended in light of these issues. (shrink)

Brown and Pooley’s ‘dynamical approach’ to physical theories asserts, in opposition to the orthodox position on physical geometry, that facts about physical geometry are grounded in, or explained by, facts about dynamical fields, not the other way round. John Norton has claimed that the proponent of the dynamical approach is illicitly committed to spatiotemporal presumptions in ‘constructing’ space-time from facts about dynamical symmetries. In this article, I present an abstract, algebraic formulation of field theories and demonstrate that the proponent of (...) the dynamical approach is not committed, in special relativity, to the illicit presumptions to which Norton refers. (shrink)

Recent work in the physics literature demonstrates that, in particular classes of rotating spacetimes, physical light rays in general do not traverse null geodesics. Having presented this result, we discuss its philosophical significance, both for the clock hypothesis (and, in particular, a recent purported proof thereof for light clocks), and for the operational meaning of the metric field. 1. Introduction2. Fletcher's Theorem2.1. Maudlin on the clock hypothesis in special relativity2.2. Fletcher’s result in special relativity2.3. Fletcher’s theorem in general relativity3. Electromagnetism (...) and the Geometrical-Optical Limit 3.1. Maxwell’s equations in curved spacetime3.2. The geometrical-optical limit3.3. Rotating spacetimes3.4. Aren’t Gödel spacetimes unphysical?4. The Clock Hypothesis and Chronogeometry 4.1. Natural and mathematical observations4.2. Clock registry discord4.3. Chronogeometry5. Conclusion. (shrink)

Therapeutic privilege is a defence that may be available to doctors who fail to disclose to the patient relevant information when seeking informed consent for treatment if they have a reasonable belief that providing that information would likely cause the patient concerned serious physical or mental harm. In a landmark judgement, the Singapore Court of Appeal introduced a novel interpretation of TP, identifying circumstances in which it might be used with patients who did not strictly lack capacity but might be (...) inclined to refuse recommended treatments. In this paper, we explore the conceptual and practical challenges of this novel interpretation of TP. We propose that more emphasis should be placed on forms of shared and supported decision-making that foster the autonomy of patients with compromised mental capacity while being mindful of the need to safeguard their well-being. The kind of privilege that doctors might need to invoke is one of time and supportive expertise to ensure a flexible, responsive approach calibrated to the individual patients’ needs. The provision of such service would extinguish the need for the novel TP proposed by the Singapore Court of Appeal. (shrink)

Phase transitions are an important instance of putatively emergent behavior. Unlike many things claimed emergent by philosophers (e.g., tables and chairs), the alleged emergence of phase transitions stems from both philosophical and scientific arguments. Here we focus on the case for emergence built from physics, in particular, arguments based upon the infinite idealization invoked in the statistical mechanical treatment of phase transitions. After teasing apart several challenges, we defend the idea that phase transitions are best thought of as conceptually novel, (...) but not ontologically or explanatorily irreducible to finite physics; indeed, by looking at ongoing work on “smooth phase transitions” we even suggest that they’re not even conceptually novel. In the case of renormalization group theory, consideration of infinite systems and their singular behavior provides a central theoretical tool, but this is compatible with an explanatory reduction. Phase transitions may be “emergent” in some sense of this protean term, but not in a sense that is incompatible with the reductionist project broadly construed. (shrink)

In current trends in cognitive sciences, the discussion on body crosses the classical divide between the body and the self in terms of nature and function. Embodiment theories have helped to bring in the importance of the role of subjective experiences to understand cognition, and place the process of knowing in a cultural and social context. This article is a critique of the growing trend in cognitive sciences, particularly in affective neurosciences, and approaches, to reduce the experiential self to a (...) nonentity. It is shown that though the apparent goal is to highlight the inner qualitative nature of experience, what is happening in the background is a role reversal. The outer body becomes the inner self. The inner self becomes the outer body. The nature and functions of the self are founded on the body by theorizing embodiment as an alternate to neural reductionism. This article argues that one of the negative consequences of embodiment theories is that age-old concepts of freewill, character and moral choices become flimsy and fleeting in the process of embodying cognition. (shrink)

Family involvement in healthcare decision-making for competent patients occurs to varying degrees in many communities around the world. There are different attitudes about who should make treatment decisions, how and why. Legal and professional ethics codes in most jurisdictions reflect and support the idea that competent patients should be enabled to make their own treatment decisions, even if others, including their healthcare professionals, disagree with them. This way of thinking contrasts with some cultural norms that put more emphasis on the (...) family as a decision-making entity, in some circumstances to the exclusion of a competent patient. Possible tensions may arise between various combinations of patient, family members and healthcare professionals, and healthcare professionals must tread a careful path in navigating family involvement in the decision-making process. These tensions may be about differences of opinion about which treatment option is best and/or on who should have a say or influence in the decision-making process. While some relevant cultural, legal and policy considerations vary from community to community, there are ethical issues that healthcare professionals need to grapple with in balancing the laws and professional codes on decision-making and the ethical principle of respecting patients and their autonomy. This paper will highlight and propose that a partial resolution to these issues may lie in relational understandings of autonomy, which in principle justify interventions by healthcare professionals and family that support patients in decision-making. (shrink)

Contributed articles presented at the National Conference on "Consciousness, Experience, and Ways of Knowing: Perspectives from Science, Philosophy, and the Arts" held at National Institute for Advanced Studies, Bangalore from 6-7 Feb. 2006.

This article argues that the specifically sexual nature of the political violence of the 1947 Partition of British India installs women's bodies as unambiguously sexed and ethnic. Through an analysis of Kirti Jain's 2001 theatre production of Aur Kitne Tukde (How Many Fragments?), I consider how Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs appropriate colonialist and nationalist ideologies surrounding the notion of ‘woman’ as repository of cultural value. The women in Jain's play are not a priori subjects who experience violence but rather the (...) experience of violence makes (and unmakes) them as gendered, ethnic and national subjects. I argue that they come into subjecthood after a violent objectification and are re-constituted by their experience of national and sexual violence. The performance of nationalism – through embodied acts of sexual violence, conversion, martyrdom and state violence – is enacted upon female bodies that are transformed into political artefacts. I ask how bodies are staged and commodified by acts of political violence and argue that marking female bodies through acts of political violence constitutes a mode of transcription to communicate with other men that will encounter this body. (shrink)

This article tracks the journeys made by the term ‘gender’ in India. From its beginnings in the 1970s as a feminist contribution to public discourse, destabilizing the biological category of ‘sex’, we find that gender has taken two distinct forms since the 1990s. On the one hand, gender as an analytical category is being used to challenge the notion of ‘woman’ as the subject of feminist politics. This challenge comes from the politics of caste and sexuality. On the other hand, (...) gender is mobilized by the state to perform a role in discourses of development, to achieve exactly the opposite effect; that is, gender becomes a synonym for ‘women’. Thus, the first trend threatens to dissolve, and the second to domesticate, the subject of feminist politics. This article explores the implications of both journeys in terms of a feminist horizon. (shrink)

Supersymmetry (SUSY) is a proposed symmetry between bosons and fermions. The structure of the space of SUSY generators is such that the distinction between internal and spacetime symmetries is blurred. As a result, there are two viable candidates for the correct spacetime setting for a flat supersymmetric field theory---Minkowski spacetime and superspace. an extension of four- dimensional Minkowski spacetime to include (at least) four new dimensions, coordinatised by mathematical objects known as supernumbers. These objects are, in one significant way, quite (...) different from real or complex number---some of them have the property that their order of multiplication makes a difference; in mathematical terms, they are said to have nontrivial commutation properties. This paper argues for two theses: first, that one standard set of arguments, related to universality of symmetry behaviour, that motivate a particular choice of spacetime structure in familiar spacetime theories motivates the choice of superspace as the appropriate spacetime for SUSY field theories. And second, that the metaphysical utility of the concept of spacetime requires more than just the satisfaction of this universality condition; in supersymmetric theories, the spacetime concept is not as useful as in special relativity. (shrink)

Accession Number: ATLA0001712100; Hosting Book Page Citation: p 7-23.; Language(s): English; General Note: Bibliography: p 22-23.; Issued by ATLA: 20130825; Publication Type: Essay.

Este ensaio pretende explorar a hipótese de que haveria subjacente à indistinção criada na figura do monstro de Frankenstein, entre o humano e não-humano, um princípio mimético que embora não necessariamente implique o monstruoso, foi a ele associado. Entender que algo que imita a perfeição de um ser humano, em todas as suas características, sobretudo linguísticas, seria um ser humano, ou seja, ter a imitação como critério para se definir o humano, é colocado em questão no romance de Mary Shelley.

Recent work in the physics literature demonstrates that, in particular classes of rotating spacetimes, physical light rays in general do not traverse null geodesics. Having presented this result, we discuss its philosophical significance, both for the clock hypothesis (and, in particular, a recent purported proof thereof for light clocks), and for the operational meaning of the metric field. 1. Introduction2. Fletcher's Theorem2.1. Maudlin on the clock hypothesis in special relativity2.2. Fletcher’s result in special relativity2.3. Fletcher’s theorem in general relativity3. Electromagnetism (...) and the Geometrical-Optical Limit 3.1. Maxwell’s equations in curved spacetime3.2. The geometrical-optical limit3.3. Rotating spacetimes3.4. Aren’t Gödel spacetimes unphysical?4. The Clock Hypothesis and Chronogeometry 4.1. Natural and mathematical observations4.2. Clock registry discord4.3. Chronogeometry5. Conclusion. (shrink)

Contributed seminar papers organized by National Institute of Advanced Studies in June 2001.

This edited volume presents perspectives from computer science, information theory, neuroscience and brain imaging, aesthetics, social sciences, psychiatry, and philosophy to answer frontier questions related to artificial intelligence and human experience. Can a machine think, believe, aspire and be purposeful as a human? What is the place in the machine world for hope, meaning and transformative enlightenment that inspires human existence? How, or are, the minds of machines different from that of humans and other species? These questions are responded to (...) along with questions in the intersection of health, intelligence and the brain. It highlights the place of consciousness by attempting to respond to questions with the help of fundamental reflections on human existence, its life-purposes and machine intelligence. The volume is a must-read for interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary researchers in humanities and social sciences and philosophy of science who wish to understand the future of AI and society. (shrink)

The article attempts to trace the evolution of the concept of civil society. Drawing from the work of political philosophers from the classical period, the period of renaissance, scientific revolution, the period of Enlightenment in the 18th century, and ideologies from the Marxist and Gramscian discourses, the article demonstrates the shifts in the meaning and implications of the concept, its relations to public spaces, accountability, governance, normative ideals of state and the relationship between the state and its citizens. The article (...) concludes its historical progression with the New Social Movements, wherein the civil society became synonymous with strategic action to construct 'an alternative social and world order’, a site for problem solving. Other contenders who put forth a renewed interest in the resurgence of civil society were the New Left, who assigned civil society a role to defend people’s democratic will in the face of state power, and the neoliberals who considered civil society as a site for subversion from authoritarian regimes. The article finally concludes with a call for urgent attention towards reclaiming the authority of the civil society in education scenario. (shrink)

Abstract The word ‘meme’ was first used by Richard Dawkins (Dawkins, 1976)1 in the sense of a replicator to introduce the idea of cultural transmission through the process of imitation, just as genes are responsible for the evolution of organisms. Following Dawkins several writers came forth to have a closer look at ‘meme’. The consensus was that this was a fascinating way of explaining cultural evolution and transmission; that meme is the basic unit of (cultural) information whose existence influences events (...) so as to make more copies of itself (Brodie, 1996).2 The book which got most attention in this line of literature wasThe Meme Machine (Blackmore, 1993),3 which favours the idea that culture, like biology, evolves through the process of variation, selection and replication. Something striking in Blackmore’s thesis is that emotions and attitudes do not count as memes since they are subjective and never get passed on. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF02780405?LI=true. (shrink)

The study aims to address the existing research gap through a thematic comparison between the aesthetics of Kant and Abhinavagupta. This paper explores Kant’s notion of aesthetic judgment based on disinterestedness with Abhinavagupta’s analysis of sādhāraṇīkaraṇa. We argue that the notions of “disinterested judgment” in Kant and sādhāraṇīkaraṇa in Abhinavagupta points towards the impersonal nature of aesthetic delight which makes the universality of aesthetic experience possible. Hence, aesthetics in both Kant and Abhinavgupta are not the personal and subjective experience but (...) a kind of universality based on the ability to experience the impersonal joy. However, the notion of aesthetic delight in Kant is confined to the agreeable mental states only while in Abhinavgupta the notion of rasa includes both positive as well as the negative mental states like fear, disgust, etc. In this regard, the paper will also analyze the affinity between notion of sensus communius in Kant and sahṛdaya in Abhinavagupta which highlights the importance of aesthetic community and the impersonal nature of aesthetic delight. (shrink)

In a recent article, Halvorson and Manchak (Br J Philos Sci, Forthcoming) claim that there is no basis for the Hole Argument, because (in a certain sense) hole isometries are unique. This raises two important questions: (a) does their argument succeed?; (b) how does this formalist response to the Hole Argument relate to other recent responses to the Hole Argument in the same tradition—in particular, that of Weatherall (Br J Philos Sci 69(2):329–350, 2018)? In this article, _ad_ (a), we argue (...) that Halvorson and Manchak’s claim does not go through; _ad_ (b), we argue that although one _prima facie_ plausible reading would see Halvorson and Manchak as filling an important hole (no pun intended) in Weatherall’s argument, in fact this reading is implausible; there is no need to supplement Weatherall’s work with Halvorson and Manchak’s results. (shrink)

O presente artigo tem por objetivo apresentar em linhas gerais o desenvolvimento da teoria dos espíritos empreendida por Kant no texto Os sonhos de um visionário explicados pelos sonhos da metafísica, publicado em 1766, com suas consequências epistêmicas. O ponto central é o esquema óptico do qual Kant lança mão para explicar os fenômenos de comunicação com os espíritos e sua relação com o esquema mesmo da percepção visual, bem como dos aparelhos de projeção espectrais usados em espetáculos e seances (...) espíritas. Além disso, nossa hipótese é que o texto kantiano faz parte, por seu estilo e tema, da onda de publicações sobre visionários, aparições e espetáculos fantasmagóricos, que ganha volume a partir dos últimos decênios do século dezoito. (shrink)

Contributed papers presented at an international symposium.