This essay considers and evaluates recent results and arguments from classical chaotic systems theory and non-relativistic quantum mechanics that pertain to the question of whether our world is deterministic or indeterministic. While the classical results are inconclusive, quantum mechanics is often assumed to establish indeterminism insofar as the measurement process involves an ineliminable stochastic element, even though the dynamics between two measurements is considered fully deterministic. While this latter claim concerning the Schrödinger evolution must be qualified, the former fully depends (...) on a resolution of the measurement problem. Two alleged proofs that nature is indeterministic, relying, in turn, on Gleason's theorem and Conway and Kochen's recent 'free will theorem', are shown to be wanting qua proofs of indeterminism. We are thus left with the conclusion that the determinism question remains open. (shrink)

Chromosomes are not only carriers of the genetic material, but also actively regulate the assembly of complex intracellular architectures. During mitosis, chromosome‐induced microtubule polymerisation ensures spindle assembly in cells without centrosomes and plays a supportive role in centrosome‐containing cells. Chromosomal signals also mediate post‐mitotic nuclear envelope (NE) re‐formation. Recent studies using novel approaches to manipulate histones in oocytes, where functions can be analysed in the absence of transcription, have established that nucleosomes, but not DNA alone, mediate the chromosomal regulation of (...) spindle assembly and NE formation. Both processes require the generation of RanGTP by RCC1 recruited to nucleosomes but nucleosomes also acquire cell cycle stage specific regulators, Aurora B in mitosis and ELYS, the initiator of nuclear pore complex assembly, at mitotic exit. Here, we review the mechanisms by which nucleosomes control assembly and functions of the spindle and the NE, and discuss their implications for genome maintenance. (shrink)

Publier en sciences économiques impose des délais considérables se chiffrant facilement en de multiples années, de la soumission à la parution. Aussi, le contenu des revues est en retard par rapport à la frontière de la recherche. Les principaux médias pour s’informer de cette frontière sont alors les conférences et les cahiers de recherche, des polycopiés qui circulent parmi certains scientifiques. Ceci favorise la formation de petits cercles fermés et exclut la participation de tiers à la pointe de la recherche. (...) L’apparition d’Internet a fondamentalement changé l’accès aux cahiers de recherche, mais encore faut-il que cet accès soit organisé et qu’il permette d’être lu par les autres. Le présent article décrit RePEc, une initiative qui a justement permis d’accorder tous les économistes sur un dénominateur commun et qui est maintenant devenue un instrument incontournable dans leur domaine de recherche. Des initiatives similaires dans d’autres champs de recherche sont aussi abordées.Publishing articles on the economics involves long time frames of up to several years, from submission to publication. Consequently, journal contents tend to lag behind what is happening on the research frontier. The most usual sources of information on frontier research are conferences and « working papers », which are photocopied documents that circulate among certain scientists. This practice is fostering the emergence of exclusive small groups and prevents third parties from participating in pioneering research. The Internet has radically changed possibilities for access to working papers, but Internet access still needs to be organised and to allow others to read one’s work. This article describes the RePEc initiative, which effectively places all economists on the same footing and has become an essential instrument in its field. Similar initiatives in other fields are also investigated. (shrink)

Spacetime as we know and love it is lost in most approaches to quantum gravity. For many of these approaches, as inchoate and incomplete as they may be, one of the main challenges is to relate what they take to be the fundamental non-spatiotemporal structure of the world back to the classical spacetime of GR. The present essay investigates how spacetime is lost and how it may be regained in one major approach to quantum gravity, loop quantum gravity.

The detailed interpretation and translation of Nietzsche’s early Latin odes clearly show that Horace’s lyric poetry has an exemplary function for the development of Nietzsche’s own poetic language. Even in his later works, such as Twilight of the Idols and the Dionysos-Dithyrambs, Nietzsche’s poetic style and rhetorical strategies remain indebted to his early attempts to emulate classical Latin poetry when he was a pupil at the Pforta boarding school.

The article discusses the role of the UN Global Compact in the emerging global corporate social responsibility infrastructure. It evaluates the debate around the effectiveness and legitimacy of the UNGC alongside the arguments of its supporters and critics and thereby introduces the Thematic Symposium contributions. The article further identifies three theoretical perspectives that are used by scholars to discuss the performance of the UNGC: economic, socio-historical, and normative. It proposes that these perspectives can serve as generic distinctions with direct relevance (...) for the evaluation of the UNGC. Once the perspective is chosen, it drives towards a certain purpose which implies assumptions and design features with regard to the UNGC. Finally, the article offers a future research agenda, emphasising the research needed on the UNGC in four areas: the identification of processes and influence mechanisms; legitimacy and effectiveness; local networks and regional development; and the interface of the UNGC and responsible leadership. (shrink)

I model sequential decisions over multiple interconnected propositions and investigate path-dependence in such decisions. The propositions and their interconnections are represented in propositional logic. A sequential decision process is path-dependent if its outcome depends on the order in which the propositions are considered. Assuming that earlier decisions constrain later ones, I prove three main results: First, certain rationality violations by the decision-making agent—individual or group—are necessary and sufficient for path-dependence. Second, under some conditions, path-dependence is unavoidable in decisions made by (...) groups. Third, path-dependence makes decisions vulnerable to strategic agenda setting and strategic voting. I also discuss escape routes from path-dependence. My results are relevant to discussions on collective consistency and reason-based decision-making, focusing not only on outcomes, but also on underlying reasons, beliefs, and constraints. (shrink)

More often than not, recently popular structuralist interpretations of physical theories leave the central concept of a structure insufficiently precisified. The incipient causal sets approach to quantum gravity offers a paradigmatic case of a physical theory predestined to be interpreted in structuralist terms. It is shown how employing structuralism lends itself to a natural interpretation of the physical meaning of causal set theory. Conversely, the conceptually exceptionally clear case of causal sets is used as a foil to illustrate how a (...) mathematically informed rigorous conceptualization of structure serves to identify structures in physical theories. Furthermore, a number of technical issues infesting structuralist interpretations of physical theories such as difficulties with grounding the identity of the places of highly symmetrical physical structures in their relational profile and what may resolve these difficulties can be vividly illustrated with causal sets. (shrink)

Approaches to quantum gravity often involve the disappearance of space and time at the fundamental level. The metaphysical consequences of this disappearance are profound, as is illustrated with David Lewis's analysis of modality. As Lewis's possible worlds are unified by the spatiotemporal relations among their parts, the non-fundamentality of spacetime---if borne out---suggests a serious problem for his analysis: his pluriverse, for all its ontological abundance, does not contain our world. Although the mere existence---as opposed to the fundamentality---of spacetime must be (...) recovered from the fundamental structure in order to guarantee the empirical coherence of the non-spatiotemporal fundamental theory, it does not suffice to salvage Lewis's theory of modality from the charge of rendering our actual world impossible. (shrink)

This essay is a critical assessment of Sellars' interpretation and criticism of Descartes. It argues that Sellars made several mistakes in his view of Descartes, although the general thrust of his critique is sound.

Globalization arguably generated a governance gap that is being filled by transnational rule-making involving private actors among others. The democratic legitimacy of such new forms of governance beyond nation states is sometimes questioned. Apart from nation-centered democracies, such governance cannot build, for example, on representation and voting procedures to convey legitimacy to the generated rules. Instead, alternative elements of democracy such as deliberation and inclusion require discussion to assess new instruments of governance. The recently published standard ISO 26000 is an (...) interesting example of transnational governance. ISO 26000 was developed in a lengthy multiorganizational process for the purpose of giving guidance on the social responsibility of organizations. By assessing the specific case of ISO 26000, this study sheds light on the question of how legitimacy beyond nation-state democracy is ensured or constricted. Centering on the idea of deliberate democracy and democratic legitimacy, the study offers in-depth insights on the normative legitimacy of the development process of ISO 26000. Positioned on the interface of business studies and public policy, this article contributes to the academic literature on transnational governance and on the role of multistakeholder processes in shaping the role of business in society. (shrink)

Recent advancements in AI have prompted a large number of AI ethics guidelines published by governments and nonprofits. While many of these papers propose concrete or seemingly applicable ideas, few philosophically sound proposals are made. In particular, we observe that the line of questioning has often not been examined critically and underlying conceptual problems not always dealt with at the root. In this paper, we investigate the nature of ethical AI systems and what their moral status might be by first (...) turning to the notions of moral agency and patience. We find that their explication would come at a too high cost which is why we, second, articulate a different approach that avoids vague and ambiguous concepts or the problem of other minds. Third, we explore the impact of our philosophical and conceptual analysis on the regulatory landscape, make this link explicit, and finally propose a set of promising policy steps. (shrink)

Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) represents a key area of neuromodulation that has gained wide adoption for the treatment of neurological and experimental testing for psychiatric disorders. It is associated with specific therapeutic effects based on the precision of an evolving mechanistic neuroscientific understanding. At the same time, there are obstacles to achieving symptom relief because of the incompleteness of such an understanding. These obstacles are at least in part based on the complexity of neuropsychiatric disorders and the incompleteness of DBS (...) devices to represent prosthetics that modulate the breadth of pathological processes implicated in these disorders. Neuroprostheses, such as an implanted DBS system, can have vast effects on subjects in addition to the specific neuropsychiatric changes they are intended to produce. These effects largely represent blind spots in the current debate on neuromodulation. Anthropological accounts can illustrate the broad existential dimensions of patients’ illness and responses to neural implants. In combination with current neuroscientific understanding, neuropsychiatric anthropology may illuminate the possibilities and limits of neurodevices as technical “world enablers”. (shrink)

This article examines the methodology of a core branch of contemporary political theory or philosophy: “analytic” political theory. After distinguishing political theory from related fields, such as political science, moral philosophy, and legal theory, the article discusses the analysis of political concepts. It then turns to the notions of principles and theories, as distinct from concepts, and reviews the methods of assessing such principles and theories, for the purpose of justifying or criticizing them. Finally, it looks at a recent debate (...) on how abstract and idealized political theory should be, and assesses the significance of disagreement in political theory. The discussion is carried out from an angle inspired by the philosophy of science. (shrink)

In response to Koplin and Wilkinson, I argue, first, that the uncertain clinical prospects of human-pig chimera based transplantation makes the reason to spend resources for clarifying whether such practice might imply serious ethical breach due to enhanced cognitive capacities of the chimeras rather weak. T he benefits of further pursuing this avenue of research is so uncertain, so that taking even very unclear risks of serious ethical breach (thus in need of clarification for justification of the research) is not (...) worth the price in terms of spent resources, and therefore only limited resources should be spent to clarify such risk before the project is abandoned due to unacceptable risks. Second, I argue that as there are some reason to pursue this avenue further (and thus investigate the risk in question), the analogy to the notion of halting all farming of larger animals for food does not hold up. The reason is that we do not need to probe any further any comparable risk to know that such farming practices should be halted. A fundamental underlying issue to the question discussed by Koplin and Wilkinson1 in this paper is formulated when they write: > We should therefore be confident that human-pig chimeras would lack morally relevant cognitive capacities before setting out to use them as a source of transplantable human organs. This leaves open the question of how confident …. (shrink)

One cannot scrutinize mediality in a pre-media age without referring to the complex issue of Christology. The idea of Christ as medium and mediator concerns not only particular theological questions but also general issues of translation and transference, as well as models of word and image. This paper sketches first the notion of Christ′s mediality up to early Scholasticism and then highlights the new conceptual patterns developed by Bonaventure (Collationes in Hexaemeron) and Nicolas of Cusa (De visione dei).

Volume 20, Issue 6, June 2020, Page 40-42.

If there is a specifically rhetorical approach to argumentation, I believe it is one that studies argumentation that is specifically rhetorical. So if we want to ask, “What is the rhetorical approach to argumentation?” we should first ask, “What is rhetorical argumentation?” It is worthwhile focusing on this question because various misleading definitions of rhetorical argumentation have been in circulation for almost as long as rhetoric has existed. Some misleading definitions see the defining property of rhetorical argumentation in the arguer’s (...) aim. And that aim, which is often assumed to override all the arguer’s other considerations, is strategic: to persuade his hearer(s) by any available means and .. (shrink)

Resumo: Esse ensaio buscará sondar as relações entre filosofia e literatura, no pensamento de Gilles Deleuze, a despeito de sua parceria conjunta com Félix Guattari, atentando tanto para as concepções de escrita expressas ao longo de sua obra quanto para o modo como essas concepções teriam influenciado o estilo de seus escritos filosóficos. Partindo da premissa deleuziana de que a escrita possui um acentuado lastro clínico, sendo a responsável pela elaboração de um diagnóstico das forças capazes de aprisionar ou calar (...) a vida, procurar-se-á esmiuçar as ressonâncias desse lastro clínico, na concepção de filosofia como ato criativo, elaborada pelo autor. Como hipótese a ser aqui trabalhada, defende-se que a escrita deleuziana - compreendida como portadora de uma literalidade, conforme sustenta François Zourabchivili, ou como encrustada de uma poética imanentista, tal qual sugere Anita Costa Malufe - procuraria produzir uma zona de vizinhança ou indiscernibilidade entre a escrita filosófica, de caráter mais exegético, e a escrita literária, mais afectiva, de modo a produzir um deslocamento na relação do leitor com o ato de pensar.: In this essay we pretend to study the relationship between philosophy and literature in Gilles Deleuze’s thought, despite of his partnership with Félix Guattari, mapping the conceptions of writing throughout his work and considering the influence of these conceptions to forge a certain style in his philosophical texts. Starting from the deleuzian premise that writing has a strong clinical backing - being responsible for the elaboration of a diagnosis of the forces liable to imprison or silence life -, we will examine the resonances of this clinical backing in his conception of philosophy as a creative act. Our hypothesis is that the deleuzian writing - having a certain literality, as François Zourabchivili argues, or encrusted with an immanentism poetics, as Anita Costa Malufe suggests - would produce a so-called neighborhood zone or zone of indiscernibility between philosophical writing, with a more exegetical character, and literary writing, which is more affective, in order to produce a shift in the reader’s relationship with the act of thinking. (shrink)

Most approaches to quantum gravity suggest that relativistic spacetime is not fundamental, but instead emerges from some non-spatiotemporal structure. This paper investigates the implications of this suggestion for the possibility of time travel in the sense of the existence of closed timelike curves in some relativistic spacetimes. In short, will quantum gravity reverse or strengthen general relativity’s verdict that time travel is possible?

This article develops theory on responsible leadership based on a model involving three leadership roles: an expert who displays organizational expertise, a facilitator who cares for and motivates employees and a citizen who considers the consequences of her or his decisions for society. It draws on previous responsible leadership research, stakeholder theory and theories of behavioral complexity to conceptualize the roles model of responsible leadership. Responsible leadership is positioned as a concept that requires leaders to show behavioral complexity in addressing (...) all three roles. In three studies, we provide a first empirical test of antecedents and outcomes of the roles model of responsible leadership. The results of the studies indicate that responsible leadership is positively related to the leader’s perceived effectiveness, favorable stakeholder evaluations and employee engagement with the organization and society. Responsible leadership behavior, in turn, seems to be facilitated by leader empathy, positive affect and universal value orientation. (shrink)

The ideal of scientific openness — i.e. the idea that scientific information should be freely accessible to interested parties — is strongly supported throughout the scientific community. At the same time, however, this ideal does not appear to be absolute in the everyday practice of science. In order to get the credit for new scientific advances, scientists often keep information to themselves. Also, it is common practice to withhold information obtained in commissioned research when the scientist has agreed with his (...) or her employer to do so. The secrecy may be intended for ever, as in the military area, but also temporarily until a patent application has been made. The paper explores to what extent such secrecy is undesirable, as seems to be suggested by the ideal of scientific openness. Should this ideal be interpreted as having certain exceptions which make the above-mentioned practices acceptable? Are there, on closer inspection, good arguments for the ideal of scientific openness, and for officially upholding it? Possible versions of the ideal of scientific openness are explored and the issue is found to be rather complex, allowing for wide variations depending on the acting parties, beneficiaries, types of information and moral requirements involved. We conclude that the arguments usually given in favour of this ideal are weaker than what seems to be generally believed, and that, on closer inspection, they leave plenty of room for exceptions to it. These exceptions only partly cover the actual practice of withholding scientific information, and there may still be good reason to advocate, teach and enforce the ideal of scientific openness within the scientific community. (shrink)

We investigate Kerr–Newman black holes in which a rotating charged ring-shaped singularity induces a region which contains closed timelike curves (CTCs). Contrary to popular belief, it turns out that the time orientation of the CTC is oppo- site to the direction in which the singularity or the ergosphere rotates. In this sense, CTCs “counter-rotate” against the rotating black hole. We have similar results for all spacetimes sufficiently familiar to us in which rotation induces CTCs. This motivates our conjecture that perhaps (...) this counter-rotation is not an accidental oddity particular to Kerr–Newman spacetimes, but instead there may be a general and intuitively comprehensible reason for this. (shrink)

Within child and adolescent psychiatry, there are a number of potential dilemmas pertaining to diagnosis, treatment, the protection of the child, as well as the child's own developing intelligence and moral judgement. Diagnostic Dilemmas in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry is the first in the IPPP series to explore this highly complex topic.

In den Paragraphen 1–78 seiner "Ontologia", die dieser Band enthält, entwickelt Wolff die grundlegenden Prinzipien seiner Metaphysik. Die Ausgabe bietet den Text erstmals in deutscher Übersetzung.

Distributed cognition refers to processes which are (i) cognitive and (ii) distributed across multiple agents or devices rather than performed by a single agent. Distributed cognition has attracted interest in several fields ranging from sociology and law to computer science and the philosophy of science. In this paper, I discuss distributed cognition from a social-choice-theoretic perspective. Drawing on models of judgment aggregation, I address two questions. First, how can we model a group of individuals as a distributed cognitive system? Second, (...) can a group acting as a distributed cognitive system be ‘rational’ and ‘track the truth’ in the outputs it produces? I argue that a group’s performance as a distributed cognitive system depends on its ‘aggregation procedure’ – its mechanism for aggregating the group members’ inputs into collective outputs – and I investigate the properties of an aggregation procedure that matter. (shrink)

If school attendance is important for social integration, then a particular out of school practice like home education could possibly represent a threat to social integration. The findings of a Norwegian research project that surveyed socialization among Norwegian home educated students from different regions are presented and discussed using socialization theory and a theory of cultural order. Among the conclusions are the following: Pragmatically motivated home educated students are often socially well integrated. Religiously motivated home educated students that hold values (...) distant from the values of society are not necessarily socially isolated. With more openness and more communication between society and home educators home educated students could meet criteria for social integration even more so than is presently the case. (shrink)