We present an experimental test of the validity of the Pauli Exclusion Principle for electrons based on the concept put forward a few years ago by Ramberg and Snow. In this experiment we perform a very accurate search of X-rays from the Pauli-forbidden atomic transitions of electrons in the already filled 1S shells of copper atoms. Although the experiment has a simple structure, it poses deep conceptual and interpretational problems. Here we describe the experimental method and recent experimental results, which (...) we interpret as an upper limit for the probability to violate the Pauli Exclusion Principle. We present also future plans to upgrade the experimental apparatus using Silicon Drift Detectors. (shrink)

We present the idea of searching for X-rays as a signature of the mechanism inducing the spontaneous collapse of the wave function. Such a signal is predicted by the continuous spontaneous localization theories, which are solving the “measurement problem” by modifying the Schrödinger equation. We will show some encouraging preliminary results and discuss future plans and strategy.

In this article, I analyze the relation between ontology and practical philosophy in Cicero’s work and the role Hellenistic philosophy plays within the work of Giorgio Agamben. I discuss the relation between life and ontology, between philosophy as a guide to living and philosophy as the study of being. Unlike philosophers who treat Hellenistic philosophy as a form of therapy, I show how Agamben interprets Hellenistic philosophy as oppressive by turning the theory of being into an injunction of having-to-be. For (...) Agamben, every philosophy implies a certain form of life, and it is thus impossible to distinguish between ontology and living. The aim of philosophy, therefore, is not to be therapeutic but rather to develop an ontology that will allow for humanity to live without oppression. Through a detailed reading of Cicero’s concept of “nature,” I develop the reading and critique of Cicero suggested by Agamben.Cet article analyse la relation entre l’ontologie et la philosophie pratique dans l’oeuvre de Cicéron et le rôle joué par la philosophie hellénistique dans l’oeuvre de Giorgio Agamben. Il discute la relation entre la vie et l’ontologie, entre la philosophie comme guide de savoir-vivre et la philosophie comme étude de l’être. Contrairement aux philosophes qui traitent la philosophie hellénistique comme une forme de thérapie, je montre que Agamben interprète la philosophie hellénistique comme essentielle-ment oppressive en transformant la théorie de l'être en une injonction normative de devoir-être. Pour Agamben, toute philosophie implique une certaine forme de vie, rendant alors la distinction entre l’ontologie et la vie impossible. Ainsi, le but de la philosophie n'est pas d’être thérapeutique mais plutôt de développer une ontologie qui permettra à l’humanité de vivre sans oppression. Par une lecture du concept de la « nature » de Cicéron, je développe l’interprétation et la critique de Cicéron proposé par Agamben. (shrink)

The paper critically discusses the deontological interpretation of Hobbesian contractual obligation which has been advocated by commentators such as Brian Barry, D. D. Raphael and Bernd Ludwig. According to this interpretation, the obligation to comply with contracts and covenants is fundamentally different from the obligation to observe the laws of nature. While the latter is taken to be a prudential obligation that is logically dependent upon the individual aim of self-preservation, the former is viewed as an absolute or unconditional moral (...) obligation that solely follows from the fact that the individual has bound himself to the performance or omission of certain actions. As can be shown, the deontological interpretation suffers from inherent problems and does not provide an appropriate interpretation of the Hobbesian texts. In particular, it can be demonstrated that the attempt to use Hobbes's concept of 'freedom as deliberation' in order to explain how obligations arise from contractual agreements faces serious difficulties. (shrink)

Insbesondere die Tragfähigkeit des transzendentalen Idealismus für Kants Metaphysik der Natur sowie die Schlüssigkeit seiner Moralphilosophie stehen in den Beiträgen des Bandes erneut auf dem Prüfstand. Zentrale Konzepte von Kants Transzendental- und Moralphilosophie, wie Substanz, Zeit, Freiheit und der kategorische Imperativ, werdenvor dem Hintergrund der Frage behandelt, wo Kant im Spannungsfeld zwischen traditionellem und modernem Wissenschaftsverständnis zu verorten ist. Bedeutende Vertreter der Kantforschung (u.a. H. E. Allison, P. Guyer, D. Schönecker, M.Caimi, H. Schmitz) liefern im vorliegenden Band Klärungen: Sie ordnen (...) Kant in den Kontext der Tradition und der zeitgenössischen Diskussion ein und ziehen produktive Vergleiche mit Autoren nach Kant, die sich kritisch mit ihm auseinander setzten. Der Band richtet sich an fortgeschrittene Studierende und Kantforscher, die sich einen repräsentativen Überblick über den aktuellen Stand der Debatte verschaffen wollen. (shrink)

In this paper we describe an experimental test of the validity of the Pauli Exclusion Principle (for electrons) which is based on a straightforward idea put forward a few years ago by Ramberg and Snow (Phys. Lett. B 238:438, 1990). We perform a very accurate search of X-rays from the Pauli-forbidden atomic transitions of electrons in the already filled 1S shells of copper atoms. Although the experiment has a very simple structure, it poses deep conceptual and interpretational problems. Here we (...) describe the experimental method and recent experimental results, which we interpret in the framework of quon theory. We also present future plans to upgrade the experimental apparatus using Silicon Drift Detectors. (shrink)

‘À quoi sert la littérature?’, Deleuze opens his book on Leopold von Sacher-Masoch with a question that this paper will pose again, trying to propose an answer to it, and to put to test the methodological approach that can be obtained from that answer: what are the uses of literature and, more specifically, how could the philosopher use literature, what could be done with it? To this end, this paper will focus on Deleuze’s symptomatological conception of literature. The second part (...) of the paper will be dedicated to the reading of two novels, 1984 by George Orwell and The Circle by Dave Eggers. The novels will be put in in a relation of resonation with two concepts sketched in Deleuze’s Post-scriptum sur les sociétés de contrôle: Foucauldian disciplinary societies and control societies. These novels will be considered as signaletic material, symptomatologies of two conditions of society, from which this paper proposes to extract two types of signs: Signs of Order and Signs of Suggestion. These signs will be made react with the concepts of Foucault and Deleuze, in order to see if they can produce the ground for a therapeutic. The paper will therefore combine literary symptomatologies and philosophical aetiology, in the attempt to make them react together, Foucault and Orwell, Eggers and Deleuze, to extract and describe signs from the literary material considered that may be brought to the fore only after the consideration of the causes of the most important symptoms of discipline and control. (shrink)

Shoshana Zuboff’s international bestseller, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, was reviewed in the Wall Street Journal as a book that asks us ‘to pause long enough to think about the future and how it might be different from today.’ That description could work as the definition of the literary utopia or dystopia. In fact, Zuboff’s book has consecutive chapters titled ‘Big Other and the Rise of Instrumentalist Power’ and (...) ‘A Utopia of Certainty’. In the former chapter, the title of which seems to reference George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, Zuboff argues that there now exists a ‘ubiquitous digital apparatus’ that ‘renders, monitors, computes and modifies human behaviour’. In the latter chapter she asserts that the ‘surveillance capitalist leaders [such as Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Page, CEOs of Facebook and Google respectively] are sui generis utopianists’. This article critically assesses Zuboff’s claims in relation to Dave Eggers’ 2013 novel The Circle, where the eponymous utopian/dystopian company’s name, as well its motto ‘ALL THAT HAPPENS MUST BE KNOWN’ gesture towards Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon writings. This article explores Zuboff’s factual and Eggers’ fictional examinations of surveillance capitalism. While Zuboff’s and Eggers’ works have different points of departure and modes of representation, a comparative reading suggests key points of overlap and disagreement about the impact of surveillance in the contemporary world, about what the future might hold, and about how we should respond. (shrink)

This book is a critical examination of the philosophical and moral issues in relation to human enhancement and the various related medical developments that are now rapidly moving from the laboratory into the clinical realm. In the book, the author critically examines technologies such as genetic engineering, neural implants, pharmacologic enhancement, and cryonic suspension from transhumanist and bioconservative positions, focusing primarily on moral issues and what it means to be a human in a setting where technological interventions sometimes impact strongly (...) on our humanity. The author also introduces the notion that death is a process rather than an event, as well as identifies philosophical and clinical limitations in the contemporary determination of brain death as a precursor to organ procurement for transplantation. The discussion on what exactly it means to be dead is later applied to explore philosophical and clinical issues germane to the cryonics movement. Written by a physician/ scientist and heavily referenced to the peer-reviewed medical and scientific literature, the book is aimed at advanced students and academics but should be readable by any intelligent reader willing to carry out some side-reading. No prior knowledge of moral philosophy is assumed, as the various key approaches to moral philosophy are outlined early in the book. (shrink)

Arash Abizadeh's main thesis is that Hobbes severed juridical obligation—a covenant-created practice of second-personal accountability—from allegedly prudential natural law, marking a "watershed" separation of the right from the good. Daniel Eggers, Mark Peacock, and David D. Raphael fruitfully explored that thesis. The proposed independence is doubtful because natural law both underwrites and constrains covenant: "a...

“Sentiment” is a term of art, intended to refer to object-directed, irruptive states, that occur in relatively transient bouts involving positive or negative affect, and that typically involve a distinctive motivational profile. Not all the states normally called “emotions” are sentiments in the sense just characterized. And all the terms for sentiments are sometimes used in English to refer to longer lasting attitudes. But this discussion is concerned with boutish affective states, not standing attitudes. That poses some challenges that will (...) be my focus here. Rational sentimentalism is a cousin of fitting attitude theories of value, but other fitting attitude theories appeal to attitudes that are widely assumed to be governable by certain kinds of judgments. The basic challenge is this: are these boutish sentiments the sorts of things that we can and do regulate in the ways that are required for treating ‘shameful’, ‘funny’, ‘disgusting’ and the like as values? In what follows I briefly sketch some necessary conditions on treating something as a value, from which it emerges that treating sentimental values as values requires regulating the sentiments for fittingness. The rest of the paper is devoted to two ways of understanding how such regulation might work. I argue first that sentiments are susceptible to regulation by evaluative judgment, though perhaps not in quite the same way that philosophers have thought “judgment-sensitive attitudes” are regulated by judgment. I then suggest more tentatively that sentiments are also susceptible to regulation for fittingness in a different way: by educating sensibilities. (shrink)

This book provides both a short history of Christian ethics and looks at itsbasic sources as they arise from Judaism, Greco-Roman ethics, andChristianity.

Although it is frequently overlooked, J.S. Mill's political philosophy has a significant civic component; he is a committed believer in the value of active and disinterested participation in public affairs by the citizens of liberal democracies, and he advocates a programme of civic education intended to cultivate public spirit. In the first half of this essay I present a brief but systematic exploration of his thought's civic dimension. In the second half I defend Mill's civic liberalism against various critics who (...) have explicitly or implicitly charged that the civic and liberal components of his political philosophy are inconsistent. (shrink)

Part of the work for this paper was done during the tenure of a fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. I am grateful for financial support provided by the National Science Foundation, Grant #BNS-8011494, and for the assistance of the staff of the Center. I also want to thank David Bloor, Stephen Downes, David Hull and Andy Pickering for offering good advice and criticism, some of which I have heeded.

Contributed research papers presented at a seminar organized by Dept. of Post-graduate Studies and Research in Christianity, University of Mysore, India in collaboration with the Society of Intercultural Philosophy, Koeln, Germany in Oct. 1994.

A collection of articles about P.A. Sorokin's work are preceded by a Russian translation of selected chapters of his 1947 work "Society, culture and personality" and a collection of correspondence (also translated into Russian) between him and Robert Merton.

t. 1. Introduction générale, témoignages, discours aus Corinthiens, sur la fortune.