In the twenty-second series of The Logic of Sense, Gilles Deleuze references a remarkable essay by Günther (Stern) Anders. Anders’ essay, translated here as ‘The Pathology of Freedom’, addresses the sickness and health of our negotiation with the negative anthropological condition of ‘not being cut out for the world’.

The philosopher, writer and technology critic Günther Anders, né Stern (1902–1992), occasionally referred to his own thinking as “occasional philosophy”. In order to reconstruct this mode of thought, which is also an essential key to understanding Anders, I will refer to a previously unpublished typescript of the same name from his literary estate. This reconstruction will be based on three theses: From the outset, Anders’ work is characterised by a preoccupation with questions of method. Secondly, the tools of occasional (...) philosophy can be found not only in his philosophical writings, but above all in his reflections on art, literature and photomontage. Thirdly, the prima vista eclectic and anti-systematic method is a logical reaction to the fundamentally changed conditions of philosophising in a (post-)modern, technologised society. (shrink)

Nous avons choisi de faire dialoguer Hannah Arendt et quelques uns de ses contemporains: Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno, Gunther Stern-Anders, Martin Buber, Paul Celan, Martin Heidegger, Max Horkheimer, Karl Jaspers, Hans Jonas, Victor Klemperer, Emmanuel Levinas, Primo Levi, George Steiner, Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin. Unanimes dans leur diagnostic d'une crise de l'occident, ces penseurs recusent la croyance dans le progres et les Lumieres: lorsque la Raison s'est muee en faculte destructrice du monde, lorsque la politique semble avoir perdu de vue (...) sa finalite, prendre soin du monde, comment resister aux forces du nihilisme? Tous illustrent la difficulte d'etre present a un monde hors de ses gonds sur lequel planait la menace d'une troisieme guerre mondiale, guerre atomique, guerre totale. Ils posent une meme question: comment repondre d'un monde habitable, amical, en avoir souci? Comment etre du monde et pas seulement au monde? (shrink)

L? Esquisse d?une théorie des émotions est traduite en anglais une première fois en 1948 1 . Elle le sera une seconde fois en 1962. Ces traductions ont suscité de nombreux comptes rendus et ont donné lieu depuis lors à de nombreuses lectures du petit livre de Sartre, alors que l?ouvrage a longtemps été négligé par les travaux de langue française 2 . En 1950, deux articles de grande qualité scellent cet intérêt anglo-saxon pour l??uvre de Sartre en général, et (...) pour l? Esquisse d?une théorie des émotions en particulier, dans cette période d?immédiat après-guerre. Le premier est écrit par Günther Stern, le second par Frederik Jacobus Johannes Buytendijk 3 . Ils adressent des questions fondamentales au livre de Sartre, à propos du rapport de l?émotion à la réalité d?une part, du rapport de l?émotion au langage de l?autre. L?émo­tion chez Sartre semble en effet se définir comme une façon de fuir la réalité, devenue trop difficile . C?est ce que semble indiquer la définition de l?émo­tion comme conscience magique. L?émotion serait ainsi, pour Sartre, la manière dont la conscience tenue en échec, mise en impasse, prétend agir directement, sans médiation, sur le monde. Dans le cadre de cet article, je me limiterai à une discussion du premier article, qui adressait déjà, sans que les commentaires suivants aient pu égaler son acuité, les questions fondamentales. Dans un premier temps, je rappellerai de. (shrink)

Literature has a central place in Hannah Arendt’s writings. In particular, scholars continually discuss the implications of storytelling to her theory of action. This paper takes a different approach by drawing attention to an early literary essay, ”Rilke’s Duino Elegies”, which Arendt co-authored with Günther Stern in 1930. The paper locates the essay in the early twentieth century intellectual response to the ”break in tradition”, arguing that the construction of a poetics dramatized in the Duino Elegies is crucial for (...) judging the originality of Arendt’s philosophical methodology, and the ontological significance of her poetic conception of praise. In this conception, meaning is to be found in things as they appear to human beings capable of using the language designating them poetically. I present my interpretation of the Arendt-Stern essay by contrasting it with Heidegger’s comment on the eighth Elegy from 1942-43 and Blanchot’s reading of Rilke from 1955. (shrink)

Cette biographie de référence éclaire d'un jour nouveau tout un pan de la vie intellectuelle du XXe siècle, celui de ces universitaires juifs allemands obligés de fuir le IIIe Reich et qui, d'étape en étape, finirent par trouver refuge aux Etats-Unis. Le livre associe la présentation des grandes étapes de la pensée et de l'œuvre de Hannah Arendt aux événements historiques qui la sollicitent et au tableau des amitiés et des cercles successifs. Si la liaison qu'elle eut brièvement au début (...) des années 30 avec Heidegger est désormais bien connue, d'autres aspects de son existence, pourtant du plus haut intérêt, le sont moins : son rapprochement avec le sionisme sous l'égide de Kurt Blumenfeld avant et pendant la guerre, son mariage avec Günther Stern, puis avec Heinrich Blücher, sa longue amitié aux Etats-Unis avec la romancière Mary McCarthy ou avec le poète W.H. Auden. Polémiste redoutable et critique cinglante, constante dans ses fidélités, et en premier lieu dans sa relation avec cette grande conscience allemande que fut Karl Jaspers, Arendt a traversé tous les débats du siècle, sans jamais céder ni sur son indépendance d'esprit ni sur sa lucidité : face au totalitarisme, dont elle forge le concept, mais aussi face au racisme et aux mouvements pour les droits civils aux Etats-Unis, face à la création de l'Etat d'Israël et au devenir du sionisme, face à l'engagement américain dans la guerre du Vietnam, face à la révolte de la jeunesse des années 60. Ne s'abandonnant jamais à la tentation aristocratique du retrait, elle accomplit une œuvre de pensée sans avoir besoin de décrier le monde, mais en prônant l'amour de la réalité, donnant ainsi l'image rare d'une vie de penseur à la hauteur de ses accomplissements spéculatifs. Indisponible depuis une dizaine d'années, cet ouvrage a été mis à jour et enrichi d'une nouvelle préface de l'auteur. (shrink)

Cette lecture du livre de Gregory Cormann, Sartre. Une anthropologie politique. 1920-1980, est centrée sur la relation de Sartre avec Lucien Lévy-Bruhl sur le thème des émotions, développée dans son dernier chapitre. Cela conduit aussi à suggérer, sous ce rapport, un lien entre Günther Anders Stern e Sartre.

The aim of this article is twofold. First, it is argued that while the principle of ‘ought implies can’ is certainly plausible in some form, it is tempting to misconstrue it, and that this has happened in the way it has been taken up in some of the current literature. Second, Kant's understanding of the principle is considered. Here it is argued that these problematic conceptions put the principle to work in a way that Kant does not, so that there (...) is an important divergence here which can easily be overlooked. (shrink)

In his 1956 essay “Die Welt als Phantom und Matrize”, Günther Anders provided a thorough interpretation of radio and television. Far from just being a time-specific document of early electronic mass media, it still continues to provide insights into how human experience is changed through each new technical medium. This will be illustrated via three critical concepts proposed by Anders. He coined the term “iconomania” to conceptualise the ongoing medial shift from a writing-based to a primarily visual culture. “A priori (...) conditional forms” is Anders’ way of getting a grasp on the structural influence of mass production and mass media on human perception and behaviour. The term “psychotechnics” was originally introduced by Anders’ father, William Stern, for early forms of applied psychology. Anders adopted it in a critical fashion in his warnings of an all-encompassing power of reshaping psychical functions that proves especially fruitful when applied to contemporary design principles. Finally, Anders’ media theory will be briefly compared to Shane Denson’s recent work on “discorrelation” between human perception and digital images. (shrink)

In this article, I want to argue that scepticism for Kant must be seen in ancient and not just modern terms, and that if we take this into account we will need to take a different view of Kant's response to Hume from the one that is standardly presented in the literature. This standard view has been put forward recently by Paul Guyer, and it is therefore his view that I want to look at in some detail, and to try (...) to correct. (shrink)

This paper has three main objectives: (a) Discuss the formal analogy between some important symmetry-invariance arguments used in physics, probability and statistics. Specifically, we will focus on Noether’s theorem in physics, the maximum entropy principle in probability theory, and de Finetti-type theorems in Bayesian statistics; (b) Discuss the epistemological and ontological implications of these theorems, as they are interpreted in physics and statistics. Specifically, we will focus on the positivist (in physics) or subjective (in statistics) interpretations vs. objective interpretations that (...) are suggested by symmetry and invariance arguments; (c) Introduce the cognitive constructivism epistemological framework as a solution that overcomes the realism-subjectivism dilemma and its pitfalls. The work of the physicist and philosopher Max Born will be particularly important in our discussion. (shrink)

Comments presented at the 35th International Seminar on the -- New Institutional Economics -- Empirical Methods for the Law; Syracuse, 2018.

The main goal of this article is to use the epistemological framework of a specific version of Cognitive Constructivism to address Piaget’s central problem of knowledge construction, namely, the re-equilibration of cognitive structures. The distinctive objective character of this constructivist framework is supported by formal inference methods of Bayesian statistics, and is based on Heinz von Foerster’s fundamental metaphor of objects as tokens for eigen-solutions. This epistemological perspective is illustrated using some episodes in the history of chemistry concerning the definition (...) or identification of chemical elements. Some of von Foerster’s epistemological imperatives provide general guidelines of development and argumentation. (shrink)

In this paper epistemological, ontological and sociological questions concerning the statistical significance of sharp hypotheses in scientific research are investigated within the framework provided by Cognitive Constructivism and the FBST (Full Bayesian Significance Test). The constructivist framework is contrasted with the traditional epistemological settings for orthodox Bayesian and frequentist statistics provided by Decision Theory and Falsificationism.

This paper introduces pragmatic hypotheses and relates this concept to the spiral of scientific evolution. Previous works determined a characterization of logically consistent statistical hypothesis tests and showed that the modal operators obtained from this test can be represented in the hexagon of oppositions. However, despite the importance of precise hypothesis in science, they cannot be accepted by logically consistent tests. Here, we show that this dilemma can be overcome by the use of pragmatic versions of precise hypotheses. These pragmatic (...) versions allow a level of imprecision in the hypothesis that is small relative to other experimental conditions. The introduction of pragmatic hypotheses allows the evolution of scientific theories based on statistical hypothesis testing to be interpreted using the narratological structure of hexagonal spirals, as defined by Pierre Gallais. (shrink)

Simultaneous hypothesis tests can fail to provide results that meet logical requirements. For example, if A and B are two statements such that A implies B, there exist tests that, based on the same data, reject B but not A. Such outcomes are generally inconvenient to statisticians (who want to communicate the results to practitioners in a simple fashion) and non-statisticians (confused by conflicting pieces of information). Based on this inconvenience, one might want to use tests that satisfy logical requirements. (...) However, Izbicki and Esteves shows that the only tests that are in accordance with three logical requirements (monotonicity, invertibility and consonance) are trivial tests based on point estimation, which generally lack statistical optimality. As a possible solution to this dilemma, this paper adapts the above logical requirements to agnostic tests, in which one can accept, reject or remain agnostic with respect to a given hypothesis. Each of the logical requirements is characterized in terms of a Bayesian decision theoretic perspective. Contrary to the results obtained for regular hypothesis tests, there exist agnostic tests that satisfy all logical requirements and also perform well statistically. In particular, agnostic tests that fulfill all logical requirements are characterized as region estimator-based tests. Examples of such tests are provided. (shrink)

The full Bayesian signi/cance test (FBST) for precise hypotheses is presented, with some illustrative applications. In the FBST we compute the evidence against the precise hypothesis. We discuss some of the theoretical properties of the FBST, and provide an invariant formulation for coordinate transformations, provided a reference density has been established. This evidence is the probability of the highest relative surprise set, “tangential” to the sub-manifold (of the parameter space) that defines the null hypothesis.

The Kant-Hegel relation has a continuing fascination for commentators on Hegel, and understandably so: for, taking this route into the Hegelian jungle can promise many advantages. First, it can set Hegel’s thought against a background with which we are fairly familiar, and in a way that makes its relevance clearly apparent; second, it can help us locate Hegel in the broader philosophical tradition, making us see that the traditional ‘analytic’ jump from Kant to Frege leaves out a crucial period in (...) post-Kantian thought; third, it can show Hegel in a progressive light, as attempting to take that tradition further forward; fourth, it can help us locate familiar philosophical issues in Hegelian thought that otherwise can appear wholly sui generis; and finally, and perhaps most importantly of all, focusing on this relation can help raise and crystalise some of the fascinating ambiguities concerning Hegel’s outlook, regarding whether Hegel’s response to Kant shows him to have been a reactionary, Romantic, pre-critical thinker, who sought to turn the philosophical clock back to a time before Kant had written, or a modernist, Enlightened and essentially critical one, who remained true to the spirit if not the letter of Kant’s philosophy. (shrink)

Heinz Von Forester characterizes the objects “known” by an autopoietic system as eigen-solutions, that is, as discrete, separable, stable and composable states of the interaction of the system with its environment. Previous articles have presented the FBST, Full Bayesian Significance Test, as a mathematical formalism specifically designed to access the support for sharp statistical hypotheses, and have shown that these hypotheses correspond, from a constructivist perspective, to systemic eigen-solutions in the practice of science. In this article several issues related to (...) the role played by language in the emergence of eigen-solutions are analyzed. The last sections also explore possible connections with the semiotic theory of Charles Sanders Peirce. (shrink)

In this paper, the notion of degree of inconsistency is introduced as a tool to evaluate the sensitivity of the Full Bayesian Significance Test (FBST) value of evidence with respect to changes in the prior or reference density. For that, both the definition of the FBST, a possibilistic approach to hypothesis testing based on Bayesian probability procedures, and the use of bilattice structures, as introduced by Ginsberg and Fitting, in paraconsistent logics, are reviewed. The computational and theoretical advantages of using (...) the proposed degree of inconsistency based sensitivity evaluation as an alternative to traditional statistical power analysis is also discussed. (shrink)

A new Evidence Test is applied to the problem of testing whether two Poisson random variables are dependent. The dependence structure is that of Holgate’s bivariate distribution. These bivariate distribution depends on three parameters, 0 < theta_1, theta_2 < infty, and 0 < theta_3 < min(theta_1, theta_2). The Evidence Test was originally developed as a Bayesian test, but in the present paper it is compared to the best known test of the hypothesis of independence in a frequentist framework. It is (...) shown that the Evidence Test is considerably more powerful when the correlation is not too close to zero, even for small samples. (shrink)

This article presents a simple derivation of optimization models for reaction networks leading to a generalized form of the mass-action law, and compares the formal structure of Minimum Information Divergence, Quadratic Programming and Kirchhoff type network models. These optimization models are used in related articles to develop and illustrate the operation of ontology alignment algorithms and to discuss closely connected issues concerning the epistemological and statistical significance of sharp or precise hypotheses in empirical science.

We review the definition of the Full Bayesian Significance Test (FBST), and summarize its main statistical and epistemological characteristics. We review also the Abstract Belief Calculus (ABC) of Darwiche and Ginsberg, and use it to analyze the FBST’s value of evidence. This analysis helps us understand the FBST properties and interpretation. The definition of value of evidence against a sharp hypothesis, in the FBST setup, was motivated by applications of Bayesian statistical reasoning to legal matters where the sharp hypotheses were (...) defendants statements, to be judged according to the Onus Probandi juridical principle. (shrink)

Sortition, i.e. random appointment for public duty, has been employed by societies throughout the years as a firewall designated to prevent illegitimate interference between parties in a legal case and agents of the legal system. In judicial systems of modern western countries, random procedures are mainly employed to select the jury, the court and/or the judge in charge of judging a legal case. Therefore, these random procedures play an important role in the course of a case, and should comply with (...) some principles, such as transparency and complete auditability. Nevertheless, these principles are neglected by random procedures in some judicial systems, which are performed in secrecy and are not auditable by the involved parties. The assignment of cases in the Brazilian Supreme Court is an example of such a procedure, for it is performed using procedures unknown to the parties involved in the judicial cases. This article presents a review of how sortition has been historically employed by societies and discusses how Mathematical Statistics may be applied to random procedures of the judicial system, as it has been applied for almost a century on clinical trials, for example. A statistical model for assessing randomness in case assignment is proposed and applied to the Brazilian Supreme Court. As final remarks, guidelines for the development of good randomization procedures are outlined. (shrink)

We present SASC, Self-Adaptive Semantic Crossover, a new class of crossover operators for genetic programming. SASC operators are designed to induce the emergence and then preserve good building-blocks, using metacontrol techniques based on semantic compatibility measures. SASC performance is tested in a case study concerning the replication of investment funds.

This article analyzes the role of entropy in Bayesian statistics, focusing on its use as a tool for detection, recognition and validation of eigen-solutions. “Objects as eigen-solutions” is a key metaphor of the cognitive constructivism epistemological framework developed by the philosopher Heinz von Foerster. Special attention is given to some objections to the concepts of probability, statistics and randomization posed by George Spencer-Brown, a figure of great influence in the field of radical constructivism.

Starting from the comparison between the situation of Augustan poets and that of artists and intellectuals in the totalitarian regimes of our time, this book offers a multidisciplinary perspective on the problem of the relation of art, thought and power.

Randomization is an integral part of well-designed statistical trials, and is also a required procedure in legal systems. Implementation of honest, unbiased, understandable, secure, traceable, auditable and collusion resistant randomization procedures is a mater of great legal, social and political importance. Given the juridical and social importance of randomization, it is important to develop procedures in full compliance with the following desiderata: (a) Statistical soundness and computational efficiency; (b) Procedural, cryptographical and computational security; (c) Complete auditability and traceability; (d) Any (...) attempt by participating parties or coalitions to spuriously influence the procedure should be either unsuccessful or be detected; (e) Open-source programming; (f) Multiple hardware platform and operating system implementation; (g) User friendliness and transparency; (h) Flexibility and adaptability for the needs and requirements of multiple application areas (like, for example, clinical trials, selection of jury or judges in legal proceedings, and draft lotteries). This paper presents a simple and easy to implement randomization protocol that assures, in a formal mathematical setting, full compliance to the aforementioned desiderata for randomization procedures. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, Volume 29, Issue 3, Page 608-623, September 2021.

We formulate the problem of permuting a matrix to block angular form as the combinatorial minimization of an objective function. We motivate the use of simulated annealing (SA) as an optimization tool. We then introduce a heuristic temperature dependent penalty function in the simulated annealing cost function, to be used instead of the real objective function being minimized. Finally we show that this temperature dependent penalty function version of simulated annealing consistently outperforms the standard simulated annealing approach, producing, with smaller (...) running times, better solutions. We believe that the use of a temperature dependent penalty function may be useful in developing SA algorithms for other combinatorial problems. -/- . (shrink)

Karl Pearson is the leading figure of XX century statistics. He and his co-workers crafted the core of the theory, methods and language of frequentist or classical statistics – the prevalent inductive logic of contemporary science. However, before working in statistics, K. Pearson had other interests in life, namely, in this order, philosophy, physics, and biological heredity. Key concepts of his philosophical and epistemological system of anti-Spinozism (a form of transcendental idealism) are carried over to his subsequent works on the (...) logic of scientific discovery. This article’s main goal is to analyze K. Pearson early philosophical and theological ideas and to investigate how the same ideas came to influence contemporary science, either directly or indirectly – by the use of variant theories, methods and dialects of statistics, corresponding to variant statistical inference procedures and their specific belief calculi. (shrink)

Much forensic inference based upon DNA evidence is made assuming Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium (HWE) for the genetic loci being used. Several statistical tests to detect and measure deviation from HWE have been devised, and their limitations become more obvious when testing for deviation within multiallelic DNA loci. The most popular methods-Chi-square and Likelihood-ratio tests-are based on asymptotic results and cannot guarantee a good performance in the presence of low frequency genotypes. Since the parameter space dimension increases at a quadratic rate on (...) the number of alleles, some authors suggest applying sequential methods, where the multiallelic case is reformulated as a sequence of “biallelic” tests. However, in this approach it is not obvious how to assess the general evidence of the original hypothesis; nor is it clear how to establish the significance level for its acceptance/rejection. In this work, we introduce a straightforward method for the multiallelic HWE test, which overcomes the aforementioned issues of sequential methods. The core theory for the proposed method is given by the Full Bayesian Significance Test (FBST), an intuitive Bayesian approach which does not assign positive probabilities to zero measure sets when testing sharp hypotheses. We compare FBST performance to Chi-square, Likelihood-ratio and Markov chain tests, in three numerical experiments. The results suggest that FBST is a robust and high performance method for the HWE test, even in the presence of several alleles and small sample sizes. (shrink)

The Full Bayesian Significance Test, FBST, is extensively reviewed. Its test statistic, a genuine Bayesian measure of evidence, is discussed in detail. Its behavior in some problems of statistical inference like testing for independence in contingency tables is discussed.