According to the most common interpretation of the simulation argument, we are very likely to live in an ancestor simulation. It is interesting to ask if some families of simulations are more likely than others inside the space of all simulations. We argue that a natural probability measure is given by computational complexity: easier simulations are more likely to be run. Remarkably this allows us to extract experimental predictions from the fact that we live in a simulation. For instance we (...) show that it is very likely that humanity will not achieve interstellar travel and that humanity will not meet other intelligent species in the universe, in turn explaining the Fermi's Paradox. On the opposite side, experimental falsification of any of these predictions would constitute evidence against our reality being a simulation. (shrink)

The chemist and philosopher Michael Polanyi was one of the first twentieth-century scientists to propose a program to resolve the internal conflict of the modern Enlightenment: scientific detachment and moral nihilism with humanist values. Stefania Jha’s intellectual biography places Polanyi in the context of his time and culture, analyzes his key philosophical ideas, and explicates the application—and at times misappropriation—of his work. Polanyi’s method was not laid out in his published works, and his vocabulary tends to make his writings (...) difficult to understand. By exposing the structure of his theory of tacit knowing, and by tracing the growth of his thinking, Jha shows how the various elements of his thought are integrated. Through examination of his philosophical roots in Kant and the complexity of his evolving thought, she counteracts the popular notion that Polanyi’s philosophy stands apart from the western philosophic tradition. Jha’s deep analysis makes Polanyi’s shift of focus from science to philosophy more intelligible, his philosophy more approachable, and the causes he championed—such as the freedom of science and cultural freedom—more understandable. Applying his notion of tacit knowing in practical directions, Jha seeks to bring the study of Polanyi’s philosophy out of the specialists’ enclave and into such fields as ethics and clinical medicine. (shrink)

Why is there something rather than nothing? About this storied question we challenge the commonly accepted main assumption: the existence of something. Starting from Nothing only, we explain how our perceived reality emerges as an illusory self-referential interpretation of Nothing and build a framework to give precise definitions to fundamental concepts such as existence, reality, nothingness and somethingness. We then explore the consequences of this framework and we discover an explanation for the existence of laws of physics in our illusory (...) reality. By aiming to describe reality starting with Nothing, we provide the first instance of an assumption-less theory. (shrink)

Stefania Tutino shows that post-Reformation Catholic culture was a rich laboratory for our current moral and hermeneutical anxieties.

At a time when they had largely fallen into disrepute Bolzano reactivated the distinctions between ‚clear‘ and ‚obscure‘, ‚distinct‘ and ‚confused‘ ideas. In the central sections of this paper I offer a critical reconstruction of the explanations of these pairs of opposita which are to be found in vol. III of Bolzano's monumental Wissenschaftslehre . I then provide a detailed account of its Leibnizian counterparts that were well-known to the ‚Bohemian Leibniz‘, and finally I evaluate Bolzano's criticism thereof.

In the present paper, we discuss Husserl's deep account of the notions of ?calculation? and of arithmetical ?operation? which is found in the final chapter of the Philosophy of Arithmetic, arguing that Husserl is as far as we know the first scholar to reflect seriously on and to investigate the problem of circumscribing the totality of computable numerical operations. We pursue two complementary goals, namely: (i) to provide a formal reconstruction of Husserl's intuitions, and (ii) to demonstrate on the basis (...) of our reconstruction that the class of operations that Husserl has in mind turns out to be extensionally equivalent to the one that, in contemporary logic, is known as the class of partial recursive functions. (shrink)

The text approaches the phenomenon of transnational migration movements in the globalized world as a question related to the specific borders and mobilities of philosophy. The circulation of philosophical ideas and subjectivities between different countries and languages is challenged as a form of transnational citizenship. This main thesis will be examined in the light of the building process of the concept of belonging in the political theory of Hannah Arendt in relation to her German and US-American audiences. I will first (...) explain the approach of the transnational circulation of ideas as well as its presumption, the consideration of philosophy as a specific social practice. I will then explore the mutations of Arendt’s thinking on belonging along a close reading and a contextualization of some of her German and English texts. The contradictions in Arendt’s conceptualizations of the idea of belonging will be finally reexamined as practices of constructing transnational social and intellectual frames. (shrink)

Since its outbreak, the COVID-19 pandemic has generated discourses and practices that directly refer to the semantic universe usually connected to disability and illness. Words such as ‘pre-existing conditions’, ‘risk groups’, ‘accessibility’, and ‘vulnerability’ have become everyday elements of official and informal communications across the globe. In this article, I explore the contradictions that arise from such uses through the lens of crip studies. In the first part, I observe how the idea of vulnerability became mainstream, moving from being usually (...) attached to disability and illness to being depicted as a universal condition. Such a shift serves the double purpose of reinstating the predominance of able-bodiedness as the preferable normalcy and invisibilising the particular conditions of disabled and chronically ill people in the pandemic. In the second part, I discuss the perverse use of the expressions ‘risk group’ and ‘underlying conditions’ as biopolitical tools to reinforce already existing forms of oppression. The third part comprises a reflection on accessibility and the sudden advent of working-from-home. Finally, I reflect on confinement and interdependence as key concepts to draft a politics of transformation that moves from disability and chronic illness to include all experiences of intersectional oppression. As other markers of oppression, illness and disability can determine the possibilities of survival through the crisis, not only because they are linked to bodily fragility but also because of the systemic violence they are immersed in. The knowledge produced from a place of vulnerability can hence show interesting elements to better understand the challenges of this pandemic through an intersectional perspective. (shrink)

Lakatos is considered to be a Popperian who adapted his Hegelian-Marxist training to critical philosophy. I claim this is too narrow and misses Lakatos' goal of understanding scientific inquiry as heuristic inquiry—something he did not find in Popper, but found in Polanyi. Archival material shows that his ‘new method' struggled to overcome what he saw as the Popperian handicap, by using Polanyi.

Quantification is particularly seductive in times of global uncertainty. Not surprisingly, numbers, indicators, categorizations, and comparisons are central to governmental and popular response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This essay draws insights from critical data studies, sociology of quantification and decolonial thinking, with occasional excursion into the biomedical domain, to investigate the role and social consequences of counting broadly defined as a way of knowing about the virus. It takes a critical look at two domains of human activity that play a (...) central role in the fight against the virus outbreak, namely medical sciences and technological innovation. It analyzes their efforts to craft solutions for their user base and explores the unwanted social costs of these operations. The essay argues that the over-reliance of biomedical research on “whiteness” for lab testing and the techno-solutionism of the consumer infrastructure devised to curb the social costs of the pandemic are rooted in a distorted idea of a “standard human” based on a partial and exclusive vision of society and its components, which tends to overlook alterity and inequality. It contends that to design our way out of the pandemic, we ought to make space for distinct ways of being and knowing, acknowledging plurality and thinking in terms of social relations, alterity, and interdependence. (shrink)

Two centuries ago Bernard Bolzano published his Contributions to a more well-founded presentation of mathematics which Goethe praised as “an opusculum of very high value”. Bolzano still seems to accept the traditional principle that that intension and extension of a concept stand in an inverse relation . In particular he claims that the concept of a genus proximum is always a component of the concept of the species which are subordinated to it. However, this does not harmonize with his simultaneous (...) assumption that there are simple species-concepts. In section 1 of this paper I shall try to bring to light this tension in Bolzanos Contributions. In section 2 I shall try to reconstruct Bolzano ’s arguments to the effect that the properties an object must have if it is to fall under a certain concept are not always components of that concept. In section 3 I shall try to reconstructs his arguments against the Canon in his Theory of Science .In seinen vor zwei Jahrhunderten erschienenen Beyträgen zu einer begründeteren Darstellung der Mathematik, die Goethe als „ein Werkchen von besonderem Werte“ pries, scheint Bernard Bolzano den traditionellen Lehrsatz der Reziprozität noch zu akzeptieren, demzufolge Inhalt und Umfang eines Begriffs in inversem Verhältnis stehen. Insbesondere akzeptiert er die traditionelle These, dass der Begriff eines genus proximum immer ein Bestandteil der Begriffe der Spezies dieses Genus ist. Diese Annahme schient aber im Gegensatz zu seiner gleichzeitigen Akzeptanz der These zu stehen, dass es einfache Spezies-Begriffe gibt. Im Paragraphen 1 bespreche ich diese Frage. Im Paragraphen 2 versuche ich, einige der Argumente zu rekonstruieren, die Bolzano in seiner Wissenschaftslehre zur Widerlegung der These verwendet, dass die Begriffe der Beschaffenheiten, die ein Gegenstand haben muss, um unter einen bestimmten Begriff zu fallen, immer Teile dieses Begriffs sind. Im Paragraphen 3 präsentiere ich die wichtigsten Argumente Bolzanos, die in der Wissenschaftslehre dafür verwendet werden, um den Kanon Allgemeingültigkeit abzusprechen. (shrink)

Two hundred years ago Bernard Bolzano published a booklet on the philosophy of mathematics that is the first major step forward in this area since Pascal’s De l’esprit géométrique. Following Aristotelian lines Bolzano distinguishes in his opusculum two kinds of proofs, those that simply show that something is the case, and those that explain why something is the case. In his Wissenschaftslehre this contrast reappears as that between derivability and consecutivity . Husserl takes up some of Bolzano’s key concepts in (...) his Prolegomena to Pure Logic. In this paper I discuss, among other things, the question whether consecutivity can be regarded as a special case of derivability, as Husserl seems to think, and I contrast Bolzano’s rejection of any appeal to self-evidence with Husserl’s reliance on this notion.Genau vor zweihundert Jahren erschienen Bernard Bolzano Beyträge zu einer begründeteren Darstellung der Mathematik. Dieses Büchlein ist der erste Meilenstein in der Geschichte der Philosophie der Mathematik seit Pascals De l’esprit géométrique. Im Anschluss an Aristoteles unterscheidet Bolzano in seinem Opusculum zwei Arten von Beweisen: solche, die nur dartun, dass etwas der Fall ist, und solche, die erklären warum etwas der Fall ist. Im seiner Wissenschaftslehre erscheint dieser Kontrast als der zwischen Ableitbarkeit und Abfolge. Husserl übernimmt einige von Bolzanos Grundbegriffen in seinen Prolegomena zur reinen Logik. In diesem Aufsatz diskutiere ich u.a. die Frage, ob Abfolge ein Spezialfall von Ableitbarkeit ist, wie Husserl anzunehmen scheint, und ich kontrastiere Bolzanos Ablehnung jeder Berufung auf Evidenz mit Husserls Einstellung. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie Jahrgang: 97 Heft: 1 Seiten: 66-96.

In un saggio del 1984 destinato a una certa fortuna interpretativa, lo storico dell’architettura Jean-Louis Cohen presentava la figura dell’architetto-intellettuale come l’esito di condizioni specifiche che avevano permesso ad alcuni architetti italiani – in contrapposizione, per esempio, a quelli francesi – di affiancare alla propria attività professionale e di insegnamento una riflessione approfondita sulle condizioni del proprio operare, rafforzando un’interpretazione dell’architettura com...

This paper analyzes Mally’s system of deontic logic, introduced in his The Basic Laws of Ought: Elements of the Logic of Willing (1926). We discuss Mally’s text against the background of some contributions in the literature which show that Mally’s axiomatic system for deontic logic is flawed, in so far as it derives, for an arbitrary A, the theorem “A ought to be the case if and only if A is the case”, which represents a collapse of obligation. We then (...) try to sort out and understand which axioms are responsible for the collapse and consider two ways of amending Mally’s system: (i) by changing its original underlying logical basis, that is classical logic, and (ii) by modifying Mally’s axioms. (shrink)

Background Ethics is a fundamental component of nursing education to increase students’ moral competence and moral reasoning abilities. However, the core ethics content that should be included in undergraduate education has not been established to date at the international level. Aim To identify the core contents required in formal undergraduate education to ensure morally competent nurses. Research Design An international workshop-research study design in 2023 reported here according to the COnsolidated criteria for REporting Qualitative research. Participants and Research Context Five (...) countries in the context of Promoting a Morally Competent Nurse project participated. In each country, two workshops took place, one with nurse professionals and one with patients’ representatives for a total of 58 individuals (32 and 26, respectively). After being translated into English language, data were categorized deductively. The Dublin Learning Outcomes Descriptors and the blueprint methodology were applied. Ethical Considerations The research protocol was ethically approved in every country where the study was performed. Results A total of 59 core content elements emerged, with ‘ethics of individualized/tailored/patient-centred care’ ( n = 8) and ‘empathy’ ( n = 6) as the most suggested. Nearly half ( n = 26) of the core content items suggested were reported only once (e.g. ‘priority setting’) while overall several referred to ‘communication skills’ ( n = 17). A diverse richness across countries emerged, with some suggesting a few items, and others providing several. Similarly, professionals and patients in most countries agreed that some contents of individualized care, empathy and responsibility should be taught in nursing education, but several core contents were mentioned by only one group of participants and in one country. Conclusion The lack of convergence on core content to be taught suggests that different views are still present. Merging these perspectives may stimulate a reciprocal understanding between professionals and patients, as well as across countries, and support the identification of commonalities and differences to further harmonize undergraduate education in the field. (shrink)

During the sixteenth century Galen's De constitutione artis medicae enjoyed a great success: in about fifty years it received four different Latin translations and three commentaries. Certainly this is also true of other medical classical texts, but such success is surprising for a treatise which did not have a wide circulation either in the Middle Ages or in the seventeenth century and later. In fact it is preserved in its entirety in only one Greek manuscript and in a Latin translation (...) by Niccolò of Reggio, who worked mainly for King Robert I in Naples in the first half of the fourteenth century. Furthermore, in his edition of 1679 René Chartier made a mistake, which the humanistic editors of the Greek Galen had avoided. The last part of the De const, art. med. itself enjoyed a considerable fortuna as an independent tract on prognosis in the Greek and Latin manuscript tradition. The editors of the Aldine and the Basle editions knew such an excerptum, at least in the manuscript Par. gr. 2165 of the sixteenth century, and rightly decided not to print it. Chartier found it in the manuscript Par. gr. 2269 of the fifteenth or sixteenth century, and published it in the wrong belief that it was a new treatise of Galen's . He was followed by Carl Gottlob Kühn in his edition of 1821, who printed the De const, art. med. in the first volume and the De praesagitura in vol. xix.497–511. The error was not publicly detected until Kalbfleisch in 1896. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic served as a catalyst to build a stronger European Health Union to protect the health of Europeans and to develop a new Global Health Strategy to contribute to global health security. In positioning itself as a key player in global health governance, the EU seeks to assert its responsibility as a global health actor and deepen its leadership in global health law.

Yinshun is regarded as one of the most eminent monks in twentieth-century Chinese Buddhism. Previous research has argued that Yinshun especially undertook the mission of writing new commentaries on Madhyamaka texts. His efforts provoked a revival of interest towards the Madhyamaka school among contemporary Chinese Buddhists, and a re-assessment of the position of the writings of N?g?rjuna within the history of Chinese Buddhism. This article focuses on Yinshun’s restatement of the nature of the M?lamadhyamakak?rik?, a text that has always been (...) regarded as fundamental in the Madhyamaka/San-lun tradition in China. The first part analyzes Yinshun’s textual study of the M?lamadhyamakak?rik?, examining his approach to the text, and how he came to terms with previous Chinese traditional textual scholarship and canonical scriptures. The second part discusses Yinshun’s interpretation of the text by moving away from the micro-context of Chinese San-lun scholarship, and addressing the macro-context of the modern Chinese understanding of the Mah?y?na. (shrink)

This article approaches the paradigm shift of datafication from the perspective of civil society. Looking at how individuals and groups engage with datafication, it complements the notion of “data politics” by exploring what we call the “contentious politics of data”. By contentious politics of data we indicate the bottom-up, transformative initiatives interfering with and/or hijacking dominant processes of datafication, contesting existing power relations or re-appropriating data practices and infrastructure for purposes distinct from the intended. Said contentious politics of data is (...) articulated in an array of practices of data activism taking a critical stance towards datafication. In data activism, data as mediators take a central role, both as part of an action repertoire or as objects of struggle in their own right. Leveraging social movement studies and science and technology studies, this theoretical essay argues that data activism can be mapped along two analytical dimensions: “data as stakes” vs. “data as repertoires”, and “individual practice vs. collective action”. Mapping action repertoires and tactics along these axes allows us to chart the potential emergence of a political data subject at the intersection of these two dimensions. This furthers our understanding of people’s engagement with data in relation to other forms of activism and existing work in social movement studies. It also helps us interpreting potential trajectories of contemporary social movements, as they increasingly interface with data, devices and platforms. (shrink)

New genetic technologies promise to generate valuable insights into the aetiology of several psychiatric conditions, as well as a wider range of human and animal behaviours. Advances in the neurosciences and the application of new brain imaging techniques offer a way of integrating DNA analysis with studies that are looking at other biological markers of behaviour. While candidate 'genes for' certain conditions, including schizophrenia and bipolar disorders, are said to be 'un-discovered' at a faster rate than they are discovered, many (...) studies are being conducted on personality traits such as aggressiveness and anti-social traits. The clinical applicability and implications of these studies are often discussed within the scientific community. However, little attention has so far been paid to their possible policy implications in relation to criminality management and to Criminal Law itself. Similarly, the related ethical issues arising in the field of crime control, and the tensions between enhancing security for society and protecting civil liberties, are currently under-explored. This paper investigates these ethical issues by focusing on the views of those professionals – including judges, lawyers, probation officers and social workers – who work with individuals 'deemed at risk' of violent and aggressive behaviours. It also discusses and problematizes mainstream rhetoric and arguments around the notion of 'risky individuals'. (shrink)

The paper discusses inappropriate (futile) treatment by analyzing the casuistics of palliative patients in the terminal stage of illness who are hospitalized at the Department of Internal Medicine and Geriatrics of the Faculty hospital with policlinic (FNsP). Our research applies the principles of palliative care in the context of bioethics. The existing clinical conditions of healthcare in Slovakia are characteristic of making a taboo of the issues of inappropriate treatment of palliative patients. Inductive-deductive and normative clinical bioethics methods of palliative (...) care and ethical strategy are applied for defining issues found in inappropriate hemodialysis treatment. An algorithm of hemodialysis treatment requires the definition of those lege artis criteria which, in the context of a patient’s autonomy and his/her decision, precondition the avoidance of the situation in which hemodialysis treatment is inappropriate (futile). Futile treatment in a terminal condition is ethically inappropriate medical treatment that extends the suffering of patients and their relatives. Its definition is determined by the relevant legislation and the methods of bioethics. An active palliative strategy is aimed at managing the process of incurable diseases in the patient’s bio-psycho-socio-spiritual continuity in the process of special bioethics. The global bioethical objective of general bioethics for palliative care is based on the paradigm of social harmony and solidarity in the context of an authentic modus of the patient’s existence as a constitutive principle for the phenomenon of the patient’s being to finite being (death). (shrink)

We examined how people think about how things could have turned out differently after they made a decision to cooperate or not in three social interactions: the Prisoner’s dilemma (Experiment 1), the Stag Hunt dilemma (Experiment 2), and the Chicken game (Experiment 3). We found that participants who took part in the game imagined the outcome would have been different if a different decision had been made by the other player, not themselves; they did so whether the outcome was good (...) or bad for them, their own choice had been to cooperate or not, and the other player’s choice had been to cooperate or not. Participants who only read about a fictional protagonist’s game imagined changes outside the protagonist’s control (such as the other player’s decision) after a good outcome but within the protagonist’s control (such as the protagonist’s decision) after a bad outcome. The implications for theories of counterfactual thinking and moral decision-making are discussed. (shrink)

This volume will be of particular interest to researchers working in the history, and in the philosophy, of logic and mathematics, and more generally, to ...

Four studies show that observers and readers imagine different alternatives to reality. When participants read a story about a protagonist who chose the more difficult of two tasks and failed, their counterfactual thoughts focused on the easier, unchosen task. But when they observed the performance of an individual who chose and failed the more difficult task, participants' counterfactual thoughts focused on alternative ways to solve the chosen task, as did the thoughts of individuals who acted out the event. We conclude (...) that these role effects may occur because participants' attention is engaged when they experience or observe an event more than when they read about it. (shrink)

The history of modern modal logic is too often presented as an American success story that started with the work of the Harvard philosopher C. I. Lewis, while prewar modal logic research in Europe is passed off as a side-show of well-intended failures. As a contribute towards correcting this picture, we carefully analyze and reconsider Oskar Becker’s pioneering work On the Logic of Modalities (1930), highlighting its influence on the early development of modal logic in the decade 1930 - 1940.

This paper proposes a political understanding of human rights which allows not to dissolve the contradiction between the positive and the normative aspect entailed in the idea and the institution of human rights, but rather to keep them together dialectically. I discuss the relationality of human rights through Hannah Arendt’s idea of the right to have rights and I develop it further through Jacques Rancière’s concept of subjectivity. This allows me to explain the dialectic of the human rights as a (...) conflict between existing positive rights, which assign specific subjects or groups to specific territories and legal spheres, and a universal claim of human equality and freedom, which is challenged from excluded, unclassified social groups and which is performed in situations of protests. I further explain the radical democratic potential of human rights on the paradigmatic case of struggles for a right to global movement and to political belonging. In order to grasp the complexity of those subjectivity practices, I distinguish four different dimensions of subjectivity: a legal and political one, an affective one, an epistemic one and finally an ethical transcultural one. (shrink)

By providing an interdisciplinary reading of advance directives regulation in international, European and domestic law, this book offers new insights into the most controversial legal issues surrounding the debate over dignity and autonomy ...