This is the first monograph devoted to the theology of the Epinomis. It argues that the work offers a revised Platonic conception of the divine better suited to the political imperatives of the post-Classical age. The Epinomis is an 'appendix' to Plato's Laws written by Plato's student, Philip of Opus. Through a comprehensive analysis of the Epinomis' lexicon, and comparisons with the Corpus Platonicum, Vera Calchi offers readers an insight into the Epinomis' philosophical and historical context, purpose, and legacy. (...) Calchi argues that Philip effectively reshapes Plato's metaphysical language into a theology premised on the immanence of God in the heavens. The resulting account of God's providential activity in the cosmos, which offers a new way of thinking about morality and political order, can be regarded as a major step towards the cosmic theology of the Hellenistic period. The Theology of the Epinomis is suitable for students and scholars of ancient philosophy, particularly those working on the Epinomis and Platonic philosophy. It will also be of interest to those studying the history of religion and theology in antiquity. (shrink)

1) The aim of the paper is to trace what we call oblivion in the thought of Martin Heidegger: the question about the nature and the natural being of the Dasein. Two questions are raised: Does Heidegger get trapped in the nature-spirit opposition? Is the Dasein sufficiently and satisfactorily though of in its factuality, if the natural dimension of its being has been silenced? 2) Within representative thought: the world in the original dimension in which the Dasein is rooted and (...) in which the opening up of Being and the prior self-offering of the intra-mundane entity as a tool takes place. 3) Nature in Being and Time: nature as being-at-hand and nature of the surrounding world. 4) Nature as organic or animal life in Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: the animal deprived of a world and the question about human animality. 5) Nature as earth in "The Origin of the Work of Art". 6) Two alternatives to think upon nature from [the perspective of] an ontology of negativity: Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Georges Bataille. 7) Conclusion: Heidegger's "oblivion" implies the risk of getting trapped in the classical nature-spirit opposition and of not being able to unfold every dimension of factuality.1) El objetivo del escrito es rastrear lo que llamamos un olvido en el pensamiento de Martin Heidegger: la pregunta por la naturaleza y el ser natural del Dasein. Se plantean dos preguntas: ¿queda Heidegger entrampado en la oposición naturaleza-espíritu? ¿está suficiente y satisfactoriamente pensado el Dasein en su facticidad si ha sido silenciada la dimensión natural de su ser?; 2) Más acá del pensamiento representativo: el mundo como la dimensión originaria en la que arraiga el Dasein y en la que tiene lugar la apertura del ser y el darse previo del ente intra-mundano como útil . 3) La naturaleza en Ser y Tiempo: naturaleza como ser-a-la-mano y naturaleza del mundo circundante. 4) La naturaleza como vida orgánica o animal en Los conceptos fundamentales de la metafísica: el animal privado de mundo y la pregunta por la animalidad de lo humano. 5) La naturaleza como tierra en "El origen de la obra de arte". 6) Dos alternativas para pensar la naturaleza desde una ontología de la negatividad: Maurice Merleau-Ponty y Georges Bataille. 7) Conclusión: el "olvido" heideggeriano implica el riesgo de quedar atrapado en la oposición clásica naturaleza-espíritu y de no desplegar todas la dimensiones de la facticidad. (shrink)

The purpose of this contribution is to examine the current state of the de Broglie-Bohm theory (dBB) in light of Bohm’s vision as he explicitly set it out in his book Quantum theory [In Bohm, D., Quantum theory, Courier corporation, (1961b)]. In particular, two programmes that differ in many crucial respects are currently being pursued. On the one hand, the Bohmian mechanics school, founded by Dürr Goldstein and Zanghì, considers the theory to be Galilean invariant, regards particles’ motion as determined (...) by a nomological entity, the universal wave function, upholds the quantum equilibrium hypothesis and explains probabilities in terms of typicality. On the other hand, the Pilot-wave school advocated by Valentini considers the theory to be based on Aristotelian dynamics, regards the wave function as a physical field displaying a contingent nature, and explains quantum equilibrium as the result of a process of relaxation from quantum non-equilibrium. Looking at Bohm’s work [In Bohm, D., Quantum theory, Courier corporation, (1961b)], it is clear that his intention was to construct a theory that was empirically different from standard quantum mechanics, so that it would be testable and falsifiable. Only this way could he defend dBB from the criticism that accused the theory of being 'metaphysical'. These methodological concerns about the falsifiability of the theory constitute, in my opinion, a strong reason for regarding Valentini's programme as methodologically valuable, even if it might turn out to be wrong. Indeed, the programme of the Pilot-wave school aims to be falsifiable with respect to standard quantum mechanics and can in principle defend the empirical status of particle trajectories. (shrink)

We study the set of possible sizes of maximal independent families to which we refer as spectrum of independence and denote \\). Here mif abbreviates maximal independent family. We show that:1.whenever \ are finitely many regular uncountable cardinals, it is consistent that \\); 2.whenever \ has uncountable cofinality, it is consistent that \=\{\aleph _1,\kappa =\mathfrak {c}\}\). Assuming large cardinals, in addition to above, we can provide that $$\begin{aligned} \cap \hbox {Spec}=\emptyset \end{aligned}$$for each i, \.

This paper examines the culture, the dynamics and the financial underpinnings that determine how medical research is being conducted on children in the United States. Children have increasingly become the subject of experiments that offer them no potential direct benefit but expose them to risks of harm and pain. A wide range of such experiments will be examined, including a lethal heartburn drug test, the experimental insertion of a pacemaker, an invasive insulin infusion experiment, and a fenfluramine "violence prediction" experiment. (...) Emphasis, however, is given to psychoactive drug tests because of the inherent ethical and diagnostic problems involved in the absence of any objective, verifiable diagnostic tool. Effort is made to provide readers comprehensive reference sources to evidence-based reports about the serious risks these drugs pose for adults and children so that the reader may judge whether the benefits (if any) outweigh the risks for children. The first ethical issue raised by these experiments is: did the severity of illness in these children justify their exposure to short and long-term risks? The ethics of the experiments will be evaluated by referring to existing codes of medical research ethics-the Nuremberg Code, the Declaration of Helsinki, and the federal Code of Regulations. The thirteen cases presented will demonstrate that children are being used in ever more speculative experiments, often in the absence of a therapeutic intent, but a significant chance for causing harm and / or discomfort. Some of the experiments were designed to explore the mechanisms of pathology and pharmacological interventions, or the response of neurological brain receptors to chemical provocation ("challenge"). Others were designed to test the safety or efficacy of new drugs, even to test these drugs on healthy children who were hypothesized to be "at risk." Children and adolescents have been subjected to "forced dose titration" experiments that induced a spectrum of severe adverse effects, including insomnia, extreme restlessness, agitation, (akathisia) and self-injurious behavior. FDA reports show that suicide is a significant issue in psychotropic drug trials-in pediatric trials the problem is even greater. The paper aims to demonstrate how the enactment of the Better Pharmaceuticals for Children Act (incorporated into the Food and Drug Administration Modernization Act, FDAMA), set in motion a radical shift in public policy by providing huge financial incentives to pharmaceutical companies to test new or patented drugs in children. Federal policy shifted from one aimed at protecting children by setting limits on permissible research risks, to a policy aimed at broadening the inclusion of children as test subjects. It will be shown how the FDA and the Department of Health and Human Services lifted regulatory restrictions to permit research involving greater than minimal risk to be conducted on healthy children, claiming that all children are potentially "at risk" of a future condition. Children were in this way deprived of regulatory protections. An argument will be made that the approval of nontherapeutic, harmful experiments-such as exposure of toddlers to lead poison-under the current gate keeping system raises serious doubts about the sustainability of institutional review boards (IRBs) as protectors of human research subjects. Children, who are precluded from exercising the adult human's right to informed consent, are being exploited as commodities for commercial ends. It is the position of the author that nothing less than the enactment of a federal law mandating a radical overhaul of the current research review system, with independent checks and balances, will provide children the legal protections they need. Ten specific recommendations are offered to protect children from harmful experiments. (shrink)

The utility of recognising emotion expressions for coordinating social interactions is well documented, but less is known about how continuously changing emotion displays are perceived. The nonlinear dynamic systems view of emotions suggests that mixed emotion expressions in the middle of displays of changing expressions may be decoded differently depending on the expression origin. Hysteresis is when an impression (e.g., disgust) persists well after changes in facial expressions that favour an alternative impression (e.g., anger). In expression changes based on photographs (...) (Study 1) and avatar images (Studies 2a–c, 3), we found hystereses particularly in changes between emotions that are perceptually similar (e.g., anger–disgust). We also consistently found uncertainty (neither emotion contributing to the mixed expression was perceived), which was more prevalent in expression sequences than in static images. Uncertainty occurred particularly in changes between emotions that are perceptually dissimilar, such as changes between happiness and negative emotions. This suggests that the perceptual similarity of emotion expressions may determine the extent to which hysteresis and uncertainty occur. Both hysteresis and uncertainty effects support our premise that emotion decoding is state dependent, a characteristic of dynamic systems. We propose avenues to test possible underlying mechanisms. (shrink)

BackgroundThe aim of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of psychotherapeutic interventions for clinically referred adolescents, as well as to examine whether sociodemographic, clinical, or treatment-related variables and patients’ role expectations predict treatment outcome or are possible predictors of treatment dropout.MethodThe study comprised 58 adolescents suffering from diverse psychiatric disorders referred to psychotherapeutic interventions conducted in outpatient care. The outcome measures, The Beck Depression Inventory, and the Clinical Outcomes in Routine Evaluation – Outcome Measure were filled in at baseline (...) and at 3-, 6-, and 12-month follow-ups. Possible predictors were assessed at baseline.ResultsThe results indicate that the mean level of symptoms and psychological distress decreased during the treatment, most reduction occurring in the first 6 months. The frequency of treatment sessions was the strongest predictor of good outcome. Adolescents with a higher level of externalizing problems or lower level of expectations for their own active role in treatment seem to have a higher risk of dropping out.ConclusionOffering intensive treatment for a shorter period might be the most efficient way to gain symptom reduction and decrease psychological distress in psychotherapeutic interventions with adolescents. Being aware of externalizing behavior and increasing the adolescents’ own agency during the assessment could strengthen commitment and result in the adolescent benefiting more from treatment. (shrink)

This essay traces the changing relationship between horticulture, agriculture, and philosophy across the seventeenth century, as the personae of the philosophical husbandman and the philosophical gardener intertwined and competed. At stake in the dynamics between them was the relationship between abstruse researches and practical applications in evolving experimental philosophy, as well as the aesthetic of experimental practices and rhetoric. Early seventeenth-century promoters of colonial projects, such as Virginian sericulture, situated the metropolitan pleasure garden, a place of whimsy and fantastical reasoning, (...) as a realm of trial that presumed eventual utility and application to large-scale husbandry. Such views informed relationships between fanciful trials, speculative proposals, and presumptions of future utility in the development of the persona of the philosophical gardener and attendant notions of experimental philosophy over the course of the century. (shrink)

Im Beitrag werden Veränderungen der Kommunikation durch digitale Medien, ihre psychischen Bedeutungen und Folgen, u. a. anhand von empirischen Befunden zu Social-Media-Praktiken von Jugendlichen und von Eltern thematisiert. Bezugsrahmen der Analyse sind dabei kulturelle Wandlungen sowie soziale und psychische Bedeutungen von Aufmerksamkeit: geteilte Aufmerksamkeit als ein Kern der Kommunikation, aber auch die für psychische Entwicklung notwendige geschenkte, für den anderen oder für anderes offene Aufmerksamkeit als ein wesentliches Moment der Zuwendung, Empathie und Bezogenheit – im Gegensatz zu selbstbezogener Aufmerksamkeit und (...) instrumenteller Aufmerksamkeitslenkung. Überdies werden Folgen fragmentierter Aufmerksamkeit, wie sie aus der Überlagerung von Online- und Offline-Kommunikation resultiert, für psychische Entwicklungen betrachtet. (shrink)

In a time marked by the development of innovative treatments in healthcare and the need for health professionals to deal with resulting ethical dilemmas in clinical practice, this study was developed to determine the influence of the bioethics teaching on the moral competence of medical and nursing students. The authors conduct a longitudinal study using the Moral Competence Test extended version before and after attending the ethics curricular unit, in three nursing schools and three medical schools of Portugal. In this (...) questionnaire the participant is confronted with three ethical dilemmas and asked to evaluate arguments for and against the attitude of the main character. For both nursing and medical students, C-score was lower after the attendance of the ethics curricular units, with a statistically significant decrease in the total score for nursing students and a decrease not statistically significant for medical students. A multivariate analysis did not find any association between this decrease and gender, course, or age. The phenomenon of moral segmentation was observed, with better performance in the worker and judge dilemma, than in the doctor dilemma. These results highlight the need to reflect on the curricular strategies that can be implemented for health professionals to better develop moral competence and decision-making, allowing for the provision of humanized health care. (shrink)

Replicability is usually considered to be one of the cornerstones of science; however, the growing recognition of nonreplicable experiments and studies in scientific journals—a phenomenon that has been called ‘replicability crisis’—has spurred a debate on the meaning, function, and significance of replicability in science. Amid this discussion, it has become clear that replicability is not a monolithic concept; what is still controversial is exactly how the distinction between different kinds of replicability should be laid out terminologically and conceptually, and to (...) what extent it bears on the more general debate on the centrality of replicability in science. This paper’s goals are to clarify the different uses of the terms related to replicability and, more importantly, to conceptually specify the kinds of replicability and their respective epistemic functions. (shrink)

Abstract:Can the claim "Sherlock Holmes is a detective" be true if no object exists that has this property? Is it true that he is a fictional character and that he does not exist? My answers are based on Alexius Meinong's theory of objects. In contrast to other Meinongians, I argue that employing other possible worlds poses ontological problems and that existence is not a property of objects. Since we think of objects by means of only some, but not all, of (...) their properties, incomplete objects function as auxiliaries. Holmes can thus be both, detective and fictional character, while not existing. (shrink)

Metaphysical anti-realism is a large and heterogeneous group of views that do not share a common thesis but only share a certain family resemblance. Views as different as mathematical nominalism—the view that numbers do not exist—, ontological relativism—the view that what exists depends on a perspective—, and modal conventionalism—-the view that modal facts are conventional—all are versions of metaphysical anti-realism. As the latter two examples suggest, relativist ideas play a starring role in many versions of metaphysical anti-realism. But what does (...) it mean for the existence of something to “depend on” a perspective, or for a modal fact to “depend on” a convention? We can distinguish between various dependence relations, giving rise to an array of drastically different forms of metaphysical anti-realism. This article offers a guided tour. I develop a systematic distinction between various forms of metaphysical anti-realism with a focus on the role of relativist ideas in this landscape. (shrink)

El presente ensayo resume la crítica del filósofo Gilbert Simondon al antropocentrismo moderno y a las concepciones sobre la técnica desarrolladas en el siglo XX por ciertas corrientes filosóficas que provienen, según él, de lo que denomina un humanismo fácil, que circunscriben el desarrollo técnico a la racionalidad instrumental y a la distinción entre medios y fines. La propuesta de Simondon para salir del marco de estas visiones que considera reduccionistas, es ampliar nuestra mirada sobre la técnica, no centrarnos en (...) la relación entre medios y fines y adentrarnos en el conocimiento sobre los modos de existencia de los objetos técnicos. La mirada de Simondon nos invita a repensar nuestra relación con la técnica y, más allá incluso, a revisar nuestras concepciones ontológicas inclinándose por las que hoy conocemos como ontologías relacionales. La técnica para el filósofo francés es un puente entre nuestro pasado ritual y nuestra actualidad que persiste en la co-existencia de todos los seres, vivos y no vivos que conforman el tecno ecosistema. (shrink)

This volume is the first edited collection of philosophy of astrophysics. In this introductory chapter, we provide a brief history of the rise of philosophy of astrophysics as a distinct subdiscipline in philosophy of science, brief summaries of the chapters in the volume and their interrelated themes, and a few suggestions for further work.

Most courts around the world have been refusing wrongful life actions. The main argument invoked is that the supposed compensable injury cannot be classified as such, since life is always a blessing no matter how hard and painful it is.In opposition to mainstream scholars and the dominant case law, this article sustains that life must be distinguished from living conditions, the former being the real injury at stake, since some living conditions are so intolerable that in themselves they justify a (...) compensation within wrongful life actions. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Generality relativism is the view that any domain of quantification can always be expanded. The view promises to resolve a broad range of paradoxes, but, without an explanation of how domains expand, it sounds very mysterious. Proponents of linguistic versions of generality relativism try to demystify the view by likening domain expansions to semantic change. They think that domains expand when we re-interpret certain terms so that, upon re-interpretation, the quantifiers range over more things. This article makes trouble for (...) linguistic approaches. According to the so-called charge of ineffability, generality relativism cannot be asserted in a coherent manner—given that asserting the view requires generalising over absolutely all domains of quantification. Generality relativists typically try to answer the charge with the help of modal operators; but linguistic approaches interpret these operators in semantically and syntactically idiosyncratic ways. I argue that, because of these commitments, linguistic approaches ultimately do not have a good response to the charge of ineffability. (shrink)

One dimension of cognitive success concerns getting it right: having many true beliefs and no false ones. Another dimension of cognitive success concerns using the right concepts. For example, using a concept of a person that systematically excludes people of certain demographics from its extension is a sort of cognitive deficiency. This view, if correct, tasks inquirers with critically examining the concepts they are using and perhaps replacing those concepts with new and better ones. This task is often referred to (...) as “conceptual engineering”. However, so far it is unclear what exactly happens in cases of conceptual engineering. How does language change when we engineer a concept? This article offers an answer. I propose a view on which, when speakers assess the truth of propositions, they often rely on assumptions with regard to what is required for their truth. For example, when speakers assess whether unborn fetuses are people, they rely on assumptions with regard to what is required to be a person. Based on this idea, I develop a model of conceptual engineering according to which speakers “engineer concepts” when they change how they assess the truth of propositions. For example, speakers engineer the concept of a person when they change how they assess the truth of the proposition that unborn fetuses are people. (shrink)

Agnes Arber (1879–1960) was a British plant morphologist, historian of botany, and philosopher of biology. Though now largely forgotten, her work offers valuable insights into morphological as well as philosophical issues. This paper focuses on Arber’s work on teleology in plants. After providing a brief overview of her life and distinct style of work, two notions of teleology are presented, which become apparent in Arber’s morphological and philosophical work. The first notion, labeled _final teleology_, is based on Aristotle’s final cause (...) and deals with adaptation-based explanations in biology. The second is labeled _formal teleology_. It is grounded in the Aristotelian formal cause and deals with the inherent directiveness of developing structures and the actualization of potentialities in organisms and their parts. Whereas Arber showed a reserved and skeptical attitude towards final teleology, she was very sympathetic to formal teleology, building her general morphological framework on it. Two examples from Arber’s work are then given, which illustrate how formal teleology informed her theorizing: the partial-shoot theory of the leaf, and parallelism in evolution as a counter-proposal to natural selection. Finally, Arber’s teleological interpretation of plant morphology is historically contextualized and connected to recent research developments in evolutionary biology and plant morphology. (shrink)

My main concern in this paper is to develop some ideas within the Kantian ethical tradition. More precisely, my aim is to develop an ethical perspective that is grounded upon the Kantian ideas of autonomy and ideal of the person (Kant’s notion of humanity) as fundamental starting points for a coherent account of Kant’s ethics in contrast to the deontological duty-based interpretation of his moral philosophy, then sketch, subsequently, some suggestions to show why this reading has more philosophical import than (...) what a deontological reading may provide. I take no issue for the time being however, as to whether or not the perspective I have in mind leads to either a Kantian orthodoxy or a revisionist direction in Kant scholarships. (shrink)

The replication crisis has spawned discussions on the meaning of replication. In fact, in order to determine whether an experiment fails to replicate, it is necessary to establish what replication is. This is, however, a difficult task, as it is possible to attribute different meanings to it. This paper offers a solution to this problem of ambiguity by engineering a concept of replication that, if compared to other proposals, stands out for being not only broadly applicable but also sufficiently specific. (...) It features a minimal level of operationalism, which would otherwise limit its applicability, while it heavily relies on replication’s specific epistemic functions, which are inter-disciplinary. Another merit is its context sensitivity, which enables it to differentiate instances of replication from non-instances of replication in every scientific discipline according to the discipline’s own standards. (shrink)

Cognitive Science, Volume 45, Issue 11, November 2021.

Generalizing the notion of a tight almost disjoint family, we introduce the notions of a tight eventually different family of functions in Baire space and a tight eventually different set of permutations of $\omega $. Such sets strengthen maximality, exist under $\mathsf {MA} (\sigma \mathrm {-centered})$ and come with a properness preservation theorem. The notion of tightness also generalizes earlier work on the forcing indestructibility of maximality of families of functions. As a result we compute the cardinals $\mathfrak {a}_e$ and (...) $\mathfrak {a}_p$ in many known models by giving explicit witnesses and therefore obtain the consistency of several constellations of cardinal characteristics of the continuum including $\mathfrak {a}_e = \mathfrak {a}_p = \mathfrak {d} < \mathfrak {a}_T$, $\mathfrak {a}_e = \mathfrak {a}_p < \mathfrak {d} = \mathfrak {a}_T$, $\mathfrak {a}_e = \mathfrak {a}_p =\mathfrak {i} < \mathfrak {u}$, and $\mathfrak {a}_e=\mathfrak {a}_p = \mathfrak {a} < non(\mathcal N) = cof(\mathcal N)$. We also show that there are $\Pi ^1_1$ tight eventually different families and tight eventually different sets of permutations in L thus obtaining the above inequalities alongside $\Pi ^1_1$ witnesses for $\mathfrak {a}_e = \mathfrak {a}_p = \aleph _1$.Moreover, we prove that tight eventually different families are Cohen indestructible and are never analytic. (shrink)

Classic publishing of Eastern philosophy, religion, and poetry. This is a facsimile edition of the work originally published in London by John Murray in 1940.

The article deals with the differentiation of “novation” and “innovation” notions. Some possible ways of showing the essence of novation phenomenon in philosophical anthropology are given. The definition of novation is worked out. Some reasons for the distinguishing of “novation”, “creation” and “creativity” are displayed. Novation is represented as the way of self-contradiction solution, as an answer to the emerging individual crisis. The analyzed phenomenon is also considered to be a new way of traditional cultural process realization. The ability of (...) a personality selfactualization in modern social and cultural field is related to an individual novational fundamentals manifestation of an individual. The culture of a personality self-actualization is suggested being considered a reproduction of novation. (shrink)

This paper argues that the framework of Community of Practice is beneficial for an understanding of the linguistic practices that international courts and tribunals employ in their interpretative approaches. Other than the frameworks of the social network, the speech community, and the epistemic community, the framework of Community of Practice can be said to allow for a more critical assessment of the social context in which international courts and tribunals function. Such an assessment is crucial in that it is in (...) that social context that interpretative approaches can be said to take form and in return shape the social institutions that international courts and tribunals comprise. That is, the framework of Community of Practice entails the notion that any form of meaning and its subsequent reifications, including, actual language use, are continually negotiated communally as a result of social interaction and, hence, shape the social constellations in which such interaction takes place accordingly. (shrink)

The article deals with the organization and implementation of the assessment of educational achievements of primary school students as a component of the overall system for assessing the quality of education. The issues of evaluation of metasubject results in the framework of VPR, including the level of formation of universal educational actions and mastery of intersubject concepts, are considered. It is pointed out that at the present stage of development of the education system, monitoring studies are considered as a mechanism (...) for providing feedback, which allows to obtain data on the compliance of the actual results of the pedagogical system with its final goals. The analysis of the performed works of students of the fourth grades is given and ways of realization of the arisen difficulties are offered. (shrink)

We study regularity properties related to Cohen, random, Laver, Miller and Sacks forcing, for sets of real numbers on the Δ31\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\varvec{\Delta}^1_3}$$\end{document} level of the projective hieararchy. For Δ21\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\varvec{\Delta}^1_2}$$\end{document} and Σ21\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\varvec{\Sigma}^1_2}$$\end{document} sets, the relationships between these properties follows the pattern of the well-known Cichoń diagram for cardinal characteristics of the continuum. It is known that (...) assuming suitable large cardinals, the same relationships lift to higher projective levels, but the questions become more challenging without such assumptions. Consequently, all our results are proved on the basis of ZFC alone or ZFC with an inaccessible cardinal. We also prove partial results concerning Σ31\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\varvec{\Sigma}^1_3}$$\end{document} and Δ41\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\varvec{\Delta}^1_4}$$\end{document} sets. (shrink)

We show that in the Maxwell–Lorentz theory of classical electrodynamics most initial values for fields and particles lead to an ill-defined dynamics, as they exhibit singularities or discontinuities along light-cones. This phenomenon suggests that the Maxwell equations and the Lorentz force law ought rather to be read as a system of delay differential equations, that is, differential equations that relate a function and its derivatives at different times. This mathematical reformulation, however, leads to physical and philosophical consequences for the ontological (...) status of the electromagnetic field. In particular, fields cannot be taken as independent degrees of freedom, which suggests that one should not add them to the ontology. (shrink)

Lists foreground multiplicity: both of objects to be pursued and, for distant objects, of far-flung networks enabling their pursuit. The future-oriented or projective list stretches such networks not only around the world but forward through time. Research agendas are one kind of future-oriented, projective list. Sketching how such lists have functioned over time, from Francis Bacon's “The New World of Sciences, or Desiderata” to today's desiderata lists, suggests how an early modern model of imperial expansion has shaped, in unintended ways, (...) a scientific rhetoric of collaborative advance on shared targets. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Many historians have traced the accumulation of scientific archives via communication networks. Engines for communication in early modernity have included trade, the extrapolitical Republic of Letters, religious enthusiasm, and the centralization of large emerging information states. The communication between Samuel Hartlib, John Dury, Duke Friedrich III of Gottorf-Holstein, and his key agent in England, Frederick Clodius, points to a less obvious but no less important impetus—the international negotiations of smaller states. Smaller states shaped communication networks in an international (albeit (...) politically and religiously slanted) direction. Their networks of negotiation contributed to the internationalization of emerging science through a political and religious concept of shared interest. While interest has been central to social studies of science, interest itself has not often been historicized within the history of science. This case study demonstrates the co-production of science and society by tracing how period concepts of interest made science international. (shrink)

We extend the work of Fischer et al. [6] by presenting a method for controlling cardinal characteristics in the presence of a projective wellorder and 2ℵ0>ℵ2. This also answers a question of Harrington [9] by showing that the existence of a Δ31 wellorder of the reals is consistent with Martinʼs axiom and 2ℵ0=ℵ3.

In this paper, I discuss whether the results of loop quantum gravity (LQG) constitute a fatal blow to Humeanism. There is at least a prima facie reason for believing so: while Humeanism regards spatiotemporal relations as fundamental, LQG describes the fundamental layer of our reality in terms of spin networks, which are not in spacetime. However, the question should be tackled more carefully. After explaining the importance of the debate on the tenability of Humeanism in light of LQG, and having (...) presented the Humean doctrine, I review two cases which present serious threats to Humeanism, one concerning the fundamentality of vectorial quantities and the other concerning quantum entanglement. In particular, I recall the strategies that are usually employed in these two cases in order to save Humeanism: in the first case, the strategy consists in amending the characterization of the Humean mosaic; in the second case, it consists in adopting a realist or nomological interpretation of the wave function. These solutions will turn out to be helpful in my discussion of LQG where, after describing LQG, I show that Humeans might save their doctrine either by endorsing a realist interpretation of spin networks, or by giving them a nomological status and, at the same time, by revisiting the characterization of the Humean mosaic. However, I conclude that both solutions are wanting. (shrink)