How we define the space of possibilities of dispositional essentialism —that is, the set of possible worlds that are genuinely possible from the point of view of DE—has important consequences for central modal debates such as how to understand the concept of essence or the relation between DE and the necessity of laws of nature. In order to define DE’s space of possibilities we need to explore DE’s consequences regarding both necessity and possibility. Unfortunately, the notion (...) of possibility has not received much attention within the DE literature. In this paper, I attempt to fill this gap. I argue that the standard way of understanding possibility found in the literature—a proposition is possible iff it expresses the manifestation of some actual disposition—needlessly restricts the space of possibilities by not accepting global and absolute possibilities, including some alien properties, as genuinely possible. I propose instead to accept a more permissive understanding of possibility: a proposition is possible iff it does not contradict any of the necessities that follow from the core commitments of DE. This allows dispositionalists to expand their modal space and to account for modal intuitions that may otherwise undermine the tenability of DE. (shrink)

We care not just how things are but how they could have been otherwise – about possibility and necessity as well as actuality. Many philosophers regard such talk as beyond the reach of respectable science, since observation tells us how things are but not how they could have been otherwise. I argue that, on the contrary, such criticisms are ill-founded: possibility and necessity are studied in natural science, for example through phase spaces, abstract mathematical representations of the possible states of (...) a physical system. The possibility is objective, not merely epistemic, though it may be more restricted than pure metaphysical possibility. The elements of a phase space are very similar to Kripke's possible worlds, despite being time slices rather than total histories. The absence of explicit modal operators in the mathematical models used by scientists does not show science to be non-modal; rather, it manifests reliance on a mathematical framework for theorizing about objective possibility similar to the mathematical framework of possible worlds model theory. (shrink)

The ArgumentThis paper charts eighteenth-century chemistry's transition from its definition as an art to its proclaimed status as a science. Both the general concept of art and specific practices of eighteenth-century chemists are explored to account for this transition. As a disciplined activity, art orients practitioners' attention toward particular directions and away from others, providing a structured space of possibilities within which their discipline develops. Consequently, while chemists throughout the eighteenth century aspired to reveal nature's “true voice,” the (...) path of their investigations was directed by and toward their laboratory manipulations. So long as the chemical community maintained an ethos of polite cooperation and eschewed theoretical wrangling, this point was hidden by a rhetoric of “matter of fact” reporting. But as “facts” mounted in the 1770s and 1780s, especially in pneumatic chemistry, cooperation gave way to contention as chemists sought to name and organize their findings without the guidance of a communally accepted “natural” system. Lavoisier and his fellow “new” chemists offered a forceful solution to this dilemma by introducing a revolutionary network of theories, nomenclature, and instruments that unabashedly fused the productive manipulation of their laboratory work with what they claimed as the structure and activity of nature. (shrink)

Where do values live in thought? A straightforward answer is that we (or our brains) make decisions using explicit value representations which are our values. Recent work applying reinforcement learning to decision-making and planning suggests that more specifically, we may represent both the instrumental expected value of actions as well as the intrinsic reward of outcomes. In this paper, I argue that identifying value with either of these representations is incomplete. For agents such as humans and other animals, there is (...) another place where reward can be located in thought: the division of the space of possibilities or ‘state space’. (shrink)

Summary I outline an approach to the phenomenology of improvised music which takes typification and the development of multi‐ordered phenomenological structures as central. My approach here is firmly in line with classical Husserlian phenomenology, taking the discussion of types in Experience and Judgment (Husserl, 1973) and Brudzińska (2015) as guide. I provide a phenomenological analysis of musical types as they are found in improvisational contexts, focusing on jazz in the 20th century. Styles are higher‐order musical types. Musical types are structures (...) that are temporally “thick,” relying on sedimented typification and knowledge, driving expectations as definitional. In most forms of music (including improvised music), musical styles involve maintaining a balance between confirming expectations and flouting expectations. I show that improvised music has a phenomenal structure which is enriched by the communicative and “ real‐time” nature of improvised music. Improvised music can be seen as an exploration of a possibility space rendered by the juxtaposition of the musical types afforded by a performance environment (instrumentation, harmonic and melodic traditions, etc.). I show that improvisation in music is a multi‐vectoral form of communication. The communication is founded in what Dieter Lohmar calls “non‐linguistic thinking.” The expression is constituted in the results of active and synthesis. The culmination of improvisational exploration of possibility spaces is the precisification and enrichment of styles‐as‐types, while in some cases developing new styles in the process. (shrink)

To understand the mind and its place in Nature is one of the great intellectual challenges of our time, a challenge that is both scientific and philosophical. How does cognition influence an animal's behaviour? What are its neural underpinnings? How is the inner life of a human being constituted? What are the neural underpinnings of the conscious condition? Embodiment and the Inner Life approaches each of these questions from a scientific standpoint. But it contends that, before we can make progress (...) on them, we have to give up the habit of thinking metaphysically, a habit that creates a fog of philosophical confusion. From this post-reflective point of view, the book argues for an intimate relationship between cognition, sensorimotor embodiment, and the integrative character of the conscious condition. Drawing on insights from psychology, neuroscience, and dynamical systems, it proposes an empirical theory of this three-way relationship whose principles, not being tied to the contingencies of biology or physics, are applicable to the whole space of possible minds in which humans and other animals are included. Embodiment and the Inner Life is one of very few books that provides a properly joined-up theory of consciousness, and will be essential reading for all psychologists, philosophers, and neuroscientists with an interest in the enduring puzzle of consciousness. (shrink)

Sociological theory on the phenomenon of suicide continues to rely heavily upon the Durkheimian perspective. While such accounts are valuable additions to the field, engagement with alternative theoretical traditions may likewise be stimulating and provide distinct concepts to delve into the issue. This article contributes to expanding sociological understanding of suicide by drawing upon Pierre Bourdieu’s theory, a relatively untapped resource in the study of suicide. I suggest that the concept of hysteresis – a mismatch between embodied and objectified structures (...) – enables an understanding of under what circumstances agents may become vulnerable to suicide. I then theorise how socioeconomic, political, and cultural dynamics may deepen the hysteresis effect and increase the chances that individuals in specific social positions experience it. Finally, I argue that individuals’ responses to such distress depend on their space of possibles: the culturally laden idea of suicide and alternatives to it. (shrink)

This paper discusses the role of Multi-User Virtual Environments (MUVEs) in the development of epistemic learner identity. MUVEs might help educators create the types of tasks and intellectual open spaces helping students with learner identity development in the information age. MUVEs can create new possibilities for dissemination and sharing of critical information (e.g. nonhierarchical, non-linear), opening up spaces of (safe) rebellion against top-down, teacher directed educational processes, helping students become more autonomous thinkers, ready to question information, and search for (...) multiple sources in problem-solving. The experiment reported here follow two General Education classes for pre-service teachers (58 students) that integrated the MUVE Second Life as a major part of their curriculum. The experimental MUVE condition was compared to two classes (59 students) using the same curricula approach and the same instructor but without using a MUVE. Individual student blog posts (weekly assignments) were extracted for both groups (experimental, active control) from three different time points over the semester. The posts were coded for levels of complexity/uncertainty, critical perspective and source of information. It was expected that students in the experimental (MUVE integrated) group would show increases over the semester as compared to the active control group. Growth curve analyses suggests students in the experimental (MUVE-integrated) condition did indeed increase in modes of thinking that question authority through increased complexity/uncertainty and critical thinking in their assigned academic/intellectual tasks, suggesting possibilities for epistemological shifts. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 35.4 (2002) 328-344 [Access article in PDF] Spaces of Invention:Dissension, Freedom, and Thought in Foucault Kendall R. Phillips Over the past two decades, invention has become an increasingly difficult concept to discuss. In an age when the free, rational actor has become not only de-centered but viewed as both impossible and undesirable by some social theorists, the traditional conception of invention, especially rhetorical invention, becomes more (...) tenuous. While some continue to promote a rational deliberative model of the human subject—Habermas is a prime example of this school of thought—the harsh and unrelenting critiques of poststructural and postmodern thinkers have cast these recovery efforts in a nostalgic and often negative light. Chief among these critics of the modern, humanist conception of human action is Michel Foucault. Within Foucault's perspective our utterances are governed by underlying rules of discourse formations, our actions are proscribed and authorized by relations of power, and our very conception of our self is circumscribed by technologies of subjectivity. Contained within these intertwined relations of knowledge, power, and subjectivity, the human subject takes on a very different meaning and even the concept of "human subject" is itself a product of these intertwined relations; a product that may, in time, disappear under new relations of discourse and governance.Despite the apparent centrality of a creative human subject to the study of rhetoric, Foucault has taken his place within the study of rhetoric. Of course, neither this incorporation of Foucault nor the observation of its peculiarity is particularly new. The incorporation of Foucault into rhetoric took its most dramatic turn in 1989 with Raymie McKerrow's "Critical Rhetoric" essay and the implications of this union of Foucault and rhetoric were forcefully raised by Barbara Biesecker in "Michel Foucault and the Question of Rhetoric" (1992). These two important essays made the relationship between Foucault and rhetoric most pressing: McKerrow by offering [End Page 328] a practical agenda for a Foucaultian rhetorical perspective and Biesecker by opening a space for reflection on this type of agenda. In the intervening decade, however, the incorporation of Foucault into rhetoric has outstripped the reflection on this incorporation and Foucault now sits as comfortably in the bibliographies of rhetorical scholars as Burke or McKeon or Perelman.The purpose of the present essay is to revisit this relationship between Foucault and rhetoric. I pursue this end not in order to critique McKerrow's project or to outstrip Biesecker's reflections, but in order to press the importance of their earlier arguments. The project of a Foucaultian rhetoric should be taken seriously, seriously enough to keep the peculiarity of this union in the forefront of our minds as we pursue it. My present effort furthers this end by seeking within Foucault a space for invention and, in so doing, asks the question: how might invention be rendered within a Foucaultian framework?My contention is that a space for invention exists within Foucault's studies of knowledge, power, and subjectivity and that this space can be demonstrated by considering the counterpoints to his tripartite understanding of the human condition. The limiting/enabling relations of knowledge/power/subjectivity are counterpointed by three terms that describe the conditions for invention: dissension, freedom, and thought. Before turning to the conditions for these spaces of invention and the unique shape of invention that emerges from them, I will briefly consider previous discussions of Foucault. Power, resistance, and invention Rhetoricians, to be clear, are not the first to be concerned with the apparent foreclosing of the possibility of invention within Foucault. Focusing mainly on dominating relations of power/knowledge/subjectivity, Foucault seems to leave little ground for the creation of new ways of acting, speaking, or being. However, what I call a concern for invention has generally not been expressed as such; rather, in rhetoric and in other fields, criticism of Foucault has been largely couched in terms of resistance. Edward Said (1986), for instance, contends that Foucault's work is "not finally as contestatory, or as oppositional as on the surface it seems to be" (152... (shrink)

: The purpose of this paper and its sister paper (Farrell and Hooker, b) is to present, evaluate and elaborate a proposed new model for the process of scientific development: self-directed anticipative learning (SDAL). The vehicle for its evaluation is a new analysis of a well-known historical episode: the development of ape-language research. In this first paper we outline five prominent features of SDAL that will need to be realized in applying SDAL to science: 1) interactive exploration of possibility (...) class='Hi'>space; 2) self-directedness; 3) localization of success and error; 4) Synergistic increase in learning capacity; and 5) continuity of SDAL process across scientific change. In this paper we examine the first three features of SDAL in relation to the early history of ape-language research. We show that this history is readily explicated as a self-directed, ever-finer, delineation of possibility space that enables the localization of both success and error. Paper II examines the last two features against this history. (shrink)

Two proposals have recently, and independently, been made about a space of possible sensory modalities. In this paper I examine these different proposals, and offer one of my own. I suggest that there are several spaces associated with distinct kinds of sensory modality.

Is there a space of the sensory modalities? Such a space would be one in which we can represent all the actual, and at least some of the possible, sensory modalities. The relative position of the senses in this space would indicate how similar and how different the senses were from each other. The construction of such a space might reveal unconsidered features of the actual and possible senses, help us to define what a sense is, (...) and provide grounds that we might use to decide what is one token sense rather than multiple token senses. -/- In this paper, I explore, refine, and defend the idea that we can construct such a space—an idea that I briefly proposed in earlier work (Macpherson 2011a and 2011b). In doing so, I defend the idea from an objection that Richard Gray (2012) has voiced. Gray claims that the dimensions of the space of sensory modalities must generate a non-­‐arbitrary ordering of the senses. He argues that we cannot find dimensions that do so. I disagree. I identify different ways in which a space could be arbitrary but I argue that we can define a space of the sensory modalities in a non-arbitrary manner. I give examples of what the dimensions might be. (shrink)

This article reviews Owen Flanagan’s latest book “The Geography of Morals, Varieties of Moral Possibilities”. By exploring the space of moral possibility, Flanagan argues that ethics is not simply a study of a priori conditions of normative rules and ideal values but a process of developing a careful understanding of varying conditions of human ecology and building practical views on living good life. The goal of this geographical exploration of the moral possibility space is surveying different traditions (...) of morality and finding tractable ways of human flourishing. This article, by following the chapters of his book, explains his views on moral diversity and his interdisciplinary and naturalistic approach to ethics. It also discusses interactive and dynamic ways to expand the moral possibility space. (shrink)

Pila (2009) has criticised the recommendations made by requirements engineers involved in the design of a grid technology for the support of distributed readings of mammograms made by Jirotka et al. (2005). The disagreement between them turns on the notion of “biographical familiarity” and whether it can be a sound basis for trust for the performances of professionals such as radiologists. In the first two sections, this paper gives an interpretation of the position of each side in this disagreement and (...) their recommendation for the design of technology for distributed reading, and in the third the underlying reasons for this is agreement are discussed. It is argued that Pila, in attempting to make room for mistrust as well as trust, brings to the fore the question of having and reflecting upon reasons for trust or mistrust. Pila holds that biographical familiarity is not a sound reason for trust/mistrust, as it seems to obliterate the possibility of mistrust. In response to her proposal, an analysis is proposed of the forms of trust involved in biographical familiarity. In particular, implicit trust is focused upon — as a form of trust in advance of reasons, and as a form of trust contained (in the logical sense) within other reasons. It is proposed that implicit trust has an important role in establishing an intersubjectively shared world in which what counts as a reason for the acceptability of performances such as readings of X-rays is established. Implicit trust, therefore, is necessary for professionals to enter into a “space of reasons”. To insist upon judgements made in the absence of the form of implicit trust at play in biographical familiarity is to demand that radiologists (and other relevantly similar professionals) make judgements regarding whether to trust or mistrust on the basis of reasons capable of being reflected upon, but at the same time leave them without reasons upon which to reflect. (shrink)

The goal of the paper is to develop and propose a general model of the state space of AI. Given the breathtaking progress in AI research and technologies in recent years, such conceptual work is of substantial theoretical interest. The present AI hype is mainly driven by the triumph of deep learning neural networks. As the distinguishing feature of such networks is the ability to self-learn, self-learning is identified as one important dimension of the AI state space. Another (...) dimension is recognized as generalization, the possibility to go over from specific to more general types of problems. A third dimension is semantic grounding. Our overall analysis connects to a number of known foundational issues in the philosophy of mind and cognition: the blockhead objection, the Turing test, the symbol grounding problem, the Chinese room argument, and use theories of meaning. It shall finally be argued that the dimension of grounding decomposes into three sub-dimensions. And the dimension of self-learning turns out as only one of a whole range of “self-x-capacities” (based on ideas of organic computing) that span the self-x-subspace of the full AI state space. (shrink)

This paper pushes back against the Democritean-Newtonian tradition of assuming a strict conceptual dichotomy between spacetime and matter. Our approach proceeds via the more narrow distinction between modified gravity/spacetime and dark matter. A prequel paper argued that the novel field Φ postulated by Berezhiani and Khoury's 'superfluid dark matter theory' is as much matter as anything could possibly be, but also below the critical temperature for superfluidity as much spacetime as anything could possibly be. Here we introduce and critically evaluate (...) three groups of interpretations that one should consider for such Janus-faced theories. The consubstantiality interpretation holds that Φ is both matter and a modification of spacetime, analogously to the sense in which Jesus is both human and god. The fundamendalist interpretations consider for each of these roles whether they are instantiated fundamentally or emergently. The breakdown interpretations focus on the question of whether Φ signals the breakdown, in some sense to be specified, of the MG-DM dichotomy and perhaps even the broader spacetime–matter distinction. More generally, it is argued that hybrid theories urge a move towards a single space of theories, rather than two separate spaces of spacetime theories and matter theories, respectively. (shrink)

Summary In the visual arts, the constructions of the spatial and chromatic structures of pictures can hardly be separated from each other. The phenomenological approach from the perspective of the arts provides an independent and worthwhile approach to the topic of colour and space. We address some matters of composition in design and, to some extent, in naturalistic painting. The phenomenological approach from the perspective of the arts reveals various topics that invite further investigation by the means of generic (...) vision science. However, although such studies might lead to increased academic insight, a thorough inquiry by the means of experimental phenomenology might well lead to formal descriptions that come somewhat closer to possible applications in the visual arts. (shrink)

Given the Sellarsian distinction between the space of causes and the space of reasons, the naturalist seeks to articulate how these two spaces are unproblematically related. In Mind and World (1996) John McDowell suggests that such a naturalism can be achieved by pointing out that we work our way into the space of reasons by the process of upbringing he calls Bildung. 'The resulting habits of thought and action', writes McDowell, 'are second nature' (p. 84). In this (...) paper I expose one implication of this remark, namely, that Bildung naturalism requires a conception of a type of action which is at once rational and habitual. Current orthodoxies in the philosophy of action prevent these two features from easily co-existing. Whilst various reconciliations are possible, I argue that only one keeps Bildung naturalism intact. This, however, commits the naturalist to a conception of reasons more radically external than any to be found in current literature, according to which the agent need have no conception of what her reasons are at the time of acting. This is what I call acting in the dark of reasons. One upshot for McDowell is that this conception of reasons may be in tension with some of his other claims. (shrink)

In this article, I pursue the question whether it is possible to understand Derridean ethics in terms of space rather than time. More precisely, I ask whether what Derrida proposes as an ethics (and exactly what that is will have to be explained) falls under the general heading of future-oriented, ‘eschatological’ or ‘messianic’, ethics that sacrifices the present for a better future, or whether it can be understood in terms of presence, more specifically of the demand to cohabit here (...) and now in the world. After proposing a reading of the to-come in terms of the intrusion of exteriority in the present, I turn to the figure of hospitality to show that Derrida's ethics is better understood in spatial rather than temporal terms: it requires a certain way of relating to the space in which we dwell. (shrink)

Spatial representations have been considered for their high didactical efficacy, as concept maps and mind maps. Graphical and spatial representations may be seen as key elements of knowledge management and may contribute to enhancing spatial knowledge. Even if isomorphisms between the physical and the mental dimension can be controversial in the field of spatial knowledge, it is nevertheless interesting to study the role of spatial interpretation in knowledge management processes. In science education, spatial skills are actually highly required due to (...) the development of new technologies and their highly demanding spatial tasks they often work intertwined with other abilities, such as logical reasoning and verbal skills. Despite spatial knowledge being significative in the overall field of learning management, there is instead little research that shows its complex role in the comprehension of concepts in the humanistic fields, e.g. in philosophical conceptual reasoning. The Elementary Logic Theory—which underlies the philosophical maps of this Atlas—identifies at the basis of complex thinking prototypical knowledge units that may be activated in the possible collaboration between explicit and implicit thinking. In EL Theory, spatiality is considered the most suitable transition format for the hypothesized collaboration between implicit and explicit processing because it shares common aspects with both of them. The focus of EL Theory is to research particularly the role of the implicit in knowledge comprehension through spatial representations. In this Atlas, the role of Elementary Logic Theory is highlighted in shaping philosophical knowledge and comprehension of philosophical concepts and their intertwining. (shrink)

The metaphor of a branching tree of future possibilities has a number of important philosophical and logical uses. In this paper we trace this metaphor through some of its uses and argue that the metaphor works the same way in physics as in philosophy. We then give an overview of formal systems for branching possibilities, viz., branching time and (briefly) branching space-times. In a next step we describe a number of different notions of possibility, thereby sketching a (...) landscape of possibilities. In the final section of the paper we look at the place of branching-based possibilities in that larger landscape of possibilities. Our main message is that far from being an outlandish metaphysical extravagancy, branching-based possibilities are epistemically as well as metaphysically basic. (shrink)

We provide a new perspective on the relation between the space of description of an object and the appearance of novelties. One of the aims of this perspective is to facilitate the interaction between mathematics and historical sciences. The definition of novelties is paradoxical: if one can define in advance the possibles, then they are not genuinely new. By analyzing the situation in set theory, we show that defining generic (i.e., shared) and specific (i.e., individual) properties of elements of (...) a set are radically different notions. As a result, generic and specific definitions of possibilities cannot be conflated. We argue that genuinely stating possibilities requires that their meaning has to be made explicit. For example, in physics, properties playing theoretical roles are generic; then, generic reasoning is sufficient to define possibilities. By contrast, in music, we argue that specific properties matter, and generic definitions become insufficient. Then, the notion of new possibilities becomes relevant and irreducible. In biology, among other examples, the generic definition of the space of DNA sequences is insufficient to state phenotypic possibilities even if we assume complete genetic determinism. The generic properties of this space are relevant for sequencing or DNA duplication, but they are inadequate to understand phenotypes. We develop a strong concept of biological novelties which justifies the notion of new possibilities and is more robust than the notion of changing description spaces. These biological novelties are not generic outcomes from an initial situation. They are specific and this specificity is associated with biological functions, that is to say, with a specific causal structure. Thus, we think that in contrast with physics, the concept of new possibilities is necessary for biology. (shrink)

I suggest that we can read Marx in the light of recent analytic, neo-Hegelian thought. I summarize the Pittsburgh School philosophers’ claims about the myth of the given, the claim that human experience is conceptual all the way out, and that we live in a space of reasons. I show how Hegel has been read in those terms, and then apply that reading of Hegel to Marx’s argument that capital is akin to what Hegel called Geist, or spirit. We (...) can understand capitalism as a space of reasons that is contradictory: while the space of reasons is supposed to make human freedom possible, our space of reasons makes freedom impossible. Reading Marx in this way is helpful, because it avoids the flaws of analytical Marxism, existentialism and structuralism. However, it raises a large problem of its own: Can the theory of the space of reasons be applied to a society that is not free of alienation? I argue that it can, but only in ways that would not satisfy the analytic neo-Hegelians themselves. (shrink)

Drawing upon the concept of thirdspace (Soja 1996), this article extends sociocultural theorizations of space in relation to alternative educational programs: programs designed to re-engage youth who have been pushed out of mainstream schools. Snapshots of educational programs, provided by ethnographic research gathered in the United States, Australia, and Canada, foreground the contradictions inherent in these alternative spaces: on one hand, the possibilities obtained for youth through participation, and on the other, the production of these programs through displacement. (...) Alternative educational programs expose the tensions between a democratic ideal of engaging all young people in excellent and equitable public schools and a neo-liberal economic rationality that currently fuels the ?sorting machine? function of compulsory schooling. (shrink)

Which mathematical structures are possible, that is, instantiated by the concrete inhabitants of some possible world? Are there worlds with four-dimensional space? With infinite-dimensional space? Whence comes our knowledge of the possibility of structures? In this paper, I develop and defend a principle of plenitude according to which any mathematically natural generalization of possible structure is itself possible. I motivate the principle pragmatically by way of the role that logical possibility plays in our inquiry into the world.

The Guadeloupean writer and critic Maryse Condé has for the last twenty-five years divided her time between her native Guadeloupe and the United States. If the author's work has attracted much critical attention in the United States, it is her fictional works that have been the focus of this attention, with these predominantly read in the light of political themes such as identity and resistance. In these intelligent and sensitive readings, Eva Sansavior argues in favour of adopting a broader thematic (...) and generic approach to the author's work. Sansavior accounts for the multiple and oblique uses of literature in Condé's literary and critical work, tracking its complex interactions with tradition, reception, politics and autobiography and also the singular possibilities that these interactions present for re-imagining the ideas of politics, literature, identity and, ultimately, the nature of critical practice itself. Eva Sansavior is Career Development Fellow in French (Francophone Caribbean Studies) at Oriel College, Oxford. (shrink)

This article addresses Bruce Janz’s “enactivist” reading of African philosophy from two perspectives. The space in which African philosophy finds itself remains problematic, and, thus, this article attempts to unpack this issue. Janz argues that African philosophy allows for only a few or no possibilities for radical thought. However, his own reading of the Nigerian philosopher Sophie Oluwole serves to debunk this claim. Oluwole’s thought highlights the challenges of building a modern African philosophy within the context of postcoloniality, (...) in which problems of untranslatability are encountered when utilizing a metropolitan language, which, in her case, is English. But, beyond the problem of untranslatability, she is able to delineate a holistic cosmology that, in multiple ways, incorporates, complicates, and extends the borders of philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper we show that some standard topological constructions may be fruitfully used in the theory of closure spaces (see [5], [4]). These possibilities are exemplified by the classical theorem on the universality of the Alexandroff's cube for T 0-closure spaces. It turns out that the closure space of all filters in the lattice of all subsets forms a generalized Alexandroff's cube that is universal for T 0-closure spaces. By this theorem we obtain the following characterization of (...) the consequence operator of the classical logic: If is a countable set and C: P() P() is a closure operator on X, then C satisfies the compactness theorem iff the closure space ,C is homeomorphically embeddable in the closure space of the consequence operator of the classical logic.We also prove that for every closure space X with a countable base such that the cardinality of X is not greater than 2 there exists a subset X of irrationals and a subset X of the Cantor's set such that X is both a continuous image of X and a continuous image of X. (shrink)

In the light of a renewed interest today in forms of direct political participation, this paper explores the contributions of Sartre and Arendt to defending direct political action as an intrinsically valuable form of human freedom. Both thinkers note, however, that such forms of action and the ‘spaces of freedom’ in which they become possible are always fleeting and transitory. The paper argues that Sartre's account of the ways in which human action is always mediated and alienated by materiality is (...) important in accounting for this phenomenon. (shrink)

In informationally mature societies, almost all organisations record, generate, process, use, share and disseminate data. In particular, the rise of AI and autonomous systems has corresponded to an improvement in computational power and in solving complex problems. However, the resulting possibilities have been coupled with an upsurge of ethical risks. To avoid the misuse, underuse, and harmful use of data and data-based systems like AI, we should use an ethical framework appropriate to the object of its reasoning. Unfortunately, in (...) recent years, the space for data-related ethics has not been precisely defined in organisations. As a consequence, there has been an overlapping of responsibilities and a void of clear accountabilities. Ethical issues have, therefore, been dealt with using inadequate levels of abstraction (e.g. legal, technical). Yet, if building an ethical infrastructure requires the collaboration of each body, addressing ethical issues related to data requires leaving room for the appropriate level of abstraction. This paper first aims to show how the space of data ethics is already latent in organisations. It then highlights how to redefine roles (chief data ethics officer, data ethics committee, etc.) and codes (code of data ethics) to create and maintain an environment where ethical reasoning about data, information, and AI systems may flourish. (shrink)

In this issue, Pila (2009) has criticised the recommendations made by requirements engineers involved in the design of a grid technology for the support of distributed readings of mammograms made by Jirotka et al. (2005). The disagreement between them turns on the notion of “biographical familiarity” and whether it can be a sound basis for trust for the performances of professionals such as radiologists. In the first two sections, this paper gives an interpretation of the position of each side in (...) this disagreement and their recommendation for the design of technology for distributed reading, and in the third the underlying reasons for this disagreement are discussed. It is argued that Pila, in attempting to make room for mistrust as well as trust, brings to the fore the question of having and reflecting upon reasons for trust or mistrust. Pila holds that biographical familiarity is not a sound reason for trust/mistrust, as it seems to obliterate the possibility of mistrust. In response to her proposal, an analysis is proposed of the forms of trust involved in biographical familiarity. In particular, implicit trust is focused upon—as a form of trust in advance of reasons, and as a form of trust contained (in the logical sense) within other reasons. It is proposed that implicit trust has an important role in establishing an intersubjectively shared world in which what counts as a reason for the acceptability of performances such as readings of X-rays is established. Implicit trust, therefore, is necessary for professionals to enter into a “space of reasons”. To insist upon judgements made in the absence of the form of implicit trust at play in biographical familiarity is to demand that radiologists (and other relevantly similar professionals) make judgements regarding whether to trust or mistrust on the basis of reasons capable of being reflected upon, but at the same time leave them without reasons upon which to reflect. (shrink)

This paper explores the possibility of the classroom as an exilic space of subversion in which we can pursue anarchist notions of personal transformation, relationships and society. Classroom environments in higher education institutions in Britain, particularly following the introduction of the Teaching Excellence Framework in September 2016, are premised upon relationships shaped by specific external standards: Employability, the instrumental pursuit of degrees, provider/consumer exchange, among others. Any notions of personal transformation are economic, and the broader goal is the pursuit (...) of economic gain for individual, company and country. In an act of subversion of these external standards, I propose theorising the classroom as an exilic space: a temporally and spatially bracketed space in which participants and their relationships are not beholden to these various external referents. Instead, I put forward the exilic classroom as an anarchic space in which the interactions of the participants are not pre-defined but are formed in the process of the interactions themselves. In theorising the exilic classroom I draw on the work of Obika Gray, and push his notion of exilic space further by integrating the works of Michel de Certeau, Jamie Heckert and Gustav Landauer to help propose a classroom defined as a positive subversive everyday space that is not bound by its opposition to wider structures. The creation of such an exilic classroom assists the participants in stepping out of their expected roles as ‘provider’ and ‘consumer’, or ‘teacher’ and ‘student’, and allows the creation of a space of possibilities for our relationships. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 48, Issue 1, pp 119 - 146 Masks are devices and symbols. In the first instance, they are artifacts that allow opposite poles to take each other’s place. They split the world into appearance and reality, manifest and repressed, sacred and profane. In this sense, they are dualistic. But by so doing they invert these terms. In this sense, they are dialectical. In the second instance, they exemplify doubt about people’s identities and the veracity of their words; (...) they denote duplicity, inauthenticity, and hypocrisy. The conjunction of these two senses resides in the fact that masks are at the threshold between reality and fiction. Such a threshold makes possible the emergence of a space of play which asserts that the world does not express a determinate and final order but is infinitely open to the emergence of new, yet transient, forms of self-organization and open new spatiotemporal worlds. (shrink)

Science and technology studies scholars have turned their attention to the materiality of objects and buildings in order to examine what they make users do in practice. Taking a close look at a therapeutic community in a psychiatric day care center for teenagers, this paper joins these discussions by exploring the materiality of “spaces of care” as part of the center’s everyday practice. The analysis incorporates the concepts of scripts and dispositifs to describe the conditions of possibility in which caregivers (...) and youths may position themselves in relation to others and to the space itself. This paper describes how spaces of care offer open, enticing, and variable conditions for fostering a dynamic of personal and relational responses as part of the care work. In this sense, the material environment entails potentialities in ways that are unpredictable but nonetheless consequential. Rather than arguing that material arrangements and things act, this paper draws attention to their impact via their potential within dispositifs of care that request participants’ attentiveness and responsiveness. Describing these potentialities brings out the subtler requirements of material environments in care practices that aim at circumventing the coercion of disciplinary spaces and their impersonal classifications. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Pila has criticised the recommendations made by requirements engineers involved in the design of a grid technology for the support of distributed readings of mammograms made by Jirotka et al. The disagreement between them turns on the notion of ‘biographical familiarity’ and whether it can be a sound basis for trust for the performances of professionals such as radiologists. In the first two sections, the paper gives an interpretation of the position of each side in this (...) disagreement and their recommendation for the design of technology for distributed reading, and in the third the underlying reasons for this disagreement are discussed. It is argued that Pila, in attempting to make room for mistrust as well as trust, brings to the fore the question of having and reflecting upon reasons for trust or mistrust. Pila holds that biographical familiarity is not a sound reason for trust/mistrust, as it seems to obliterate the possibility of mistrust. In response to her proposal, an analysis is proposed of the forms of trust involved in biographical familiarity. In particular, implicit trust is focused upon, as a form of trust in advance of reasons, and as a form of trust contained within other reasons. It is proposed that implicit trust has an important role in establishing an intersubjectively shared world in which what counts as a reason for the acceptability of performances such as readings of x-rays is established. Implicit trust, therefore, is necessary for professionals to enter into a ‘space of reasons’. To insist upon judgements made in the absence of the form of implicit trust at play in biographical familiarity is to demand that radiologists make judgements regarding whether to trust or mistrust on the basis of reasons capable of being reflected upon, but at the same time to leave them without reasons upon which to reflect. (shrink)

In modern physics nonlinear systems with a lot of heterogeneity and anisotropy which are in strong fields and processes of crossings of electromechanical, spinor-mechanical, termo-magnetic and other ones are actual. Correct building with the help of mathematics of the given theories is possible only with the attraction geometry of the stratified spaces. The geometry of the stratified spaces chow its power by examining these systems and processes. Noncontradictional, covarianty theory of the single whole field of matter can be built only (...) with the attraction the geometry of the stratified spaces. Introduction the stratified spaces into physics of geometry is a continuation of works of Hamiltone, Langrange, Aler and other scientists. The problem is multivariate spaces of internal degrees offreedom. The ideas, positions of geometry of stratified spaces and their supplements demand a new philosophical sense of understanding. (shrink)

Burt C. Hopkins - Husserl, Heidegger, and the Space of Meaning: Paths Toward Transcendental Philosophy - Journal of the History of Philosophy 40:2 Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.2 271-273 Book Review Husserl, Heidegger, and the Space of Meaning: Paths Toward Transcendental Philosophy Steven Galt Crowell. Husserl, Heidegger, and the Space of Meaning:Paths Toward Transcendental Philosophy. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2001. Pp. xvii + 323. Cloth, $79.95. Paper, $27.95. The "space of meaning" announced in (...) the title of the present collection of essays has both a historical and systematic referent. Historically, it refers to the fact that it is now "possible to recognize that what has distinguished philosophy in the twentieth century is not that it has concerned itself with language, but that, whether through the prism of language or not, it has concerned itself with meaning" . Systematically, it refers to the issues that emerge when the project of transcendental phenomenology is explored in a manner that.. (shrink)

In situations where we ignore everything but the space of possibilities, we ought to suspend judgment—that is, remain agnostic—about which of these possibilities is the case. This means that we cannot sum our degrees of belief in different possibilities, something that has been formalised as an axiom of non-additivity. Consistent with this way of representing our ignorance, I defend a doxastic norm that recommends that we should nevertheless follow a certain additivity of possibilities: even if (...) we cannot sum degrees of belief in different possibilities, we should be more confident in larger groups of possibilities. It is thus shown that, in the type of situation considered (in so-called “classical ignorance”, i.e. “behind a thin veil of ignorance”), it is epistemically rational for advocates of suspending judgment to endorse this comparative confidence, while on the other hand it is shown that, even in classical ignorance, no stronger belief—such as a precise uniform probability distribution—is warranted. (shrink)

There is a fairly long-standing distinction between what are called the ideographic as opposed to nomothetic sciences. The nomothetic sciences, such as physics, offer explanations in terms of the laws and regular operations of nature. The ideographic sciences, such as natural history, cast explanations in terms of narratives. This article offers an account of what is involved in offering an explanatory narrative in the historical sciences. I argue that narrative explanations involve two chief components: a possibility space and an (...) explanatory causal mechanism. (shrink)

I want to defend a Combinatorialtheory of possibility. Such a view traces the very idea of possibility to the idea of the combinations – all the combinations which respect a certain simple form – of given, actual, elements. Combination is to be understood widely enough to cover the notions of expansion and contraction. The combinatorial idea is not new, of course. Wittgenstein gave a classical exposition of it in the Tractatus. Perhaps its charter is 3.4: ‘A proposition determines a place (...) in logical space. The existence of this logical place is guaranteed by the mere existence of the constituents’. There is a small additional combinatorial literature. I myself was converted to a combinatorial view by Brian Skyrms’ brief but fascinating article ‘Tractarian Nominalism.’. (shrink)

Possibility and reference have been central topics in metaphysics and the philosophy of language in the past decades. Wolfgang Freitag’s Form and Philosophy provides a novel approach to these notions and their interrelations, based on the concept of form as the key modal concept: form is the possibility space of objects. In its historic dimension, the book analyses the role of form in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. In its systematic dimension, the book (...) offers an alternative ontological basis to David Armstrong’s combinatorial theory of possibility and rejects David Lewis’ analysis of possibility in terms of possible worlds. Representation is shown to rest on the idea of direct reference as proposed by David Kaplan and Saul Kripke. It is argued that the problem of reference links up with Wittgenstein’s rule-following problem, the nature of which is extensively discussed. It emerges that form and reference are complementary with respect to the notion of representation. Once their individual roles are seen, many metaphysical puzzles appear in a new light or disappear altogether. (shrink)

This paper addresses the cognitive status of making pictures, rather than their informational function. Discussion centres on the structure of pictorial space. Space of this kind is constituted from the relation between pictorial content's modal plasticity (that is, its capacity to represent actualities, possibilities, and nomological and metaphysical impossibilities) and the formative role of planar structure and idioms of recessional organization. On the basis of this, it is argued that alternative creative realizations and aesthetic significance are inherent (...) to the structure of pictorial space itself qua pictorial. Such space is conceptually connected to the possibility of visual art. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

This paper tackles the problem of the nature of the space of perception. Based both on philosophical arguments and on results obtained from original experimental situations, it attempts to show how space is constituted concretely, before any distinction between the “inner” and the “outer” can be made. It thus sheds light on the presuppositions of the well-known debate between internalism and externalism in the philosophy of mind; it argues in favor of the latter position, but with arguments that (...) are foundationally antecedent to this debate. We call the position we defend enactive externalism. It is based on experimental settings which, in virtue of their minimalism, make it possible both to defend a sensori-motor/enactive theory of perception; and, especially, to inquire into the origin of the space of perception, showing how it is concretely enacted before the controversy between internalism and externalism can even take place. (shrink)

Color coding is used to guide attention in computer displays for such critical tasks as baggage screening or air traffic control. It has been shown that a display object attracts more attention if its color is more similar to the color for which one is searching. However, what does similar precisely mean? Can we predict the amount of attention that a display color will receive during a search for a given target color? To tackle this question, two color‐search experiments measuring (...) the selectivity of saccadic eye movements and mapping out its underlying color space were conducted. A variety of mathematical models, predicting saccadic selectivity for given target and display colors, were devised and evaluated. The results suggest that applying a Gaussian function to a weighted Euclidean distance in a slightly modified HSI color space is the best predictor of saccadic selectivity in the chosen paradigm. Hue and intensity information by itself provides a basis for useful predictors, spanning a possibly spherical color space of saccadic selectivity. Although the current models cannot predict saccadic selectivity values for a wide variety of visual search tasks, they reveal some characteristics of color search that are of both theoretical and applied interest, such as for the design of human–computer interfaces. (shrink)