Search

The article is a discussion of the concept of power in three different social theories that are often applied to educational research: the theories of Jürgen Habermas, Pierre Bourdieu, and Michel Foucault. In everyday life, the concept of power is used as if it only had a single connotation: power as possessed by someone (“the powerful”) while exercised over someone else (“the powerless”). In this case, power is considered as a (potentially) repressive force and ascribed to a person, a culture, a state, or a society. Though, power can be comprehended otherwise: as non-possessed and productive. In the paper, the three conceptions of power are presented and discussed in relation to each other and to specific philosophical themes like dualism, reductionism, determinism and autonomy, truth, normativity, and relativism. Finally, the paper shows that the applied powerconcept has significant consequences for the way the educational researcher analyzes conflicts, and therefore also for our understanding of the world in which we live. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a recent paper, Nicolas Gisin suggests that by conducting physics with intuitionistic rather than classical mathematics, rich temporality—that is, passage and tense, and specifically the future's openness—can be incorporated into physics. Physics based on classical mathematics is tenseless and deterministic, and that, so he holds, renders it incongruent with experience. According to Gisin, physics ought to represent the indeterminate nature of reality, and he proposes that intuitionistic mathematics is the key to succeeding in doing so. While I share his insistence on the reality of passage and tense and on the future being real and open, I argue that the amendment he offers does not work. I show that, its attunement to time notwithstanding, intuitionistic mathematics is as tenseless as classical mathematics and that physics is bound to remain tenseless regardless of the math it employs. There is much to learn about tensed time, but the task belongs to phenomenology and not to physics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the riddle of Oedipus? This paper is an exploration of the philosophy involved in Sophocles' famous play Oedipus Tyrannus. The play involves a riddler who becomes king, a man who is famously good at understanding what others find obscure, and yet is unable to see it when he is confronted by an obvious set of uncomfortable truths about himself. As well as for Oedipus, the play poses a number of different riddles for us: in particular it is a study of responsibility and shame, and of deliberation and choice. Like any work of art, the play does not tell us what conclusions we should reach; but it does show us some questions that need asking, and indeed some riddles that we face. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I have argued against the Principle of Alternative Possibilities using a time travel-based counterexample. Kelly McCormick has responded to my counterexample by arguing that the time travel scenario must be a scenario in which a time traveler's actions are causally determined; hence, she claims, we should be suspicious of attributing moral responsibility to anyone in such a scenario. In this paper, I respond by arguing that one might be morally responsible in an indeterministic time travel scenario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the authors provide an epistemological view on the old controversial random-necessity. It has been considered that either one or the other form part of the structure of reality. Chance and indeterminism are nothing but a disorderly efficiency of contingency in the production of events, phenomena, processes, i.e., in its causality, in the broadest sense of the word. Such production may be observed in natural and artificial processes or in human social processes (in history, economics, society, politics, etc.). Here we touch the object par excellence of all scientific research whether natural or human. In this work, is presented a hypothesis whose practical result satisfies the Hegelian dialectic, with the consequent implication of their mutual reciprocal integration. Producing abstractions, without which, there is no thought or knowledge of any kind, from the concrete, that is, the real problem, which in this case is a given Ontological System or Reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Annals of Philosophy / Roczniki Filozoficzne is the property of John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Faculty of Philosophy and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of BEÜ Ilahiyat Fakültesi Dergisi is the property of Bulent Ecevit University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The turn of the twenty-first century was a period of intensified research on the description of the world as a complex structure built of dynamical systems occurring at different levels of reality. Such systems can be described as bundles of processes. Therefore, the most empirically adequate ontology turns out to be processualism. In this paper, I describe a contemporary version of processual philosophy, which I refer to as processual (or dynamical) emergentism. Within the proposed position, the classical formulations of processualism and emergentism are revisited. Both elements complement each other – emergence describes constant, radical novelty as the basic feature of nature, while processualism employs the category of a process, which replaces the classically understood substance. The approach to emergence developed here is ontological and diachronic. I discuss classic determinants of emergence and propose a discussion on the category of supervenience, which in the light of the adopted assumptions turns out to be insufficient to describe the relationship of the dependence of the emergent on its base. Finally, processualism is reconciled with moderate structuralism and strong emergentism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the completion of the Human Genome Project (HGP), biomedical sciences have moved away from a gene-centred view and towards a multi-factorial one in which environment, broadly speaking, plays a central role in the determination of human health and disease. Environmental exposures have been shown to be highly prevalent in disease causation. They are considered as complementary to genetic factors in the etiology of diseases, hence the introduction of the concept of the "exposome" as encompassing the totality of human environmental exposures, from conception onwards (Wild in Cancer Epidemiol Biomark Prev 14:1847–1850, 2005), and the launch of the Human Exposome Project (HEP) which aims to complement the HGP. At first sight, and seen as complementary to the genome, the exposome could thus appear as contributing to the rise of novel postgenomic deterministic narratives which place the environment at their core. Is this really the case? If so, what sort of determinism is at work in exposomics research? Is it a case of environmental determinism, and if so, in what sense? Or is it a new sort of deterministic view? In this paper, we first show that causal narratives in exposomics are still very similar to gene-centred deterministic narratives. They correspond to a form of Laplacian determinism and, above all, to what Claude Bernard called the "determinism of a phenomenon". Second, we introduce the notion of "reversed heuristic determinism" to characterize the specific deterministic narratives present in exposomics. Indeed, the accepted sorts of external environmental exposures conceived as being at the origins of diseases are determined, methodologically speaking, by their identifiable internal and biological markers. We conclude by highlighting the most relevant implications of the presence of this heuristic determinism in exposomics research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Avicenna's discussion of future contingent propositions is sometimes considered to entail metaphysical indeterminism. In this paper, I argue that his logical analysis of future contingent statements is best understood in terms of the epistemic modality of those statements, which has no consequences for modal metaphysics. This interpretation is corroborated by hitherto neglected material concerning the question of God's knowledge of particulars. In the Taʿlīqāt, Avicenna argues that God knows particulars by knowing their complete causes, and when contrasted with the human knowledge of particulars, this epistemically superior access shows that the contingency of statements about future particulars is not due to the modal properties of real particulars but to the nature of human access to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I present an overview of the life and work of Donald MacCrimmon Mackay, a distinguished Christian polymath who made significant contributions across a number of domains in science and philosophy in the middle part of the 20th Century, and the centenary of whose birth was in 2022. After a brief biographical sketch, we will review his contribution to theology & science, the main ones of these being: complementarity, an innovative concept relating information and matter, and mind and brain; and logical indeterminism, a proposed solution to the problem of free will and determinism. I hope that this overview will stimulate interest in, and further exploration of, his ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a metaphysical framework for distinguishing between human and machine intelligence. It posits two identical deterministic worlds -- one comprising a human agent and the other a machine agent. These agents exhibit different information processing mechanisms despite their apparent sameness in a causal sense. Providing a conceptual modeling of their difference, this paper resolves what it calls “the vantage point problem” – namely, how to justify an omniscient perspective through which a determinist asserts determinism from within the supposedly deterministic universe.

This paper offers a new argument for compatibilism about moral responsibility by drawing attention to some overlooked implications of incompatibilism. More specifically, I argue that incompatibilists are committed to some unsavory claims about pairs of agents in deterministic worlds. These include comparative claims about moral responsibility, blameworthiness, desert, punishment, and the fittingness of reactive attitudes. I argue that we have good reasons to reject such comparisons because they fail to account for key differences between deterministic agents. This provides us with reason to embrace compatibilism and reject incompatibilism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brian Cutter (Analysis 77: 278-287, 2017) argues that one of the most prominent versions of the consequence argument—viz., Peter van Inwagen’s (An Essay on Free Will. Oxford University Press, 1983) ‘Third Formal Argument’—does not support an incompatibility thesis that every paradigmatic compatibilist would reject. Justin Capes (Thought 8: 50-56, 2019) concedes Cutter’s conclusion concerning van Inwagen’s Third Formal Argument and tries to meet the important challenge that Cutter issues at the end of his paper—viz., articulate a promising version of the consequence argument whose conclusion is an incompatibility thesis that every paradigmatic compatibilist would reject. After arguing that Capes’s response to Cutter’s challenge fails, I meet Cutter’s challenge by presenting and discussing a version of the consequence argument that focuses on ordinary human agents in circumstances that are ordinary for human agents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to relate two debates about how logic and language influence thought. There is an axis of discussion about whether there exists a plurality of logic or a single logical system as an evaluation criterion for any reasoning context. In linguistics, the debate arising from the strong and weak interpretations of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has centralized the discussion around the degree of influence or determination of language on thought. From different perspectives and theoreticalconceptual frameworks, logic, and linguistics delimit and problematize a field of inquiry and reflection. The article, from a transdisciplinary perspective, intends to account for and postulate communicating vessels between these debates, considering the nuances of each approach. It also seeks to propose its own hypothesis on the problem raised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Michael S. Moore defends the ideas of free will and responsibility, especially in relation to criminal law, against several challenges from neuroscience. I agree with Moore that morality and the law presuppose a commonsense understanding of humans as rational agents, who make choices and act for reasons, and that to defend moral and legal responsibility, we must show that this commonsense understanding remains viable. Unlike Moore, however, I do not think that classical compatibilism, which is based on a conditional understanding of the ability to do otherwise, provides a sufficiently robust account of free will, even when it is amended as Moore suggests. I argue that free will and responsibility can be defended more robustly by observing that, at the level of agency, there can be alternative possibilities and mental causation in a stronger sense than recognized by classical compatibilism, even if physical determinism is true. Moore's arguments could thus be strengthened by embracing this compatibilist libertarian position. At the same time, I note that, although the idea of responsibility is robustly defensible, there are independent reasons for rejecting a retributivist approach to punishment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Repeated regulatory incident investigations demonstrate the insufficiency of company risk assessments and the vulnerabilities that this exposes to the business and its duty holders who are, ultimately, culpable for the subsequent legislative breaches. While the epistemology and taxonomy of the traditional risk assessment are well established, there is a paucity of information that allows the verification and validation of the risk assessment content. Using evidence-based methodologies such as Content Analysis, Thematic Analysis, and validating the outputs using a survey, it became possible to "reverse engineer" the risk assessment content. This analysis of the published risk assessments, kindly supplied by six different Renewable Energy businesses, established that deterministic and behavioristic risk management methodologies had been adopted. These methodologies permitted and guided the use of vague and imprecise terminology and phraseology, numerical inconsistencies resulting in data ossification, and flawed assumptions. This analysis enables the duty holders to make informed and rational judgements about the adequacy of the risk assessment documents, and the process that permitted and guided their creation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The primary focus of this research centers on the analysis and critique of Moritz Shclick's perspective concerning the "relationship between free will and determinism." Its objective is to demonstrate the inadequacy of his proposed solution in a descriptive-analytical manner. According to Shclick, the purported dilemma surrounding free will and determinism is a pseudo-philosophical quandary stemming from a conflation of key concepts. He contends that disentangling these concepts through differentiation of terms in common sense, such as "normative law" from "descriptive law," "causality" (representing determinism) from "compulsion," and "non-causality" (indeterminism) from "freedom," will naturally dissipate this pseudo-problem. Shclick posits that "compulsion" falls within the realm of normative concepts, while determinism and the principle of causal necessity reside in the domain of descriptive concepts, thereby rendering any connection between "compulsion" and "determinism" non-existent. In this study, I illustrate through three innovative examples that: a) "compulsion" and "freedom" possess at least two distinct meanings in common sense, and Shclick's claim succumbs to the fallacy of reductionism. b) The crux of the issue surrounding free will revolves around the secondary meaning of these terms. c) Shclick's definition of freedom encompasses not only humans but also extends to animals, thereby not impeding others. These three critiques collectively demonstrate the untenability of Shclick's compatibilist perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Commentators on P.F. Strawson's reactive attitudes emphasize the opposition between the participant and objective attitudes. This tendency overlooks Strawson's attempt to mitigate what he saw as "a crude opposition" between these two perspectives. Strawson called attention to phenomena involving the "half-suspension" of reactive attitudes, or the "straddling" of the objective and participant stances in order to diminish this crudity. This has been largely ignored in the literature, and as a result, the phenomena that Strawson mentions are poorly understood. Drawing on the work in the philosophy of emotion by Amélie Rorty and a multidimensional account of the reactive attitudes, we provide a framework to explain how such a half-suspension is possible and highlight some of its more prominent features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Balanced hypergraph partitioning is an NP-hard problem with many applications, e.g., optimizing communication in distributed data placement problems. The goal is to place all nodes across k different blocks of bounded size, such that hyperedges span as few parts as possible. This problem is well-studied in sequential and distributed settings, but not in shared-memory. We close this gap by devising efficient and scalable shared-memory algorithms for all components employed in the best sequential solvers without compromises with regards to solution quality. This work presents the scalable and high-quality hypergraph partitioning framework Mt-KaHyPar. Its most important components are parallel improvement algorithms based on the FM algorithm and maximum flows, as well as a parallel clustering algorithm for coarsening – which are used in a multilevel scheme with log (n) levels. As additional components, we parallelize the n-level partitioning scheme, devise a deterministic version of our algorithm, and present optimizations for plain graphs. We evaluate our solver on more than 800 graphs and hypergraphs, and compare it with 25 different algorithms from the literature. Our fastest configuration outperforms almost all existing hypergraph partitioners with regards to both solution quality and running time. Our highest-quality configuration achieves the same solution quality as the best sequential partitioner KaHyPar , while being an order of magnitude faster with ten threads. Thus, two of our configurations occupy all fronts of the Pareto curve for hypergraph partitioning. Furthermore, our solvers exhibit good speedups, e.g., 29.6x in the geometric mean on 64 cores (deterministic), 22.3x (log (n)-level), and 25.9x (n-level). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I have argued against the Principle of Alternative Possibilities using a time travel-based counterexample. Kelly McCormick has responded to my counterexample by arguing that the time travel scenario must be a scenario in which a time traveler’s actions are causally determined; hence, she claims, we should be suspicious of attributing moral responsibility to anyone in such a scenario. In this paper, I respond by arguing that one might be morally responsible in an indeterministic time travel scenario.