As we approach the centennial anniversary of modern quantum mechanics this paper revisits the foundational debates through a new poll within the research community. Inspired by the survey by Schlosshauer, Kofler, and Zeilinger at the specialized 2011 Quantum Physics and the Nature of Reality conference, we expanded our recruitment to include a more representative sample of the broader community of physicists with the aim to reveal potential shifts in scientists' views and compare our findings with those from several previous polls. While quantum foundations still lack a consensus interpretation, our results indicate a persistent preference for the Copenhagen interpretation. This enduring support likely reflects both the educational emphasis on the Copenhagen interpretation and its pragmatic appeal in avoiding complex metaphysical questions and introducing new notions (e.g., other worlds or the pilot wave). Our findings thus underscore the relative stability of interpretational preferences over the past decades.
Credences are mental states corresponding to degrees of confidence in propositions. Attribution of credences to Large Language Models (LLMs) is commonplace in the empirical literature on LLM evaluation. Yet the theoretical basis for LLM credence attribution is unclear. We defend three claims. First, our semantic claim is that LLM credence attributions are (at least in general) correctly interpreted literally, as expressing truth-apt beliefs on the part of scientists that purport to describe facts about LLM credences. Second, our metaphysical claim is that the existence of LLM credences is at least plausible, although current evidence is inconclusive. Third, our epistemic claim is that LLM credence attributions made in the empirical literature on LLM evaluation are subject to non-trivial sceptical concerns. It is a distinct possibility that even if LLMs have credences, LLM credence attributions are generally false because the experimental techniques used to assess LLM credences are not truth-tracking.
The no-go theorems of Bell and Kochen and Specker could be interpreted as implying that the notions of system and experimental context are fundamentally inseparable. In this interpretation, statements such as "spin is 'up' along direction $x$" are relational statements about the configurations of macroscopic devices which are mediated by the spin and not about any intrinsic properties of the spin. The operational meaning of these statements is provided by the practically infinite resources of macroscopic devices that serve to define the notion of a direction in three-dimensional space. This is the subject of "textbook quantum mechanics": The description of quantum systems in relation to an experimental context. Can one go beyond that? Relational quantum mechanics endeavors to provide a relational description between any quantum systems without the necessity of involving macroscopic devices. However, by applying "textbook quantum mechanics" in such situations, it implicitly assumes infinite resources, even for simple quantum systems such as spins, which have no capacity to define an experimental context. This leads to conceptual difficulties. As an alternative, we analyse Penrose's spin network proposal as a potential formalisation of quantum theory that goes beyond the textbook framework: A description in presence of finite resources, which is inherently relational and inseparable in the system-context entity.
This is an essay in what might be called ``mathematical metaphysics.'' There is a fundamental duality that run through mathematics and the natural sciences. The duality starts as the logical level; it is represented by the Boolean logic of subsets and the logic of partitions since subsets and partitions are category-theoretic dual concepts. In more basic terms, it starts with the duality between the elements (Its) of subsets and the distinctions (Dits, i.e., ordered pairs of elements in different blocks) of a partition. Mathematically, the Its $\&$ Dits duality is fully developed in category theory as the reverse-the-arrows duality. The quantitative versions of subsets and partitions are developed as probability theory and information theory (based on logical entropy). Classical physics was based on a view of reality as definite all the way down. In contrast, quantum physics embodies (objective) indefiniteness. And finally, there are the two fundamental dual mechanisms at work in biology, the selectionist mechanism and the generative mechanism, two mechanisms that embody the fundamental duality.
This study addresses the often underestimated importance of physical dimensions and units in the formal reconstruction of physical theories, focusing on structuralist approaches that use the concept of ``species of structure" as a meta-mathematical tool. Similar approaches also play a role in current philosophical debates on the metaphysical status of physical quantities. Our approach builds on an earlier proposal by Terence Tao. It involves the representation of fundamental physical quantities by one-dimensional real ordered vector spaces, while derived quantities are formulated using concepts from linear algebra, e.g. tensor products and dual spaces. As an introduction, the theory of Ohm's law is considered. We then formulate a reconstruction of the calculus of physical dimensions, including Buckingham's $Π$-theorem. Furthermore, an application of this method to the Newtonian theory of gravitating systems consisting of point particles is demonstrated, emphasizing the role of the automorphism group and its physical interpretations.
The paper is concerned with beginning to lay a basis for a more comprehensive model of designing, one that can overcome the abyss between the conceptual limitations of purely professional designing and wider instincts of design capabilities. The qualifier for today is that such a model of designing has to establish a structural relationship to the artificial. The approach in the paper has been to reach back into the last time such projects were attempted in the late 1960s/1970s, and to use as a moment Herbert Simon’s propositions on design and the artificial developed in The Sciences of the Artificial. These propositions were never fully thought through by design. This is in part perhaps because of the difficulty of thinking design in its professional moments in relation to Simon’s theses on the artificial. As will be seen below, in several respects these propositions severely challenge the limits of professional thinking in design. At the same time, does Simon’s proposition that design and the artificial are essentially identical (the one dependent upon the other) ground design more deeply than we have previously thought? Does this in turn offer an objective basis on which a more comprehensive model of designing, embracing both practice and capacity, can be constructed? This is the wager the article explores. It makes no definitive claims. Its aim is to ask the question.
German philosopher Martin Heidegger’s later thought is significant because of his attention to the meaning of “truth” (alētheia) and its connection to Protagoras’s thesis of anthrōpon metron (“of all things man is the measure…”), which Heidegger elevates to the “highest principle” of philosophy. Philosopher Werner Marx concurs with Heidegger that our time faces the “age of technology” as the completion of the Western tradition of metaphysics. With the “end of philosophy” in this sense, we stand to inaugurate “a new beginning” in thinking without reliance on the principles and standards that have their provenance in the tradition from ancient Greek philosophy onward to late European modernity. For Marx, this elicits the possibility of a non-metaphysical ethics, hence the question of “measure” that he engages in connection with Heidegger’s later thinking. However, it is problematic that Marx engages Schelling’s reflections on the essence of human freedom to articulate a possibility of measure. Here Marx’s reflections are engaged by considering his motivation and the thought of Schelling, Nietzsche, Heidegger, as well as the historical context of the twentieth century, all of which constrain Marx’s normative objective. Heidegger’s engagement of Schelling and Kant to elucidate the problem of human freedom raises questions whether Marx’s proposal for a measure “on this earth” can achieve the goal of a foundation for a post-metaphysical ethics.
What Christians call ‘creation’ is fundamentally, inescapably, and entirely temporal. Humans, too, are temporal beings. As such, understanding the nature of time has been a philosophical pursuit since the pre-Socratic philosophers. Theologians have not been exempted from this interest, and thus, unsurprisingly, reflection on God’s relation to time similarly spans back many hundreds of years. In fact, one might argue that the topic ‘God and Time’ underlies almost all key theological debates, for two reasons. First, because the nature of God’s relation to time concerns the relationship between creator and creation, a core component of the bedrock of theology. Second, because understanding whether God is temporal or atemporal enables insight into what the mind of God might be like. Determining God’s temporal status can inform us about issues ranging from incarnation to omniscience, from divine action to omnipotence. Thus, understanding the topic ‘God and time’ is integral for many (arguably most) important theological pursuits.
This article sets out the main points of interest in this intellectual terrain. Each half of the conjunction ‘God and time’ will be defined, and then the various ways of framing the relationship will be explored. The article will begin by setting out the kind of ‘God’ upon which God and time discourse is focused. Then, it will turn to ‘time’ by briefly introducing temporal metaphysics, with a focus on debates between the A-theory, B-theory, and C-theory of time. This terminology serves as the conceptual architecture within which much contemporary God and time discourse takes place. Following this, the ways that contemporary physics shapes our understanding of temporal reality will be set out. Then, the article will sketch the key arguments for divine atemporality and divine temporality in turn, examining how each of these models of God’s relationship to time impacts our understanding of both the divine nature and the ways God might relate to the world and its inhabitants. The article will close with a few reflections on the implications of the preceding discussion for our understanding of human nature. In so doing, the article provides an up-to-date survey of this highly important topic.
Astrophysics is a social enterprise exemplified here by the Dark Energy Survey (DES) which completed its fieldwork in 2019 after 16 years of preparation and observation, while data analysis continues. Society funds astrophysics on a grand scale. For human capital and for governance the discipline draws on a self-governing "republic of science", while the funds were provided by philanthropists in the past, and by governments today. The benefits accrue initially to scientists themselves, in the form of a rewarding vocation. For the social benefit it is tempting to apply formal cost benefit analysis, but that approach ignores the option value of science and imposes questionable assumptions from welfare economics. Astrophysics generates some useful spinoffs, offers attractive careers, appeals to the popular imagination, speaks to metaphysical cravings and constitutes a good in itself. The rise of AI also suggests a role in exploring future habitats for intelligence and cognition.
The notorious `measurement problem' has been roving around quantum mechanics for nearly a century since its inception, and has given rise to a variety of `interpretations' of quantum mechanics, which are meant to evade it. We argue that no less than six problems need to be distinguished, and that several of them classify as different types of problems. One of them is what traditionally is called `the measurement problem' (here: the Reality Problem of Measurement Outcomes). Another of them has nothing to do with measurements but is a profound metaphysical problem. We also analyse critically Maudlin's (1995) well-known statement of `three measurements problems', and the clash of the views of Brown (1986) and Stein (1997) on one of the six measurement problems, concerning so-called Insolubility Theorems. Finally, we summarise a solution to one measurement problem which has been largely ignored but tacitly if not explicitly acknowledged.
The focus of the author’s attention has been on the emblematic sense concentration in the philosophical system of Hryhorii Skovoroda. The study aims to reveal the artistic and style features of eide emblematic formation in the texts of the Ukrainian sophist, their origin, context, and conceptual classification by the author himself. The theoretical generalizations were essentially based on the philosophical treatises and dialogues by Hryhorii Skovoroda and the studies of other scholars. To analyze the issues under scrutiny, the author applied structuralist and semiotic methodology. The article highlights the emblematic sense, conveyance, and dominance in Skovoroda’s works. Emblematic forms of signification play a unique role in elucidating the anthropological, metaphysical, ethical, aesthetic, and hermeneutic dimensions of the Ukrainian poet and philosopher. Skovoroda considers emblemacity a particularly effective pictorial and verbal (iconic-conventional) type of “significative” speech, functioning as metalanguage.
History of scholarship and learning. The humanities
It is generally accepted that quantum mechanics entails a revision of the classical propositional calculus as a consequence of its physical content. However, the universal claim according to which a new quantum logic is indispensable in order to model the propositions of every quantum theory is challenged. In the present essay we critically discuss this claim by showing that classical logic can be rehabilitated in a quantum context by taking into account Bohmian mechanics. It will be argued, indeed, that such a theoretical framework provides the necessary conceptual tools to reintroduce a classical logic of experimental propositions in virtue of its clear metaphysical picture and its theory of measurement. More precisely, it will be showed that the rehabilitation of a classical propositional calculus is a consequence of the primitive ontology of the theory, a fact which is not yet sufficiently recognized in the literature concerning Bohmian mechanics. This work aims to fill this gap.
The Revolution of Knowledge. The Internet User’s Sociology and Social-Psychology
The latest communicational architecture, the internet has not yet a perfectly transparent effect on the entirety of human beings, remodeling and modifying cognition, knowledge, the relationships between people. The network system substantially influences the fields of the social system, listed here politics, economy, culture and the world of life. In this presentation new theories and new research achievements are presented, through these we can understand the new phenomenon of the society moved (migrated) on the internet. A new world has come into existence; its metaphysics is born now.
Muovendo dal testo di Heidegger su L'origine dell'opera d'arte e dalla tesi lì espressa del travisamento del concetto di creatività per opera del «soggettivismo moderno», il saggio prende in esame le riflessioni di alcuni autori tedeschi che tra la seconda metà del Settecento e la prima dell'Ottocento hanno posto a tema il rapporto tra creatività e imitazione in termini che sfuggono all'idea per cui con la metafisica del soggetto si è imposta una «considerazione estetica dell'arte» chiusa nella rappresentazione dell'opera come «portatrice e suscitatrice del bello in riferimento allo stato sentimentale».
Starting from the theses expressed by Heidegger in the text The origin of the work of art on the distortion of the concept of creativity by work of "modern subjectivism," the essay examines the reflections of some German authors who between the second half of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century focused on the relationship between creativity and imitation, escaping the idea that with the metaphysics of the subject an "aesthetic consideration of art" was imposed, closed in the representation of the work as "bearer and arouse of beautiful in reference to the sentimental state ".
Varlığı bir tür izah girişimi olarak metafiziğin ilgilendiği temel konulardan birisi de hiç şüphesiz varoluş problemidir. Bu problem bir yönüyle İlk Çağ felsefesi çerçevesinde varlığın arkasında bulunan temel ilkeleri tespit çalışması, diğer yönüyle de varlık âleminde karşılaştığımız çeşitliliği ve değişimi anlama girişimidir. Bu anlam arayışına klasik dönem Müslüman felsefecileri de ilkesel anlamda yaklaşmış ve birtakım özgün fikirler ortaya koymuştur. İslam felsefe geleneğinin oluşumunun hemen başında karşılaştığımız düşünürlerden biri olan Câbir, metafiziğe dair görüşlerinde “oluş” problemine değinmiştir. O, İlkçağ felsefe geleneğinin düşüncelerine uyarak “arke” sorunu ile ilgilenmiş; cevher, heyûla, kuvve, fiil gibi Aristotelesçi kavramları kullanarak varoluş problemini İslam felsefesi geleneği içerisine dâhil etmiştir. Câbir, bunun yanı sıra nefs, akıl, ilk sebep gibi Yeni-Platoncu etkilere de farklı anlamlar ilave ederek “yaratma” temelli bir oluş fikri üzerinde durmuştur. Bu fikirleriyle de kendisinden sonraki İslam felsefe geleneğine önemli katkılarda bulunmuştur. Bu bağlamda çalışmamızda Câbir'in “oluş” problemine dair görüşlerinin ortaya konması amaçlanmaktadır.
The purpose of this text is to develop and compare the philosophical-anthropological notions of perspectivism, cannibalism and metamorphosis in Cannibal Metaphysics, by the anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, and in various essays and novels by the poet-essayist Severo Sarduy. Both describe universes inhabited by bodies and affections, in which a single plane of immanence folds (Deleuze) multiplying perspectives. The intertextual crossing has the following objectives: to critically review the binary categories of thinking; to formulate a neo-baroque reading / rewriting method; and to propose a cosmopolitics as an affective framework of humans, non-humans, artifacts and things. Methodology: The texts have been approached from a material and productive hermeneutic of immanence. Conclusions: The notion of Amerindian perspectivism of Viveiros de Castro is consistent with the dissemination of the views of Sarduy. In both approaches, the planes are juxtaposed and cross-linked without a guiding center (neo-baroque); the figure of a neutral point of view disappears. In Amerindian cannibalism, the division within the self is realized by the absorption of the other in a ritual of devouring. In the literary anthropophagy, the destitution is given by the power of a narrative plot that swallows the author and turns him into a character. In one case, it is the enemy’s body that is devoured to swallow its relative position and fissure the ego in its unity; in the other, it is the textual body that absorbs and divides. Both positions derive in a cosmopolitics: intersocietary narrative transformations. Originality: The originality of this work lies in the application of the counterpoint method, inspired by the Cuban writer José Lezama Lima. Said method allows the emergence of differences and similarities in texts that contrast each other given their origin and register.
In reading Father Dumitru Stăniloae, it is obvious that love and divine-human communion have a prominent role in his theology. This text aims to approach this topic from a phenomenological point of view: it analyzes the implicit reductions working in Stăniloae’s texts, the presence of the intentionality, the role of the ego and its limits, as well as the problem of the reciprocity of love (raised by Jean-Luc Marion). We will try to argue not only that there are phenomenological influences in Stăniloae’s understanding of love, but also that such a topic requires a phenomenology that synthesizes the phenomenology of the world (Husserl and Heidegger) and the phenomenology of life (M. Henry). Because love, in its perfection, is a gift of the Holy Spirit, both types of phenomenology must be complemented with a dialogical and paradoxical one, a theo-phenomenology of love, where the Given can be invisible, living, eternally saturated, and never reducible to an object or to a concept.
Keywords: Dumitru Stăniloae, Jean-Luc Marion, love, erotic reduction, theological counter-reduction, reciprocity of love, spiritual life, phenomenology
The interpretation of quantum theory is one of the longest-standing debates in physics. Type I interpretations see quantum probabilities as determined by intrinsic properties of the observed system. Type II see them as relational experiences between an observer and the system. It is usually believed that a decision between these two options cannot be made simply on purely physical grounds but requires an act of metaphysical judgment. Here we show that, under some assumptions, the problem is decidable using thermodynamics. We prove that type I interpretations are incompatible with the following assumptions: (i) The choice of which measurement is performed can be made randomly and independently of the system under observation, (ii) the system has limited memory, and (iii) Landauer's erasure principle holds.