What happens when people's beliefs are derived from information provided by an LLM? People's use of LLM chatbots as thought partners can contribute to cognitive offloading, which can have adverse effects on cognitive skills in cases of over-reliance. This paper defines and investigates a particular kind of cognitive offloading in human-AI interaction, "belief offloading," in which people's processes of forming and upholding beliefs are offloaded onto an AI system with downstream consequences on their behavior and the nature of their system of beliefs. Drawing on philosophy, psychology, and computer science research, we clarify the boundary conditions under which belief offloading occurs and provide a descriptive taxonomy of belief offloading and its normative implications. We close with directions for future work to assess the potential for and consequences of belief offloading in human-AI interaction.
I argue that spacetime singularities entail no ontological commitment to material entities. First, I show that Penrose's singularity theorem is best understood as a theorem of incompleteness, it demonstrates the failure of specific spacetime models within General Relativity (or any theory incorporating the Raychaudhuri equation) under certain general conditions. Although this has been done before, I adopt a novel approach based on differentiating between physical and purely formal assumptions in the axiomatic foundation of general relativity. Next, I compare Penrose's result with Gödel's incompleteness theorem, highlighting key similarities and differences. Finally, I draw philosophical conclusions regarding the limits and prospects of our epistemic reconstructions of the physical world.
We propose a formal reconstruction of quantum mechanics grounded not in external mathematical abstractions, but in the structured dynamics of subjective experience. The Qualia Abstraction Language (QAL) models physical systems as evolving streams of introspective units, structured sequences of modality, shape, and functional effect, rather than as state vectors in Hilbert space. This approach reimagines core quantum concepts: superposition becomes a form of structured ambiguity; collapse is reframed as an introspective contraction; and entanglement is modeled as semantic resonance across streams of qualia. Drawing on insights from nominalist philosophy and oversight theoretic limits in AI, we argue that the observer paradox in quantum mechanics reflects not an ontological lacuna, but a linguistic one: the absence of a formal vocabulary for modeling first person structure. QAL introduces such a vocabulary, providing a morphodynamic framework that embeds the observer within the system and replaces abstract projection with endogenous transformation. We analyze the alignment of QAL with endophysical approaches, contrast it with standard interpretations of quantum theory, and explore its implications for a post Platonist, introspectively grounded physics.
Philosophers have claimed that: (a) Born-Oppenheimer approximation methods for solving molecular Schrödinger equations violate the Heisenberg uncertainty relations; therefore, (b) `quantum chemistry' is not fully quantum; and (c) therefore chemistry does not reduce to physics. This paper analyses the reasoning behind Born-Oppenheimer methods and shows that they are internally consistent and fully quantum mechanical, contrary to (a)-(c). Our analysis addresses important issues of mathematical rigour, physical idealization, reduction, and classicality in the quantum theory of molecules, and we propose an agenda for the philosophy of quantum chemistry more grounded in scientific practice.
The article discusses postmodernist approaches to the problem of nuclear weapons, taking as an example Jacques Derrida’s paper No Apocalypse, Not Now. Proceeding from the widespread conception of postmodernism as relativism, the author hypothesizes that postmodernist philosophers would either try to demonstrate the non-absolute nature of the nuclear threat or suggest relativist ways of countering it. If we agree with Boris Groys’ interpretation of Derrida’s work, then it perfectly conforms to such expectations. However, a careful reading of the paper in question proves both our hypothesis and Groys’ interpretation to be wrong. Although No Apocalypse, Not Now does contain a number of relativist theses (for instance, Derrida portrays nuclear war as a textual phenomenon, a non-event, the absent referent that finally blurs all the distinction between knowledge and opinion, doxa and episteme), they play a minor role in the overall argument. Firstly, Derrida acknowledges the absolute nature of nuclear weapons: for him, they threaten the destruction of the entire archive and all symbolic capacity, that is, of culture as a social mechanism for coping with death, if not the destruction of the whole humanity as a biological species. Secondly, the philosopher criticizes the strategy of deterrence for relying on the logic of escalation and being prone to chance and accident. Thirdly, Derrida emphasizes that a nuclear war, which would destroy all the values and ideals that might legitimate starting it, would in fact be fought (should it happen) in the name of the name, and of nothing else, thus of nothing. To counter such urges, at the same time fundamentalist and nihilistic, the philosopher invites us to fall in love with life. In the later works of Derrida this invitation develops into a principle of responsibility for the life of the other, one of the central tenets of his ethical and political thought. However, since Derrida chooses to focus on individual instead of collective survival, questions remain as to whether his philosophy is able to meet the challenges of the nuclear age.
David Bohm has often been considered unable to understand the meaning of the quantum revolution as well as its radical metaphysical implications. Similarly, his pilot-wave theory was negatively portrayed as an attempt to restore a classical and deterministic Weltanschauung. Against this background, the aim of this paper is twofold: in the first place, it will be argued that the accusations of dogmatism advanced by several eminent physicists contra Bohm show a biased understanding of his works. Referring to this, two case studies will be discussed: the Bohm-Pauli correspondence, and the difficult relationship between the former and Leon Rosenfeld, a fervent supporter of Bohr's philosophy of complementarity. These examples indicate that the opposition to the pilot-wave approach was for the most part not based on scientific grounds. In the second place, I will reconstruct and analyze the evolution of Bohm's philosophical reflections about ontology, scientific realism and pluralism studying private correspondences as well as his main works in the fifties culminated in the book "Causality and Chance in Modern Physics". Underlining the originality of Bohm's thoughts, it will be concluded that his perspective can be characterized as a form of internal realism.
In early March, 2022, Moscow State Pedagogical University hosted the 26th researchto-practice international conference Linguistic for All devoted to language contacts in the modern world. Aiming to provide a venue for young researchers to present their findings and practice their public speaking skills and to advance their access to the world of science, the conference brought together students of schools and universities from across Russia and abroad. Professor Lubkov A.V., Rector of the University, Corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Education opened the conference by remarking the increased need for communication the world has experienced recently. He encouraged the participants to promote Russian education, culture and language through wider contacts and fruitful work. Professor Tarasov S. V., Rector of Herzen University that was another organizer of the conference, noted that linguistics unites people regardless of their backgrounds and field of study. Drozdova O. Ye., Chairman of the Organizing Committee of the Conference, addressed the importance of personal and professional communication by all means, be it in person or online. The two-day conference began on March 3 with speeches from students and three panel discussion of Professional Communication and Labour Market Competitiveness (hosted by Shcherbakov A. V.), Language and Languages in the World Today (hosted by Dorofeev Yu. V.), and Language Games in Russian: Yesterday, Today, Always (hosted by Belorusec S. M.). The next day Chernyshove Ye. G. welcomed school students who presented their reports before the panel of renowned scholars from Russian and foreign universities. Participants in ten sections of the conference were awarded with diplomas. Another important stage in the work of teachers, university and school student ended, but hopefully next year the 27th conference Linguistics for All will gather those interested in languages again.
According to the algebraic approach to spacetime, a thoroughgoing dynamicism, physical fields exist without an underlying manifold. This view is usually implemented by postulating an algebraic structure (e.g., commutative ring) of scalar-valued functions, which can be interpreted as representing a scalar field, and deriving other structures from it. In this work, we point out that this leads to the unjustified primacy of an undetermined scalar field. Instead, we propose to consider algebraic structures in which all (and only) physical fields are primitive. We explain how the theory of \emph{natural operations} in differential geometry -- the modern formalism behind classifying diffeomorphism-invariant constructions -- can be used to obtain concrete implementations of this idea for any given collection of fields. For concrete examples, we illustrate how our approach applies to a number of particular physical fields, including electrodynamics coupled to a Weyl spinor.
This article focuses on prerequisites for the establishment of feminism in Portugal, history of main Portuguese feminist organizations and basic conditions for their functioning. This research is based on the comparative analysis of socio-political environment in Portugal and in several other states (mainly located in Western Europe) in different periods of their history. Basing on the aforementioned analysis, the author comes to the conclusion that feminism in Portugal has generally been moderate and has passed three phases in its development. These phases are in line with three waves that are basically seen as the key milestones in the history of the feminist movement around the world. The first wave lasted from the middle of the 19th century until the 1930s and was characterized by the struggle of Portuguese women for such common rights as the right to work and electoral rights. At this stage Portuguese feminism developed in line with the traditional trend. The second wave in Portugal lasted from the 1960s until the 1990s. During this period scientists working created numerous books and articles, criticising the patriarchy and the problems of women. The discussion of reproductive rights of women, problems in the family and sexual sphere was also typical for this period. The feminist theory of the third wave was developing since the 1990s and continues to develop up to the present moment. It is based on the gender approach: women assert their rights to abortion and affordable contraception, combat against oppression from men and gender-based discrimination. At the same time, the feminism of the third wave is becoming more diverse and can be characterized as intersectional. The feminist movement in Portugal triggered deep social transformations. Most of the achievements of the feminist movement today cannot be put into question. Nevertheless, there is still a long way to go to achieve a change in mentality of Portuguese society, to reduce female unemployment and gender inequality at work, to combat domestic violence.
According to the orthodox interpretation of bounce cosmologies, the universe was born from an entropy reducing phase in a previous universe. To defend the thesis that the whole of physical reality was caused to exist a finite time ago, William Lane Craig and co-author James Sinclair have argued the low entropy interface between universes should instead be understood as the beginning of two universes. Here, I present Craig and Sinclair with a dilemma. On the one hand, if the direction of time is reducible, as friends of the Mentaculus -- e.g., David Albert, Barry Loewer, and David Papineau -- maintain, then there is reason to think that the direction of time and the entropic arrow of time align. But on that account, efficient causation is likely reducible to non-causal phenomena. In consequence, contrary to Craig and Sinclair's theological aims, things can begin to exist without causes. On the other hand, if the direction of time is not reducible, Craig and Sinclair's interpretation of bounce cosmologies is unjustified. Lastly, a reply to a potential objection motivates a discussion of how to interpret bounce cosmologies on the tensed theory of absolute time favored by Craig and Sinclair. I offer two interpretations of bounce cosmologies that, given a tensed theory of absolute time, are preferable to those Craig and Sinclair offer, yet inconsistent with their project in natural theology; on one interpretation, the universe does not require a supernatural cause and, on the other, bounce cosmologies represent the universe as never having begun to exist.
This article explores the following methodological principle for theory construction in physics: if an ontological theory predicts two scenarios that are ontologically distinct but empirically indiscernible, then this theory should be rejected and replaced by one relative to which the scenarios are ontologically the same. I defend the thesis that this methodological principle was first articulated by Leibniz as a version of his principle of the identity of indiscernibles, and that it was applied repeatedly to great effect by Einstein in his development of the special and general theories of relativity. I argue for an interpretation of the principle as an inference to the best explanation, defend it against some criticisms, discuss its potential applications in modern physics, and explain how it provides an attractive middle ground in the debate between empiricist and realist philosophies of science.
The comparison of geometrical properties of black holes with classical thermodynamic variables reveals surprising parallels between the laws of black hole mechanics and the laws of thermodynamics. Since Hawking's discovery that black holes when coupled to quantum matter fields emit radiation at a temperature proportional to their surface gravity, the idea that black holes are genuine thermodynamic objects with a well-defined thermodynamic entropy has become more and more popular. Surprisingly, arguments that justify this assumption are both sparse and rarely convincing. Most of them rely on an information-theoretic interpretation of entropy, which in itself is a highly debated topic in the philosophy of physics. We discuss some of the pertinent arguments that aim at establishing the identity of black hole surface area (times a constant) and thermodynamic entropy and show why these arguments are not satisfactory. We then present a simple model of a Black Hole Carnot cycle to establish that black hole entropy is genuine thermodynamic entropy which does not require an information-theoretic interpretation.
The celu of the philosophical literature on the hole argument is the 1987 paper by Earman \& Norton ["What Price Space-time Substantivalism? The Hole Story" Br. J. Phil. Sci.]. This paper has a well-known back-story, concerning work by Stachel and Norton on Einstein's thinking in the years 1913-15. Less well-known is a connection between the hole argument and Earman's work on Leibniz in the 1970s and 1980s, which in turn can be traced to an argument first presented in 1975 by Howard Stein. Remarkably, this thread originates with a misattribution: the argument Earman attributes to Stein, which ultimately morphs into the hole argument, was not the argument Stein gave. The present paper explores this episode and presents some reflections on how it bears on the subsequent literature.
This essay demonstrates the key role of Astronomy in Botticelli's "Venus and Mars-NG915" painting, to date only very partially understood. Worthwhile coincidences among the principles of the Ficinian philosophy, the historical characters involved and the compositional elements of the painting, show how the astronomical knowledge of that time strongly influenced this masterpiece. First, Astronomy provides its precise dating since the artist used the astronomical ephemerides of his time, albeit preserving a mythological meaning, and a clue for Botticelli's signature. Second, it allows the correlation among Botticelli's creative intention, the historical facts and the astronomical phenomena such as the heliacal rising of the planet Venus in conjunction with the Aquarius constellation dating back to the earliest representations of Venus in Mesopotamian culture. This work not only bears a significant value for the history of science and art, but, in the current era of three-dimensional mapping of billion stars about to be delivered by Gaia, states the role of astronomical heritage in Western culture. Finally, following the same method, a precise astronomical dating for the famous Primavera painting is suggested.
In this paper we investigate the history of relationalism and its present use in some interpretations of quantum mechanics. In the first part of this article we will provide a conceptual analysis of the relation between substantivalism, relationalism and relativism in the history of both physics and philosophy. In the second part, we will address some relational interpretations of quantum mechanics, namely, Bohr's relational approach, the modal interpretation by Kochen, the perspectival modal version by Bene and Dieks and the relational interpretation by Rovelli. We will argue that all these interpretations ground their understanding of relations in epistemological terms. By taking into account the analysis on the first part of our work, we intend to highlight the fact that there is a different possibility for understanding quantum mechanics in relational terms which has not been yet considered within the foundational literature. This possibility is to consider relations in (non-relativist) ontological terms. We will argue that such an understanding might be capable of providing a novel approach to the problem of representing what quantum mechanics is really talking about.
As Harvey Brown emphasizes in his book Physical Relativity, inertial motion in general relativity is best understood as a theorem, and not a postulate. Here I discuss the status of the "conservation condition", which states that the energy-momentum tensor associated with non-interacting matter is covariantly divergence-free, in connection with such theorems. I argue that the conservation condition is best understood as a consequence of the differential equations governing the evolution of matter in general relativity and many other theories. I conclude by discussing what it means to posit a certain spacetime geometry and the relationship between that geometry and the dynamical properties of matter.