Hasil untuk "Metaphysics"

J. Burnheim

Philip Goyal

One hundred years after the creation of quantum theory, there is no consensus on the kind of reality that is described by the theory. Here, I attribute the lack of progress to the prevailing interpretative methodology, which invariably takes the quantum formalism as the starting point for philosophical reflection and analysis. I argue that this methodology is particularly inappropriate, for it invariably marginalizes much of the theory's content, both that implicit in modelling heuristics and experimental practices, and that encapsulated in the mathematical structures of its formalism. In addition, the prevailing methodology offers little protection against undue influence by metaphysically-laden language which invariably accompanies the formalism. Here, I summarize an alternative methodology whose goal is to ensure that an interpretational project take into account all forms of theoretic content. The methodology harnesses the recent results of the quantum reconstruction program. These results distil the mathematical content of the quantum formalism into physical principles and assumptions, which are more readily philosophically digestible than the formalism itself, and bracket much of its metaphysically-laden language. As a case study of reconstruction-based interpretation, I describe the reconstruction of the identical particle formalism, and its step-by-step interpretation, highlighting the key questions that drive the interpretation forwards and the techniques and stances that are employed in each step. The interpretation yields a novel metaphysical profile for systems of identical particles as potential parts of a whole, which can be traced step-by-step to elementary experimental data and the reconstruction's physical postulates and assumptions. I also describe some of the pitfalls that one faces in any attempt to directly interpret the identical particle formalism.

John Beverley, Jim Logan, Barry Smith

This paper introduces a framework for representing information about entities that do not exist or may never exist, such as those involving fictional entities, blueprints, simulations, and future scenarios. Traditional approaches that introduce "dummy instances" or rely on modal logic are criticized, and a proposal is defended in which such cases are modeled using the intersections of actual types rather than specific non existent tokens. The paper positions itself within the Basic Formal Ontology and its realist commitments, emphasizing the importance of practical, implementable solutions over purely metaphysical or philosophical proposals, arguing that existing approaches to non existent entities either overcommit to metaphysical assumptions or introduce computational inefficiencies that hinder applications. By developing a structured ontology driven approach to unreal patterns, the paper aims to provide a useful and computationally viable means of handling references to hypothetical or non existent entities.

Baptiste Le Bihan

Can multiverse hypotheses ever receive empirical support? Critics argue that multiverse scenarios posit unobservable entities, face severe underdetermination, or fall outside the bounds of science. This chapter challenges that view by offering a naturalistic metaphysical counterpoint to Bayesian approaches, distinguishing fragmented from holistic multiverses. Scientific proposals are almost always holistic: they embed universes within a unifying physical or metaphysical structure that can, in principle, leave empirical signatures inside the universes. I develop a typology of such signatures and show how it applies to leading scenarios from quantum theory, cosmology, and string theory. This framework clarifies why objections such as the `this universe' objection and a newly articulated generalization, the epistemic isolation objection, fail against scientifically motivated multiverses. The upshot is a qualified defence: while fragmented multiverses remain empirically inaccessible, certain holistic multiverses could, in principle, be supported by the same epistemic standards used elsewhere in physics.

Davide Romano

The paper advances the hypothesis that the multi-field is a determinable, that is, a physical object characterized by indeterminate values with respect to some properties. The multi-field is a realist interpretation of the wave function in quantum mechanics, specifically it interprets the wave function as a new physical entity in 3D space: a multi-field (Hubert & Romano 2018; Romano 2021). The multi-field is similar to a field as it assigns determinate values to N-tuples of points, but is also different from a field as it does not assign pre-existing values at each point of 3D space. In particular, the multi-field values corresponding to the empty points (points where no particles are located) have indeterminate values until a particle is located at those points. The paper suggests that the multi-field so defined can be precisely characterized in terms of determinable-based, object-level, account of metaphysical indeterminacy. Under this view, the multi-field as novel physical entity is, in fact, a metaphysically indeterminate quantum object, that is, a determinable.

Andrea Oldofredi

Recent philosophical discussions about metaphysical indeterminacy have been substantiated with the idea that quantum mechanics, one of the most successful physical theories in the history of science, provides explicit instances of worldly indefiniteness. Against this background, several philosophers underline that there are alternative formulations of quantum theory in which such indeterminacy has no room and plays no role. A typical example is Bohmian mechanics in virtue of its clear particle ontology. Contrary to these latter claims, this paper aims at showing that different pilot-wave theories do in fact instantiate diverse forms of metaphysical indeterminacy. Namely, I argue that there are various questions about worldly states of affairs that cannot be determined by looking exclusively at their ontologies and dynamical laws. Moreover, it will be claimed that Bohmian mechanics generates a new form of modal indeterminacy. Finally, it will be concluded that ontological clarity and indeterminacy are not mutually exclusive, i.e., the two can coexist in the same theory.

Michał Chaberek

This article concerns the question of whether St. Thomas Aquinas can be considered a young Earth creationist. This question breaks down to three different though interrelated issues: Aquinas’s view on the origin of species, his position on the length of the six days of creation (whether they were natural days or other periods of time) and his views on the age of the earth. Each of the topics is addressed separately in the subsequent sections. The article attempts to establish Thomas’s views by his explicit statements as well as what he implies in some fragments. The conclusion presents Aquinas as a creationist with an open-ended view of the timescale of the creative events and the age of the universe.

Igor Ševo

Evaluating artificial systems for signs of consciousness is increasingly becoming a pressing concern, and a rigorous psychometric measurement framework may be of crucial importance in evaluating large language models in this regard. Most prominent theories of consciousness, both scientific and metaphysical, argue for different kinds of information coupling as a necessary component of human-like consciousness. By comparing information coupling in human and animal brains, human cognitive development, emergent abilities, and mental representation development to analogous phenomena in large language models, I argue that psychometric measures of intelligence, such as the g-factor or IQ, indirectly approximate the extent of conscious experience. Based on a broader source of both scientific and metaphysical theories of consciousness, I argue that all systems possess a degree of consciousness ascertainable psychometrically and that psychometric measures of intelligence may be used to gauge relative similarities of conscious experiences across disparate systems, be they artificial or human.

Daniel Grimmer

What, if anything, can help us explain the dynamical behavior of matter? One may be tempted here to appeal to the laws of nature, or to the world's geometric structure, or even to the smooth topological structure of the spacetime manifold itself. Some think, however, that the metaphysics involved in such explanatory strategies is excessively spooky. Indeed, some opt to reverse the arrow of explanation, putting dynamics first. For instance, one can use Lewis's Best Systems Analysis (BSA) to view the laws of nature as merely being codifications of certain patterns in the dynamical behavior of matter. Similarly, one can use Huggett's Regularity Relationism to achieve an analogous view of the world's geometric structure. At present, however, there is no such dynamics-first view of the spacetime manifold itself. This dissertation puts forward such a view: The spacetime manifold is merely a codification of certain patterns in the dynamical behavior of matter. This dissertation develops powerful mathematical tools for investigating and negotiating between a wide variety of spacetime settings for a wide range of spacetime theories. From here, a competition between different spacetime codifications is invoked analogous to the competition between different law-like codifications in Lewis's BSA. Whereas the BSA judges law-like codifications based on their balance of simplicity and strength, spacetime codifications are to be judged by how well they fit the theory's dynamics and kinematics.

Howard M. Wiseman, Eric G. Cavalcanti, Eleanor G. Rieffel

A recent paper by two of us and co-workers, based on an extended Wigner's friend scenario, demonstrated that certain empirical correlations predicted by quantum theory (QT) violate inequalities derived from a set of metaphysical assumptions we called "Local Friendliness" (LF). These assumptions are strictly weaker than those used for deriving Bell inequalities. Crucial to the theorem was the premise that a quantum system with reversible evolution could be an observer (colloquially, a "friend"). However, that paper was noncommittal on what would constitute an observer for the purpose of an experiment. Here, we present a new LF no-go theorem which takes seriously the idea that a system's having *thoughts* is a sufficient condition for it to be an observer. Our new derivation of the LF inequalities uses four metaphysical assumptions, three of which are thought-related, including one that is explicitly called "Friendliness". These four assumptions, in conjunction, allow one to derive LF inequalities for experiments involving the type of system that "Friendliness" refers to. In addition to these four metaphysical assumptions, this new no-go theorem requires two assumptions about what is *technologically* feasible: Human-Level Artificial Intelligence, and Universal Quantum Computing which is fast and large scale. The latter is often motivated by the belief that QT is universal, but this is *not* an assumption of the theorem. The intent of the new theorem is to give a clear goal for future experimentalists, and a clear motivation for trying to achieve that goal. We review various approaches to QT in light of our theorem. The popular stance that "quantum theory needs no interpretation" does not question any of our assumptions and so is ruled out. Finally, we quantitatively discuss how difficult the experiment we envisage would be, and briefly discuss milestones on the paths towards it.

Cennet Ceren Cavus

Ibn Arabi’s philosophy has been addressed by some scholars as a source of Islamic feminism because of his revolutionary ideas and practices concerning women. In his ontology, he consecrates femininity by putting the feminine Essence (dhât) at the top of his existential hierarchy. Frithjof Schuon, who reads Ibn Arabi’s philosophy very critically, refers to the feminine aspect of God with the concept of “Eternal Feminine”. At the first sight, both thinkers seem to have very egalitarian perspectives in terms of gender relations. However, are their ontologies really pro-feminine? This paper discusses the two Sufis’ understandings of femininity, masculinity, and “God’s femininity” in detail with a critical method. I argue that by adopting the ancient “active man-passive woman” discourse Ibn Arabi and Schuon construct their ontologies on the feminine-masculine dichotomy and establish a hierarchy to the detriment of femininity. In dichotomies they elaborated to explain their metaphysics -such as “active-passive”, “total-part”, “superior-inferior”, and “essence-accident”-, they attribute all the favorable sides to the masculinity while attributing the unfavorable sides to the femininity. Moreover, Ibn Arabi puts men in the place of God in their relation to women while Schuon regards men as the image of God’s totality, not women. Therefore, even though they have some discourses consecrating femininity, their ontologies are quite pro-masculine since they sustain the actual androcentric approach to sex.

Daniil Khaitovich

In this paper, we present a formal analysis of temporally sensitive counterfactual conditionals. We observe a set of key metaphysical and conceptual problems in regards to counterfactual statements and time. Bearing that in mind, we present the weakest combination of Ockhamist branching time temporal logic and minimal counterfactual logic P and argue in favor of that simple solution.

Sonja Deppe

The article confronts Bergson’s Time and Free Will with ontological models of temporal reality from analytic time metaphysics, such as presentism, eternalism etc. I maintain that tense (and hence a changing “now”) and temporal extension are crucial features for understanding successive structure within our temporal experience. In the context of analytic metaphysics following McTaggart, however, tense and extension fall under the suspicion that they are not consistent with each other. I show Bergson’s concept of “Qualitative Multiplicity” to open a new perspective on the issue: being introduced as a qualitative and hence not countable or measurable feature, it enables an understanding of temporal extension that differs radically from spatial extension. Following this, we can understand Bergson’s durational realm of the conscious I as temporally extended in qualitative but not numerical respect — which, in turn, is unproblematically consistent with tense. A second issue of the article is a critical reflection on the conception of the external world established in Time and Free Will: I maintain that it is not problem-free to conceive any part of reality as merely tensed and not at all temporally extended. I conclude this to be a strong motivation for expanding further the idea of “Qualitative Multiplicity.”

Yu. V. Rodionova, G. A. Chasovskikh, E. O. Taratukhin

The concepts of spirituality and religiosity are studied in the context of cardiac disease and prevention. In psychology, psychosomatics, psychocardiology, spirituality is studied as a feature of human experience, attributed to certain transcendental ideas. Religiosity is a part of a person's self-identification, influencing his experience of interaction with medicine, and more broadly, in general, his worldview and conceptualizations. Spirituality and religiosity are culturally specific, in particular, in Russia, where society has historically formed stereotypes of attitudes on God and other inaccessible ideas. Thus, the Russian society is characterized by lay religiosity, which includes Eastern Orthodox metaphysics along with paganism. In practical cardiology, the concepts of spirituality and religiosity can be realized explicitly (manifestation of faith by a patient and a doctor) and implicitly, without manifestation. Spirituality and religiosity can influence patient adherence, decision making, and more complex psychosomatic processes. Spirituality and religiosity can be a salutogenic factor, which promotes health, improves the psychological and physical state. But they can also mediate morbid effects if a doctor incorrectly addresses them during communication with a patient. Spirituality and religiosity are a part of complex downward system of somatic manifestation of cultural and social factors, the study and consideration of which is obvious in practice.

Somaye Hamidi , Hashem Ghaderi

Opinion on the concept of state has a deep root in the history of western political thought. Although there have been brief and marginal studies in this area in ancient Greece, we notice more attention to the concept of state and its coordinates since the Renaissance. Germany, during eighteenth century, is one of the most important arenas on this concept. As one of its thinkers and contemporary of Hegel, Schopenhauer has also paid attention to the issue of state during his discussions. The problem of the present study is the nature of state in Schopenhauer's political thought. The hypothesis of the present paper is that Schopenhauer's theory of state as opposed to Hegelian thought, rejects the totalitarian and the Hegelian ideal state on one hand, and, based on the rule of the concept of evil and how he views metaphysics in its philosophical apparatus on the other hand, takes on a minimalist and protective nature.

Jinwei Zhao, Qizhou Wang, Fuqiang Zhang et al.

Real artificial intelligence always has been focused on by many machine learning researchers, especially in the area of deep learning. However deep neural network is hard to be understood and explained, and sometimes, even metaphysics. The reason is, we believe that: the network is essentially a perceptual model. Therefore, we believe that in order to complete complex intelligent activities from simple perception, it is necessary to con-struct another interpretable logical network to form accurate and reasonable responses and explanations to external things. Researchers like Bolei Zhou and Quanshi Zhang have found many explanatory rules for deep feature extraction aimed at the feature extraction stage of convolution neural network. However, although researchers like Marco Gori have also made great efforts to improve the interpretability of the fully connected layers of the network, the problem is also very difficult. This paper firstly analyzes its reason. Then a method of constructing logical network based on the fully connected layers and extracting logical relation between input and output of the layers is proposed. The game process between perceptual learning and logical abstract cognitive learning is implemented to improve the interpretable performance of deep learning process and deep learning model. The benefits of our approach are illustrated on benchmark data sets and in real-world experiments.

Robert Cheng Huat Chia

We are not good at thinking movement. Our instinctive skills favour the fixed and the static, the separate and the self-contained. Taxonomies, hierarchies, systems and structures represent the instinctive vocabulary of institutionalized thought in its determined subordinating of flux, movement, change and transformation. Our dominant models of change in general and organizational change in particular are, therefore, paradoxically couched in the language of stasis and equilibrium. This paper seeks to offer an alternative model of change which, it is claimed, affords a better understanding of the inherent dynamic complexities and intrinsic indeterminacy of organization transformational processes.

S. French, J. Ladyman

G. Harman

S. Bertelli, G. Zini, P. Lenisa

The evolution of Physics between the second half of the XIX century and the beginning of the XX century is presented coupling art and science, in the framework of Ferrara. The main characters are Giuseppe Bongiovanni, Professor of Experimental Physics and Giorgio de Chirico, artist founder of the Metaphysical art movement.