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1258912.733176
This paper introduces "pseudo-consciousness" as a novel framework for understanding and classifying advanced artificial intelligence (AI) systems that exhibit sophisticated cognitive behaviors without possessing subjective awareness or sentience.
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1258937.73325
Tatiana Ehrenfest-Afanassjewa was an important physicist, mathematician, and educator in 20th century Europe. While some of her work has recently undergone reevaluation, little has been said regarding her groundbreaking work on dimensional analysis. This, in part, reflects an unfortunate dismissal of her interventions in such foundational debates by her contemporaries. In spite of this, her work on the generalized theory of homogeneous equations provides a mathematically sound foundation for dimensional analysis and has found some appreciation and development. It remains to provide a historical account of Ehrenfest-Afanassjewa’s use of the theory of homogeneous functions to ground (and limit) dimensional analysis. We take as a central focus Ehrenfest-Afanassjewa’s contributions to a debate on the foundations of dimensional analysis started by physicist Richard Tolman in 1914. I go on to suggest an interpretation of the more thoroughgoing intervention Ehrenfest-Afanassjewa makes in 1926 based on this earlier context, especially her limited rehabilitation of a “theory of similitude” in contradistinction to dimensional analysis. It is shown that Ehrenfest-Afanassjewa has made foundational contributions to the mathematical foundations and methodology of dimensional analysis, our conception of the relation between constants and laws, and our understanding of the quantitative nature of physics, which remain of value.
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1258969.733261
What is health? This book addresses this fundamental question by narrowing the focus to contemporary medicine, specifically Western biomedicine or mainstream medicine. This chapter and the next one introduce the strategy: to understand what health is, we need to analyze health concepts. The health concepts we will discuss and evaluate throughout the book are the statements found in regulatory documents of the medical and healthcare community, or the operational definitions found in research protocols and scientific articles. We will see throughout the book that each concept of health is a theoretical tool designed to serve specific goals.
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1258992.733271
Perspectivist positions have been proposed in physics, notably in order to address the interpretive difficulties of quantum mechanics. Recently, some versions of perspectivism have also been proposed in general philosophy of science to account for the plurality of scientific practice. Both kinds of views share the rejection of what they metaphorically call the “view from nowhere”. However, beyond this superficial similarity, they are very different: while quantum perspectivism entertains a concrete notion of perspective associated with individual agents or systems or concrete contexts, perspectival realism adopts a more abstract notion associated with explanatory aims or conceptual schemes. The aim of this paper is to clarify what is at stake with perspectivism in general. The general notion of a perspective, as well as the various attitudes one can entertained towards them, are characterised using the concepts of harmless contradiction and crossperspectival accessibility. A taxonomy of positions ranging from absolutism to relativism is proposed on this basis. Then the framework is applied to quantum perspectivism and perspectival realism to show its fruitfulness. Finally, I argue that abstract versions of perspectivism are bound to be metaphysically weaker than concrete versions.
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1259017.733279
Causal Set Theory (CST) is a promising approach to fundamental physics that seems to treat causation as a basic posit. But in exactly what sense is CST causal? We argue that if the growth dynamics is interpreted as a physical process, then CST employs relations of actual causation between causal set elements, whereby elements bring one another into existence. This is important, as it provides a better sense of how CST works, highlights important differences from general relativity— where relations between spacetime points are typically seen as cases of mere causal connectibility rather than actual causation of the relevant type—and points toward a specific understanding of the emergence of spacetime within CST.
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1374331.733286
The photon is typically regarded as a unitary object that is both particle-discrete and wave- continuous. This is a paradoxical position and we live with it by making dualism a fundamental feature of radiation. It is argued here that the photon is not unitary; rather it has two identities, one supporting discrete behavior and the other supporting continuous (wave) behavior. There is photon kinetic energy that is always discrete/localized on arrival; it never splits (on half-silvered mirrors) or diffracts (in pinholes or slits). Then there is the photon s probability wavefront that is continuous and diffractable. Acknowledging that the photon has two identities explains the photon s dual nature. And wave-particle duality is central to quantum mechanics. Understanding it leads to new insights into the photon s constant velocity and its entanglement with another photon.
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1374354.733293
The idea of using lattice methods to provide a mathematically well-defined formulation of realistic effective quantum field theories (QFTs) and clarify their physical content has gained traction in the last decades. In this paper, I argue that this strategy faces a two-sided obstacle: realistic lattice QFTs are (i) too different from their effective continuum counterparts even at low energies to serve as their foundational proxies and (ii) far from reproducing all of their empirical and explanatory successes to replace them altogether. I briefly conclude with some lessons for the foundations of QFT.
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1374376.733301
Thought experiments (TEs) are indispensable conceptual tools in scientific research, particularly in the study of quantum gravity. Many scholars argue that the epistemic significance of TEs hinges on the proper and ineliminable use of imagination. However, there is disagreement regarding the specific nature of the imagination involved. A valuable perspective on this debate is provided by a TE proposed by Matvei Bronstein in 1936 to support a quantum theory of gravity. His contribution serves as a notable example of destructive TE, aiming to highlight the internal inconsistency within a unified theory of both quantum mechanics and general relativity. In this paper, I reconstruct Bronstein’s TE in the context of recent discussions on the relationship between TEs and imagination. I argue that this case study challenges existing epistemological frameworks for understanding TEs. I contend that Bronstein’s TE introduces a new form of imagination, termed operational imagination, as indispensable for reaching its intended conclusion. I conclude that operational imagination can be integrated into simulative model-based accounts of TEs.
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1374398.733308
Process jargon is widespread in the physical sciences. Beginning with the work of Wesley Salmon, several accounts in philosophy of science have attempted to provide a definition of “process” compatible with scientists’ understanding of causation and explanation. The proposed characterisation links processes to the properties of the spacetime they inhabit as regards continuity and genuine causality. Recent developments in theories of quantum gravity challenge the validity of process ontologies at the fundamental scale. In particular, this paper examines how arguments based on minimal length in the literature question the traditional definition of process. Process realism does not favour the processualist against these arguments. I conclude that certain theories of quantum gravity prevent a processual representation of the intended phenomena at the fundamental scale because they predict a violation of either the spatiotemporal specification or the causality conditions. In the end, the processualist faces a dilemma: either weaken the accepted definition of process without falling into substance ontologies, or hope that problematic theories of quantum gravity will be disconfirmed.
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1374446.733315
Machine learning is rapidly transforming how society and humans are quantified. Shared amongst some machine learning applications in the social and human sciences is the tendency to conflate concepts with their operationalization through particular tests or measurements. Existing scholarship reduces these equations of concept and operationalization to disciplinary naivety or negligence. This paper takes a close look at equations of concept and operationalization in machine learning predictions of poverty metrics. It develops two arguments. First, I demonstrate that conflations of concept and operationalization in machine learning poverty prediction cannot be reduced to naivety or negligence but can serve a strategic function. Second, I propose to understand this function in the context of philosophical and historical research on operationalism in the social sciences.
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1374472.733327
The term ‘spontaneous’ appears in various contexts in modern physics, but it also has a long history in natural philosophy. Its Greek analogue to automaton is studied by Aristotle, and the Latin phrase sponte sua is used extensively by Lucretius. Peirce also introduces spontaneity in the context of his tychism. In this thesis we give a historical overview of these uses of spontaneity and compare them to spontaneity in thermodynamics and quantum mechanics. We examine the relation to quantum measurement. We argue that in the Copenhagen interpretation, no quantum event can be said to be truly spontaneous, but that true spontaneity does exist in spontaneous collapse theories. Finally we investigate the relation of spontaneity to randomness and indeterminism.
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1422471.733334
When thinking about online speech, it’s tempting to start with questions like: What’s new here? Do online speech environments enable new types of speech acts, new semantic phenomena, new expressive effects? In other words, how has the shift to online speech fundamentally changed how we use language to communicate, coordinate, obfuscate, rouse, empower, disempower, insult, etc.? What hidden truths might online speech reveal about the nature of meaning and communication more broadly?
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1427604.733345
In the last fifth of their interview, Adelstein and Huemer discuss my views. I now respond point by point. Adelstein:
And it just almost feels like there's something different going on when Bryan Caplan does moral reasoning than when I do. …
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1474643.733352
In Part 4 we saw how the classical Kepler problem is connected to a particle moving on the 3-sphere, and how this illuminates the secret symmetry of the Kepler problem. There are various ways to quantize the Kepler problem and obtain a description of the hydrogen atom’s bound states as wavefunctions on the 3-sphere. …
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1484759.733359
Joseph Heath presents his market failures approach to business ethics as a happy medium between cynicism and the idealism of traditional moral theories such as Kantian ethics, which Heath believes to be incompatible with important forms of competition. The market failures approach defends some real ethical limits in business, beyond following the law, but it condones certain deviations from the norms of everyday morality in the interest of economic efficiency. On this view, a certain level of sleaziness in business is permissible and inevitable, even if it is regrettable. This article argues that Kantian ethics provides a better account of the ethics of competition than the market failures approach does. Kantian ethics is in fact compatible with competition, both on the market and in the workplace. On some key issues, notably including the issue of truthfulness and disclosure, Kantian ethics permits competitive strategies that the market failures theory forbids. Moreover, when Kantian ethics deems the reasoning behind a competitive strategy morally acceptable, it endorses the strategy without any ethical reservations. There is no reason to regard justified business practices as regrettable or sleazy.
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1510656.733366
Now that you’ve watched and/or read the Matthew Adelstein-Mike Huemer conversation on the ethics of insect suffering, I hope you’re ready to hear my reaction. I’m going to post this in two parts. In part 1, I dissect Adelstein and Huemer’s exchange with each other. …
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1510657.733373
A decade ago, Effective Altruism got an early taste of bad PR when someone at an EA Global conference was widely reported as enthusing that EA was “the last social movement the world would ever need,” or words to that effect. …
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1537110.73338
Історія логіки – актуальний напрямок досліджень в царині сучасного логічного знання. Такі розвідки, по-перше, сприяють створенню загальної картини еволюції логіки, усвідомленню змін предмета, що їх вона зазнавала як наука і як навчальна дисципліна, а також змін у парадигмальних принципах її історичного розвитку, засадничих правилах побудови логічних теорій та інструментарієві останніх. По-друге, історикологічні дослідження надають можливість виявити те, як логічні концепції впливали на інші наукові дисципліни, передусім філософію та математику. По-третє, історико-логічний аналіз дозволяє розглянути логічну позицію певного автора в широкому історико-філософському контексті, показати, як філософські ідеї впливали на розвиток логічного знання. По-четверте, дослідження в царині історії логіки допомагають розглянути її в широкому історико-культурному контексті, з’ясувати взаємовплив різних логічних поглядів та певних культурних традицій і особливостей історичних епох.
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1537152.733386
We present a logic which deals with connexive exclusion. Exclusion (also called “co-implication”) is considered to be a propositional connective dual to the connective of implication. Similarly to implication, exclusion turns out to be non-connexive in both classical and intuitionistic logics, in the sense that it does not satisfy certain principles that express such connexivity. We formulate these principles for connexive exclusion, which are in some sense dual to the well-known Aristotle’s and Boethius’ theses for connexive implication. A logical system in a language containing exclusion and negation can be called a logic of connexive exclusion if and only if it obeys these principles, and, in addition, the connective of exclusion in it is asymmetric, thus being different from a simple mutual incompatibility of propositions. We will develop a certain approach to such a logic of connexive exclusion based on a semantic justification of the connective in question. Our paradigm logic of connexive implication will be the connexive logic C, and exactly like this logic the logic of connexive exclusion turns out to be contradictory though not trivial.
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1585317.733393
When not in the courtroom, the Nuremberg prisoners were visited and interviewed by American psychiatrists. This poem is based on the interviews with Hermann Goering. (For more context, see Goering at Nuremberg, 1. …
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1600723.7334
Over the last month or so, I’ve been been hammering out a new AI wager with Holden Karnofsky, co-founder of GiveWell and Open Philanthropy. I think of it as the “Feast-or-Famine” bet. Holden suspects that AI will dramatically change the global economy, but he’s undecided about whether the changes will be dramatically good or dramatically bad. …
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1690010.733407
The Kepler problem is the study of a particle moving in an attractive inverse square force. In classical mechanics, this problem shows up when you study the motion of a planet around the Sun in the Solar System. …
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1691512.733414
This paper proposes that the evolution of consciousness can be partially understood through increasingly complex forms of exploration. We trace how features such as integration, intentionality, temporality, and valence evolved as functional tools for dealing with uncertainty and contradiction. Central to this process is a shift from implicit to explicit representation, which we relate to established models of consciousness levels. Our approach emphasizes structural and functional continuity between these levels, while avoiding sharp thresholds or binary distinctions. Understood as exploration, consciousness supports what Stegmaier (2019) calls orientation, the achievement of finding one’s way in a changing environment by establishing temporary relevance and stability in conditions of uncertainty. We argue that exploration provides a productive framework for understanding how conscious capacities developed in response to situational demands. The account further raises questions about the conditions under which synthetic systems might replicate conscious capacities, highlighting the role of affect, embodiment, and representational structure in the evolution of conscious cognition.
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1691534.733421
This paper introduces the Representational Uncertainty Principle (RUP) as a structural account of the limits of representational precision. We argue that as representations become more narrowly defined—by fixing more internal structure—they constrain the integration of perceptual and contextual cues. This often suppresses representational flexibility: the capacity to draw on multiple situational cues to stabilize meaning. When this flexibility is reduced, representational diffraction becomes more prominent: a structural phenomenon in which aspects of a situation are subsumed under a representation that deviates from the expected or standard framing, resulting in ambiguity or tension. Drawing on a structural analogy with quantum mechanics, we treat interference and diffraction as complementary manifestations of how representational content is formed. This framework explains why overly precise representations often fail in contexts that demand sensitivity to subtle variations. We support this account through examples of conceptual ambiguity and apparent contradiction, and by developing a framework that distinguishes between the structuring role of the representational vehicle and the dynamic process of integration that gives rise to content. The RUP thus highlights a structural tension between abstraction, context sensitivity, and the need for orientation within experience.
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1691557.733428
I review the works of Gärdenfors (1990) and Scorzato (2013) and show that their combination provides an elegant solution of Goodman’s new riddle of induction. The solution is based on two main ideas: (1) clarifying what is expected from a solution: understanding that philosophy of science is a science itself, with the same limitations and strengths as other scientific disciplines; (2) understanding that the concept of complexity of a model’s assumptions and the concept of direct measurements must be characterized together. Although both measurements and complexity have been the subject of a vast literature, within the philosophy of science, essentially no other attempt has been made to combine them. The widespread expectation, among modern philosophers, that Goodman’s new riddle cannot be solved is clearly not defensible without serious exploration of such a natural approach. A clarification of this riddle has always been very important, but it has become even more crucial in the age of AI.
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1767893.733434
Levy’s Upward Theorem says that the conditional expectation of an integrable random variable converges with probability one to its true value with increasing information. In this paper, we use methods from effective probability theory to characterise the probability one set along which convergence to the truth occurs, and the rate at which the convergence occurs. We work within the setting of computable probability measures defined on computable Polish spaces and introduce a new general theory of effective disintegrations. We use this machinery to prove our main results, which (1) identify the points along which certain classes of effective random variables converge to the truth in terms of certain classes of algorithmically random points, and which further (2) identify when computable rates of convergence exist. Our convergence results significantly generalize earlier results within a unifying novel abstract framework, and there are no precursors of our results on computable rates of convergence. Finally, we make a case for the importance of our work for the foundations of Bayesian probability theory.
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1776475.733441
Optimalism holds that, of metaphysical necessity, the best world is actualized. There are two ways to understand “the best world”: (1) the best of all metaphysically possible worlds and (2) the best of all (narrowly) logically possible worlds. …
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1840957.733448
What is the relation between the phenomenal properties of experience and physical properties, such as physical properties of the brain? I evaluate the proposal that phenomenal properties are determinables of physical realizer determinates, focusing Jessica Wilson’s response to a prominent argument for thinking that phenomenal properties cannot be understood in this way. Wilson premises her response on the idea that phenomenal properties admit of physical determination dimensions, which can be discovered through the relevant sciences. I provide several reasons for questioning this way of understanding the relation between the phenomenal and the physical, centered on the idea that even if phenomenal properties have physical determination dimensions, it remains to be shown that these determine the physical realizers of phenomenal properties, and provide reasons for denying that this is the case. I then address Wilson’s “powers-based conception” of the determinable/ determinate relation and argue that it faces difficulties both independent from and in relation to the view of phenomenal properties as determinables of physical realizer determinates.
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1846176.733455
As I write in the spring of 2025, we are in the midst of a crisis in the United States. The crisis is economic, social, political, and legal. One dimension of this crisis is the attack on higher education by the Trump administration. To date, this attack has included: o Cuts to funding for existing federal grants to higher education o Substantive content restrictions on applications for new grants o Deporting, or canceling visas of, international students and scholars without due cause o Denial of entry into the United States of international scholars traveling for academic or research activities o Increases to the amount of overhead that universities must pay to support federal grants o Threats to increase endowment tax on universities from 1.4% to as much as 35% o Closure, or severe cuts to funding, of libraries, museums, and archives.
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1853424.733463
Robert H. Jackson was an Associate Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court by day, and one of the most eloquent men alive. In 1945-46 he led the American prosecution at the Nuremberg Trials, “perhaps the greatest opportunity ever presented to an American lawyer.” His powerful opening statement testifies to the power of words, used well, to shape the meaning of events:
That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law is one of the most significant tributes that Power ever has paid to Reason. …