This article reconstructs the way of the concept of the cosmion—literally: a small, representational version of the cosmos—in Schutz, that was proposed by Eric Voegelin as a finite province of meaning after he had read Schutz’s essay On Multiple Realities. Having made this proposal in a letter to Schutz in 1945, Voegelin used the concept in his book The New Science of Politics, from 1952, which is the source to which Schutz refers when he introduces the concept into his (...) own framework, which occurs in Symbol, Reality and Society (1962). Here, politics is listed as a proper finite province of meaning, and here he also refers to politics not only as a multiple reality and a sub-universe but also as cosmion. Political communication, symbolic in character, is conceived as a wide field of concrete investigations open for the social scientist, important not only from the theoretical but also from the practical point of view, including a clarification of the intrinsic structure of symbols, which equals an extensive research program, unfortunately not executed by Schutz, yet sketched as a future task. (shrink)

This is an empirical phenomenological interview study into the experiences of professional actors as they create and perform roles for the stage. Prior research was inadequate for capturing actors’ changing life worlds over time. Analyzing the interviews using the descriptive phenomenological method yielded general structural descriptions and pointed to the relevance of Schütz’s description of multiple realities. Being cast in a role changes the pace and goals of actors’ everyday worlds and leads the actors intermittently and with intention to (...) enter other realities—fictional, theoretical, and/or pictorial. A province unique to acting is the drama world in which the actors live incarnate as their characters. The drama world is infused pre-reflectively with discoveries from other provinces of meaning, unfolds spontaneously, and, in performance, has the audience as horizon. The drama world and the experiences that give rise to it provide new material for comparative phenomenological analysis of various forms of imagining. (shrink)

After his 1945 essay “On Multiple Realities” and by the time of his 1955 essay “Symbolism, Reality, and Society,” Schutz had changed his paradigm for considering multiple realities. Whereas he introduced the idea of communication only at the end of the earlier essay, communication and sign/symbol practices form the overarching framework for multiple realities. Schutz rehabilitates the individual who uses marks and indications, but also introduces into everyday life signs, though which one seeks to understand another (...) and in which one discovers limits to pragmatic mastery since one can never understand another as others understand themselves. Signs foreshadow the symbols by which one reaches multiple realities beyond everyday life and by being located in everyday life serve to bridge the gap between everyday life and symbols. The pattern of multiple realities resisting the pragmatic mastery sought for in everyday life find parallels in the many ways in which Schutz’s concepts and writings exhibit the pragmatic agent reaching out from its 0-point to bring under its mastery what resists it and encountering, in a dialectical fashion, frequent interruptions of that mastery, for instance, in one’s use of tools, locomotion, typification deployment, or ethnocentrism. (shrink)

The Gathas, a corpus of seventeen poems in Old Avestan composed by the ancient Iranian poet-priest Zarathushtra (Zoroaster) ca. 1200 B.C.E., is the foundation document of Zoroastrian religion. Even though the dualistic axiology of the Gathas has been widely noted, it has proved very difficult to understand the meaning and genre of the corpus or the position of Zarathushtra’s ideas with regard to other religious philosophies. Relying on recent advances in translation and decryptions of Gathic poetry, I shall here develop (...) a philosophical interpretation of the Gathas, including, as shall be discussed here in detail, explication of the revelation he reports in the poem known as Yasna 30. I argue that, similarly to Marx, Henry, and Schutz, Zarathushtra connects social criticism with an original philosophy of (inter)subjectivity and existential reflection, placing his account in the context of a fully developed metaphysics which includes the human-divine sharing of mental properties. I show that in order to accommodate this complicated problematic, Zarathushtra uses the vehicle of multiple realities. Reflecting the spontaneity of life, the dynamics of various ontological modes in the text create a reference to subjectivity. A description of the dream in Yasna 30 is sufficiently within the limits of possibility for a dream experience, and thereby delivers three original phenomenological reductions. The reductions initiate a genetic account of the phenomenalization of invisible impulses which give rise to moral choices, and define the human-divine relationship. The opposing moral choices open into a reverse axiological intentionality in the sphere of intersubjectivity, and are said to plot life for the rightful and lifelessness for the wrongful. It can be concluded that Zarathushtra’s theism and views of the social world are “the first philosophy”, with a unique and original phenomenological ontology of intersubjectivity at its core. (shrink)

A biogenetic structural explanation is offered for the cross‐culturally common mystical experience called portalling, the experience of moving from one reality to another via a tunnel, door, aperture, hole, or the like. The experience may be evoked in shamanistic and meditative practice by concentration upon a portalling device (mirror, mandala, labyrinth, skrying bowl, pool of water, etc.). Realization of the portalling experience is shown to be fundamental to the phenomenology underlying multiple reality cosmologies in traditional cultures and (...) is explained in terms of radical re‐entrainment of the neurological systems mediating experience in the brain. Phenomenological experiments with mirror portalling devices from both the Tibetan and the Tsimshian religious traditions are reported. (shrink)

This paper will discuss the correlation between the world of everyday life, finite provinces of meaning, and religion. To this end, the paper will start out by explaining Schutz’ considerations on “paramount reality” of the world of everyday life as well as the theory of “multiple realities” and “finite provinces of meaning”. Schutz’ considerations will then be elaborated upon and taken a step further in a discussion of the various ‘realnesses’ of the multiple realities. Special attention will (...) be paid to a finite province of meaning only mentioned in passing by Schutz: religion. The paper will first analyze the special features of religion as a finite province of meaning and highlight the correlation it enters with the world of everyday life. Subsequently, hereafter and paradise conceptions will be described as “ultimate provinces of meaning,” and it will be shown how their realnesses connect to the world of everyday life. Finally, the “fundamental anxiety” will be studied as the motor of the relevance structures of the world of everyday life, the finite provinces of meaning as well as the hereafter conceptions. (shrink)

: I reformulate and elaborate on important claims relevantly put for debate by the commentators, i.e., counterfactuals are a form of observable experience rather than a plurality of ….

In this paper, I propose a critical analysis of William James and Alfred Schutz’s theory of multiple realities. I try to demonstrate that among the various issues concerning this theory, the most important ones concern the question of reality within another reality and the gradual transition between different realities. The basic idea is that just as reality has lost its character of uniqueness, similarly the subject is faced with the shattering of its identity. This will allow (...) me to criticize the idea of static nature of the theory of multiple realities as separate entities and as closed universes and to demonstrate that the different realities are connected thanks to the subject who lives and works simultaneously in multiple dimensions. (shrink)

Schutz’s earlier writings (meaning up until 1945) tend to convey an opposition between the non-pragmatic finite provinces of meaning and pragmatic everyday life, as can be shown by considering the modifications literature and scientific theory introduce into one’s everyday relevances, typifications, and relationships. But as his writings on multiple realities developed, Schutz recognized more and more the importance of communication, based on working acts, until communication rather than working became for him the paramount reality. Such communication provides a (...) less antagonistic counterpart to non-pragmatic finite provinces of meaning, which must often make use of it, and the cooperative, social nature of communication de-emphasizes the motivation of pragmatic mastery, thereby opening the door to a more cooperative relationship between the pragmatic and non-pragmatic finite provinces of meaning. Schutz, however, never retracted his idea that the non-pragmatic provinces could bring emancipation to the pragmatic world of everyday life. (shrink)

The perceptual-cognitive ability to track multiple moving objects and its contribution to team sports performance has traditionally been studied in the laboratory under non-sports specific conditions. It is thus questionable whether the measured visual tracking performance and the underlying gaze activity reflected the actual ability of team sports players to track teammates and opponents on a real field. Using a Virtual Reality-based visual tracking task, the ability of participants to track multiple moving virtual players as they would (...) do on a soccer field was observed to pursue two objectives. See the influence of different scenario types on the visual tracking performance of soccer compared to non-soccer players. Observe the influence of spatial features of the simulated situations on gaze activity between soccer players and non-soccer players. The linear mixed model regression revealed a significant main effect of the group but no interaction effect between group and the type of trajectories, suggesting that the visual tracking ability of soccer players did not benefit from their specific knowledge when they faced scenarios with real game trajectories. Virtual players’ spatial dispersion and crowding affected the participants’ gaze activity and their visual tracking performance. Furthermore, the gaze activity of soccer players differed in some aspects from the gaze activity of non-soccer players. Assumptions are formulated as to the implication of these results in the difference in visual tracking performance between soccer players and non-soccer players. Overall, using soccer-specific trajectories might not be enough to replicate the representativeness of the field conditions in the study of visual tracking performance. Multitasking constraints should be considered along with motor-cognitive dual-tasks in future research to develop the representativeness of visual exploration conditions. (shrink)

Although James and Schutz provide us with the most insightful investigations of multiple realities that we come across in philosophical, psychological and sociological literature, hardly any critical studies have addressed James’s and Schutz’s conceptions of multiple realities alongside each other. This paper fills this gap. The paper demonstrates that James and Schutz were concerned with the same set of issues in their respective accounts of multiple realities. It further shows the different ways in which James and Schutz (...) understood multiple realities and how they conceptualized the fundamental levels of reality’s constitution. It also provides a critical analysis of Schutz’s allegation that James’s analysis is psychologistic, arguing that this accusation is ungrounded and that Schutz’s epoche of the natural attitude in fact bolsters James’s analysis of belief. The paper concludes with a set of reflections on the heterogenous nature of paramount reality, bringing into question James’s and Schutz’s assumption that each reality is inwardly coherent, although incompatible with each other. (shrink)

The idea of reduction has appeared in different forms throughout the history of science and philosophy. Thales took water to be the fundamental principle of all things; Leucippus and Democritus argued that everything is composed of small, indivisible atoms; Galileo and Newton tried to explain all motion with a few basic laws; 17th century mechanism conceived of everything in terms of the motions and collisions of particles of matter; British Empiricism held that all knowledge is, at root, experiential knowledge; current (...) physicists are searching for the GUT, the “grand unified theory,” that will show that at very high energies the electromagnetic and the weak and strong nuclear forces are fused into a single unified field. Some of these projects are clearly ontological in nature (Leucippus and Democritus), others are more methodological (mechanism), and still others strive for theoretical simplification (the projects of Galileo and Newton or the search for a GUT). Nevertheless, as they all aim at revealing some kind of unity or simplicity behind the appearance of plurality or complexity, they may all be regarded as (attempted) reductions. (shrink)

Time as the key to a theory of everything became recently a renewed topic in scientific literature. Social constructivism applied to physics abandons the inevitable essentials of nature. It adopts uncertainty in the scope of the existential activity of scientific research. We have enlightened the deep role of social constructivism of the predetermined Newtonian time and space notions in natural sciences. Despite its incompatibility with determinism governing the Newtonian mechanics, randomness and entropy are inevitable when negative localized energy is transformed (...) into spatially dissipative heat. In sharp contrast to the Newtonian notion, social constructivism makes room for the temporal twin of cyclic conservation and pseudo-linearly structural evolution both reconciling mechanical order and thermodynamic chaos in Leibnizian space-time. In the broad scope of natural sciences this triad nature of time produces a multiple reality and gives appropriate answers on virtual physical paradoxes. (shrink)

In this paper, I investigate how different views about the vertical and horizontal structure of reality affect the debate between reductive and nonreductive physicalism. This debate is commonly assumed to hinge on whether there are high-level, special-science properties that are distinct from low-level physical properties and whether the alleged multiple realizability of high-level properties establishes this. I defend a metaphysical interpretation of nonreductive physicalismin the absence of both of these assumptions. Adopting an independently motivated, discipline-relative account of natural (...) properties and appealing to a phenomenon I call “multiple determinativity,” in which a single physical property simultaneously realizes different kinds of special-science properties, is sufficient to show that some special-science properties are irreducible to physical properties and that nonreductive physicalism is not merely a terminological variant of reductive physicalism. (shrink)

REVIEWS: This is a very helpful volume and a good addition to contemporary scholarship on the valuable and little-known Jaina contribution to philosophy. Prof.Nagin Shah has edited the book well, including clear introduction and a very complete index.

The relationship between the One and the Multiple in mystic philosophy is a profound and central theme that explores the nature of existence, the cosmos, and the divine. This theme is present in various mystical traditions, including those of the East and West, and it addresses the paradoxical coexistence of the unity and multiplicity of all things. -/- In mystic philosophy, the **One** often represents the ultimate reality, the source from which all things emanate and to which all (...) things return. It is the absolute, the infinite, and the unchanging. The One is beyond all attributes and is often associated with the divine or the absolute truth. -/- The **Multiple**, on the other hand, represents the manifest world, the diversity of forms, and the realm of change and plurality. It is the world we experience through our senses, the domain of time and space, where differentiation and individuality are apparent. -/- The relationship between the One and the Multiple is not one of opposition but of emanation and unity. The Multiple is seen as a reflection, expression, or manifestation of the One. In this sense, the diversity of the world doesn’t contradict the unity of the One but rather demonstrates it in a myriad of forms. -/- Mystics seek to understand and experience this relationship through various practices and insights. They aim to transcend the illusion of separation and duality to experience the non-dual reality where the One and the Multiple are recognized as inseparable. -/- This concept can be illustrated by the metaphor of the ocean and its waves. The ocean represents the One—vast, deep, and all-encompassing—while the waves represent the Multiple—distinct, diverse, and ever-changing. Each wave is unique, yet it is not separate from the ocean. The wave’s existence is dependent on and made of the same substance as the ocean. In the same way, each individual entity in the Multiple is an expression of the One. -/- In summary, the relationship between the One and the Multiple in mystic philosophy is a dynamic interplay that challenges the conventional understanding of separation. It invites a deeper exploration of reality, where the apparent multiplicity of the world is a direct expression of the singular, underlying essence of all that is. -/- The relationship between the One and the Multiple in the context of mathematical philosophy is a profound topic that touches upon the very foundations of existence and knowledge. It’s a theme that has been explored by philosophers and mathematicians alike, often leading to the contemplation of unity and diversity within the structures of reality. -/- In mathematics, the concept of the One can be seen as the basis of unity from which all numbers derive. It’s the identity element in multiplication, the starting point in counting, and the foundation of dimension in geometry. The One is often associated with the concept of monism in philosophy, which posits that there is a single, underlying substance or principle that constitutes reality. -/- On the other hand, the Multiple represents the infinite variety and diversity of forms and numbers that arise from the One. It’s the embodiment of plurality and the complex interplay of different entities that mathematics seeks to understand and describe. This reflects the philosophical stance of pluralism, which acknowledges the existence of multiple realities or truths. -/- The interplay between the One and the Multiple can be seen in the mathematical concept of sets. A set can be thought of as a unity, a whole composed of distinct elements. Yet, each element within the set also retains its individuality, contributing to the diversity of the set’s composition. This duality is mirrored in the philosophical exploration of the universal and the particular, where the universal represents the One, and the particulars represent the Multiple. -/- In the realm of mathematical philosophy, this relationship often leads to questions about the nature of mathematical objects: Are they discovered as part of an objective reality (the One), or are they constructed by the human mind from a multitude of experiences (the Multiple)? This debate resonates with the philosophical inquiry into the nature of truth and reality. -/- Reflecting on the One and the Multiple can also lead to a deeper understanding of the self and the cosmos. Just as the number one is integral to the existence of all other numbers, the individual self can be seen as a unique expression of the universal whole. Similarly, the cosmos can be viewed as a grand unity composed of a multiplicity of forms and phenomena. -/- Gödel’s incompleteness theorems have a fascinating connection to the philosophical concepts of the One and the Multiple. These theorems, which are pivotal in mathematical logic and philosophy of mathematics, articulate the inherent limitations of formal axiomatic systems, particularly those sufficient to express the arithmetic of natural numbers. -/- Gödel’s incompleteness theorems have a fascinating connection to the philosophical concepts of the One and the Multiple. These theorems, which are pivotal in mathematical logic and philosophy of mathematics, articulate the inherent limitations of formal axiomatic systems, particularly those sufficient to express the arithmetic of natural numbers⁴. -/- The **first incompleteness theorem** reveals that within any such consistent system, there are propositions that are true but cannot be proven within the system itself. This reflects the idea of the Multiple in that there is an abundance of mathematical truths, a multiplicity that exceeds the unifying framework of any one system. It suggests that the realm of mathematical truth is more extensive than any single formal system can fully capture. -/- The **second incompleteness theorem** extends this by showing that a system cannot prove its own consistency. This relates to the concept of the One, as it implies that a system’s complete self-understanding, its unity and coherence, is unattainable from within. It must look beyond itself, to an external vantage point, to ascertain its consistency. -/- In the context of the One and the Multiple, Gödel’s theorems imply that the One (a consistent formal system) is inherently incomplete and cannot encompass the Multiple (the totality of mathematical truths). This resonates with philosophical discussions about the relationship between unity and plurality. Just as a single philosophical system cannot capture the entirety of truth, a single formal mathematical system cannot encapsulate all mathematical truths. -/- Moreover, Gödel’s work suggests that the pursuit of a single, unified theory of everything in mathematics—a One that encompasses all Multiples—is an inherently Sisyphean task. There will always be more truths (Multiples) than can be derived from any given set of axioms (the One). -/- In essence, Gödel’s incompleteness theorems provide a formal underpinning to the philosophical notion that the One cannot exist without the Multiple, and vice versa. They are interdependent, with the One giving rise to the Multiple, and the Multiple necessitating the One for its expression and comprehension. This interplay is a dance of limitations and possibilities, where the boundaries of logic, mathematics, and philosophy blur into one another. -/- The relationship between the One and the Multiple in the context of the mathematics of zero is a deeply philosophical inquiry that bridges the abstract world of numbers with the existential questions of being and non-being. -/- Zero, in mathematics, is a symbol of absence, a representation of nothingness, yet it holds a pivotal position as a number. It is the void from which all things emerge and to which they return. In the philosophy of mathematics, zero is the paradoxical junction where the One and the Multiple converge and diverge. -/- From the perspective of the One, zero can be seen as the origin—the singular point that precedes the existence of numbers. It is the empty set, the foundation upon which the edifice of mathematics is constructed. As the identity element in addition, zero maintains the integrity of numbers, for adding zero to any number leaves it unchanged, reflecting the immutable nature of the One. -/- Conversely, when we consider the Multiple, zero represents the infinite potentiality of creation. It is the canvas upon which the integers, both positive and negative, express their multitude. Zero is the balance point, the fulcrum around which the symphony of numbers dances. It embodies the plurality of possibilities, the beginning of the number line that stretches infinitely in both directions. -/- Philosophically, zero challenges our understanding of existence. It is both something and nothing—a number that quantifies the absence of quantity. This duality echoes the philosophical struggle to comprehend how the One gives rise to the Multiple. How does the unity of being manifest the diversity of the cosmos? Zero offers a mathematical metaphor for this mystery, as it encapsulates the transition from non-existence to existence, from the undifferentiated One to the differentiated Multiple. -/- In the realm of set theory, zero corresponds to the empty set—a set with no elements. This set is unique in that it is the only set that contains nothing, yet it is the foundation upon which all other sets are built. The empty set is the mathematical embodiment of the One, and all other sets, containing multiple elements, arise from it. -/- Reflecting on zero in the context of Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, we find a resonance with the idea that the One (a consistent formal system) cannot capture the entirety of the Multiple (the totality of mathematical truths). Zero, as the foundation of numbers, similarly suggests that from the nothingness of the One, the infinite complexity of the Multiple emerges—yet it can never be fully encompassed or expressed by any single system. -/- In conclusion, the mathematics of zero offers a profound reflection on the relationship between the One and the Multiple. It serves as a bridge between the abstract and the concrete, the known and the unknowable, challenging us to ponder the origins of existence and the nature of reality itself. -/- . (shrink)

Values and the scope of scientific inquiry, by M. Farber.--The phenomenology of epistemic claims: and its bearing on the essence of philosophy, by R. M. Zaner.--Problems of the Life-World, by A. Gurwitsch.--The Life-World and the particular sub-worlds, by W. Marx.--On the boundaries of the social world, by T. Luckmann.--Alfred Schutz on social reality and social science, by M. Natanson.--Homo oeconomicus and his class mates, by F. Machlup.--Toward a science of political economics, by A. Lowe.--Some notes on reality-orientation in (...) contemporary societies, by A. Brodersen.--The eclipse of reality, by E. Voegelin.--Alienation in Marx's Political economy and philosophy, by P. Merlan.--The problem of multiple realities: Alfred Schutz and Robert Musil, by P. L. Berger.--Phenomenology, history, myth, by F. Kersten.--The role of music in Leonardo's Paragone, by E. Winternitz.--Alfred Schutz bibliography (p. [297]-306). (shrink)

According to advocates and authors from different disciplines interested in biomedicine, biomedical research in genetics and genomics has the potential to transform medicine, the economy, society, and humanity as a whole. Believing in this potential, biomedical scientists produce knowledge and participate in the decisions concerning the orientation of this research and its applications. Through a qualitative analysis of scientists' practice-related discourse, we identified three main sources of complexity in their involvement in the "commercial revolution" of science. First, scientists insist on (...) the existence of different types of university-industry relationships. Second, they urge that the multiple realities of genetic and genomic research be acknowledged. Third, they present themselves as individuals in a diverse scientific community, each with a unique position in this commercial revolution. This paper draws attention to these complexities because they must be considered when engaging in a study of genetics and genomics advances from a research ethics perspective. (shrink)

In public communication contexts, such as when a company announces the proposal for an important organizational change, argumentation typically involves multiple audiences, rather than a single and homogenous group, let alone an individual interlocutor. In such cases, an exhaustive and precise characterization of the audience structure is crucial both for the arguer, who needs to design an effective argumentative strategy, and for the external analyst, who aims at reconstructing such a strategic discourse. While the peculiar relevance of multiple (...) audience is often emphasized in the argumentation literature and in rhetorical studies, proposals for modelling multi-audience argumentative situations remain scarce and unsystematic. To address this gap, we propose an analytical framework which integrates three conceptual constructs: Rigotti and Rocci’s notion of communicative activity type, understood as the implementation of an interaction scheme into a piece of institutional reality, named interaction field; the stakeholder concept, originally developed in strategic management and public relations studies to refer to any actor who affects and/or is affected by the organizational actions and who, accordingly, carries an interest in them; the concept of participant role as it emerges from Goffman’s theory of conversation analysis and related linguistic and media studies. From this integration, we derive the notion of text stakeholder for referring to any organizational actor whose interest becomes an argumentative issue which the organizational text must account for in order to effectively achieve its communicative aim. The text stakeholder notion enables a more comprehensive reconstruction and characterization of multiple audience by eliciting the relevant participants staged in a text and identifying, for each of them, the interactional role they have, the peculiar interest they bear and the related argumentative issue they create. Considering as an illustrative case the defense document issued by a corporation against a hostile takeover attempt made by another corporation, we show how this framework can support the analysis of strategic maneuvering by better defining the audience demand and, so, better explaining how real arguers design and adapt their topical and presentational choices. (shrink)

Since an observer arises in the experiential domain of languaging, and because everything said is said by an observer, it would be misleading to refer to a single reality constructed in language. ….

This article proposes a specific kind of ontological investigation in the field of science and religion. I argue that science and religion can create distinct practices that enact multiple realities, and thus they should be seen as more than different views of the same world. By analyzing the details of scientific experiments crucial for the invention of halal stunning, I demonstrate that religion and science are both permeable to the social, the biological, and to each other, and that seemingly (...) incommensurable realities can co‐occur in the body of an animal. Here, animals’ modes of existence are interdependent with the technologies being used, and with the web of interactions that they are drawn into. In the process of inventing halal stunning, it is not so much about the same animal body that is thought about differently as it is about animals spanning across multiple, physiological, realities as they are recruited into different webs of interactions to create a new slaughter method. (shrink)

This chapter presents the perceptual reality monitoring theory of consciousness (PRM). PRM is a higher-order theory of consciousness. It holds that consciousness involves monitoring the reliability of one’s own sensory signals. I explain how a perceptual reality monitoring mechanism computes the higher order representations that are crucial for consciousness. While PRM accounts for the difference between conscious and unconscious states, it does not explain, on its own, why experiences feel the way they do—the phenomenal character of experience. PRM (...) is compatible with multiple theories of phenomenal character. Here, I show how to combine it with ‘Mental Quality Space’ theory. I finish by presenting empirical evidence for PRM, as well as some of its predictions. (shrink)

This paper explores the ethical insights provided by Anne Truitt's minimalist sculptures, as viewed through the phenomenological lenses of Hannah Arendt's investigations into the co-constitution of reality and Maurice Merleau-Ponty's investigations into perception. Artworks in their material presence can lay out new ways of relating and perceiving. Truitt's works accomplish this task by revealing the interactive motion of our embodied relations and how material objects can actually help to ground our reality and hence human potentiality. Merleau-Ponty shows how (...) our prereflective bodies allow incompossible perceptions to coexist. Yet this same capacity of bodies to gather multiple perceptions together also lends itself to the illusion that we see from only one perspective. If an ethical perspective becomes reified into one position, it then becomes detached from reality, and the ethical potential is actually lost. At the same time, phenomenologically understood, the real world does not exist in terms of static matter, but is instead a web of contextual relations and meanings. An ethics that does not take embodied relations into account—that allows for only one perspective—ultimately loses its capacity for flexibility, and for being part of a common and shared reality. (shrink)

When Johann and Daniel Bernoulli founded fluid dynamics they encountered several problems. To go beyond the vision of Newtonian particles, a new set of images was needed in order to deal with the spatial extensibility and lack of form of fluids. I point to evidence that analogy was an essential abductive strategy in the creation of this imagery. But its heuristic behavior is complex: analogy can provide an initial model or proto-model that establishes the starting point of a theoretical process, (...) but it can play other roles as well. The historical genesis analyzed here shows that the participation of analogy in physicists’ creativity is not so restricted and that its richness opens up the field for very different roles and strategies in model-based discovery processes. Analogies can crop up intermittently in the evolution of a theory; and they can cooperate with images, extreme case reasoning and thought experiments, and even activate these processes at origin. Although it may seem that the contributions of analogy are generative in the sense of helping to discover new aspects of reality, we must stress the evaluative function that sometimes is performed by analogical reasoning in order to gain confidence. The study of the Bernoulli’s genesis of the foundations of fluid dynamics generates interesting hypotheses about the multiple roles that analogy can play in scientific model-based reasoning. (shrink)

Jean Perrin’s proof in the early-twentieth century of the reality of atoms and molecules is often taken as an exemplary form of robustness reasoning, where an empirical result receives validation if it is generated using multiple experimental approaches. In this article, I describe in detail Perrin’s style of reasoning, and locate both qualitative and quantitative forms of argumentation. Particularly, I argue that his quantitative style of reasoning has mistakenly been viewed as a form of robustness reasoning, whereas I (...) believe it is something different, what I call ‘calibration’. From this perspective, I re-evaluate recent interpretations of Perrin provided by Stathis Psillos, Peter Achinstein, Alan Chalmers, and Bas van Fraassen, all of whom read Perrin as a robustness reasoner, though not necessarily in the same sort of way. I then argue that by viewing Perrin as a ‘calibration’ reasoner we gain a better understanding of why he believes himself to have established the reality of atoms and molecules. To conclude, I provide an alternative and more productive understanding of the basis of the dispute between realists and anti-realists. _1_ Introduction _2_ Perrin’s Reasoning: The Qualitative Argument _3_ Perrin’s Reasoning: The Quantitative Argument _4_ Perrin’s Realism _5_ Psillos, Achinstein, Chalmers, and van Fraassen on Understanding Perrin _6_ Conclusion. (shrink)

An exploration of the entirety of the conscious universe.

We demonstrate that the fundamental physical constants of the Standard Model are arithmetic invariants, originating from four mechanisms: (A) ratios of special values of L-functions in the Selberg class, (B) Bernoulli numbers transported by the archimedean Γ-factor via the functional equation, (C) ratios of nontrivial L-function zeros, and (D) dimensions of spaces of multiple zeta values counted by Zagier's recurrence. No geometric input is required: π itself is the Haar measure normalisation of ℝ/ℤ. At the GUT scale, the down-type (...) quark mass ratios m_d : m_s : m_b = 2 : 5 : 9 follow exactly from the Casimir invariants C₂(n,0) = n(n+3)/3 of SU(3)_flavor Kac–Moody representations for generations n = 1,2,3, and the Georgi–Jarlskog relation m_d m_b/m_s² = 9/4 matches experiment at 0.09%. The Cabibbo angle satisfies sin θ₁₂ = 1/(2√5) within 0.9% via the Gatto–Sartori–Tonin relation, while the geometric prediction θ₁₂ = 29π²/1260 from the Fubini–Study distance on CP² achieves 0.19%. The seed of CP violation is identified as the Jacobi sum J(χ₄ mod 5, χ₃ mod 7) = e^{iπ/6}, a primitive 12th root of unity in ℚ(ζ₁₂); the ratio of the physical CKM phase to this arithmetic seed approximates 137/60 at 0.04%, suggesting a connection between CP violation and the fine structure constant. Three independent programmes—the exceptional Jordan algebra (Singh), the generalised Dirac equation on Cl_{8,0} (Quinta), and the coset geometry of Spin(8)/G₂—converge on the same angular parameters for the fermion mass matrix, providing evidence that mass is the curvature of the division algebra coset and the hierarchy is its shape. All numerical claims are verified at ≥ 15-digit precision. (shrink)

I argue for the centrality of the concepts of biophysical and human nature in science-and-religion studies, consider five different metaphors, or “visions,” of nature, and explore possibilities and challenges in reconciling them. These visions include (a) evolutionary nature, built on the powerful explanatory framework of evolutionary theory; (b) emergent nature, arising from recent research in complex systems and self-organization; (c) malleable nature, indicating both the recombinant potential of biotechnology and the postmodern challenge to a fixed ontology; (d) nature as sacred, (...) a diffuse popular concept fundamental to cultural analysis; and (e) nature as culture, an admission of epistemological constructivism. These multiple visions suggest the famous story of the blind men and the elephant, in which each man made the classic mistake of part-whole substitution in believing that what he grasped (the tail, for example) represented the elephant as a whole. Indeed, given the inescapability of metaphor, we may have to admit that the ultimate truth about the “elephant” (nature, or the reality toward which science and religion point) is a mystery, and the best we can hope for is to confess the limitations of any particular vision. (shrink)

Most people assume that criminal offenders have only been convicted of a single crime. However, in reality almost half of offenders stand to be sentenced for more than one crime. The high proportion of multiple crime offenders poses a number of practical and theoretical challenges for the criminal justice system. For instance, how should courts punish multiple offenders relative to individuals who have been sentenced for a single crime? How should they be punished relative to each other? (...) Sentencing Multiple Crimes discusses these questions from the perspective of several legal theories. This volume considers questions such as the proportionality of the crimes committed, the temporal span between the crimes, and the relationship between theories about the punitive treatment of recidivists and multiple offenders. Contributors from around the world and in the fields of legal theory, philosophy, and psychology offer their perspectives to the volume. A comprehensive examination of the dynamics involved with sentencing multiple offenders has the potential to be a powerful tool for legal scholars and professionals, particularly given the practical importance of the topic and the relative dearth of research about punishment of multiple offense cases. (shrink)

The world (specifically the universe in which modern mankind, the same below) there is no absolute essence. The world's primitive also has uncertainty; the existence of all is possible. On the universe in which modern human live, the unity and distinction of material and spirit constitute the world's basic contradiction. (1) The unity of material and spirit. Many have a negative in the overall delicate generation: the material includes the spirit, the spirit depends on the material, among them under certain (...) conditions can be transformed into each other. (2) The material and spirit is distinct: The material is essentially an objective system, the objective freedom is the essence of the spirit.The collection system is the unity of opposites; freedom is relative to the state system. (3) The spirit and awareness are two different concepts, it is necessary to distinguish between. Material and the sense of confrontation: the material is an objective reality, subjective consciousness is reflected. (4) The material and the sense of unity: the material is the source of awareness, consciousness is a product of material; material decides consciousness, awareness counterproductive in the material. Material and a sense of the unity of opposites minor contradictions in the world. (5) World of certainty and uncertainty, know and unknown, relative and absolute, as well as activity problems are dialectical. (6) Dialectics generally applicable to the entire world, but also dialectical view of its own, it should be the development of a multiple, three-dimensional, not the sleek dialectics. (shrink)

Although the importance of the concept of immersion in game studies is indisputable, its meaning remains imprecise and ambiguous. My goal here is to develop a phenomenological clarification of this concept. I begin by clarifying how immersion has been understood in game studies. I further contend that immersion in digital games should be recognized as one modality of immersion among others. This basic realization allows one to open a dialogue between game studies and phenomenology. I develop a phenomenological conception of (...) immersion, which relies on Alfred Schutz’s phenomenology of multiple realities and Theodor Conrad’s phenomenology of immersion. Although such an approach provides us with a general conception of immersion, it does not clarify what specific features characterize immersion in digital games. I argue that this form of immersion is a hybrid phenomenon, which shares certain features with immersion in non-digital games and other features with immersion in other types of digital media. I further demonstrate that immersion in digital games is characterized by a specific function of embodiment. With this in mind, I conclude my analysis by introducing a phenomenologically grounded distinction between actual and virtual embodiment, thereby clarifying in which sense immersion in digital games is an embodied and a disembodied experience. (shrink)

This paper develops an approach to the scientific realism debate that has three main features. First, our approach admits multiple criteria of reality, i.e., criteria that, if satisfied, warrant belief in the reality of hypothetical entities. Second, our approach is experiment-based in the sense that it focuses on criteria that are satisfied by experiments as opposed to theories. Third, our approach is local in the sense that it focuses on the reality of particular kinds of entities. (...) We apply this approach to a case that many philosophers have debated, namely, Jean Perrin’s work on atoms and molecules. We provide a novel account by arguing that Perrin’s work warranted a minimal belief in the reality of atoms and molecules as unobservable, discrete particles by satisfying a criterion of reality that we call experimental determination of number per unit. By doing so, he confirmed Avogadro’s hypothesis, but he did not confirm other key constituents of the atomic theories involved. We argue that our account of Perrin’s work is preferable to several other accounts, and we use this as a reason in support of our approach to the realism debate more generally. (shrink)

This article starts with a brief overview of well-known criticisms of modern democracy in order to suggest a different approach: reflecting on the principles of Western democracy in the basic horizon of the problematic of the self and wondering if the ‘multiple’ self should not be conceived as the single subjective correlate that is adequate to democratic pluralism and also as the only chance of curing ourselves of ‘fundamentalism’. I try to highlight the Derridian radical view of democracy as (...) “always still to come”, placing it in the generic framework of ‘postmodern ethics’. I distinguish between two trends in postmodern ethics and also between three kinds or models of relationship to the self, in order to argue that the ‘multiple’ self, that is the self conceived as an irreducible multiplicity of voices, positions, tendencies, vocabularies, and characters, might claim the status of an ideal that needs to be fully embraced and understood in all its consequences – some of them profoundly disturbing for the old ‘images of the self’ consecrated by our tradition, on the one side Greek and Latin, on the other, Judeo-Christian –, if we want that democracy actually become a social and political reality. I conclude this paper with a plea for resistance to biopolitical normalization. (shrink)

_Purpose._ The paper attempts to investigate the constructivist approach to the social world and its implications for social forecasting. _Theoretical basis._ Social forecasting is mainly based on the idea that a human is "determined ontologically". Using the methodology of the natural sciences, most predictions and forecasts fail to encompass all the multiplicity and variability of the future. The postmodern interpretation of reality gave impetus to the development of the new approaches to it. A constructivist approach to social reality (...) began to compete with essentialism. Social constructivism asserts that reality is a set of mental constructs, that it is ultimately a text. Radical constructivism interprets reality as a specific system of meanings emphasizing the artifact aspects of our reality. An interpretation of the social actors’ behavior is based on the ways of understanding accepted in a given society/community and do not possess ontological universality. The creators of social space are also its creations. _Originality._ Within the framework of the postmodern approach to reality, the second-order forecasting, or forecasting of forecasting, is particularly relevant. That means that the observers-forecasters must be included in the forecast as a part of one-unified process. At this stage, a forecaster must realize that he/she is a part of a larger system, a part of the world he/she observes (and actually creates). The situation changes dramatically – the forecaster is forced to take responsibility for his/her own observations. This ultimately leads to the "humanization" of forecasting. Acting in our world full of uncertainty, unpredictability, and turbulence, modern researchers of the future should be mindful of powerful social constructs of reality. _Conclusions._ Social forecasting should be embedded in a wider context, which requires a joint effort of philosophers, foresight practitioners, historians, psychologists, sociologists, political scientists, religious scholars, anthropologists, etc. To develop promising visions and scenarios of the future, it is necessary to answer the question "Why?", which is the task of philosophically oriented research, because without this answer, we will deal with the consequences; and the implementation of the negative scenarios will reproduce itself in new socio-cultural and historical conditions. An in-depth understanding of this "Why?" provides opportunities to be in the flow of transformations. The study of the deep mental processes of the actors of social changes, the multidimensional influence on the transformation of social structures can gradually expand an answer to the question "Why?", that can cause positive changes and, accordingly, allow to create fruitful projects of the future and form effective behavioral strategies that correspond to the desired level of social development. (shrink)

The French physicist Jean Baptiste Perrin is widely credited with providing the conclusive argument for atomism. The most well-known part of Perrin’s argument is his description of thirteen different procedures for determining Avogadro’s number (N)–the number of atoms, ions, and molecules contained in a gram-atom, gram-ion, and gram-mole of a substance, respectively. Because of its success in ending the atomism debates Perrin’s argument has been the focus of much philosophical interest. The various philosophers, however, have reached different conclusions, not only (...) about the argument’s general rationale but also the role that the multiple determination of N played in it. This paper emphasizes the historical development of Perrin’s experimental work in order to understand the role that the multiple determination of molecular magnitudes played in his argument for molecular reality. It claims that Perrin used the multiple determination strategy to put forward an exceptionally strong no-coincidence argument to argue for both the correctness of the values for the molecular magnitudes determined and the validity of the auxiliary assumptions upon which the different determinations were based. The historicist approach also allows the identification of the elements responsible for the epistemic strength of Perrin’s no-coincidence argument. (shrink)

Fichte’s distinction, in his Wissenschaftslehre of 1812, between what shifts from visibility into invisibility and vice versa – respectively, reality (A) and thought (B) – operates upon a chiastic premise. First, their difference can be described as a shift in the focus – which takes places at the B-level – from one to the other. In short, then, A and B stand in a relation of inverse proportionality. Secondly, their being brought together as each other’s reverse (or multiplicative inverse) (...) does not erase their difference – quite the opposite: it only serves to highlight it. Lastly, the fact that it is only from B’s self-reflective perspective that B and then, ultimately, A become visible in their difference hints at the fact that their unity and their difference is purely thinkable. Therefore, against the dominant view (which I analyze in section 8) that Fichte gradually moved from a philosophy of the “I” to one of the “absolute” of which the 1812 Wissenschaftslehre is often taken to be the final expression I contend (in sections 2–5) following Isabelle Thomas-Fogiel, that Fichte’s ongoing enquiry into the problem of thought’s self-transparency – which, I further argue, haunts the history of philosophy from Parmenides and Plato to Wittgenstein – reaches its zenith in this text. Concerning the dissymmetric correlation of being and thought in it, I moreover offer (in sections 6–7) both a structuralist interpretation – in dialogue with Cristiana Senigaglia and Max Marcuzzi’s novel approaches to Fichte’s late ontology – and a diagrammatic representation. Finally, after examining (in section 9) Heidegger’s reliance on Fichte and the way in which the ambiguity of Heidegger’s own thought becomes apparent in light of it (regardless of whether one focusses on the first or the second Heidegger), I assess (in section 10) the manner in which a structuralist reinterpretation of Fichte’s philosophy might influence the contemporary discussion on the dissociation or, alternatively, the intertwining of earth and world. This would also reveal a chance to move beyond post-structuralism and into a neo-structuralist type of thinking which I explore in dialogue with Roy Wagner’s meta-conceptual use of the notion of inverse proportionality. (shrink)