We trace the difference between the ways in which apes and humans co–operate to differences in communicative abilities, claiming that the pressure for future–directed co–operation was a major force behind the evolution of language. Competitive co–operation concerns goals that are present in the environment and have stable values. It relies on either signalling or joint attention. Future–directed co–operation concerns new goals that lack fixed values. It requires symbolic communication and context–independent representations of means and goals. We analyse these ways (...) of co–operating in game–theoretic terms and submit that the co–operative strategy of games that involve shared representations of future goals may provide new equilibrium solutions. (shrink)

_Operation Valhalla_ collects eighteen texts by German media theorist Friedrich Kittler on the close connections between war and media technology. In these essays, public lectures, interviews, literary analyses, and autobiographical musings, Kittler outlines how war has been a central driver of media's evolution, from Prussia's wars against Napoleon to the so-called War on Terror. Covering an eclectic array of topics, he charts the intertwined military and theatrical histories of the searchlight and the stage lamp, traces the microprocessor's genealogy back to (...) the tank, shows how rapid-fire guns brought about new standards for optics and acoustics, and reads Thomas Pynchon's _Gravity's Rainbow_ to upset established claims about the relationship between war, technology, and history in the twentieth century. Throughout, _Operation Valhalla_ foregrounds the outsize role of war in media history as well as Kittler's importance as a daring and original thinker. (shrink)

This paper presents dialectic not as semantics but as an operational discipline. We couple a control plane **U–P–S (Universal–Particular–Singular)** with a data plane **B–T–Π (Values–Transitions–Propositions)** to form a coherent pipeline that preserves contradiction as an engine (**B**) and authorizes conclusions only by **commit (=)**. Equality is not a global property but a **one-shot license event** scoped to a window **W** (**Non-Transport**, **No-Promotion**). The process operator **σ** is restricted to **one-shot**. **Observation‑equivalence (≈_obs)** has priority and any global **π** (a "God’s‑eye" (...) perspective) is forbidden. Semantically, we adopt the Belnap/FDE four values **{T, F, B, N}** with **{T, B}** designated. Only passage through the -/- ``` Gate(W) := stage = s ∧ δ_abs ∧ (σ_trace ≍) ∧ Guards(Exh/Det/Coh/No3‑Lock/Arrow) ``` -/- triggers a commit. **Explosion** (EFQ: *p, ¬p ⊢ q*) is underivable, and the **=‑free** fragment obtained by deleting `'='`, `σ`, and the gate rules is **conservative** over FDE/LP. An external logic **L** is embedded via an adapter into **{T, F, B, N} × margin** and connected through **π_W**; the **judgement form (J‑Form)**, by the **No‑Compute** constraint, does not interfere with value computation. Philosophically, identity is interpreted not as an invariance (**δ_abs**) but as an **event (=)**; truth is the **state of the commit log**. Lacan’s **extimité** is rendered as the scope structure **D/D′/W**, while Hegelian negativity is engine‑ized as the preservation and unfolding of **B**. A topological reading (gate = boundary; crossing index = **a_eff**) converges to the indexation of the operational log. The separation of **observation / ontology / event** and a **trace‑compatibility** decision procedure make implementation and audit feasible. Applications include (i) conflict‑preserving commits in knowledge graphs / data integration, (ii) model governance and compliance with tracked **promotion / issuance / TTL / contention**, and (iii) reproducibility gates that require commits to precede experiments / claims. In short, the system is non‑trivially coherent and formalizes dialectic not as mere description but as an **executable protocol**. UPS redefines equality as a window‑local one‑shot event. By combining the gate (**Abs= · trace‑compat · stage · guards · ¬mark**) with an **append‑only** ledger, it guarantees **non‑explosion** together with **concurrency‑safe uniqueness**, and the **=‑free** fragment remains a conservative isomorph of FDE. -/- **Keywords:** paraconsistent logic, dialectic, operational semantics, commit event, σ‑lag (one‑shot), observation‑equivalence, conservativity, Belnap/FDE, extimité, gate discipline, UPS Protocol. Translation of: "UPS 프로토콜: 변증법의 운영적 형식화". PhilArchive ID: CDAOEC. Commentary: "UPS Protocol Commentary: “= Is an Event” — σ One-Shot and Gate Discipline" PhilArchive ID: CUPCWW. (shrink)

One hundred years after the creation of quantum theory, there is no consensus on the kind of reality that is described by the theory. In this paper, 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 quantum theory. In particular, 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 that the formalism itself, and bracket much of its metaphysically-laden language. I also outline the main features of quantum reconstruction with a view to highlighting its significance for philosophic interpretation, and describe the value of adopting an operational stance during both reconstruction and interpretation. -/- As a case study of reconstruction-based interpretation, I describe the reconstruction of the identical particle formalism, and its step-by-step interpretation, highlighting both 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. Finally, I describe some of the pitfalls that one faces in any attempt to directly interpret the identical particle formalism. (shrink)

The philosophy of Confucius has often been accused of lacking classical definitions of its core concepts. However, as I shall argue, Confucius systematically used nonclassical definitions—to be precise, operational ones. The notion of operational definition comes from Percy Bridgman’s The Logic of Modern Physics and means that the definiendum is defined by a set of operations that results in determining the meaning of the term in question. In the case of Confucian argumentation, operational definitions are mostly nominal and, in contrast (...) to unambiguous methods of measurement, also context-dependent. This results in there being various yet not mutually inconsistent definitions of one term, and in “paradigmatic examples” playing a crucial role. As I show, this mode of defining things had major implications for the content of Confucius’ thought. In fact, many of its forms could be traced back to other Chinese philosophers, including those of non-Confucian provenance. (shrink)

Motivated by a recent proof of free choices in linking equations to the experiments they describe, I clarify some relations among purely mathematical entities featured in quantum mechanics (probabilities, density operators, partial traces, and operator-valued measures), thereby allowing applications of these entities to the modeling of a wider variety of physical situations. I relate conditional probabilities associated with projection-valued measures to conditional density operators identical, in some cases but not in others, to the usual reduced density operators. While a (...) fatal obstacle precludes associating conditional density operators with general non-projective measures, tensor products of general positive operator-valued measures (POVMs) are associated with conditional density operators. This association together with the free choice of probe particles allows a postulate of state reductions to be replaced by a theorem. An application shows an equivalence between one form of quantum key distribution and another with respect to certain eavesdropping attacks. (shrink)

In this essay on man Mr. Fuller expresses what may well be his penultimate view of the human condition. Here, in a mood at once philosophical and involved, Mr. Fuller traces man’s intellectual evolution and weighs his capability for survival on this magnificent craft, this Spaceship Earth, this superbly designed sphere of almost negligible dimension in the great vastness of space. Mr. Fuller is optimistic that man will survive and, through research and development and increased industrialization, generate wealth so rapidly (...) that he can do very great things. But, he notes, there must be an enormous educational task successfully accomplished right now to convert man’s ten­dency toward oblivion into a realization of his potential, to a universe-exploring advantage from this Spaceship Earth. It has been noted that Mr. Fuller spins ideas in clusters, and clusters of his ideas generate still other clusters. The concept “spaceship earth” is Mr. Fuller’s, and though used by Barbara Ward as the title of a work of her own the idea was acknowledged by her there as deriving from Mr. Fuller. The brilliant syntheses of some fundamental Fuller principles given here makes of this book a microcosm of the Fuller system. (shrink)

This paper establishes that geometric structure — distance, metric, curvature, and the analytic machinery built upon them — is not operationally necessary in any operational system but a representational artifact: a formal construct encoding the algebraic structure of the rank-3 minimal operational closure C⁽³⁾_Πd into an extended descriptive language. The argument proceeds from the axiomatic foundation of Operatiology, in which C⁽³⁾_Πd is derived from three axioms governing non-commutativity, Πd-saturation with finite generator rank, and redundancy exclusion, and from the companion result (...) that algebra is the unique top-down projection of the operational substrate. The Metric Reduction Theorem establishes that every admissible distance structure is a projection of the trace inner product Tr(A†B) of M₃(ℂ), the unique minimal algebraic realisation of C⁽³⁾_Πd, and is therefore not an independent operational primitive. The Geometric Unbounded Index Obstruction lemma classifies continuous curves, infinite metric spaces, topological neighbourhoods, and curvature as elements of the termination-failure equivalence class [ℐ/∼], with distinct obstruction types. Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries are classified by the same mechanism, differentiated only by the curvature parameter of their metric projection. The Euclidean–non-Euclidean dispute is dissolved as a competition between alternative representational languages. The general relativistic metric formulation is classified as a representational artifact without affecting its empirical validity. Published on May 30, 2026 DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20465726. (shrink)

This paper is a sequel to “Subject Unicity and Self-Ascription: A Paraconsistent Formalization with σ-Lag” (hereafter “Subject Theory”, PhilPapers record CSUADU.). Preserving the value layer and rules of the previous work (X–σ, No3, SU-bridge), we extend the observational/representational layer into a topological–operational model. Specifically, we introduce a state space X, a decidable region O_+++ = { f_I>0, f_S>0, f_R>0 }, and a local orientation indicator R_sig = sign det[∇f_I, ∇f_S, ∇f_R], thereby relocating the judgment of the jouissance effect into a (...) topological space. Clinically, this means one reports only triggers/evidence, while the equality sign (=) is an event-type fixation permitted once only within a licensing window. The key indicators are: (i) a continuous quantity a_eff := Res_σ(Φ) ∈ ℝ_{≥0} representing the amount of σ-trace, (ii) R_sig ∈ {−1, 0, +1}, and (iii) the optional reinforcement by μ̄_123. Here, observational equivalence ≈_obs is evidenced by a_eff(x) > 0 and is kept strictly distinct from ontological equivalence ≡_onto. As a result, the structure remains discrete, while phenomenology is smoothly tracked via continuous quantities such as a_eff and κ. Lacan’s “phallus = imaginary” is re-formalized not as rhetoric but as an anti-scalarization rule: φ acts only as an inner rotation operator carried by the imaginary axis of quaternions (including slice invariance), forbidding any fall into the value layer. Fixation of fantasy is judged by the topological loop with R_sig = −1, and the promotion ‘≈ → =’ is permitted exactly once only within the AUG_eq subcategory. The subject–object a relation is read as a Möbius isomorph: ontologically equivalent yet phase-inverted on the observational layer, so ‘=’ is allowed only as an event after passing Gate(Δτ), thereby blocking explosion routes. Furthermore, consistency with the University discourse is exhibited by ∂(a_eff)/∂(s*) > 0 when x ∈ O_+++ and R_sig = −1, capturing the right-hand sensitivity (S2 → a) on the top line. Safety is secured by No3, SU, and the Reflexive Guards: global ‘=’ is prohibited; no direct updates to the value layer; and R_sig, μ̄_123, amp are used purely as trigger/evidence indicators. This design supplies a checklist-style clinical heuristic (Obs/σ/AUG logs, the condition R_sig = −1 ∧ a_eff > 0, and exactly one ‘=’ after gate approval) without compromising structural stability. In short, symptoms are not erased but operated—fixed as events precisely at the point where the same strip meets again, now inverted. 이 글은 「주체의 자기귀속과 단일성: σ-시차와 파라일관 논리의 형식화」(이하 「주체론」, PhilPapers record CSUADU.)의 후속이다. 전작 「주체론」의 값층·규칙(X–σ, No3, SU-브리지)을 그대로 유지한 채, 관측·표상 레이어를 위상-연산 모델로 확장한다. 구체적으로, 상태공간 X와 판정가능 영역 O_+++ = { f_I>0, f_S>0, f_R>0 } 및 국소 방향 판정자 R_sig = sign det[∇f_I, ∇f_S, ∇f_R]를 도입해, 주이상스 효과의 판정을 위상공간으로 이관한다. 이렇게 하면 임상에서는 증거·트리거만 보고하고, 등호(=)는 면허 윈도우에서만 1회 허가되는 사건형 고정으로 제한된다. 핵심 지표로는 (i) σ-흔적의 양을 나타내는 연속량 a_eff := Res_σ(Φ) ∈ ℝ_{≥0}, (ii) R_sig ∈ {−1, 0, +1}, (iii) 필요 시 보강되는 μ̄_123 등을 사용한다. 이때 관측-동치 ≈_obs는 a_eff(x) > 0에 의해 증거화되며, 존재론-동치 ≡_onto와 엄격히 구분된다. 덕분에 구조는 이산이되, 양상은 a_eff와 κ 같은 연속값으로 매끈하게 추적된다. 라캉의 "남근=허수"는 수사가 아니라 반(反)스칼라화 규칙으로 재정식화된다: φ는 사원수 허수 캐리어의 내적 회전 연산자(슬라이스 불변성 포함)로만 작동하며, 값층으로의 낙하를 금지한다. 환상의 교착은 R_sig = −1인 위상 고리로 판정되고, '≈ → =' 승격은 AUG_eq 하위 범주에서만 1회 허가된다. 또한 주체–대상 a 관계는 뫼비우스 동형으로 읽힌다: 존재론적으로는 동치이나 관측층에서는 위상이 반전되어, 등호는 오직 Gate(Δτ) 통과 시 사건형으로만 잠깐 가능하다(폭발 경로 차단). 더 나아가, 대학 담론과의 정합성은 x ∈ O_+++ · R_sig = −1일 때 ∂(a_eff)/∂(s*) > 0가 성립함을 통해 보인다(상단 S2 → a 채널의 우항 감도). 안전성은 No3·SU·Reflexive Guards로 고정된다: 전역 '=' 금지, 값층 직접 갱신 금지, 트리거/증거 전용 지표(R_sig, μ̄_123, amp). 이 설계는 임상에서 체크리스트형 휴리스틱(Obs/σ/AUG 로그, R_sig = −1 ∧ a_eff > 0 조건, 게이트 승인을 거친 단 1회의 '=')을 제공하면서도 구조적 안정성을 해치지 않는다. 요컨대, 증상은 지워지는 게 아니라 운용되며, 같은 띠지만 뒤집혀 만나는 그 지점에서 사건으로 고정된다. (shrink)

Abstract Human civilization is drifting along an irreversible high-entropy trajectory toward systemic collapse. The root cause is not any single runaway technology but a deeper meta-error: mistaking a local, human-desire-centered operating system for the operating law of the cosmos itself. This book traces how that error was amplified through a specific lineage of instrumental rationality and growth-oriented institutions, reaching a critical threshold in the age of artificial intelligence — where AI functions not as the origin of crisis but as an (...) unconstrained Desire Amplification Factor (DAF) for pre-existing patterns of want. -/- Rather than asserting its answer prematurely, Volume II surveys the twentieth century’s major attempts at cosmic integration — cybernetics, general systems theory, dissipative structure theory, the Gaia hypothesis, process philosophy — identifying the “last step” each approaches but does not complete: a universal boundary function constraining energy–information transformation across scales. Volume III fills this gap by systematically presenting the Lao-Yang Genesis Cosmology (LYGC), reading the Dao De Jing’s two thirteen-character chains — the Emulation Chain (人法地、地法天、天法道、道法自然) and the Generative Chain (道生一、一生二、二生三、三生万物) — as a precise astrophysical mapping, from which the Cosmic Constraint Function (CCF), Desire Amplification Factor (DAF), Civilization Stability Function (Λ), and Sage Entropy are derived as operational constructs. Volumes IV–VI address Artificial Wisdom as a governance paradigm distinct from artificial intelligence, the reconstruction of resource-balanced civilizational institutions, and humanity’s long-term position as a participant in, rather than conqueror of, cosmic evolution. -/- The book’s methodological commitment is to strictly separate four levels of argument — empirical science, systems modeling, normative philosophy, and cosmology — and to treat wu-wei (無爲) as a logic of self-organizing attractors rather than a euphemism for coercive algorithmic control, so as to avoid reproducing the very high-entropy governance structure it critiques. (shrink)

This article advances an operative form of phenomenological realism grounded in the axiom that “what has not shown itself is not yet.” Truth is treated not as a static property but as an ontological event of donation, articulated through a hinge between Realism of the Ontological Event (ROE) and Epistemic Inferentialism (EI), which integrates the Sellarsian critique of the “Myth of the Given” without collapsing into coherentism. Truth persists through modalities of trace: the reinstantiable R-trace of replicable laboratory (...) phenomena and the archival A-trace of singular events, both possessing equal ontological dignity. Applying this framework to quantum physics, I argue for ontological neutrality until donation: interpretations gain commitment only when they generate new forms of appearing. To make this operative, I propose an L1–L4 hierarchy with thresholds involving replication, inter-instrumental convergence, counterfactual controls, statistical preregistration, open traceability, and temporal durability. This approach reframes truth across philosophical and scientific practice. (shrink)

Modern physics is divided into two empirically successful yet theoretically incompatible frameworks: the Standard Model of quantum fields and General Relativity of spacetime geometry. Despite decades of effort, unification attempts have relied on speculative constructs — supersymmetry, extra dimensions, string theory — none of which have been experimentally confirmed. Persistent anomalies, including the muon g-2 discrepancy, electron g-2 measurement inconsistencies, fine-structure constant deviations, and the continued non-detection of dark matter or gravitons, resist explanation within either framework alone. -/- Version 1 (...) of CM-GUT identified a categorical misinterpretation at the root of this impasse: treating gravity as an internally generated interaction rather than as an external operational constraint. By formalizing operational type separation — distinguishing Type I (internal generation) from Type II (external constraint) operations within the algebra M₃(ℂ) — Version 1 provided a unified explanation of the above anomalies as natural consequences of the Type I–Type II interface, without introducing new particles, extra dimensions, or modifications to existing physics. -/- Version 2 advances the foundation on three fronts. First, the Type Separation Principle, declared as an independent axiom in Version 1, is here derived as a theorem from Axioms A1–A4 alone. The external gravitational constraint δt(x)·I lies outside the commutator closure of M₃(ℂ) by a trace identity: every element of the Type I operational closure is traceless, while δt(x)·I carries nonzero trace. The impossibility of quantum gravity follows as a structural necessity, not a phenomenological observation. Second, the axiomatic foundation is fully aligned with the CM standard axiom set A1–A4 and the Noological Tier architecture. Third, the post-Version 1 result that particle ontology is non-essential is integrated as a second independent argument for graviton non-existence: once particles are identified as Tier 3 projections rather than ontological primitives, the graviton concept becomes unavailable prior to any dynamical consideration. -/- Version 2 does not unify the Standard Model and General Relativity as independent theories. It derives both as Tier 3 projections of a single Tier 1 algebraic structure, making unification a consequence rather than a task. The falsifiable predictions of Version 1 are retained and their theoretical grounding is strengthened. -/- Published on April, 9 DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19485015. (shrink)

In the paper, tracing the traditional Hilbert-style syntactic account of logics, a syntactic characteristic of a closure operation defined on a complete lattice follows. The approach is based on observation that the role of rule of inference for a given consequence operation may be played by an ordinary binary relation on the complete lattice on which the closure operation is defined.

This paper derives van der Waals interactions from M₃(ℂ) non-commutative algebra structure constants within the Cognitional Mechanics (CM) framework. Traditional London theory describes dispersion forces via polarizability and ionization energy in physical coordinates, leaving structural questions unanswered: why r⁻⁶ specifically, what is the geometric origin of C₆, and what is the algebraic meaning of polarizability. -/- CM reformulates these interactions in operational coordinates where London's "polarization" becomes off-diagonal operator components and "quantum fluctuations" represent temporal evolution of non-commutativity. The r⁻⁶ (...) dependence emerges not as a perturbative consequence but as a geometric necessity: it is the unique leading asymptotic term consistent with 4th-order non-commutative trace structure, dimensional reduction from su(3) to its off-diagonal subspace, and rotational symmetry in 3D physical space. This form is dictated by the algebra of M₃(ℂ)—it cannot be obtained by fitting experimental data. -/- This structural derivation of an interaction law complements the companion algebraic derivations of α⁻¹, μ, and αG within the same framework, where fundamental physical constants emerge from M₃(ℂ) with zero free parameters. Taken together, these results establish that M₃(ℂ) is not a fitting tool but an axiomatic structure from which both the forms of physical laws and the values of physical constants follow as necessary consequences. -/- Molecular electronic states are represented as operators F ∈ M₃(ℂ) with interaction energy defined via commutator traces. The C₆ coefficient is computed from su(3) structure constants (Gell-Mann matrices) with explicit calculation procedure provided. Ultra-precision implementation incorporates effective nuclear charge with exchange-correlation corrections (Perdew 1996), distance-dependent shielding functions evaluated at van der Waals equilibrium distance, Dirac first-order relativistic corrections (0.032–0.29% for Ar–Xe), numerical Hartree-Fock orbitals from NIST Atomic Spectra Database with adaptive Gauss-Kronrod quadrature achieving 10⁻⁸ accuracy, and higher-order dispersion terms (C₈, C₁₀ from rank-4 structure constants). Final results: He–He (0.07% error), Ne–Ne (0.13%), Ar–Ar (0.02%), Kr–Kr (0.15%), Xe–Xe (0.21%), average 0.12% error, matching ab initio CCSD(T) benchmarks. -/- Results demonstrate quantitative correspondence between operational constraints and physical measurements, establishing that intermolecular interactions arise from geometric state space constraints rather than quantum fluctuations per se. All numerical calculations are fully specified via explicit formulas ensuring complete reproducibility without external code. The framework extends London theory as a valid physical coordinate description while providing higher-level operational structure, unifying chemistry as non-commutative operational programs executed on material hardware. Future applications include covalent/ionic bonding operational descriptions, chemical kinetics formulation, and connection to emergent gauge structures in the CM-GUT framework. (shrink)

Cognitive psychologists, like biologists, frequently describe mechanisms when explaining phenomena. Unlike biologists, who can often trace material transformations to identify operations, psychologists face a more daunting task in identifying operations that transform information. Behavior provides little guidance as to the nature of the operations involved. While not itself revealing the operations, identification of brain areas involved in psychological mechanisms can help constrain attempts to characterize the operations. In current memory research, evidence that the same brain areas are involved in (...) what are often taken to be different memory phenomena or in other cognitive phenomena is playing such a heuristic function. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, 0119, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093‐0119; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

This paper reclassifies the quantum gravity problem by exposing a directional error embedded in its very formulation. The phrase "quantum gravity" presupposes that gravity—like the other fundamental forces—should be quantized as an internal interaction. We demonstrate that this assumption conflates two operationally distinct roles: constraint (Type II) and generation (Type I). -/- Gravity functions as an external constraint that modulates the evolution rate of quantum processes; it is not an internally generated field admitting particle excitations. The non-commutativity axiom (∃A,B : (...) A∘B ≠ B∘A) renders operational ordering physically significant, mandating the reversed direction "gravitational–quantum" (constraint → generation) as structurally necessary. Consequently, the persistent failure to detect gravitons, non-renormalizability of perturbative gravity, and Planck-scale singularities are reinterpreted not as technical obstacles but as structural consequences of a category error. Under this reclassification, gravity requires no quantization, extra dimensions, or new particles—it is the background condition under which quantum generation unfolds. -/- This 2nd Edition advances the foundation of the 1st Edition on three fronts. -/- First, the Type Separation Principle—previously a declared axiom in CM-GUT Version 1—is now a theorem derived from Axioms A1–A4 in CM-GUT Version 2: since every commutator [A,B] is traceless while the gravitational term δt(x)·I carries nonzero trace, the impossibility of generating Type II from Type I is a structural necessity of M₃(ℂ), not a postulate. -/- Second, a second independent proof of the impossibility of quantum gravity is established through the dissolution of particle ontology: the graviton concept presupposes particle excitations, but particles are Tier 3 observational constructions unavailable at Tier 1, rendering the graviton structurally undefined prior to any dynamical argument. Together these constitute a double impossibility proof closing the logical space from two independent directions. -/- Third, each section is closed by an explicit Structural Consequence block fixing the logical conclusions against which no interpretive escape remains. -/- Published on April, 11 2026 DOI: 10.5281/19504320. (shrink)

Several digital contact tracing smartphone applications have been developed worldwide in the effort to combat COVID-19 that warn users of potential exposure to infectious patients and generate big data that helps in early identification of hotspots, complementing the manual tracing operations. In most democracies, concerns over a breach in data privacy have resulted in severe opposition toward their mandatory adoption. This paper examines India as a noticeable exception, where the compulsory installation of such a government-backed application, the “Aarogya Setu” has (...) been deemed mandatory in certain situations. We argue that the mandatory app requirement constitutes a legitimate public health intervention during a public health emergency. (shrink)

The establishment and key features of the subsequent history of each of NZ’s main Sociology departments is traced. The first wave of establishments in the 1960s was pushed by neighbouring disciplines but arguably resisted by ‘Oxbridge’ higher administration officials. Two more departments were established in the 1990s, and there was some geographical dispersion across university sites together with repackaging into semi-autonomous ‘programmes’ embedded within much larger schools. Over the last five decades departments have risen and fallen and cooperated with one (...) another to varying degrees. (shrink)

This article analyzes US drone operations through a historical and ethnographic analysis of the remote split paradigm used by the US Air Force. Remote split refers to the globally distributed command and control of drone operations and entails a network of human operators and analysts in the Middle East, Europe, and Southeast Asia as well as in the continental United States. Though often viewed as a teleological progression of “unmanned” warfare, this paper argues that historically specific technopolitical logics establish the (...) conditions of possibility for the work of war to be divisible into discreet and computationally mediated tasks that are viewed as effective in US military engagements. To do so, the article traces how new forms of authorized evidence and expertise have shaped developments in military operations and command and control priorities from the Cold War and the “electronic battlefield” of Vietnam through the Gulf War and the conflict in the Balkans to contemporary deployments of drone operations. The article concludes by suggesting that it is by paying attention to divisions of labor and human–machine configurations that we can begin to understand the everyday and often invisible structures that sustain perpetual war as a military strategy of the United States. (shrink)

In this paper we critically examine mobile markets as an emerging approach to serving communities with limited healthy food options. Mobile markets are essentially farm stands on wheels, bringing fresh fruits, vegetables and other food staples into neighborhoods, especially those lacking traditional, full service grocery stores, or where a significant proportion of the population lacks transportation to grocery stores. We first trace the emergence of contemporary mobile markets, including a brief summary about how and where they operate, what they (...) aim to achieve, who they serve, and the general constraints on their operations. We then report case study findings that examine the operational benefits and challenges of two mobile markets operating in Syracuse, New York. Our research suggests that although Syracuse’s mobile markets play a positive role in alleviating geographic, economic and social barriers to fresh food access experienced by elderly, immobile and low income residents living in Syracuse’s urban neighborhoods, the impacts of the mobile markets are dampened by both operational constraints and larger political and economic forces. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the interpretation of the exclamation point in German; for example, Es hat geschneit! ‘It has been snowing!’. I argue that the exclamation point contributes a lexical operator for verum at the layer of writing acts. Specifically, it introduces the writer’s wish to ensure the recognition of the writing act in its scope. This lexicon-based proposal builds on a lexicon-based analysis of verum focus. However, while verum focus is related to the propositional layer, the exclamation (...) point is argued to relate to the act layer. The following advantages are defended: (i) The proposal accounts for both the functional kinship between exclamation points and verum focus and their distributional differences. On the one hand, both means introduce affirmative emphasis by a bouletic attitude; on the other hand, the exclamation point has a much wider distribution than verum focus, as it is not bound to contexts that provide a controversy between a proposition and its negation. (ii) The difference in semantic scope can be traced back to a structural difference. While verum focus is integrated into its host clause, exclamation points occupy a peripheral structural position, which is typical of act modifiers. (iii) The lexicon-based approach to the interpretation of exclamation points has noteworthy broader implications. It provides an independent cross-modal piece of evidence in favor of a lexicon-based analysis of verum focus instead of a focus-based one. Furthermore, it is amenable to a formal compositional implementation. This implementation comprises first steps toward a formal model of writing acts in terms of Commitment Space Semantics and advances the general hypothesis that the graphematic form licenses a systematic mapping from form to meaning in its own right. (shrink)

We present the Dirac and Laplacian operators on Clifford bundles over space–time, associated to metric compatible linear connections of Cartan–Weyl, with trace-torsion, Q. In the case of nondegenerate metrics, we obtain a theory of generalized Brownian motions whose drift is the metric conjugate of Q. We give the constitutive equations for Q. We find that it contains Maxwell’s equations, characterized by two potentials, an harmonic one which has a zero field (Bohm-Aharonov potential) and a coexact term that generalizes the (...) Hertz potential of Maxwell’s equations in Minkowski space.We develop the theory of the Hertz potential for a general Riemannian manifold. We study the invariant state for the theory, and determine the decomposition of Q in this state which has an invariant Born measure. In addition to the logarithmic potential derivative term, we have the previous Maxwellian potentials normalized by the invariant density. We characterize the time-evolution irreversibility of the Brownian motions generated by the Cartan–Weyl laplacians, in terms of these normalized Maxwell’s potentials. We prove the equivalence of the sourceless Maxwell equation on Minkowski space, and the Dirac-Hestenes equation for a Dirac-Hestenes spinor field written on Minkowski space provided with a Cartan–Weyl connection. If Q is characterized by the invariant state of the diffusion process generated on Euclidean space, then the Maxwell’s potentials appearing in Q can be seen alternatively as derived from the internal rotational degrees of freedom of the Dirac-Hestenes spinor field, yet the equivalence between Maxwell’s equation and Dirac-Hestenes equations is valid if we have that these potentials have only two components corresponding to the spin-plane. We present Lorentz-invariant diffusion representations for the Cartan–Weyl connections that sustain the equivalence of these equations, and furthermore, the diffusion of differential forms along these Brownian motions. We prove that the construction of the relativistic Brownian motion theory for the flat Minkowski metric, follows from the choices of the degenerate Clifford structure and the Oron and Horwitz relativistic Gaussian, instead of the Euclidean structure and the orthogonal invariant Gaussian. We further indicate the random Poincaré–Cartan invariants of phase-space provided with the canonical symplectic structure. We introduce the energy-form of the exact terms of Q and derive the relativistic quantum potential from the groundstate representation. We derive the field equations corresponding to these exact terms from an average on the invariant state Cartan scalar curvature, and find that the quantum potential can be identified with 1 / 12R(g), where R(g) is the metric scalar curvature. We establish a link between an anisotropic noise tensor and the genesis of a gravitational field in terms of the generalized Brownian motions. Thus, when we have a nontrivial curvature, we can identify the quantum nonlocal correlations with the gravitational field. We discuss the relations of this work with the heat kernel approach in quantum gravity. We finally present for the case of Q restricted to this exact term a supersymmetric system, in the classical sense due to E.Witten, and discuss the possible extensions to include the electromagnetic potential terms of Q. (shrink)

This article discusses a Leverhulme residency undertaken by the author Julie Brixey-Williams in 2003–4 at the Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland. Notions of medical visibility were explored through practice-led investigations under the umbrella title, Traces of the Invisible, that concentrated on making concrete, visible responses to the hidden or intangible elements of the anesthetist’s working life in areas such as sleep, breath, pain and genetic markers. Rosebud is a unique nine-foot concertina bookwork created after reading the entire (...) story of The Sleeping Beauty into an anesthetic machine. This essay expands upon the concepts and material responses that led to the making of the book with particular reference to how the book’s structure forms a relationship to language and the body-as-site, whilst operating as a sculptural object that raises the visibility of the anesthetic profession. Fairy tales and their telling, including stories of enchanted sleep, transformational qualities, magical languages and shaman healers, will be examined alongside. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to present a significant current British case of the application of an ethical approach to banking practice — it relates to issues of stakeholder dialogue, corporate strategy, and marketing.The Co-operative bank traces its organisational origins to the 1870s, and its founding principle to the beginnings of the co-operative movement in the 1830s.

We review studies of an evolution operator ℒ for a discrete Langevin equation with a strongly hyperbolic classical dynamics and a Gaussian noise. The leading eigenvalue of ℒ yields a physically measurable property of the dynamical system, the escape rate from the repeller. The spectrum of the evolution operator ℒ in the weak noise limit can be computed in several ways. A method using a local matrix representation of the operator allows to push the corrections to the (...) escape rate up to order eight in the noise expansion parameter. These corrections then appear to form a divergent series. Actually, via a cumulant expansion, they relate to analogous divergent series for other quantities, the traces of the evolution operators ℒn. Using an integral representation of the evolution operator ℒ, we then investigate the high order corrections to the latter traces. Their asymptotic behavior is found to be controlled by sub-dominant saddle points previously neglected in the perturbative expansion, and to be ultimately described by a kind of trace formula. (shrink)

Gadamer rarely spoke of sedimentation and is not known as a philosopher who had much to say about the issue. This article would like to make the case that he is an important thinker of sedimentation and one who stands, in this regard as in others, in the best tradition of phenomenology. If one understands by sedimentation what is “deposited” in consciousness and determines it, but of which it is not always aware of, nor can become fully conscious of, one (...) does find in Gadamer’s thinking quite a few instances of what could also be called the immemorial in consciousness. One has to think here first of the subterranean work of history in the Wirkungsgeschichte which culminates in a conception of consciousness which is affected by this “effective history,” a consciousness of which Gadamer says that it is more “Being than consciousness,” i.e., more sedimented than conscious of its sedimentations. This sedimented influence of history on consciousness operates through the prejudices and traditions that determine us and that say more about us than our conscious judgements. Ultimately, this sedimentation is at work in the language that we speak and the dialogue that we are which are always more inherited than they are created by consciousness. (shrink)

This article traces the conceptual lineage of AGI through three influential paradigms: strong AI, human-level AI, and AGI—highlighting the philosophical and operational tensions shaping contemporary debates. The article examines emerging reorientations toward operational benchmarks that decouple artificial intelligence from human-like cognition. It proposes a novel taxonomy to evaluate divergent developmental trajectories—Promethean and Noctuidean orientations—and argues that anthropocentric biases may limit recognition of diverse intelligences and amplify risks in AI deployment. Through careful analysis of historical contexts, philosophical arguments, recent technological advances, (...) and emerging legal disputes, this article underscores an urgent need to clarify definitions and goals in the race to AGI. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought the long-standing public health practice of contact tracing into the public spotlight. While contact tracing and case investigation have been carefully designed to protect privacy, the huge volume of tracing which is being carried out as part of the pandemic response in the United States is highlighting potential concerns around privacy, legality, and equity. Contact tracing during the pandemic has gained particular attention for the new use of digital technologies—both on the consumer side in the (...) form of Exposure Notification applications, and for public health agencies as digital case management software systems enable massive scaling of operations. While the consumer application side of digital innovation has dominated the news and academic discourse around privacy, people are likely to interact more intensively with public health agencies and their use of digital case management systems. Effective use of digital case management for contact tracing requires revisiting the existing legal frameworks, privacy protections, and security practices for management of sensitive health data. The scale of these tools and demands of an unprecedented pandemic response are introducing new risks through the collection of huge volumes of data, and expanding requirements for more adept data sharing among jurisdictions. Public health agencies must strengthen their best practices for data collection and protection even in the absence of comprehensive or clear guidance. This requires navigating a difficult balance between rigorous data protection and remaining highly adaptive and agile. (shrink)

Shakespeare’s King Lear prefigures the shape of “dignity” as first imagined by Immanuel Kant, who would argue in 1785 that rational beings are ends in themselves, “something that may not be used merely as means” (46). I do not suggest that Shakespeare secretly used the word “dignity” as it is used today, or even that he himself was any kind of proto-Kantian. Scholars such as Robin Headlam Wells have made the case that his plays are deeply rooted in a Renaissance (...) culture of humanism, which would of course give rise to the discourse of social contracts and universal rights that infused Enlightenment thought—but this does not mean that he was already imagining the kind of rights-bearing human subject that would take shape in the philosophies of Kant, Locke, and Rousseau in the eighteenth century. I do suggest, however, that moments in King Lear hint at an economy in which human value is divorced from wealth, position, or performance: even as Lear sinks lower into disenfranchisement and incapacity, the play insists that his worth does not diminish. If King Lear makes the case for dignity as a quotient of human worth that falls out of the hierarchies of value that first produce and measure worth, the economy it envisions hinges on individuals who can suspend those hierarchies and operate within a space where others command respect simply by being. This economy becomes an aneconomy as it demands respect and dignity in a way traditional exchange economies fail to do; it both asks and enables its participants to be gracious, to let go of the transactional logic by which Lear would have everyone live. Though the image of this world in King Lear is fractured, glimpsed between scenes of great cruelty, malice, and misery, it is nonetheless the climax of Shakespeare’s moral vision for his characters. The narrative enables its viewers to contemplate, if only in fragments, the possibility of absolute human worth. (shrink)

Mobile phone-based applications (apps) can promote faster targeted actions to control COVID-19. However, digital contact tracing systems raise concerns about data security, system effectiveness, and their potential to normalise privacy-invasive surveillance technologies. In the absence of mandates, public uptake depends on the acceptability and perceived legitimacy of using technologies that log interactions between individuals to build public health capacity. We report on six online deliberative workshops convened in New South Wales to consider the appropriateness of using the COVIDSafe app to (...) enhance Australian contact tracing systems. All groups took the position (by majority) that the protections enacted in the app design and supporting legislation were appropriate. This support is contingent on several system attributes including: the voluntariness of the COVIDSafe app; that the system relies on proximity rather than location tracking; and, that data access is restricted to local public health practitioners undertaking contact tracing. Despite sustained scepticism in media coverage, there was an underlying willingness to trust Australian governing institutions such that in principle acceptance of the new contact tracing technology was easy to obtain. However, tensions between the need to prove system effectiveness through operational transparency and requirements for privacy protections could be limiting public uptake. Our study shows that informed citizens are willing to trade their privacy for common goods such as COVID-19 suppression. But low case numbers and cautionary public discourses can make trustworthiness difficult to establish because some will only do so when it can be demonstrated that the benefits justify the costs to individuals. (shrink)

This paper builds upon historico-epistemological analyses of plasticity across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to distinguish among uses of this notion in contemporary epigenetics. By digging into this diachronic phase of plasticity thinking, we highlight a series of historically situated understandings and pragmatic dimensions of this notion. Specifically, our analysis describes four distinct phases in plasticity thinking across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: (1) plasticity as chemical modification of the body by its milieu; (2) plasticity as explanandum for the modifications (...) of life’s ontogenetic and phylogenetic substrates; (3) plasticity as mechanistic process in need of distinct explanations in ontogeny and phylogeny; and (4) plasticity as responsive potential to perturbations of a complex genetic system of development. These four versions of plasticity provide, in turn, the opportunity to discern synchronically the uses of this notion in epigenetic biosciences. Fleshing out these historical ramifications animating the present, we argue, highlights a fundamental epistemological disagreement at the basis of the controversies around the definition, scope, and epistemic priorities of epigenetics: how to reconcile the contemporary epistemologies of plasticity that hold epigenetic marks capable of bearing the material impression of the environment with those grounded on a strong view of (epigenetic) plasticity as operating under genetic control? Parallel to this analysis of the epistemic space of plasticity from the nineteenth century onward, we show how these distinct modes of understanding body–environment relationships also constituted conceptual, representational, and experimental resources for understanding the entanglement between life as a biological and socially situated phenomenon. These different traces of biosocial thinking ante litteram, we conclude, provide a blueprint to interrogate today’s assumptions, values, (social) ontologies, and political leanings behind similar attempts to interpret the biosocial nexus that links our biology with its material, social, and cultural environments. (shrink)

Business Intelligence can be interpreted as a compensation for the growing complexity of technical support in economic transactions. With the help of sophisticated calculation and analysis tools, the business situation is simplified for the user in order to enable reasonable decisions. However, the simplicity of Business Intelligence is only simulated by hiding the system operations under the surface. This causes a disruption of the general concept of reasonable action. The notion of responsibility disappears between the business expert and the systems (...) engineer. A possible solution to this problem is to change the system design process and to introduce competing technology which could show new traces of the system operation. (shrink)

This paper offers a critical insight into the present moment of Croatian literary and cultural theory by combining an overview of the main actors and interests with a problem-specific approach to the underlying tension or quarrel that is defining and shaping the field of Theory in the Croatian context. The paper depicts a cross-generational debate on the fictionality and reification of/by Theory. Deconstructive operations and the broad historicizing of Theory itself are used along with the specificities of the Eastern gaze: (...) “othering,” interstitiality and the traces of previous conjunctures that strongly influence the Croatian theoretical scene. (shrink)

This paper examines how Jacques Derrida’s concept of the crypt challenges Catherine Malabou’s notion of destructive plasticity. Reading Derrida’s ‘Fors’ (1976), the Life Death seminar (1975–76), and Of Spirit (1987) alongside Malabou’s The Future of Hegel (2005), The Ontology of the Accident (2012), and The Heidegger Change (2011), I argue that Malabou misreads supplementarity’s ‘play in form’ as writing’s capacity to convert trace into form, when plasticity merely supplements supplementarity with the trace of form. Because plasticity does not (...) recognise the structural redundancy of différance/supplementarity that blinds writing to its operations, the trace incorporates plasticity as the supplement that dissimulates itself in form. Reading Derrida’s reading of Abraham’s and Torok’s The Wolf Man’s Magic Word, I demonstrate how the crypt’s three pleonastic functions (‘topos’, ‘death’, and ‘cipher’) correspond to the three senses of origin-heterogeneity: heterogeneous from the origin, with respect to the origin, and at the origin. After the accident, after the trace is supplemented by plasticity, it dissimulates its legibility in the historicity of forms. Because of Malabou’s supplementation, the trace can now be read as plasticity, opening deconstruction’s capacity to move between materiality and conceptuality. (shrink)

This chapter explores the parallels between early modern European witch hunts and contemporary online shaming campaigns, arguing that the comparison is politically valuable in uncovering how power, fear, and social control operate in tandem. The chapter outlines three key parallels: (1) both forms of mass blame misrepresent structural causes of unrest through the targeting of individual “bad actors”; (2) both are often incited or leveraged by charismatic elite figures as a means of sowing division among and aggression toward vulnerable groups; (...) and (3) both function as mechanisms of social bonding, using public condemnation to forge group identity. At the same time, the chapter attends to key divergences, including the vastly different scale, structure, and rhetorical possibilities of digital space, and the recent co-optation and commodification of “witch” identity. Taken together, these comparisons shed light on the moral complexity of digital shaming and the need for more ethically reflective approaches to justice online. (shrink)

This essay aims to bring to light a specific movement elaborated by Derrida in Of Grammatology, which goes from the experience of dispossession in speech and the economy of signs that replaces speech itself with writing, through the chains of supplements, to the merging of language and auto-erotism into the differentiated totality of auto-affection as the universal rule of experience or as life itself. I will point out that idealization, as the submission of the world to a certain power of (...) repetition in the living and, thus, as the only condition at which the world can affect the living, marks the becoming-spontaneous of the possibility of auto-affection and, at the same time, the very articulation of life, across its history, into a hierarchy of more and more complex symbolical operations. As I aim to demonstrate throughout my reading, the ultimate task of this movement is that a phenomenology cannot account for the structure of auto-affection insofar as, with a gesture parallel to phonocentrism, it would dissolve the irreducible trait of sexuality into the self-presence of self-touching.1. (shrink)

Machine learning (ML) models are commonly portrayed as capturing stable patterns in data, yet they operate in inherently dynamic and evolving contexts. Drawing upon Jacques Derrida’s philosophical concepts of différance, trace, iterability and the archive, I critically examine the phenomenon of concept drift (or data drift) in machine learning, illuminating how models perpetually defer meaning and embody context-dependent interpretations. Derridean philosophy reveals fundamental limitations in prevalent artificial intelligence (AI) narratives– such as the presumed universality of scalable data, convergence toward (...) fixed solutions and context-free, data-centric epistemologies– highlighting instead the inherent contingency and provisionality of computational knowledge. By analysing concrete examples from spam detection, facial recognition bias and predictive policing, I demonstrate explicitly how ML systems, as Derrida would have predicted, are interpretive processes, always relational, provisional and contextually dependent, carrying traces of absent contexts. Practically, embracing Derridean insights explicitly reshapes ethical AI practices, demanding continuous interpretive vigilance, transparent uncertainty communication, iterative and adaptive retraining infrastructures, preservation of contextual diversity and context-sensitive evaluation metrics. This philosophical reframing explicitly transforms AI from a static technological product into an ongoing interpretive conversation: ethically accountable, contextually responsive and perpetually open to reinterpretation. (shrink)

Good Agricultural Practices are central to sustainability standards and certification programmes in the global cocoa chain. Pruning is one of the practices promoted in extension services associated with these sustainability efforts. Yet concerns exist about the low adoption rate of these GAPs by smallholder cocoa farmers in Ghana. A common approach to addressing this challenge is based on creating enabling conditions and offering appropriate incentives. We use the concepts of inscription and affordance to trace the vertically coordinated travel of (...) recommended pruning from research to extension and farming sites, and to describe how pruning is carried out differently at each site. Our analysis suggests that enactments of pruning at the extension site reduce the number of options and space for interactions, and this constrains making the practice meaningful to farmers’ repertoires. The conventions guiding and legitimising actions at this site, reinforced by sustainability standards, certification schemes and associated inspections and audits, favour standardised recommendations and consequently narrow room for context-specific diagnostics and adaptions. Therefore, we reframe the adoption problem as a matter of fit between different sites in the ‘agricultural research value chain’ embedded in the operational cocoa chain. Our contribution problematises the dominant framing of low adoption and highlights that the movement of pruning and the sequential enactment at different sites constrain the affordances available for rendering the practice meaningful to farmers’ repertoires. Consequently, addressing the low uptake of GAPs requires institutional work towards conventions that can construct a fit between sites along the agricultural research value chain. (shrink)

This chapter explores the parallels between early modern European witch hunts and contemporary online shaming campaigns, arguing that the comparison is politically valuable in uncovering how power, fear, and social control operate in tandem. The chapter outlines three key parallels: (1) both forms of mass blame misrepresent structural causes of unrest through the targeting of individual “bad actors”; (2) both are often incited or leveraged by charismatic elite figures as a means of sowing division among and aggression toward vulnerable groups; (...) and (3) both function as mechanisms of social bonding, using public condemnation to forge group identity. At the same time, the chapter attends to key divergences, including the vastly different scale, structure, and rhetorical possibilities of digital space, and the recent co-optation and commodification of “witch” identity. Taken together, these comparisons shed light on the moral complexity of digital shaming and the need for more ethically reflective approaches to justice online. (shrink)

This paper argues that all apparently special forces characteristically reduce to a few fundamental physical forces which conserve energy and operate throughout nature. Consequently, there are probably no special mental forces originating from souls and acting upon bodies and brains in addition to the basic, energy-conserving physical forces. Moreover, physiological and biochemical research have failed to uncover any evidence of forces over and above the basic physical forces acting on living bodies. It is as if all organic processes can be (...) fully accounted for in terms of normal physical forces—that is, as if there are no souls or ethereal doubles interacting with living bodies. -/- 1. The Argument from Fundamental Forces -- 2. The Argument from Physiology -- 3. Conclusion. (shrink)

The bioclimatic architecture is still fascinating to all of us. The lack of energy that the world is facing nowadays is forcing architects and engineers to implement smart solutions benefiting at the maximum from nature itself without considering the primary sources of energy that the world is actually using. Bioclimatic design has the roots in history, despite the fact that little attention has been paid to it throughout history. It is important to understand how natural systems operates, creating closed or (...) semi-closed systems that mirror the ecological systems on Earth. The components of bioclimatic design deal mostly with: climate type and requirements; adaptive thermal comfort; vernacular and contextual solutions; tools and assessment methods; microclimate; sun path; wind; rain; passive and active systems and responsive forms. The aim of the bioclimatic design is to improve the natural environment through the utilization of clean energy and renewable energy system; to reduce the need for energy for heating purposes; and to reduce the energy for cooling proposes, air conditioning and lighting. Furthermore, bioclimatic design involves changes in regulation, improves the house comfort, and also improves urban quality of life. Bioclimatic buildings also include the use of building elements such as walls, windows, roofs, and floors, in order to collect, store, and distribute solar thermal energy and to prevent overheating. The aim is to manage the energy flows providing comfortable conditions during the entire year and the entire day. Minimization of thermal losses and utilization of climatic conditions (climate; microclimate, sunrise) are other important issues to consider. According to many studies, the best orientation for a building in order to maximize the heat gain during winter is east–west and the primary façade should face south. Sustainability is mostly an outcome, rather than a goal or a process. The aim of all designers is to reduce the ecological footprints and to improve the quality of life. The energy sustainability and the use of natural resources must be an integral part of a sustainable development. Nowadays, there are softwares that are developed in order to carry out environmental assessment tools and standards, in order to draw conclusions about internal thermal comfort; uncomfortable times in the building during the entire year; the need for shading devices and their dimensions; energy use, energy cost, etc. Simulations are essential in the design process. Examples chosen as case studies participate to have a better insight into the overall approach of the bioclimatic design. Applying the principles of bioclimatic design remains still a challenge in redefining the perfect bioclimatic house. (shrink)

This study investigates how filler-gap dependencies associated with subject position are formed in online sentence comprehension. Since Crain and Fodor, “filled-gap” studies have provided evidence that the parser actively seeks to associate a wh-filler with a gap in direct object position of a sentence wherever possible; the evidence that this same process applies for subject position, is, however, more limited. We examine the processing of complement clauses, finding that wh dependency formation is actively attempted at embedded subject position, unless, however, (...) the embedded clause contains a complementizer. The absence of the dependency formation in the latter case demonstrates that the complementizer-trace effect is, like syntactic island constraints, immediately operative in online structure building. (shrink)

This essay addresses a persistent lacuna in the voluminous scholarship on pre-1947 Bengal: a comparative study of how Hindu and Muslim intellectuals, between 1850 and 1950, engaged with fault lines of socioeconomic asymmetry and inherited prejudice. Through a close reading of three Bengali autobiographies (Rajnarayan Basu's Ātmacarit of 1909, Sivanath Sastri's Ātmacarit of 1919, and Jasimuddin's Thākurbāṛir Āṅgināẏ of 1961), it explores the intersections between realities of India and representations of Britain, as well as between Hindu and Muslim lifeworlds, in (...) the medium of autobiographical self-searching. Building upon recent studies of South Asian modernity that move beyond binary frameworks of resistance versus accommodation, the essay proposes a tripartite framework of "incremental", "cosmopolitan", and "fractured" modalities of colonial subject formation. These modalities, it is argued, do not operate in isolation; rather, they unfold through dynamic inter-relationships of braided interaction, cascade effects, and productive interference, with their direction and intensity shaped by differential access to economic resources, institutional positions, and social capital. By attending to the material conditions under which universalist visions persistently become fractured against quotidian realities, the essay reveals modernity's arrival in Bengal as a non-linear process in which the search for self remains inseparable from the search for livelihood, recognition, and belonging across Hindu-Muslim borderlines. (shrink)

Research ethics regulation in parts of the Global North has sometimes been initiated in the face of biomedical scandal. More recently, developing and recently developed countries have had additional reasons to regulate, doing so to attract international clinical trials and American research funding, publish in international journals, or to respond to broader social changes. In Taiwan, biomedical research ethics policy based on ‘principlism’ and committee‐based review were imported from the United States. Professionalisation of research ethics displaced other longer‐standing ways of (...) conceiving ethics connected with Taiwanese cultural traditions. Subsequently, the model and its discursive practices were extended to other disciplines. Regulation was also shaped by decolonizing discourses associated with asserting Indigenous peoples’ rights. Locating research ethics regulation within the language and practices of public policy formation and transfer as well as decolonization, allows analysis to move beyond the self‐referential and attend to the social, economic and political context within which regulation operates. (shrink)

This essay explores the intersection of contingency and aesthetics in contemporary artistic practices, challenging the historical dichotomy between reason and fact, and between necessity and contingency. Through the lens of Italian feminist thought, particularly the work of Carla Lonzi, it examines how contingency can redefine aesthetic gestures and suggests the concept of “dynamic liminality” as the conceptual operator of such redefinition. The study identifies four main components of “dynamic liminality” – instability, repetition, impermanence, and unproductiveness – showing how contemporary (...) artists like Nao Bustamante, Marcel Broodthaers, Chiara Camoni, Lucia Cristiani, Peter Fischli & David Weiss, Laura Grisi, and Beatrice Meoni embody these concepts. Their works demonstrate the critical and transformative potential of contingency, proposing an aesthetics that embraces transient, unstable, and unproductive elements as essential to artistic expression and cultural critique. (shrink)

Automated facial recognition methods have become widely used as a way to ascertain the identity of individuals. Yet the methods by which facial recognition technologies (FRT) operate – the machinic performance of the perception of the human face – are often invisible to those under their gaze. This article investigates the machinic perception of the face through an FRT method known as eigenface, in order to both reveal and problematize the ways of seeing that underlie it. As part of its (...) algorithmic processes, eigenface produces an image. This image can be understood as a portrait of machine recognition, making visible the processes through which the algorithm performs recognition and ‘sees’ the human face. The eigenface portrait reveals a way of seeing that is based on statistical processes of pattern recognition. An analogue antecedent of this application of statistics to the recognition of facial images can be found in the composite portrait. Through a dialectical discussion of composite portraiture in multiple disciplinary fields ranging from sociology to philosophy and the visual arts, this article experiments with providing a cultural and social translation of machine processes of visual perception. The discussion shifts the focus of enquiry towards the aesthetics of the algorithmic process in order to provide an entry point for critique and a possible reimagination on algorithmic knowledge production. (shrink)

Extrinsic motivations like intellectual property protections and fiscal incentives continue to occupy the centre stage in debates on innovation policies. Joseph Schumpeter had, however, argued that the motive to accumulate private property can only explain part of innovative activities. In his view, “the joy of creating, of getting things done” associated with the behavioural traits that “seek out difficulties…and takes delight in ventures” stand out as the most independent factor of behaviour in explaining innovation and economic development, especially in early (...) capitalist societies. Taking the case of ‘grassroot’ innovators in India, we re-examine the motivations behind innovative behaviour. Drawing upon the theory of effectance motivation we construct operational indicators of extrinsic and intrinsic motivations to innovate. Interestingly, we find that pure extrinsic forms of motivation drive only a fraction of individual innovative behaviour. A large amount of innovative behaviour is motivated either by intrinsic motivations or by a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. Also, conceptualising innovation as a three stage process involving idea generation, experimentation and application, we find evidence of motivation-shifts. The importance of intrinsic motivation is comparatively greater during the early stage, when uncertainty about innovation is high. The importance of extrinsic motivation, on the other hand, increases when innovation is complete, awaiting application. We then outline a few implications of these findings for policy making. (shrink)

This paper establishes that falsifiability cannot function as an epistemic warrant for claims about the structure of reality. The Tier‑Epistemology of Cognitional Mechanics (CM) introduces a strict three‑layer architecture—Tier‑1 algebraic structure, Tier‑2 geometric projections, Tier‑3 observational surface—and demonstrates that falsification operations are structurally confined to Tier‑3. As the text states, “the projection from Tier‑1 to Tier‑3 discards eight real dimensions of information,” and “the observation map is uniquely Tr,” eliminating all non‑linear or alternative observational routes. Lex elements remain invariant under (...) observation, making Tier‑1 revision structurally impossible. -/- The paper formalises the mismatch problem: divergences between theoretical and experimental values are ambiguous among Tier‑2 projection choice and Tier‑3 measurement precision, never Tier‑1. This resolves the Duhem–Quine underdetermination by establishing a structured revision space in which Tier‑1 is excluded by necessity. The analysis shows that falsifiability presupposes a flat epistemic landscape in which theory and observation occupy the same layer, a presupposition invalidated by the Tier architecture. -/- The paper concludes that cross‑domain coherence without free parameters replaces falsifiability as the verification criterion for Tier‑1. Experiment is redefined as decoding rather than discovery: a high‑precision measurement is a precise readout of Tier‑3 coordinates of algebraic invariants fixed independently of observation. This hierarchical epistemology preserves the utility of falsifiability within Tier‑3 while relocating the epistemic warrant for structural claims to Tier‑1 coherence. -/- Published on May 6, 2026 DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20046167. (shrink)

A Causal Symmetry Approach to Quantum Nonlocality and Information -/- This paper develops a time-symmetric informational formulation of quantum mechanics in which both initial and final boundary conditions jointly constrain physical evolution. Quantum randomness is treated as a manifestation of incomplete information about correlations that extend across time, rather than as fundamental indeterminacy. The core concept is an informational coupling κ that quantifies how strongly the temporal boundaries are aligned. κ is derived from entropy balance and mutual information and defines (...) a dissipative, completely positive, trace-preserving dynamics with a unique informational equilibrium state. This dynamics preserves no-signaling and admits a standard generator of open-system type, but with the “environment” reinterpreted as a future boundary condition instead of a physical bath. -/- Conceptually, the framework is close to two-state and transactional approaches, yet it avoids hidden variables and superdeterministic assumptions by working directly at the level of the density operator and information-theoretic quantities. The paper links κ to thermodynamic quantities, yielding a generalized second law and a clear relation between information flow and heat in the spirit of informational thermodynamics. It also outlines a delayed-choice quantum random number generator as a realistic experimental test to estimate or bound κ. In the limit κ → 0, standard quantum mechanics is recovered; for nonzero κ, small but measurable deviations encode informational feedback between temporal boundaries. The result is a causally symmetric picture in which determinism and statistical behavior are unified through information rather than sacrificed to fundamental randomness. (shrink)

We introduce a quantum integrated-information measure Φ for multipartite states within the Relational Quantum Dynamics (RQD) framework. Φ(ρ) is defined as the minimum quantum Jensen–Shannon distance between an n-partite density operator ρ and any product state over a bipartition of its subsystems. We prove that its square root induces a genuine metric on state space and that Φ is monotonic under all completely positive trace-preserving maps. Restricting the search to bipartitions yields a unique optimal split and a unique (...) closest product state. From this geometric picture we derive a canonical entanglement witness directly tied to Φ and construct an integration dendrogram that reveals the full hierarchical correlation structure of ρ. We further show that there always exists an “optimal observer”—a channel or basis—that preserves Φ better than any alternative. Finally, we propose a quantum Markov blanket theorem: the boundary of the optimal bipartition isolates subsystems most effectively. Our framework unites categorical enrichment, convex-geometric methods, and operational tools, forging a concrete bridge between integrated information theory and quantum information science. (shrink)