Conceptual Puzzles Research Articles

Mental Imagery: Greasing the Mind's Gears

This paper introduces a novel conceptualisation of mental imagery; namely, that is grease for the mind’s gears (MGT). MGT is not just a metaphor. Rather, it describes an important and overlooked higher-order function of mental imagery: that it aids various mental faculties discharge their characteristic functional roles. MGT is motivated by reflection on converging evidence from clinical, experimental and social psychology and solves at least two neglected conceptual puzzles about mental imagery. The first puzzle concerns imagery’s architectural promiscuity; that is, its ability to assist diverse mental faculties and perform many different functions when doing so. The second puzzle concerns how to square imagery’s architectural promiscuity with its psychopathological relevance; that is, its being a maintaining cause, and possibly even a partial constituent, of several psychological disorders, including post-traumatic stress disorder, bipolar disorder and major depressive disorder. Mental imagery helps and harms human psychology to extreme degrees and this is something that calls for elucidation. MGT says that instead of facing perplexing heterogeneities here, we instead face a significant unity. On this score, MGT is argued to be superior to the currently dominant conception of imagery in the philosophical literature; namely, as a perception-like state of mind.

Addressing the “Puzzle” of Gray-Area Sexual Violations

AbstractThe gray area of sexual violations generally refers to ambiguous sexual experiences that are not readily distinguishable from rape or sex. Such experiences are describable as ambiguous or complex in a way that, to some, seems to defy existent categories of sexual experiences. This leads some feminists to approach the gray area as a puzzle that must be resolved either by understanding it as a new category, or by upholding existing rape categorization. Rather than dispelling the gray-area ambiguity by resolving conceptual puzzles, I assign the gray-area ambiguity a positive analytical role by attending to it in a historical and dialectical light. By tracing histories of feminist antirape discourse, I elaborate a way of understanding the “gray area” of sexual violations, articulating it as a historical condition affecting the interpretive possibilities of our sexual experiences. Such an approach underscores the potential of the gray area to inaugurate feminist critique in virtue of its status as a historically specific yet ambiguous horizon where our experiences can contradictorily seem not-like rape, but not-like sex.

Lutheran Theology: A Grammar of Faith by Kirsi Stjerna

Reviewed by: Lutheran Theology: A Grammar of Faith by Kirsi Stjerna Anthony Bateza Lutheran Theology: A Grammar of Faith. By Kirsi Stjerna. New York: T&T Clark, 2021. 218 pp. In many Lutheran congregations the Book of Concord is resting comfortably on a dusty bookshelf, safe from the wear and tear other books might receive. One could lament this reality, but, truth be told, the confessional documents can trip up rostered leaders and parishioners alike. The eager optimism of curious readers diving [End Page 465] into the Augsburg Confession turns into befuddled dejection long before reaching the Smalcald Articles. What is needed is a guide who will blend well-crafted historical and theological knowledge with a passion for the Confessions’ ability to illumine pressing questions. Fortunately, Kirsi Stjerna, professor at Pacific Lutheran Theolo gical Seminary, proves to be just such a guide. Lutheran Theology is divided into three sections, with the first two providing succinct introductions to Martin Luther’s life, theology, and the general layout and history behind the Book of Concord. The third section does more heavy lifting, with chapters addressing issues with our language about God, Christology, sin, and the church. Stjerna suggests that the idea of freedom, in its various angles, is a helpful thread for readers trying to find their way through these documents. This approach gives a welcome flexibility and the reader is invited to “engage Luther boldly with the topics they are passionate about and not worry too much about the historical distance or the appropriateness of the questions raised” (197). This, of course, does not mean that questions of historicity or appropriateness are abandoned. Each chapter grounds itself in the Augsburg Confession before moving through other confessional documents, Luther’s broader theology, and the practical and conceptual puzzles that modern readers bring to the texts. Core Lutheran beliefs are highlighted and well explained. Readers come to understand the principle of sola scriptura and how this Reformation principle differs from biblical literalism. Just as the Reformation itself was an exercise in teamwork, Stjerna says that Lutheran hermeneutics has always “been considered a group effort, a dialogical process, where concord and discord are possible and tolerated” (58). Other central loci, such as the law-gospel dialectic, are also presented as key Lutheran formulations possible of generating endless spiritual insights “as the framework allows tension and surprises” for all (78). Stjerna celebrates the confessions while noting potential deficiencies and omissions. At times this means pushing deeper into the texts. Acknowledging the lack of a systematic engagement with pneumatology in the confessions, Stjerna guides the reader through [End Page 466] the Holy Spirit’s appearance in various passages and in particular Luther’s constant and pastoral attention to the Spirit in the Large Catechism (104–108). In other cases texts simply overlook or fail to address issues of our day, like the ideas of lordship and bondage or the use of gendered language for God and gendered norms for humans. In these moments Stjerna pushes beyond the confessions without abandoning them, providing a wonderful example of how this work enriches both our reading and our response to the texts. While this volume offers much to praise, two areas of concern should be noted. First, minor grammatical infelicities can occasionally distract the reader. Second, the consistently positive explication of Lutheran teaching can create challenges for understanding the reformers and their forebears. This can lead to a lack of nuance in dealing with earlier figures, like St. Augustine, or in addressing the motivations behind late-medieval Roman Catholic beliefs or practices. When problems appear to threaten some of Luther’s claims, Stjerna sometimes explains these as resulting from his lack of systematicity or as deep theological insights in themselves. Luther’s teaching on human freedom and predestination, for example, leads to notorious difficulties when pressed in different directions. Stjerna recognizes this, but appreciatively lifts up Luther’s warnings about God’s unknown ways and the dangers of pressing the issue too far. But should we push back on Luther’s potentially evasive response? Is he cautioning the faithful to respect proper theological boundaries, or is there a deeper issue here generated by Luther’s own theology or the...

The Rise of Neo-Illiberalism

This paper expands on the notion neo-illiberalism, signifying a symbiosis between neoliberal capitalism and variegated illiberal nationalisms, offering deeper reflections on its geopolitics, key drivers, and conceptual puzzles. It is argued that the West has entered an age of political illiberalization, replicating political operating logics of variegated illiberal(izing) regimes elsewhere, corroding domestic institutions and the western-dominated international liberal order, constituting an historic geopolitical shift. Although centrist parties have been variably attracted to the far right, particularly seeing center-right parties reinvent themselves as nationalist challengers to the ‘globalist’ status quo, in power they mostly radicalize the neoliberal encasement of capital, transforming a range of liberal-democratic institutions, procedures, and rights into illiberal political fortifications. Neoliberalism’s illiberal mutation is being realized amidst the intersections of rampant financial offshoring and digitization defining contemporary capitalism, allowing billionaire-class factions to ‘hack’ liberal-democratic governments and operating systems. With the rollout of data-driven technologies increasingly requiring the rollback of liberal protections by design, the fusion of digitizing capitalism and illiberal nationalisms is increasingly escaping accepted notions of liberalism.

Observer-dependent black hole interior from operator collision

We present concrete construction of interior operators for a black hole which is perturbed by an infalling observer. The construction is independent from the initial states of the black hole while dependent only on the quantum state of the infalling observer. The construction has a natural interpretation from the perspective of the boundary operator's growth, resulting from the collision between operators accounting for the infalling and outgoing modes. The interior partner modes are created once the infalling observer measures the outgoing mode, suggesting that the black hole interior is observer dependent. Implications of our results on various conceptual puzzles, including the firewall puzzle, the Marolf-Wall puzzle, and the information problem, are discussed. Explicit counterarguments against the $\mathrm{ER}=\mathrm{EPR}$ approach by Maldacena and Susskind are also presented.

Law without law: from observer states to physics via algorithmic information theory

According to our current conception of physics, any valid physical theory is supposed to describe the objective evolution of a unique external world. However, this condition is challenged by quantum theory, which suggests that physical systems should not always be understood as having objective properties which are simply revealed by measurement. Furthermore, as argued below, several other conceptual puzzles in the foundations of physics and related fields point to limitations of our current perspective and motivate the exploration of an alternative: to start with the first-person (the observer) rather than the third-person perspective (the world).In this work, I propose a rigorous approach of this kind on the basis of algorithmic information theory. It is based on a single postulate: that universal induction determines the chances of what any observer sees next. That is, instead of a world or physical laws, it is the local state of the observer alone that determines those probabilities. Surprisingly, despite its solipsistic foundation, I show that the resulting theory recovers many features of our established physical worldview: it predicts that it appears to observers as if there was an external world that evolves according to simple, computable, probabilistic laws. In contrast to the standard view, objective reality is not assumed on this approach but rather provably emerges as an asymptotic statistical phenomenon. The resulting theory dissolves puzzles like cosmology's Boltzmann brain problem, makes concrete predictions for thought experiments like the computer simulation of agents, and suggests novel phenomena such as ``probabilistic zombies'' governed by observer-dependent probabilistic chances. It also suggests that some basic phenomena of quantum theory (Bell inequality violation and no-signalling) might be understood as consequences of this framework.

Is the turtle still plodding along? Public management reform in Germany

ABSTRACT Public management reforms in Germany have long been characterized by slow-moving incrementalism and maintenance of its administrative system’s central characteristics. This article reviews recent developments in administrative reforms against the background of the traditional German reform style. More ambitious reform efforts in the field of digitalization raise conceptual puzzles related to the conditions under which incrementalism can generate substantive change – and at what point incremental reforms give way to more rapid patterns of change. The article also discusses the implications of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis on public management reforms.

Inclusive Fitness as a Measure of Biological Utility

This article is about the analogy between inclusive fitness and utility. In behavioral ecology, it is often assumed that individual organisms behave as if they were “striving” to maximize their inclusive fitness—a measure analogue to the kind of utility function that is used to represent the preferences of rational agents. Here, I explore some conceptual puzzles related to this view and question whether the kind of biological utility posited by the advocates of the “maximizing agent analogy” can be adequately interpreted in inclusive fitness terms.

From Eternity to Here: Divine Accommodation and the Lost Language of Law

This paper asserts that the discourse of religious accommodation has stopped making sense, and that the reason it has stopped making sense is because our terminology (including such terms as accommodation, and secularism) is inherited from tradition of political theological discourse that has been forgotten: the theology of divine accommodation. The paper reconstructs the content of that tradition of political theology in broad strokes, arguing that the birthplace of secularism and the birthplace of liberalism both lie here and that, once we recognize that, a number of doctrinal and conceptual puzzles can be solved, including how to define religion, whether to characterize secular humanism as a religion, and whether to accept the broad (virtually boundless) conception of a right to religious accommodation now being promoted by religious conservatives. The answers proposed are that (a) religion, from the standpoint of this tradition of political theology, refers to beliefs about the content and source of the moral law, and is not contingent on continued belief in a deity; (b) secular humanism is a in this sense, and is indeed the promoted by accommodationist political theology; (c) the broad conception of a right to religious accommodation must be rejected for the same reasons that the religion of secular humanism must be accepted. The paper further argues, as a matter of political theory/history of political thought, that locating the origins of liberalism and secularism in the tradition of divine accommodation reveals conservative political theology and liberal political theory to be one and the same. Finally, it underscores the centrality of law to the humanist tradition and the centrality of humanism to law.

Classical Causal Models for Bell and Kochen-Specker Inequality Violations Require Fine-Tuning

Nonlocality and contextuality are at the root of conceptual puzzles in quantum mechanics, and are key resources for quantum advantage in information-processing tasks. Bell nonlocality is best understood as the incompatibility between quantum correlations and the classical theory of causality, applied to relativistic causal structure. Contextuality, on the other hand, is on a more controversial foundation. In this work, I provide a common conceptual ground between nonlocality and contextuality as violations of classical causality. First, I show that Bell inequalities can be derived solely from the assumptions of no-signalling and no-fine-tuning of the causal model. This removes two extra assumptions from a recent result from Wood and Spekkens, and remarkably, does not require any assumption related to independence of measurement settings -- unlike all other derivations of Bell inequalities. I then introduce a formalism to represent contextuality scenarios within causal models and show that all classical causal models for violations of a Kochen-Specker inequality require fine-tuning. Thus the quantum violation of classical causality goes beyond the case of space-like separated systems, and manifests already in scenarios involving single systems.

When rational sections become cyclic \u2014 Gauge enhancement in F-theory via Mordell-Weil torsion

We explore novel gauge enhancements from abelian to non-simply-connected gauge groups in F-theory. To this end we consider complex structure deformations of elliptic fibrations with a Mordell-Weil group of rank one and identify the conditions under which the generating section becomes torsional. For the specific case of ℤ2 torsion we construct the generic solution to these conditions and show that the associated F-theory compactification exhibits the global gauge group [SU(2) × SU(4)]/ℤ2 × SU(2). The subsolution with gauge group SU(2)/ℤ2 × SU(2), for which we provide a global resolution, is related by a further complex structure deformation to a genus-one fibration with a bisection whose Jacobian has a ℤ2 torsional section. While an analysis of the spectrum on the Jacobian fibration reveals an SU(2)/ℤ2 × ℤ2 gauge theory, reproducing this result from the bisection geometry raises some conceptual puzzles about F-theory on genus-one fibrations.

Bit Threads and Holographic Entanglement

The Ryu-Takayanagi (RT) formula relates the entanglement entropy of a region in a holographic theory to the area of a corresponding bulk minimal surface. Using the max flow-min cut principle, a theorem from network theory, we rewrite the RT formula in a way that does not make reference to the minimal surface. Instead, we invoke the notion of a "flow", defined as a divergenceless norm-bounded vector field, or equivalently a set of Planck-thickness "bit threads". The entanglement entropy of a boundary region is given by the maximum flux out of it of any flow, or equivalently the maximum number of bit threads that can emanate from it. The threads thus represent entanglement between points on the boundary, and naturally implement the holographic principle. As we explain, this new picture clarifies several conceptual puzzles surrounding the RT formula. We give flow-based proofs of strong subadditivity and related properties; unlike the ones based on minimal surfaces, these proofs correspond in a transparent manner to the properties' information-theoretic meanings. We also briefly discuss certain technical advantages that the flows offer over minimal surfaces. In a mathematical appendix, we review the max flow-min cut theorem on networks and on Riemannian manifolds, and prove in the network case that the set of max flows varies Lipshitz continuously in the network parameters.

What’s Going On? Reflections on Kratochwil’s Concept of Law

This article focuses on two conceptual puzzles that arise out of Kratochwil’s concept of law. The first is the dual meaning of the questions ‘what is the law’ and ‘what is society’? I will argue that a sociological approach to these questions is unable to do justice to the specific position of the legal practitioner, for whom then these questions are first and foremost normative ones with possible far-reaching implications. The second is the relation between the validity and the binding force of law. In line with institutional approaches to law, I argue that legal language cannot be reduced to one form of linguistic practice, the production of binding decisions and norms of conduct. I will show how a broader conception of law as a form of linguistic activity opens up new research agendas in (international) law.

‘GOING GLOBAL’: POLICY ENTREPRENEURSHIP OF THE GLOBAL COMMISSION ON DRUG POLICY

Changes in policy processes have impacted policy participants and stimulated the development of new patterns of action and entrepreneurship, but also the emergence of new entrants claiming authority on ‘global’ policy terrains. Privately convened ‘global initiatives’ are proliferating while triggering some conceptual puzzles, blurring the already ill‐defined limits of ‘global processes’. To seize the meanings and implications of ‘going global’, this article explores the empirical scope of such global framing of policy entrepreneurship and why such distinction matters for our understanding of global policy processes. To that end, the case of the Global Commission on Drug Policy (GCDP) is examined.

IS SELF-DECEPTION PRETENSE?

I assess Tamar Gendler's (2007) account of self-deception according to which its characteristic state is not belief, but imaginative pretense. After giving an overview of the literature and presenting the conceptual puzzles engendered by the notion of self-deception, I introduce Gendler's account, which emerges as a rival to practically all extant accounts of self-deception. I object to it by first arguing that her argument for abandoning belief as the characteristic state of self-deception conflates the state of belief and the process of belief-formation when interpreting David Velleman's (2000) thesis that belief is an essentially truth-directed attitude. I then call attention to the fact that Velleman's argument for the identity of motivational role between belief and imagining, on which Gendler's argument for self-deception as pretense depends, conflates two senses of 'motivational role'-a stronger but implausible sense and a weaker but explanatorily irrelevant sense. Finally, I introduce Neil Van Leeuwen's (2009) argument to the effect that belief is the practical ground of all non-belief cognitive attitudes in circum-stances wherein the latter prompt action. I apply this framework to Gendler's account to ultimately show that imaginative pretense fails to explain the existence of voluntary actions which result from self-deception.

When the Profile Becomes the Population: Examining Privacy Governance and Road Traffic Surveillance in Canada and Australia

Use of automated licence/number plate recognition (‘ALPR/ANPR’) technologies in Canada and Australia raises significant policy questions for privacy advocates and criminal justice practitioners. The proliferation of mass surveillance through ALPR/ANPR also presents several conceptual puzzles about the links among criminal justice data flows, individual privacy and state responsibility in this actuarial age. In this article, we use case studies of ALPR/ANPR in Canada and Australia to examine privacy as a technique for governing road traffic surveillance. We explain our findings in light of Harcourt's (2007) argument against the use of actuarial prediction and ‘hit rates’ that are rationalised as the chief measure of law enforcement activities and effectiveness. Finally, we question the regulation of surveillance technologies such as ALPR/ANPR through current Canadian and Australian information privacy laws, with specific focus on privacy by design (‘PbD’), a strategy that favours improving law enforcement efficiency at the expense of privacy.

The Puzzle of Self‐Deception

AbstractIt is commonly accepted that people can, and regularly do, deceive themselves. Yet closer examination reveals a set of conceptual puzzles that make self‐deception difficult to explain. Applying the conditions for other‐deception to self‐deception generates what are known as the ‘paradoxes’ of belief and intention. Simply put, the central problem is how it is possible for me to believe one thing, and yet intentionally cause myself to simultaneously believe its contradiction. There are two general approaches taken by philosophers to account for these puzzles about the self‐deceptive state and the process of self‐deception. ‘Partitioning’ strategies try to resolve the paradoxes by proposing that the mind is divided in some way that allows self‐deception to occur. ‘Reformulation’ strategies suggest that the conditions we use to define self‐deception should be modified so that the paradoxes do not arise at all. Both approaches are subject to criticism about the consequences of the strategies philosophers use, but recent cross‐disciplinary analyses of self‐deception may help shed light on the puzzles that underlie this phenomenon.

Qualitative secondary analysis in practice: introduction

This Open Space section presents exemplars of qualitative secondary analysis in practice along with discussion of the challenges of, and strategies for, conducting such analysis. The articles share an historical as well as sociological dimension in their focus. Two of them centre on aspects of change in familial and intergenerational relationships, and the wider societal contexts in which these are shaped. Throughout, the articles examine questions of secondary analytic method alongside substantive and conceptual puzzles.

Reaching the Hard-to-Reach: Conceptual Puzzles and Challenges for Policy and Practice

AbstractThe concept of systematic inequalities in social and health outcomes has come to form part of contemporary policy discourse. This rhetoric is deployed even in the face of policy decisions widely viewed as iniquitous. Moreover, there is a widespread view, expressed across the political spectrum, that those in more deprived circumstances are less likely than their more affluent counterparts to be in receipt of optimal public services. Such individuals and communities are variously described as excluded, disadvantaged, underserved or hard to reach. Across countries and policy domains the term ‘hard to reach’ is used to refer to those deemed not to be in optimal receipt of public sector services which are intended to increase some aspect of material, social or physical wellbeing. It is increasingly used in health policy documents which aim to address health inequalities. However, it is an ill-defined and contested term. The purpose of this paper is two-fold. First, it offers a critical commentary on the concept of hard-to-reachness and asks: who are viewed as hard to reach and why? Second, using a case-study of a Scottish health improvement programme that explicitly aims to reach and engage the ‘hard to reach’ in preventive approaches to cardiovascular disease, it tests the policy and practice implications of the concept. It finds that a lack of conceptual clarity leads to ambiguous policy and practice and argues for possible theoretical refinements.

Justice, Fairness, and Membership in a Class: Conceptual Confusions and Moral Puzzles in the Regulation of Human Subjects Research

This essay examines conceptual difficulties with one of the ways in which justice has been understood and applied the ethical and regulatory review of human research. Justice requires the fair distribution of the benefits and burdens of research. Class membership is seen as justifying inclusion in higher hazard-no benefit research from which members of potentially vulnerable classes, such as children, typically would be excluded. I argue that class membership does not do the justificatory work it is thought to do and that the use of class membership to justify inclusion in higher hazard-no benefit research leads to unjustified discrimination of sick children and offers special protections to healthy children.