Core Axioms Research Articles

Emer de Vattel in context: the moral philosophical foundations of a natural law for states

ABSTRACT In line with its influence, Emer de Vattel’s Le droit des gens (1757) is most often conceptualised in terms of far-reaching political intentions and epochal intellectual developments. However, the core axioms of the work constitute a surprisingly exact application of Vattel’s philosophical premises, developed within the highly specific traditions of Swiss Calvinism and the école romande of natural law, integrating Leibnizian influences. The present article provides basic context for this claim by excavating two early debates that Vattel intervenes upon as an apologist for Leibniz: first, Vattel demonstrates an adherence to non-fatalist Leibnizian metaphysics when countering Swiss anti-Leibnizians in 1737–1741 and, second, in 1747 Vattel develops Leibnizian-Wolffian moral philosophy in response to Barbeyrac’s vindication of Pufendorfian voluntarism. These interventions point toward an evolving but systematic philosophical substratum, which I claim can also be found, mutatis mutandis, in Vattel’s account of the law of nations. Thus, whether applying natural law to people or states, Vattel considers both to be (moral) persons who naturally prioritise duties to themselves, this principle of self-interested utility conceived of as coterminous with altruistic virtue, and, by consequence, belonging to a universal society of moral actors.

In Defence of Pigou–Dalton for Chances

AbstractI defend a weak version of the Pigou–Dalton principle for chances. The principle says that it is better to increase the survival chance of a person who is more likely to die rather than a person who is less likely to die, assuming that the two people do not differ in any other morally relevant respect. The principle justifies plausible moral judgements that standard ex post views, such as prioritarianism and rank-dependent egalitarianism, cannot accommodate. However, the principle can be justified by the same reasoning that has recently been used to defend the core axiom of ex post prioritarianism and egalitarianism, namely, Pigou–Dalton for well-being. The arguably biggest challenge for proponents of Pigou–Dalton for chances is that it violates state dominance for social prospects. However, I argue that we have independent reason for rejecting state dominance for social prospects, since it prevents a social planner from properly respecting people's preferences.

Becoming Global Governors: Self-Agentification, Recognition, and Delegation in World Politics

AbstractThe emergence of new global governors and the ensuing complexity marks one of the most noticeable characteristics of contemporary global politics. However, this core axiom of global governance has not been unpacked in terms of why and how new actors emerge. This is surprising, since the emergence of new global governors raises fundamental questions about the very architecture of global governance. To unpack the dynamics of agency emergence, the article proposes a conceptual framework eclectically derived from relationalism. The framework defines foundational terms and allows us to posit assumptions on self-agentification, recognition, and delegation. We illustrate the framework and its mechanisms by reconstructing the emergence and evolution of corporate agency within the United Nations (UN) from initial debates in the 1960s to the UN Global Compact and conclude that this is mostly a story of contested recognition rather than self-agentification, with the international community and, in particular, states of the global north, inviting business to become more active.

Kinds of Replication: Examining the Meanings of “Conceptual Replication” and “Direct Replication”

Although psychology’s recent crisis has been attributed to various scientific practices, it has come to be called a “replication crisis,” prompting extensive appraisals of this putatively crucial scientific practice. These have yielded disagreements over what kind of replication is to be preferred and what phenomena are being explored, yet the proposals are all grounded in a conventional philosophy of science. This article proposes another avenue that invites moving beyond a discovery metaphor of science to rethink research as enabling realities and to consider how empirical findings enact or perform a reality. An enactment perspective appreciates multiple, dynamic realities and science as producing different entities, enactments that ever encounter differences, uncertainties, and precariousness. The axioms of an enactment perspective are described and employed to more fully understand the two kinds of replication that predominate in the crisis disputes. Although the enactment perspective described here is a relatively recent development in philosophy of science and science studies, some of its core axioms are not new to psychology, and the article concludes by revisiting psychologists’ previous calls to apprehend the dynamism of psychological reality to appreciate how scientific practices actively and unavoidably participate in performativity of reality.

From gateways to multilinear connections: A qualitative longitudinal investigation of the relationships between vaping and smoking among adolescent users.

The international growth of e-cigarette use has been accompanied by a corresponding concern that e-cigarettes will act as a 'gateway' to smoking and the use of other drugs. Taking these concerns as our point of departure, we explore the relationships between vaping and smoking among a cohort of young people. Qualitative longitudinal methods with a diverse sample of 36 14-18-year olds from the UK city of Leicester. A total of 66 depth interviews conducted across two phases separated by 6-12 months. The interviews were recorded, transcribed verbatim and thematically analysed. We highlight a complex 'tangle' of connections between substances/risk behaviours recounted to us by our adolescent study participants, including multiple and multilinear relationships between vaping and smoking. These findings problematise some of the core axioms of the notion of gateways as an explanatory model of causality and sequential connection between smoking and vaping. They also throw into question gateway logics more fundamentally. While many of our study participants themselves consciously invoked ideas of 'gateway effects', the accounts they produced repeatedly disrupted the logics of connection (between e-cigarettes and smoking; one set of behaviours and another) presupposed in gateway theory and our own early lines of questioning. Accordingly, we explore how cultural understandings of gateway effects are invoked by users in accounting for their vaping and smoking behaviours, noting the potential influence of these ideas upon the very processes they are understood to apprehend. Our findings suggest there is a case to be made to reinforce the distinctiveness of tobacco and e-cigarettes in the life-worlds of young people to avoid naturalising a 'gateway' logic of connection that might ultimately inform the associative logic of young users themselves, and potentially the development of their usage careers.

Thoughts, Crimes, and Thought Crimes

Thought crimes are the stuff of dystopian fiction, not contemporary law. Or so we’re told. Yet our criminal legal system may in a sense punish thought regularly, even as our existing criminal theory lacks the resources to recognize this state of affairs for what it is—or to explain what might be wrong with it. The beginning of wisdom lies in the seeming rhetorical excesses of those who complain that certain terrorism and hate crime laws punish offenders for their malevolent intentions while purporting to punish them for their conduct. Behind this too-easily-written-off complaint is a half-buried precept of criminal jurisprudence, one that this Essay aims to excavate, elaborate, and defend: that the proper target of an offender’s punishment is always the criminal action itself, not the offender’s associated mental state conceived as a separate wrong. Taken seriously, this precept would change how we punish an assortment of criminal offenses, from attempts to hate crimes to terrorism. It also would change how we conceive the criminal law’s core axioms, especially the poorly understood but surprisingly important doctrine of concurrence.

Newtons Methodologie: Eine Kritik an Duhem, Feyerabend und Lakatos

Abstract The Newtonian research program consists of the core axioms of the Principia Mathematica, a sequence of force laws and auxiliary hypotheses, and a set of methodological rules. The latter underwent several changes and so it is sometimes claimed that, historically seen, Newton and the Newtonians added methodological rules post constructione in order to further support their research agenda. An argument of Duhem, Feyerabend, and Lakatos aims to provide a theoretical reason why Newton could not have come up with his theory of the Principia in accordance with his own methodology: Since Newton’s starting point, Kepler’s laws, contradict the law of universal gravitation, he could not have applied the so-called method of analysis and synthesis. In this paper, this argument is examined with reference to the Principia’s several editions. Newton’s method is characterized, and necessary general background assumptions of the argument are made explicit. Finally, the argument is criticized based on a contemporary philosophy of science point of view.

John Cage's Silent Piece and the Japanese gardening technique of shakkei: Formalizing Whittington's conjecture through conceptual graphs

This article examines John Cage's Silent Piece (commonly known as ). I analyze the work through formalizing the frame conjecture of Stephen Whittington [2013. “Digging In John Cage's Garden: Cage and Ryōanji.” Malaysian Music Journal 2 (2): 12–21], which suggests that the work's spatial conditions are akin to those found in the Japanese gardening technique of shakkei, or borrowed scenery. By firstly expressing core axioms in natural language that describe the spatial conditions of Cage's Silent Piece, its' 1952 premiere as , the technique of shakkei, and an exemplar manifestation of shakkei at the garden Adachi Teien (Japan), I construct an ontology that enables the fundamental assumptions of Whittington's conjecture to be explicated through conceptual graphs John Sowa [1984. Conceptual Structures: Information Processing in Mind and Machine. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley]. From the ontology, I create a number of graphs and derive first-order logic formulas that are then used for inference and further reasoning. I conclude by providing a formalism of Whittington's conjecture via a conceptual graph rule that accounts for both auditory and visual conditions that generate shakkei in the cited examples of the premiere of the Silent Piece as and the garden of Adachi Teien.

Unique information via dependency constraints

The partial information decomposition (PID) is perhaps the leading proposal for resolving information shared between a set of sources and a target into redundant, synergistic, and unique constituents. Unfortunately, the PID framework has been hindered by a lack of a generally agreed-upon, multivariate method of quantifying the constituents. Here, we take a step toward rectifying this by developing a decomposition based on a new method that quantifies unique information. We first develop a broadly applicable method—the dependency decomposition—that delineates how statistical dependencies influence the structure of a joint distribution. The dependency decomposition then allows us to define a measure of the information about a target that can be uniquely attributed to a particular source as the least amount which the source-target statistical dependency can influence the information shared between the sources and the target. The result is the first measure that satisfies the core axioms of the PID framework while not satisfying the Blackwell relation, which depends on a particular interpretation of how the variables are related. This makes a key step forward to a practical PID.

Another Counterexample to Markov Causation from Quantum Mechanics: Single Photon Experiments and the Mach-Zehnder Interferometer

Abstract The theory of causal Bayes nets [15, 19] is, from an empirical point of view, currently one of the most promising approaches to causation on the market. There are, however, counterexamples to its core axiom, the causal Markov condition. Probably the most serious of these counterexamples are EPR/B experiments in quantum mechanics (cf. [13, 23]). However, these are also the only counterexamples yet known from the quantum realm. One might therefore wonder whether they are the only phenomena in the quantum realm that create problems for causal Bayes nets. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that not only the phenomenon of quantum correlations in EPR/B experiments create problems for causal Bayes nets, but also the temporal evolution of quantum systems, which is described as dualistic by quantum mechanics. For this purpose, it is shown that single photon experiments in a Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) violate the causal Markov condition as well. It is then argued, however, that the Markov violation does not occur under the de Broglie-Bohm interpretation of Bohmian mechanics.

Service-dominant logic 2025

During the last decade, service-dominant (S-D) logic (1) has taken a series of significant theoretical turns, (2) has had foundational premises modified and added and (3) has been consolidated into a smaller set of core axioms. S-D logic can continue to advance over the next decade by moving toward further development of a general theory of the market and, even more broadly, to a general theory of value cocreation. To support this theory of the market requires developing more midrange theoretical frameworks and concepts of service exchange, resource integration, value cocreation, value determination, and institutions/ecosystems. These midrange theories can be partially informed by theories outside of marketing, including those under the rubrics of practice, evolutionary, complexity, ecological and structuration theories. Evidence-based research is also needed; opportunities exist in areas such as (1) strategy development and implementation (2) application of complexity economics and (3) the study of the service of cognitive mediators (assistants) as heuristic tools in complex service ecosystems. Additionally, opportunities exist for using S-D logic as a broader framework for the study of macromarketing, including ethics, economic, environmental and social sustainability, as well as public policy. For each of these, the further study of institutions and institutional arrangements, which facilitate coordination among actors in service ecosystems, is needed.

Erratum to: Causality as a theoretical concept: explanatory warrant and empirical content of the theory of causal nets

We start this paper by arguing that causality should, in analogy with force in Newtonian physics, be understood as a theoretical concept that is not explicated by a single definition, but by the axioms of a theory. Such an understanding of causality implicitly underlies the well-known theory of causal (Bayes) nets (TCN) and has been explicitly promoted by Glymour (Br J Philos Sci 55:779–790, 2004). In this paper we investigate the explanatory warrant and empirical content of TCN. We sketch how the assumption of directed cause–effect relations can be philosophically justified by an inference to the best explanation. We then ask whether the explanations provided by TCN are merely post-facto or have independently testable empirical content. To answer this question we develop a fine-grained axiomatization of TCN, including a distinction of different kinds of faithfulness. A number of theorems show that although the core axioms of TCN are empirically empty, extended versions of TCN have successively increasing empirical content.

An introduction to the general boundary formulation of quantum field theory

We give a brief introduction to the so-called general boundary formulation (GBF) of quantum theory. This new axiomatic formulation provides a description of the quantum dynamics which is manifestly local and does not rely on a metric background structure for its definition. We present the basic ingredients of the GBF, in particular we review the core axioms that assign algebraic structures to geometric ones, the two quantisation schemes so far developed for the GBF and the probability interpretation which generalizes the standard Born rule. Finally we briefly discuss some of the results obtained studying specific quantum field theories within the GBF.

Causality and Unification: How Causality Unifies Statistical Regularities

Two key ideas of scientific explanation - explanations as causal information and explanation as unification - have frequently been set into mutual opposition. This paper proposes a "dialectical solution" to this conflict, by arguing that causal explanations are preferable to non-causal explanations because they lead to a higher degree of unification at the level of the explanation of statistical regularities. The core axioms of the theory of causal nets (TC) are justified because they give the best if not the only unifying explanation of two statistical phenomena: screening off and linking up. Alternative explanation attempts are discussed and it is shown why they don't work. It is demonstrated that not the core of TC but extended versions of TC have empirical content, by means of which they can generate independently testable predictions.

Generaties, herinnering en historiciteit

Although ‘generation’ is a key concept in historiography, the problem of historicity has rarely been discussed within generational theory. In this article, I argue for a revision of generational thinking, which focuses on historical experience instead of political action. I start with a critical assessment of Karl Mannheims seminal essay ‘the Problem of Generations’ (1928). Although the core axiom of his theory – the primary importance of adolescent experiences for generational consciousness – is still valid, his historical materialist interpretation of generations is questionable as it leads to the fallacies of historicism. Alternatively, the imagined character of the generation is emphasized and a reinterpretation of the generational experience as an experience of historicity is proposed. Consequently, the generation is no longer understood as an agent of sociohistorical change, but as a meta-historical category in which the individual’s placement in history is both cognitively understood and socially mediated.

On ranking opportunity distributions

Our results show the intimate relationship between a large group of apparently different rankings of opportunity distributions. First, we provide a set of core basic axioms that are intuitively plausible under any concern for equality or efficiency aspects. Second, we introduce two very opposed views of the problem by incorporating different perspectives of the notion of advantage (better opportunity set) and we provide some axioms that might be defended under such extreme positions. For any of these two different perspectives, we characterize the families of rankings which satisfy the core axioms and the group of axioms corresponding to that view. These characterizations will prove insightful to better understand most of the criteria already introduced in the literature, which are part of the families we study.

Islamic Finance and Securitization: Man-Made Tale or Reality

The core and fundamental axiom of Islamic finance is the elimination of riba which literally means interest. Islam's unconditional prohibition of riba changes the landscape of the Islamic financial system. Prohibition of interest by Islam is actually an indirect prohibition of pure debt security. Instead of debt other forms of financing based on the principle of sharing of profit and loss are recommended under Shariah (Islamic law). We will look at most of the shariah compliant services and whether that is not just a leap of faith. However Plato's Theaetetus of belief, knowledge and understanding will try to bring out some light on that issue.

General boundary quantum field theory: Foundations and probability interpretation

We elaborate on the proposed general boundary formulation as an extension of standard quantum mechanics to arbitrary (or no) backgrounds. Temporal transition amplitudes are generalized to amplitudes for arbitrary spacetime regions. State spaces are associated to general (not necessarily spacelike) hypersurfaces. We give a detailed foundational exposition of this approach, including its probability interpretation and a list of core axioms. We explain how standard quantum mechanics arises as a special case. We include a discussion of probability conservation and unitarity, showing how these concepts are generalized in the present framework. We formulate vacuum axioms and incorporate spacetime symmetries into the framework. We show how the Schroedinger-Feynman approach is a suitable starting point for casting quantum field theories into the general boundary form. We discuss the role of operators.

The Great Illusion: Chimeras of Isolationism and Realism in Post‐Iraq U.S. Foreign Policy1

In light of the Bush Administration's failures in Iraq, some have foreseen a turn toward a new isolationism or realism in U.S. foreign policy. This article argues that such an ideological reorientation is unlikely. America's level of economic entwinement with others, and its role in maintaining strategic stability in certain regions, present formidable practical barriers to isolationism. Though realism might be a more plausible prospect, the nature of America's historical and ideological journey toward internationalism makes it difficult for a realist approach to gain lasting supremacy. Increased pragmatism, and reduced militarism and adventurism, are likely responses to harsh operational realities. Nevertheless, the core axiom of American strategic thought—the liberal universalist credo that all nations must eventually adopt a baseline of American values and practices for lasting international peace to be achieved—is embedded too widely across the political spectrum to be ousted without a major revolution in American political culture.

Networks and Contexts: Variation in the Structure of Social Ties

A core axiom of sociology is that social structure affects and is affected by human behavior. The term “social structure” conveys two quite different meanings. One meaning is relational, involving networks of ties between individuals or groups of individuals. A second meaning refers to the contexts containing these individuals. Studies of neighborhood and community effects depend on variability in both types of social structure. Using data from multiple villages in Nang Rong, Thailand, this article documents substantial variability in network structure and shows that network structure covaries with context in meaningful ways, suggesting reciprocal effects of changes in both. Finally, it considers implications of variability in network structure, showing that social cohesion affects the likelihood of finding and interviewing former village residents.