Physical Doctrine Research Articles

Physicalism Without the Idols of Mathematics

AbstractI will argue that the ontological doctrine of physicalism inevitably entails the denial that there is anything conceptual in logic and mathematics. The elements of a formal system, even if they are tagged by suggestive names, are merely meaningless parts of a physically existing machinery, which have nothing to do with concepts, because they have nothing to do with the actual things. The only situation in which they can become meaning-carriers is when they are involved in a physical theory. But in this role they refer to elements of the physical reality, i.e. they represent a physical concept. “Mathematical concepts” are just idols, that philosophy can completely deny and physics can completely ignore.

Bilateral Brown-Sequard syndrome regressing to anterior cord syndrome in spinal impalement: 2 unique cases with management pearls

BackgroundNon-missile impalement spine injuries are quite uncommon. Most of these patients either present with impaling agent in situ or with a part of retained offending agent. Both the scenarios present unique management challenges especially if patients are clinically stable. The injury becomes more complex if multiple compartments like lung and abdomen also get involved. Non-missile penetrating spinal injury is rarely seen in the Indian settings. The world over it approximately accounts for 0.3–2.1% of spinal injuries. In view such meagre occurrence management decisions are usually driven based on surgeons’ experience and patient’s condition. Although conservative approaches for retained products have less complications as compared to surgery, long-term outcomes are not available for comparison. Unique management challenges are noted and described. Physical doctrines for management principles of such injuries are also attempted. Noteworthy is that their regression from complete cord syndrome to anterior cord syndrome is extremely short period.Case presentationWe present 2 unique cases presenting as complete cord transection regressing from bilateral brown Sequard syndrome to anterior cord syndrome following decompression.ConclusionSpinal impalements are very rare especially now with strict societal regulations and criminal justice in place. Still now and then we do come across some staggering cases as described above. To establish a treatment protocol and management guidelines in such scarce scenarios is difficult. We attempt to underlie few basic doctrines in this regard with our experience in a tertiary centre.

What is a Physical Taking?

The Supreme Court often says that a “per se” (or “categorical”) rule governs “physical taking” claims under the Taking Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. These statements suggest the government must pay compensation whenever it physically intrudes upon private property, without regard to any other factor or circumstance. However, there are substantial reasons to doubt that a literal per se rule for physical taking claims actually does — or should — exist. In practice, the Court has frequently departed from a per se analysis of physical taking claims, and in some instances the Court has rejected physical taking claims outright. These outcomes are plainly inconsistent with a per se rule. While the Court has suggested the purported per se approach to physical taking cases has a venerable history (“as old as the Republic,” it has said), it is actually a relatively modern invention and lacks strong support in precedent. The per se theory also is impossible to square with the many traditional government physical invasions of private property that have generally not been regarded as implicating the taking issue, including, for example, forfeitures, seizures of distressed financial institutions, or impoundments of dangerous animals or adulterated foods. Finally, the Court has failed to identify persuasive justifications for applying a per se rule in physical taking cases, and some of its reasoning in support of per se analysis is simply incoherent. The serious problems with the Court’s purported per se theory reveal the need to rethink physical takings doctrine. This Article takes up this challenge by first addressing how to distinguish physical taking claims from other types of taking claims. It proposes that physical takings be classified as either appropriations or occupations, with appropriations defined as de jure or de facto government acquisitions of ownership from a prior owner, and occupations defined as government-caused invasions of private property by people or objects. Both types of physical taking claims stand in contrast to taking claims based on restrictions on the use of property, which are generally analyzed under a relatively more forgiving, complex analytic framework. This Article argues that each type of taking claim should be understood as arising from an impairment of a distinctive normative value: in the case of appropriations, the instrumental exploitation of citizens for governmental purposes; in the case of occupations, the impairment of personal privacy; and in the case of restrictions on the use of property, the potentially extreme and unfair redistribution of wealth. Particular government actions may implicate several of these different property-related values with the result that a single government action can potentially support different types of taking claims. However, the values associated with each type of claim are sufficiently distinctive to support different rules for different types of alleged takings. This analysis yields a new approach to physical taking cases that eschews an absolute per se theory but also recognizes that courts should analyze physical taking claims (based on either appropriations or occupations) differently than claims based on use restrictions. Under the proposed approach, courts would evaluate physical taking claims without regard to the economic impact of the government action or the size of the portion of the property affected by the government action. However, courts would evaluate physical taking claims by considering other factors from traditional takings analysis, including the extent of interference with the owner’s reasonable expectations and the purposes of the government action.

ГЕНЕЗИС ТА ОСОБЛИВОСТІ ФОРМУВАННЯ БАЗОВИХ МОДЕЛЕЙ ІДЕНТИФІКАЦІЇ КОЛЬОРУ

Purpose. The determination of the formation features of basic models of color and identification of color in the initial stages (the 18th – 19th centuries) of scientific research of the problem. Methodology of the research is based on historical and cultural method. The source base is the artistic, scientific and technical literature of the studied period and also artefacts. Results. This publication reveals a generalized approach to theoretical developments on color perception and identification, and covers the initial period of color research and the formation of basic models of color (the 18th – 19th centuries). So in the middle of the 17th century I. Newton founded a seven-color ordering model, placing them to a closed color circle. At about the same time, other attempts at color systemization were proposed, such as color identification in the form of tables of existing paints, the work of I. Brennen and R. Waller. Subsequently, Jacob Christoph Le Blon concluded that in order to get results, you could use only three colors, namely red, yellow and blue. Based on this work, M. Harris presented his color circle, J. Lambert – a triangular color pyramid, and Ph.Runge built a color sphere using the principle of the globe. Goethe, contrary to Newton's physical doctrine of colors, conceived another system, it was based on the phenomenological perception of color. According to Goethe and his followers, the colors come from the struggle of "light" and "darkness". A. Schopenhauer took the step that J. Goethe lacked in his thinking: A. Schopenhauer formed a doctrine of color in terms of psychology, noting the enormous role that our brain plays in color perception, and proposing his model of identification by the principle of intensity / extensiveness/quality. for the formal description of the tri-color system of color, forming a mathe-confirmation of T. Young's theory and came to the conclusion that for the comparison of all shades, three light sources were needed and sufficient: in the red, green and blue parts of the spectrum. The perception of other colors is conditioned by the interaction of these constituents. In his work, J. Maxwell proved that all colors come from a mixture of three spectral colors: red, green, and blue. Based on his research, he introduced the first two-dimensional color spectrum visualization system. H. Grassmann's merit is the mathematical representation of the three spectral colors. E. Hering's theory highlights the psychological aspects of color vision: warm sensations occur for white, yellow, and red colors, while cold sensations occur for black, dark blue, and light blue. G. Peano introduced the concept of "color space" as a system of vector space equations.

Causal closure of the physical, mental causation, and physics

The argument from causal closure of the physical (CCP) is usually considered the most powerful argument in favor of the ontological doctrine of physicalism. Many authors, most notably Papineau, assume that CCP implies that physicalism is supported by physics. I demonstrate, however, that physical science has no bias in the ontological debate between proponents of physicalism and dualism. I show that the arguments offered for CCP are effective only against the accounts of mental causation based on the action of the mental forces of a Newtonian nature, i.e. those which manifest themselves by causing accelerations. However, it is conceivable and possible that mental causation is manifested through the redistribution of energy, momentum and other conserved quantities in the system, brought about by altering the state probability distribution within the living system and leading to anomalous correlations of neural processes. After arguing that a probabilistic, interactionist model of mental causation is conceivable, which renders the argument from causal closure of the physical ineffective, I point to some basic features that such a model must have in order to be intelligible. At the same time, I indicate the way that conclusive testing of CCP can be done within the theoretical framework of physics.

Problemy koncepcyjne naturalizmu redukcyjnego Quine’a

Quine’s position is counted as a reductive naturalism. It overcomes both the traditional Cartesian-Kantian approach to philosophy and the theory of logical empiricism. In consequence, Quine turns for guidance to empirical science. Philosophical reflection turns out to be secondary and dependent on science, for it is the empirical sciences that are the only source of genuine knowledge. As a result, philosophy should be reduced, in Quine’s view, to the application of scientific methods to problems that more general than those raised within the sciences themselves. Quine’s position is criticized in this article both internally, for being inconsistent, and externally, from the point of view of non-reductive naturalism. The criticism primarily pertains to (a) the doctrine of physicalism, (b) the thought-experiment regarding the indeterminacy of translation, and (c) non-observability of the principles of naturalism.

Damascius and al-Naẓẓām on the Atomic Leap

AbstractLike Damascius’ ἅλµατα or leaps, al-Naẓẓām’s (died ca. 849 CE) doctrine of the leap (Arabic ṭafra) seems to be an attempt to respond to Zeno’s paradoxes of motion. After a survey of these paradoxes and Aristotle’s responses to them, I discuss some points of resemblance between the physical doctrines of Damascius and al-Naẓẓām. To explain them, I adopt Richard Sorabji’s suggestion of an historical influence by Damascius on al-Naẓẓām. After surveying objections to Sorabji’s thesis, I make use of new paleographical discoveries to suggest that after Justinian’s closure of the Platonic School of Athens, the last Neoplatonic philosophers may have taken the library of the School of Athens—including the ancestors of the core manuscripts of the Collection Philosophique—to the court of Ḫosrow I Anūšīrwān at Ctesiphon ca. 531 CE, where some texts that were the models of this Collection—which includes works by Damascius—may have been translated into Persian. This provides a new possible avenue by which al-Naẓẓām and other early Islamic theologians may have had access to some elements of late Greek philosophy even before the beginnings of the great translation movement sponsored by al-Maʿmūn (r. 813-833 CE).

Representationalism in Nietzsche’s Early Physics: Cosmology and Sensation in the Zeitatomenlehre

Abstract Nietzsche’s 1873 fragment, the Zeitatomenlehre, posits a temporal conception of action at a distance where space is reduced to a single point and time consists only in a series of discrete atoms. Taken as a physical doctrine that destroys all spatial difference, this conception raises serious conflicts with the rest of his work. I describe and situate this theory within the historical context of debates over action at a distance in nineteenth-century physics, distinguish it from physical theories influential on Nietzsche, and argue that these conflicts can be resolved only by viewing it in the anti-metaphysical phenomenalist and representational terms that he also expressed in his early work.

Doctrine, Practice and Masculinity: Physical Training in the British Army, 1939–1945

From the 1860s to the end of the Second World War, the British Army produced several iterations of its physical training doctrine. Such material remains, however, a largely untapped resource for researchers, despite considerable scholarly interest in the subject of military masculinity and corporeality. By drawing extensively on the under-utilized resource provided by military instructional material, the present article will argue that physical activity, primarily through bodily exercise, exerted a fundamental influence on the development of an appropriately military-masculine identity in British Army recruits during the Second World War.

On Indivisibles and Infinitesimals: A Response to David Sherry, “The Jesuits and the Method of Indivisibles”

In “The Jesuits and the Method of Indivisibles” David Sherry criticizes a central thesis of my book Infinitesimal: that in the seventeenth century the Jesuits sought to suppress the method of indivisibles because it undermined their efforts to establish a perfect rational and hierarchical order in the world, modeled on Euclidean Geometry. Sherry accepts that the Jesuits did indeed suppress the method, but offers two objections. First, that the book does not distinguish between indivisibles and infinitesimals, and that whereas the Jesuits might have reason to object to the first, the second posed no problem for them. Second, seeking an alternative explanation for the Jesuits’ hostility to the method, he proposes that its implicit atomism conflicted with the Catholic doctrine of the sacrament of the Eucharist, and was therefore heretical. In response to Sherry’s first criticism I point out that the Jesuits objected to all forms of the method of indivisibles, and that the distinction between indivisibles and infinitesimals consequently cannot explain the fight over the method in the seventeenth century. With regards to the Eucharist, I agree with Sherry that the Jesuits were indeed concerned about the method’s affinity to atomism and materialism, though for a different reason: these doctrines were antithetical to their efforts to impose divine hierarchy and order on the world. In as much as the technical details of the miracle of the Eucharist mattered, they provided no grounds for objecting to a mathematical (rather than physical) doctrine.

AN EPITOME OF GALEN'SON THE ELEMENTSASCRIBED TO ḤUNAYN IBN ISḤĀQ

AbstractGalen'sOn the Elements according to Hippocratesis an important source for physical doctrines circulating in late antiquity. The variety of atomistic doctrines that Galen brings into the discussion, as well as his arguments aimed at refuting them, were closely studied by the early kalām atomists. Of particular interest are the summaries of this text, which seem to have been written many centuries after Galen; some of them are products of early Islamicate culture. In this paper, we present an edition, translation, and study of a hitherto unknown summary, extent in a unique manuscript where it is attributed to Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq. Like the other summaries, it presents a doxography of physical doctrines, not always repeating precisely what Galen says, but rather reflecting the discourse of its period.

Pursuing Natural Piety: Understanding Ontological Emergence and Distinguishing it from Physicalism

This paper focuses on two issues related to ontological emergence: whether it is a coherent notion, and its relation to the doctrine of physicalism. First, it is argued that ontological emergence is best understood as a thesis relying on three fundamental tenets claiming that emergents are basic, genuinely causal, and determined by the physical realm. The paper elucidates the roles of these tenets, and introduces an interpretation that is able to resolve any apparent contradiction between the tenets, thereby supporting the claim that the commitments of ontological emergence form a consistent view. The proposed understanding also hints that telling physicalism and emergentism apart is not a problem even if one subscribes to a supervenience-based formulation of physicalism. The difference in the modal strength of the supervenience relation physicalism and emergentism endorse readily distinguishes them – the former is committed to metaphysical determination whereas the latter to nomological determination. However, in a recent paper, Jessica Wilson has posed an objection to this way of differentiating physicalism from emergentism on the ground that the metaphysical/nomological distinction cannot be drawn in this context. The second part of this paper introduces Wilson's objection, and argues in detail that it fails to disqualify the modal strength-based distinction.

The Story of Rizzo: The Shifting Landscape of Attempt Law

People v. Rizzo, 158 N.E. 888 (N.Y. 1927), the case of a bunch of incompetent would-be robbers who never quite found their victim, is one of the great icons of attempt law and of criminal law generally. The prosecutor had plenty of evidence that the defendants were trying to find a payroll agent who was to deliver wages at a construction site, but they spent hours driving around the Bronx in futile pursuit of their prey, and spotted by the police, were arrested just before the intended victim showed up. In reversing the conviction for attempted robbery, the New York Court of Appeals held that the conduct of the defendants fell short of the line that divides preparation from attempt — although it also offered the police perhaps unwelcome congratulations for their vigilance. This chapter in Criminal Law Stories (Donna Coker & Robert Weisberg, eds., 2012), recounts the background of the Rizzo case and narrates the trial itself, which, amid a fair amount of comedy, offers a useful picture of late 1920s law enforcement and trial practice. But the chapter also views the opinion as doctrinally important. In holding that the defendants’ conduct was not “so near to its accomplishment that in all reasonable probability the crime itself would have been committed but for timely interference,” the court reflects such defense-friendly tests as the “physical proximity doctrine,“ the “dangerous proximity doctrine,” or the “indispensable element test.” Not long after this decision, American law saw the advent of the MPC’s “substantial step” test, which, by putting much more emphasis on the manifest subjective mental state of the defendant, is much more prosecution-friendly and might have meant a victory for the state in Rizzo. On the other hand, the case also illustrates how substantive crime definitions interact with, and are sometimes contingent upon, rules of criminal procedure. In Rizzo, the strong evidence of the defendant’s intent came from police actions that might now barred by the Warren Court search-and-seizure and confession law, as well as the law addressing cross-admission of confessions in joint trials of accomplices.

The Philosophic Context of the Development of Natural Law

The modern critique of natural law theory is unpersuasive, focusing on peripheral issues on which natural law theorists can yield. This results from a lack of awareness of the philosophic context in which Thomas Aquinas reworked natural law theology. Turning to the ancient and medieval precursors to natural law opens us to a more thoroughgoing engagement with it, one that begins with political philosophy rather than with physical or metaphysical doctrines.

Book Review: The Foundations of Copernicus's Book I: Niccolò Copernico e la Fondazione del Cosmo Eliocentrico, con testo, traduzione e commentario del Libro I de Le Rivoluzioni Celesti

THE FOUNDATIONS OF COPERNICUS'S BOOK I Niccolo Copernico e la Fondazione del Cosmo Eliocentrico, con testo, traduzione e commentario del Libro I de Le Rivoluzioni Celesti. Anna De Pace (Bruno Mondadori, Milan, 2009). Pp. 450. euro32 (paperback). ISBN 978-88-6159071-7.This is a study of the philosophical foundations of Copernicus's planetary theory focused on the first book of De revolutionibus. It contains a new edition with an Italian translation of the manuscript version of Book 1,1-1 1, the original preface (absent in the editio princeps of 1543, published for the first time in the Torun edition of 1 873), and Copernicus's dedicatory letter to Paul DI. Appendices present Copernicus's Latin translation of Lysis's letter to Hipparchus, Osiander's anonymous preface, and Cardinal Schonberg's letter to Copernicus.This new edition aims at bring Book I of De revolutionibus back to the form in which it was presumably conceived by the author (Rosen has already provided the English reader with a translation, On the revolutions (1978), which integrates the printed and the manuscript versions of Copernicus's major work). De Pace explicitly distances herself from the editorial line of the Gesamtausgabe, which relies on the printed edition and relegates the original introduction to an appendix (NCG, ii, 487-8), as well as from the same decision by Lerner and Segonds for the announced Les Belles Lettres edition. De Pace's transcription is accurate and readable; she expands the ligatures and abbreviations and provides some normalization (e.g., capital letters and the distinction of 'u' and V). In some points, she improves and slightly corrects former transcriptions (as emerges from a comparison with NCG). However her normalization is not always consistent (ptolemaeus becomes Ptolemaeus whilst plutarchus is not standardized (p. 256). The Italian translation is elegantly agreeable, an improvement on the already available ones, the most important of which appeared in Barone's edition of Copernicus's astronomical works (Copernico, Opere (Turin, 1979)). The most original renderings of particular terms are discussed and justified in the notes (1,1, 'parte perfetta' for 'absolutae partes', Rosen: 'separate parts'; 1,2, 'cime delle montagne' for 'vertices', Rosen: 'poles'; 1,8, 'corpi integrali' for 'universi' as opposed to the 'partes', Rosen, more elegantly: 'wholes').De Pace presents Copernicus's achievement as essentially philosophical. This undertaking can be regarded as a continuation of a continental scholarly tradition that includes A. Birkenmajer and Bilinski, as well as Barone, Lerner and Hallyn. Moreover, she accepts Koyre's judgement on the importance of the geokinetic theory for the emergence of classical mechanics but questions the claim that no adequate philosophical and physical doctrine supported Copernicus's system. By contrast, she emphasizes his essentially Platonic commitment and the philosophical coherence of his program. Her solid background in the history of philosophy allows her to trace Copernicus's explicit and implicit references to Plato's works, especially Timaeus and Laws, but also Phaedo and Republic. As a strong evidence of Copernicus 's familiarity with Timaeus, she also cites (36-7 ana passim) a passage from Rheticus's Praise of Prussia (cf. Narrano prima, ed. Hugonnard-Roche and Verdert (Wroclaw, 1982), 85-6 and 144) reporting on Copernicus's and Giese's rebuttal of Aristotle's criticism on the geokinetic doctrines of the Pythagoreans and Timaeus. Yet, it should be remarked that this passage merely refers to Aristotle's De caelo 11,13, that is, to an indirect source of the Pythagoreans' and Plato's conceptions.She regards two Copernican ideas as essentially 'Platonic' (p. 38); (i) his claim that the main task of astronomy is to unveil the beauty underlying the cosmos, that astronomical geometries and physical causes shall be derived from higher purposes rooted in God's goodness; (ii) his assertion of the ontological and epistemological priority of astronomy over physics which undermines the Aristotelian hierarchy of knowledge. …

The Explanatory Role of Irreducible Properties

I aim to reconcile two apparently conflicting theses: 1. Everything that can be explained, can be explained in purely physical terms, that is, using the machinery of fundamental physics, and 2. Some properties that play an explanatory role in the higher-level sciences are irreducible in the strong sense that they are physically undefinable: their nature cannot be described using the vocabulary of physics. I investigate the contribution that physically undefinable properties typically make to explanations in the high-level sciences, and I show that when they are explanatorily relevant, it is in virtue of their extension (or something close) alone. They are irreducible because physics cannot capture their nature; this is no obstacle, however, to physics’ more or less capturing their extension, which is all that it need do to duplicate their explanatory power. In the course of the argument, I sketch the outlines of an account of the explanation of physically contingent regularities, such as the regularities found in most branches of biological inquiry, at the center of which is an account of the nature of contingent, empirical “bridge principles”. Science and philosophy are fighting a battle over reduction, or so it seems. On the one hand, for any “high-level” phenomenon—chemical, biological, psychological, economic—science claims to be able to provide, in the long term if not quite yet, a lower-level explanation, and ultimately a physicallevel explanation. The enormous progress that has been made towards this goal can hardly be ignored. On the other hand, philosophers have recently claimed with increasing confidence that many explanatory properties cited by higher-level sciences—being water, being a gene, being a species, being a belief, being currency—are irreducible. The aim of this paper is to show that both sides may be correct. I will characterize very strong versions of both the scientific and the philosophical claims—strong versions of explanatory physicalism and explanatory irreducibility—and I will argue that there exists an explanatory relevance relation, a conception of the explanatory role played by irreducible properties, that allows the two to coexist. I will provide no arguments for either explanatory physicalism or explanatory irreducibility; I will rather simply suppose that both doctrines are correct and attempt a reconciliation. Further, in contrast with much of the recent literature on reductionism, this paper will not be especially concerned with functionally defined or multiply realizable higher-level properties; the explanatory role I find for irreducible properties can be played by functional and non-functional properties, by multiply and singly realizable properties, alike. 1. Explanatory Physicalism Everything that can be explained, can be explained physically; that is the doctrine of explanatory physicalism. More fancifully, if there were a race that only spoke and thought in the language of fundamental physics, and so could not conceive of non-physical properties, they could understand the world as

The Politics of the Eternal Return

The Politics of the Eternal Return Nicholas Tampio (bio) Nathan Widder. Reflections on Time and Politics. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008. $45.00 (hardcover), 216 pp. ISBN: 978-0271033945 In Nietzsche and Philosophy, Gilles Deleuze distinguishes two aspects of the eternal return. First, the eternal return is a cosmological and physical doctrine that posits a world of pure becoming. The world as we know it has regularities and identities, but these are only the surface effects of a deeper game of difference and repetition. The eternal return invites us to think of a world that emerges from, and always retains elements of, chaos: Chaosmos. The eternal return is also an ethical and selective thought that presses us to affirm a world without solid foundations. We live with beings and forces that resent the transience and injustice of this world and demand retribution, either against themselves (bad conscience) or others (ressentiment). The test of the eternal return—“whatever you will, will it in such a way that also wills its eternal return”—expunges reactive forces that demand solidity or vengeance and awakens joy for a world of surging and transient identities. The question becomes, though, how to translate the idea of the eternal return into a democratic, pluralistic politics. That is, how can we advocate the eternal return when we share the planet with theists, secularists, and others who hold that politics must have a secure foundation? In Reflections on Time and Politics, Nathan Widder thinks broadly and profoundly about the political prospects opened up by understanding time as the structural ungrounding of movement and chronology. The book’s deceptively simple title illustrates its thesis that identities, though necessary for human life, hide the complex interactions that produce them. For though the book is about time and politics, these topics are nodes in a network that includes ontology, epistemology, mathematics, linguistics, psychology, discursive formations, disciplinary regimes, ethical practices, micropolitics, the history of philosophy, and the philosophy of history. Widder examines each of these topics by drawing upon an impressive array of philosophers, psychologists, and political theorists, including Adorno, Aristotle, Bergson, Deleuze, Foucault, Freud, Hegel, Irigaray, Klein, Lacan, Nietzsche, the Stoics, and Wittgenstein. The book is composed of eighteen “focused components” that explore themes—with the help of one or several authors—that resonate together, and with exterior forces, to change how we think politically. In the introduction, Widder divides the components into three groupings that we may summarize as ontology, genealogy, and politics. Widder’s first aim in Reflections in Time and Politics is to present an ontology of the eternal return and anticipate the politics that it makes possible. Here, Widder follows Deleuze’s lead in combating the Hegelian presuppositions that continue to inform much radical political thought. Widder recovers Deleuze’s 1954 review of Jean Hyppolite’s Logic and Existence to show how Deleuze travels partway with his Hegelian teacher. Their shared task is the achievement of a philosophy of immanence, one that surpasses traditional metaphysical binaries such as essence and appearance. The solution, for both, is a logic of sense. A logic of sense retains a distinction between the inside and outside of a thing—between its external sense (its smell, as it were) and its internal core (the sense of the thing)—as two levels on the same plane of immanence. A logic of sense illuminates “the many mutually imbricated layers of reality residing within the empirical but going unnoticed by empirical thinking” (37). How, though, to describe the mutually imbricated layers of reality? The key difference between Deleuze and Hyppolite—and their respective progenitors Nietzsche and Hegel—is how to interpret the syntheses that compose identities. For Hegel, the glue of being is contradiction. Any thing is only by virtue of not being what it is not. Forces oppose one another, but only in order to reconcile identity and difference in a higher synthesis: the Absolute. For Hegel, the logic of contradiction explains both the movement of history (detailed in the Phenomenology of Sense) and the movement of thinking (described in the Logic). Deleuze’s first objection to the dialectical method is that its concepts—contradiction, negation, the One, the multiple, and...

Entrapped on the Web? Applying the Entrapment Defense to Cases Involving Online Sting Operations

Many law enforcement agencies are currently responding to the problem of online crime by establishing proactive investigative units that track criminals on the Internet. Not only do these specialized teams face problems in the area of emerging technology, they are also faced with handling emerging legal issues. The current research examined the issue of the entrapment defense, and how previously established physical realm doctrine could be applied to the investigation of online crimes such as child pornography. Relying on previous case law it would appear that entrapment claims related to online sting operations involve consideration of: a) did the law enforcement officer continuously contact the suspect with the intention of trying to convince the individual to engage in a particular type of behavior, b) how long was the relationship between the undercover officer and the suspect, and c) how much, if any, reluctance to commit the criminal act did the suspect provide evidence of?

IN DEFENCE OF THE SOVEREIGNTY OF PHILOSOPHY: AL-BAGHDĀDĪ'S CRITIQUE OF IBN AL-HAYTHAM'S GEOMETRISATION OF PLACE

This paper investigates the objections that were raised by the philosopher ‘Abd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī (d. ca. 1231 CE) against al-Ḥasan ibn al-Haytham’s (Alhazen; d. after 1041 CE) geometrisation of place. In this line of enquiry, I contrast the philosophical propositions that were advanced by al-Baghdādī in his tract: Fī al-Radd ‘alā Ibn al-Haytham fī al-makān (A refutation of Ibn al-Haytham’s place), with the geometrical demonstrations that Ibn al-Haytham presented in his groundbreaking treatise: Qawl fī al-Makān (Discourse on place). In examining the particulars of al-Baghdādī’s fragile defence of Aristotle’s definition of topos as delineated in Book IV of the Physics, which was rejected on mathematical grounds by Ibn al-Haytham, a special attention is also given to highlighting the systemic distinctions between the entities that are studied within the speculative physical doctrines of common sense and immediate experience, and the postulated ‘objects’ of scientific and mathematical research.

Colloquium – The United States Armyʼs Emerging Physical Fitness Doctrine

Colloquium – The United States Armyʼs Emerging Physical Fitness Doctrine