Against the Virtual: Kleinherenbrink’s Externality Thesis and Deleuze’s Machine Ontology

Drawing from Arjen Kleinherenbrink's recent book, Against Continuity: Gilles Deleuze's Speculative Realism (2019), this paper undertakes a detailed review of Kleinherenbrink's fourfold "externality thesis" vis-à-vis Deleuze's machine ontology. Reading Deleuze as a philosopher of the actual, this paper renders Deleuzean syntheses as passive contemplations, pulling other (passive) entities into an (active) experience and designating relations as expressed through contraction. In addition to reviewing Kleinherenbrink's book (which argues that the machine ontology is a guiding current that emerges in Deleuze's work after Difference and Repetition) alongside much of Deleuze's oeuvre, we relate and juxtapose Deleuze's machine ontology to positions concerning externality held by a host of speculative realists. Arguing that the machine ontology has its own account of interaction, change, and novelty, we ultimately set to prove that positing an ontological "cut" on behalf of the virtual realm is unwarranted because, unlike the realm of actualities, it is extraneous to the structure of becoming-that is, because it cannot be homogenous, any theory of change vis-à-vis the virtual makes it impossible to explain how and why qualitatively different actualities are produced

A study of computational aspects of network models for planning and control

Beginning with the PERT-CPM methodology and progressing through the more general network models, this study critically reviews the computational assumptions, results and possible errors, both by character and magnitude

Experience and relations in the metaphysics of A.N. Whitehead and F.H. Bradley

The central purpose of this thesis is to examine the affinities and contrasts in the metaphysical systems of A. N. Whitehead and F. H. Bradley. Not only does this thesis aim to explore thoroughly and show exactly where these two philosophers agree, it also attempts to provide an analysis and evaluation of the arguments where conflict does arise.After a brief introduction which sets out Whitehead's and Bradley's respective positions on philosophic method and approach to metaphysics, Chapter II "Immediate Experience and Feeling ", shows where Whitehead and Bradley unite in their reaction against the ontology of scientific materialism of the 17th century cosmology. At this point various affinities are shown concerning the central role of the doctrine of feeling. But in Chapter III "The Analysis of Experience ", Whitehead's interpretation of feeling in terms of a distinctive pluralistic ontology is seen to conflict with Bradley's doctrine, and thus the stage is set for the central Chapter IV "Relations: Internal and External ". In this chapter Whitehead is confronted with Bradley's very rigorous and exhaustive analysis of the relational form. Despite Bradley's arguments it is here concluded that Whitehead's scheme can be shown to be consistent, given various modifications of the pluralist ontology in terms of the temporal asymmetry of one -way dependence. In Chapter V "Extension and Whole -Part Relations ", an attempt is made to defend the new doctrine of event -pluralism against a recent version of the ontology of material substance; and it is shown how such an ontology of events can account for the physical bodies which make up the system of nature. In the remainder of this chapter and the following Chapter VI "Time ", special problems of space and time are raised in connection with Whitehead's and Bradley's very different conceptions of the extended universe; and various attempts are made to defend Whitehead's view of process against an eternalistic view of the universe largely consistent with the Bradleian Absolute. However in the course of evaluating the arguments, it is discovered that Whitehead's ultimate metaphysical position must make certain concessions to the theory of eternalism; and this gives rise to the final Chapter VII "God and the Absolute ", where it is concluded that Whitehead's God must be seen as an 'Absolute open at one end'. Here Whitehead and Bradley merge on the notion of universal absorption of all finite actualities into one eternal actual entity; though Whitehead's conception, in the end, differs in the sense that God is not the only real entity, but one divine actuality which is in unison of becoming with the whole of creation

Advances and Applications of Dezert-Smarandache Theory (DSmT), Vol. 1

The Dezert-Smarandache Theory (DSmT) of plausible and paradoxical reasoning is a natural extension of the classical Dempster-Shafer Theory (DST) but includes fundamental differences with the DST. DSmT allows to formally combine any types of independent sources of information represented in term of belief functions, but is mainly focused on the fusion of uncertain, highly conflicting and imprecise quantitative or qualitative sources of evidence. DSmT is able to solve complex, static or dynamic fusion problems beyond the limits of the DST framework, especially when conflicts between sources become large and when the refinement of the frame of the problem under consideration becomes inaccessible because of vague, relative and imprecise nature of elements of it. DSmT is used in cybernetics, robotics, medicine, military, and other engineering applications where the fusion of sensors\u27 information is required

Advances and Applications of DSmT for Information Fusion

This book is devoted to an emerging branch of Information Fusion based on new approach for modelling the fusion problematic when the information provided by the sources is both uncertain and (highly) conflicting. This approach, known in literature as DSmT (standing for Dezert-Smarandache Theory), proposes new useful rules of combinations

Powers, Necessitation, and Time

In this thesis I investigate the question of whether or not dispositional properties are able to necessitate their manifestations. I provide three main discussions that reflect three aspects of my question. The first and second discussions concern different aspects of the 'problem of prevention'. This is the premise that causal interactions can be subject to interference/prevention, generally construed. A number of philosophers have argued that the problem of prevention undercuts the necessitation of lawful regularities in the context of dispositional essentialism. We can term this issue the 'necessitation issue'. In the first discussion I examine whether or not antidotes qua preventative entities are metaphysically possible within the context of Alexander Bird's (2007) dispositional monism. I argue that Bird's theory raises a problem of ontological representation re antidotes. The line of thought in this discussion is that it is difficult for Bird to say what antidotes are and how they operate; nevertheless, in this discussion I provide a solution to my problem that stays within the confines of Bird's dispositional monism. In this section of the thesis I remain neutral on the necessitation issue, but I take myself to clarify the question of whether or not dispositional properties are able to necessitate their manifestations by criticising Bird's model of antidotes/prevention and setting out a replacement. In the second discussion I examine Stephen Mumford and Rani Lill Anjum's (2011) anti-necessitarian strategies. Mumford and Anjum's 'causal dispositionalism' encompasses a theory of dispositional properties, antidotes, and prevention. Mumford and Anjum's causal dispositionalism is not subject to the problem of ontological representation that Bird's theory raises; nevertheless, I argue that their theory is multiply problematic. The purpose of this discussion, taken as a whole, is to show that a recent strategy for attacking the necessitarian claim of dispositional essentialism is weaker than it has appeared to a number of philosophers. In this section of the thesis I move from a neutral stance on necessitation to a defensive stance. In the first two stages of the thesis, which concern the problem of prevention, I work with the background assumption that dispositional essentialism is a tenable position. In the third section of this thesis, however, I begin by endorsing Stephen Barker's (2013) essay The Emperor's New Metaphysics of Powers, which argues that the main articulations of dispositional essentialism are either internally inconsistent or otherwise disguised versions of brute modalism, where brute modalism focuses upon possible worlds as oppose to properties. In response, I develop a replacement position for dispositional essentialism that I term 'temporal essentialism'. I advance temporal essentialism as a prototype position in the properties and laws debate. It aims to provide a metaphysical explanation for lawful regularities by drawing upon the passage of time. In short, temporal essentialism is the position that it is built into a system of ontology that it dynamically adds new entities to its ontological categories and constructs states of affairs in a rule-following way

English for Students of Psychology: учебно-методическое пособие

Данное пособие предназначено для студентов, обучающихся по специальности "Психология", и содержит материалы по специальности, дополняющие основной курс английского языка. Материалы пособия могут быть использованы как для аудиторной, так и для самостоятельной работы студентов030300.62 ПсихологияАнглийский языкбакалавриа