A Linear-Optical Proof that the Permanent is #P-Hard

One of the crown jewels of complexity theory is Valiant's 1979 theorem that computing the permanent of an n*n matrix is #P-hard. Here we show that, by using the model of linear-optical quantum computing---and in particular, a universality theorem due to Knill, Laflamme, and Milburn---one can give a different and arguably more intuitive proof of this theorem.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figures, to appear in Proceedings of the Royal Society A. doi: 10.1098/rspa.2011.023

Life and death boundaries: transgression in contemporary Japanese media

The theme of Life and Death Boundary Transgression has appeared recurrently in Japanese discourses since the writing of the Kojiki (711-712). The theme, which deals with journeys to the land of the dead, resurrections and overall an unacceptance of death has been approached in various forms, media and context. In the Second Lost Decade (2000-2010) the theme appeared for the first time as a main structural tension in new popular culture media such as manga, anime and computer games. This PhD studies that representation of an ancient and recurrent theme through new media forms, understood as media that engage for first time the EBT conversation as their main dramatic tension. In so doing it focuses on a double meditation on the role of the theme in Japanese culture, the role of the media that support its discursive manifestation and both theme and media relation to the context. The theme of life and death boundary transgression, what I frame as Essential Boundary Transgression (EBT) is therefore understood as a dynamic human construct. It deals with and interrogates human ontologies while, simultaneously, questioning the context from where it manifests

Developing through relationships origins of communication, self, and culture

Journal ArticleI began to consider the study of relationships as an intellectual vocation in 1970, the result of two years of college teaching that was part of my work as a United States Peace Corps volunteer in Bogota, Colombia. After another year I began my doctoral training in the Department of Education at the University of Chicago, working on Kenneth Kaye's mother-infant communication studies and struggling to fill the gaps in my knowledge of developmental psychology left by undergraduate and master's degrees in physics and mathematics. I am still struggling, as I believe all professionals struggle, with incompleteness and ambiguity, wavering between conviction and uncertainty. The work that follows is part of an ongoing learning process. Apart from what I have said about these limitations in the body of the text I can also add that it feels finished enough for now, ready for public scrutiny, but open to revision in the future. This book is the product not only of the year over which the writing took place, but also of the past twenty years of my professional development and of my personal life history

New Realism and Contemporary Philosophy

This open access book advances the current debate in continental realism. In the field of contemporary continental ontology, Speculative Realist thinkers are now grappling with the genealogy of their ideas in the history of modern philosophy. The Speculative Realism movement prompted a debate, criticizing the predominant postmodernist orientation in philosophy, which located its origins in Kantian “correlationism” which supposedly ended the period of early modern naive realist metaphysics by showing that the mind and the outside world can only ever be understood as correlates. The debate over a new kind of realism has attracted many supporters and critics. In order to refocus its specific interpretation of modern philosophy in general and of the Kantian gesture in particular, this volume brings together major authors working on contemporary ontology and historians of ideas. It underlines and illustrates the fact that contemporary continental philosophy is rediscovering its past in original ways by productively re-interpreting some of the key concepts of modern philosophy. The perspectives and accounts of the key concepts of the history of philosophy are different in the views of individual contributors, and sometimes radically so, yet the discussion between contemporary realists and their critics shows that the real battleground of new ideas lies not in developing the philosophical motifs of the end of the 20th century, but rather in rethinking the milestones of modern philosophy. The eBook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com

New Realism and Contemporary Philosophy

This open access book advances the current debate in continental realism. In the field of contemporary continental ontology, Speculative Realist thinkers are now grappling with the genealogy of their ideas in the history of modern philosophy. The Speculative Realism movement prompted a debate, criticizing the predominant postmodernist orientation in philosophy, which located its origins in Kantian “correlationism” which supposedly ended the period of early modern naive realist metaphysics by showing that the mind and the outside world can only ever be understood as correlates. The debate over a new kind of realism has attracted many supporters and critics. In order to refocus its specific interpretation of modern philosophy in general and of the Kantian gesture in particular, this volume brings together major authors working on contemporary ontology and historians of ideas. It underlines and illustrates the fact that contemporary continental philosophy is rediscovering its past in original ways by productively re-interpreting some of the key concepts of modern philosophy. The perspectives and accounts of the key concepts of the history of philosophy are different in the views of individual contributors, and sometimes radically so, yet the discussion between contemporary realists and their critics shows that the real battleground of new ideas lies not in developing the philosophical motifs of the end of the 20th century, but rather in rethinking the milestones of modern philosophy. The eBook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com

Beyond all words : a psychoanalytic approach to the phenomenon of mysticism in literature

The principal claim of this thesis is that the mystical experience is a wide-ranging influence upon literature. It is a recurrent thematic concern of poets, novelists and playwrights; but even when mysticism is not an overt element in a text, analysis of its symbols can reveal references to emotions and experiences of a mystical character - as is frequently the case with fantasy. In a more essential way, certain widely-used techniques of poetry effectively reproduce the character of mystical events for the reader. Some theory does indeed imply that the mystical bearing is quite fundamental, at a certain level, to all creative literature. This thesis explores the link between mysticism and literature through widely differing examples, to show how it continues to be found in otherwise divergent texts and contexts. Indeed, no attempt is made to provide an exhaustive overview; rather, certain special areas of interest are represented by selected cases. Mystical elements in Modernism, for example (especially in T.S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf), are contrasted with Romantic attitudes to mysticism, which Wordsworth and Coleridge are taken to represent. A further goal is to analyse the character of literary mysticism, and to account for the connection between mysticism and literary practice. The view is adopted that the circumstances in which the infant first acquires language is of crucial importance in this regard, and that literary language often draws upon submerged recollections of these early circumstances. Literature, it is argued, can employ signs and patterns of symbolisation in ways that actually attempt to 'undo' many of the everyday functions of words. The ultimate ideal of such literary techniques is to 'reverse' the process by which language was acquired and to 'return' the reader to a state resembling pre-linguistic experience, a goal which has much in common with the ambitions of mystics. Jacques Lacan's theoretical writings touch at many points upon the early development of the child and the significance of its acquisition of language. This thesis consequently has recourse to Lacan's work and, where relevant, to related psychoanalytic writings by Sigmund Freud and Julia Kristeva. After an investigation of the main characteristics of mystical experience as such, the Introduction broadly outlines Lacan's theoretical position. Chapter 1 is concerned more specifically with Lacan's discussions of mysticism. Part Two (Chapters 2-4) deals principally with the links between mystical yearnings and the Romantic ideal of the 'sublime'. In Part Three (Chapters 5-7) the relation between mysticism and Modernist developments affecting both theme and artistic technique is examined in works by three writers: T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, and Fernando Pessoa. Part Four discusses particular literary presentations of 'evil' and of 'good' as embodiments of mystical perceptions. Late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century 'supernatural' fiction is selected to represent the first case, and certain New Testament and early Christian texts the second

Constructions and situations : a constructivist reading of Hegel's System

The object of this work is Hegel's Logic, which comprises the first third of his philosophical System that also includes the Philosophy of Nature and the Philosophy of Spirit. The work is divided into two parts, where the first part investigates Hegel s Logic in itself or without an explicit reference to rest of Hegel's System. It is argued in the first part that Hegel's Logic contains a methodology for constructing examples of basic ontological categories. The starting point on which this construction is based is a structure Hegel calls Nothing, which I argue to be identical with an empty situation, that is, a situation with no objects in it. Examples of further categories are constructed, firstly, by making previous structures objects of new situations. This rule makes it possible for Hegel to introduce examples of ontological structures that contain objects as constituents. Secondly, Hegel takes also the very constructions he uses as constituents of further structures: thus, he is able to exemplify ontological categories involving causal relations. The final result of Hegel's Logic should then be a model of Hegel s Logic itself, or at least of its basic methods. The second part of the work focuses on the relation of Hegel's Logic to the other parts of Hegel's System. My interpretation tries to avoid, firstly, the extreme of taking Hegel's System as a grand metaphysical attempt to deduce what exists through abstract thinking, and secondly, the extreme of seeing Hegel's System as mere diluted Kantianism or a second-order investigation of theories concerning objects instead of actual objects. I suggest a third manner of reading Hegel's System, based on extending the constructivism of Hegel's Logic to the whole of his philosophical System. According to this interpretation, transitions between parts of Hegel's System should not be understood as proofs of any sort, but as constructions of one structure or its model from another structure. Hence, these transitions involve at least, and especially within the Philosophy of Nature, modelling of one type of object or phenomenon through characteristics of an object or phenomenon of another type, and in the best case, and especially within the Philosophy of Spirit, transformations of an object or phenomenon of one type into an object or phenomenon of another type. Thus, the transitions and descriptions within Hegel's System concern actual objects and not mere theories, but they still involve no fallacious deductions.Väitöskirjani tutkii Hegelin logiikkaa, joka on ensimmäinen osa hänen filosofista järjestelmäänsä, johon kuuluvat myös luonnon- ja hengenfilosofia. Väitöskirjani ensimmäisessä osassa tutkin logiikkaa ottamatta huomioon sen suhteita Hegelin filosofian muihin osa-alueisiin. Pyrin osoittamaan, että Hegelin logiikka pyrkii antamaan ohjeet, joiden avulla on mahdollista konstruoida malleja perustavista ontologisista kategorioista. Lähtökohtana on Hegelin Ei-miksikään kutsuma rakenne, jonka esitän tarkoittavan mahdollista tilannetta, ettei mitään ole olemassa. Hegel muodostaa monimutkaisempia ontologisia rakenteita käyttämällä aiempia rakenteita uusien tilanteiden osatekijöinä. Näin esimerkiksi ensimmäinen kaikesta olevasta tyhjä tilanne antaa mahdollisuuden mallintaa olemisen käsitettä, koska tyhjän tilanteen voi sanoa olevan jotakin. Lisäksi Hegel käyttää myös logiikassa sovellettuja konstruoimisen menetelmiä ontologisten rakenteiden osatekijöinä ja näin mallintaa kausaalisuhteita. Hegelin logiikka huipentuu malliin Hegelin logiikasta ja sen perusmetodeista. ---- Väitöskirjani toisessa osassa keskityn Hegelin logiikan ja hänen järjestelmänsä muiden osa-alueiden suhteeseen. Yritän välttää perinteisen metafyysisen Hegel-tulkinnan, jonka mukaan Hegel yrittää abstraktioita ajattelemalla osoittaa, mitä on olemassa. Toisaalta en myöskään halua vesittää Hegelin filosofiaa pelkäksi kantilaisuuden kaksoiskappaleeksi, joka tutkisi olioiden sijaan niitä koskevaa tietämistä. Yritän sitä vastoin laajentaa konstruktivistista tulkintaani Hegelin logiikasta hänen koko filosofiaansa. Hegelin järjestelmää eivät kuljeta eteenpäin todistukset, vaan konstruktiot, joissa yhden rakenteen pohjalta rakennetaan uusia rakenteita tai ainakin näiden malleja. Näin etenkin luonnonfilosofiassa Hegel pyrkii mallintamaan luonnonilmiöitä ja -olioita toisten ilmiöiden ja olioiden avulla, kun taas erityisesti hengenfilosofiassa hän haluaa osoittaa, miten tietyt inhimillisen tietoisuuden muodot voidaan muuntaa toisenlaisiksi. Hegelin filosofia siis käsittelee todellisia olioita eikä vain olioita koskevaa ajattelua, muttei silti perustu mihinkään karkeisiin virhepäätelmiin