Infinite Value and the Best of All Possible Worlds

A common argument for atheism runs as follows: God would not create a world worse than other worlds he could have created instead. However, if God exists, he could have created a better world than this one. Therefore, God does not exist. In this paper I challenge the second premise of this argument. I argue that if God exists, our world will continue without end, with God continuing to create value-bearers, and sustaining and perfecting the value-bearers he has already created. Given this, if God exists, our world—considered on the whole—is infinitely valuable. I further contend that this theistic picture makes our world's value unsurpassable. In support of this contention, I consider proposals for how infinitely valuable worlds might be improved upon, focusing on two main ways—adding value-bearers and increasing the value in present value-bearers. I argue that neither of these can improve our world. Depending on how each method is understood, either it would not improve our world, or our world is unsurpassable with respect to it. I conclude by considering the implications of my argument for the problem of evil more generally conceived

Michelangelo, Leibniz and the Serpentine Figure

Abstract In his lectures from 1987, Deleuze draws an analogy between Michelangelo‟s figures and Leibnizian substances by claiming that neither are essences but rather sources of modifications or manners of being. The best way to explore this analogy, I argue, is by focusing on Michelangelo‟s preference for serpentine shapes. By putting key passages from The Logic of Sensation, The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque and What is Philosophy? in resonance with the Leibnizian accounts of corporeal aggregates and possible worlds on the one hand and art history on the other, I will try to develop a Deleuzian concept for the typically mannerist ideal of the serpentine figure. Although Deleuze usually prefers to speak in musical terms of refrains and counterpoints by which various blocs of sensation resonate with each other, in the visual arts it is the serpentine figure that renders visible sensory becoming as a rhythmic counter-positioning of possible worlds within a single body without organs

Leibniz, Acosmism, and Incompossibility

Leibniz claims that God acts in the best possible way, and that this includes creating exactly one world. But worlds are aggregates, and aggregates have a low degree of reality or metaphysical perfection, perhaps none at all. This is Leibniz’s tendency toward acosmism, or the view that there this no such thing as creation-as-a-whole. Many interpreters reconcile Leibniz’s acosmist tendency with the high value of worlds by proposing that God sums the value of each substance created, so that the best world is just the world with the most substances. I call this way of determining the value of a world the Additive Theory of Value (ATV), and argue that it leads to the current and insoluble form of the problem of incompossibility. To avoid the problem, I read “possible worlds” in “God chooses the best of all possible worlds” as referring to God’s ideas of worlds. These ideas, though built up from essences, are themselves unities and so well suited to be the value bearers that Leibniz’s theodicy requires. They have their own value, thanks to their unity, and that unity is not preserved when more essences are added

NASA Lewis Research Center Futuring Workshop

On October 21 and 22, 1986, the Futures Group ran a two-day Futuring Workshop on the premises of NASA Lewis Research Center. The workshop had four main goals: to acquaint participants with the general history of technology forecasting; to familiarize participants with the range of forecasting methodologies; to acquaint participants with the range of applicability, strengths, and limitations of each method; and to offer participants some hands-on experience by working through both judgmental and quantitative case studies. Among the topics addressed during this workshop were: information sources; judgmental techniques; quantitative techniques; merger of judgment with quantitative measurement; data collection methods; and dealing with uncertainty

The normativity of epistemic rationality

Cette thèse tente de démontrer que la rationalité épistémique est normative, ou plus précisément, que les agents doivent être épistémiquement rationnels. On peut dire provisoirement que la rationalité est un code – ou un ensemble de règles – en ce sens qu’elle correspond à une collection systématique d’exigences. En particulier, la rationalité est souvent identifiée à un ensemble systématique de lignes de conduite ayant pour but de faire en sorte qu’un agent réponde correctement à ses raisons, qu’il évite de se contredire, d’être incohérent ou akratique. La thèse poursuit aussi certains objectifs secondaires, en particulier: (i) montrer que les raisons épistémiques apparentes de croire que P (comprises comme des propositions apparemment vraies qui, si elles étaient vraies, militeraient en faveur de la conclusion que P) sont normatives; (ii) montrer qu’il n’y a pas de dilemme insoluble de la rationalité épistémique; (iii) montrer que, relativement à un ensemble de données probantes ou de raisons épistémiques, un agent idéalement rationnel n’a jamais la permission épistémique de croire que P et de croire que ~P simultanément. Si ces objectifs secondaires sont intéressants en eux-mêmes, ils contribuent aussi à confirmer l’idée selon laquelle la rationalité épistémique est normative.This thesis argues that epistemic rationality is normative, or that agents ought to be epistemically rational. The property of rationality is here understood as a code. Specifically, the code of epistemic rationality requires various things, such as responding correctly to epistemic reasons one has, remaining coherent and avoiding akratic combinations of beliefs. Additionally, this thesis has secondary aims, such as: (i) arguing that apparent epistemic reasons to believe P (understood as apparently true propositions which, if they were true, would count in favour of the conclusion that P) are deontically significant; (ii) arguing against unsolvable normative dilemmas of epistemic rationality; (iii) arguing against a specific type of permissiveness which roughly states that, relative to a body of epistemic reasons, it can be epistemically rational for an ideal agent to believe P and to disbelieve P. While these secondary aims are interesting in their own right, they confirm the main claim of this thesis, namely, that epistemic rationality is normative

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

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

Interactions en environnements virtuels: aspects multimodaux

Tableau d’honneur de la Faculté des études supérieures et postdoctorales, 2012-2013.Les environnements virtuels prennent jour après jour une importance grandissante dans nos sociétés modernes. Leurs applications sont de plus en plus nombreuses, allant du récréatif et de l'éducatif au thérapeutique et à la télémédecine. Cependant, les paramètres exacts qui influencent l'organisation sociale dans les espaces virtuels sont encore grandement méconnus. Les résultats présentés dans ce mémoire visent à approfondir nos connaissances des interactions sociales en environnements virtuels. L'étude des interactions sociales, facteur clé de l'immersion dans les environnements virtuels, sera divisée selon trois aspects : les aspects langagiers, les aspects visuels et un cas extrême des aspects visuels en environnements virtuels. Le premier chapitre de ce mémoire, portant sur les aspects langagiers des environnements virtuels, démontre que le jugement d'humanité d'un interlocuteur durant une interaction sociale dépend non seulement du comportement de celui-ci, mais également du comportement du juge lui-même. De plus, nos résultats mettent l'accent sur l'aspect collaboratif du dialogue, tout comme sur la nature multidimensionnelle et multifactorielle de ce processus. Le deuxième chapitre de ce mémoire, portant sur les aspects visuels des environnements virtuels, suggère que les dynamiques sociales pourraient avoir une plus grande importance pour l'utilisateur que la récompense immédiate qu'apporte l'utilisation optimale de l'interface, et ainsi, représenter un facteur majeur d'immersion dans les environnements virtuels. Le troisième chapitre de ce mémoire, portant sur un cas particulier de l'aspect visuel des environnements virtuels, démontre que la sélection sociale basée sur l'apparence semble jouer un rôle considérable dans le regroupement social des communautés en ligne. Ainsi, présenter une apparence semblable pourrait donc représenter un moyen de favoriser l'émergence de groupes sociaux solides et durables. En somme, les résultats présentés dans les différents chapitres de ce mémoire sont non seulement essentiels pour la compréhension des fondements cognitifs des comportements sociaux dans les contextes virtuels, mais également pour l'optimisation de l'utilisation et du design des environnements virtuels immersifs futurs