Visual Perception as Patterning: Cavendish against Hobbes on Sensation

Many of Margaret Cavendish’s criticisms of Thomas Hobbes in the Philosophical Letters (1664) relate to the disorder and damage that she holds would result if Hobbesian pressure were the cause of visual perception. In this paper, I argue that her “two men” thought experiment in Letter IV is aimed at a different goal: to show the explanatory potency of her account. First, I connect Cavendish’s view of visual perception as “patterning” to the “two men” thought experiment in Letter IV. Second, I provide a potential reply on Hobbes’s behalf that appeals to physiological differences between perceivers’ sense organs, drawing upon Hobbes’s optics in De homine. Third, I argue that such a reply would misunderstand Cavendish’s objective of showing the limited explanatory resources available in understanding visual perception as pressing when compared to her view of visual perception as patterning

Representation and poly-time approximation for pressure of Z2\mathbb{Z}^2 lattice models in the non-uniqueness region

We develop a new pressure representation theorem for nearest-neighbour Gibbs interactions and apply this to obtain the existence of efficient algorithms for approximating the pressure in the $2$-dimensional ferromagnetic Potts, multi-type Widom-Rowlinson and hard-core models. For Potts, our results apply to every inverse temperature but the critical. For Widom-Rowlinson and hard-core, they apply to certain subsets of both the subcritical and supercritical regions. The main novelty of our work is in the latter.Comment: 37 pages, 2 figure

Hobbes's Laws of Nature in Leviathan as a Synthetic Demonstration: Thought Experiments and Knowing the Causes

The status of the laws of nature in Hobbes’s Leviathan has been a continual point of disagreement among scholars. Many agree that since Hobbes claims that civil philosophy is a science, the answer lies in an understanding of the nature of Hobbesian science more generally. In this paper, I argue that Hobbes’s view of the construction of geometrical figures sheds light upon the status of the laws of nature. In short, I claim that the laws play the same role as the component parts – what Hobbes calls the “cause” – of geometrical figures. To make this argument, I show that in both geometry and civil philosophy, Hobbes proceeds by a method of synthetic demonstration as follows: 1) offering a thought experiment by privation; 2) providing definitions by explication of “simple conceptions” within the thought experiment; and 3) formulating generative definitions by making use of those definitions by explication. In just the same way that Hobbes says that the geometer should “put together” the parts of a square to learn its cause, I argue that the laws of nature are the cause of peace

Demarcating Aristotelian Rhetoric: Rhetoric, the Subalternate Sciences, and Boundary Crossing

The ways in which the Aristotelian sciences are related to each other has been discussed in the literature, with some focus on the subalternate sciences. While it is acknowledged that Aristotle, and Plato as well, was concerned as well with how the arts were related to one another, less attention has been paid to Aristotle’s views on relationships among the arts. In this paper, I argue that Aristotle’s account of the subalternate sciences helps shed light on how Aristotle saw the art of rhetoric relating to dialectic and politics. Initial motivation for comparing rhetoric with the subalternate sciences is Aristotle’s use of the language of boundary transgression, germane to the Posterior Analytics, when discussing rhetoric’s boundaries, as well as the language of “over” and “under” found in APo. First, I discuss three passages inRhetoric Book I and argue that Garver’s (1988) account cannot be correct. Second, I look to the subalternate sciences, especially focusing on optics and the distinction between “unqualified” optics and mathematical optics. Third, I discuss rhetoric’s dependence on both dialectic and politics

Natural Philosophy, Geometry, and Deduction in the Hobbes-Boyle Debate

This paper examines Hobbes’s criticisms of Robert Boyle’s air-pump experiments in light of Hobbes’s account in De Corpore and De Homine of the relationship of natural philosophy to geometry. I argue that Hobbes’s criticisms rely upon his understanding of what counts as “true physics.” Instead of seeing Hobbes as defending natural philosophy as “a causal enterprise ... [that] as such, secured total and irrevocable assent,”2 I argue that, in his disagreement with Boyle, Hobbes relied upon his understanding of natural philosophy as a mixed mathematical science. In a mixed mathematical science one can mix facts from experience (the ‘that’) with causal principles borrowed from geometry (the ‘why’). Hobbes’s harsh criticisms of Boyle’s philosophy, especially in the Dialogus Physicus, sive De natura aeris (1661; hereafter Dialogus Physicus), should thus be understood as Hobbes advancing his view of the proper relationship of natural philosophy to geometry in terms of mixing principles from geometry with facts from experience. Understood in this light, Hobbes need not be taken to reject or diminish the importance of experiment/experience; nor should Hobbes’s criticisms in Dialogus Physicus be understood as rejecting experimenting as ignoble and not befitting a philosopher. Instead, Hobbes’s viewpoint is that experiment/experience must be understood within its proper place – it establishes the ‘that’ for a mixed mathematical science explanation

The racialization of Jimi Hendrix

The period of history immediately following World War Two was a time of intense social change. The end of colonialism, the internal struggles of newly emerging independent nations in Africa, social and political changes across Europe, armed conflict in Southeast Asia, and the civil rights movement in America were just a few. Although many of the above conflicts have been in the making for quite some time, they seemed to unite to form a socio-political cultural revolution known as the 60s, the effects of which continues to this day. The 1960s was a particularly intense time for race relations in the United States. Long before it officially became a republic, in matters of race, white America collectively had trouble reconciling what it practiced versus what it preached. Nowhere is this racial contradiction more apparent than in the case of Jimi Hendrix. Jimi Hendrix is emblematic of the racial ideal and the racial contradictions of the 1960s. Generally, black artists, such as those in jazz and R&B developed styles of playing that emphasized the distinctive timbre of the guitar set against the other instruments. White artists went further by perfecting the grandiose art of guitar soloing, and rock music was seen as their domain. Hendrix represents the virtually unheard of situation where a black man is virtually worshipped by young whites in general, and white males in particular, because of his mastery of what was previously their domain-the grandiose art of rock guitar soloing. (Heller) What may come as a surprise to many of his black detractors was that Jimi Hendrix not only knew that he was black, but what that blackness meant in the context of American history. What Jimi refused to do was allow the notion of blackness as defined by others to determine his music. Jimi was neither an activist nor a black separatist, and his central focus, as always, was music, which he saw as being without color. (Cross 98) Responding to a question during an interview about the difference in music and race in England versus America in U Jimi Hendrix-The Uncut Story, Jimi answers by stating, l could play louder over there [England]. could really get myself together over there. There wasn\u27t as many hang-ups as there was in America. You know mental hang-ups. Jimi Hendrix played the blues. From his days learning to play the guitar while growing up in Seattle, Washington, to playing a sideman on the chitlin\u27 circuit, before James Marshall Hendrix actually became the man known as Jimi Hendrix, he always played the blues. By refusing to be stereotyped for playing his music, Jimi Hendrix symbolizes the contradictions on race and ethnicity that continues to remain a burden to both blacks and whites alike. This paper examine why Jimi Hendrix became worshipped as a musical genius by the rock community, which by default was white, while balancing the social contradictions of the black community, particularly in regards to music, and which group got to claim him

Hobbes on Natural Philosophy as "True Physics" and Mixed Mathematics

I offer an alternative account of the relationship of Hobbesian geometry to natural philosophy by arguing that mixed mathematics provided Hobbes with a model for thinking about it. In mixed mathematics, one may borrow causal principles from one science and use them in another science without there being a deductive relationship between those two sciences. Natural philosophy for Hobbes is mixed because an explanation may combine observations from experience (the ‘that’) with causal principles from geometry (the ‘why’). My argument shows that Hobbesian natural philosophy relies upon suppositions that bodies plausibly behave according to these borrowed causal principles from geometry, acknowledging that bodies in the world may not actually behave this way. First, I consider Hobbes's relation to Aristotelian mixed mathematics and to Isaac Barrow's broadening of mixed mathematics in Mathematical Lectures (1683). I show that for Hobbes maker's knowledge from geometry provides the ‘why’ in mixed-mathematical explanations. Next, I examine two explanations from De corpore Part IV: (1) the explanation of sense in De corpore 25.1-2; and (2) the explanation of the swelling of parts of the body when they become warm in De corpore 27.3. In both explanations, I show Hobbes borrowing and citing geometrical principles and mixing these principles with appeals to experience

The war within: The soldiers’ resistance movement during the Vietnam era

The Soldiers’ Resistance Movement (SRM) during the Vietnam Era is arguably the most important social movement in the history of the American military. Responding to a highly unpopular war, the soldiers of Vietnam began to question their role in what many considered to be a conflict built on lies. While the government expected some resistance, the soldiers’ unity of purpose eventually forced the military to respond. This paper examines the soldiers’ revolt as it grew throughout the decades of the 1960s and 1970s, culminating in a protest movement that helped to end the war. While providing a chronicle of the parallels between the growth of the SRM and America’s involvement in Southeast Asia, this paper also seeks to illustrate the institutional deficiencies of the military. Occurring in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement, the growing radicalism of many African American soldiers, along with the support of thousands of civilians and the public media, eventually brought about both an end to the draft and the close of the Vietnam War

Minimum Radii of Super-Earths: Constraints from Giant Impacts

The detailed interior structure models of super-Earth planets show that there is degeneracy in the possible bulk compositions of a super-Earth at a given mass and radius, determined via radial velocity and transit measurements, respectively. In addition, the upper and lower envelopes in the mass--radius relationship, corresponding to pure ice planets and pure iron planets, respectively, are not astrophysically well motivated with regard to the physical processes involved in planet formation. Here we apply the results of numerical simulations of giant impacts to constrain the lower bound in the mass--radius diagram that could arise from collisional mantle stripping of differentiated rocky/iron planets. We provide a very conservative estimate for the minimum radius boundary for the entire mass range of large terrestrial planets. This envelope is a readily testable prediction for the population of planets to be discovered by the Kepler mission.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, Accepted for publication in ApJ Letter