88 research outputs found
Leibnizian, Robinsonian, and Boolean Valued Monads
This is an overview of the present-day versions of monadology with some
applications to vector lattices and linear inequalities.Comment: This is a talk prepared for the 20th St. Petersburg Summer Meeting in
Mathematical Analysis, June 24-29, 201
A Dodecalogue of Basic Didactics from Applications of Abstract Differential Geometry to Quantum Gravity
We summarize the twelve most important in our view novel concepts that have
arisen, based on results that have been obtained, from various applications of
Abstract Differential Geometry (ADG) to Quantum Gravity (QG). The present
document may be used as a concise, yet informal, discursive and peripatetic
conceptual guide-cum-terminological glossary to the voluminous technical
research literature on the subject. In a bonus section at the end, we dwell on
the significance of introducing new conceptual terminology in future QG
research by means of `poetic language'Comment: 16 pages, preliminary versio
A perspective on the landscape problem
I discuss the historical roots of the landscape problem and propose criteria
for its successful resolution. This provides a perspective to evaluate the
possibility to solve it in several of the speculative cosmological scenarios
under study including eternal inflation, cosmological natural selection and
cyclic cosmologies.Comment: Invited contribution for a special issue of Foundations of Physics
titled: Forty Years Of String Theory: Reflecting On the Foundations. 31
pages, no figure
The Self Model and the Conception of Biological Identity in Immunology
The self/non-self model, first proposed by F.M. Burnet, has dominated immunology for sixty years now. According to this model, any foreign element will trigger an immune reaction in an organism, whereas endogenous elements will not, in normal circumstances, induce an immune reaction. In this paper we show that the self/non-self model is no longer an appropriate explanation of experimental data in immunology, and that this inadequacy may be rooted in an excessively strong metaphysical conception of biological identity. We suggest that another hypothesis, one based on the notion of continuity, gives a better account of immune phenomena. Finally, we underscore the mapping between this metaphysical deflation from self to continuity in immunology and the philosophical debate between substantialism and empiricism about identity
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