Why I am not an anti-haecceitist

Funding: Scottish Graduate School for Arts & Humanities (SGSAH) (AHRC: AH/R012717/1); St Leonard’s College European Doctoral Stipend Scholarship.In this paper I argue that if the Identity of Indiscernibles is not necessarily true, then Haecceitism ensues—where Haecceitism is the view that there are maximal possibilities that include all the same qualitative possibilities, and yet differ with respect to the non-qualitative possibilities they include. This goes against the common intuition that Anti-Haecceitism is compatible with the Identity of Indiscernibles being only contingently true. My argument is interesting in many respects. First, it shows that in any modal framework there is a connection between the number of worldbound ordinary spatio-temporal objects, and the number of overall possibilities. Second, it has repercussions for the tenability of some philosophical positions, like Generalism, which is usually interpreted as entailing Anti-Haecceitism while at the same time being compatible with the claim that the Identity of Indiscernibles is not necessarily true. If I am correct, Generalism and similar philosophical accounts turn out to be inconsistent. Finally, it provides a strong argument for Haecceitism, given that the majority of authors today find counterexamples to the Identity of Indiscernibles extremely convincing, and many philosophical positions have been and continue being criticised on the basis of their commitment to the Identity of Indiscernibles. The paper is structured as follows: I introduce Haecceitism and the Identity of Indiscernibles in Sects. 1 and 2 respectively. Drawing on a result from the Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics, which I survey in Sect. 3, I give my main argument in Sect. 4. Finally, I discuss some implications in Sect. 5.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Dexketoprofen/tramadol 25 mg/75 mg: randomised double-blind trial in moderate-to-severe acute pain after abdominal hysterectomy

Statistical Analysis of TOTPAR over 2, 4, 6 and 8 h (ANCOVA) (ITT Population) (single-dose phase). (DOCX 16 kb

Enhancing Dose Selection in Phase I Cancer Trials: Extending the Bayesian Logistic Regression Model with Non-DLT Adverse Events Integration

This paper presents the Burdened Bayesian Logistic Regression Model (BBLRM), an enhancement to the Bayesian Logistic Regression Model (BLRM) for dose-finding in phase I oncology trials. Traditionally, the BLRM determines the maximum tolerated dose (MTD) based on dose-limiting toxicities (DLTs). However, clinicians often perceive model-based designs like BLRM as complex and less conservative than rule-based designs, such as the widely used 3+3 method. To address these concerns, the BBLRM incorporates non-DLT adverse events (nDLTAEs) into the model. These events, although not severe enough to qualify as DLTs, provide additional information suggesting that higher doses might result in DLTs. In the BBLRM, an additional parameter $\delta$ is introduced to account for nDLTAEs. This parameter adjusts the toxicity probability estimates, making the model more conservative in dose escalation. The $\delta$ parameter is derived from the proportion of patients experiencing nDLTAEs within each cohort and is tuned to balance the model's conservatism. This approach aims to reduce the likelihood of assigning toxic doses as MTD while involving clinicians more directly in the decision-making process. The paper includes a simulation study comparing BBLRM with the traditional BLRM across various scenarios. The simulations demonstrate that BBLRM significantly reduces the selection of toxic doses as MTD without compromising, and sometimes even increasing, the accuracy of MTD identification. These results suggest that integrating nDLTAEs into the dose-finding process can enhance the safety and acceptance of model-based designs in phase I oncology trials.Comment: 15 pages, 2 tables, 3 figures; submitted to "Statistics in Medicine" journa

Essays on indiscernibility

This Thesis is a collection of essays on qualitatively indiscernible entities, i.e. entities which agree with respect to all the qualitative properties they instantiate. In Chapter 1 I introduce various accounts of indiscernibility, and provide a review of the relevant literature. Chapter 2 is dedicated to Leibniz’s principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles, the claim that indiscernibility suffices for numerical identity. I argue that if certain assumptions about identity criteria are accepted, the weakest non-trivial interpretation of the principle is one restricted solely to qualitative properties. In Chapter 3 I present a new counterexample to the Identity of Indiscernibles. In Chapter 4 I argue that Anti-Haecceitism, the claim that there are no maximal possibilities which differ only with respect to the non-qualitative possibilities they include, entails that the Identity of Indiscernibles holds of necessity. In Chapter 5 I propose a new account of qualitative properties, according to which a property is qualitative if and only if it is invariant under any identity assignment — where an identity assignment is a function from individuals and worlds to identities. In Chapter 6 I argue that singular reference to indiscernible individuals is possible, and show how current theories of Arbitrary Reference allow for a successful analysis of this phenomenon. In Chapter 7 I defend Arbitrary Reference against a popular objection, and advance a new probabilistic account of Arbitrary Reference. Finally, in Chapter 8, I show that singular reference to entities to which identity does not apply is impossible."This work was supported by the Scottish Graduate School for Arts & Humanities [Grant Number: AHRC: AH/R012717/1]. This work was supported by the St Leonard's College European Doctroal Stipend Scholarship."--Fundin

Spinal muscular atrophy with respiratory distress type 1: Clinical phenotypes, molecular pathogenesis and therapeutic insights

Spinal muscular atrophy with respiratory distress type 1 (SMARD1) is a rare autosomal recessive neuromuscular disorder caused by mutations in the IGHMBP2 gene, which encodes immunoglobulin \u3bc-binding protein 2, leading to progressive spinal motor neuron degeneration. We review the data available in the literature about SMARD1. The vast majority of patients show an onset of typical symptoms in the first year of life. The main clinical features are distal muscular atrophy and diaphragmatic palsy, for which permanent supportive ventilation is required. No effective treatment is available yet, but novel therapeutic approaches, such as gene therapy, have shown encouraging results in preclinical settings and thus represent possible methods for treating SMARD1. Significant advancements in the understanding of both the SMARD1 clinical spectrum and its molecular mechanisms have allowed the rapid translation of preclinical therapeutic strategies to human patients to improve the poor prognosis of this devastating disease

On the Security Notions for Homomorphic Signatures

Homomorphic signature schemes allow anyone to perform computation on signed data in such a way that the correctness of computation’s results is publicly certified. In this work we analyze the security notions for this powerful primitive considered in previous work, with a special focus on adaptive security. Motivated by the complications of existing security models in the adaptive setting, we consider a simpler and (at the same time) stronger security definition inspired to that proposed by Gennaro and Wichs (ASIACRYPT’13) for homomorphic MACs. In addition to strength and simplicity, this definition has the advantage to enable the adoption of homomorphic signatures in dynamic data outsourcing scenarios, such as delegation of computation on data streams. Then, since no existing homomorphic signature satisfies this stronger notion, our main technical contribution are general compilers which turn a homomorphic signature scheme secure under a weak definition into one secure under the new stronger notion. Our compilers are totally generic with respect to the underlying scheme. Moreover, they preserve two important properties of homomorphic signatures: context-hiding (i.e. signatures on computation’s output do not reveal information about the input) and efficient verification (i.e. verifying a signature against a program P can be made faster, in an amortized, asymptotic sense, than recomputing P from scratch)