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result(s) for
"indeterminacy"
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Gappy, glutty, glappy
According to the Determinable Based Account (DBA) of metaphysical indeterminacy (MI), there is MI when there is an indeterminate state of affairs, roughly a state of affairs in which a constituent object x has a determinable property but fails to have a unique determinate of that determinable. There are different ways in which x might have a determinable but no unique determinate: x has no determinate—gappy MI, or x has more than one determinate—glutty MI. Talk of determinables and determinates is usually constructed as relative to levels of determination. In this paper I first (1) provide a formal construction for determinables and determinates that pays crucial attention to intermediate levels of determination, and then (2) explore the consequences for the DBA of introducing such intermediate levels. In particular, I argue that intermediate levels of determination highlight crucial differences between gappy and glutty cases of MI, and allow one to introduce a third way of indeterminacy, glappy MI.
Journal Article
Meristem fate: to terminate, or not?
Plants exhibit remarkable physiological and developmental flexibility, enabling continued organogenesis, adaptation to environmental stimuli, and underpinning a vast diversity of shoot architectures. Central to this capacity is the plasticity of plant meristems, that function as dynamic sources of stem cells and define pivotal decision points between indeterminate (sustained) and determinate (finite) growth. Understanding the regulatory networks governing meristem fate is critical for both basic plant science and practical applications in crop architecture and yield optimization. In this review, we focus on the interplay between transcriptional regulators and phytohormone gradients that govern the switch between indeterminacy and determinacy in developing shoot meristems. We explore how regulatory networks converge to produce determinate structures such as flowers and thorns in different angiosperm species.
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Quantum metaphysical indeterminacy
On a wide variety of presently live interpretations, quantum mechanics violates the classical supposition of 'value definiteness', according to which the properties ('observables') of a given particle or system have precise values at all times. Here we consider whether two recent approaches to metaphysical indeterminacy—a metaphysical supervaluationist account, on the one hand, and a determinable-based account, on the other—can provide an intelligible basis for quantum metaphysical indeterminacy (QMI), understood as involving quantum value indefiniteness. After identifying three sources of such QMI, we show that previous arguments (Darby in Australas J Philos 88:227-245, 2010; Skow in Philos Q 60:851-858, 2010) according to which supervaluationism cannot accommodate QMI are unsuccessful; we then provide more comprehensive arguments for this conclusion, which moreover establish that the problems for supervaluationism extend far beyond the orthodox interpretation. We go on to argue that a determinable-based approach can accommodate the full range of sources of QMI.
Journal Article
Modelling deep indeterminacy
This paper constructs a model of metaphysical indeterminacy that can accommodate a kind of ‘deep’ worldly indeterminacy that arguably arises in quantum mechanics via the Kochen–Specker theorem, and that is incompatible with prominent theories of metaphysical indeterminacy such as that in Barnes and Williams (Oxf Stud Metaphys 6:103–148, 2011). We construct a variant of Barnes and Williams’s theory that avoids this problem. Our version builds on situation semantics and uses incomplete, local situations rather than possible worlds to build a model. We evaluate the resulting theory and contrast it with similar alternatives, concluding that our model successfully captures deep indeterminacy.
Journal Article
Lo spazio aperto come soglia: luogo di immersione e assemblaggi. Storia di GiadA giardino aperto
Open space today is increasingly disrupted and altered, heterogeneous and articulated by innumerable folds that generate different patches. However, new developments in ecology show that it is often anthropogenic disturbances that unexpectedly bring forth new ways for living beings to coexist. The story of GiadA (Garden of Social Friendship) that we tell in this article is set in a territory in south-eastern Sicily that has been profoundly disturbed, in which fragments of woodland are intertwined with different forms of agriculture and relics of the Second World War. After having been first built in the Vatican Pavilion Social Friendship: meeting in the garden set up on the island of San Giorgio for the Venice Biennale 2023, thanks to the cooperation between various actors, the garden was ‘transferred’ to the ancient forest of Santo Pietro in Caltagirone, with the intention of creating a threshold between village and forest, a transitional space in which relations between ecosystems and assemblages between worlds are activated and multiplied, transformed into significant events for evolution.
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Quantum metametaphysics
Say that metaphysical indeterminacy occurs just when there is a fact such that neither it nor its negation obtains. The aim of this work is to shed light on the issue of whether orthodox quantum mechanics provides any evidence of metaphysical indeterminacy by discussing the logical, semantic, and broadly methodological presuppositions of the debate. I argue that the dispute amounts to a verbal disagreement between classical and quantum logicians, given Eli Hirsch’s account of substantivity; but that it need not be so if Ted Sider’s naturalness-based account of substantivity is adopted instead. Given the latter approach, can anything be said in order to tip the balance of the dispute either way? Some prima facie reasonable constraints on naturalness entail that the classicist is right, and the quantum world is therefore determinate. Nevertheless, there are reasons for weakening those constraints, to the effect that the dispute remains very much open. Finally, I discuss alternative accounts of metaphysical indeterminacy, and argue that they are unsuitable for framing the quantum indeterminacy debate.
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Maximum Entropy Criterion for Moment Indeterminacy of Probability Densities
We deal with absolutely continuous probability distributions with finite all-positive integer-order moments. It is well known that any such distribution is either uniquely determined by its moments (M-determinate), or it is non-unique (M-indeterminate). In this paper, we follow the maximum entropy approach and establish a new criterion for the M-indeterminacy of distributions on the positive half-line (Stieltjes case). Useful corollaries are derived for M-indeterminate distributions on the whole real line (Hamburger case). We show how the maximum entropy is related to the symmetry property and the M-indeterminacy.
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Quantum principle of relativity
Quantum mechanics is an incredibly successful theory and yet the statistical nature of its predictions is hard to accept and has been the subject of numerous debates. The notion of inherent randomness, something that happens without any cause, goes against our rational understanding of reality. To add to the puzzle, randomness that appears in non-relativistic quantum theory tacitly respects relativity, for example, it makes instantaneous signaling impossible. Here, we argue that this is because the special theory of relativity can itself account for such a random behavior. We show that the full mathematical structure of the Lorentz transformation, the one which includes the superluminal part, implies the emergence of non-deterministic dynamics, together with complex probability amplitudes and multiple trajectories. This indicates that the connections between the two seemingly different theories are deeper and more subtle than previously thought.
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