Simply Unsuccessful: The Neo-Platonic Proof of God’s Existence

Edward Feser defends the ‘Neo-Platonic proof’ for the existence of the God of classical theism. After articulating the argument and a number of preliminaries, I first argue that premise three of Feser’s argument – the causal principle that every composite object requires a sustaining efficient cause to combine its parts – is both unjustified and dialectically ill-situated. I then argue that the Neo-Platonic proof fails to deliver the mindedness of the absolutely simple being and instead militates against its mindedness. Finally, I uncover two tensions between Trinitarianism and the Neo-Platonic proof and one tension between the Neo-Platonic proof (and, more generally, classical theism) and the incarnation.

Detection of Schools in Remote Sensing Images Based on Attention-Guided Dense Network

The detection of primary and secondary schools (PSSs) is a meaningful task for composite object detection in remote sensing images (RSIs). As a typical composite object in RSIs, PSSs have diverse appearances with complex backgrounds, which makes it difficult to effectively extract their features using the existing deep-learning-based object detection algorithms. Aiming at the challenges of PSSs detection, we propose an end-to-end framework called the attention-guided dense network (ADNet), which can effectively improve the detection accuracy of PSSs. First, a dual attention module (DAM) is designed to enhance the ability in representing complex characteristics and alleviate distractions in the background. Second, a dense feature fusion module (DFFM) is built to promote attention cues flow into low layers, which guides the generation of hierarchical feature representation. Experimental results demonstrate that our proposed method outperforms the state-of-the-art methods and achieves 79.86% average precision. The study proves the effectiveness of our proposed method on PSSs detection.

Logical-probabilistic assessment of the occurrence of destruction during intersystem interactions in the electrical system of the seaport

This article solves the problem of a quantitative assessment of the occurrence of destruction in the intersystem interactions of the transport system and the electrical system of the seaport, in the conditions of the technological process in the seaport, which indicates its significant impact on the electrical system, as a result of which the reliability of the berthing power line is significantly reduced. The intersystem interactions that occur during the implementation of the technological process, as experience shows, are the causes of critical situations that occur at the border of areas of different physical nature, and the consequences are recorded, in the case under consideration, in the electrical system. A mathematical model describing intersystem destruction in quantitative form is presented in this paper using a logical-probabilistic model that reflects internal and external relationships. In the object under study, the destructive cause (collision) and the consequence (accumulation of electrical damage in the insulation of the cable line) are in the same object (the mooring power supply unit), and this is limited to the effects of intersystem destruction. In such a statement, the object of power supply of the technological process and equipment is considered as a composite object containing a cable line and an electric contact column. The problem being formulated is an important and relevant scientific task, which includes not only the question of identifying the causes of increased electrical wear of the power line, but also the development of methods for obtaining quantitative results, and in practical terms also involves the diagnosis of the technical condition of electrical equipment and timely preventive maintenance.

Boundary Stones and the Rebellion of Nature

Boundaries demarcate property throughout European history, though the utopian dream of terrain without boundaries recurs, not least in association with the figure of the free-roaming god Pan. Ancient Rome had a god of boundaries, Terminus, associated by Horace with venerable, quasi-natural landscapes of human occupation. In Renaissance culture, Terminus is represented as a hybrid figure—part human; part lithic; often incorporated into architecture. This essay identifies a composite object in a Roman sculpture collection, noted for figures of Pan, as a model for Erasmus’s widely divulged emblem of Terminus, featured in images by major artists. Initially identifying himself with Terminus’s resistance to divine authority, Erasmus met with criticism for arrogance. In response, he drew on Horace’s ethically colored evocation of Terminus, now in connection with the ultimate boundary, that between life and death, as appears in Hans Holbein’s moving design for a monument to the humanist.

Non-Factualism about Composite Objects (or Why There’s No Fact of the Matter Whether Any Material Objects Exist)

Chapter 4 provides an argument for a non-factualist view of the composite-object question; i.e., it argues that there’s no fact of the matter whether there are any such things as composite objects like tables and rocks and cats (where a composite object is an object that has proper parts). In addition, this chapter explains how the argument can be extended to establish the much more general (and much more radical) conclusion that there’s no fact of the matter whether there are any material objects at all—including mereological simples (i.e., objects that don’t have any proper parts). The argument proceeds by undermining the necessitarian and contingentist views of the composite-object question; so, roughly speaking, the idea is that there isn’t a fact of the matter about the existence of composite objects like tables because there isn’t a necessary fact about this and there also isn’t a contingent fact about it.

Metaphysics, Sophistry, and Illusion

This book does two things. First, it introduces a novel kind of non-factualist view, and it argues that we should endorse views of this kind in connection with a wide class of metaphysical questions, most notably, the abstract-object question and the composite-object question (more specifically, the book argues that there’s no fact of the matter whether there are any such things as abstract objects or composite objects—or material objects of any other kind). Second, the book explains how these non-factualist views fit into a general anti-metaphysical view called neo-positivism, and it explains how we could argue that neo-positivism is true. Neo-positivism is (roughly) the view that every metaphysical question decomposes into some subquestions—call them Q1, Q2, Q3, etc.—such that, for each of these subquestions, one of the following three anti-metaphysical views is true of it: non-factualism, or scientism, or metaphysically innocent modal-truth-ism. These three views can be defined (very roughly) as follows. Non-factualism about a question Q is the view that there’s no fact of the matter about the answer to Q. Scientism about Q is the view that Q is an ordinary empirical-scientific question about some contingent aspect of physical reality, and Q can’t be settled with an a priori philosophical argument. And metaphysically innocent modal-truth-ism about Q is the view that Q asks about the truth value of a modal sentence that’s metaphysically innocent in the sense that it doesn’t say anything about reality and, if it’s true, isn’t made true by reality.

The First Quarantine: How the Plague Became a Political Disease

The great plague of 1665-1666 is one of the starting points for the birth of biopolitics in its modern form. The quarantine measures introduced by the government have been considered effective from the medical point of view since the middle of the 18th century. However, many of those contemporary with the plague were convinced that the state was only worsening matters for London’s inhabitants. The author examines why the plague elicited such an ambivalent response in England and how the disease stopped being a composite object and turned into a “comfortable, domesticated” concept. The article investigates why the moral assessment of those measures has become so different over the past hundred years and shows how the quarantine in London influenced the “hygienic revolution.” Apart from its historical interest, this case is a suitable topic for the use of STS methodology because it illustrates the impossibility providing a complete description of the quarantine process and subsequent medical treatment in terms of a conflict between different actors. In order to understand why these measures have subsequently been perceived in this fashion, the author applies the concept of Lovecraftian horror, which offers a way to describe the situation of “collisions” with the plague. By describing how biopolitics released the moral tension built up by the co-existence of different interpretations of the causes of the epidemic, the author reconstructs the retrospective creation of the myth about the success of the quarantine. He contrasts the logic of “multiplicity” with the unifying descriptions and shows the kind of problems a “blurred” ontology can bring on during a crisis in everyday life. This leads to a discussion of the difficulty of holding onto unstable objects that have the potential for liberation from the logic of paternalistic care.

An Algorithmic Metaphysics of Self-Patterns

The paper draws on an algorithmic criterion to demonstrate that the self (as initially described in Shaun Gallagher’s a pattern theory of self) is a composite, scattered, and patterned object. It also addresses the question of extendedness of the self-pattern. Based on the criteria drawn from algorithmic complexity, I argue that although the self-pattern possesses a genuinely extended aspect (and in this sense, the self-pattern is minimally extended) the self-pattern and its environment do not constitute a genuine composite object.

Intensional Composition as Identity

Composition as Identity claims that a composite object is identical to its parts taken collectively. This is often understood as reducing the identity of composite objects to the identity of their parts. The author argues that Composition as Identity is not such a reduction. His central claim is that an intensional notion of composition, which is sensitive to the arrangement of the composing objects, avoids criticisms based on an extensional understanding of composition. The key is to understand composition as an intensional kind of identity relation, many-one identity. Eventually, the author suggests an arrangement condition for many-one identity that allows him to distinguish between composite objects, even if they have the same parts.