This article aims at applying the approaches peculiar to analytic philosophy to the question about representation of the concept of time as a symbol which can reflect the bases of the modern natural sciences, social sciences and humanities. The main methods, which the author of this article uses, are speculative analysis and modeling. The symbolic meaning of the concept of time demonstrates preconditions for the organization of the bases of the natural sciences, and social and humanitarian knowledge as well. Judgments for the meaning of time reveal the essence of the problem in two aspects of discussion on the dissociation of the foundations in the modern philosophy of physics and the philosophical analysis of the humanities as well. 1) The formation of the image of human nature in contemporary philosophy reveals the special role of the concept of time in epistemology and philosophy of science. 2) This research reveals the perspective of understanding natural and cultural processes, which is based on the unification of branches of science. As a result, the research shows the basics of communication of the natural sciences with the social science, and humanitarian knowledge as well.
When we try to search for extraterrestrial life and intelligence, we have to follow some guidelines. The first step is to clarify what is to be meant by "Life" and "intelligence", i.e. an attempt to define these words. The word "definition" refers to two different situations. First, it means an arbitrary convention. On the other hand it also often designates an attempt to clarify the content of a pre-existing word for which we have some spontaneous preconceptions, whatever their grounds, and to catch an (illusory) "essence" of what is defined. It is then made use of pre-existing plain language words which carry an a priori pre-scientific content likely to introduce some confusion in the reader's mind. The complexity of the problem will be analyzed and we will show that some philosophical prejudice is unavoidable. There are two types of philosophy: "Natural Philosophy", seeking for some essence of things, and "Critical (or analytical) Philosophy", devoted to the analysis of the procedures by which we claim to construct a reality. An extension of Critical Philosophy, Epistemo-Analysis (i.e. the Psycho-Analysis of concepts) is presented and applied to the defintion of Life and to Astr
Philosophy has nurtured fundamental science by asking the right questions. This scientific growth has fuelled research in various domains and introduced diverse disciplines. Nanotechnology is an interdisciplinary domain with numerous applications ranging from medical diagnostics and food technology to electronics and psychology. Exploring nanotechnology's philosophical and social perspective can better understand these domains and may open new doors for research. This review addresses philosophical and other aspects of nanotechnology, such as history, definitions, vision, language, laws, politics, and ethics. This is an attempt to equip anyone in the field of nanotechnology with philosophical and social insights. We expect this review to provide an introductory understanding of philosophy and other aspects to the nanotechnologists, which are usually excluded from their degree curriculum.
This monograph discusses dualities in physics: what dualities are, their main examples--from quantum mechanics and electrodynamics to statistical mechanics, quantum field theory and string theory--and the philosophical questions they raise. Part I first conceptualises dualities and discusses their main roles and themes, including how they are related to familiar notions like symmetry and interpretation. It also discusses the main simple examples of dualities: position-momentum, wave-particle, electric-magnetic, and Kramers-Wannier dualities. Part II discusses advanced examples and their inter-relations: particle-soliton dualities, electric-magnetic dualities in quantum field theories, dualities in string theory, and gauge-gravity duality. This Part ends with discussions of the hole argument, and how string theory counts the microstates of a black hole. Part III is an in-depth discussion of general philosophical issues on which dualities bear: theoretical equivalence (two theories 'saying the same thing, in different words'), scientific realism and the under-determination of theories by data, theory succession and the M-theory programme, explanation, and scientific understanding. It
In this thought-provoking book, Richard Healey proposes a new interpretation of quantum theory inspired by pragmatist philosophy. Healey puts forward the interpretation as an alternative to realist quantum theories on the one hand such as Bohmian mechanics, spontaneous collapse theories, and many-worlds interpretations, which are different proposals for describing what the quantum world is like and what the basic laws of physics are, and non-realist interpretations on the other hand such as quantum Bayesianism, which proposes to understand quantum theory as describing agents' subjective epistemic states. The central idea of Healey's proposal is to understand quantum theory as providing not a description of the physical world but a set of authoritative and objectively correct prescriptions about how agents should act. The book provides a detailed development and defense of that idea, and it contains interesting discussions about a wide range of philosophical issues such as representation, probability, explanation, causation, objectivity, meaning, and fundamentality. Healey's project is at the intersection of physics and philosophy. The book is divided into two parts. Part I of the b
We seek to elucidate the philosophical context in which one of the most important conceptual transformations of modern mathematics took place, namely the so-called revolution in rigor in infinitesimal calculus and mathematical analysis. Some of the protagonists of the said revolution were Cauchy, Cantor, Dedekind, and Weierstrass. The dominant current of philosophy in Germany at the time was neo-Kantianism. Among its various currents, the Marburg school (Cohen, Natorp, Cassirer, and others) was the one most interested in matters scientific and mathematical. Our main thesis is that Marburg neo-Kantian philosophy formulated a sophisticated position towards the problems raised by the concepts of limits and infinitesimals. The Marburg school neither clung to the traditional approach of logically and metaphysically dubious infinitesimals, nor whiggishly subscribed to the new orthodoxy of the "great triumvirate" of Cantor, Dedekind, and Weierstrass that declared infinitesimals conceptus nongrati in mathematical discourse. Rather, following Cohen's lead, the Marburg philosophers sought to clarify Leibniz's principle of continuity, and to exploit it in making sense of infinitesimals and re
This review systematically examines the progression of the You Only Look Once (YOLO) object detection algorithms from YOLOv1 to the recently unveiled YOLOv12. Employing a reverse chronological analysis, this study examines the advancements introduced by YOLO algorithms, beginning with YOLOv12 and progressing through YOLO11 (or YOLOv11), YOLOv10, YOLOv9, YOLOv8, and subsequent versions to explore each version's contributions to enhancing speed, detection accuracy, and computational efficiency in real-time object detection. Additionally, this study reviews the alternative versions derived from YOLO architectural advancements of YOLO-NAS, YOLO-X, YOLO-R, DAMO-YOLO, and Gold-YOLO. Moreover, the study highlights the transformative impact of YOLO models across five critical application areas: autonomous vehicles and traffic safety, healthcare and medical imaging, industrial manufacturing, surveillance and security, and agriculture. By detailing the incremental technological advancements in subsequent YOLO versions, this review chronicles the evolution of YOLO, and discusses the challenges and limitations in each of the earlier versions. The evolution signifies a path towards integrating
The paper defends the thesis that it's possible to maintain some conceptual preconditions of overcoming of relativistic intentions in modern philosophy of science ("there are no any general foundations in philosophy of science"). We found two general foundations in philosophy of science as a minimum. From the first side it's realistic to reveal on the base of special understanding of time the value of time not only in natural thought (especially in theory of gravity) but also in humanitarian knowledge. That's why philosophy of science has independent position in epistemology and ontology corresponding to interpretation of time as a general category of scientific thinking. The nature of time has internally inconsistent (paradoxical) character. Time is phenomenon which existing and not existing at the same time. This phenomenon is identified with imaginary movement and also ideal (formal) process of formation of the nature. The general understanding of time is connected with its "mathematical" meaning as calculable formal regulation of language practice and also the universal organization rules of quantitative parameters of intelligence of natural (physical) processes. From the secon
The goal of this article is to develop the theory of presentable categories and topoi internal to an arbitrary $\infty$-topos $\mathcal{B}$. Our main results are internal analogues of Lurie's and Lurie-Simpson's characterisations of presentable $\infty$-categories and $\infty$-topoi. In the process, we introduce a theory of internal filteredness and accessible internal categories and establish a number of structural results about presentable $\mathcal{B}$-categories such as adjoint functor theorems and the existence of an internal analogue of the Lurie tensor product. We also compare these internal notions with external variants. We show that $\mathcal{B}$-modules embed fully faithfully into presentable $\mathcal{B}$-categories and prove that there is an equivalence between topoi internal to $\mathcal{B}$ and $\infty$-topoi over $\mathcal{B}$. We also include a number of applications of our results, such as a general version of Diaconescu's theorem for $\infty$-topoi and a characterisation of locally contractible geometric morphisms in terms of smoothness.
This paper provides a preparatory introduction to sheaves and topoi, written as a conceptual continuation of the author's earlier introduction to torsors and as preparatory background for the author's arXiv paper \emph{Grothendieck Topologies and Sheaf-Theoretic Foundations of Cryptographic Security:\ Attacker Models and $Σ$-Protocols as the First Step}~\cite{InoueSecurity}. Rather than attempting an encyclopedic survey of all of topos theory, the exposition develops those parts of the subject that are most relevant for passing from torsor-based local-to-global reasoning to sheaf-theoretic and topos-theoretic reasoning: Grothendieck topologies, sheaves, torsors over a site, descent, sheaf topoi, elementary topoi, Cartesian closed structure, subobject classifiers, and internal logic. The goal is not merely motivational. We try to develop enough genuine topos theory that the reader can understand, not only heuristically but structurally, why the later cryptographic framework of~\cite{InoueSecurity} uses Grothendieck topologies and sheaf-theoretic language. To make the note more self-contained, we also include substantial appendices on basic category theory, Yoneda's lemma, limits and
In math.AG/0207028 we began the study of higher sheaf theory (i.e. stacks theory) on higher categories endowed with a suitable notion of topology: precisely, we defined the notions of S-site and of model site, and the associated categories of stacks on them. This led us to study a notion of \textit{model topos} (orginally due to C. Rezk), a model category version of the notion of Grothendieck topos. In this paper we treat the analogous theory starting from (1-)Segal categories in place of S-categories and model categories. We introduce notions of Segal topologies, Segal sites and stacks over them. We define an abstract notion of Segal topos and relate it with Segal categories of stacks over Segal sites. We compare the notions of Segal topoi and of model topoi, showing that the two theories are equivalent in some sense. However, the existence of a nice Segal category of morphisms between Segal categories allows us to improve the treatment of topoi in this context. In particular we construct the 2-Segal category of Segal topoi and geometric morphisms, and we provide a Giraud-like statement characterizing Segal topoi among Segal categories. As an example of applications, we show how t
We elaborate on the representation theorems of topoi as topoi of discrete actions of various kinds of localic groups and groupoids. We introduce the concept of "proessential point" and use it to give a new characterization of pointed Galois topoi. We establish a hierarchy of connected topoi: [1. essentially pointed Atomic = locally simply connected], [2. proessentially pointed Atomic = pointed Galois], [3. pointed Atomic]. These topoi are the classifying topos of, respectively: 1. discrete groups, 2. prodiscrete localic groups, and 3. general localic groups. We analyze also the unpoited version, and show that for a Galois topos, may be pointless, the corresponding groupoid can also be considered, in a sense, the groupoid of "points". In the unpointed theories, these topoi classify, respectively: 1. connected discrete groupoids, 2. connected (may be pointless) prodiscrete localic groupoids, and 3. connected groupoids with discrete space of objects and general localic spaces of hom-sets, when the topos has points (we do not know the class of localic groupoids that correspond to pointless connected atomic topoi). We comment and develop on Grothendieck's galois theory and its generaliz
In this paper I review the problematic relationship between science and philosophy; in particular, I will address the question of whether science needs philosophy, and I will offer some positive perspectives that should be helpful in developing a synergetic relationship between the two. I will review three lines of reasoning often employed in arguing that philosophy is useless for science: a) philosophy's death diagnosis ('philosophy is dead'); b) the historic-agnostic argument/challenge "show me examples where philosophy has been useful for science, for I don't know of any"; c) the division of property argument (or: philosophy and science have different subject matters, therefore philosophy is useless for science). These arguments will be countered with three contentions to the effect that the natural sciences need philosophy. I will: a) point to the fallacy of anti-philosophicalism (or: 'in order to deny the need for philosophy, one must do philosophy') and examine the role of paradigms and presuppositions (or: why science can't live without philosophy); b) point out why the historical argument fails (in an example from quantum mechanics, alive and kicking); c) briefly sketch som
Automated planning is a prominent area of Artificial Intelligence, and an important component for intelligent autonomous agents. A cornerstone of domain-independent planning is the separation between planning logic, i.e. the automated reasoning side, and the knowledge model, that encodes a formal representation of domain knowledge needed to reason upon a given problem to synthesise a solution plan. Such a separation enables the use of reformulation techniques, which transform how a model is represented in order to improve the efficiency of plan generation. Over the past decades, significant research effort has been devoted to the design of reformulation techniques. In this paper, we present a systematic review of the large body of work on reformulation techniques for classical planning, aiming to provide a holistic view of the field and to foster future research in the area. As a tangible outcome, we provide a qualitative comparison of the existing classes of techniques, that can help researchers gain an overview of their strengths and weaknesses.
Optical clocks have improved their frequency stability and estimated accuracy by more than two orders of magnitude over the best caesium microwave clocks that realise the SI second. Accordingly, an optical redefinition of the second has been widely discussed, prompting a need for the consistency of optical clocks to be verified worldwide. While satellite frequency links are sufficient to compare microwave clocks, a suitable method for comparing high-performance optical clocks over intercontinental distances is missing. Furthermore, remote comparisons over frequency links face fractional uncertainties of a few $10^{-18}$ due to imprecise knowledge of each clock's relativistic redshift, which stems from uncertainty in the geopotential determined at each distant location. Here, we report a landmark campaign towards the era of optical clocks, where, for the first time, state-of-the-art transportable optical clocks from Japan and Europe are brought together to demonstrate international comparisons that require neither a high-performance frequency link nor information on the geopotential difference between remote sites. Conversely, the reproducibility of the clocks after being transporte
Here we review a kind of post-World-War-II "Nachtrag" to H. Weyl's philosophical comments on mathematics and the natural sciences published in the middle of the 1920s. In a talk given at Zürich in the late 1940s, Weyl discussed F.Gonseth's dialectical epistemology and considered it as being restricted too strictly to aspects of historical change. His own experiences with post-Kantian dialectical philosophy, in particular J.G. Fichte's derivation of the concept of space and matter, had been a stronger dialectical background for his own 1918 studies in purely infintitesimal geometry and the early geometrically unified field theory of matter (extending the Mie-Hilbert program). Although now Weyl distantiated himself from the speculative features of his youthful philosophizing and in particular from his earlier enthusiasm for Fichte, he again had deep doubts as to the cultural foundations of modern mathematical sciences and its role in material culture of high modernity. For Weyl, philosophical "reflection" was a cultural necessity; he now turned towards K. Jasper's and M. Heidegger's existentialism to find deeper grounds, similar to his turn towards Fichte's philosophy after World War
The chapter advances a reformulation of the classical problem of the nature of mathematical objects (if any), here called "Plato's problem," in line with the program of a philosophy of mathematical practice. It then provides a sketch of a platonist solution, following the same perspective. This solution disregards as nonsensical the question of the existence of abstract, and specifically mathematical, objects, by rather focusing on the modalities of our access to them: objects (in general, both concrete and abstract) are regarded as individual contents that we have (or can have) a de re epistemic access to. The question of the existence of mathematical objects is then replaced by that of the modalities of our de re epistemic access to individual mathematical contents.
Context is an important factor in computer vision as it offers valuable information to clarify and analyze visual data. Utilizing the contextual information inherent in an image or a video can improve the precision and effectiveness of object detectors. For example, where recognizing an isolated object might be challenging, context information can improve comprehension of the scene. This study explores the impact of various context-based approaches to object detection. Initially, we investigate the role of context in object detection and survey it from several perspectives. We then review and discuss the most recent context-based object detection approaches and compare them. Finally, we conclude by addressing research questions and identifying gaps for further studies. More than 265 publications are included in this survey, covering different aspects of context in different categories of object detection, including general object detection, video object detection, small object detection, camouflaged object detection, zero-shot, one-shot, and few-shot object detection. This literature review presents a comprehensive overview of the latest advancements in context-based object detecti
We propose a test for abstract causal reasoning in AI, based on scholarship in the philosophy of causation, in particular on the neuron diagrams popularized by D. Lewis. We illustrate the test on advanced Large Language Models (ChatGPT, DeepSeek and Gemini). Remarkably, these chatbots are already capable of correctly identifying causes in cases that are hotly debated in the literature. In order to assess the results of these LLMs and future dedicated AI, we propose a definition of cause in neuron diagrams with a wider validity than published hitherto, which challenges the widespread view that such a definition is elusive. We submit that these results are an illustration of how future philosophical research might evolve: as an interplay between human and artificial expertise.
Several different topoi have played an important role in the development and applications of synthetic guarded domain theory (SGDT), a new kind of synthetic domain theory that abstracts the concept of guarded recursion frequently employed in the semantics of programming languages. In order to unify the accounts of guarded recursion and coinduction, several authors have enriched SGDT with multiple "clocks" parameterizing different time-streams, leading to more complex and difficult to understand topos models. Until now these topoi have been understood very concretely qua categories of presheaves, and the logico-geometrical question of what theories these topoi classify has remained open. We show that several important topos models of SGDT classify very simple geometric theories, and that the passage to various forms of multi-clock guarded recursion can be rephrased more compositionally in terms of the lower bagtopos construction of Vickers and variations thereon due to Johnstone. We contribute to the consolidation of SGDT by isolating the universal property of multi-clock guarded recursion as a modular construction that applies to any topos model of single-clock guarded recursion.