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374The purpose of this paper is to show that the dual notions of elements & distinctions are the basic analytical concepts needed to unpack and analyze morphisms, duality, and universal constructions in the Sets, the category of sets and functions. The analysis extends directly to other concrete categories (groups, rings, vector spaces, etc.) where the objects are sets with a certain type of structure and the morphisms are functions that preserve that structure. Then the elements & distinctions-bas…Read more
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354Classical physics and quantum physics suggest two meta-physical types of reality: the classical notion of a objectively definite reality with properties "all the way down," and the quantum notion of an objectively indefinite type of reality. The problem of interpreting quantum mechanics (QM) is essentially the problem of making sense out of an objectively indefinite reality. These two types of reality can be respectively associated with the two mathematical concepts of subsets and quotient sets …Read more
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348James M. Buchanan and Democratic Classical LiberalismIn Luca Fiorito, Scott Scheall & Carlos Eduardo Suprinyak (eds.), Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, Emerald Publishing. pp. 149-163. 2018.Nancy MacLean’s book, Democracy in Chains, raised questions about James M. Buchanan’s commitment to democracy. This paper investigates the relationship of classical liberalism in general and of Buchanan in particular to democratic theory. Contrary to the simplistic classical liberal juxtaposition of “coercion vs. consent,” there have been from Antiquity onwards voluntary contractarian defenses of non-democratic government and even slavery—all little noticed by classical liberal scholars who pref…Read more
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327Logical Entropy: Introduction to Classical and Quantum Logical Information theoryEntropy 20 (9): 679. 2018.Logical information theory is the quantitative version of the logic of partitions just as logical probability theory is the quantitative version of the dual Boolean logic of subsets. The resulting notion of information is about distinctions, differences and distinguishability and is formalized using the distinctions of a partition. All the definitions of simple, joint, conditional and mutual entropy of Shannon information theory are derived by a uniform transformation from the corresponding defi…Read more
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313A Graph-theoretic Method to Define any Boolean Operation on PartitionsThe Art of Discrete and Applied Mathematics 2 (2): 1-9. 2019.The lattice operations of join and meet were defined for set partitions in the nineteenth century, but no new logical operations on partitions were defined and studied during the twentieth century. Yet there is a simple and natural graph-theoretic method presented here to define any n-ary Boolean operation on partitions. An equivalent closure-theoretic method is also defined. In closing, the question is addressed of why it took so long for all Boolean operations to be defined for partitions.
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308Follow the Math!: The Mathematics of Quantum Mechanics as the Mathematics of Set Partitions Linearized to (Hilbert) Vector SpacesFoundations of Physics 52 (5): 1-40. 2022.The purpose of this paper is to show that the mathematics of quantum mechanics is the mathematics of set partitions linearized to vector spaces, particularly in Hilbert spaces. That is, the math of QM is the Hilbert space version of the math to describe objective indefiniteness that at the set level is the math of partitions. The key analytical concepts are definiteness versus indefiniteness, distinctions versus indistinctions, and distinguishability versus indistinguishability. The key machiner…Read more
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295Review: Envisioning Real Utopias by Erik Olin Wright (review)Cosmos + Taxis 5 94-103. 2018.This article is a review of Erik Olin Wright’s 2010 book Envisioning Real Utopias. The review focuses on certain topics such as his understanding of ‘capitalism,’ his conception of worker cooperatives, and the general issues surrounding markets, the Left, and Marxism.
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280This paper shows how the classical finite probability theory (with equiprobable outcomes) can be reinterpreted and recast as the quantum probability calculus of a pedagogical or toy model of quantum mechanics over sets (QM/sets). There have been several previous attempts to develop a quantum-like model with the base field of ℂ replaced by ℤ₂. Since there are no inner products on vector spaces over finite fields, the problem is to define the Dirac brackets and the probability calculus. The previo…Read more
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279Brain functors: A mathematical model for intentional perception and actionBrain: Broad Research in Artificial Intelligence and Neuroscience 7 (1): 5-17. 2016.Category theory has foundational importance because it provides conceptual lenses to characterize what is important and universal in mathematics—with adjunctions being the primary lens. If adjunctions are so important in mathematics, then perhaps they will isolate concepts of some importance in the empirical sciences. But the applications of adjunctions have been hampered by an overly restrictive formulation that avoids heteromorphisms or hets. By reformulating an adjunction using hets, it is sp…Read more
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265Property and Contract in Economics: The Case for Economic DemocracyBlackwell. 1992.From a pre-publication review by the late Austrian economist, Don Lavoie, of George Mason University: "The book's radical re-interpretation of property and contract is, I think, among the most powerful critiques of mainstream economics ever developed. It undermines the neoclassical way of thinking about property by articulating a theory of inalienable rights, and constructs out of this perspective a "labor theory of property" which is as different from Marx's labor theory of value as it is from…Read more
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196Translatio versus Concessio: Retrieving the Debate about Contracts of Alienation with an Application to Today’s Employment ContractPolitics and Society 33 (3): 449-480. 2005.Liberalism is based on the juxtaposition of consent to coercion. Autocracy and slavery were based on coercion whereas today’s political democracy and economic “employment system” are based on consent to voluntary contracts. This article retrieves an almost forgotten dark side of contractarian thought that based autocracy and slavery on explicit or implicit voluntary contracts. The democratic and antislavery movements forged arguments not simply in favor of consent but arguments that voluntary co…Read more
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99Classical physics and quantum physics suggest two meta-physical types of reality: the classical notion of a objectively definite reality with properties "all the way down," and the quantum notion of an objectively indefinite type of reality. The problem of interpreting quantum mechanics is essentially the problem of making sense out of an objectively indefinite reality. These two types of reality can be respectively associated with the two mathematical concepts of subsets and quotient sets which…Read more
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80A New Logic, a New Information Measure, and a New Information-Based Approach to Interpreting Quantum MechanicsEntropy Special Issue: Information-Theoretic Concepts in Physics 26 (2). 2024.The new logic of partitions is dual to the usual Boolean logic of subsets (usually presented only in the special case of the logic of propositions) in the sense that partitions and subsets are category-theoretic duals. The new information measure of logical entropy is the normalized quantitative version of partitions. The new approach to interpreting quantum mechanics (QM) is showing that the mathematics (not the physics) of QM is the linearized Hilbert space version of the mathematics of partit…Read more
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79This paper shows how the classical finite probability theory (with equiprobable outcomes) can be reinterpreted and recast as the quantum probability calculus of a pedagogical or toy model of quantum mechanics over sets (QM/sets). There have been several previous attempts to develop a quantum-like model with the base field of ℂ replaced by ℤ₂. Since there are no inner products on vector spaces over finite fields, the problem is to define the Dirac brackets and the probability calculus. The previo…Read more
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75The Workplace: A Forgotten Topic in Democratic Theory?Kettering Review 51-57. 2009.Early democratic theorists such as Kant considered the effects of being a servant or, in modern terms, an employee to be so negative that such dependent people should be denied the vote. John Stuart Mill and John Dewey also noted the negative effects of the employment relation on the development of democratic habits and civic virtues but rather than deny the franchise to employees, they pushed for workplace democracy where workers would be a member of their company rather than an employee. In sp…Read more
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72Intellectual Trespassing as a Way of Life: Essays in Philosophy, Economics, and MathematicsRowman & Littlefield Publishers. 1995.Dramatic changes or revolutions in a field of science are often made by outsiders or 'trespassers,' who are not limited by the established, 'expert' approaches. Each essay in this diverse collection shows the fruits of intellectual trespassing and poaching among fields such as economics, Kantian ethics, Platonic philosophy, category theory, double-entry accounting, arbitrage, algebraic logic, series-parallel duality, and financial arithmetic.
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65Workplace Democracy and Human Development: The Example of the Postsocialist Transition DebateJournal of Speculative Philosophy 24 (4): 333-353. 2010.In the 1990s , a debate raged across the whole postsocialist world as well as in Western development agencies such as the World Bank about the best approach to the transition from various forms of socialism or communism to a market economy and political democracy. One of the most hotly contested topics was the question of the workplace being organized based on workplace democracy (e.g., various forms of worker ownership) or based on the conventional employer-employee relationship. Well before 19…Read more
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57Marxism as a capitalist toolJournal of Socio-Economics 39 (6): 696-700. 2010.Just as the two sides in the Cold War agreed that Western Capitalism and Soviet Communism were "the" two alternatives, so the two sides in the intellectual Great Debate agreed on a common framing of questions with the defenders of capitalism taking one side and Marxists taking the other side of the questions. From the viewpoint of economic democracy (e.g., a labor-managed market economy), this late Great Debate between capitalism and socialism was as misframed as would be an antebellum 'Great De…Read more
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49The democratic firm: An argument based on ordinary jurisprudenceJournal of Business Ethics 21 (2-3). 1999.This paper presents an argument for the democratic (or 'labor-managed') firm based on ordinary jurisprudence. The standard principle of responsibility in jurisprudence ('Assign legal responsibility in accordance with de facto responsibility') implies that the people working in a firm should legally appropriate the assets and liabilities produced in the firm (the positive and negative fruits of their labor). This appropriation is normally violated due to the employment or self-rental contract. Ho…Read more
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45On Abstraction in Mathematics and Indefiniteness in Quantum MechanicsJournal of Philosophical Logic 50 (4): 813-835. 2021.ion turns equivalence into identity, but there are two ways to do it. Given the equivalence relation of parallelness on lines, the #1 way to turn equivalence into identity by abstraction is to consider equivalence classes of parallel lines. The #2 way is to consider the abstract notion of the direction of parallel lines. This paper developments simple mathematical models of both types of abstraction and shows, for instance, how finite probability theory can be interpreted using #2 abstracts as “…Read more
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43Logical information theory: new logical foundations for information theoryLogic Journal of the IGPL 25 (5): 806-835. 2017.There is a new theory of information based on logic. The definition of Shannon entropy as well as the notions on joint, conditional, and mutual entropy as defined by Shannon can all be derived by a uniform transformation from the corresponding formulas of logical information theory. Information is first defined in terms of sets of distinctions without using any probability measure. When a probability measure is introduced, the logical entropies are simply the values of the probability measure on…Read more
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42A short note on the logico-conceptual foundations of information theory in partition logicThe Reasoner 3 (7): 4-5. 2009.A new logic of partitions has been developed that is dual to ordinary logic when the latter is interpreted as the logic of subsets of a fixed universe rather than the logic of propositions. For a finite universe, the logic of subsets gave rise to finite probability theory by assigning to each subset its relative size as a probability. The analogous construction for the dual logic of partitions gives rise to a notion of logical entropy that is precisely related to Claude Shannon's entropy. In thi…Read more
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39Knowledge-based development assistanceKnowledge, Technology & Policy 12 (4): 17-43. 2000.Knowledge-based development is education writ large. Therefore this paper approaches the idea of a knowledge-based development institution ("Knowledge Bank") from the viewpoint of philosophy of education, educational psychology, and pedagogical theory applied to the problems of development.
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36Reply to Commentaries on ‘The Labour Theory of Property and Marginal Productivity Theory’Economic Thought 5 (2): 44. 2016.Jamie Morgan's commentary (Morgan, 2016) on my paper 'The Labour Theory of Property and Marginal Productivity Theory' (Ellerman, 2016) and Ted Burczak's later comments (Burczak, 2016) raise a number of issues that surely will occur to other readers and that need to be addressed. I take the occasion to expand upon the arguments and to explore some related issues. In the narrative that unfolds, Frank H. Knight plays the role of the sophisticated defender of the system of renting, hiring and employ…Read more
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27Four ways from universal to particular: how Chomsky’s principles-and-parameters model is not selectionistJournal of Applied Non-Classical Logics 26 (3): 193-207. 2016.Following the development of the selectionist theory of the immune system, there was an attempt to characterise many biological mechanisms as being ‘selectionist’ as juxtaposed with ‘instructionist’. However, this broad definition would group Darwinian evolution, the immune system, embryonic development, and Chomsky’s principles-and-parameters language-acquisition mechanism together under the ‘selectionist’ umbrella, even though Chomsky’s mechanism and embryonic development are significantly dif…Read more
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27The Quantum Logic of Direct-Sum Decompositions: The Dual to the Quantum Logic of SubspacesLogic Journal of the IGPL 26 (1): 1-13. 2018.ince the pioneering work of Birkhoff and von Neumann, quantum logic has been interpreted as the logic of subspaces of a Hilbert space. There is a progression from the usual Boolean logic of subsets to the "quantum logic" of subspaces of a general vector space--which is then specialized to the closed subspaces of a Hilbert space. But there is a "dual" progression. The set notion of a partition is dual to the notion of a subset. Hence the Boolean logic of subsets has a dual logic of partitions. Th…Read more
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21Sheaves of structures and generalized ultraproductsAnnals of Mathematical Logic 7 (2): 163. 1974.
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19Comment on Ramon Flecha and Ignacio Santa Cruz. The Priority of Labor and Capital AccountsAnalyse & Kritik 33 (1): 171-174. 2011.Two aspects of the fine Flecha-Cruz paper can be usefully elaborated. The Mondragon cooperatives differ not only from capitalist firms but also from most other cooperatives in the doctrine of the 'priority of labor over capital' which means that the people working in any sort of cooperative will be members and will not be rented as employees. Also the Mondragon system of internal capital accounts solves the equity-structure problem that has plagued many modern cooperatives structured as non-prof…Read more
Areas of Specialization
Normative Ethics |
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |
Areas of Interest
Social and Political Philosophy |
Philosophy of Physical Science |