This paper explores the centrality of self-affirmation in Bernard Lonergan’s Insight and is specifically concerned with the role of bias in relation to self-appropriation and genuineness. I begin with an explication of the process of self-affirmation and the model of knowledge it involves. I then discuss the nature of bias and its relation to genuineness in Insight. My analysis concludes that bias is never “overcome,” in the sense of being eliminated. Thus, genuine self-appropriation is never complete. Rather, being true to (...) oneself is the struggle to recognize one’s biases while still affirming what is reasonable and choosing responsible action. I also conclude that total resistance to self-affirmation is a disingenuous refusal to engage one’s biases; it is an act of evasion, or a fear of genuineness and its accompanying responsibilities. I end by briefly addressing some of these tensions in relation to Catholicism, specifically raising questions concerning our thinking and acting from within a Catholic faith. (shrink)

This paper explores the centrality of self-affirmation in Bernard Lonergan’s Insight and is specifically concerned with the role of bias in relation to self-appropriation and genuineness. I begin with an explication of the process of self-affirmation and the model of knowledge it involves. I then discuss the nature of bias and its relation to genuineness in Insight. My analysis concludes that bias is never “overcome,” in the sense of being eliminated. Thus, genuine self-appropriation is never complete. Rather, being true to (...) oneself is the struggle to recognize one’s biases while still affirming what is reasonable and choosing responsible action. I also conclude that total resistance to self-affirmation is a disingenuous refusal to engage one’s biases; it is an act of evasion, or a fear of genuineness and its accompanying responsibilities. I end by briefly addressing some of these tensions in relation to Catholicism, specifically raising questions concerning our thinking and acting from within a Catholic faith. (shrink)

Robert Talisse argues that a Peircean epistemic basis for democracy is "thin" enough to allow for reasonable pluralism while being "thick" enough to justify the preferability of democracy. This brief critical engagement with Talisse's argument asks, first, whether or not it is fair to employ Peirce's doubt-belief model of inquiry as the basis of a "thin" philosophy of democracy. Additionally, it asks whether such a justification of democracy can do any real work without also employing Peirce's more comprehensive philosophical views (...) concerning the conditions necessary for developing the epistemic character required for actual democratic practices. Lastly, it questions whether Talisse's philosophy of democracy is best called "Peircean" at all. (shrink)

Brouwer and Weyl recognized that the intuitive continuum requires a mathematical analysis of a kind that set theory is not able to provide. As an alternative, Brouwer introduced choice sequences. We first describe the features of the intuitive continuum that prompted this development, focusing in particular on the flow of internal time as described in Husserl's phenomenology. Then we look at choice sequences and their logic. Finally, we investigate the differences between Brouwer and Weyl, and argue that Weyl's conception of (...) choice sequences is defective on several counts. (shrink)

Brouwer and Weyl recognized that the intuitive continuum requires a mathematical analysis of a kind that set theory is not able to provide. As an alternative, Brouwer introduced choice sequences. We first describe the features of the intuitive continuum that prompted this development, focusing in particular on the flow of internal time as described in Husserl's phenomenology. Then we look at choice sequences and their logic. Finally, we investigate the differences between Brouwer and Weyl, and argue that Weyl's conception of (...) choice sequences is defective on several counts. (shrink)

There are two principles that lend Brouwer's mathematics the extra power beyond arithmetic. Both are presented in Brouwer's writings with little or no argument. One, the principle of bar induction, will not concern us here. The other, the continuity principle for numbers, occurs for the first time in print in [4]. It is formulated and immediately applied to show that the set of numerical choice sequences is not enumerable. In fact, the idea of the continuity property can be dated fairly (...) precisely, it is to be found in the margin of Brouwer's notes for his course on Pointset Theory of 1915/16. The course was repeated in 1916/17 and he must have inserted his first formulation of the continuity principle in the fall of 1916 as new material right at the beginning of the course.In modern language, the principle readswhere α and β range over choice sequences of natural numbers, m and x over natural numbers, and stands for ⟨α, α, …, α⟩, the initial segment of α of length m.An immediate consequence of WC-N is that all full functions are continuous, and, as a corollary, that the continuum is unsplittable [28]. Note that WC-N is incompatible with Church's thesis, [22], section 4.6.After Brouwer asserted WC-N, Troelstra was the first to ask in print for a conceptual motivation, but he remained an exception; most authors followed Brouwer by simply asserting it, cf. [18].Let us note first that in one particular case the principle is obvious indeed, namely in the case of the lawless sequences. The notion of lawless sequence surfaced fairly late in the history of intuitionism. Kreisel introduced it in [17] for metamathematical purposes. There is a letter from Brouwer to Heyting in which the phenomenon also occurs [7]. This is an important and interesting fact since it is the only time that Brouwer made use of a possibility expressly stipulated in, e.g., [5], see below. (shrink)

Geach's problem, the problem of accounting for the fact that judgements expressed using moral terms function logically like other judgements, stands in the way of most noncognitive analyses of moral judgements. The non-cognitivist must offer a plausible interpretation of such terms when they appear in conditionals that also explains their logical interaction with straightforward moral assertions. Blackburn and Gibbard have offered a series of accounts each of which interprets such conditionals as expressing higher order commitments. Each then invokes norms for (...) the coherent acceptance of attitudes to explain why we hold certain combinations inconsistent. Against these accounts the paper presses two related objections: (1) The norms needed to do the explanatory work cannot be strong enough to do that work without also ruling clearly consistent attitudes inconsistent. And (2), the norms of rational attitude acceptance do not neatly track the distinction between consistent and inconsistent attitudes. (shrink)

Motivational internalism about moral judgments is the plausible view that accepting a moral judgment is necessarily connected to motivation motivation. However, it conflicts with the Humean theory that motives must be constituted by desires. Simple versions of internalism run into problems with people who do not desire to do what they believe right. This has long been urged by David Brink. Hence, many internalists have adopted more subtle defeasible views, on which only rational agents will have a desire to act. (...) I will argue that more complex versions run into problems with self-effacing values of the sort Parfit highlights in another context. Such values can only be attained indirectly. After proposing a general account of motivation suited to the internalist thesis, I argue that Anti-Humeanism is better suited to accommodating the internalist insight. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that the characteristics of digital platforms challenge the fundamental assumptions of value sensitive design (VSD). Traditionally, VSD methods assume that we can identify relevant values during the design phase of new technologies. The underlying assumption is that there is onlyepistemic uncertaintyabout which values will be impacted by a technology. VSD methods suggest that one can predict which values will be affected by new technologies by increasing knowledge about how values are interpreted or understood in context. (...) In contrast, digital platforms exhibit a novel form of uncertainty, namely,ontological uncertainty: even with full information and overview, it cannot be foreseen what users or developers will do with digital platforms. Hence, predictions about which values are affected might not hold. In this paper, we suggest expanding VSD methods to account for value dynamism resulting from ontological uncertainty. Our expansions involve (1) extending VSD to the entire lifecycle of a platform, (2) broadening VSD through the addition of reflexivity, i.e. second-order learning about what values to aim at, and (3) adding specific tools of moral sandboxing and moral prototyping to enhance such reflexivity. While we illustrate our approach with a short case study about ride-sharing platforms such as Uber, our approach is relevant for other technologies exhibiting ontological uncertainty as well, such as machine learning, robotics and artificial intelligence. (shrink)

Brouwer and Husserl both aimed to give a philosophical account of mathematics. They met in 1928 when Husserl visited the Netherlands to deliver his Amsterdamer Vorträge. Soon after, Husserl expressed enthusiasm about this meeting in a letter to Heidegger, and he reports that they had long conversations which, for him, had been among the most interesting events in Amsterdam. However, nothing is known about the content of these conversations; and it is not clear whether or not there were any other (...) exchanges between them. The following is an attempt at some remarks on Husserl’s Philosophy of Arithmetic from an intuitionistic, by which I mean a Brouwerian, point of view. I will confine myself specifically to some intuitionistic musings on Husserl’s analysis of the concept of finite number, which he developed in his Habilitationsschrift of 1887, “On the Concept of Number,” and presented again in 1891 in the first four chapters of the Philosophy of Arithmetic. It will turn out that the intuitionistic account of number is very different from Husserl’s. For instance, they strongly disagree about the number 2. On the other hand, the roots of the projects of Husserl and Brouwer have much in common. Since this fact makes their disagreement pressing and lends it much of its significance, I will begin there. (shrink)

Metaethics: A Contemporary Introduction provides a solid foundation in metaethics for advanced undergraduates by introducing a series of puzzles that most metaethical theories address. These puzzles involve moral disagreement, reference, moral epistemology, metaphysics, and moral psychology. From there, author Mark van Roojen discusses the many positions in metaethics that people will take in reaction to these puzzles. Van Roojen asks several essential questions of his readers, namely: What is metaethics? Why study it? How does one discuss metaethics, given its (...) inherently controversial nature? Each chapter closes with questions, both for reading comprehension and further discussion, and annotated suggestions for further reading. (shrink)

There are two principles that lend Brouwer's mathematics the extra power beyond arithmetic. Both are presented in Brouwer's writings with little or no argument. One, the principle of bar induction, will not concern us here. The other, the continuity principle for numbers, occurs for the first time in print in [4]. It is formulated and immediately applied to show that the set of numerical choice sequences is not enumerable. In fact, the idea of the continuity property can be dated fairly (...) precisely, it is to be found in the margin of Brouwer's notes for his course on Pointset Theory of 1915/16. The course was repeated in 1916/17 and he must have inserted his first formulation of the continuity principle in the fall of 1916 as new material right at the beginning of the course.In modern language, the principle readswhere α and β range over choice sequences of natural numbers, m and x over natural numbers, and stands for ⟨α, α, …, α⟩, the initial segment of α of length m.An immediate consequence of WC-N is that all full functions are continuous, and, as a corollary, that the continuum is unsplittable [28]. Note that WC-N is incompatible with Church's thesis, [22], section 4.6.After Brouwer asserted WC-N, Troelstra was the first to ask in print for a conceptual motivation, but he remained an exception; most authors followed Brouwer by simply asserting it, cf. [18].Let us note first that in one particular case the principle is obvious indeed, namely in the case of the lawless sequences. The notion of lawless sequence surfaced fairly late in the history of intuitionism. Kreisel introduced it in [17] for metamathematical purposes. There is a letter from Brouwer to Heyting in which the phenomenon also occurs [7]. This is an important and interesting fact since it is the only time that Brouwer made use of a possibility expressly stipulated in, e.g., [5], see below. (shrink)

Over the last decade there have been various attempts to use empirical data about people’s dispositions to choose to undermine various moral positions by arguing that our judgements about what to do are unreliable. Usually they are directed at non-consequentialists by consequentialists, but they have also been directed at all moral theories by skeptics about morality. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong has been one of the leading proponents of such general skepticism. He has argued that empirical results particularly undermine intuitionist moral epistemology. This (...) paper is an attempt to look at what intuitionists should say in response. Consider the following argument : Regress (R1) If any person S is ever justified in believing a normative claim that p then S must be able to infer p from other beliefs of S. (shrink)

On Friday, November 15, 1940, Kurt Gödel gave a talk on set theory at Brown University. The topic was his recent proof of the consistency of Cantor’s Continuum Hypothesis with the axiomatic system ZFC for set theory. His friend from their days in Vienna, Rudolf Carnap, was in the audience, and afterward wrote a note to himself in which he raised a number of questions on incompleteness.

There are two principles that lend Brouwer's mathematics the extra power beyond arithmetic. Both are presented in Brouwer's writings with little or no argument. One, the principle of bar induction, will not concern us here. The other, the continuity principle for numbers, occurs for the first time in print in [4]. It is formulated and immediately applied to show that the set of numerical choice sequences is not enumerable. In fact, the idea of the continuity property can be dated fairly (...) precisely, it is to be found in the margin of Brouwer's notes for his course on Pointset Theory of 1915/16. The course was repeated in 1916/17 and he must have inserted his first formulation of the continuity principle in the fall of 1916 as new material right at the beginning of the course.In modern language, the principle readswhere α and β range over choice sequences of natural numbers,mandxover natural numbers, andstands for ⟨α(0), α(1), …, α(m− 1)⟩, the initial segment of α of lengthm.An immediate consequence of WC-N is that all full functions are continuous, and, as a corollary, that the continuum is unsplittable [28]. Note that WC-N is incompatible with Church's thesis, [22], section 4.6.After Brouwer asserted WC-N, Troelstra was the first to ask in print for a conceptual motivation, but he remained an exception; most authors followed Brouwer by simply asserting it, cf. [18].Let us note first that in one particular case the principle is obvious indeed, namely in the case of the lawless sequences. The notion of lawless sequence surfaced fairly late in the history of intuitionism. Kreisel introduced it in [17] for metamathematical purposes. There is a letter from Brouwer to Heyting in which the phenomenon also occurs [7]. This is an important and interesting fact since it is (probably) the only time that Brouwer made use of a possibility expressly stipulated in, e.g., [5], see below. (shrink)

T. M. Scanlon suggests that the binding nature of promises itself plays a role in allowing a promisee rationally to expect follow through even while that binding nature itself depends on the promisee’s rational expectation of follow through. Kolodny and Wallace object that this makes the account viciously circular. The chapter defends Scanlon’s theory from this objection. It argues that the basic complaint is a form of wrong kinds of reason objection. The thought is that the promisee’s reason to expect (...) compliance are undermined if the promise is binding only when the promisee forms that very expectation. The chapter suggests that other uncontroversially rational processes of multi-person coordination involve beliefs with the very same feature. Focal point reasoning in the theory of games is one example. In coordination situations it can be rational to believe that another person will do something precisely because that person expects you to believe what one does about what they’ll do. An examination of the reasoning in such cases motivates a group reflection principle that vindicates the reasoning employed in Scanlon’s account. -/- . (shrink)

On the intended interpretation of intuitionistic logic, Heyting's Proof Interpretation, a proof of a proposition of the form p -> q consists in a construction method that transforms any possible proof of p into a proof of q. This involves the notion of the totality of all proofs in an essential way, and this interpretation has therefore been objected to on grounds of impredicativity (e.g. Gödel 1933). In fact this hardly ever leads to problems as in proofs of implications usually (...) nothing more is assumed about a proof of the antecedent than that it indeed is one, and this assumption does not require a further grasp of the totality of proofs. The prime example of an intuitionistic theorem that goes beyond that assumption is Brouwer's proof of the 'bar theorem': For every tree x, if x contains a decidable subset of nodes such that every path through the tree meets it (a 'bar'), then there is a well-ordered subtree of x that contains a bar for the whole of x. Instantiated with an arbitrary tree t, this proposition takes the form P(t) -> Q(t). Brouwer's proof of the bar theorem mainly consists in an analysis of the inner structure that a proof of P(t) must have, where proofs are taken to be primarily mental objects. So here Brouwer engages in phenomenological reflection by considering the acts in which we think about bars. From that analysis he obtains the information from which to construct a proof of Q(t). In this talk I will argue that Brouwer circumvents the problem of impredicativity by resorting to a transcendental argument based on phenomenological description, and defend this application by showing how common objections to transcendental arguments do not apply here. Finally, I will indulge in some historical speculation by relating the foregoing considerations to the remarkable change that Gödel's view on the Proof Interpretation underwent between his Yale Lecture (1941) and the Dialectica paper (1958). (shrink)

In his text 'The modern development of the foundations of mathematics in the light of philosophy' from around 1961, Go¨del announces a turn to Husserl's phenomenology to find the foundations of mathematics. In Go¨del's archive there are two draft letters that shed some further light on the exact strategy that he formulated for himself in the early 1960s. Transcriptions of these letters are presented, together with some comments.

Gödel once offered an argument for the general reflection principle in set theory that took the form of an analogy with Leibniz' Monadology. I discuss the mathematical and philosophical background to Gödel's argument, reconstruct the proposed analogy in detail, and argue that it has no justificatory force.

Contemporary internalists typically idealize the conditions for motivation, claiming for example that motivation must be present in rational persons under certain conditions. Robert Johnson, in The Philosophical Quarterly, 49, convincingly argues that these versions of internalism overlook ways in which the conditions in the antecedent of the conditional expressing the analysis are incompatible with the claim under analysis. However, avoiding the fallacy decouples internalism from its use to explain and justify moral action. I use Johnson’s argument as the basis of (...) a new proposal for defining central internalist claims, modifying the conditions in which motivation must be manifest so that it is less idealized. We can specify conditions which are ideal enough to ensure motivation, but which are not so ideal as to be incompatible with the grounds of an agent’s reasons. (shrink)

Within the literature on emotion and behavioral action, studies on approach-avoidance take up a prominent place. Several experimental paradigms feature successful conceptual replications but many original studies have not yet been replicated directly. We present such a direct replication attempt of two seminal experiments originally conducted by Chen and Bargh (1999). In their first experiment, participants affectively evaluated attitude objects by pulling or pushing a lever. Participants who had to pull the lever with positively valenced attitude objects and push the (...) lever with negatively valenced attitude objects (i.e., congruent instruction) did so faster than participants who had to follow the reverse (i.e., incongruent) instruction. In Chen and Bargh's second experiment, the explicit evaluative instructions were absent and participants merely responded to the attitude objects by either always pushing or always pulling the lever. Similar results were obtained as in Experiment 1. Based on these findings, Chen and Bargh concluded that (1) attitude objects are evaluated automatically; and (2) attitude objects automatically trigger a behavioral tendency to approach or avoid. We attempted to replicate both experiments and failed to find the effects reported by Chen and Bargh as indicated by our pre-registered Bayesian data analyses; nevertheless, the evidence in favor of the null hypotheses was only anecdotal, and definitive conclusions await further study. (shrink)

Michael Smith's recent defence of the theory shows promise, in that it captures the most common reasons for accepting a Humean view. But, as I will argue, it falls short of vindicating the view. Smith's argument fails, because it ignores the role of rationality conditions on the ascription of motivating reason explanations. Because of these conditions, we must have a theory of rationality before we choose a theory of motivation. Thus, we cannot use Humean restrictions on motivation to argue for (...) a particular conception of rationality. I will not directly criticize using a Humean conception of rationality to defend a Humean theory of motivation. For my argument implies that such criticism must come more directly, as argument over the substantive content of rationality. (shrink)

In his text ‘The modern development of the foundations of mathematics in the light of philosophy’ from around 1961, Gödel announces a turn to Husserl's phenomenology to find the foundations of mathematics. In Gödel's archive there are two draft letters that shed some further light on the exact strategy that he formulated for himself in the early 1960s. Transcriptions of these letters are presented, together with some comments.

The dialectical approach to teaching critical thinking is centred on a comparative evaluation of contending arguments, so that generally the strength of an argument for a position can only be assessed in the context of this dialectic. The identification of fallacies, though important, plays only a preliminary role in the evaluation to individual arguments. Our approach to fallacy identification and analysis sees fallacies as argument patterns whose persuasive power is disproportionate to their probative value.

We recently discovered a novel subset of beta cells that resemble immature beta cells during pancreas development. We named these “virgin” beta cells as they do not stem from existing mature beta cells. Virgin beta cells are found exclusively at the islet periphery in areas that we therefore designated as the “neogenic niche.” As beta cells are our only source of insulin, their loss leads to diabetes. Islets also contain glucagon‐producing alpha cells and somatostatin‐producing delta cells, that are important for (...) glucose homeostasis and form a mantle surrounding the beta cell core. This 3D architecture is important and determines access to blood flow and innervation. We propose that the distinctive islet architecture may also play an important, but hitherto unappreciated role in generation of new endocrine cells, including beta cells. We discuss several predictions to further test the contribution of the neogenic niche to beta cell regeneration. (shrink)