According to a standard view of the second law of thermodynamics, our belief in the second law can be justified by pointing out that low-entropy macrostates are less probable than high-entropy macrostates, and then noting that a system in an improbable state will tend to evolve toward a more probable state. I would like to argue that this justification of the second law is unhelpful at best and wrong at worst, and will argue that certain puzzles sometimes associated with the (...) second law are merely artifacts of this questionable justification. *Received October 2006; revised October 2007. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, University of Chicago, 1115 E. 58th St., Chicago, IL 60637; e-mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

Some philosophers have recently argued that contrary to the traditional view, good scientific theories can in fact be logically inconsistent. The literature is now full of case-studies that are taken to support this claim. I will argue however that as of yet no-one has managed to articulate a philosophically interesting view about the role of logically inconsistent theories in science that genuinely goes against tradition, is plausibly true, and is supported by any of the case studies usually given.

Many arguments found in the physics literature involve concepts that are not well-defined by the usual standards of mathematics. I argue that physicists are entitled to employ such concepts without rigorously defining them so long as they restrict the sorts of mathematical arguments in which these concepts are involved. Restrictions of this sort allow the physicist to ignore calculations involving these concepts that might lead to contradictory results. I argue that such restrictions need not be ad hoc, but can sometimes (...) be justified by considering some of the metaphysical issues surrounding the question of the applicability of mathematics to physical reality. 1 Introduction 2 Rejecting inferential permissiveness 3 The agreement problem 4 Independent objections to the liberal view. (shrink)

Describing a physical system in idealized terms involves making claims about the system that we know to be literally false. Because of this, it is not clear how calculations involving idealizations can generate justified belief and explain facts about the world. I argue that this puzzling aspect of idealizations cannot be explained away by talking about approximations, as is often supposed. I develop a different account of how justified beliefs and explanations can be generated from idealized descriptions of physical systems. (...) My account involves a type of contextualism about the truth of mathematical descriptions of physical systems. (shrink)

Although the canonical distribution is one of the central tools of statistical mechanics, the reason for its effectiveness is poorly understood. This is due in part to the fact that there is no clear consensus on what it means to use the canonical distribution to describe a system in equilibrium with a heat bath. I examine some traditional views as to what sort of thing we should take the canonical distribution to represent. I argue that a less explored alternative, according (...) to which the canonical distribution represents a time ensemble of sorts, has a number of advantages that rival interpretations lack. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, University of Chicago, 1115 E. 58th St., Chicago, IL 60637; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

Ever since, while continuing to develop his liguistic theories, he has been the most prominent US critic both of his country's foreign policy and of the intellectuals and media that give it overwhelming consensual support. "The Responsibility of Intellectuals" was followed by a series of ever more devastating attacks on American policy in Vietnam (collected in American Power and the New Mandarins and At War With Asia ): by 1970, he was far and away the best known intellectual opponent of (...) the US war effort. (shrink)

Although the inferring of explanations plays an important role in both our everyday lives and in the workings of science, I argue that inference to the best explanation as it is commonly conceived is often not the best way to capture this sort of reasoning. I suggest that a different form of reasoning – so-called immediate explanatory inference – is instead often much better suited to this task. This is a form of inference in which we are justified in believing (...) explanations for the evidence before us purely in virtue of this evidence, and not in virtue of the evidence plus some general principle or rule of non-deductive reasoning. I defend the idea of such a notion of inference, and argue that it plays a central role in both ordinary life and science. (shrink)

In a recent article in this journal, Richard Gale and Alexander Pruss offer a new cosmological proof for the existence of God relying only on the Weak Principle of Sufficient Reason, W-PSR. We argue that their proof relies on applications of W-PSR that cannot be justified, and that our modal intuitions simply do not support W-PSR in the way Gale and Pruss take them to.

Inspired by the work of Kuhn, we might want to develop an account of science that explains how it is that while much of science involves the investigation of a world as articulated by a paradigm, the scientist is nevertheless an observer and rational interpreter of a mind-independent world that does not change its character over time. Kuhn himself recognizes that there is a challenge here that he does not know how to meet. I argue that progress can be made (...) on this challenge by carefully examining and criticizing Kuhn’s account of deliberation in science. Inspired by certain views about Gestalt psychology and examples such as the duck/rabbit picture, Kuhn takes deliberation in science to be a consequence of seeing things a certain way, rather than rational deliberation in science making new ways of seeing things possible. I argue that the most serious problems of Kuhn’s view of science stem from this fact, and that we can free ourselves from these problems by not following Kuhn here. In particular, I argue using material from Hanson and Peirce that we should think of the revolutionary scientist as being revolutionary not merely in virtue of seeing things in a new way, but rather for showing – typically through painstaking deliberation – that certain conjectures connected with new ways of seeing the world are reasonable This makes coming to see the world differently a deliberative process that is importantly unlike seeing a rabbit/duck picture differently. Such a way of thinking allows us to view the articulation of a new paradigm as a deliberative process that does not take some paradigm or other for granted, but rather as a deliberative process that interrogates existing orthodoxy for its suitability to survive into the next paradigm. The result is a view of science that maintains much of what is important to Kuhn, but departs from him where his view is least convincing. (shrink)

Examples involving infinite suspended chains or infinite trains are sometimes used to defend perceived weaknesses in traditional cosmological arguments. In this article, we distinguish two versions of the cosmological argument, suggest that such examples can only be relevant if it is one specific type of cosmological argument that is being considered, and then criticize the use of such examples in this particular type of cosmological argument. Our criticism revolves around a discussion of what it means to call a system closed, (...) and what it means to call an explanation complete. Our analysis makes no suppositions about the nature of the infinite, and is therefore independent of many of the issues around which contemporary discussions of the cosmological argument have tended to revolve. (shrink)

Why is it that even strong formal theories of truth fail to prove their own consistency? Although Field has addressed this question for many theories of truth, I argue that there is an important and attractive class of theories of truth that he omitted in his analysis. Such theories cannot prove that all their axioms are true, though unlike many of the cases Field considers, they do not prove that any of their axioms are false or that any of their (...) rules of inference are not truth preserving. I argue that it is the fact that such theories are not finitely axiomatizable that stops them from proving their own consistency. (shrink)

In [7] and [8], it is established that given any abstract countable structure S and a relation R on S, then as long as S has a recursive copy satisfying extra decidability conditions, R will be ∑0α on every recursive copy of S iff R is definable in S by a special type of infinitary formula, a ∑rα() formula. We generalize the typ e of constructions of these papers to produce conditions under which, given two disjoint relations R1 and R2 (...) on S, there is a recursive copy of S in which R1 and R2 are 0α inseparable. We then apply these theorems to specific everyday structures such as linear orderings, boolean algebras andvector spaces. (shrink)

According to a standard view of the second law of thermodynamics, our belief in the second law can be justified by pointing out that low entropy macrostates are less probable than high entropy macrostates, and then noting that a system in an improbable state will tend to evolve toward a more probable state. I would like to argue that this justification of the second law of thermodynamics is fundamentally flawed, and will show that some puzzles sometimes associated with the second (...) law are merely artifacts of this incorrect justification. (shrink)

In this paper, we consider two different ways in which modus-ponens type reasoning with conditional obligations may be formalized. We develop necessary and sufficient conditions for the validity of each, and make some philosophical observations about the differences between the minor premises that each formalization requires. All this is done within the context of the Belnap-Perloff stit theory.

It is often supposed that we can use mathematics to capture the time evolution of any physical system. By this, I mean that we can capture the basic truths about the time evolution of a physical system with a set of mathematical assertions, which can then be used as premises in arbitrary mathematical arguments to deduce more complex properties of the system. ;I would like to argue that this picture of the role of mathematics in physics is incorrect. Specifically, I (...) shall assert: ;The Deduction Failure Thesis: Bodies of knowledge in physics are generally not closed under otherwise valid mathematical argument forms. ;The Representation Failure Thesis: We cannot assume that the state of any system, together with its fundamental laws, can be captured by some set of mathematical assertions or equations. In fact, it is more likely that the world is not representable by a set of mathematical assertions or equations than that it is. ;The dissertation largely consists of arguments for these two theses. (shrink)

A gas relaxing into equilibrium is often taken to be a process in which a system moves from an “improbable” to a “probable” state. Given that the thermodynamic entropy increases during such a process, it is natural to conjecture that the thermodynamic entropy is a measure of the probability of a macrostate. For nonideal classical gases, however, I claim that there is no clear sense in which the thermodynamic entropy of a macrostate measures its probability. We must therefore reject the (...) idea that thermodynamic entropy and probability are connected in a deep and general way. (shrink)

Kevin Davey claims that the justification of the second law of thermodynamics as it is conveyed by the “standard story” of statistical mechanics, roughly speaking, that lowentropy microstates tend to evolve to high-entropy microstates, is “unhelpful at best and wrong at worst.” In reply, I demonstrate that Davey’s argument for rejecting the standard story commits him to a form of skepticism that is more radical than the position he claims to be stating and that Davey places (...) unreasonable demands on the notion of justification in the physical sciences. (shrink)

Our paper ‘A new cosmological argument’ gave an argument for the existence of God making use of the weak Principle of Sufficient Reason (W-PSR) which states that for every proposition p, if p is true, then it is possible that there is an explanation for p. Recently, Graham Oppy, as well as Kevin Davey and Rob Clifton, have criticized the argument. We reply to these criticisms. The most interesting kind of criticism in both papers alleges that the W-PSR (...) can be justifiably denied by the atheist, and constitutes no improvement on the strong Principle of Sufficient Reason (S-PSR) which claims that every true proposition in fact has an explanation. The criticism is predicated on the fact that it can be shown that the W-PSR entails the S-PSR. We argue that the W-PSR's plausibility remains despite the criticisms. From this it can be seen to follow that the entailment relation between the W-PSR and the S-PSR gives one reason to believe the S-PSR. (shrink)

Most phobias are focussed on a small number of fear-inducing stimuli (e.g., snakes, spiders). A review of the evidence supporting biological and cognitive explanations of this uneven distribution of phobias suggests that the readiness with which such stimuli become associated with aversive outcomes arises from biases in the processing of information about threatening stimuli rather than from phylogenetically based associative predispositions or “biological preparedness.” This cognitive bias, consisting of a heightened expectation of aversive outcomes following fear-relevant stimuli, generates and maintains (...) robust learned associations between them. Some of the features of such stimuli which determine this expectancy bias are estimates of how dangerous they are, the semiotic similarity between them and their aversive outcomes, and the degree of prior fear they elicit. Ontogenetic and cultural factors influence these features of fear-relevant stimuli and are hence important in determining expectancy bias. The available evidence does not exclude the possibility that both expectancy biases and specific evolved predispositions coexist, but the former can explain a number of important findings that the latter cannot. (shrink)

Medical Ethics, Law and Communication at a Glance presents a succinct overview of these key areas of the medical curriculum. This new title aims to provide a concise summary of the three core, interlinked topics essential to resolving ethical dilemmas in medicine and avoiding medico-legal action. Divided into two sections; the first examines the ethical and legal principles underpinning each medical topic; while the second focuses on communication skills and the importance of good communication. Medical Ethics, Law and Communication at (...) a Glance offers an accessible introduction to the fundamentals of good medical practice, and will provide indispensable support for undergraduate medical students and nurses, as well as newly qualified healthcare professionals. (shrink)

Introduction: religion and politics as human universals -- Catholic integralism and the integralists -- History --Symmetry -- Transition -- Stability -- Justice -- Confucian and Islamic anti-liberalisms -- Epilogue: reconciliation.

The conflicting positions of the two early eleventh century Yogācāra scholars, Ratnākaraśānti and his critic Jñānaśrīmitra, concerning whether or not consciousness can exist without content are inseparable from their respective understandings of enlightenment. Ratnākaraśānti argues that consciousness can be contentless —and that, for a buddha, it must be. Mental content can be defeated by reasoning and made to disappear by meditative cultivation, and so it is fundamentally distinct from the nature of consciousness, which is never defeated and never ceases. That (...) mental content is thus separable from the nature of consciousness is unimaginable to Jñānaśrīmitra, who argues that all mental content cannot be so defeated, nor can it disappear completely, and who concludes that Ratnākaraśānti’s commitment to this idea can be based on nothing but faith. Contra Jñānaśrīmitra, I will suggest that Ratnākaraśānti’s view is based not only on faith, but is also driven by a certain theory of buddhahood, the implications of which he is committed to working out. Because Ratnākaraśānti’s theory of buddhahood is developed in part in his tantric work, our understanding of his position benefits from our reading it in this context, wherein buddhahood and the most effective techniques for attaining it are explored. (shrink)

There is growing interest in understanding and eliciting division of labor within groups of scientists. This paper illustrates the need for this division of labor through a historical example, and a formal model is presented to better analyze situations of this type. Analysis of this model reveals that a division of labor can be maintained in two different ways: by limiting information or by endowing the scientists with extreme beliefs. If both features are present however, cognitive diversity is maintained indefinitely, (...) and as a result agents fail to converge to the truth. Beyond the mechanisms for creating diversity suggested here, this shows that the real epistemic goal is not diversity but transient diversity. (shrink)

Experimental philosophy of consciousness aims to investigate and explain our thinking about phenomenally conscious states. Based on empirical studies, researchers have argued (a) that we lack a folk concept of consciousness, (b) that we do not think entities like Microsoft feel regret, (c) that unfelt pains are widely accepted, and (d) that people do not attribute phenomenally conscious states to duplicated hamsters. In this article, I review these and other intriguing claims about people’s understanding of phenomenal consciousness. In doing so, (...) I also show why experimental philosophy of consciousness is challenging, although perhaps not quite as daunting as studying phenomenal consciousness itself. (shrink)

This paper considers Jñānaśrīmitra’s defense of manifestation as the criterion of ultimate existence. In the first section, "Asatkhyāti and Adhyavasāya: making sense of manifestation as the criterion of the real", I show the way that, in response to Ratnākaraśānti’s Nirākāravāda, Jñānaśrīmitra argues for a sharp distinction between manifestation and determination in an effort to establish that the manifestation of something unreal is incoherent. The unreal, he thinks, is only ever determined; it is never manifest to consciousness, properly speaking. In the (...) second section, “To be manifest is to be locked away in a single awareness-event”, I turn to one of the consequences of this view that Jñānaśrīmitra embraces: what manifests is only what appears in a single moment of conscious awareness. In the third section, “The scope of neither-one-nor-many: Jñānaśrīmitra’s Interpretation of PV 3.220–221”, I consider one of the problems this raises: how is it that an appearance with mutually opposed parts manifests in one and the same unitary moment of awareness? Jñānaśrīmitra solves this problem by appealing to the nature of manifestation and its distinction from determination: what is manifest, even if it is variegated, is nondual and indivisible; distinctions arise only on the basis of determination. I trace the details of this solution in the context of his discussion of an important pair of verses from Dharmakīrti. Finally, in the last section, “The marvelous nonduality of variegated awareness-events”, I turn to the surprising buddhological consequences of this solution. (shrink)

On at least one of its uses, ‘higher-order evidence’ refers to evidence about what opinions are rationalized by your evidence. This chapter surveys the foundational epistemological questions raised by such evidence, the methods that have proven useful for answering them, and the potential consequences and applications of such answers.

Abstract:Ratnākaraśānti (ca. 970–1040) holds three conflicting positions: luminosity (prakāśa) is the ultimately real nature of consciousness; luminosity and appearances (ākāras) are identical; and appearances are false (alīka) because they are targeted by the neither-one-nor-many argument. But why is luminosity not false, too, given its identity with appearances? In response to this worry, Ratnākaraśānti develops a notion of identity (tādātmya) that lets him claim that, although luminosity and appearance are composed of the same stuff, they are not identical in every respect. (...) On the basis of this, he limits the scope of the neither-one-nor-many argument such that it targets appearances but not luminosity. Other philosophers (and possibly Ratnākaraśānti himself) then further limit the argument's scope, showing that it also does not target experiences of pleasure (sukha) and, crucially for their buddhology, the innate bliss (sahajānanda) that characterizes the experience of buddhahood. (shrink)

Increasingly, epistemologists are becoming interested in social structures and their effect on epistemic enterprises, but little attention has been paid to the proper distribution of experimental results among scientists. This paper will analyze a model first suggested by two economists, which nicely captures one type of learning situation faced by scientists. The results of a computer simulation study of this model provide two interesting conclusions. First, in some contexts, a community of scientists is, as a whole, more reliable when its (...) members are less aware of their colleagues' experimental results. Second, there is a robust tradeoff between the reliability of a community and the speed with which it reaches a correct conclusion. ‡The author would like to thank Brian Skyrms, Kyle Stanford, Jeffrey Barrett, Bruce Glymour, and the participants in the Social Dynamics Seminar at University of California–Irvine for their helpful comments. Generous financial support was provided by the School of Social Science and Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Sciences at UCI. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, Baker Hall 135, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890; e-mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

A keen athlete in his late forties, philosophy professor Kevin Aho hadn't given much thought to his own mortality, until he suffered a sudden heart attack that left him fighting for his life. Confronted with death for the first time, he realized that the things he thought gave his life meaning, such as his independence or his ability to plan his own future, were in tatters. Aho turned to those thinkers who have reflected deeply on the meaning of life (...) and the anxiety of living when every heartbeat might be your last: the existentialists. Armed with insights from the likes of Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Nietzsche, and de Beauvoir, he found new meaning and comfort in a view of life that strives for authenticity and accepts aging and death as part of what makes life worthwhile. Existentialism asks us to face the frailty of our existence and to live with a sense of urgency and gratitude toward its manifold beauties. It is only then that we can be released from patterns of self-deception and begin to appreciate what truly matters in our fleeting, precious lives. (shrink)

You can perceive things, in many respects, as they really are. For example, you can correctly see a coin as circular from most angles. Nonetheless, your perception of the world is perspectival. The coin looks different when slanted than when head-on, and there is some respect in which the slanted coin looks similar to a head-on ellipse. Many hold that perception is perspectival because you perceive certain properties that correspond to the “looks” of things. I argue that this view is (...) misguided. I consider the two standard versions of this view. What I call the PLURALIST APPROACH fails to give a unified account of the perspectival character of perception, while what I call the PERSPECTIVAL PROPERTIES APPROACH violates central commitments of contemporary psychology. I propose instead that perception is perspectival because of the way perceptual states are structured from their parts. (shrink)

The standard view in philosophy treats pains as phenomenally conscious mental states. This view has a number of corollaries, including that it is generally taken to rule out the existence of unfelt pains. The primary argument in support of the standard view is that it supposedly corresponds with the commonsense conception of pain. In this paper, we challenge this doctrine about the commonsense conception of pain, and with it the support offered for the standard view, by presenting the results of (...) a series of new empirical studies that indicate that lay people not only tend to believe that unfelt pains are possible, but actually, quite common. (shrink)

Theories of scientific rationality typically pertain to belief. In this paper, the author argues that we should expand our focus to include motivations as well as belief. An economic model is used to evaluate whether science is best served by scientists motivated only by truth, only by credit, or by both truth and credit. In many, but not all, situations, scientists motivated by both truth and credit should be judged as the most rational scientists.

This chapter explores the metaphysical views about higher-order logic held by two individuals responsible for introducing it to philosophy: Gottlob Frege (1848–1925) and Bertrand Russell (1872–1970). Frege understood a function at first as the remainder of the content of a proposition when one component was taken out or seen as replaceable by others, and later as a mapping between objects. His logic employed second-order quantifiers ranging over such functions, and he saw a deep division in nature between objects and functions. (...) Russell understood propositional functions as what is obtained when constituents of propositions are replaced by variables, but eventually denied that they were entities in their own right. Both encountered contradictions when supposing there to exist as many objects as functions, and both adopted views about the meaningfulness of higher-order discourse that were difficult to state from within their own strictures. (shrink)

Much of contemporary knowledge is generated by groups not single individuals. A natural question to ask is, what features make groups better or worse at generating knowledge? This paper surveys research that spans several disciplines which focuses on one aspect of epistemic communities: the way they communicate internally. This research has revealed that a wide number of different communication structures are best, but what is best in a given situation depends on particular details of the problem being confronted by the (...) group. (shrink)

According to Phenomenal Conservatism (PC), if a subject S has an appearance that P, in the absence of defeaters, S has justification for believing P by virtue of her appearance's inherent justifying power. McCain and Moretti (2021) have argued that PC is affected by the problem of reflective awareness: if S becomes reflectively aware of an appearance, the appearance loses its inherent justifying power. This limits the explanatory power of PC and reduces its antisceptical bite. This paper provides a novel (...) argument to the same conclusion and contends that it does not apply to Phenomenal Explanationism, the appearance-based account of justification alternative to PC defended by McCain and Moretti (2021). (shrink)

_Challenges conventional understandings of Heidegger’s account of the body._.

The rise of modern science and the proclaimed 'death' of God in the nineteenth century led to a radical questioning of divine action and authorship - Bultmann's celebrated 'demythologizing'. Remythologizing Theology moves in another direction that begins by taking seriously the biblical accounts of God's speaking. It establishes divine communicative action as the formal and material principle of theology, and suggests that interpersonal dialogue, rather than impersonal causality, is the keystone of God's relationship with the world. This original contribution to (...) the theology of divine action and authorship develops a new vision of Christian theism. It also revisits several long-standing controversies such as the relations of God's sovereignty to human freedom, time to eternity, and suffering to love. Groundbreaking and thought-provoking, it brings theology into fruitful dialogue with philosophy, literary theory, and biblical studies"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

This chapter covers some of Robert Brandom’s contributions to our understanding of communication. Topics discussed include his theory of discursive practice, his inferential semantics, his scorekeeping pragmatics, his views on the “transmission” model of communication, and his semantic perspectivism. I compare his scorekeeping pragmatic theory to other kinds of pragmatic theories, and I argue that his semantic perspectivism can be understood as a global indexical relativism.

This paper approaches the problem of testimony from a new direction. Rather than focusing on the epistemic grounds for testimony, it considers the problem from the perspective of an individual who must choose whom to trust from a population of many would-be testifiers. A computer simulation is presented which illustrates that in many plausible situations, those who trust without attempting to judge the reliability of testifiers outperform those who attempt to seek out the more reliable members of the community. In (...) so doing, it presents a novel defense for the credulist position that argues one should trust testimony without considering the underlying reliability of the testifier. (shrink)

Scholarship in experimental jurisprudence has reported surprising findings about various concepts of legal significance: _acting intentionally_, _causation_, _consent_, _knowledge, recklessness_, _reasonableness,_ and _law_ itself. Often, these studies examine laypeople’s ordinary concepts and draw broader conclusions about legal experts’ concepts. This Article questions such inferences, from empirical findings about ordinary concepts to conclusions about the concepts of those with legal expertise. It presents a case study concerning what it means to act _intentionally._ An experiment examines intentionality judgments across four populations (N (...) = 774): laypeople, law students, non-law students, and United States judges. Legal training affected judgments in three ways that are consistent with the acquisition of a distinctive legal concept. This case study supports the Article’s broader claim: Laypeople’s ordinary concepts are not equivalent to experts’ legal concepts. The acquisition of legal concepts is an important form of legal expertise. (shrink)

Costly signalling theory has become a common explanation for honest communication when interests conflict. In this paper, we provide an alternative explanation for partially honest communication that does not require significant signal costs. We show that this alternative is at least as plausible as traditional costly signalling, and we suggest a number of experiments that might be used to distinguish the two theories.

Matthew McGrath has recently challenged all theories that allow for immediate perceptual justification. This challenge comes by way of arguing for what he calls the “Looks View” of visual justification, which entails that our visual beliefs that are allegedly immediately justified are in fact mediately justified based on our independent beliefs about the looks of things. This paper shows that McGrath’s arguments are unsound or, at the very least, that they do not cause genuine concern for the species of dogmatism (...) called “Phenomenal Explanationism”, recently introduced and defended by Kevin McCain and Luca Moretti. (shrink)