The status of abduction is still controversial. When dealing with abductive reasoning misinterpretations and equivocations are common. What did Peirce mean when he considered abduction both a kind of inference and a kind of instinct or when he considered perception a kind of abduction? Does abduction involve only the generation of hypotheses or their evaluation too? Are the criteria for the best explanation in abductive reasoning epistemic, or pragmatic, or both? Does abduction preserve ignorance or extend truth or both? To (...) study some of these conundrums and to better understand the concept of visual abduction, I think that an interdisciplinary effort is needed, at the same time fecundated by a wide philosophical analysis. To this aim I will take advantage of some reflections upon Peirce’s philosophy of abduction that I consider central to highlight the complexity of the concept, too often seen in the partial perspective of limited formal and computational models. I will ponder over some seminal Peircean philosophical considerations concerning the entanglement of abduction, perception, and inference, which I consider are still important to current cognitive research. Peircean analysis helps us to better grasp how model-based, sentential, manipulative, and eco-cognitive aspects of abduction—I have introduced in my book Abductive Cognition —have to be seen as intertwined, and indispensable for building an acceptable integrated model of visual abduction. Even if speculative, Peircean philosophical results on visual abduction certainly anticipate various tenets of recent cognitive research. (shrink)

This book offers a novel perspective on abduction. It starts by discussing the major theories of abduction, focusing on the hybrid nature of abduction as both inference and intuition. It reports on the Peircean theory of abduction and discusses the more recent Magnani concept of animal abduction, connecting them to the work of medieval philosophers. Building on Magnani's manipulative abduction, the accompanying classification of abduction, and the hybrid concept of abduction as both inference and intuition, the book examines the problem (...) of visual perception together with the related concepts of misrepresentation and semantic information. It presents the author's views on caricature and the caricature model of science, and then extends the scope of discussion by introducing some standard issues in the philosophy of science. By discussing the concept of ad hoc hypothesis generation as enthymeme resolution, it demonstrates how ubiquitous the problem of abduction is in all the different individual scientific disciplines. This comprehensive text provides philosophers, logicians and cognitive scientists with a historical, unified and authoritative perspective on abduction. (shrink)

Inspired by Bermúdez’s notion of proto-logic, I would like to fathom what the true proto-logic could be like. But this will be approached only in a negative way of figuring out what it could not be. I shall argue that it could not be purely deductive by exploiting the recent researches in logic of maps. This will allow us to reorient the search for proto-logic, starting with animal abduction. I will also suggest that proto-logic won’t get off the ground without (...) proto-geometry. These negative results will shed some lights on some further conceptual and historical issues around the language of thought hypothesis to arrive at the true proto-logic. (shrink)

This book offers a historical explanation of important philosophical problems in logic and mathematics, which have been neglected by the official history of modern logic. It offers extensive information on Gottlob Frege’s logic, discussing which aspects of his logic can be considered truly innovative in its revolution against the Aristotelian logic. It presents the work of Hilbert and his associates and followers with the aim of understanding the revolutionary change in the axiomatic method. Moreover, it offers useful tools to understand (...) Tarski’s and Gödel’s work, explaining why the problems they discussed are still unsolved. Finally, the book reports on some of the most influential positions in contemporary philosophy of mathematics, i.e., Maddy’s mathematical naturalism and Shapiro’s mathematical structuralism. Last but not least, the book introduces Biancani’s Aristotelian philosophy of mathematics as this is considered important to understand current philosophical issue in the applications of mathematics. One of the main purposes of the book is to stimulate readers to reconsider the Aristotelian position, which disappeared almost completely from the scene in logic and mathematics in the early twentieth century. (shrink)

The present collection of essays honours John Woods on the occasion of his eightieth birthday from contributors who wish to pay homage to this remarkable researcher whom they see not only as a scholar of prodigious energy and insight, but as a friend, colleague, collaborator, or former teacher. All of the essays touch upon topics Woods has taken a direct or indirect interest in, ranging from technical problems of mathematical logic and applications of formal methods through philosophical logic, philosophy of (...) language, epistemology and history of ancient and modern logic. The sections themselves of the book cover relevance, paradoxes, inconsistency, fallacies, abduction, fictions, logic naturalized, law, argumentation and narratives, and many other topics: and represent the main research areas which have profited from Woods' reflections. (shrink)

ACCORDING TO DUNS SCOTUS, what makes a material substance an individual is a positive entity which falls within the category of substance and contracts the specific nature to this or that. That entity, called haecceitas, together with the formal distinction, constitutes the core of Scotus' theory of individuation. But what is haecceitas? Haecceitas is not definable. Nor can we be acquainted with it. Then how could we understand it? Both negatively and positively, Scotus himself tried to give an answer to (...) this question. Before presenting his haecceitas theory, Scotus criticized six different types of rival theories available in his day: the position of the nominalists, the double negation theory, the theory of individuation by actual existence, the theory of individuation by quantity or other accidents, the theory of individuation by matter, and the theory attributed to Godfrey of Fontaines. In other words, he was explaining "what haecceitas is not" when he criticized these theories. More importantly, he tried to give us a positive characterization of haecceitas. Since he used "individual difference" as a synonym for "haecceitas," he resorted to an analogy between the specific difference and the individual difference in order to explain the notion of haecceitas. The problem is that twentieth-century ontologists may not be patient enough to study the triple analogy, which again presupposes Scotus' doctrines of the formal distinction and the ultimate difference. In order to draw their attention to Scotus' theory of individuation, one would need to discuss the following questions: How can we translate the term "haecceitas" into modern terminology? Is there any counterpart of haecceitas in contemporary ontology? For what reasons should we reintroduce haecceitas into the current discussion of individuation, if it has a good counterpart? Is there still anything significant left to add to our understanding of haecceitas? (shrink)

We can witness the recent surge of interest in the interaction between cognitive science, philosophy of science, and aesthetics on the problem of representation. This naturally leads us to rethinking the achievements of Goodman’s monumental book Languages of Art. For, there is no doubt that no one else contributed more than Goodman to throw a light on the cognitive function of art. Ironically, it could be also Goodman who has been the stumbling block for a unified theory of representation. In (...) this paper, I shall contrast the ways how differently misrepresentation has been treated in cognitive science, aesthetics, and philosophy of science. And I shall show that it is Goodman’s unnecessary separation of resemblance and representation in art that made such a difference. As a conclusion, I will indicate some of the most promising projects toward the unified theory of representation the revolt against Goodman’s rejection of resemblance theories might promise to us. (shrink)

How do we discover and justify axioms of mathematics? In view of the long history of the axiomatic method, it is rather embarrassing that we are still lacking a standard answer to this simple question. Since the axiom of choice is arguably one of the most frequently discussed famous axioms throughout the history of mathematics, Thomas Forster’s recent identification of the axiom as an inference to the best explanation provides us with a nice point of departure. I will argue that, (...) by separating sharply between abduction and IBE, we can give a convincing account of both the discovery and the justification of the axioms of mathematics. (shrink)

One of the most pressing issues in understanding abduction is whether it is an instinct or an inference. For many commentators find it paradoxical that new ideas are products of an instinct and products of an inference at the same time. Fortunately, Lorenzo Magnani’s recent discussion of animal abduction sheds light on both instinctual and inferential character of Peircean abduction. But, exactly for what reasons are Peirce and Magnani so convinced that animal abduction can provide us with a novel perspective? (...) Inspired by Peirce’s and Magnani’s discussions of animal abduction, I propose to compare Peirce’s and Magnani’s views of animal abduction with the estimative power of non-human animals and humans, which was one of the internal senses in medieval psychology. (shrink)

The problem I tackle in this article is: Do we have in Scotus a modal logic or a counterpart theory? We need to take a rather roundabout path to handle this problem. This is because, whether it be in Lewis's original formulation or in others' applications, the crucial concept of 'counterpart' has never been clearly explicated. In section two, I shall therefore examine the recent controversy concerning Leibniz's views on modalities which centers around the counterpart relation. By fully exploiting the (...) lessons learned from such an examination, I shall then launch a trilemma against a Leibnizian in section three. Section four shall make the claim that unlike Leibniz's case, Scotus's position is not endangered by the trilemma. One important premise will be adopted from my thesis presented elsewhere regarding the different between Scotus's haecceitas and Leibniz's individual essence. Another will be secured from a brief report on Scotus's views on similarity, which might be utterly original to modern eyes jaundiced by contemporary set theories. (shrink)

To date there seems to be no disciplined way of distinguishing between ad hoc hypotheses and legitimate auxiliary hypotheses. This is embarrassing not just for Popperian falsificationist scientific methodology, for the need for such a distinction seems an important part of scientific practice. Do scientists bother about ad hoc hypotheses at all? Did any towering figure in the history of science care about ad hoc hypotheses? Ironically, the answers to these questions seem to be “Yes” and “No” in both cases. (...) Inspired by Paglieri and Woods’ recent proposal for a theory of enthymeme based on the principle of parsimony, I propose to approach the problem of ad hoc hypothesis by interpreting it as a kind of enthymeme resolution. One reason for this interpretative strategy lies in its potential for understanding the pervasiveness and the longevity of the Aristotelian scientific methodology embedded in the scientific practice throughout the ages. (shrink)

This paper examines the concept of information in situation semantics. For this purpose the most fundamental principles of situation semantics are classified into three groups: principles of the more fundamental kind, principles related to regularity, and principles governing incremental information. Fodor’s well-known criticisms of situation semanticists’ concepts of information target the first group. Interestingly, situation semanticists have been anxious to articulate either the principles of the second group or the principles of the third group in order to meet these criticisms. (...) Based on these observations, I will launch a dilemma for situation semanticists. Either they fail to handle information about individuals or they fail to present any acceptable account of the laws of nature. Millikan’s version of situation semantics, I shall argue, is not the exception to the rule. (shrink)

Michael Friedman’s project both historically and systematically testifies to the importance of the relativized a priori. The importance of implicit definitions clearly emerges from Schlick’s General Theory of Knowledge . The main aim of this paper is to show the relationship between both and the relativized a priori through a detailed discussion of Friedman’s work. Succeeding with this will amount to a contribution to recent scholarship showing the importance of Hilbert for Logical Empiricism.

This dissertation consists of a philosophico-historical study of Duns Scotus' theory of individuation. In order to do justice to the history of philosophy, it grants a fair hearing to the problem of individuation as he conceived it, his criticisms of various theories available at his time, and his own intriguing theory of haecceitas. His doctrines of the formal distinction, the real unity of the common nature, and ultimate differences are studied in some detail because his explanation of haecceitas by a (...) triple analogy between the individual difference and the specific difference presupposed them. From a philosophical point of view, however, it is useful to study a contemporary counterpart of haecceitas in order to understand Scotus' conception better. Thus, this study attempts to show that the widespread interpretation of haecceitas as an individual essence or a coordinate quality is not supported by Scotus' major writings. Haecceitas, in fact, is somewhat similar to Bergmann's bare particular. So, a comparison of haecceitas and the bare particular is drawn in order to understand the similarities and differences between them and understand Scotus' theory better. (shrink)

Under the rubric of understanding the problem of explainability of AI in terms of abductive cognition, I propose to review the lessons from AlphaGo and her more powerful successors. As AI players in Baduk have arrived at superhuman level, there seems to be no hope for understanding the secret of their breathtakingly brilliant moves. Without making AI players explainable in some ways, both human and AI players would be less-than omniscient, if not ignorant, epistemic agents. Are we bound to have (...) less explainable AI Baduk players as they make further progress? I shall show that the resolution of this apparent paradox depends on how we understand the crucial distinction between abduction and inference to the best explanation. Some further philosophical issues arising from explainable AI will also be discussed in connection with this distinction. (shrink)

Both the defenders and the challengers of the indispensability argument seem to ignore the obvious fact that it is meant to be an analogical inference. In this note, I shall draw attention to this fact so as to avoid unnecessary confusions in any future discussion of the indispensability argument. For this purpose, I shall criticize Maddy’s version of the indispensability argument. After having noted that Quinean holism does not have to be one of the necessary premises, I shall suggest alternative (...) formulations of the indispensability argument as an analogical inference. Also, some further reflections on how to evaluate Maddy’s objections to the indispensability argument will be in due order. (shrink)

Historians of philosophy will spill huge amounts of ink scrutinizing the reason why abduction was highlighted so much in the first two decades of the 21st century. Not to mention the numerous scholarly articles on abduction published in logic, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, semiotics, and philosophy of science, several monographs on abduction appeared during this period: Magnani, Walton, Gabbay and Woods, Aliseda, to name a few. It looks as if they were responding to Hintikka’s influential paper “What Is Abduction? The (...) Fundamental Problem of Contemporary Epistemology” published in this journal at the end of the last century.In order to appreciate... (shrink)

Arthur N. Prior, in the Preface of Past, Present and Future, made clear his indebtedness to “the very lively tense-logicians of California for many discussions”. Strangely,with a notable exception of Copeland, there is no extensive discussion of these scholars in the literature on the history of tense logic. In this paper, I propose to study how Nino B. Cocchiarella, as one of the Californian tense-logicians, interacted with Prior in the late 1960s. By gathering clues from their correspondence available at Virtual (...) Lab for Prior Studies, I will highlight some of the differences between their views on tense-logic, which might still have far-reaching philosophical implications. I will conclude with a sketchof how to study in what ways Prior and Cocchiarella influenced some other Californian tense-logicians. (shrink)

In some sense, both ontological and epistemological problems related to individuation have been the focal issues in the philosophy of mathematics ever since Frege. However, such an interest becomes manifest in the rise of structuralism as one of the most promising positions in recent philosophy of mathematics. The most recent controversy between Keränen and Shapiro seems to be the culmination of this phenomenon. Rather than taking sides, in this paper, I propose to critically examine some common assumptions shared by both (...) parties. In particular, I shall focus on their assumptions on haecceity as an individual essence, haecceity as a property, the classification of properties, and thereby the search for the principle of individuation in terms of properties. I shall argue that all these assumptions are mistaken and ungrounded from Scotus’ point of view. Further, I will fathom what consequences would follow, if we reject each of these assumptions. (shrink)

ParkWoosuk. _Philosophy’s Loss of Logic to Mathematics: An Inadequately Understood Take-Over _. Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology, and Rational Ethics; 43. Springer, 2018. ISBN: 978-3-319-95146-1 ; 978-3-030-06984-1 978-3-319-95147-8. Pp. xii + 230. doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-95147-8.

This study described the relationships between academic class and student moral sensitivity and reasoning and between curriculum design components for ethics education and student moral sensitivity and reasoning. The data were collected from freshman (n = 506) and senior students (n = 440) in eight baccalaureate nursing programs in South Korea by survey; the survey consisted of the Korean Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire and the Korean Defining Issues Test. The results showed that moral sensitivity scores in patient-oriented care and conflict were (...) higher in senior students than in freshman students. Furthermore, more hours of ethics content were associated with higher principled thinking scores of senior students. Nursing education in South Korea may have an impact on developing student moral sensitivity. Planned ethics content in nursing curricula is necessary to improve moral sensitivity and moral reasoning of students. (shrink)

A historical investigation of the exclusion of Africa and Asia from modern histories of philosophy.

The problem of unconceived alternatives can be undermined, regardless of whether the possibility space of alternatives is bounded or unbounded. If it is bounded, pessimists need to justify their assumption that the probability that scientists have not yet eliminated enough false alternatives is higher than the probability that scientists have already eliminated enough false alternatives. If it is unbounded, pessimists need to justify their assumption that the probability that scientists have not yet moved from the possibility space of false alternatives (...) to the possibility space of true alternatives is higher than the probability that scientists have already moved from the former to the latter space. (shrink)

The epistemic account and the noetic account hold that the essence of scientific progress is the increase in knowledge and understanding, respectively. Dellsén (2018) criticizes the epistemic account (Park, 2017a) and defends the noetic account (Dellsén, 2016). I argue that Dellsén’s criticisms against the epistemic account fail, and that his notion of understanding, which he claims requires neither belief nor justification, cannot explain scientific progress, although it can explain fictional progress in science-fiction.

Extensional scientific realism is the view that each believable scientific theory is supported by the unique first-order evidence for it and that if we want to believe that it is true, we should rely on its unique first-order evidence. In contrast, intensional scientific realism is the view that all believable scientific theories have a common feature and that we should rely on it to determine whether a theory is believable or not. Fitzpatrick argues that extensional realism is immune, while intensional (...) realism is not, to the pessimistic induction. I reply that if extensional realism overcomes the pessimistic induction at all, that is because it implicitly relies on the theoretical resource of intensional realism. I also argue that extensional realism, by nature, cannot embed a criterion for distinguishing between believable and unbelievable theories. (shrink)

This book provides philosophers of science with new theoretical resources for making their own contributions to the scientific realism debate. Readers will encounter old and new arguments for and against scientific realism. They will also be given useful tips for how to provide influential formulations of scientific realism and antirealism. Finally, they will see how scientific realism relates to scientific progress, scientific understanding, mathematical realism, and scientific practice.

Van Fraassen contends that there is no argument that rationally compels us to disbelieve a successful theory, T. I object that this contention places upon him the burden of showing that scientific antirealists’ favorite arguments, such as the pessimistic induction, do not rationally compel us to disbelieve T. Van Fraassen uses the English view of rationality to rationally disbelieve T. I argue that realists can use it to rationally believe T, despite scientific antirealists’ favorite arguments against T.

Healey (2019a) makes four comments on my (Park, 2019a) objections to van Fraassen’s positions. The four comments concern the issues of whether ‘disbelief’ is appropriate or inappropriate to characterize van Fraassen’s position, what the relationship between a theory and models is for van Fraassen, whether he believes or not that a theory is empirically adequate, and whether destructive empiricism is tenable or not. I reply to those comments in this paper.

Evolutionary theory coheres with its neighboring theories, such as the theory of plate tectonics, molecular biology, electromagnetic theory, and the germ theory of disease. These neighboring theories were previously unconceived, but they were later conceived, and then they cohered with evolutionary theory. Since evolutionary theory has been strengthened by its several neighboring theories that were previously unconceived, it will be strengthened by infinitely many hitherto unconceived neighboring theories. This argument for evolutionary theory echoes the problem of unconceived alternatives. Ironically, however, (...) the former recommends that we take the realist attitude toward evolutionary theory, while the latter recommends that we take the antirealist attitude toward it. (shrink)

Scientific realists claim that the best of successful rival theories is (approximately) true. Relative realists object that we cannot make the absolute judgment that a theory is successful, and that we can only make the relative judgment that it is more successful than its competitor. I argue that this objection is undermined by the cases in which empirical equivalents are successful. Relative realists invoke the argument from a bad lot to undermine scientific realism and to support relative realism. In response, (...) I construct the argument from double spaces. It is similar to the argument from a bad lot, but threatens many philosophical inferences, including relative realists’ inference from comparative success to comparative truth. (shrink)

The wider the gap between rivaling positions, the more there can be debates between rivaling interlocutors. The gap between the respective formulations of scientific realism and antirealism that invoke the Prussian conception of rationality is wider than the gap between the respective formulations of scientific realism and antirealism that invoke the English conception of rationality. Therefore, scientific realists and antirealists should choose the former over the latter as the framework of their debate.

Lyons’s (2003, 2018) axiological realism holds that science pursues true theories. I object that despite its name, it is a variant of scientific antirealism, and is susceptible to all the problems with scientific antirealism. Lyons (2003, 2018) also advances a variant of surrealism as an alternative to the realist explanation for success. I object that it does not give rise to understanding because it is an ad hoc explanans and because it gives a conditional explanation. Lyons might use axiological realism (...) to account for the success of a theory. I object that some alternative axiological explanations are better than the axiological realist explanation, and that the axiological realist explanation is teleological. Finally, I argue that Putnam’s realist position is more elegant than Lyons’s. (shrink)

Van Fraassen infers the truth of the contextual theory from his observation that it has passed a crucial test. Mizrahi infers the comparative truth of our best theories from his observation that they are more successful than their competitors. Their inferences require, according to the argument from double spaces, the prior belief that it is more likely that their target theories were pulled out from the T-space than from the O-space. The T-space is the logical space of unconceived theories whose (...) appearances agree with their realities; the O-space is the logical space of unconceived theories whose appearances may agree or disagree with their realities. (shrink)

This essay addresses feminist approaches to medical aid in dying (MAID), considering whether it is a practice that should be supported for women and other marginalized groups. Some feminists have raised rights and justice-based arguments in support of MAID; others have taken a care-based approach to suggest that the practice violates relationships of care and only worsens distrust between marginalized groups and the medical establishment. I argue that we need to adopt both justice and care approaches to develop a robust (...) feminist account of MAID. I defend a woman’s right to choose death in cases of terminal illness or suffering but argue that relational concerns of care, trust, and trustworthiness must be addressed at the same time to ensure that MAID is justly practiced and accessible to all those who want it. (shrink)