The folk concept of intentional action has been the subject of extensive research by experimental philosophers and psychologists (e.g., Alicke, 2008; Knobe, 2003a, 2003b, 2006; Machery, 2008; Malle, 2006; Mele, 2006; Nadelhoffer, 2004, 2006; Nichols & Ulatowski, 2007; Wright & Bengson, 2009). This research has focused primarily on puzzling asymmetries in ordinary people‘s judgments about intentional action. For example, researchers have been concerned with ordinary judgments about the intentional status of side effects, as in the case described in Knobe (2003a), (...) where a negative foreseen side effect of a CEO‘s action—harming the environment—is judged to be intentional while a positive foreseen side effect—helping the environment—is judged to be unintentional. Call any puzzling asymmetry in ordinary judgments about intentional action (whether or not they involve side effects) an intentionality judgment asymmetry. Debate has turned on whether intentionality judgment asymmetries are best explained in terms of the influence of some type of prescriptive judgment (Alicke, 2008; Knobe, 2003a, 2004, 2006; Mele, 2006; Mele & Cushman, 2007; Nadelhoffer, 2004, 2006; Pettit & Knobe, 2009; Uttich & Lombrozo, 2010; Wright & Bengson, 2009) or rather in terms of the interplay between various descriptive judgments (Guglielmo, Monroe, & Malle, 2009; Machery, 2008; Malle, 2006; Nanay, 2010; Sripada, forthcoming). To adjudicate between these two types of accounts—what we will call prescriptivist accounts and descriptivist accounts—Chandra Sripada and Sarah Konrath (forthcoming) used structural equation models (SEMs) to support a descriptivist account put forward by Sripada (forthcoming)—the Deep Self Concordance.. (shrink)

Predictably, John MacFarlane claims that our discussion does not get to the heart of relativism and that his own framework does. We think he both underestimates the resources at work in our approach and overestimates the clarity and cogency of his. In what follows we shall briefly speak to both of these themes. We say that relativists reject the idea of truth as a monadic property. MacFarlane disagrees – he doesn’t think the typical relativist rejects the idea of monadic truth. (...) MacFarlane’s discussion of these issues confuses a monadic property with a monadic predicate. To see what we have in mind, let’s begin with the notion of a monadic property. Our grip on that notion is more or less in line with the tradition. Roughly speaking a monadic property either does or doesn't stand in the instantiation relation to a given object. For many purposes this can be represented as a particular function from worlds to extensions, and in a setting where intensional issues are irrelevant it may serve our purposes well enough to represent it as a set of objects. Abstract objects with a more complex profile are not what we have in mind by 'monadic property'. In particular an abstract object with parameterized instantiation – something that is instantiated by Jones relative to one index on a parameter but not relative to another -- is not what we had in mind by 'monadic property'. In saying this, we are not acting as the terminology police. We are merely alluding to a tradition of thinking and talking about properties that we are immersed in and which is quite familiar. Aware that there might be some flexibility in how authors use 'monadic property', we tried to forestall misinterpretation with remarks such as the following: One final point of clarification: to get our intentions right, think here of ‘instantiates’, as it figures in T1 [T1= There are propositions and they instantiate the fundamental monadic properties of truth simpliciter and falsity simpliciter] as a simple binary relation between an object and a property.. (shrink)

One of Weatherson's main goals is to drive home a methodological point: We shouldn't be looking for deductive arguments for or against relativism – we should instead be evaluating inductive arguments designed to show that either relativism or some alternative offers the best explanation of some data. Our focus in Chapter Two on diagnostics for shared content allegedly encourages the search for deductive arguments and so does more harm than good. We have no methodological slogan of our own to offer. (...) Part of what we were trying to do was to clearly articulate what the relevant issues even are. Often relativism is characterized in a way that is offhand and sloppy. The relativist, we are told, accepts 'disquotational truth' for various kinds of claims but denies that they are 'true simpliciter'. What exactly is going on here? Do the relevant distinctions even make sense? Before engaging in various abductive manoevers we need to get much clearer about what it is that we are trying to argue for and against. That said we are perfectly happy with the kind of inductive enterprise that Weatherson sketches. For our part, we were fully aware (and indeed explicit) that the 'agreement' diagnostic does not ‘deductively’ settle all of the relevant disputes. A significant part of Chapter Four is dedicated to something in the vicinity of Weatherson's project. Note, indeed, that our diagnostics are even stated using the ideology of 'providing evidence' – hardly the basis for a straightforwardly deductive argument for or against relativism. Finally, though, we should point out that we are not hostile to deductive arguments against relativism. A philosopher's evidence is theory-laden and in part owes itself to epistemic powers that his or her opponents may not acknowledge. In short, their evidence may not always have the hallmarks of 'evidence neutrality' --- evidence that their opponents would recognize as such. We are perfectly open to there being compelling deductive arguments against relativism from such evidence.. (shrink)

Some of Richard's initial remarks strike a curiously critical tone. We noted that collective agreement tests provide only limited support to claims of shared content. Acknowledging this, Richard then argues that the relevant limitations do not carry over to collective disagreement reports. We agree. Indeed the points that he makes in this connection are ones that we ourselves make in the book (see e.g. RMT pp.62-63). At the end of his Section one, Richard oversimplifies the dialectical situation considerably. He says (...) that the upshot of our discussion in Chapter two is that there is a very strong argument for relativistic content. The situation in all the core cases is much more complicated. Take predicates of personal taste - 'fun' for example. There are indeed cases where standard contextualism predicts disparate content but where the disagreement diagnostic provides prima facie evidence for the claim of shared content promoted by a standard relativist view. But there are plenty of other cases where the predictions yielded by relativistic semantics do not sit well at all with the deliverances of that diagnostic (see e.g. RMT p.109). There is, thus, prima facie troubling data that each side has to explain away. Richard, like many relativists, is overly encouraged by a limited diet of examples. Let us turn to the nature of disagreement, the topic of Richard's Section two. As Richard anticipates we are sympathetic to a pretty simple view of disagreement: We disagree about a proposition if one of us believes it and one of us believes the negation.1 Some relativists – notably MacFarlane – have thought that there are considerations that show that such a view must be wrong, even leaving the general issue of relativism to the side. One paradigmatic argument of this sort is to the effect that if someone in world w1 believes p and someone in world w2 believes not-p, they are not thereby disagreeing. Richard displays some sympathy to this line of argument. He shouldn't.. (shrink)

Lasersohn discusses a type of case that we raise as problematic for a simple relativistic approach to predicates of personal taste: A waiter says 'The party was not fun'. The host says 'The party was fun'. We do not think they disagree. But, prima facie, it seems that a relativistic analysis will predict disagreement. We were fully explicit that such cases could be handled by a mixed view that said that the relevant sentences have relativistic contents only some of the (...) time. Moreover, this case was only a small piece of our overall argumentative arsenal. Nevertheless we did think it illuminating since a shift to a mixed view carries its own costs. Lasersohn's main aim is to provide an answer to the case on behalf of someone who pushes a uniformly relativist account. One relativist tactic here is to complicate the account of disagreement, distinguishing disagreement from inconsistency (see Richard contribution to this symposium). Lasersohn pushes a different strategy, which amplifies and refines on one that we briefly pursued in a footnote. The key thought is that 'predication in natural language is often done on the basis of only certain parts or aspect of the object to which the predicate is applied.' (Lasersohn, this vol.) The simplest version of such a manoeuvre (the one we discussed in the relevant footnote) is one that claims that 'The party' has different referents in the mouths of each speaker, the one occurrence referring to one part of the complex event, the other referring to a different part. Lasersohn is rightly wary of this. After all there is quite a bit of linguistic evidence against it. The host can say 'It was fun', anaphorically picking up on the use of 'The party' by the waiter. This is hard to make sense of on an analysis that posits disparate referents. Also, it is fine to claim that there is an event that the host thought was fun, but that the waiter did not think was fun. This does not square with the multiple referent approach. Lasersohn intends instead that the 'contextual effect be attributed to the predicate' (Lasersohn, this vol.) Here is one toy model.. (shrink)

German and English speakers employ different strategies to encode static spatial scenes involving the axial position (standing vs. lying) of an inanimate figure object with respect to a ground object. In a series of three experiments, we show that this linguistic difference is not reflected in native speakers’ ability to detect changes in axial position in nonlinguistic memory tasks. Furthermore, even when participants are required to use language to encode a spatial scene, they do not rely on language during a (...) recognition memory task. These results have implications for the relationship between language and visual memory. (shrink)

This paper argues that the distinctiveness of the Hering primary hues – red, green, blue, and yellow – is already evident at the retina. Basic features of spectral sensitivity provide a foundation for the development of unique hue perceptions and the hue categories of which they are focal examples. Of particular importance are locations in color space at which points of minimal and maximal spectral sensitivity and extreme ratios of chromatic to achromatic response occur. This account builds on Jameson & (...) D’Andrade’s (1997) insight about the relationship between the Hering primaries and chromatic/achromatic ratios, Romney & Chiao’s (2009) color appearance model, and Thornton’s (1971; 1999) research on artificial lighting. (shrink)

Intentionality is a property of an important class of things: things that represent, or are about something. Thus a belief or sentence or story is about something, a painting or photo is of something, a sign is a sign of something, and a desire is a desire for something. These disparate things all display intentionality. They have content; they represent some state of affairs beyond themselves. The represented state of affairs need not be actual, and is not in the cases (...) of false belief, unfulfilled desire, or Salvadore Dali painting. (shrink)

This dissertation extends John Rawls’s mature theory of justice out to address the environmental challenges that citizens of liberal democracies now face. Specifically, using Rawls’s framework of political liberalism, I piece together a theory of procedural justice to be applied to a constitutional democracy. I show how citizens of pluralistic democracies should apply this theory to environmental matters in a four stage contracting procedure. I argue that, if implemented, this extension to Rawls’s theory would secure background environmental justice. I explain (...) why the theory can be viewed as a partially specified political conception of environmental pragmatism, and how it relates to public environmental policy and discourse. While the framework is anthropocentric, it is one that reasonable non-anthropocentrists can endorse. Using this theory, I argue that liberal democracies must take measures to secure basic environmental rights for all presently existing and future citizens. Measures must also be in place to secure a minimum of social goods (including environmental goods) that guarantees that all citizens (present and future) can exercise their basic rights and liberties. Moreover, disparities in environmental goods should only be tolerated if they arise in accord with Rawls’s principle of fair equality of opportunity. I discuss carbon taxes, as well as carbon allocation trading schemes. I also argue that free democracies should employ precautionary reasoning when attempting to meet the demands of background environmental justice. (shrink)

This dissertation defends and develops the thesis that some instances, or tokens, of dispositional properties are pure. A pure disposition has no causal basis in any further properties beyond the disposition. A causal basis typically consists of some set of properties underlying a disposition that enables the disposition to manifest when stimulated in the appropriate circumstances. For example, a vase is fragile because it is disposed to break when a hammer or other suitable object strikes it, where the causal basis (...) for fragility is the underlying micro-structure of the vase. Moreover, micro-structural properties of the vase seem to anchor the continuous existence of the vase’s fragility when the vase is not actually breaking. In contrast to the neo-Humean metaphysical assumption that any disposition requires a causal basis in further properties, as in the example of fragility, the Pure Dispositions Thesis denies this. This dissertation achieves four goals. First, it defends the Pure Dispositions Thesis from notable objections: the Powers Regress Argument, the Insufficient Causal Basis Argument, the Argument from the Identity Thesis, and the Argument from Spatial Occupation. Second, it evaluates several theories of the continuous existence of pure dispositions, and argues that some pure dispositions are self-grounded via a minimally sufficient occurrence of their own power. Third, it presents two arguments that some pure dispositions are extrinsically grounded, the Argument from the Higgs Field and the Argument from Priority Monism, and deflects numerous objections to those arguments. Finally, it develops and defends an account of systems of pure dispositions, arguing that a pure dispositional system may generate higher-level categorical and dispositional properties by way of an emergence mechanism involving the union of two pure dispositions. (shrink)

We only need to think for a moment about surfaces and other interfaces to realise their enormous importance in everydaylife. There are numerous branches of physics, chemistry, biology, and materials science concerned wholly or largely with surfaces, and one sometimes comes across the expression ‘surface science’ Among the natural phenomena connected with surfaces which have aroused scientific interest are surface tension, surface waves, photoelectric emission, reflection, refraction, evaporation, adsorption, adhesion, thin films, detergents, catalysts, cell membranes, skin. All of these phenomena (...) are complex, interesting, and some of them are still far from completely understood. Are surfaces important for philosophy? An epistemologist might well answer affirmatively, thinking of Quine’s "surface irritations" as the basis of our knowledge of the physical world, or Berkeley’s theory of vision, or the view that we perceive a material object in virtue of suitable causal interaction with its surfaces. But at first sight it seems that there is not much of interest for an ontologist. In his work on surfaces, especially in the book of that name, Avrum Stroll has shown to the contrary that there is much ontological interest in surfaces} Every ontologist delights in a newly discovered or hitherto neglected member of the ontological zoo: surfaces are not exactly new, but they have been neglected, and we can be grateful to Stroll for bringing them to greater prominence. (shrink)

Confounding earlier predictions of naysayers and sceptics, by the beginning of the twenty-first century, metaphysics had re-emerged for the first time in decades as a vital, progressive and exciting branch of philosophy. Although the most strident criticisms came from early analytic philosophers such as Carnap, it is analytical metaphysics that has led the way. But rather than trace the stages of the revival of metaphysics, we consider a spread of contemporary themes which have been especially fruitful in expanding the circle (...) of metaphysical discussion from its modest beginnings at the hands of Strawson and Quine in mid-century. The topics are divided into four groups: Expanding the Toolbox; Ontological Speculations; Systematics; and Applications. (shrink)

This is an encyclopedia entry and does not include an abstract.

Consider a subset, S, of the positive integers. What is the probability of selecting a number in S, assuming that each positive integer has an equal chance of selection? The purpose of this short paper is to provide an answer to this question. I also suggest that the answer allows us to determine the relative sizes of two subsets of the positive integers.

According to the dominant interpretation of the likelihood approach to hypothesis ranking, likelihoods are supposed to be conditioned on the available background information. In doing so, background information about the manner in which evidence was obtained can obliterate the value of that evidence for discriminating amongst hypotheses. I argue that this interpretation conflates two distinct questions concerning the support offered by evidence, and derive appropriate expressions for addressing each.

The sound producing machinery of change is a viral element in the problems of civilization. A silent relation that is unmoved, as it is unexposed to the power of the discourse of change and a silent logic of volumetric processes, together illustrated to companion empirical nature are employed for the elaboration of historical conceptual paradox involving mind and matter. Mind, conceived as an enduring state of the becoming of energy into a state of matter, and matter as the constantly becoming (...) environment, are tested with criteria of witnessibility for consistency to capture an acceptably reasoned description, from a modern perspective, of cultural evolution. A self-generating friction at the conceptual border of the social and natural sciences, as the recurring source of the problems of civilization, is discussed. The philosophies of logical positivism and post modernism referenced from the elaborated philosophy are determined to reflect a need for a representation of nature that is independent of temporal and physical parameters of perspective. Emergence is discussed within the framework of first witness perspective and a visually based mathematical-physical model of space is elaborated. (shrink)

In this paper, we examine the concept of particle as it appears in quantum field theories (QFT), focusing on a puzzling situation regarding this concept. Although quantum ‘particles’ arise from fields, which form the basic ontology of QFT, and thus a certain concept of ‘particle’ is al- ways available, the properties ascribed to such ‘particles’ are not completely in agreement with the mathematical and logical description of such fields, which should be taken as individuals.

This is an encyclopedia entry and does not include an abstract.

This is an encyclopedia entry and does not include an abstract.

We describe a research on the interplay that appears to exist in companies between Human Resource Management and innovation. This complex, multicomponent, non-linear and dynamic interplay is often viewed as a "black box". To help open the black box, we outline both a theoretical framework and preliminary empirical data. We view innovation as an organization-level property, favored by the organization's self-perception as a knowledge engine. Therefore, we devised a protocol to study the companies' strategies for training and development and their (...) innovation profile. The protocol consisted in a questionnaire with 100 closed questions, suitable for companies which rely mostly on an inner training and development service. The questionnaire was administered to a sample of Italian firms from the Food & beverages and Fashion markets. The results show that certain facets of training and development are indeed correlated to innovation. Finally, we discuss the results. (shrink)

The integration process between evolutionary approach and conventional economic analysis is very essential for the next development of economic studies, especially in the fundamental concepts of modern economics: supply and demand analysis. In this presentation, we use the concept of meme to explore evolution of demand. This study offers an evolutionary model of demand, which views utility as a function of the distance between the two types of sequences of memes (memeplex), which represent economic product and consumer preference. It is (...) very different from the conventional approach of demand, which only views utility as a function of quantity. This modification provides an opportunity to see innovation and transformation of consumer preferences in the demand perspective. Innovation is seen as a change in sequence of memes in economic products, while the transformation of consumer behavior is defined as a change in the aligning memes of consumer preference. Demand quantity is the result of the selection process. This model produces some interesting characteristics, such as: (i) quantitative and qualitative properties of evolution of demand, (ii) relationship between consumer behavior and properties of evolution of demand that occurred and (iii) power law on the distribution of product lifetime. At the end we show the improvement of utility function, in the concept of meme, might create a new landscape for the further development of economics. (shrink)

Both Deleuze in DR and Thompson / Jonas can be fairly said to be biological panpsychists. That‘s pretty much what ―Mind in Life‖ means: mind and life are co-extensive: life = autopoiesis and cognition = sense-making. Thus Mind in Life = autopoietic sense-making = control of action of organism in environment. Sense-making here is three-fold: 1) sensibility as openness to environment; 2) signification as positive or negative valence of environmental features relative to the subjective norms of the organism; 3) direction (...) or orientation the organism adopts in response to 1 and 2. (―Sense of the river‖ is archaic in English, but ―sens unique‖ for ―one-way street‖ is perfectly clear in French.). (shrink)

This is an encyclopedia entry and does not include an abstract.

A commonly held view is that giving to the poor is superogatory i.e. that while it is a good thing to do, it is not morally wrong for us not to do so. This essay sets out to show that for the affluent in the world giving to the poor is not superogatory but is rather a moral obligation. The paper critiques Singer’s famous argument in ‘Famine, Affluence and Morality’ and finds that although the argument is a cogent and powerful (...) one, Singer, when trying to apply the argument to how we should act, somewhat skews the argument’s real implications. Furthermore it is argued that a cosmopolitan concern for the global poor is the morally correct response to have, and defends this view by examining the proper effect that that aspects like geographical distance, nationality, reciprocity, and the nature of the global economic system should have on our moral considerations. In conclusion it is argued that as the way that each person spends his/her money is a reflection of what he/she values, then for many of us in positions of affluence, in order to be moral, much more should be done in order to help those experiencing dire, life-threatening poverty across the globe. (shrink)

Wide-scopers argue that the detachment of intuitively false ‘ought’ claims from hypothetical imperatives is blocked because ‘ought’ takes wide, as opposed to narrow, scope. I present two arguments against this view. The first questions the premise that natural language conditionals are true just in case the antecedent is false. The second shows that intuitively false ‘ought’s can still be detached even WITH wide-scope readings. This weakens the motivation for wide-scoping.

A satisfactory theory of perception must meet a variety of metaphysical and epistemological demands. What is wanted is a view that simultaneously accounts for, among other things, the epistemic significance of experience, the nature and status of illusion and hallucination, the possibility of unmediated perceptual contact with the world, the “richness” of experience, and the source of perceptual concepts. It has been argued that experience must be conceptual in order to secure the justificatory role of perceptual states; at the same (...) time, it has been thought that such states cannot be conceptual given their phenomenological and explanatory features. Our aim is to introduce and defend a new framework for conceptualism that, by marking ontological and epistemic differences between sensory awareness and perceptual experience, promises to resolve this dispute while accounting for all of the above phenomena. In §1, we clarify the conceptualist thesis at issue. In §2, we present and motivate the framework—a collection of theses about awareness and.. (shrink)

As is well known, Frege (1892) argued that the sentential complements of propositional attitude predicates refer to propositions. W.V. Quine, who disdained intensional objects like propositions, briefly suggested instead an analysis of such complements crucially involving quotation (1956), and Donald Davidson took up and elaborated this suggestion in a number of papers (1969, 1975, 1979). The main purpose of this paper is to argue against quotational analyses of propositional attitudes, although I’ll suggest at the end that the result may have (...) consequences for the analysis of quotation itself. In the second section below we will review Quine’s comments and Davidson’s development of them. In §3 we look at considerations involving proper names which seem at first to go in favor of this kind of analysis, but which ultimately probably do not. In §4 we turn to an argument against quotational analyses – the fact that it seems to deny languageless creatures1 propositional attitudes. The final section contains some concluding remarks. (shrink)

Coleman suggests three central things in her commentary: (i) SUB is just as well-suited to deal with our case as PROB SUB is; thus, there aren’t any interesting reasons to prefer PROB SUB to SUB; (ii) I may have failed to describe Feldman’s possibilist view accurately; and (iii) an “intentionally accessible” version of possibilism will solve all our problems without appealing to objective subjunctive probabilities. Let me attend to each point.

Luc Schneider Kinds of Instances. A Logical and Metaphysical Inquiry into the Ontological Square Co-Director Barry Smith (Buffalo/IFOMIS Saarbrücken) Research Fellow, EIDOS, Geneva..

3-6.04.08 "Torheit, Unvernünftigkeit und kognitive Werte", Wissen und Wert, Dresden..

The word “philosophy” comes from the Greek “philos” (meaning love) and “sophia” (meaning wisdom); thus philosophy literally is the “love of wisdom.” Whatever else philosophy may be, most people agree that it still retains this spirit of its etymological roots, and that when we are engaged in philosophy we are pursuing wisdom for the sake of itself. Wisdom, however, is not the same thing as knowledge or information. We aren’t merely trying to amass list of interesting ideas, or believe anything (...) that sounds good. Wisdom is, at least in part, the reflection on and critical evaluation of what we ourselves and others around us believe about some very heady topics. (shrink)

We need a better theory of movement. e present theories harbor stipulations and give little traction on understanding why movement has the properties it does. A presently popular theory of movement has the following ingredients.

( ) Di erence in Semantic Displacement a. Total Reconstruction: Mary kaupir ikke skó. ¬ Mary kaupir skó b. Variable Binding: Which book Mary had read e set of propositions such that x Mary had read x, x a book. A guard stands before every bank x if x is a bank then a guard stands before x..

The first serious cycling trip I took was from where I live in Pennsylvania to a town named Carlisle, near the state capitol of Harrisburg. I was talked into this by my friend Tim, who had an aunt and uncle living down in Carlisle and was just starting to get into cycling. We decided to do the ride down in one day – 95 hilly miles and two mountain crossings. The longest bike ride I had taken before this trip was (...) maybe 30 miles. Well, I thought I was in fairly decent physical shape; I was playing singles tennis two or three times a week, was riding my bike the six miles to the tennis courts, and walked to work every day. My cycling gear at that time consisted of a Schwinn World Sport 18-speed with a fat padded seat. I figured I needed to do a couple of longer rides before the big Carlisle trip, so I stretched out by riding to the neighboring town, a scenic, flat ride by the Susquehanna River that was 23 miles round-trip. I did that a couple of times. I felt ready to go. I can hear you veteran cyclists already laughing. (shrink)

Michael Wheeler, in his book Reconstructing the Cognitive World, analyses the development of embedded-embodied cognitive science in the light of underlying philosophical differences about the constitution of human agency. On one side he sees orthodox computational cognitive science as holding to Cartesian conceptions of an abstract, disembodied reason deliberating over de-contextualised representations of the world. On the other side, he sees modern-day embodied-embedded cognitive scientists going beyond such Cartesianism to embrace concepts of human agency more in keeping with Heidegger’s account (...) of Dasein in Being and Time. By bringing to light and criticising the Cartesian assumptions of the computationalists and by pointing out and clarifying the connections between embodied-embedded cognitive science and Heidegger’s philosophy, Wheeler aims to lay the “foundations of a genuinely non- Cartesian cognitive science.”. (shrink)

Two twelve-year old boys, Jerry and David, break into a shed, just for the fun of it. Jerry steals a hammer. David takes a screwdriver. Afterwards, Jerry continues to steal things and ends up as a criminal, spending time in jail. David doesn't steal again but in contrast becomes an honest person. He pursues an academic career and ends up as a professor of philosophy.

Intuition. Originally an alleged direct relation, analogous to visual seeing, between the mind and something abstract and so not accessible to the senses. What are intuited (which can be derivatively called 'intuitions') may be abstract objects, like numbers or properties, or certain truths regarded as not accessible to investigation through the senses or calculation; the mere short circuiting of such processes in 'bank managers intuition' would not count as intuition for philosophy. Kant talks of our intuiting space and time, in (...) a way which is direct and entirely free from any mediation by the intellect - but this must be distinguished from an alleged pure reception of 'raw data' from the senses; the intuiting is presupposed by, and so cannot depend upon, sensory experience. (shrink)

Difference and sameness -- or identity -- are correlated concepts: to understand one is to understand the other. I will distinguish two accounts of sameness and difference: first, an essentialist account of sameness against which an understanding of difference is presented as derivative; secondly, a contextualist account which relates both sameness and difference to a more fundamental horizon or context. I will contrast two kinds of horizons, synchronic and diachronic, and within diachronic contexts I will discuss the biological horizon and (...) the cultural or moral horizon. (shrink)

I respond to Alasdair Cochrane’s recent argument that animals do not have an intrinsic interest in liberty. Drawing upon evolutionary theory, a Dennettian theory of animal minds, and Cochrane’s acceptance of the precautionary principle, I argue that it is reasonable to consider that animals held in harsh confinement do have an intrinsic interest in negative liberty.

If post-modern philosophy has a spiritual father, this is surely Nietzsche. The great revival of interest in his thought parallels our period’s discomfort with foundational, “metaphysical” thinking. He appeals to our disquiet with talk of essences. Many find his “deconstruction” of science and morality liberating. Above all his doctrine of “perspectivism” has found a general appeal. The pluralism that is its apparent result is attractive to everyone from feminists to defenders of multiculturalism. There is, however, a darker side to Nietzsche. (...) There is the Nietzsche who speaks of the advance in women’s rights as “one of the worst developments in the general uglification of Europe.”[i] This is the same Nietzsche who teaches that “almost everything we call ‘higher culture’ is based on the spiritualization and intensification of cruelty,”[ii] the Nietzsche, who in answer to his question “whither must we direct our hopes,” speaks of preparing “for great enterprises and collective experiments in discipline and breeding so as to make an end of that gruesome domination of chance and nonsense which has hitherto been called ‘history’...”[iii] As much as we would like to forget the fact, this Nietzsche became the icon of the Nazis. (shrink)

The post-modern, post-enlightenment debate on the nature of being begins with Heidegger’s assertion that the “ancient interpretation of the being of beings” is informed by “the determination of the sense of being as ... ‘presence.’”[i] This understanding, which reduces being to temporal presence, is supposed to have set all subsequent philosophical reflection. At its origin is “Aristotle’s essay on time.” In Heidegger’s reading, Aristotle interprets entities with regard to the present, equating their being with temporal presence. He also takes time (...) itself as a present entity--i.e., “as just one being among others.”[ii] In an interpretation that is essentially “oriented to the world,” Aristotle thus collapses being and temporal presence to the point that the countable nows are, in their presence, taken as entities. Aristotle’s essay, Heidegger claims, “has essentially determined every subsequent account of time--Bergson’s included.” Even “the Kantian interpretation of time” remains under its sway.[iii] Given this, the “destruction” of the tradition that Heidegger proposes[iv] is a destruction of this account.[v] Only through such a destruction can we uncover what the Aristotelian account conceals. In making time objective, it hides Dasein’s (or human being’s) role in temporalization. The project of Being and Time is to uncover this through “the repeated interpretation of the structures of Dasein ... as modes of temporalization.”[vi]. (shrink)

One of the permanent factors driving philosophy is the puzzle presented by our embodiment. Our consciousness is embodied. We are its embodiment; we are that curious amalgam that we try to describe in terms of mind and body. Philosophy has sought again and again to describe their relation. Yet each time it attempts this from one of these aspects, the other hides itself. From the perspective of mind, everything appears as a content of consciousness. Yet, from the perspective of the (...) body, there are no conscious contents. There are only neural pathways and chemical processes. As thinkers as early as Locke and Leibniz realized, we may search the brain as thoroughly as we wish; within its material structure, we will never find a conscious content.[i] Both perspectives are obviously one-sided. We are both mind and body; we are determined by our conscious contents and our physical makeup. Husserl’s Logical Investigations takes account of this fact in speaking of the real and ideal determination of the subject. As embodied beings, we are subject to real causal laws. Such laws, insofar as the relate to our mental contents, take these as determined by the contents temporally proceeding them.[ii] As engaged in mind, we are also subject to the ideal laws of “authentic thought.” These are nontemporal, logical laws governing “the compatibility or incompatibility of mentally realizable contents.” In the Investigations, the problem of the mind’s relation to the body comes to a head in these two determinations. How can the same set of mental acts be subject to both causal and logical laws? How can a causally determined subject grasp an apodictically certain set of logical relations? As Theodor DeBoer puts this question: “on the one hand, these acts are empirically necessary and determined; on the other hand, an idea realizes itself in them through which they claim apodeictic validity. How can both these views be combined?”[iii]. (shrink)

Both in its methods and spirit, Kant’s critical philosophy seems the opposite of recent French philosophy. In its deductive approach, it exemplifies a severe rationality; its structures of argument and proof often abstract from our lived experience. The philosophies of Derrida and Levinas, however, attend to such experience. In particular, they are sensitive to precisely those aspects of it that seem to exceed our conceptual abilities. Thus, for Levinas the face of the other manifests an “inabsorbable alterity.” It cannot be (...) integrated.. (shrink)

A venerable tradition in philosophy sees significance in the fact that, from a subjective viewpoint, some rules seem to impress themselves upon us with a distinctive kind of authority or normative force: one feels their pull and is drawn to act in accordance with such rules unconditionally, and violations strike one as egregious. Though the first person experience of it can be mystifying, I believe this phenomenology is just one aspect of the operation of a psychological system crucial to morality. (...) Building on previous work, I’ll call this property of certain rules independent normativity. After describing that property, I situate it with respect to earlier work done on the so-called moral/conventional distinction, and suggest new questions it raises about morality and emotion. Sripada and Stich (2006) posit a model of the cognitive architecture underlying an important element of human rule cognition.1 Following them, I’ll call this the norm system, and the rules cognized by it social norms. One feature of this system is that it imputes those rules it processes with independent normativity. Understood this way, those rules that enjoy independent normativity do so not in virtue of any particular content, but because the mental representations that express them occupy a certain functional role in human minds (that I’ll call SN-functional role). (shrink)

According social externalism, it is possible to possess a concept not solely in virtue of one’s intrinsic properties but also in virtue of relations to one’s linguistic community. I examine how social externalism affects the debate surrounding the knowledge argument against physicalism (Jackson 1982, 1986, 1995). Derek Ball (2009) argues, in effect, that (i) social externalism extends to phenomenal concepts, and (ii) this fact undermines both the knowledge argument the most popular physicalist response to it, known as the phenomenal concept (...) strategy (Stoljar 2005). Michael Tye (2009) argues similarly. I argue that Ball and Tye are mistaken about (ii) even granting (i). The knowledge argument and the phenomenal concept strategy might have to be modified slightly to make them consistent with social externalism—though even this is unclear—but not in fundamental ways or ways that make them weaker. I also argue that those modifications are needed for independent reasons and should be of general interest. (shrink)

From a logical point of view, Stone duality for Boolean algebras relates theories in classical propositional logic and their collections of models. The theories can be seen as presentations of Boolean algebras, and the collections of models can be topologized in such a way that the theory can be recovered from its space of models. The situation can be cast as a formal duality relating two categories of syntax and semantics, mediated by homming into a common dualizing object, in this (...) case 2. In the present work, we generalize the entire arrangement from propositional to first-order logic. Boolean algebras are replaced by.. (shrink)

In this article I take a loose, functional approach to defining induction: Inductive forms of reasoning include those prima facie reasonable inference patterns that one finds in science and elsewhere that are not clearly deductive. Inductive inference is often taken to be reasoning from the observed to the unobserved. But that is incorrect, since the premises of inductive inferences may themselves be the results of prior inductions. A broader conception of inductive inference regards any ampliative inference as inductive, where an (...) ampliative inference is one where the conclusion ‘goes beyond’ the premises. ‘Goes beyond’ may mean (i) ‘not deducible from’ or (ii) ‘not entailed by’. Both of these are problematic. Regarding (i), some forms of reasoning might have a claim to be called ‘inductive’ because of their role in science, yet turn out to be deductive after all—for example eliminative induction (see below) or Aristotle’s ‘perfect induction’ which is an inference to a generalization from knowledge of every one of its instances. Interpretation (ii) requires that the conclusions of scientific reasoning are always contingent propositions, since necessary propositions are entailed by any premises. But there are good reasons from metaphysics for thinking that many general propositions of scientific interest and known by inductive inference (e.g. “all water is H2O”) are necessarily true. Finally, both (i) and (ii) fail to take account of the fact that there are many ampliative forms of inference one would not want to call inductive, such as counter-induction (exemplified by the ‘gambler’s fallacy’ that the longer a roulette wheel has come up red the more likely it is to come up black on the next roll). Brian Skyrms (1999) provides a useful survey of the issues involved in defining what is meant by ‘inductive argument’. Inductive knowledge will be the outcome of a successful inductive inference. But much discussion of induction concerns the theory of confirmation, which seeks to answer the question, “when and to what degree does evidence support an hypothesis?” Usually, this is understood in an incremental sense and in a way that relates to the rational credibility of a hypothesis: “when and by how much does e add to the credibility of h?”, although ‘confirms’ is sometimes used in an absolute sense to indicate total support that exceeds some suitably high threshold.. (shrink)

In this first issue of the new Erkenntnis, it seems fitting to recall at least briefly the character and the main achievements of its distinguished namesake and predecessor. The old Erkenntnis came into existence when Hans Reichenbach and Rudolf Carnap assumed the editorship of the Annalen der Philosophie and gave the journal its new title and its characteristic orientation; the first issue appeared in 1930. The journal was backed by the Gesellschaft f r Empirische Philosophie in Berlin, in which Reichenbach, (...) Walter Dubislav, and Kurt Grelling were the leading figures, and by the Verein Ernst Mach in Vienna, whose philosophical position was strongly influenced by that of the Vienna Circle; a brief account of these groups, and of several kindred schools and trends of scientific and philosophical thinking, was given by Otto Neurath in his 'Historische Anmerkungen' (Vol. 1, pp. 311-314). As Reichenbach noted in his introduction to the first issue, the editors of Erkenntnis were concerned to carry on philosophical inquiry in close consideration of the procedures and results of the various scientific disciplines: analysis of scientific research and its presuppositions was expected to yield insight into the character of all human knowledge, while at the same time, the objectivity and the progressive character of science inspired the convection that philosophy need not remain an array of conflicting 'systems', but could attain to the status of objective knowledge. As a student in Berlin and Vienna during those years, I experienced vividly the exhilarating sense, shared by those close to those two philosophical groups, of being jointly engaged in a novel and challenging intellectual enterprise in which philosophical issues were dealt with 'scientifically' and philosophical claims were amenable to support or criticism by logically rigorous arguments. The 'logical analyses' and 'rational reconstructions' set forth by adherents of this program often made extensive use of the concepts, methods, and symbolic apparatus of contemporary symbolic logic, whose importance for philosophy was the subject of Carnap's article, 'Die Alte und die Neue Logik', which appeared in the first issue.. (shrink)

Structure has played a significant role in recent philosophy of science, often at the expense of objects, but for Kathrin Koslicki structures and objects are inseparable: every composite material object has a structure, and the structure is literally a part of the object. Whilst she draws her inspiration – and her critical targets – from the metaphysical works of Plato and Aristotle, David Lewis and Kit Fine, Koslicki’s book contains much that will interest philosophers of science, perhaps especially philosophers of (...) physics and of biology. (shrink)

What is true and what is not depends upon how the world is: that there are no white ravens is true because there are no white ravens. That much, Trenton Merricks accepts. But he denies that principles about truthmaking can do any heavy lifting in metaphysics, and he provides powerful, sophisticated arguments for this denial. The hunt for individual truthmakers for specific truths is doomed once we consider negative existentials, and, on the other side of that coin, universal claims. But (...) the weaker claim that truth supervenes upon being either collapses into the platitudes about dependence that even Merricks accepts, or else collapses into the fruitless search for individual truthmakers. The reasoning is complex, yet elegant and clear, and from now on anyone wishing to use truthmaker principles to establish substantive positions in metaphysics will need to grapple with this critique. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophers commonly suppose that any fundamental entities there may be are maximally determinate. More generally, they commonly suppose that, whether or not there are fundamental entities, any determinable entities there may be are grounded in, hence less fundamental than, more determinate entities. Hence, for example, Armstrong takes the physical objects constituting the presumed fundamental base to be “determinate in all respects” (1961, p. 59) and Lewis takes the properties characterizing things “completely and without redundancy” to be “highly specific” (1986, (...) 60). Here I’ll look at the usually cited reasons for these suppositions, and argue that none is compelling (S1, S2, S3). The discussion in S3 will moreover identify a positive reason for taking some determinable entities to be part of a fundamental (or relatively fundamental) base. I’ll go on to sketch an account, patterned after theorizing in the natural sciences, of how certain determinables, along with certain determinates, might together enter into a (relatively) fundamental base (S4). It will not be a consequence of my arguments that all determinables are appropriately considered (relatively) fundamental; I’ll close by showing how special science entities plausibly taken to be non-fundamental will, by lights of the positive account and given certain plausible assumptions, typically turn out to be non-fundamental determinables (S5). (shrink)

Remarkable progress in the mathematics and computer science of probability has led to a revolution in the scope of probabilistic models. In particular, ‘sophisticated’ probabilistic methods apply to structured relational systems such as graphs and grammars, of immediate relevance to the cognitive sciences. This Special Issue outlines progress in this rapidly developing field, which provides a potentially unifying perspective across a wide range of domains and levels of explanation. Here, we introduce the historical and conceptual foundations of the approach, explore (...) how the approach relates to studies of explicit probabilistic reasoning, and give a brief overview of the field as it stands today. (shrink)

In “The Nature of the Atonement”, Eleonore Stump explores the problem of human sin that the atonement is meant to solve, helpfully uncovering important adequacy conditions for theories of atonement. She then uses those conditions to critically evaluate Anselmian and Thomistic theories of atonement, arguing (among many other interesting things) that the Thomist has a leg up on the Anselmian when it comes to the atonement-motivating problem of human sin (pp.11-12 of ms.). I argue for two claims in what follows. (...) First, Stump’s two seemingly independent “further problems” for theorists of atonement (discussed in the penultimate section of her paper) in fact reduce to a single challenge, which suggests a strategy for future theorizing about the atonement. Second, Stump’s case that the Thomist outperforms the Anselmian on the problem of human sin is weaker than it initially appears. As we’ll see, Stump’s own account of shame implies that the Anselmian’s difficulties on this front are less serious than she thinks. (shrink)

We investigate the stability of mixed strategy equilibria in 2 person (bimatrix) games under perturbed best response dynamics. A mixed equilibrium is asymptotically stable under all such dynamics if and only if the game is linearly equivalent to a zero sum game. In this case, the mixed equilibrium is also globally asymptotically stable. Global convergence to the set of perturbed equilibria is shown also for (rescaled) partnership games, also known as potential games. Lastly, mixed equilibria of partnership games are shown (...) to be always unstable under all dynamics of this class. (shrink)

We introduce a new class of population games called stable games. These games are characterized by self-defeating externalities: when agents revise their strategies, the improvements in the payoffs of strategies to which revising players are switching are always exceeded by the improvements in the payoffs of strategies which revising players are abandoning. We show that stable games subsume many well-known classes of examples, including zero-sum games, games with an interior ESS, wars of attrition, and concave potential games. We prove that (...) the set of Nash equilibria of any stable game is convex, and offer an elementary proof of existence of equilibrium. Finally, we show that the set of Nash equilibria of a stable game is globally asymptotically stable under a variety of evolutionary dynamics. These convergence results are proved by constructing Lyapunov functions defined in terms of revision potentials—that is, potential functions for the protocols agents follow when they consider switching strategies. (shrink)

Preemption games are widely used to model patent races, innovation adoption and market entry problems. A previously neglected feature of these problems is that the agents’ states (e.g. R&D …rms’ technological improvements) are kept secret and stochastically change over time. We fully characterize equilibrium in preemption games where private information evolves according to Poisson processes, and provide a strategic rationale for the common wisdom that ‘big things happen fast.’ In the context of patent races we surprisingly …nd that strengthening patent (...) rights need not increase innovation disclosure. Furthermore, we clarify a basic welfare tradeo¤ between duplication costs and preemption: the former likely take place in early stages of the race, and preemption in later stages. (shrink)

This paper proposes an equilibrium approach to belief manipulation and deception in which agents only have coarse knowledge of their opponent’s strategy. Equilibrium requires the coarse knowledge available to agents to be correct, and the inferences and optimizations to be made on the basis of the simplest theories compatible with the available knowledge. The approach can be viewed as formalizing into a game theoretic setting a well documented bias in social psychology, the Fundamental Attribution Error. It is applied to a (...) bargaining problem, thereby revealing a deceptive tactic that is hard to explain in the full rationality paradigm. (shrink)

We prove existence of mixed strategy equilibria for a class of discontinuous two-player games with non-compact strategy sets. As a corollary of our main results, we obtain a continuum of mixed strategy equilibria for the first- and second-price two-bidder auctions with toeholds. We also find Klemperer’s (2000) result about the existence of mixed strategy equilibria in the classical Bertrand duopoly.

We consider T -round elimination tournaments where players have fixed resources instead of cost functions. We show that players always spend a higher share of their resources in early than in later rounds in a symmetric equilibrium. Equal resource allocation across T rounds takes place only in the winner-take-all case. Applications for career paths, elections, and sports are discussed.

Szmimary.—The present report investigated the question of how individual differences in self-consciousness devdop. Rimé and LeBon proposed that high self-consciousness follows a history of frequent exposure to selffocusing stimuli, i.e., mirrors, audiences, audio and video devices, and cameras. To explore this hypothesis private and public self-consciousness and past exposure to self-focusing stimuli were assessed in 438 subjects. Analysis indicated that history of frequent exposure to self-focusing stimuli is significantly but weakly related to high private self-consciousness in men and to high (...) public self-consciousness in women. This supports previous observations suggesting that the routes to the development of selfconsciousness seem to differ for the two sexes. (shrink)

My topic is the confluence of two recently active philosophical research programs. One research program concerns the metaphysics of realization. Within the literature on realization there is substantial disagreement about even the general outlines of a theory. Occasionally it seems that the only common ground is that realization is a dependence relation that sometimes or always relates entities that figure in different explanatory schema, such as those of the special sciences and those of more fundamental sciences. The other research program (...) concerns scientific explanation in terms of mechanisms. According to the advocates of the “new mechanism” there is a distinctive and important kind of scientific explanation that is generated by discovering and describing causal mechanisms. There is some dispute about whether this kind of explanation is genuinely distinctive. And there is much dispute about how exactly to characterize mechanisms. But even most critics of the new mechanism do not wish to replace it with old fashioned deductive-nomological explanation. (shrink)

The enduring metaphysical question about minds and mental phenomena concerns their nature. At least since Descartes this question—the mind-body problem—has been understood in terms of the viability or necessity of mind-body dualism, the thesis that minds and bodies are essentially distinct kinds of substance. Assuming that the nonmental (‘body’) portions of the world are constituted of physical stuff, the remaining question is: Are minds or mental phenomena essentially distinct non-physical substances, or phenomena that essentially involve such distinct kinds of substances? (...) By the middle of the Twentieth Century there was broad philosophical and scientific consensus that the answer to this classical question about minds is negative: Minds and mental phenomena are not essentially distinct substances, nor are they phenomena that essentially involve distinct kinds of substances. There are at least two broad trends and one specific argument that lead to this conclusion. One trend is the decreasing influence of specifically theological arguments and commitments in philosophical argumentation, so that religious belief in immortal souls was no longer given much weight in the ontology of mind. The second trend, perhaps related to the first, is the increased demand that metaphysical theories bear explanatory fruits, so that the postulation of an immaterial and essentially mental substance appears to be a abdication from explanatory duties rather than a useful proposal. The argument, known to Descartes from the very beginning, is that there has never been an adequate account of 1 how two essentially distinct and incompatible substances could causally interact.1 Descartes’ solution was inadequate and brute, and his followers struggled with the problem—leading to Leibniz’s parallelism and Malebranche’s occasionalism, among other views. The problem of mental causation, then, is the central difficulty that underines substance dualism.2 The negative answer on the question of substance dualism, however, only increases the pressure for some monistic account of the nature of minds.. (shrink)

In the early years of the 1990s, a number of philosophers and cognitive scientists became enthused about the idea that mental states are spatially and temporally distributed in the brain, and that this has significant consequences for philosophy of mind. Daniel Dennett (1991), for example, appealed to the spatial and temporal distribution of cognitive processes in the brain in order to argue that there is no unified place where or time when consciousness occurs in the brain. Dennett used this interim (...) conclusion as a premise in a series of arguments designed to undermine what he calls the “Cartesian Theater” view of consciousness, according to which there is an independent and fact of the matter about when and where conscious mental states occur. Most famously, Dennett argues that anyone who believes there are such facts of the matter must choose between “Orwellian” and “Stalinesque” theories of the timing of consciousness, in order to accommodate certain data about the spatial distribution of the timing of consciousness-related brain events. But, he claims, that distinction is a distinction without a difference: The choice between “Orwellian” and “Stalinesque” views is either nonsense, or at the very least one that we could never be justified in making. And this, Dennett takes it, is a reductio ad absurdum of any theory of consciousness that says there is a fact of the matter about when and where is occurs. (shrink)

Our starting point is pre-theoretical. We don’t aim to show that current theories of knowledge are forced to take assumptions into account. Nor will we present a particular theory of knowledge. Our goal is to illustrate, in broad strokes, the epistemological picture you end up with when you start in a different place, one which we think is ordinary and straightforward.

I study a market model in which profit-maximizing firms compete in multidimensional pricing strategies over a consumer, who is limited in his ability to grasp such complicated objects and therefore uses a sampling procedure to evaluate them. Firms respond to increased competition with an increased effort to obfuscate, rather than with more competitive pricing. As a result, consumer welfare is not enhanced and may even deteriorate. Specifically, when firms control both the price and the quality of each dimension, and there (...) are diminishing returns to quality, increased competition implies an efficiency loss which is entirely borne by consumers. KEYWORDS. Bounded rationality, industrial organization, multi-dimensional pricing, law of small numbers, market exploitation, obfuscation. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is the construction of a distributional model which enables the study of the evolutionary dynamics that arise for symmetric games, and the equilibrium selection mechanisms that originate from such processes. The evolution of probability distributions over the state variables is studied using the Fokker-Planck diffusion equation. Equilibrium selection using the ’’basin of attraction’’ approach, and a selection process suggested by Pontryagin are contrasted. Examples are provided for all generic 2-person symmetric binary choice games. JEL Classification: (...) C78.. (shrink)

In this paper, I attempt to shed light on Kant’s account of consciousness by considering it in its historical context. I argue that Kant’s novel distinction between transcendental and empirical forms of consciousness is best understood as incorporating elements of two contrasting positions on consciousness that arose in Leibniz’s wake in German thought in the 18th century. On the one hand, Wolff and those thinkers indebted to him defended an account of consciousness in terms of the thinking subject’s acts of (...) differentiation, the influence of which account I claim is discernable in Kant’s account of empirical consciousness. On the other hand, the Pietists asserted that consciousness was in fact prior to differentiation, which I contend anticipates important features of Kant’s doctrine of transcendental apperception. (shrink)

The capacity to engage with art is a human universal present in all cultures and just about every individual human. This indicates that this capacity is evolved. Here I discuss various evolutionary scenarios and their consequences. This is an almost final draft of a critical notice for the Canadian Journal of Philosophy of Denis Dutton's book, The Art Instinct. The title under which it appears here will not appear in the journal.

The common ethical criticisms of eugenics focus on the supposed unnaturalness of its means of human improvement and its supposed harm to autonomy. This misguided approach relies on questionable metaphysical assumptions about identity, free will, and the uniqueness of human nature, and thus associates the critique of eugenics with a naïve form of humanism that pits itself against a caricaturized version of the naturalist scientific worldview. In this paper I draw upon Nietzsche’s work to critique eugenics’ ends rather than its (...) means, on the grounds that it intends harm to abilities, rather than to autonomy. My critique assumes a naturalist perspective compatible with the sciences, thus avoiding the dubious dichotomy of humanistic versus scientific approaches to bioethics. I first apply Nietzsche’s notion of “slavish” forms of evaluation to subjective eugenics, where selected traits are deemed extrinsically valuable to the selector. A “slavish” value is a positive value reducible to the negation of a more primary negative one—for example, moral goodness as the elimination of evil. I argue all subjectively valued traits are slavish because they are evaluated relative to a negatively perceived norm—for example, intelligence as greater than average intelligence. These apparently positive values disguise an intention to diminish the norm—for example, to increase one child’s intelligence relative to the norm by decreasing everyone else’s. Consequently, subjective eugenics is always a “negative eugenics” of the norm, and ethically problematic as intentional harm to others. Even seemingly non-comparative aesthetic traits like eye color are valued through negative comparison—either for their rarity, the negation of a norm that is devalued for its commonness, or for their identity with family tastes and traits, the exclusion and devaluation of the norm as an out-group. Finally, I argue there is no objective form of eugenics on the Nietzschean grounds that abilities are not valuable intrinsically, but only as forms of power. Nietzsche identifies wellbeing with the power to exercise abilities, a value that depends on two contingencies: an ability’s strength and compatibility with the subject’s other abilities and its environment. Abilities frustrated by conflict with one’s other abilities or environment are harmful, while disabilities that empower one’s other abilities are beneficial. Consequently, no trait is intrinsically valuable and all supposedly objective forms of eugenics are subject to the previous ethical critique of subjective eugenics. Because, like evolutionary fitness, the complementary fit of traits and environment that produces power is accidental and unpredictable, human wellbeing is maximized through the conservation of a diversity of types, rather than through active improvement. I conclude by suggesting that Nietzsche’s view supports a broader environmental ethics that I call conservationalist anti-perfectionism. Because there are no normative facts to justify either the intentional elimination of natural types or their protection from accidental extinction, this ethics conserves, but does not preserve, the diversity of all natural forms. And because there are no objectively valuable traits to serve as criteria of human perfection, it rejects any ethics that seeks to reduce human diversity through the promotion of a single moral ideal, no matter how pluralistically or broadly defined. (shrink)

Of course there is a long history of such sayings in all the world’s main spiritual traditions. Socrates’ remark reminds us at once of Solon’s doleful doctrine that we should call no man happy until he is dead (Herodotus Histories Book 1; Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 1100a11). And Bonhoeffer’s famous saying, while it echoes the typical teaching of many Christian spiritual masters, for instance St Thomas à Kempis and Bianco da Siena (the author of that beautiful hymn “Come down O Love (...) Divine”), is ultimately just a paraphrase of Jesus’ even more famous saying that anyone who wants to follow him must “deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me” (Matthew 16.24). (shrink)

This paper draws on the ‘Fitting Attitudes’ analysis of value to argue that we should take the concept of fittingness (rather than value) as our normative primitive. I will argue that the fittingness framework enhances the clarity and expressive power of our normative theorizing, allowing us to draw important distinctions that may otherwise be occluded. Along the way, we will see how the fittingness framework can illuminate our understanding of various consequentialist theories, and even adjudicate the rival claims of Act, (...) Global and Scalar Consequentialisms to represent the ‘core’ consequentialist idea. (shrink)

We investigate the implications of protective measurement for de Broglie-Bohm theory, mainly focusing on the interpretation of the wave function. It has been argued that de Broglie-Bohm theory gives the same predictions as quantum mechanics by means of quantum equilibrium hypothesis. However, this equivalence is based on the premise that the wave function, regarded as a Ψ-field, has no mass and charge density distributions. But this premise turns out to be wrong according to protective measurement; a charged quantum system has (...) effective mass and charge density distributing in space, proportional to the square of the absolute value of its wave function. Then in de Broglie-Bohm theory both Ψ-field and Bohmian particle will have charge density distribution for a charged quantum system. This will result in the existence of an electrostatic self-interaction of the field and an electromagnetic interaction between the field and Bohmian particle, which not only violates the superposition principle of quantum mechanics but also contradicts experimental observations. Therefore, de Broglie-Bohm theory as a realistic interpretation of quantum mechanics is problematic according to protective measurement. Lastly, we briefly discuss the possibility that the wave function is not a physical field but a description of some sort of ergodic motion (e.g. random discontinuous motion) of particles. (shrink)

In order to measure the degree of dissimilarity between elements of a Boolean algebra, the author’s (1984) proposed to use pseudometrics satisfying generalizations of the usual axioms for identity. The proposal is extended, as far as is feasible, from Boolean algebras (algebras of propositions) to Brouwerian algebras (algebras of deductive theories). The relation between Boolean and Brouwerian geometries of logic turns out to resemble in a curious way the relation between Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries of physical space. The paper ends (...) with a brief consideration of the problem of the metrization of the algebra of theories. (shrink)

The technique of minimizing information (infomin) has been commonly employed as a general method for both choosing and updating a subjective probability function. We argue that, in a wide class of cases, the use of infomin methods fails to cohere with our standard conception of rational degrees of belief. We introduce the notion of a deceptive updating method, and argue that non-deceptiveness is a necessary condition for rational coherence. Infomin has been criticized on the grounds that there are no higher (...) order probabilities that ‘support’ it, but the appeal to higher order probabilities is a substantial assumption that some might reject. The elementary arguments from deceptiveness do not rely on this assumption. While deceptiveness implies lack of higher order support, the converse does not, in general, hold, which indicates that deceptiveness is a more objectionable property. We offer a new proof of the claim that infomin updating of any strictly-positive prior with respect to conditional-probability constraints is deceptive. In the case of expected-value constraints, infomin updating of the uniform prior is deceptive for some random variables, but not for others. We establish both a necessary condition and a sufficient condition (which extends the scope of the phenomenon beyond cases previously considered) for deceptiveness in this setting. Along the way, we clarify the relation which obtains between the strong notion of higher order support, in which the higher order probability is defined over the full space of first order probabilities, and the apparently weaker notion, in which it is defined over some smaller parameter space. We show that under certain natural assumptions, the two are equivalent. Finally, we offer an interpretation of Jaynes, according to which his own appeal to infomin methods avoids the incoherencies discussed in this paper. (shrink)

This short sketch of Gödel’s incompleteness proof shows how it arises naturally from Cantor’s diagonalization method [1891]. It renders Gödel’s proof and its relation to the semantic paradoxes transparent. Some historical details, which are often ignored, are pointed out. We also make some observations on circularity and draw brief comparisons with natural language. The sketch does not include the messy details of the arithmetization of the language, but the motives for it are made obvious. We suggest this as a more (...) efficient way to teach the topic than what is found in the standard textbooks. For the sake of self–containment Cantor’s original diagonalization is included. A broader and more technical perspective on diagonalization is given in [Gaifman 2005]. In [1891] Cantor presented a new type of argument that shows that the set of all binary sequences (sequences of the form a0, a1,…,an,…, where each ai is either 0 or 1) is not denumerable ─ that is, cannot be arranged in a sequence, where the index ranges over the natural numbers. Let A0, A2,…An, … be a sequence of binary sequences. Say An = an,0, an,1, …, an,i, … . Define a new sequence A* = b0, b1,…,bn,… , by putting. (shrink)

I sketch an application of a semantically anti-realist understanding of the classical sequent calculus to the topic of mathematics. The result is a semantically anti-realist defence of a kind of mathematical realism. In the paper, I begin the development of the view and compare it to orthodox positions in the philosophy of mathematics.

Although they might not express themselves in quite this way, non-philosophers tend to think that mereological composition is a vague matter : sometimes it occurs, sometimes it does not, and sometimes it sort of occurs. For example, when I am building a boat, at first the timbers that I have acquired for the job do not jointly compose an entity; in the end they do—they compose the boat that I have built; and in between they sort of or more or (...) less or to some extent compose an entity, which in turn sort of or more or less or to some extent exists—this entity being the boat I am building. This idea seems innocuous enough. However, the orthodox view amongst philosophers is that composition can never be a vague matter, because vague composition entails vague existence (the common-sense view agrees with this step), and vague existence is impossible if not nonsensical. Let us call the following the ‘orthodox argument’. (shrink)

The aim of this work is to show that the reality is not only the world of being, it is equally the world of non-being. Such an approach, as I think, is not nihilism, on the contrary - it helps to resolve many problems and contradictions confusing the philosophical mind. The reader will not find any citations or references in this work because I tried to bring it closer to Philosophy as it used to be in its early stages and (...) from which it has departed so far nowadays. (shrink)

John Martin Fischer has done more than anyone (including, I think, Harry Frankfurt himself) to promote reflection on what he calls “Frankfurt-type cases;” it is obvious how fruitful reflection on these cases has been in Fischer’s own work (familiarity with which I here take for granted). Fischer draws from the Frankfurt-type cases two central, crucial, insights about what is important for freedom of the sort required for moral responsibility. The first is that what matters is what actually happened, not what (...) might have happened: we need to focus on what Fischer calls the “actual sequence.” The second is related: responsibility requires a kind of freedom that includes control, and so, rather than focus on mere possibility, we must try to understand the relevant notion of control. These insights have led Fischer sensibly to dismiss appeals to what he calls mere “flickers of freedom” as a way of addressing the Frankfurt-type cases. Throughout, Fischer has also been motivated by “the idea that our basic status as distinctively free and morally responsible agents should not depend on the arcane ruminations—and deliverances—of the theoretical physicists and cosmologists.”1 However, far from dismissing incompatibilism, Fischer (together, at times, with Mark Ravizza) instead advances a well-known alternative, semi-compatibilism. With his semi-compatibilism, Fischer distinguishes between different sorts of control and identifies the sort he believes required for our responsibility: what he calls “guidance control.” Guidance control is, roughly, the kind of control we exercise over our actions when they are the result of a “moderately reasons-responsive” mechanism that is appropriately our own. Guidance control, Fischer argues, is compatible with the truth of determinism, because determinism is compatible with both ownership and moderate reasons responsiveness. (shrink)

This paper begins with Thomas Nagel’s investigation of the possibility of altruism.1 Altruism, by Nagel’s definition, is “merely a willingness to act in consideration of the interests of other persons, without the need of ulterior motives.” (Nagel: 79) The fundamental question Nagel investigates is: how is altruism possible? The reason why we need to investigate the possibility of altruism is exactly that an altruistic act is not readily exercised; it requires some effort on the part of the agent. Nagel discusses (...) various cases of “motivational interference,” such as weakness of the will, cowardice, laziness, panic, etc. (Nagel: 66). In addition, we can also imagine that attitudes such as procrastination, apathy, inconsistency, and consideration for one’s future self all pose an obstacle to the causal efficacy of altruistic motivation. Therefore, a successful motivational theory of altruism must explain how altruism is possible under all these motivational interferences. However, in this paper I want to push the question further: how can altruism be realized in our contemporary society? When the pursuit of the gratification of one’s own desires generally has an immediate causal efficacy, how can one also be motivated to care for others and to act towards the wellbeing of others? The paper will begin with an.. (shrink)

This essay defends a theory of dispositions, on which dispositional properties are analyzable in terms of agents’ abilities. On this view, claims about dispositions are a projection of agent-centric facts about manipulability onto a world whose nature, considered in itself, is exhausted by the categorical.

This year is the 300th anniversary of the birth of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688 - 1772). Although he worked in the eighteenth century, his investigations into the nature of physical, physiological and spiritual processes are still relevant today, although they are not as widely known as they deserve. In this article, I will briefly describe the stages in Swedenborg's life, and outline his mature teachings with particular relevance to what is relevant to the concerns of contemporary science, and to the concerns (...) of those wishing to extend that science. (shrink)

Published in: Cogito, 2 (1988) pp 10 - 12. Pdf version Modern physics has cast doubt on Newton's idea of particles with definite properties. Do we have to go back to Aristotle for a new understanding of the ultimate nature of substance? If we ask, `what is the nature of substance?', we might be told that this substance is salt, that one is copper, or that the atomic nucleus is a mixture of protons and neutrons. But what are all these (...) substances? What do they have in common which makes them substances? We don't seem to think that such things as colours, numbers, or shapes are by themselves `substantial enough' to be substances in their own right. We therefore change our question to `what is it to be a substance?', or to `what is the ultimate nature of the simplest substances?'. We might first turn to scientists for an answer, to physicists in particular. (shrink)

In the context of animal cognitive research, “anthropomorphism” is defined as the attribution of uniquely human mental characteristics to non-human animals. Those who worry about anthropomorphism in research are confronted with the question of which properties are uniquely human. As animals, humans and non-human animals1 share a number of biological, morphological, relational, and spatial properties. In addition, it is widely accepted and humans and animals share some psychological properties such as the ability to fear or desire. These claims about the (...) properties animals share with humans are often the products of empirical work. Prima facie one might think that in order to justify the claim that a property is uniquely human, it would be necessary to find empirical evidence supporting the claim that the property is not found in other species. After all, the goal of animal cognition is to determine what sort of cognitive abilities animals use. If scientists were to discover that a cognitive property wasn’t found in any species except human species, then the claim that some other animal had that property would be a false charge, and would be an example of anthropomorphism. However, in practice anthropomorphic worries play a pre-empirical role. Research programs are charged with being anthropomorphic because they are examining.. (shrink)

According to the mental continuity claim (MCC), human mental faculties are physical and beneficial to human survival, so they must have evolved gradually from ancestral forms and we should expect to see their precursors across species. Materialism of mind coupled with Darwin’s evolutionary theory leads directly to such claims and even today arguments for animal mental properties are often presented with the MCC as a premise. However, the MCC has been often challenged among contemporary scholars. It is usually argued that (...) only humans use language and that language as such has no precursors in the animal kingdom. Moreover, language is quite often understood as a necessary tool for having representations and forming beliefs. As a consequence, by lacking language animals could not have developed representational systems or beliefs. In response to these worries, we aim to mount a limited defense of the MCC as an empirical hypothesis. First, we will provide a short historical overview of the origins of the MCC and examine some of the motives behind traditional arguments for and against it. Second, we will focus on one particular question, namely whether language as such is necessary for having beliefs. Our goal is to show that there is little reason to think language is necessary for belief. In doing so, we will challenge a view of belief that is widely accepted by those working in animal cognition, namely representational belief, and we will argue that if belief is non-representational, then different research questions and methods are required. We will conclude with an argument that to study the evolution of belief across species, it is essential to begin the study of subjects in their social and ecological environment rather than in contexts that are not ecologically valid along the social and ecological dimensions. Thus, rather than serving as a premise in an argument 3 in favor of animal minds, the MCC can only be defended by empirical investigation, but importantly, empirical investigation of the right sort.. (shrink)

I want to answer two questions. The first is this: do anticipated emotions like regret, pride and guilt—emotions of first-personal assessment—have independent reason-giving force? That is, when making decisions about what to do, does the mere fact that we will, after the fact, experience these emotions give us a reason to act that is over and above the reasons we have arising from the value of the act itself and its (other) consequences? This question matters, I believe, for several reasons. (...) One is that anticipating or dreading these emotions plays an enormous role in our deliberations, as we can see both in anecdotal appeals and in social science research sketched below. The rational warrant of such appeals is thus important to address. In addition, explaining the role of these emotions in our practical deliberations sheds light on the emotions themselves. I will argue that these after-the-fact emotions should carry little weight, and that to the extent that such appeals are a commonplace, there may be an interesting confusion between the heuristic and intrinsic significance of anticipated emotions. A central focus throughout will be the case of regret. The second question concerns emotional valence—how desirable or undesirable we find the experience of guilt, pride or regret. What is it that determines the valence of these feelings? Come to think of it, what determines the valence of feelings in general— of pain, for instance? I will argue that how attractive or repulsive these feelings are to us.. (shrink)

Students can use an educational system’s help in unexpected ways. For example, they may bypass abstract hints in search of a concrete solution. This behavior has traditionally been labeled as a form of gaming or help abuse. We propose that some examples of this behavior are not abusive and that bottom-out hints can act as worked examples. We create a model for distinguishing good student use of bottom-out hints from bad student use of bottom-out hints by means of logged response (...) times. We show that this model not only predicts learning, but captures behaviors related to self-explanation. (shrink)

nature of modern data collection and storage techniques, and the increases in the speed and storage capacities of computers. Statistics books from 30 years ago often presented examples with fewer than 10 variables, in domains where some background knowledge was plausible. In contrast, in new domains, such as climate research where satellite data now provide daily quantities of data unthinkable a few decades ago, fMRI brain imaging, and microarray measurements of gene expression, the number of variables can range into the (...) tens of thousands, and there is often limited background knowledge to reduce the space of alternative causal hypotheses. In such domains, non-automated causal discovery techniques appear to be hopeless, while the availability of faster computers with larger memories and disc space allow for the practical implementation of computationally intensive automated search algorithms over large search spaces. Contemporary science is not your grandfather’s science, or Karl Popper’s. Causal inference without experimental controls has long seemed as if it must somehow be capable of being cast as a kind of statistical inference involving estimators with some kind of convergence and accuracy properties under some kind of assumptions. Until recently, the statistical literature said not. While parameter estimation and experimental design for the effective use of data developed throughout the 20th century, as recently as 20 years ago the methodology of causal inference without experimental controls remained relatively primitive. Besides a cessation of hostilities from the majority of the statistical and philosophical communities (which has still only partially happened), several things were needed for theories of causal estimation to appear and to flower: well defined mathematical objects to represent causal relations; well defined connections between aspects of these objects and sample data; and a way to compute those connections. A sequence of studies beginning with Dempster’s work on the factorization of probability distributions [Dempster 1972] and culminating with Kiiveri and Speed’s [Kiiveri & Speed 1982] study of linear structural equation models, provided the first, in the form of directed acyclic graphs, and the second, in the form of the “local” Markov condition.. (shrink)

Many philosophers of science have argued that a set of evidence that is "coherent" confirms a hypothesis which explains such coherence. In this paper, we examine the relationships between probabilistic models of all three of these concepts: coherence, confirmation, and explanation. For coherence, we consider Shogenji's measure of association (deviation from independence). For confirmation, we consider several measures in the literature, and for explanation, we turn to Causal Bayes Nets and resort to causal structure and its constraint on probability. All (...) else equal, we show that focused correlation, which is the ratio of the coherence of evidence and the coherence of the evidence conditional on a hypothesis, tracks confirmation. We then show that the causal structure of the evidence and hypothesis can put strong constraints on how coherence in the evidence does or does not translate into confirmation of the hypothesis. (shrink)

This paper argues that the evaluations which are most closely connected to predicates expressing so-called thick ethical concepts are a certain kind of pragmatic presuppositions of their use. [Not a final draft.].