Locke’s thesis states that no two things of the same sort can be in the same place at the same time. The thesis has recently received extensive discussion, with some philosophers attempting to find arguments in its favour and others attempting to provide counter-examples. However, neither the arguments nor the counter-examples have been especially convincing; and it is my aim, in this short note, to present what I believe is a more convincing counter-example to the thesis.

Practitioners of the new ‘experimental philosophy’ have collected data that appear to show that some philosophical intuitions are culturally variable. Many experimental philosophers take this to pose a problem for a more traditional, ‘armchair’ style of philosophizing. It is argued that this is a mistake that derives from a false assumption about the character of philosophical methods; neither philosophy nor its methods have anything to fear from cultural variability in philosophical intuitions.

In this paper, I present a counter-example to the two most prominent theories of pragmatic encroachment (regarding knowledge ascriptions): Contextualism (specifically, DeRose's version), and Stanley's Subject-Sensitive Invariantism (SSI). The example is a variation on DeRose's bank case. -/- Key words: Knowledge, knowledge ascriptions, pragmatic encroachment, Stanley, DeRose, bank case, standards, stakes.

Infallibilism is commonly rejected because it is apparently subject to easy counter-examples. I describe a strategy that infallibilists can use to resist this objection. Because the sentences used in the counter-examples to express evidence and belief are context-sensitive, the infallibilist can insist that such counter-examples trade on a vacillation between different readings of these sentences. I describe what difficulties await those who try to produce counter-examples against which the proposed strategy is ineffective.

In his target article Page proposes a definition of the term “localist.” In this commentary I argue that his definition does not serve to make a principled distinction, as the inclusion of vague terms make it susceptible to some problematic counterexamples.

One of the traditional applications of Euler diagrams is as a representation or counterpart of the usual set-theoretical models of given sentences. However, Euler diagrams have recently been investigated as the counterparts of logical formulas, which constitute formal proofs. Euler diagrams are rigorously defined as syntactic objects, and their inference systems, which are equivalent to some symbolic logical systems, are formalized. Based on this observation, we investigate both counter-model construction and proof-construction in the framework of Euler diagrams. We introduce (...) the notion of “counter-diagrammatic proof”, which shows the invalidity of a given inference, and which is defined as a syntactic manipulation of diagrams of the same sort as inference rules to construct proofs. Thus, in our Euler diagrammatic framework, the completeness theorem can be formalized in terms of the existence of a diagrammatic proof or a counter-diagrammatic proof. (shrink)

Plays, symphonies and other works in the performing arts are generally regarded, ontologically speaking, as being types, with individual performances of those works being regarded as tokens of those types. But I show that there is a logical feature of type theory which makes it impossible for such a theory to satisfactorily explain a 'double performance' case that I present: one in which a single play performance is actually a performance of two different plays. Hence type theories fail, both for (...) plays and for the related performing art of music as well. (shrink)

An alleged counterexample to causal decision theory, put forward by Andy Egan, is studied in some detail. It is argued that Egan rejects the evaluation of causal decision theory on the basis of a description of the decision situation that is different from—indeed inconsistent with—the description on which causal decision theory makes its evaluation. So the example is not a counterexample to causal decision theory. Nevertheless, the example shows that causal decision theory can recommend unratifiable acts which presents (...) a problem in the dynamics of intentions. It is argued that we can defuse this problem if we hold that decision theory is a theory of rational decision making rather than a theory of rational acts. It is shown how decisions can have epistemic side-effects that are not mediated by the act and that there are cases where one can only bring oneself to perform the best act by updating by imaging rather than by conditioning. This provides a pragmatic argument for updating by imaging rather than by conditioning in these cases. (shrink)

Tom Beauchamp and James Childress are confident that their four principles—respect for autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice—are globally applicable to the sorts of issues that arise in biomedical ethics, in part because those principles form part of the common morality (a set of general norms to which all morally committed persons subscribe). Inevitably, however, the question arises of how the principlist ought to respond when presented with apparent counter-examples to this thesis. I examine a number of strategies the principlist (...) might adopt in order to retain common morality theory in the face of supposed counter-examples. I conclude that only a strategy that takes a non-realist view of the common morality’s principles is viable. Unfortunately, such a view is likely not to appeal to the principlist. (shrink)

The original Brouwerian counter examples were algorithmic in nature; after the introduction of choice sequences, Brouwer devised a version which did not depend on algorithms. This is the origin of the creating subject technique. The method allowed stronger refutations of classical principles. Here it is used to show that negative dense subsets of the continuum are indecomposable.

The aim of this paper is to present a version of the principle of alternate possibilities which is not susceptible to the Frankfurt-style counter-example. I argue that PAP does not need to be endorsed as a necessary condition for moral responsibility and, in fact, presenting PAP as a sufficient condition maintains its usefulness as a maxim for moral accountability whilst avoiding Frankfurt-style counter-examples. In addition, I provide a further sufficient condition for moral responsibility – the twin world (...) condition – and argue that this provides a means of justifying why the protagonist in Frankfurt-style scenarios is still felt to be morally responsible. I conclude with the claim that neither the amended PAP nor the twin world condition is necessary for the ascription of moral responsibility; rather, what is necessary is simply that one of these conditions is satisfied. (shrink)

The main aim of this paper is to analyse David Lewis’ version of contextualism and his solution to the Gettier problem and the lottery problem through the employment of his Rule of Relevance and Stewart Cohen’s response to these problems. Here I analyse whether Stewart Cohen’s response to David Lewis’ solutions to these problems is on the right track or not. Hence, I try to analyse some concept in David Lewis and Stewart Cohen which has remained unanalysed. Cohen tries to (...) show that when we try to solve some variation of the lottery problem and the Gettier problem by applying Lewis’s Rule of Relevance, then it generates some counterintuitive result. So Cohen gives Lewis some alternatives (which are explained in “The Strategy of Biting the Bullet and the Problem of Interference” and “Biting the Bullet Strategy as a Natural Extension of Contextualist Resolution to the Sceptical Problem and the Pity Poor Bill Variation of the Lottery Problem” sections) to avoid this counterintuitive result; this attempt, however, affects some other presuppositions of the contextual theory of David Lewis. My aim in this paper is to show how without taking these alternatives suggested by Cohen, Lewis can apply his Rules of Relevance to solve the lottery problem and the Gettier problem without any counterintuitive result. (shrink)

(No abstract is available for this citation).

In his paper ‘A Function for Thought Experiments’, T. S. Kuhn asks: Ought we demand of our concepts, as we do of our laws and theories, that they be applicable to any and every situation that might conceivably arise in any possible world? Is it not sufficient to demand of a concept, as we do of a law or theory, that it be unequivocally applicable in every situation which we expect ever to encounter?

An axiomatic treatment of synthetic domain theory is presented, in the framework of the internal logic of an arbitrary topos. We present new proofs of known facts, new equivalences between our axioms and known principles, and proofs of new facts, such as the theorem that the regular complete objects are closed under lifting . In Sections 2–4 we investigate models, and obtain independence results. In Section 2 we look at a model in de Modified realizability Topos, where the Scott Principle (...) fails, and the complete objects are not closed under lifting. Section 3 treats the standard model in the Effective Topos. Theorem 3.2 gives a new characterization of the initial lift-algebra relative to the dominance. We prove that in the standard case it is not the internal colimit of the chain 0 → L → L 2 → ⋯ . The models in Sections 2 and 3 compare via an adjunction. Section 4 discusses a model in a Grothendieck topos. A feature here is that N is not well-complete , whereas 2 is. (shrink)

This paper argues that there are cases, which various guise of the good-theses concerning desires, intentions and actions would not allow. In these cases the agent acts for considerations that the agent does not regard as good reasons. The considerations render the actions intelligible but not desirable. These cases are atypical, but nonetheless show that those guise of the good-theses which do not allow them, should be revised. In typical cases the intelligibility of desires, intentions and actions co-varies with their (...) desirability: there are both unintelligible cases without suitable desirability characteristics and cases where desirability characteristics make the desire, intention and action intelligible. The claim here is that there are further more atypical and puzzling, but equally possible cases, where intelligibility and desirability come apart. The paper first introduces the Guise of the Good - debates about desires, intentions, and actions, and suggests distinguishing the category of “acting for a reason” from “acting for a consideration not taken to be a reason”. It then argues that while desirability entails intelligibility, and lack of intelligibility entails lack of desirability, these two cases leave conceptual room for a third category, which is that of intelligibility without desirability. This is so, whether we examine objective or subjective intelligibility and desirability. The claim is meant to apply mutatis mutandis to characteristics of desires, intentions and actions. The paper then provides possible cases of intelligibility without desirability, and defends the view against some objections. (shrink)

Two kinds of considerations are thought to be relevant to the correct response to the discovery of a peer who disagrees with you about some question. The first is general principles pertaining to disagreement. According to the second kind of consideration, a theory about the correct response to peer disagreement must conform to our intuitions about test cases. In this paper, I argue against the assumption that imperfect conformity to our intuitions about test cases must count against a theory about (...) peer disagreement, offer a principled way of shrugging off a theory’s failure to deliver the intuitive verdict, and consider the main extant theories from the new methodological perspective. (shrink)

Stuart Rachels and Larry Temkin have offered a purported counter-example to the acyclicity of the relationship 'all things considered better than'. This example invokes our intuitive preferences over pairs of alternatives involving a single person's painful experiences of varying intensity and duration. These preferences, Rachels and Temkin claim, are confidently held, entirely reasonable, and cyclical. They conclude that we should drop acyclicity as a requirement of rationality. I argue that, together with the findings of recent research on (...) the way people evaluate episodes of pain, the use of a heuristic known as similarity-based decision-making explains why our intuitive preferences may violate acyclicity in this example. I argue that this explanation should lead us to regard these preferences with suspicion, because it indicates that they may be the result of one or more biases. I conclude that Rachels' and Temkin's example does not provide sufficient grounds for rejecting acyclicity. (shrink)

Usually, people think that Gettier counter-examples challenged the traditional tripartite definition of knowledge and fundamentally changed the characteristic of the contemporary epistemology. This paper argues that regard for Gettier counter-examples is exaggerated, because (i) the JTB definition is neither an important nor a comprehensive one that covers all knowledge. Moreover, the significance of Gettier counter-examples is limited. (ii) The source of Gettier counter-examples lies in one arbitrary judgment, two mix-ups, three false assumptions, and a misunderstanding about (...) the JTB definition. (shrink)

So-called Locke's thesis is the view that no two things of the same kind may coincide, that is, may be completely in the same place at the same time. A number of counter-examples to this view have been proposed. In this paper, some new and arguably more convincing counter-examples to Locke's thesis are presented. In these counter-examples, a particular entity (a string, a rope, a net, or similar) is interwoven to obtain what appears to be a distinct, (...) thicker entity of the same kind. It is argued that anyone who subscribes to certain standard metaphysical arguments, which are generally taken for granted in the debate about Locke's thesis, is virtually compelled to accept the counter-examples. (shrink)

In a recent article, Elliot Sober responds to challenges to a counter-example that he posed some years earlier to the Principle of the Common Cause (PCC). I agree that Sober has indeed produced a genuine counter-example to the PCC, but argue against the methodological moral that Sober wishes to draw from it. Contrary to Sober, I argue that the possibility of exceptions to the PCC does not undermine its status as a central assumption for methods that (...) endeavor to draw causal conclusions from statistical data. 1 The PCC and the counter-example 2 Making non-stationary time series stand still 3 Sober's alternative. (shrink)

The Komori–Kashima problem, that asks whether the implicational intermediate logics axiomatizable by formulas minimal in classical logic are only intuitionistic logic and classical logic, has stood for over a decade. In this paper, we give a counter-example to this problem. Additionally, we also give some open problems derived from this result.

This paper aims to question the traditional definition of lying. I do not present my definition of this phenomenon. Instead, I try to show that the traditional definition – to lie one must utter a false claim – is inadequate. To do that, in the first part of the paper, I present Herbert Paul Grice’s theory of conversational implicatures, which are explicitly excluded from the traditional definition. Next, relying on the theory of default meanings, I reject the widespread idea that (...) the speaker can always distance themselves from a pragmatically conveyed message. Then I present the traditional definition of lying and the role that the intention of the speaker and the responsibility of the hearer play in it. In the second part, I apply the insights gathered by that point to Shakespeare’s tragedy Othello. After a brief presentation of the relation between Othello and Iago, I present three examples of dialogues from the play that I consider to be the cases of lying accomplished with conversational implicatures. This kind of analysis has a dual role. The first one is to show the inadequacy of the traditional definition of lying. Even though Iago does not utter a single false claim, he is lying. The second one to point to the limited scope of the possibility of denying a pragmatically conveyed message. Iago’s pragmatic messages are so strong that he cannot distance himself from them, even when he tries to. (shrink)

An opponent thesis to that of incommensurability—the commensurability approach—is proposed. The new thesis is based on the delineation of an empirical comparative metatheory for comparing theories of different paradigms. The method of multidimensional scaling together with the proximity-predictability hypothesis instantiate and substantiate this metatheory. The scaling of mind body theories, and the confirmation of certain predictions derived from MDS and the PP hypothesis concerning the relations that exist among these theories, are brought as actual examples supporting the present paper's approach.

Within Michel Foucault’s own conceptualization of governmentality, there is little room for something like ‘ungovernable life’. The latter seems to hint at a form of social conduct beyond power-relations, which would offend Foucault’s basic philosophical postulates. I argue that this identification between governmentality and power as such demonstrates a one-sided focus on the history of Western power-relations. By opposing Foucault’s genealogy of governmentality to Ivan Illich’s critical history of government, I delineate indigenous struggles against governmentalization as a form of ungovernable (...) counter-conduct. Throughout his books from the 1970s to 1990s, Illich wrote a critical history of government surprisingly similar to Foucault’s, from the pastorate to modern political economy. However, rather than merely describing this history, Illich argued governmentalization alienated human beings from their autonomy. As a former missionary priest, he criticized the Church’s and modern governments’ attempts to subsume populations under a conduct of conducts. He advocated anticolonial resistance to subsumption under Western governmental regimes. In Illich’s appreciation of decolonized life, an ungovernable form of life can be discovered, which I defend with the example of Zapatismo and indigenous self-government through mandar obedeciendo. (shrink)

What are the truth conditions of want ascriptions? According to an influential approach, they are intimately connected to the agent’s beliefs: ⌜S wants p⌝ is true iff, within S’s belief set, S prefers the p worlds to the not-p worlds. This approach faces a well-known problem, however: it makes the wrong predictions for what we call (counter)factual want ascriptions, wherein the agent either believes p or believes not-p—for example, ‘I want it to rain tomorrow and that is exactly (...) what is going to happen’ or ‘I want this weekend to last forever, but of course it will end in a few hours’. We solve this problem. The truth conditions for want ascriptions are, we propose, connected to the agent’s conditional beliefs. We substantiate this connection by pursuing a striking parallel between (counter)factual and non-(counter)factual want ascriptions on the one hand and counterfactual and indicative conditionals on the other. (shrink)

Let's begin with an old example. In De Rerum Naturua , Lucretius presented a thought experiment to show that space is infinite. We imagine ourselves near the alleged edge of space; we throw a spear; we see it either sail through the ‘edge’ or we see it bounce back. In the former case the ‘edge’ isn't the edge, after all. In the latter case, there must be something beyond the ‘edge’ that repelled the spear. Either way, the ‘edge’ isn't (...) really an edge of space, after all. So space is infinite. (shrink)

Contemporary moral philosophy for the most part relegates examples to a negative role, as counter-examples. In this essay a view is articulated according to which the example has a much more positive and more fundamental role to play in the argumentation of moral philosophy: according to this view, examples may provide grounding for general moral principles. Some of the philosophical implications or presuppositions of such a view of examples are examined.

The internal resistance to religious forms of power is often at issue in Michel Foucault’s genealogy of Christianity. For this anti-clerical Nietzschean, religion is, like science, always a battle over bodies and souls. In his 1978 Collège de France lectures, he traced the nature and descent of an apparatus of “pastoral power” characterized by confession, direction, obedience, and sacrifice. Governmental rationality, both individualizing and totalizing, is its modern descendant. At different moments, Foucault rather infamously opposed to the pastorate and governmentality (...) such ethico-political spiritualities as the Iranian Revolution and ancient Greek ascesis, but he also took care to identify numerous forms of resistance specific and internal to Christianity itself. His lecture of 1 March 1978 outlined five examples of “insurrections of conduct”: “eschatology, Scripture, mysticism, the community, and ascesis.” I will detail Foucault’s analysis of pastoral counter-conducts, and explore how he sets up the nature and stakes of this tension within Christianity and its secular kin. (shrink)