I show explicitly how concerns about wave function collapse and ontology can be decoupled from the bulk of technical analysis necessary to recover localized, approximately Newtonian trajectories from quantum theory. In doing so, I demonstrate that the account of classical behavior provided by decoherence theory can be straightforwardly tailored to give accounts of classical behavior on multiple interpretations of quantum theory, including the Everett, de Broglie-Bohm and GRW interpretations. I further show that this interpretation-neutral, decoherence-based account conforms to a general (...) view of inter-theoretic reduction in physics that I have elaborated elsewhere, which differs from the oversimplified and often ambiguous picture that treats reduction simply as a matter of taking limits. This interpretation-neutral account rests on a general three-pronged strategy for reduction between quantum and classical theories that combines decoherence, an appropriate form of Ehrenfest's Theorem, and a decoherence-compatible mechanism for collapse. It also incorporates a novel argument as to why branch-relative trajectories should be approximately Newtonian, which is based on a little-discussed extension of Ehrenfest's Theorem to open systems, rather than on the more commonly cited but less germane closed-systems version. In the Conclusion, I briefly suggest how the strategy for quantum-classical reduction described here might be extended to reduction between other classical and quantum theories, including classical and quantum field theory and classical and quantum gravity. (shrink)

Reduction between theories in physics is often approached as an a priori relation in the sense that reduction is often taken to depend only on a comparison of the mathematical structures of two theories. I argue that such approaches fail to capture one crucial sense of “reduction,” whereby one theory encompasses the set of real behaviors that are well-modeled by the other. Reduction in this sense depends not only on the mathematical structures of the theories, but also on empirical facts (...) about where our theories succeed at describing real systems, and is therefore an a posteriori relation. (shrink)

A conventional wisdom about the progress of physics holds that successive theories wholly encompass the domains of their predecessors through a process that is often called reduction. While certain influential accounts of inter-theory reduction in physics take reduction to require a single "global" derivation of one theory's laws from those of another, I show that global reductions are not available in all cases where the conventional wisdom requires reduction to hold. However, I argue that a weaker "local" form of reduction, (...) which defines reduction between theories in terms of a more fundamental notion of reduction between models of a single fixed system, is available in such cases and moreover suffices to uphold the conventional wisdom. To illustrate the sort of fixed-system, inter-model reduction that grounds inter-theoretic reduction on this picture, I specialize to a particular class of cases in which both models are dynamical systems. I show that reduction in these cases is underwritten by a mathematical relationship that follows the broad prescriptions of Nagel/Schaffner reduction, and support this claim with several examples. Moreover, I show that this broadly Nagelian analysis of inter-model reduction encompasses several cases that are sometimes cited as instances of the "physicist's" limit-based notion of reduction. (shrink)

Supporters of the de Broglie-Bohm interpretation of quantum theory argue that because the theory, like classical mechanics, concerns the motions of point particles in 3D space, it is specially suited to recover classical behavior. I offer a novel account of classicality in dBB theory, if only to show that such an account falls out almost trivially from results developed in the largely interpretation-neutral context of decoherence theory. I then argue that this undermines any special claim that dBB theory is purported (...) to have on the unification of the quantum and classical realms. (shrink)

I distinguish two types of reduction within the context of quantum-classical relations, which I designate “formal” and “empirical”. Formal reduction holds or fails to hold solely by virtue of the mathematical relationship between two theories; it is therefore a two-place, a priori relation between theories. Empirical reduction requires one theory to encompass the range of physical behaviors that are well-modeled in another theory; in a certain sense, it is a three-place, a posteriori relation connecting the theories and the domain of (...) physical reality that both serve to describe. Focusing on the relationship between classical and quantum mechanics, I argue that while certain formal results concerning singular \ limits have been taken to preclude the possibility of reduction between these theories, such results at most provide support for the claim that singular limits block reduction in the formal sense; little if any reason has been given for thinking that they block reduction in the empirical sense. I then briefly outline a strategy for empirical reduction that is suggested by work on decoherence theory, arguing that this sort of account remains a fully viable route to the empirical reduction of classical to quantum mechanics and is unaffected by such singular limits. (shrink)

This study attempts to spell out more explicitly than has been done previously the connection between two types of formal correspondence that arise in the study of quantum–classical relations: one the one hand, deformation quantization and the associated continuity between quantum and classical algebras of observables in the limit \, and, on the other, a certain generalization of Ehrenfest’s Theorem and the result that expectation values of position and momentum evolve approximately classically for narrow wave packet states. While deformation quantization (...) establishes a direct continuity between the abstract algebras of quantum and classical observables, the latter result makes in-eliminable reference to the quantum and classical state spaces on which these structures act—specifically, via restriction to narrow wave packet states. Here, we describe a certain geometrical re-formulation and extension of the result that expectation values evolve approximately classically for narrow wave packet states, which relies essentially on the postulates of deformation quantization, but describes a relationship between the actions of quantum and classical algebras and groups over their respective state spaces that is non-trivially distinct from deformation quantization. The goals of the discussion are partly pedagogical in that it aims to provide a clear, explicit synthesis of known results; however, the particular synthesis offered aspires to some novelty in its emphasis on a certain general type of mathematical and physical relationship between the state spaces of different models that represent the same physical system, and in the explicitness with which it details the above-mentioned connection between quantum and classical models. (shrink)

I defend three general claims concerning inter-theoretic reduction in physics. First, the popular notion that a superseded theory in physics is generally a simple limit of the theory that supersedes it paints an oversimplified picture of reductive relations in physics. Second, where reduction specifically between two dynamical systems models of a single system is concerned, reduction requires the existence of a particular sort of function from the state space of the low-level model to that of the high-level model that approximately (...) commutes, in a specific sense, with the rules of dynamical evolution prescribed by the models. The third point addresses a tension between, on the one hand, the frequent need to take into account system-specific details in providing a full derivation of the high-level theory’s success in a particular context, and, on the other hand, a desire to understand the general mechanisms and results that under- write reduction between two theories across a wide and disparate range of different systems; I suggest a reconciliation based on the use of partial proofs of reduction, designed to reveal these general mechanisms of reduction at work across a range of systems, while leaving certain gaps to be filled in on the basis of system-specific details. After discussing these points of general methodology, I go on to demonstrate their application to a number of particular inter-theory reductions in physics involving quantum theory. I consider three reductions: first, connecting classical mechanics and non-relativistic quantum mechanics; second,connecting classical electrodynamics and quantum electrodynamics; and third, connecting non-relativistic quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics. I approach these reductions from a realist perspective, and for this reason consider two realist interpretations of quantum theory - the Everett and Bohm theories - as potential bases for these reductions. Nevertheless, many of the technical results concerning these reductions pertain also more generally to the bare, uninterpreted formalism of quantum theory. Throughout my analysis, I make the application of the general methodological claims of the thesis explicit, so as to provide concrete illustration of their validity. (shrink)

A recently popular formulation of the Higgs naturalness principle prohibits delicate cancellations between running renormalized Higgs mass parameters and EFT matching corrections, by contrast with the principle’s original formulation, which prohibits delicate cancellations between the bare Higgs mass parameter and its quantum corrections. While the need for this latter cancellation is sometimes viewed as unproblematic since bare parameters are thought by some to be divergent and unphysical, renormalized parameters are finite and measurable, and the need for delicate cancellations between the (...) renormalized Higgs mass parameter and EFT matching corrections is therefore considered by some to constitute a more salient formulation of the Higgs naturalness problem. Here, we argue that to the contrary, the need for fine tuning of the renormalized Higgs mass parameter is an eliminable, unphysical artifact of renormalization scheme, and that this severely weakens the grounds for regarding it as a problematic instance of fine tuning. In doing so, we highlight what we take to be a number of important conceptual lessons about the physical interpretation of model parameters in QFT. (shrink)

The relationship whereby one physical theory encompasses the domain of empirical validity of another is widely known as “reduction.” Elsewhere I have argued that one influential methodology for showing that one physical theory reduces to another, associated with the so-called “Bronstein cube” of theories, rests on an oversimplified and excessively vague characterization of the mathematical relationship between theories that typically underpins reduction. I offer what I claim is a more precise characterization of this relationship, which here is based on a (...) more basic notion of reduction between distinct models of a single physical system. Reduction between two such models, I claim, rests on a particular type of approximation relationship between group actions over the models’ state spaces, characterized by a particular function between the model state spaces and a particular subset of the more encompassing model’s state space. Within this approach, I show formally in what sense and under what conditions reduction is transitive, so that reduction of a model 1 to another model 2 and reduction of model 2 to a third model 3 entails direct reduction of model 1 to model 3. Building on this analysis, I consider cases in which reduction of a model 1 to a model 3 may be effected via distinct intermediate models 2a and 2b, and motivate a set of formal consistency requirements between distinct “reduction paths” having the same models as their “end points”. These constraints are explicitly shown to hold in the reduction of a model of non-relativistic classical mechanics to a model of relativistic quantum mechanics, which may be effected by a composite reduction that proceeds either via a model of non-relativistic quantum mechanics or a model of relativistic classical mechanics. I offer some brief speculations as to whether and how this sort of consistency requirement might serve to constrain the reductions relating other theories and models, including the relationship that the Standard Model and general relativity must bear to any viable unification of these frameworks. (shrink)

The requirement of naturalness has long served as an influential constraint on model-building in theoretical particle physics. Yet there are many ways of understanding what, precisely, this requirement amounts to, from restrictions on the amount of fine-tuning that a model can exhibit, to prohibitions on sensitive dependence between physics at different scales, to the requirement that dimensionless parameters defining the Lagrangian of a theory all be of order one unless they are protected by a symmetry. This workshop aims to clarify (...) the relationships among these concepts of naturalness and their connection to the hierarchy problem, as well as to assess arguments for and against imposing various forms of naturalness as a requirement on particle physics model-building. (shrink)

The earliest formulation of the Higgs naturalness argument has been criticized on the grounds that it relies on a particular cutoff-based regularization scheme. One response to this criticism has been to circumvent the worry by reformulating the naturalness argument in terms of a renormalized, regulator-independent parametrization. An alternative response is to deny that regulator dependence poses a problem for the naturalness argument, because nature itself furnishes a particular, physically correct regulator for any effective field theory in the form of that (...) EFT’s physical cutoff, together with an associated set of bare parameters that constitute the unique physically preferred “fundamental parameters” of the EFT. Here, I argue that both lines of defense against the initial worry about regulator dependence are flawed. I argue that reformulation of the naturalness argument in terms of renormalized parameters simply trades dependence on a particular regularization scheme for dependence on a particular renormalization scheme, and that one or another form of scheme dependence afflicts all formulations of the Higgs naturalness argument. Concerning the second response, I argue that the grounds for suspending the principle of regularization or renormalization scheme independence in favor of a physically preferred parametrization are thin; the assumption of a physically preferred parametrization, whether in the form of bare “fundamental parameters” or renormalized “physical parameters,” constitutes a theoretical idle wheel in generating the confirmed predictions of established EFTs, which are invariably scheme-independent. I highlight certain features of the alternative understanding of EFTs, and the EFT-based approach to understanding the foundations of QFT, that emerges when one abandons the assumption of a physically preferred parametrization. I explain how this understanding departs from several dogmas concerning the mathematical formulation and physical interpretation of EFTs in high-energy physics. (shrink)

The requirement of naturalness has long served as an influential constraint on model-building in theoretical particle physics. Yet there are many ways of understanding what, precisely, this requirement amounts to, from restrictions on the amount of fine-tuning that a model can exhibit, to prohibitions on sensitive dependence between physics at different scales, to the requirement that dimensionless parameters defining the Lagrangian of a theory all be of order one unless they are protected by a symmetry. This workshop aims to clarify (...) the relationships among these concepts of naturalness and their connection to the hierarchy problem, as well as to assess arguments for and against imposing various forms of naturalness as a requirement on particle physics model-building. (shrink)

In 1973, Nickles identified two senses in which the term `reduction' is used to describe the relationship between physical theories: namely, the sense based on Nagel's seminal account of reduction in the sciences, and the sense that seeks to extract one physical theory as a mathematical limit of another. These two approaches have since been the focus of most literature on the subject, as evidenced by recent work of Batterman and Butterfield, among others. In this paper, I discuss a third (...) sense in which one physical theory may be said to reduce to another. This approach, which I call `dynamical systems reduction,' concerns the reduction of individual models of physical theories rather than the wholesale reduction of entire theories, and specifically reduction between models that can be formulated as dynamical systems. DS reduction is based on the requirement that there exist a function from the state space of the low-level model to that of the high-level model that satisfies certain general constraints and thereby serves to identify quantities in the low-level model that mimic the behavior of those in the high-level model - but typically only when restricted to a certain domain of parameters and states within the low-level model. I discuss the relationship of this account of reduction to the Nagelian and limit-based accounts, arguing that it is distinct from both but exhibits strong parallels with a particular version of Nagelian reduction, and that the domain restrictions employed by the DS approach may, but need not, be specified in a manner characteristic of the limit-based approach. Finally, I consider some limitations of the account of reduction that I propose and suggest ways in which it might be generalised. I offer a simple, idealised example to illustrate application of this approach; a series of more realistic case studies of DS reduction is presented in another paper. (shrink)

We ask whether it is reasonable to delay or refuse to take COVID-19 vaccines that have been shown in clinical trials to be safe and effective against infectious diseases. We consider two kinds of vaccine hesitancy. The first is geared to scientifically informed open questions about vaccines. We argue that in cases where the data is not representative of relevant groups, such as pregnant women and ethnic minorities, hesitancy can be reasonable on epistemic grounds. However, we argue that hesitancy is (...) not reasonable if a vaccine has passed well-conducted clinical trials. The second kind of hesitancy is to do with beliefs about the institutions offering a successfully trialled vaccine and the justifiability of cooperating with those institutions. For example, in the UK, distrust of the UK Government or the National Health Service is identified as a factor in the vaccine hesitancy of minority ethnic populations. We ask whether this sort of hesitation is reasonable given normative requirements of fair co-operation, both with those institutions and the wider population. We suggest that the answer is not straightforward. Sometimes the hesitation is unreasonable but understandable. -/- . (shrink)

In recent years, Swedish women belonging to a post-migrant generation have made their voices against racism and social inequality prominent within public debate. Engaging in segregated and economically deprived suburbs, these women make use of art in order to counter stereotypical narratives of themselves and their communities. Based on interviews from two research projects, Accessing Utopia and Gendered Islamophobia in Sweden, this article aims to understand the complexities in using art to protest racist structures and stereotypes. In what ways are (...) the young women making room for their own creative expressions in Swedish society, while countering processes of othering? How does the work of representation affect them? What meaning do the women give to the platforms and networks they have been involved in? This article shows that the women’s early experiences of othering and meeting likeminded youths play a central role in order to either enter or create collective platforms where they can creatively engage in expressing their subjectivities and counter society’s controlling images. Projects and platforms such as Revolution Poetry and Swedish hijabis provided collective self-care through support and confidence building among youths from marginalized communities. These platforms can be seen as an artistic homeplace for the interlocutors. The article also shows that the work of representation is sometimes felt as limiting. The activism the women engage in is a deeply personal struggle for self-valuation and seeking ways to live a life on one’s own terms. (shrink)

Experimental philosophy uses experimental research methods from psychology and cognitive science in order to investigate both philosophical and metaphilosophical questions. It explores philosophical questions about the nature of the psychological world - the very structure or meaning of our concepts of things, and about the nature of the non-psychological world - the things themselves. It also explores metaphilosophical questions about the nature of philosophical inquiry and its proper methodology. This book provides a detailed and provocative introduction to this innovative field, (...) focusing on the relationship between experimental philosophy and the aims and methods of more traditional analytic philosophy. Special attention is paid to carefully examining experimental philosophy's quite different philosophical programs, their individual strengths and weaknesses, and the different kinds of contributions that they can make to our philosophical understanding. Clear and accessible throughout, it situates experimental philosophy within both a contemporary and historical context, explains its aims and methods, examines and critically evaluates its most significant claims and arguments, and engages with its critics. (shrink)

It has been standard philosophical practice in analytic philosophy to employ intuitions generated in response to thought-experiments as evidence in the evaluation of philosophical claims. In part as a response to this practice, an exciting new movement—experimental philosophy—has recently emerged. This movement is unified behind both a common methodology and a common aim: the application of methods of experimental psychology to the study of the nature of intuitions. In this paper, we will introduce two different views concerning the relationship that (...) holds between experimental philosophy and the future of standard philosophical practice (what we call, the proper foundation view and the restrictionist view), discuss some of the more interesting and important results obtained by proponents of both views, and examine the pressure these results put on analytic philosophers to reform standard philosophical practice. We will also defend experimental philosophy from some recent objections, suggest future directions for work in experimental philosophy, and suggest what future lines of epistemological response might be available to those wishing to defend analytic epistemology from the challenges posed by experimental philosophy. (shrink)

Memorias de Leticia Valle desvela un nuevo sentido de la palabra inaudito: lo inaudito por cotidiano, es decir, lo que de tanto sonar ya no se oye y pasa inadvertido. Al mismo tiempo la novela establece una íntima relación entre este nuevo sentido y el comunmente aceptado —el de lo inaudito por extraordinario: lo que nunca se ha oído. El espacio entre lo uno y lo otro desaparece: lo extraordinario se gesta en lo cotidiano y sólo una mirada o un (...) oído atento es necesario para descubrirlo. La estrategia narrativa que sustenta esta visión consiste en situarse en el punto culminante de la historia, aludiéndolo pero sin nombrarlo, y desde ahí retroceder hasta el principio de todo. Es un ejercicio de indagación rigurosa, ordenando y sopesando los recuerdos en relación al papel que juegan en el desencadenamiento de la apoteosis final. (shrink)

This chapter argues that epistemic uses of the imagination are a sui generis form of reasoning. The argument proceeds in two steps. First, there are imaginings which instantiate the epistemic structure of reasoning. Second, reasoning with imagination is not reducible to reasoning with doxastic states. Thus, the epistemic role of the imagination is that it is a distinctive way of reasoning out what follows from our prior evidence. This view has a number of important implications for the epistemology of the (...) imagination. For one thing, it clarifies the epistemic role of widely invoked “constraints” on the imagination. For another, it highlights important and underappreciated disanalogies between how perceptual experiences and imaginings justify beliefs. Ultimately, the view that we can reason with imagination offers an illuminating and theoretically fruitful framework through which to understand the epistemic structure of the imagination. (shrink)

Our interest in this paper is to drive a wedge of contention between two different programs that fall under the umbrella of “experimental philosophy”. In particular, we argue that experimental philosophy’s “negative program” presents almost as significant a challenge to its “positive program” as it does to more traditional analytic philosophy.

This paper defends pro-realism, the view that it is better if moral realism is true rather than any of its rivals. After offering an account of philosophical angst, I make three general arguments. The first targets nihilism: in securing the possibility of moral justification and vindication in objecting to certain harms, moral realism secures something that is non-morally valuable and even essential to the meaning and intelligibility of our lives. The second argument targets antirealism: moral realism secures a desirable independence (...) for moral justification that is qualitatively different from the anti-realistic construal of independence that is only explicable in terms of degrees of distance from our subjective responses and attitudes. Finally, I argue that while the pan-expressivist semantic program of quasi-realism has significant effects on what can be appropriately said in meta-ethical discourse, it provides no comfort to the pro-realist who is already angsty about anti-realism. (shrink)

As COVID-19 spread, clinicians warned of mental illness epidemics within the coronavirus pandemic. Funding for digital mental health is surging and researchers are calling for widespread adoption to address the mental health sequalae of COVID-19. -/- We consider whether these technologies improve mental health outcomes and whether they exacerbate existing health inequalities laid bare by the pandemic. We argue the evidence for efficacy is weak and the likelihood of increasing inequalities is high. -/- First, we review recent trends in digital (...) mental health. Next, we turn to the clinical literature to show that many technologies proposed as a response to COVID-19 are unlikely to improve outcomes. Then, we argue that even evidence-based technologies run the risk of increasing health disparities. We conclude by suggesting that policymakers should not allocate limited resources to the development of many digital mental health tools and should focus instead on evidence-based solutions to address mental health inequalities. (shrink)

Este artículo ofrece un análisis y un comentario general de los dieciséis estudios que componen el libro compilado por Enrique Hülsz Piccone, Nuevos ensayos sobre Heráclito, el último compendio de investigaciones sobre la filosofía del Oscuro de Efe so, donde se reúnen las actas del Segundo Symposium Heracliteum celebrado en junio de 2006 en la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras de la UNAM, ocasión en la que algunos de los especialistas más reconocidos de la comunidad internacional se reunieron para presentar (...) sus trabajos sobre Heráclito. This article aims to analyze and discuss the sixteen studies that compose the book edited by Enrique Hülsz Piccone, Nuevos ensayos sobre Heráclito, which is the latest compendium of studies on the philosophy of the Obscure of Ephesus. This volume gathers the proceedings of the Second Symposium Heracliteum held in June 2006 at the Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, UNAM, where some of the most renowned specialists of the international community came together to present their work on Heraclitus. (shrink)

A recent systematic review of Machine Learning (ML) approaches to health data, containing over 100 studies, found that the most investigated problem was mental health (Yin et al., 2019). Relatedly, recent estimates suggest that between 165,000 and 325,000 health and wellness apps are now commercially available, with over 10,000 of those designed specifically for mental health (Carlo et al., 2019). In light of these trends, the present chapter has three aims: (1) provide an informative overview of some of the recent (...) work taking place at the intersection of text mining and mental health so that we can (2) highlight and analyze several pressing ethical issues that are arising in this rapidly growing field and (3) suggest productive directions for how these issues might be better addressed within future interdisciplinary work to ensure the responsible development of text mining approaches in psychology generally, and in mental health fields, specifically. In Section 1, we review some of the recent literature on text-mining and mental health in the contexts of traditional experimental settings, social media, and research involving electronic health records. Then, in Section 2, we introduce and discuss ethical concerns that arise before, during, and after research is conducted. Finally, in Section 3, we offer several suggestions about how ethical oversight of text-mining research might be improved to be more responsive to the concerns mapped out in Section 2. (shrink)

Case reports about patients undergoing Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) for various motor and psychiatric disorders - including Parkinson’s Disease, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and Treatment Resistant Depression - have sparked a vast literature in neuroethics. Questions about whether and how DBS changes the self have been at the fore. The present chapter brings these neuroethical debates into conversation with recent research in moral psychology. We begin in Section 1 by reviewing the recent clinical literature on DBS. In Section 2, we consider (...) whether DBS poses a threat to personal identity. In Section 3 we argue for engagement with recent empirical work examining judgements of when identity changes. We conclude in Section 4 by highlighting a range of ethical issues raised by DBS, including various cross-cultural considerations. (shrink)

Jennifer Nagel (2010) has recently proposed a fascinating account of the decreased tendency to attribute knowledge in conversational contexts in which unrealized possibilities of error have been mentioned. Her account appeals to epistemic egocentrism, or what is sometimes called the curse of knowledge, an egocentric bias to attribute our own mental states to other people (and sometimes our own future and past selves). Our aim in this paper is to investigate the empirical merits of Nagel’s hypothesis about the psychology involved (...) in knowledge attribution. (shrink)

Die Kritik der Urteilskraft übernimmt die Aufgabe, die bereits in vorausgegangenen Kritiken untersuchte Freiheit und Natur miteinander in Verbindung zu setzen, weil die Freiheit sich und ihre Zwecke in der Natur verwirklichen sollen, aber ohne den jeweiligen Gesetzen Abbruch zu tun. Das Problem stellt sich aus der Perspektive der reflexiven Subjektivität, aus der der Mensch philosophiert und mittels Begriffen denkt und handeln will, und die sich gegenüber der Natur setzt. Die Lösung findet sich im vorreflexiven synthetischen Akt, wo die Subjektivität (...) selbst und ihre Zweckmäßigkeit als Objekt und zwar als ein organischer lebendiger Gegenstand oder Leib erscheinen. Aber eben wegen dieser Dualität entsteht die Dialektik der teleologischen Urteilskraft, weil es scheint, dass diese lebendigen Wesen durch zwei verschiedene Prinzipien beurteilt werden könnten: durch den Mechanismus der Natur und durch die Zweckmäßigkeit der Subjektivität. Diese Antinomie wird in diesem Artikel in drei Stufen der Auslegung erklärt, die am Ende zeigen, wie das mechanische Prinzip sogar den Bereich der Erscheinungen nicht ganz erklären kann, sondern unterdeterminiert, aber die Zweckmäßigkeit als solche geht für den methodologischen Standpunkt der Wissenschaft zu weit, so dass nur die philosophische Reflexion sie übernehmen kann. (shrink)

There are two ways of understanding experimental philosophy's process of appealing to intuitions as evidence for or against philosophical claims: the positive and negative programs. This chapter deals with how the positivist method of conceptual analysis is affected by the results of the negative program. It begins by describing direct extramentalism, semantic mentalism, conceptual mentalism, and mechanist mentalism, all of which argue that intuitions are credible sources of evidence and will therefore be shared. The negative program challenges this view by (...) questioning if there can be in fact a shared intuition about a specific hypothetical case, as conflicting intuitions are as likely to arise. The chapter then discusses other issues raised by the negativists such as the limits of surveys and the proper domain problem. (shrink)

Many of us are unmoved when it is objected that some morally or intellectually suspect source agrees with our belief. While we may tend to find this kind of guilt by epistemic association unproblematic, I argue that this tendency is a mistake. We sometimes face what I call the problem of unwelcome epistemic company. This is the problem of encountering agreement about the content of your belief from a source whose faults give you reason to worry about the belief's truth, (...) normative status, etiology, or implications. On the basis of an array of cases, I elaborate four distinct kinds of problems that unwelcome epistemic company poses. Two of these are distinctly epistemic, and two are moral. I canvass possible responses, ranging from stubbornness to an epistemic prudishness that avoids unwelcome company at all costs. Finally, I offer preliminary lessons of the problem and distinguish it from the problem of peer disagreement. (shrink)

In this paper, we consider two different attempts to make an end run around the experimentalist challenge to the armchair use of intuitions: one due to Max Deutsch and Herman Cappelen, contending that philosophers do not appeal to intuitions, but rather to arguments, in canonical philosophical texts; the other due to Joshua Knobe, arguing that intuitions are so stable that there is in fact no empirical basis for the experimentalist challenge in the first place. We show that a closer (...) attention to philosophical practices reveal, in turn, that we cannot make sense of these philosophical texts as arguments all the way down; and that our methods are so sensitive to error that even a modest amount of instability is enough to raise deep methodological concerns. (shrink)

This book provides an analytical and critical appraisal of Rousseau's political thought that, while frank about its limits, also explains its enduring power.

A singular thought about an object o is one that is directly about o in a characteristic way—grasp of that thought requires having some special epistemic relation to the object o, and the thought is ontologically dependent on o. One account of the nature of singular thought exploits a Russellian Structured Account of Propositions, according to which contents are represented by means of structured n-tuples of objects, properties, and functions. A proposition is singular, according to this framework, if and only (...) if it contains an object as a constituent. One advantage of the framework of Russellian Structured propositions is that it promises to provide a metaphysical basis for the notion of a singular thought about an object, grounding it in terms of constituency. In this paper, we argue that the attempt to ground the peculiar features of singular thoughts in terms of metaphysical constituency fails, and draw some consequences of our discussion for other debates. (shrink)

Philosophical discussions often involve appeals to verdicts about particular cases, sometimes actual, more often hypothetical, and usually with little or no substantive argument in their defense. Philosophers — on both sides of debates over the standing of this practice — have often called the basis for such appeals ‘intuitions’. But, what might such ‘intuitions’ be, such that they could legitimately serve these purposes? Answers vary, ranging from ‘thin’ conceptions that identify intuitions as merely instances of some fairly generic and epistemologically (...) uncontroversial category of mental states or episodes to ‘thick’ conceptions that add to this thin base certain semantic, phenomenological, etiological, or methodological conditions. As this chapter discusses, thick conceptions turn out to have their own methodological problems; some may even leave philosophers in the methodologically untenable position of being unable to determine when anyone is doing philosophy correctly. (shrink)

This article aims to provide a consistent explication of the doctrine of Divine Simplicity. To achieve this end, a re-construal of the doctrine is made within an “aspectival trope-theoretic” metaphysical framework, which will ultimately enable the doctrine to be elucidated in a consistent manner, and the Plantingian objections raised against it will be shown to be unproblematic.

Commentary about the role of AI in bioethics for the 10th anniversary issue of AJOB: Empirical Bioethics.

Virtue ethics has been dogged by the objection that it lacks the ability to provide adequate action-guidance, that it is agent-centered rather act-centered. Virtue ethics has also been faulted for devolving into moral cultural relativism. Rosalind Hursthouse has presented an action-based, naturalistic theory of virtue ethics intended to defuse these charges. Despite its merits, I argue that Hurthouse’s theory fails to successfully solve the problems associated with action guidance and relativism precisely because her attempt to provide a non-cultural basis for (...) virtue ethics undermines the possibility of using virtue ethics to derive useful action-guidance. The action-guiding power of virtue is derived from culture; seeking to avoid the cultural grounding of virtue merely brings one back to the problem of how virtue ethics can provide action-guidance. (shrink)

This book argues that this powerful technique permits the social sciences to meet an explanation, in which one 'grows' the phenomenon of interest in an artificial society of interacting agents: heterogeneous, boundedly rational actors.

Experimental philosophy has emerged as a very specific kind of response to an equally specific way of thinking about philosophy, one typically associated with philosophical analysis and according to which philosophical claims are measured, at least in part, by our intuitions. Since experimental philosophy has emerged as a response to this way of thinking about philosophy, its philosophical significance depends, in no small part, on how significant the practice of appealing to intuitions is to philosophy. In this paper, I defend (...) the significance of experimental philosophy by defending the significance of intuitions—in particular, by defending their significance from a recent challenge advanced by Timothy Williamson. (shrink)

The burgeoning science of ethics has produced a trend toward pessimism. Ordinary moral thought and action, we’re told, are profoundly influenced by arbitrary factors and ultimately driven by unreasoned feelings. This book counters the current orthodoxy on its own terms by carefully engaging with the empirical literature. The resulting view, optimistic rationalism, shows the pervasive role played by reason, and ultimately defuses sweeping debunking arguments in ethics. The science does suggest that moral knowledge and virtue don’t come easily. However, despite (...) the heavy influence of automatic and unconscious processes that have been shaped by evolutionary pressures, we needn’t reject ordinary moral psychology as fundamentally flawed or in need of serious repair. Reason can be corrupted in ethics just as in other domains, but a special pessimism about morality in particular is unwarranted. Moral judgment and motivation are fundamentally rational enterprises not beholden to the passions. (shrink)

We investigate the value of persons. Our primary goal is to chart a path from equal and extreme value to infinite value. We advance two arguments. Each argument offers a reason to think that equal and extreme value are best accounted for if we are infinitely valuable. We then raise some difficult but fruitful questions about the possible grounds or sources of our infinite value, if we indeed have such value.