In the context of discussions about the nature of ‘identical particles’ and the status of Leibniz’s Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles in Quantum Mechanics, a novel kind of physical discernibility has recently been proposed, which we call witness-discernibility. We inquire into how witness-discernibility relates to known kinds of discernibility. Our conclusion will be that for a wide variety of cases, including the intended quantum-mechanical ones, witness-discernibility collapses extensionally to absolute discernibility, that is, to discernibility by properties.

When people deny that there are objects of a certain kind, they normally take this to be a reason to stop speaking as if such objects existed. For instance, when atheists deny the existence of God, they take this to be a reason to stop speaking about God’s will or His mercy. Or, to take a more mundane example, when people deny that there are round squares or that there are unicorns, they take this to be a reason to stop (...) speaking as if rounds squares or unicorns existed. (shrink)

My thesis discusses the unique challenge that platonistic mathematics poses to philosophical naturalism. It has two main parts. ;The first part discusses the three most important approaches to my problem found in the literature: First, W. V. Quine's holistic empiricist defense of mathematical platonism; then, the nominalists' argument that mathematical platonism is naturalistically unacceptable; and finally, a radical form of naturalism, due to John Burgess and Penelope Maddy, which dismisses any philosophical criticism of a successful science such as mathematics. I (...) find faults with all of these approaches. ;The second part attempts to do better. First, I develop an improved epistemological challenge to mathematical platonism. Roughly, this challenge asks for an account of what mathematicians' justification for believing in platonistic mathematics consists in. I argue this challenge is immune to the criticism I leveled against the traditional challenges. To show that it has bite, I apply this challenge to Quine's philosophy of mathematics. I argue this shows that Quine must invoke, in addition to his confirmational holism, a semantic indeterminacy thesis that is so radical as to be implausible. Finally, I attempt to develop a better response to the improved challenge. I defend an unorthodox view of the concept of an object and argue this makes room for a neo-Dedekindian view of mathematical objects which identifies mathematical existence with the logical coherence of the theory describing the structure in question. This view transforms metaphysical and epistemological questions about mathematical objects into corresponding, but more tractable questions about the logical notion of coherence. (shrink)

Is the natural number 3 identical with the Roman emperor Julius Caesar? In Grundlagen Frege raised some peculiar questions of this sort.1 There are two kinds of intuitions regarding such questions. On the one hand, these questions seem not only to be pointless but to be downright meaningless. Regardless of how much arithmetic one studies, no answer to the opening question will be forthcoming. Arithmetic tells us that 3 is the successor of 2 and that it is prime, but not (...) whether it is identical with Caesar. So questions concerning the identity of numbers and people seem not to be provided for. On the other hand, it seems that the opening question must be answered negatively. For numbers are not the sorts of things that can be identical with people. In fact, since the number 3 is an abstract object and Caesar is not, it follows by Leibniz’s law that they are not identical. (shrink)

The paper focuses on Albert Borgmann’s philosophy of technology. We argue in support of Borgmann’s “Churchill principle” (“we shape our buildings, and afterwards they shape us”) as presented in Real American Ethics (RAE) (2006) by comparing it to findings within behavioral economics in general and to the “libertarian paternalism” of Cass R. Sunstein and Richard H. Thaler in particular. According to our interpretation of it, the Churchill principle implies that because our material environment in fact influences our choices, this environment (...) can and should be rearranged so that we “automatically” will tend to make better decisions. Having defended the Churchill principle, we go on to discuss how this principle is related to Borgmann’s approach in Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life (TCCL) (1984). In this earlier work, Borgmann suggests we reform technology by making room for focal practices, that is, meaningful practices in which we develop our skills and excellences. We argue that while these two works have different basic approaches—rearranging the material environment in RAE and developing certain skills and excellences in TCCL—they can and ought to be seen, not as mutually excluding, but as supplementing one another. Together they form a highly salient critique of technology that takes into consideration questions of the good life without becoming overly paternalistic. (shrink)

The paper focuses on Albert Borgmann’s philosophy of technology. We argue in support of Borgmann’s “Churchill principle” as presented in Real American Ethics by comparing it to findings within behavioral economics in general and to the “libertarian paternalism” of Cass R. Sunstein and Richard H. Thaler in particular. According to our interpretation of it, the Churchill principle implies that because our material environment in fact influences our choices, this environment can and should be rearranged so that we “automatically” will tend (...) to make better decisions. Having defended the Churchill principle, we go on to discuss how this principle is related to Borgmann’s approach in Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life. In this earlier work, Borgmann suggests we reform technology by making room for focal practices, that is, meaningful practices in which we develop our skills and excellences. We argue that while these two works have different basic approaches—rearranging the material environment in RAE and developing certain skills and excellences in TCCL—they can and ought to be seen, not as mutually excluding, but as supplementing one another. Together they form a highly salient critique of technology that takes into consideration questions of the good life without becoming overly paternalistic. (shrink)

Even though the philosophy of common sense is not justifi able as such, the assump- tion upon which it rests, namely that there are things which we are not in position to doubt is correct. The reason why Thomas Reid was unable to bring this assumption out in a justifi able manner is that his views, both on knowledge and nature, are to be considered dogmatic. American pragmatists such as Charles Sanders Peirce and John Dewey on the other hand, may (...) be seen as offering us a ‘critical’ and post-Darwinian philosophy of common sense. (shrink)

The paper argues that the relation between the philosophy of common sense and skepticism ought to be perceived of as the relation between the two horns of a dilemma. Each position, it is therefore said, is able to confront the other with a valid objection, something which implies that neither of the two positions are defensible as such. The dilemma is only resolved, it is argued, by the way in which a pragmatic approach to knowledge enables us to incorporate the (...) insights of both common sense and skepticism in a single position. (shrink)

A research biobank is a collection of personal health and lifestyle information, including genetic samples of yet unknown but possibly large information potential about the participant. For the participants, the risk of taking part is not bodily harm but infringements of their privacy and the harmful consequences such infringements might have. But what do we mean by privacy? Which harms are we talking about? To address such questions we need to get a grip on what privacy is all about and (...) aim for a fruitful perspective on the issues of property and privacy rights in the context of biobanking. This paper argues that the limits and handling of private matters is determined in specific social relations. The crucial point is thus to determine which information and activities are or are not the legitimate concern of others. Privacy and property rights should be seen as balanced by duties, that is as inherently relational interests extending into the public sphere, rather than to see these rights as the control of an object—for instance the participant’s biobank material. (shrink)

The article sets out to explore the international legal dimension in Jürgen Habermas' latest publications on philosophy of law. It is our view that Habermas deals with the examination of just relations beyond the nation-state first and foremost from a legal perspective, and that the key to a Habermasian reading of international justice is not through an application of discourse-theoretical models of communicative or moral action as such, but primarily through proper legal institutionalisation of the rule of law. In asserting (...) this view, we will look closer at the Kantian influence in Habermas' legal construct at the international level, and show why this institutional approach is to be sharply distinguished from and preferred to any exclusively non-institutional approach to international justice. (shrink)

The proliferation of information and communication technologies (ICTs) into all aspects of life poses unique ethical challenges as our modern societies become increasingly dependent on the flawless operation of these technologies. As we increasingly entrust our privacy, our well-being and our lives to an ever greater number of computers we need to look more closely at the risks and ethical implications of these developments. By emphasising the vulnerability of software and the practice of professional software developers, we want to make (...) clear the ethical aspects of producing potentially flawed software. This paper outlines some of the vulnerabilities associated with software systems and identifies a number of social and organisational factors affecting software developers and contributing to these vulnerabilities. Scott A. Snook’s theory of practical drift is used as the basis for our analysis. We show that this theory, originally developed to explain the failure of a military organisation, can be used to understand how professional software developers “drift away” from procedures and processes designed to ensure quality and prevent software vulnerability. Based on interviews with software developers in two Norwegian companies we identify two areas where social factors compel software developers to drift away from a global set of rules constituting software development processes and methods. Issues of pleasure and control and difference in mental models contribute to an uncoupling from established practices designed to guarantee the reliability of software and thus diminish its vulnerability. (shrink)

As long as the market is said to be based on the motive of self-interest, any argument in favor of expanding the market will have to be seen as an argument in favor of self-interest. Such an argument, however, clearly conflicts with the notion that this motive, when viewed from a practical-political point of view, must be deemed a vice and thus, at best is something to be tolerated. As long as the market is seen as presupposing the motive of (...) self-interest, as the currently dominating interpretation of Adam Smith implies, it therefore appears virtually impossible to see how Smith – or anyone else for that manner – can possibly justify extending the market in practical-political terms. (shrink)

Quantum mechanics tells us that states involving indistinguishable fermions must be antisymmetrized. This is often taken to mean that indistinguishable fermions are always entangled. We consider several notions of entanglement and argue that on the best of them, indistinguishable fermions are not always entangled. We also present a simple but unconventional way of representing fermionic states that allows us to maintain a link between entanglement and non-factorizability.

Oystein Linnebo's book Thin Objects is partly devoted to defending the view that some objects are “thin” in that their existence does not impose any substantive demands on the world. In this paper, I discuss the concern that the defense relies on there being entities that serve as the referents of predicates. Linnebo thus seems to assume the thinness of those entities. In the course of my discussion, I also discuss what Linnebo says about the role of criteria of identity (...) in his discussion of reference and existence. (shrink)

Having its seeds in the 2nd International Lauener Symposium held in honour of Dagfinn Follesdal, the present collection contains a rich, kaleidoscopic ensemble of previously unpublished contributions by leading authors, representing diverse approaches to a variety of philosophical themes on which Follesdal has had a longstanding, formative impact. Follesdal himself contributes an orientating essay continuing to develop his pioneering theory of reference as well as in-depth commentaries on each of the other authors elaborated papers plus candid answers in the added (...) interview. The volume assembles a wealth of original articles containing in part direct discussions of Follesdal s work and covering a broad range of topics like subjectivity, intersubjectivity, objectivity, rationality, logics and mathematics, choice theory, values, modalities, intentionality, individuation, perception, communication, meaning, reference, the slingshot, one- and two-sorted semantics, evidence, neuropsychology, space and time, science and society, methodology, fallibilism, the relative a priori, justification, holism, the life-world, reflective equilibrium, empathy, and ethics. Moreover the book includes an incisive memoir of Follesdal the philosopher as well as a spanning interview with him, which are both critically directing toward Follesdal s subtly differentiated understanding of the dynamic philosophical horizon he shares in. With contributions from Dagfinn Follesdal, Charles Parsons, Patrick Suppes, Jon Elster, John Perry, Michael Friedman, Dag Prawitz, Wilhelm K. Essler, David Woodruff Smith, Olav Gjelsvik, Graciela De Pierris, Nils Roll-Hansen, Christian Beyer, Oystein Linnebo, Michael Frauchiger. Excerpt Open publication". (shrink)

The intellectual affinity between Thomas Reid, on one hand, and American pragmatists such as Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey, on the other, has been noted by several scholars. Indeed, Peirce himself professed an admiration for Reid and referred to his own Pragmatism as entailing what he called “Critical Common-sensism.” In recent times, a number of scholars – chiefly Baumann, Magnus, and Lundestad – have investigated the pragmatist elements in Reid’s thought. Each has identified important ways in (...) which Reid prefigured central themes in American pragmatist thought, though none has gone so far as to label Reid himself a pragmatist. In this paper, I demonstrate the great extent of the similarities between Reid and some of the early American pragmatists. In light of these affinities, the term “pragmatist” may, in my opinion, be helpful for categorising Reid’s thought. My central claim, however, is not merely a terminological one: Rather, I attempt to demonstrate the deep and broad intellectual affinity between Reid’s “Common Sense” philosophy and major trends in American Pragmatism, by shedding light on a number of distinct and central shared features. (shrink)

It is impossible not to discuss the question of time, at least for the philosophy of religion. However, to discuss the question of time is equally impossible, as the various perspectives presented in this volume show. Then what is time? Time is not, and yet everything is within time. Time is, but neither substance nor pure form. Being a dimension of all Being, not even God could or would withdraw from time. The authors of the contributions to this volume discuss (...) the unavoidability of time and its paradoxes, not the least with the purpose of giving time, as a recurring topic for the philosophy of religion. Contributors: Joseph Ballan, Jonna Bornemark, Oystein Brekke, Rebecca Comay, Iben Damgaard, Arne Gron, Jan-Olav Henriksen, Marius Timmann Mjaaland, Carsten Pallesen, Ulrik Houlind Rasmussen, Werner Stegmaier, Philipp Stoellger, Claudia Welz. (shrink)