Is conceptual analysis required for reductive explanation? If there is no a priori entailment from microphysical truths to phenomenal truths, does reductive explanation of the phenomenal fail? We say yes . Ned Block and Robert Stalnaker say no.

The explanatory gap . Consciousness is a mystery. No one has ever given an account, even a highly speculative, hypothetical, and incomplete account of how a physical thing could have phenomenal states. Suppose that consciousness is identical to a property of the brain, say activity in the pyramidal cells of layer 5 of the cortex involving reverberatory circuits from cortical layer 6 to the thalamus and back to layers 4 and 6,as Crick and Koch have suggested for visual consciousness. .) (...) Still, that identity itself calls out for explanation! Proponents of an explanatory gap disagree about whether the gap is permanent. Some say that we are like the scientifically naive person who is told that matter = energy, but does not have the concepts required to make sense of the idea. If we can acquire these concepts, the gap is closable. Others say the gap is uncloseable because of our cognitive limitations. Still others say that the gap is a consequence of the fundamental nature of consciousness. (shrink)

This essay concerns the question of how we make genuine epistemic progress through conceptual analysis. Our way into this issue will be through consideration of the paradox of analysis. The paradox challenges us to explain how a given statement can make a substantive contribution to our knowledge, even while it purports merely to make explicit what one’s grasp of the concept under scrutiny consists in. The paradox is often treated primarily as a semantic puzzle. However, in “Sect. (...) 1” I argue that the paradox raises a more fundamental epistemic problem, and in “Sects.1 and 2” I argue that semantic proposals—even ones designed to capture the Fregean link between meaning and epistemic significance—fail to resolve that problem. Seeing our way towards a real solution to the paradox requires more than semantics; we also need to understand how the process of analysis can yield justification for accepting a candidate conceptual analysis. I present an account of this process, and explain how it resolves the paradox, in “Sect. 3”. I conclude in “Sect. 4” by considering the implications for the present account concerning the goal of conceptual analysis, and by arguing that the apparent scarcity of short and finite illuminating analyses in philosophically interesting cases provides no grounds for pessimism concerning the possibility of philosophical progress through conceptual analysis. (shrink)

Philosophical conceptual analysis is an experimental method. Focusing on this helps to justify it from the skepticism of experimental philosophers who follow Weinberg, Nichols & Stich. To explore the experimental aspect of philosophical conceptual analysis, I consider a simpler instance of the same activity: everyday linguistic interpretation. I argue that this, too, is experimental in nature. And in both conceptual analysis and linguistic interpretation, the intuitions considered problematic by experimental philosophers are necessary but epistemically (...) irrelevant. They are like variables introduced into mathematical proofs which drop out before the solution. Or better, they are like the hypotheses that drive science, which do not themselves need to be true. In other words, it does not matter whether or not intuitions are accurate as descriptions of the natural kinds that undergird philosophical concepts; the aims of conceptual analysis can still be met. (shrink)

There is a line of reasoning in metaepistemology that is congenial to naturalism and hard to resist, yet ultimately misguided: that knowledge might be a natural kind, and that this would undermine the use of conceptual analysis in the theory of knowledge. In this paper, I first bring out various problems with Hilary Kornblith’s argument from the causal–explanatory indispensability of knowledge to the natural kindhood of knowledge. I then criticize the argument from the natural kindhood of knowledge against (...) the method of conceptual analysis in the theory of knowledge. A natural motivation for this argument is the following seemingly plausible principle: if knowledge is a natural kind, then the concept of knowledge is a natural kind concept. Since this principle lacks adequate support, the crucial semantic claim that the concept of knowledge is a natural kind concept must be defended in some more direct way. However, there are two striking epistemic disanalogies between the concept of knowledge and paradigmatic natural kind concepts that militate against this semantic claim. Conceptual analyses of knowledge are not affected by total error, and the proponents of such analyses are not subject to a priori conceptual obliviousness. I conclude that the argument from natural kindhood does not succeed in undermining the use of conceptual analysis in the theory of knowledge. (shrink)

Many philosophical naturalists eschew analysis in favor of discovering metaphysical truths from the a posteriori, contending that analysis does not lead to philosophical insight. A countercurrent to this approach seeks to reconcile a certain account of conceptual analysis with philosophical naturalism; prominent and influential proponents of this methodology include the late David Lewis, Frank Jackson, Michael Smith, Philip Pettit, and David Armstrong. Naturalistic analysis is a tool for locating in the scientifically given world objects and (...) properties we quantify over in everyday discourse. This collection gathers work from a range of prominent philosophers who are working within this tradition, offering important new work as well as critical evaluations of the methodology. Its centerpiece is an important posthumous paper by David Lewis, "Ramseyan Humility," published here for the first time. The contributors first address issues of philosophy of mind, semantics, and the new methodology's a priori character, then turn to matters of metaphysics, and finally consider problems regarding normativity. Conceptual Analysis and Philosophical Naturalism is one of the first efforts to apply this approach to such a wide range of philosophical issues. _Contributors: _David Braddon-Mitchell, Mark Colyvan, Frank Jackson, Justine Kingsbury, Fred Kroon, David Lewis, Dustin Locke, Kelby Mason, Jonathan McKeown-Green, Peter Menzies, Robert Nola, Daniel Nolan, Philip Pettit, Huw Price, Denis Robinson, Steve Stich, Daniel Stoljar The hardcover edition does not include a dust jacket. (shrink)

This paper does two things. First, it argues for a metaphilosophical view of conceptual analysis questions; in particular, it argues that the facts that settle conceptual-analysis questions are facts about the linguistic intentions of ordinary folk. The second thing this paper does is argue that if this metaphilosophical view is correct, then experimental philosophy is a legitimate methodology to use in trying to answer conceptual-analysis questions.

Frank Jackson champions the cause of conceptual analysis as central to philosophical inquiry. In recent years conceptual analysis has been undervalued and widely misunderstood, suggests Jackson. He argues that such analysis is mistakenly clouded in mystery, preventing a whole range of important questions from being productively addressed. He anchors his argument in discussions of specific philosophical issues, starting with the metaphysical doctrine of physicalism and moving on, via free will, meaning, personal identity, motion, and change, (...) to ethics and the philosophy of color. In this way the book not only offers a methodological program for philosophy, but also casts new light on some much-debated problems and their interrelations. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss the claim that the successful reduction of qualitative to physical states requires some sort of intelligible connection between our qualitative and physical concepts, which in turn requires a conceptual analysis of our qualitative concepts in causal-functional terms. While I defend this claim against some of its recent critics, I ultimately dispute it, and propose a different way to get the requisite intelligible connection between qualitative and physical concepts.

“Conceptual analysis” is a misnomer—it refers, but it does not refer to a method or practice that involves the analysis of concepts. Once this is recognized, many of the main arguments for skepticism about conceptual analysis can be answered, since many of these arguments falsely assume that conceptual analyses target concepts. The present paper defends conceptual analysis from skepticism about its viability and, positively, presents an argument for viewing conceptual analyses as (...) targeting philosophical phenomena, not our concepts of these phenomena. (shrink)

Conceptual analysis of health and disease is portrayed as consisting in the confrontation of a set of criteria—a “definition”—with a set of cases, called instances of either “health” or “ disease.” Apart from logical counter-arguments, there is no other way to refute an opponent’s definition than by providing counter-cases. As resorting to intensional stipulation is not forbidden, several contenders can therefore be deemed to have succeeded. This implies that conceptual analysis alone is not likely to decide (...) between naturalism and normativism. An alternative to this approach would be to examine whether the concept of disease can be naturalized. (shrink)

Perspective taking is a critical yet tangled construct that is used to describe a range of psychological processes and that is applied interchangeably with related constructs. The resulting ambiguity is particularly vexing in science education, where although perspective taking is recognized as critical to informed citizens’ ability to negotiate scientifically related societal issues, or socioscientific issues via socioscientific reasoning, the precise nature of perspective taking remains elusive. To operationalize perspective taking, a theoretical conceptual analysis was employed and used (...) to position perspective taking within the context of SSR. The resulting, more precise construct identified as socioscientific perspective taking requires engagement with others or their circumstances, an etic/emic shift in one’s viewpoint, and a moral context guided by conscience. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the implications of recent empirical research on concept representation for the philosophical enterprise of conceptual analysis. I argue that conceptual analysis, as it is commonly practiced, is committed to certain assumptions about the nature of our intuitive categorization judgments. I then try to show how these assumptions clash with contemporary accounts of concept representation in cognitive psychology. After entertaining an objection to my argument, I close by considering ways in which (...) class='Hi'>conceptual analysis might be altered to accord better with the empirical work. (shrink)

A critical survey of various positions on the nature, use, possession, and analysis of normative concepts. We frame our treatment around G.E. Moore’s Open Question Argument, and the ways metaethicists have responded by departing from a Classical Theory of concepts. In addition to the Classical Theory, we discuss synthetic naturalism, noncognitivism (expressivist and inferentialist), prototype theory, network theory, and empirical linguistic approaches. Although written for a general philosophical audience, we attempt to provide a new perspective and highlight some underappreciated (...) problems about normative concepts. (shrink)

Conceptual analysis, like any exclusively theoretical activity, is far from overrated in current psychology. Such a situation can be related both to the contingent influences of contextual and historical character and to the more essential metatheoretical reasons. After a short discussion of the latter it is argued that even within a strictly empirical psychology there are non-trivial tasks that can be attached to well-defined and methodologically reliable, conceptual work. This kind of method, inspired by the ideas of (...) Ludwig Wittgenstein, Peter Strawson (conceptual grammar), and Gilbert Ryle (conceptual geography), is proposed and formally depicted as being holistic, descriptive, and connective. Finally, the newly presented framework of connective conceptual analysis is defended against the “Charge from Psychology,” in a version developed by William Ramsey, claiming that conceptual analysis is based on psychological assumptions that have already been refuted by empirical psychology. (shrink)

Conceptual analysis is undergoing a revival in philosophy, and much of the credit goes to Frank Jackson. Jackson argues that conceptual analysis is needed as an integral component of so-called serious metaphysics and that it also does explanatory work in accounting for such phenomena as categorization, meaning change, communication, and linguistic understanding. He even goes so far as to argue that opponents of concep- tual analysis are implicitly committed to it in practice. We show that (...) he is wrong on all of these points and that his case for conceptual analysis doesn. (shrink)

What is the rationale for the methodological innovations of experimental philosophy? This paper starts from the contention that common answers to this question are implausible. It then develops a framework within which experimental philosophy fulfills a specific function in an otherwise traditionalist picture of philosophical inquiry. The framework rests on two principal ideas. The first is Frank Jackson’s claim that conceptual analysis is unavoidable in ‘serious metaphysics’. The second is that the psychological structure of concepts is extremely intricate, (...) much more so than early practitioners of conceptual analysis had realized. This intricacy has implications for the activity of analyzing concepts: while the central, coarser, more prominent contours of a concept may be identified from the armchair, the finer details of the concept’s structure require experimental methods to detect. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a conceptual analysis of fake news. In essence, I suggest analysing this notion as a species of Frankfurtian bullshit. This construal, I argue, allows us to distinguish it from similar phenomena like bad or biased journalism and satire. First, I introduce four test cases. The first three are, intuitively, not cases of fake news, while the fourth one is. A correct conceptual analysis should, hence, exclude the first three while including the (...) fourth. Next, I go through some factors that could explain the difference between the first three cases and the fourth one before I offer my explanation. After that, I propose an analysis of fake news and show that it matches our intuitions about the four test cases. Finally, I consider a possible objection to my proposal. (shrink)

Three proponents of the Canberra Plan, namely Jackson, Pettit, and Smith, have developed a collective functionalist program—Canberra Functionalism—spanning from philosophical psychology to ethics. They argue that conceptual analysis is an indispensible tool for research on cognitive processes since it reveals that there are some folk concepts, like belief and desire, whose functional roles must be preserved rather than eliminated by future scientific explanations. Some naturalists have recently challenged this indispensability argument, though the point of that challenge has been (...) blunted by a mutual conflation of metaphysical and methodological strands of naturalism. I argue that the naturalist’s challenge to the indispensability argument, like naturalism itself, ought to be reformulated as a strictly methodological thesis. So understood, the challenge succeeds by showing (1) that we cannot know a priori on the basis of conceptual analysis of folk platitudes that something must occupy the functional roles specified for beliefs and desires, and (2) that proponents of Canberra Functionalism sometimes tacitly concede this point by treating substantive psychological theories as the deliverances of a priori platitudes analysis. (shrink)

That a philosophical thesis entails a vicious regress is commonly taken to be decisive evidence that the thesis is false. In this paper, I argue that the existence of a vicious regress is insufficient to reject a proposed analysis provided that certain constraints on the analysis are met. When a vicious regress is present, some further consequence of the thesis must be established that, together with the presence of the vicious regress, shows the thesis to be false. The (...) argument is provided largely through the examination of Michael Bergmann's vicious regress argument against strong awareness internalism and a partial defense of that thesis against Bergmann. (shrink)

Wakefield's (2000) responses to our paper herein (Murphy and Woolfolk 2000) are not only unsuccessful, they force him into a position that leaves him unable to preserve any distinction between disorders and other problems. They also conflate distinct scientific concepts of function. Further, Wakefield fails to show that ascriptions of human dysfunction do not ineliminably involve values. -/- We suggest Wakefield is analyzing a concept that plays a role in commonsense thought and arguing that the task of science is to (...) identify the natural processes that accord with that commonsense concept. We argue that this represents an attempt to use conceptual analysis to legislate what should be acceptable science. We conclude that this constraint on science is unacceptable and that therefore Wakefield's overall position should be rejected. (shrink)

One way to do socially relevant investigations of science is through conceptual analysis of scientific terms used in special-interest science (SIS). SIS is science having welfare-related consequences and funded by special interests, e.g., tobacco companies, in order to establish predetermined conclusions. For instance, because the chemical industry seeks deregulation of toxic emissions and avoiding costly cleanups, it funds SIS that supports the concept of "hormesis" (according to which low doses of toxins/carcinogens have beneficial effects). Analyzing the hormesis concept (...) of its main defender, chemical-industry-funded Edward Calabrese, the paper shows Calabrese and others fail to distinguish three different hormesis concepts, H, HG, and HD. H requires toxin-induced, short-term beneficial effects for only one biological endpoint, while HG requires toxin-induced, net-beneficial effects for all endpoints/responses/subjects/ages/conditions. HD requires using the risk-assessment/regulatory default rule that all low-dose toxic exposures are net-beneficial, thus allowable. Clarifying these concepts, the paper argues for five main claims. (1) Claims positing H are trivially true but irrelevant to regulations. (2) Claims positing HG are relevant to regulation but scientifically false. (3) Claims positing HD are relevant to regulation but ethically/scientifically questionable. (4) Although no hormesis concept (H, HG, or HD) has both scientific validity and regulatory relevance, Calabrese and others obscure this fact through repeated equivocation, begging the question, and data-tri mm ing. Consequently (5) their errors provide some undeserved rhetorical plausibility for deregulating low-dose toxins. (shrink)

Codes necessarily state standards of professional practice, but the term ?standards?; is itself ambiguous. ?Standards of professional practice?; can mean anything from minimal expectations for all practitioners to the perceived ideal for which practitioners should strive. Carefully articulated codes of ethics should recognize the differences between minimal standards and standard?as?ideal They should also articulate group norms?largely unstated expectations of how all people within the group should or do perform. The process of producing a code of ethics is intellectually healthy because (...) it constitutes critical analysis of the profession by its practitioners. (shrink)

It would be nice if good old a priori conceptual analysis were possible. For many years conceptual analysis was out of fashion, in large part because of the excessive ambitions of verificationist theories of meaning._ _However, those days are over._ _A priori conceptual analysis is once again part of the philosophical mainstream._ _This renewed popularity, moreover, is well-founded. Modern philosophical analysts have exploited developments in philosophical semantics to formulate analyses which avoid the counterintuitive consequences (...) of verificationism, while vindicating our ability to know a priori precisely what it is our words and thoughts represent._ _Despite its apparent promise, however, I. (shrink)

One strategy for blocking Chalmers's overall case against physicalism has been to deny his claim that showing that phenomenal properties are in some sense physical requires an a priori entailment of the phenomenal truths from the physical ones. Here I avoid this well-trodden ground and argue instead that an a priori entailment of the phenomenal truths from the physical ones does not require an analysis in the Jackson/Chalmers sense. This is to sever the dualist's link between conceptual (...) class='Hi'>analysis and a priori entailment by showing that the lack of the former does not imply the absence of the latter. Moreover, given the role of the argument from conceptual analysis in Chalmers's overall case for dualism, undermining that argument effectively undermines that case as a whole in a way that, I'll argue, undermining the conceivability arguments as stand-alone arguments does not. (shrink)

We use words to mark out patterns in nature. This is why a word like 'nutritious' is so useful. One way of thinking about conceptual analysis is as the business of capturing the structure in the patterns so picked out, for it is not credible that the patterns are one and all sui generis. This paper spells out this way of thinking about conceptual analysis. Along the way we discuss: the role of intuitions about possible cases (...) with some reference to the experimental philosophy debate, why analyses are often hard to find, and whether conceptual analysis so conceived presupposes a controversial version of the description theory of reference. (shrink)

Conceptual analysis of health and disease is portrayed as consisting in the confrontation of a set of criteria -- a "definition" -- with a set of cases, called instances of either "health" or "disease." Apart from logical counterarguments, there is no other way to refute an opponent's definition than by providing countercases. As resorting to intensional stipulation is not forbidden, several contenders can therefore be deemed to have succeeded. This implies that conceptual analysis alone is not (...) likely to decide between naturalism and normativism. An alternative to this approach would be to examine whether the concept of disease can be naturalized. (shrink)

While philosophers of language have traditionally relied upon their intuitions about cases when developing theories of reference, this methodology has recently been attacked on the grounds that intuitions about reference, far from being universal, show significant cultural variation, thus undermining their relevance for semantic theory. I’ll attempt to demonstrate that (1) such criticisms do not, in fact, undermine the traditional philosophical methodology, and (2) our underlying intuitions about the nature of reference may be more universal than the authors suppose.

Phenomenology and analytic philosophy were born out of the same historical problem---the growing crisis about how to characterize the proper methods and role of philosophy, given the increasing success and separation of the natural sciences. A common 18th and 19th century solution that reached its height with John Stuart Mill’s psychologism was to hold that the while natural science was concerned with “external, physical phenomena”, philosophy was concerned with “internal, mental phenomena”, and thus proceeded by turning our observational gaze inward (...) at the mind, rather than outward towards the world. Both Husserlian phenomenology and early analytic philosophy grew from dissatisfaction with psychologism, and figures from both traditions developed relentless criticisms of psychologism, beginning with Brentano and G.E. Moore[i] and reaching its peak with Frege / and Husserl. (shrink)

My aim here is threefold: to show that conceptual facts play a more significant role in justifying explanatory reductions than most of the contributors to the current debate realize; to furnish an account of that role, and to trace the consequences of this account for conceivability arguments about the mind.

In this paper I discuss the claim that the successful reduction of qualitative to physical states requires some sort of intelligible connection between our qualitative and physical concepts, which in turn requires a conceptual analysis of our qualitative concepts in causal-functional terms. While I defend this claim against some of its recent critics, I ultimately dispute it, and propose a different way to get the requisite intelligible connection between qualitative and physical concepts.

In this paper I want to leave behind the failed attempts to think about populism as ideology, strategy, style, or even discourse. I will focus on the ‘conceptual battles of politics’ and their potential to influence actors to pursue and effect specific ends. Reinhart Koselleck and his ideas about conceptual history will figure prominently in my discussion, as will his concept of asymmetrical combat-concept as a means of unleashing a theoretical and political war. The goal is to demonstrate (...) that concepts have taken the place of weapons of war among political actors. (shrink)

Rey’s project of rescuing conceptual analysis within a naturalistic computationalist framework, equipped with a Putnamian account of reference, is an interesting and valuable project. However, his extremepessimism about fundamental philosophical concepts, according to which they mostly tended to be empty, amounts to sacrificing philosophical analysis after having it rescued from the Quineans. An alternative is proposed, which accepts most of the naturalistic computationalist Putnamian framework, rejects the traditional view of analyticity, but secures more space for a constructive, (...) as opposed to merely destructive, philosophical analysis. (shrink)

In my paper I identify both the conceptual tools needed to establish claims for the existence of conceptual ties, as well as the principles governing the use of those tools, and present a model of conceptual analysis. I identify and justify those principles in light of the conditions for the meaningfulness of expressions in language, which I extract from an analysis of the concept of meaning. The conclusions of this analysis are organized into a (...) schematic model of the workings of a language. According to this model, the meaning of every word in any language is determined by its role in the systematic mapping of all possible states of affairs included in its conceptual scheme. (shrink)

Inquiry into the history of practices in the manner of Foucault's philosophical genealogy requires that we distinguish between practical action, on the one hand, and mere behavior, on the other. The need for this distinction may help explicate an aspect of Foucault's philosophical genealogy that might otherwise appear misplaced, namely his attention to rationalities and its attendant conceptual material. This article shows how a genealogical attention to practice goes hand in hand with an attention to the role of the (...) conceptual within our practices. This is done by first drawing on considerations furnished by a Wittgensteinean branch in analytic philosophy recently developed by Robert Brandom. With an account of conceptual normativity and reflexivity in hand, the article turns second to a crucial site of conceptual self-transformation by drawing on work from a particular Foucauldian lineage developed in the work of Arnold Davidson. Davidson's work helps us understand the crucial status of concepts of persons for any historical inquiry into practices. (shrink)

Gödel argued that intuition has an important role to play in mathematical epistemology, and despite the infamy of his own position, this opinion still has much to recommend it. Intuitions and folk platitudes play a central role in philosophical enquiry too, and have recently been elevated to a central position in one project for understanding philosophical methodology: the so-called ‘Canberra Plan’. This philosophical role for intuitions suggests an analogous epistemology for some fundamental parts of mathematics, which casts a number of (...) themes in recent philosophy of mathematics (concerning a priority and fictionalism, for example) in revealing new light. (shrink)

The late scholastics, from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries, contributed to many fields of knowledge other than philosophy. They developed a method of conceptual analysis that was very productive in those disciplines in which theory is relatively more important than empirical results. That includes mathematics, where the scholastics developed the analysis of continuous motion, which fed into the calculus, and the theory of risk and probability. The method came to the fore especially in the social sciences. (...) In legal theory they developed, for example, the ethical analyses of the conditions of validity of contracts, and natural rights theory. In political theory, they introduced constitutionalism and the thought experiment of a “state of nature”. Their contributions to economics included concepts still regarded as basic, such as demand, capital, labour, and scarcity. Faculty psychology and semiotics are other areas of significance. In such disciplines, later developments rely crucially on scholastic concepts and vocabulary. (shrink)

The philosophical method of conceptual analysis has been criticised on the grounds that empirical psychological research has cast severe doubt on whether concepts exist in the form traditionally assumed, and that conceptual analysis therefore is doomed. This objection may be termed the Charge from Psychology. After a brief characterisation of conceptual analysis, I discuss the Charge from Psychology and argue that it is misdirected.

Frank Jackson and the author each take the other to hold a position in philosophy of mind that it is extremely difficult to sustain. This chapter tries to say something about how that can be. It seeks to demonstrate the sanity of Jackson's opponents and the fragility of his own position than to hold out for the truth of any particular doctrine. It wants to bring to the surface an assumption in ontology, which is seen as a crucial part of (...) the grounding of Jackson's particular version of physicalism. Once it is appreciated that this assumption is contestable, Jackson's opponents may be seen in a different light from the one in which they appear in his writings. More generally, a connection will appear between the vast literature on physicalism as a topic in philosophy of mind and the equally vast literature on material constitution as a topic in metaphysics. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie Jahrgang: 97 Heft: 4 Seiten: 416-457.

Gottlob Frege famously rejects the methodology for consistency and independence proofs offered by David Hilbert in the latter's Foundations of Geometry. The present essay defends against recent criticism the view that this rejection turns on Frege's understanding of logical entailment, on which the entailment relation is sensitive to the contents of non-logical terminology. The goals are (a) to clarify further Frege's understanding of logic and of the role of conceptual analysis in logical investigation, and (b) to point out (...) the extent to which his understanding of logic differs importantly from that of the model-theoretic tradition that grows out of Hilbert's work. (shrink)

Doxing is the intentional public release onto the Internet of personal information about an individual by a third party, often with the intent to humiliate, threaten, intimidate, or punish the identified individual. In this paper I present a conceptual analysis of the practice of doxing and how it differs from other forms of privacy violation. I distinguish between three types of doxing: deanonymizing doxing, where personal information establishing the identity of a formerly anonymous individual is released; targeting doxing, (...) that discloses personal information that reveals specific details of an individual’s circumstances that are usually private, obscure, or obfuscated; and delegitimizing doxing, which reveals intimate personal information that damages the credibility of that individual. I also describe how doxing differs from blackmail and defamation. I argue that doxing may be justified in cases where it reveals wrongdoing, but only if the information released is necessary to reveal that such wrongdoing has occurred and if it is in the public interest to reveal such wrongdoing. Revealing additional information, such as that which allows an individual to be targeted for harassment and intimidation, is unjustified. I illustrate my discussion with the examples of the alleged identification of the creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, by Newsweek magazine, the identification of the notorious Reddit user Violentacrez by the blog Gawker, and the harassment of game developer Zoe Quinn in the ‘GamerGate’ Internet campaign. (shrink)

The application of the conceptual analysis (CA) method outlined in Part I is illustrated on the example of quantum mechanics. In Part II, we deduce the complete-lattice structure in quantum mechanics from postulates specifying the idealizations that are accepted in the theory. The idealized abstract concepts are introduced by means of a topological extension of the basic structure (obtained in Part I) in accord with the “approximation principle”; the relevant topologies are not arbitrarily chosen; they are fixed by (...) the choice of the idealizations. There is a typical topological asymmetry in the mathematical scheme. Convexity or linear structures do not play any role in the mathematical methods of this approach. The essential concept in Part II is the idealization of “perfect measurement” suggested by our conceptual analysis in Part I. The Hilbert-space representation will be deduced in Part III. In our papers, we keep to the tenet: The mathematical scheme of a physical theory must be rigorously formulated. However, for physics, mathematics is only a nice and useful tool; it is not purpose. (shrink)

A method is proposed that should facilitate the construction of theories of “submicroscopic particles” (denoted as “theories of microchannels”) in a way similar to the use of group-theoretical methods. The “conceptual analysis” (CA) method is based on the analysis of the basic concepts of a theory; it permits a determination of necessary conditions imposed on the mathematical apparatus (of the theory) which then appear as a mathematical representation of the structures obtained in a formal scheme of a (...) theory. A pertinent conceptual analysis leads to a new definition (“relativization”) of the concept “empirical implication.” The approach may be characterized as “realistic” and “operational.” The application of the CA method is illustrated on the example of quantum theory. In Part I the algebraic structure of a partially ordered, up-ward directed, bounded set is deduced from the rudimentary concepts. In Parts II and III, we shall deduce the Hilbert-space structure (well established in quantum mechanics) from postulates on some essential idealizations accepted in the theory. Whereas Part II is concerned with the idealizations of existing quantum theories based on the Hilbert-space formalism, Part I may be considered as a general basis for a wider class of theories. (shrink)