Wesley Salmon provided three classic criteria of adequacy for satisfactory interpretations of probability. A fourth criterion is suggested here. A distinction is drawn between frequency‐driven probability models and theory‐driven probability models and it is argued that single case accounts of chance are superior to frequency accounts at least for the latter. Finally it is suggested that theories of chance should be required only to be contingently true, a position which is a natural extension of Salmon's ontic account of probabilistic (...) causality and his own later views on propensities. (shrink)

Wesley Salmon provided three classic criteria of adequacy for satisfactory interpretations of probability. A fourth criterion is suggested here. A distinction is drawn between frequency-driven probability models and theory-driven probability models and it is argued that single case accounts of chance are superior to frequency accounts at least for the latter. Finally it is suggested that theories of chance should be required only to be contingently true, a position which is a natural extension of Salmon's ontic account of probabilistic (...) causality and his own later views on propensities. (shrink)

The topic of this session is “physical randomness”. It might be doubted whether such a subject exists, for definitions of randomness have hitherto almost all been mathematical in nature. The only exceptions of which I am aware are the preceding paper by Benioff and a paper by Wesley Salmon. These attempts to inject some empirical content into randomness are highly desirable. But anyone attempting to formulate a physically based definition of randomness should at some point make clear what the (...) connection is (if any) with a more traditional notion of disorder - that of indeterminism. Repeated reference to quantum mechanical examples whenever physical randomness is discussed indicates that a primary motivation for considering physical randomness to be important is because of the current belief that data sequences associated with quantum mechanical experiments are irreducibly random. (As an indication of this, in any situation in which physical randomness is discussed, translate the remarks about quantum phenomena into remarks about coin tossing, and they will lose much of their interest.). (shrink)

Results: We analyzed 1,402 surveys and 15 in-depth interviews. Many (32%) CL participants reported greater difficulty refilling medications and a minority (14%) reported greater difficulty accessing HIV care during the pandemic. Most (99%) Opt4Mamas participants reported no difficulty refilling medications or accessing HIV/pregnancy care. Among the CL participants, older women were less likely (aOR = 0.95, 95% CI: 0.92–0.98) and women with more children were more likely (aOR = 1.13, 95% CI: 1.00–1.28) to report difficulty refilling medications. Only 2% of (...) CL participants reported greater difficulty managing FP and most (95%) reported no change in likelihood of using FP or desire to get pregnant. Qualitative analysis revealed three major themes: (1) adverse organizational/economic implications of the pandemic, (2) increased importance of pregnancy prevention during the pandemic, and (3) fear of contracting COVID-19. (shrink)

Two major functions of the visual system are discussed and contrasted. One function of vision is the creation of an internal model or percept of the external world. Most research in object perception has concentrated on this aspect of vision. Vision also guides the control of object-directed action. In the latter case, vision directs our actions with respect to the world by transforming visual inputs into appropriate motor outputs. We argue that separate, but interactive, visual systems have evolved for the (...) perception of objects on the one hand and the control of actions directed at those objects on the other. This 'duplex' approach to high-level vision suggests that Marrian or 'reconstructive' approaches and Gibsonian or 'purposive-animate-behaviorist' approaches need not be seen as mutually exclusive, but rather as complementary in their emphases on different aspects of visual function. (shrink)

Euclid’s Elements inspired a number of foundationalist accounts of mathematics, which dominated the epistemology of the discipline for many centuries in the West. Yet surprisingly little has been written by recent philosophers about this conception of mathematical knowledge. The great exception is Imre Lakatos, whose characterisation of the Euclidean Programme in the philosophy of mathematics counts as one of his central contributions. In this essay, we examine Lakatos’s account of the Euclidean Programme with a critical eye, and suggest an alternative (...) picture which builds on his work, but differs in a number of important respects. (shrink)

The philosophical theory of scientific explanation proposed here involves a radically new treatment of causality that accords with the pervasively statistical character of contemporary science. Wesley C. Salmon describes three fundamental conceptions of scientific explanation--the epistemic, modal, and ontic. He argues that the prevailing view is untenable and that the modal conception is scientifically out-dated. Significantly revising aspects of his earlier work, he defends a causal/mechanical theory that is a version of the ontic conception. Professor Salmon's theory furnishes a (...) robust argument for scientific realism akin to the argument that convinced twentieth-century physical scientists of the existence of atoms and molecules. To do justice to such notions as irreducibly statistical laws and statistical explanation, he offers a novel account of physical randomness. The transition from the "reviewed view" of scientific explanation to the causal/mechanical model requires fundamental rethinking of basic explanatory concepts. (shrink)

How is consciousness possible? What biological purpose does it serve? And why do we value it so highly? In Soul Dust, the psychologist Nicholas Humphrey, a leading figure in consciousness research, proposes a startling new theory. Consciousness, he argues, is nothing less than a magical-mystery show that we stage for ourselves inside our own heads. This self-made show lights up the world for us and makes us feel special and transcendent. Thus consciousness paves the way for spirituality, and allows (...) us, as human beings, to reap the rewards, and anxieties, of living in what Humphrey calls the "soul niche." Tightly argued, intellectually gripping, and a joy to read, Soul Dust provides answers to the deepest questions. It shows how the problem of consciousness merges with questions that obsess us all--how life should be lived and the fear of death. Resting firmly on neuroscience and evolutionary theory, and drawing a wealth of insights from philosophy and literature..."--Jacket. (shrink)

This is the general introduction to the edited collection "A companion to Experimental Philosophy".

For children, the collateral damage of the COVID-19 pandemic response has been considerable. In this paper, we use the framework of evidence-based medicine to argue that child abuse is another negative side effect of COVID-19 lockdowns. While it was certain that school closures would have profound social and economic costs, it remains uncertain whether they have any effect on COVID-19 transmission. There is emerging evidence that lockdowns significantly worsened child abuse on a global scale. Low-income and middle-income countries are particularly (...) vulnerable to increases in child abuse. The best available external evidence from systematic research during the pandemic demonstrates an increase in the risk of child maltreatment, an increase in child maltreatment hospitalisations and a concerning decrease in official child maltreatment referrals. The paradoxical phenomenon of increased hospitalisations and decreased reports is unlikely to be explained by a genuine decrease in child abuse. We conclude that lockdowns have an unacceptably high risk of negative side effects for children, as evidenced by child abuse, the true extent of which appears to be masked by lockdown-related disruptions to schools and other surveillance systems. The desire for a sense of security may be a tempting bias towards emphasising the resilience of children, but it is ethically problematic to push children towards abuse in the name of public health. It is our view that the collateral damage of prolonged school closures for society’s most vulnerable members is a powerful ethical consideration against any pandemic response which involves their use. (shrink)

A common complaint against Kripke’s Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language is that whereas the aim of “the real” Wittgenstein’s private language argument is to establish the impossibility of a necessarily private language, the communitarian account of meaning proposed by Kripke’s Wittgenstein (KW), if successful, would establish the impossibility of a contingently private language. I show that this common complaint is based on a failure of Kripke’s critics (a failure that is justified, in part, by Kripke’s text) to recognize and (...) understand his distinction between a “physically isolated” individual (PII) and an individual “considered in isolation” (ICl) . It is only an ICI for whom rule following and language are rendered impossible by KW. l then show that an lel speaks a necessarily private language. Thus, KW’s private language argument gives us, at best, the same story about the impossibility of private language as pre-Kripke accounts of Wittgenstein’s private language argument. (shrink)

We continue the work of [14, 3, 1, 19, 16, 4, 12, 11, 20] investigating the strength of set existence axioms needed for separable Banach space theory. We show that the separation theorem for open convex sets is equivalent to WKL 0 over RCA 0 . We show that the separation theorem for separably closed convex sets is equivalent to ACA 0 over RCA 0 . Our strategy for proving these geometrical Hahn-Banach theorems is to reduce to the finite-dimensional case (...) by means of a compactness argument. (shrink)

A common complaint against Kripke’s Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language is that whereas the aim of “the real” Wittgenstein’s private language argument is to establish the impossibility of a necessarily private language, the communitarian account of meaning proposed by Kripke’s Wittgenstein , if successful, would establish the impossibility of a contingently private language. I show that this common complaint is based on a failure of Kripke’s critics to recognize and understand his distinction between a “physically isolated” individual and an (...) individual “considered in isolation” . It is only an ICI for whom rule following and language are rendered impossible by KW. l then show that an lel speaks a necessarily private language. Thus, KW’s private language argument gives us, at best, the same story about the impossibility of private language as pre-Kripke accounts of Wittgenstein’s private language argument. (shrink)

A common complaint against Kripke’s Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language is that whereas the aim of “the real” Wittgenstein’s private language argument is to establish the impossibility of a necessarily private language, the communitarian account of meaning proposed by Kripke’s Wittgenstein (KW), if successful, would establish the impossibility of a contingently private language. I show that this common complaint is based on a failure of Kripke’s critics (a failure that is justified, in part, by Kripke’s text) to recognize and (...) understand his distinction between a “physically isolated” individual (PII) and an individual “considered in isolation” (ICl). It is only an ICI for whom rule following and language are rendered impossible by KW. l then show that an lel speaks a necessarily private language. Thus, KW’s private language argument gives us, at best, the same story about the impossibility of private language as pre-Kripke accounts of Wittgenstein’s private language argument. (shrink)

We continue the work of [14, 3, 1, 19, 16, 4, 12, 11, 20] investigating the strength of set existence axioms needed for separable Banach space theory. We show that the separation theorem for open convex sets is equivalent to WKL$_0$ over RCA$_0$. We show that the separation theorem for separably closed convex sets is equivalent to ACA$_0$ over RCA$_0$. Our strategy for proving these geometrical Hahn-Banach theorems is to reduce to the finite-dimensional case by means of a compactness argument.

The Euclidean Programme embodies a traditional sort of epistemological foundationalism, according to which knowledge – especially mathematical knowledge – is obtained by deduction from self-evident axioms or first principles. Epistemologists have examined foundationalism extensively, but neglected its historically dominant Euclidean form. By contrast, this book offers a detailed examination of Euclidean foundationalism, which, following Lakatos, the authors call the Euclidean Programme. The book rationally reconstructs the programme's key principles, showing it to be an epistemological interpretation of the axiomatic method. It (...) then compares the reconstructed programme with select historical sources: Euclid's Elements, Aristotle's Posterior Analytics, Descartes's Discourse on Method, Pascal's On the Geometric Mind and a twentieth-century account of axiomatisation. The second half of the book philosophically assesses the programme, exploring whether various areas of contemporary mathematics conform to it. The book concludes by outlining a replacement for the Euclidean Programme. (shrink)

This chapter addresses the issue of the underrepresentation of women in philosophy by presenting an account regarding gender differences in philosophical institutions. It begins with an analysis of data on the gender gap in academic philosophy; followed by a discussion about the term “intuition,”as well as the tendency to appeal to intuitions during philosophical arguments. It then presents empirical data about gender differences derived from a series of experiments such as a Gettier-style case study of Christina Starmans and Ori Friedman, (...) a philosophical thought experiment of Geoffrey Holtzman, and one of David Pizarro about moral responsibility and causal deviance, among others; one hypothesis derived from these studies pertains to the distinct differences between women and mens' intuitions regarding philosophy, with the instructors deciding that the mens' are more correct. (shrink)

The 2015 Paris Agreement set a global warming limit of 2°C above preindustrial levels. Corporations play an important role in achieving this objective, and methods have recently been developed to map global climate targets to specific industries, and individual corporations within those industries. In this article, we assess whether Sustainability ratings capture corporate performance in meeting the 2°C target. We analyze nine rating schemes used by investors and three commonly used in academic studies. Most rating schemes do consider corporate greenhouse (...) gas emissions in their analysis, whereas only a minority scale emissions by factors that have the potential to allow benchmarking against science-based targets. None take the final step of mapping climate indicators against the 2°C target. Furthermore, we find a lack of consistency in the climate change ratings of the databases used in academic studies. These results are concerning in the context of being able to meet global climate change goals. (shrink)

This handbook provides both an overview of state-of-the-art scholarship in philosophy of science, as well as a guide to new directions in the discipline. Section I contains broad overviews of the main lines of research and the state of established knowledge in six principal areas of the discipline, including computational, physical, biological, psychological and social sciences, as well as general philosophy of science. Section II covers what are considered to be the traditional topics in the philosophy of science, such as (...) causation, probability, models, ethics and values, and explanation. Section III identifies new areas of investigation that show promise of becoming important areas of research, including the philosophy of astronomy and astrophysics, data, complexity theory, neuroscience, simulations, post-Kuhnian philosophy, post-empiricist epistemology, and emergence. Most chapters are accessible to scientifically educated non-philosophers as well as to professional philosophers, and the contributors - all leading researchers in their field -- bring diverse perspectives from the North American, European, and Australasian research communities. This volume is an essential resource for scholars and students. (shrink)

The McCollough effect, an orientation-contingent color aftereffect, has been known for over 30 years and, like other aftereffects, has been taken as a means of probing the brain's operations psychophysically. In this paper, we review psychophysical, neuropsychological, and neuroimaging studies of the McCollough effect. Much of the evidence suggests that the McCollough effect depends on neural mechanisms that are located early in the cortical visual pathways, probably in V1. We also review evidence showing that the aftereffect can be induced without (...) conscious perception of the induction patterns. Based on these two lines of evidence, it is argued that our conscious visual experience of the world arises in the cortical visual system beyond V1. (shrink)

Epistemic modals have peculiar logical features that are challenging to account for in a broadly classical framework. For instance, while a sentence of the form $$p\wedge \Diamond \lnot p$$ (‘p, but it might be that not p’) appears to be a contradiction, $$\Diamond \lnot p$$ does not entail $$\lnot p$$, which would follow in classical logic. Likewise, the classical laws of distributivity and disjunctive syllogism fail for epistemic modals. Existing attempts to account for these facts generally either under- or over-correct. (...) Some theories predict that $$ p\wedge \Diamond \lnot p$$, a so-called epistemic contradiction, is a contradiction only in an etiolated sense, under a notion of entailment that does not always allow us to replace $$p\wedge \Diamond \lnot p$$ with a contradiction; these theories underpredict the infelicity of embedded epistemic contradictions. Other theories savage classical logic, eliminating not just rules that intuitively fail, like distributivity and disjunctive syllogism, but also rules like non-contradiction, excluded middle, De Morgan’s laws, and disjunction introduction, which intuitively remain valid for epistemic modals. In this paper, we aim for a middle ground, developing a semantics and logic for epistemic modals that makes epistemic contradictions genuine contradictions and that invalidates distributivity and disjunctive syllogism but that otherwise preserves classical laws that intuitively remain valid. We start with an algebraic semantics, based on ortholattices instead of Boolean algebras, and then propose a possibility semantics, based on partial possibilities related by compatibility. Both semantics yield the same consequence relation, which we axiomatize. We then show how to lift an arbitrary possible worlds model for a non-modal language to a possibility model for a language with epistemic modals. The goal throughout is to retain what is desirable about classical logic while accounting for the non-classicality of epistemic vocabulary. (shrink)

In two of the earliest papers on extending modal logic with propositional quantifiers, R. A. Bull and K. Fine studied a modal logic S5Π extending S5 with axioms and rules for propositional quantification. Surprisingly, there seems to have been no proof in the literature of the completeness of S5Π with respect to its most natural algebraic semantics, with propositional quantifiers interpreted by meets and joins over all elements in a complete Boolean algebra. In this note, we give such a proof. (...) This result raises the question: For which normal modal logics. (shrink)

It is widely accepted in epistemology that knowledge is factive, meaning that only truths can be known. We argue that this theory creates a skeptical challenge: because many of our beliefs are only approximately true, and therefore false, they do not count as knowledge. We consider several responses to this challenge and propose a new one. We propose easing the truth requirement on knowledge to allow approximately true, practically adequate representations to count as knowledge. In addition to addressing the skeptical (...) challenge, this view also coheres with several previous theoretical proposals in epistemology. (shrink)

We describe food transfer patterns among Ache Indians living on a permanent reservation. The social atmosphere at the reservation is characterized by a larger group size, a more predictable diet, and more privacy than the Ache typically experience in the forest while on temporary foraging treks. Although sharing patterns vary by resource type and package size, much of the food available at the reservation is given to members of just a few other families. We find significant positive correlations between amounts (...) transferred among pairs of families, a measure of the "contingency" component required of reciprocal altruism models. These preferred sharing partners are usually close kin. We explore implications of these results in light of predictions from current sharing models. (shrink)

Pedagogy is a pillar of human culture and society. Telling each other information and showing each other how to do things comes naturally to us. A strong case has been made that declarative knowledge is the norm of assertion, which is our primary way of telling others information. This article presents an analogous case for the hypothesis that procedural knowledge is the norm of instructional demonstration, which is a primary way of showing others how to do things. Knowledge is the (...) norm of telling and showing. It is the prime pedagogical principle. (shrink)

The traditional definition per genus et differentiam is argued to be cognitively grounded in perception and in order to avoid needless argument, definitions are stipulated to assert boundaries. An analysis of the notion of perspective shows that a boundary is a composite of two distinctions: similarity that includes and difference that excludes. The concept is applied to the type-token distinction and percepts are shown to be the result of a comparison between a token as representing some phenomenon and a type (...) as representing the kind of object the phenomenon might be. The Principle of Connection is proposed as the mental architecture that gives rise to percepts. The value of a percept is shown to be one of Identical, Similar, Different or Contrary and its perceptual aspects represent the cognitive schema of Essence, Quality, Quantity and Relation. The two notions of similarity and difference are claimed to constitute the necessary and sufficient conditions for definitions. Accordingly, the qualitative elements of a definition signify the genus as representing the similarity of the defined entity in terms of others of its kind and the quantitative elements signify the differentia as representing the difference it has from everything else. Paying proper attention to both qualitative and quantitative aspects will enable formulation of definitions that are ‘good’. (shrink)

Reasons are given to justify the claim that computer simulations and computational science constitute a distinctively new set of scientific methods and that these methods introduce new issues in the philosophy of science. These issues are both epistemological and methodological in kind.

This paper is a critical analysis of Putnam’s “consistency objection,” an objection made against a particular reading of Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mathematics (“up-to-us-ism”). I show that Putnam’s objection presupposes a rather unlikely version of Wittgenstein’s “up-to-us-ism” and is unable to undermine a more likely anti-Platonist version. I also show that a companion argument, (the “something more” argument) is unable to overturn this more sophisticated anti-Platonist version of Wittgenstein’s up-to-us-ism. Along the way I try to clarify Wittgenstein’s anti-Plalonist account of mathematics, (...) so that others do not repeat Putnam’s mistake. (shrink)

This paper is a critical analysis of Putnam’s “consistency objection,” an objection made against a particular reading of Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mathematics (“up-to-us-ism”). I show that Putnam’s objection presupposes a rather unlikely version of Wittgenstein’s “up-to-us-ism” and is unable to undermine a more likely anti-Platonist version. I also show that a companion argument, (the “something more” argument) is unable to overturn this more sophisticated anti-Platonist version of Wittgenstein’s up-to-us-ism. Along the way I try to clarify Wittgenstein’s anti-Plalonist account of mathematics, (...) so that others do not repeat Putnam’s mistake. (shrink)