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338720.312354
Epistemology has taken a zetetic turn from the study of belief towards the study of inquiry. Several decades ago, theories of bounded rationality took a procedural turn from attitudes towards the processes of inquiry that produce them. What is the relationship between the zetetic and procedural turns? In this paper, I argue that we should treat the zetetic turn in epistemology as part of a broader procedural turn in the study of bounded rationality. I use this claim to motivate and clarify the zetetic turn in epistemology, as well as to reveal the need for a second zetetic turn within practical philosophy.
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388068.312655
Metric poetry is rhythmic language laid above, and to some degree matching, an underlying pulse. If you do not know where in that pulse you are, you may mangle the verse. In iambic pentameter the pulse is easy: five strong beats, separated by weaker off-beats. …
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403607.312686
The quarantine model, recently proposed by Pereboom and Caruso, is one of the most influential models developed to date in the context of criminal justice. The quarantine model challenges the very idea of criminal punishment and asserts that nobody deserves punishment on a fundamental level. Instead, in order to deal with offenders, it proposes a series of incapacitation measures based on public safety concerns. In this article, we examine several objections to the quarantine model that demonstrate how, in our view, it can be improved. These mainly pertain to (2.1) the difficulty of reliably identifying dangerous individuals and consequently the need to base confinement decisions on probability, and (2.2) the potential for the quarantine model not to properly deter certain crimes. Three additional objections are raised with respect to (3.1) the rights that are potentially suppressed in the quarantine model; (3.2) the role of “genetic justice”; and (3.3) the difficulty it faces accommodating reasons-responsiveness. Whereas these objections do not constitute knock-down arguments against the quarantine model, they highlight issues that invite closer scrutiny, at least if it is to be considered as a credible framework for the development of viable policies in criminal justice.
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406347.312707
This paper does two things. First, it reviews the recent debate between Halvorson and Manchak (2022) and Menon and Read (2024), looking for a reading of the former that is sympathetic to the concerns of the latter. Second, it considers whether there is a notion of determinism for spacetime theories that is adequate for the purposes of (Halvorson & Manchak, 2022); it concludes that there is not, but that we learn much of interest by considering the question.
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406371.314272
I apply Dennett’s ‘real patterns’ idea to the ontology of physics, and specifically to the puzzle of how to relate the very different ontologies one finds at different scales in physics (e.g. particles vs continua, or fields vs particles). I argue that real patterns provide part but not all of the answer to the puzzle, and locate the rest of the answer in the structural-realist idea that ontology in general is secondary to (mathematically-presented) structure. I make some suggestions for the application of these ideas outside physics, including in the philosophy of mind context that motivated Dennett’s original proposal.
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406397.314338
I show that frequentism, as an explanation of probability in classical statistical mechanics, can be extended in a natural way to a decoherent quantum history space, the analogue of a classical phase space. The result is further a form of finite frequentism, in which Gibbs’ concept of an infinite ensemble of gases is replaced by the total quantum state expressed in terms of the decoherence basis, as defined by the history space. It is a form of finite and actual frequentism (as opposed to hypothetical frequentism), insofar as all the microstates exist, in keeping with the decoherence-based Everett interpretation, and some versions of pilot-wave theory.
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406424.314389
We discuss the challenges that the standard (Humean and non-Humean) accounts of laws face within the framework of quantum gravity where space and time may not be fundamental. This paper identifies core (meta)physical features that cut across a number of quantum gravity approaches and formalisms and that provide seeds for articulating updated conceptions that could account for QG laws not involving any spatio-temporal notions. To this aim, we will in particular highlight the constitutive roles of quantum entanglement, quantum transition amplitudes and quantum causal histories. These features also stress the fruitful overlap between quantum gravity and quantum information theory. Keywords: spacetime, laws of nature, quantum gravity, quantum entanglement, transition amplitude, quantum causal histories.
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406505.314435
Chronostratigraphy is the subfield of geology that studies the relative age of rock strata and that aims at producing a hierarchical classification of (global) divisions of the historical time-rock record. The ‘golden spike’ or ‘GSSP’ approach is the cornerstone of contemporary chronostratigraphic methodology. It is also perplexing. Chronostratigraphers define each global time-rock boundary extremely locally, often by driving a gold-colored pin into an exposed rock section at a particular level. Moreover, they usually avoid rock sections that show any meaningful sign of paleontological disruption or geological discontinuity: the less obvious the boundary, the better. It has been argued that we can make sense of this practice of marking boundaries by comparing the status and function of golden spikes to that of other concrete, particular reference standards from other sciences: holotypes from biological taxonomy and measurement prototypes from the metrology of weight and measures. Alisa Bokulich (2020b) has argued that these ‘scientific types’ are in an important sense one of a kind: they have a common status and function. I will argue that this picture of high-level conceptual unity is mistaken and fails to consider the diversity of aims and purposes of standardization and classification across the sciences. I develop an alternative, disunified account of scientific types that shows how differences in ontological attitudes and epistemic aims inform scientists’ choices between different kinds of scientific types. This perspective on scientific types helps to make sense of an intriguing mid-twentieth-century debate among chronostratigraphers about the very nature of their enterprise. Should chronostratigraphers conventionally make boundaries by designating golden spikes, or should they attempt to mark pre-existing ‘natural’ boundaries with the help of a different kind of scientific type?
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406546.314484
The early history of string theory is marked by a shift from strong interaction physics to quantum gravity. The first string models and associated theoretical framework were formulated in the late 1960s and early 1970s in the context of the S-matrix program for the strong interactions. In the mid-1970s, the models were reinterpreted as a potential theory unifying the four fundamental forces. This paper provides a historical analysis of how string theory was developed out of S-matrix physics, aiming to clarify how modern string theory, as a theory detached from experimental data, grew out of an S-matrix program that was strongly dependent upon observable quantities. Surprisingly, the theoretical practice of physicists already turned away from experiment before string theory was recast as a potential unified quantum gravity theory. With the formulation of dual resonance models (the hadronic string theory ), physicists were able to determine almost all of the models parameters on the basis of theoretical reasoning. It was this commitment to non-arbitrariness , i.e., a lack of free parameters in the theory, that initially drove string theorists away from experimental input, and not the practical inaccessibility of experimental data in the context of quantum gravity physics. This is an important observation when assessing the role of experimental data in string theory.
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410327.314538
One of the most common fallacies in applied ethics and public policy is to reason from “X is good” to “Doing Y without X should be prohibited”. Presumably the implicit thought is that by prohibiting not-X, you’ll get more X. …
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425666.314573
While effective altruists (EAs) spend a lot of time researching which ways to do good are the most effective, historically many have assumed, with relatively little argument, that the benchmark for membership in the movement is a commitment to donate 10% of your earnings. This points to an asymmetry between the two halves of effective altruism: EAs tend to have relatively restricted standards for effectiveness (where to give), but they have much looser standards for altruism (how much to give). I investigate explanations for this asymmetry. While some possible justifications may work (pending empirical support), others look flimsier. I conclude that this means EA likely is, or anyway ought to be, more demanding than some of its proponents currently claim.
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435329.314621
In thought insertion, patients claim to have thoughts which are not their own. I offer an account of the thought insertion delusion by utilising the notion of commitment, that is, the experience of a conscious state as being appropriate or fitting. The proposed explanation of thought insertion relies on two main tenets. One is that the experience of a thought as being one's own is the experience of regarding that thought as being correct. The other is that patients with thought insertion do not experience being committed to the thoughts that they disown. I extend this account to the case of patient RB, who disowns some of his conscious memories, and to the case of anarchic hand syndrome, in which patients disown some of their conscious actions.
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465897.314658
Legend has it that Damion Searls learnt Norwegian in order to translate Jon Fosse, whom he had read in German and identified as a genius. Searls’ translations of Fosse are, by all accounts, superb. So it is intriguing to learn that he has now translated Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, joining other post-centenary interpreters, Michael Beaney, a historian of early analytic philosophy, and Alexander Booth, a poet. …
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511861.314691
This is an original manuscript of an article published in Australasian Journal of Philosophy, available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/00048402.2024.2339470. John Maier’s Options and Agency is an excellent book. It is brimming with insights and original ideas; in just about 160 pages of text, it provides the reader with an entirely novel perspective on different issues in metaphysics, semantics, and the philosophy of action. It is lucidly written and a joy to read. While we disagree with some core points (to be elaborated below), we highly recommend the book to anyone interested in agency, modality, and the intersection between the two. Maier voices an attractive ambition: we should work towards a philosophy of agency that emphasises the possible and the future, not a philosophy of action that privileges the actual and the past. To understand agency, Maier argues, we must start from the plurality of options that agents face at every stage of their lives. These options are practically indispensable, analytically irreducible, and key to explaining how human (and perhaps also other) beings can have free will.
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520723.314724
In a July 19, 2019 post I discussed The New England Journal of Medicine’s response to Wasserstein’s (2019) call for journals to change their guidelines in reaction to the “abandon significance” drive. …
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569657.31477
Issues of reliability are claiming center-stage in the epistemology of machine learning. This paper unifies different branches in the literature and points to promising research directions, whilst also providing an accessible introduction to key concepts in statistics and machine learning – as far as they are concerned with reliability.
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569686.314812
The current literature on norms of inquiry features two families of norms: norms that focus on an inquirer’s ignorance and norms that focus on the question’s soundness. I argue that, given a factive conception of ignorance, it’s possible to derive a soundness-style norm from a version of the ignorance norm. A crucial lemma in the argument is that just as one can only be ignorant of a proposition if the proposition is true, so one can only be ignorant with respect to a question if the question is sound.
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569710.314874
In my view, Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd is one of the very best works of modern musical theater. When I learn that it will be performed nearby, I begin to look into buying tickets. That is not to say that I always end up going: in many cases, the tickets are too expensive; in others, I learn something disappointing about the casting choice or announced changes to the book or the songs; in others, I have other plans that make it impossible to attend. However, whether or not I end up attending, my immediate response to learning that Sweeney Todd is being staged is to be moved to try to attend. By contrast, I do not think very highly of Lerner and Loewe’s Camelot. If I were to learn that Camelot was being staged near me, I would not bother to check ticket prices. I doubt I would see it even if it were free, unless there were some independent consideration moving me to do so, such as a desire to accompany a friend. It seems natural to explain the difference in my motivations in these two cases by pointing to the difference in my judgements of the merits of the two musicals. My high opinion of Sweeney Todd explains my motivation to see it again; my low opinion of Camelot explains my lack of motivation to revisit it.
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592703.314927
I’ve been thinking a bit about the relationship between dignity and value. Here are four plausible principles:
If x has dignity, then x has great non-instrumental value. If x has dignity, then x has great non-instrumental value because it has dignity. …
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627508.314959
The development of reasoning skills is often regarded as a central goal of ethics and philosophy classes in school education. In light of recent studies from the field of moral psychology, however, it could be objected that the promotion of such skills might fail to meet another important objective, namely the moral education of students. In this paper, I will argue against such pessimism by suggesting that the fostering of reasoning skills can still contribute to the aims of moral education. To do so, I will engage with the concept of moral education, point out different ways in which reasoning skills play an essential role in it, and support these considerations by appealing to further empirical studies. My conclusion will be that the promotion of ethical reasoning skills fulfils two important aims of moral education: First, it enables students to critically reflect on their ethical beliefs. Second, it allows them to explore ethical questions in a joint conversation with others. Lastly, I will refer to education in the field of sustainable development in order to exemplify the importance of these abilities.
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627541.315001
According to the causal-historical theory of reference, natural kind terms refer in virtue of complicated causal relations the speakers have to their environment. A common objection to the theory is that purely causal relations are insufficient to fix reference in a determinate fashion. The so-called hybrid view holds that what is also needed for successful fixing are true descriptions associated in the mind of the speaker with the referent. The main claim of this paper is that the objection fails: reference fixing of natural kind terms can be purely causal. The main argument draws inspiration from recent theoretical advances made in metaphysics of kinds by Marion Godman, Antonella Mallozzi, and David Papineau. The main claim is that their notion of super-explanatory properties may explain how reference of many kind terms can be fixed purely causally.
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627568.315053
In this paper, I aim to discuss what puns, metaphysically, are. I argue that the type-token view of words leads to an indeterminacy problem when we consider puns. I then outline an alternative account of puns, based on recent nominalist views of words, that does not suffer from this indeterminacy.
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637121.315099
The simulation hypothesis has recently excited renewed interest, especially in the physics and philosophy communities. However, the hypothesis specifically concerns computers that simulate physical universes, which means that to properly investigate it we need to couple computer science theory with physics. Here I do this by exploiting the physical Church-Turing thesis. This allows me to introduce a preliminary investigation of some of the computer science theoretic aspects of the simulation hypothesis. In particular, building on Kleene’s second recursion theorem, I prove that it is mathematically possible for us to be in a simulation that is being run on a computer by us. In such a case, there would be two identical instances of us; the question of which of those is “really us” is meaningless. I also show how Rice’s theorem provides some interesting impossibility results concerning simulation and self-simulation; briefly describe the philosophical implications of fully homomorphic encryption for (self-)simulation; briefly investigate the graphical structure of universes simulating universes simulating universes, among other issues. I end by describing some of the possible avenues for future research that this preliminary investigation reveals.
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637150.315157
This paper first proposes the concept of " graph ecology " , an emerging discipline that combines graph theory and complex network theory with ecological research. The article begins by introducing the influence of Western philosophy (including holism and systems theory) and Eastern philosophy (especially Taoism) on ecological theory and practice. Then, we deeply explore the roots of graph theory and complex network theory in Eastern and Western philosophy and their application in ecosystem analysis, highlighting the importance of graph ecology in understanding the complexity of ecosystems, especially in revealing ecological networks. Structural and functional role. The article further discusses the differences and complementarities between graph ecology and traditional ecology, and how graph ecology promotes the development of the entire field of ecology. Finally, the application prospects and challenges of graph ecology are discussed, as well as calls for future research directions and interdisciplinary cooperation. This article highlights the critical role of graph ecology in promoting the development of ecological theory and effectively addressing environmental challenges.
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637180.315199
Among the various attempts to formulate a theory of quantum gravity, a class of approaches suggests that spacetime, as modeled by general relativity, is destined to fade away. A major issue becomes then to identify which structures may inhabit the more fundamental, non-spatiotemporal environment, as well as to explain the relationship with the higher-level spatiotemporal physics. Recently, it has been suggested that a certain understanding of functionalism is the proper tool to suitably account for the recovery of spacetime. Here the viability and usefulness of such a conceptual strategy is explored, by looking at the various levels of spacetime emergence a theory of quantum gravity is expected to deal with. Our conclusion will be that, while its viability is clear also in a quantum gravity context, the import of spacetime functionalism remains rather unsettled.
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637209.315232
ABSTRACT: While there is considerable disagreement on the precise nature of material objecthood, it is standardly assumed that material objects must be spatial. In this paper, I provide two arguments against this assumption. The first argument is made from largely a priori considerations about modal plenitude. The possibility of non-spatial material objects follows from commitment to certain plausible principles governing material objecthood and plausible principles regarding modal plenitude. The second argument draws from current philosophical discussions regarding theories of quantum gravity and the emergence of spacetime. When it is appreciated what possible worlds these current theories commit us to, the possibility of non-spatial material objects will follow. Thus, either route will lead us to the possibility of non-spatial material objects. The significance of this result is that we need to revise our accounts of material objecthood to both accommodate these possibilities and the theories that lead to them.
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638343.315267
Tsongkhapa Losang Drakpa (1357–1419) is a well-known Tibetan
religious philosopher and one of the most influential and innovative
scholars and practitioners in the history of Tibetan Buddhism. He
added to the Tibetan Buddhist traditions more globally by setting a
paradigm to integrate theory and practice while maintaining focus on
ethics, monastic discipline, and the traditions of scholarship and
meditation within the esoteric Buddhist tradition. His main
contribution to Buddhist philosophy was to show how to develop a
robust realism about the conventional world, and how to make sense of
epistemology and the possibility of knowledge in the context of global
illusion.
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647750.315299
On June 1, 2019, I posted portions of an article [i],“There is Still a Place for Significance Testing in Clinical Trials,” in Clinical Trials responding to the 2019 call to abandon significance. I reblog it here. …
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682334.315344
On desire-fulfillment (DF) theories of wellbeing, cases of fulfilled desire are an increment to utility. What about cases of unfulfilled desire? On DF theories, we have a choice point. We could say that unfulfilled desires don’t count at all—it’s just that one doesn’t get the increment from the desire being fulfilled—or that they are a decrement. …
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682582.315383
The main message of Neuroethics is that neuroscience forces us to reconceptualize human agency as marvelously diverse and flexible. Free will can arise from unconscious brain processes. Individuals with mental disorders, including addiction and psychopathy, exhibit more agency than is often recognized. Brain interventions should be embraced with cautious optimism. Our moral intuitions, which arise from entangled reason and emotion, can generally be trusted. Nevertheless, we can and should safely enhance our brain chemistry, partly because motivated reasoning crops up in everyday life and in the practice of neuroscience itself. Despite serious limitations, brain science can be useful in the courtroom and marketplace. Recognizing all this nuance leaves little room for anxious alarmism or overhype and urges an emphasis on neurodiversity. The result is a highly opinionated tour of neuroethics as an exciting field full of implications for philosophy, science, medicine, law, and public policy.