Philosophical Progress

Articles and blog posts found on 09 May 2024

2024-05-09T23:59:00Z

A. K. Flowerree: Reasoning Through Narrative (pdf, 8846 words)

A peculiar feature of our species is that we settle what to believe, value, and do by reasoning through narratives. A narrative is adiachronic, information-rich story that contains persons, objects, and at least one event. When we reason through narrative, we usenarrative to settle what to do, to make predictions, to guide normative expectations, and to ground which reactive attitudes we think areappropriate in a situation. Narratives explain, justify, and provide understanding. Narratives play a ubiquitous role in human reasoning. Andyet, narratives do not seem up to the task. Narratives are often unmoored representations (either because they are do not purport to referto the actual world, or because they are grossly oversimplified, or because are known to be literally false). Against this, I argue thatnarratives guide our reasoning by shaping our grasp of modal structure: what is possible, probable, plausible, permissible, required,relevant, desirable and good. Narratives are good guides to reasoning when they guide us to accurate judgments about modal space. Icall this the modal model of narrative. In this paper, I develop an account of how narratives function in reasoning, as well as an account ofwhen reasoning through narrative counts as good reasoning.

Christian de Ronde, Raimundo Fernández Mouján, Cesar Massri: Everything is Entangled in Quantum Mechanics: Are the Orthodox Measures Physically Meaningful? (pdf, 16442 words)

Even though quantum entanglement is today’s most essential concept within the new technological era of quantum information processing, we do not only lack a consistent definition of this kernel notion, we are also far from understanding its physical meaning [35]. These failures have lead to many problems when attempting to provide a consistent measure or quantification of entanglement. In fact, the two main lines of contemporary research within the orthodox literature have created mazes where inconsistencies and problems are found everywhere.

Kit Fine, Louis deRosset: Truthmaker Semantics, Ground, and Generality (pdf, 5755 words)

Our aim in this paper is to extend the semantics for the kind of logic of ground developed in [deRosset and Fine, 2023]. In that paper, the authors very briefly suggested a way of treating universal and existential quantification over a fixed domain of objects. Here we explore some options for extending the treatment to allow for a variable domain of objects.

Kit Fine, Louis deRosset: Approaches to the Impure Logic of Ground (pdf, 7127 words)

This paper is concerned with the semantics for the logics of ground that derive from a slight variant GG of the logic of [Fine, 2012b] that have already been developed in [deRosset and Fine, 2023]. Our aim is to outline that semantics and to provide a comparison with two related semantics for ground, given in [Correia, 2017] and [Kramer, 2018a]. This comparison highlights the strengths and difficulties of these different approaches. KEYWORDS: Impure Logic of Ground; Truthmaker Semantics; Logic of Ground; Ground This paper concerns the semantics for the logics of ground deriving from a slight variant GG of the logic of [Fine, 2012b] that have already been developed in [deRosset and Fine, 2023]. Our aim is to outline that semantics and to provide a comparison with two related semantics for ground, given in [Correia, 2017] and [Kramer, 2018a]. This will serve to highlight the strengths and difficulties of these different approaches. In particular, it will show how deRosset and Fine’s approach has a greater degree of flexibility in its ability to acccommodate different extensions of a basic minimal system of ground. We shall assume that the reader is already acquainted with some of the basic work on ground and on the framework of truthmaker semantics. Some background material may be found in [Fine, 2012b, 2017a,b].

Siyu Yao, Amit Hagar: Searching for Features with Artificial Neural Networks in Science: The Problem of Non-Uniqueness (pdf, 8155 words)

Artificial neural networks and supervised learning have become an essential part of science. Beyond using them for accurate input-output mapping, there is growing attention to a new feature-oriented approach. Under the assumption that networks optimized for a task may have learned to represent and utilize important features of the target system for that task, scientists examine how those networks manipulate inputs and employ the features networks capture for scientific discovery. We analyse this approach, show its hidden caveats, and suggest its legitimate use. We distinguish three things that scientists call a “feature”: parametric, diagnostic, and real-world features. The feature-oriented approach aims for real-world features by interpreting the former two, which also partially rely on the network. We argue that this approach faces a problem of non-uniqueness: there are numerous discordant parametric and diagnostic features and ways to interpret them. When the approach aims at novel discovery, scientists often need to choose between those options, but they lack the background knowledge to justify their choices. Consequentially, features thus identified are not promised to be real. We argue that they should not be used as evidence but only used instrumentally. We also suggest transparency in feature selection and the plurality of choices.

Wei Fang: Multilevel Modeling and the Explanatory Autonomy of Psychology (pdf, 7414 words)

This article argues for the explanatory autonomy of psychology drawing on cases from the multilevel modeling practice. This is done by considering a multilevel linear model in personality and social psychology, and discussing its philosophical implications for the reductionism debate in philosophy of psychology. I argue that this practice challenges the reductionist position in philosophy of psychology, and supports the explanatory autonomy of psychology.

Wei Fang: Design Principles as Minimal Models (doc, 10318 words)

In this essay I suggest that we view design principles in systems biology as minimal models, for a design principle usually exhibits universal behaviors that are common to a whole range of heterogeneous (living and nonliving) systems with different underlying mechanisms. A well-known design principle in systems biology, i ntegral feedback control, is discussed, showing that it satisfies all the conditions for a model to be a minimal model. This approach has significant philosophical implications: it not only accounts for how design principles explain, but also helps clarify one dispute over design principles, e.g., whether design principles provide mechanistic explanations or a distinct kind of explanations called design explanations.

Bet On It: The Fertile Formula (html, 177 words)

Here’s a comprehensive tax modification I’ve been daydreaming about. While my first choice is just giving people a tax holiday every time they have a kid, imagine the following alternative. After you calculate your regular federal tax, there’s one final adjustment. …

Articles and blog posts found on 08 May 2024

2024-05-08T23:59:00Z

Alexander Pruss's Blog: Forgiving the forgiven (html, 455 words)

Suppose that Alice wronged Bob, repented, and God forgave Alice for it. Bob, however, withholds his forgiveness. First, it is interesting to ask the conceptual question: What is it that Bob withholds? …

Articles and blog posts found on 07 May 2024

2024-05-07T23:59:00Z

Basil Müller: The Transmission of Cumulative Cultural Knowledge — Towards a Social Epistemology of Non-Testimonial Cultural Learning (pdf, 13239 words)

Cumulative cultural knowledge [CCK], the knowledge we acquire via social learning and has been refined by previous generations, is of central importance to our species’ flourishing. Considering its importance, we should expect that our best epistemological theories can account for how this happens. Perhaps surprisingly, CCK and how we acquire it via cultural learning has only received little attention from social epistemologists. Here, I focus on how we should epistemically evaluate how agents acquire CCK. After sampling some reasons why extant theories cannot account for CCK, I suggest that things aren’t as bleak as they might look. I explain how agents deserve epistemic credit for how CCK is transmitted in cultural learning by promoting a central need of their social group: The efficient and safe transmission of CCK. A good initial fit exists between this observation and Greco’s knowledge-economy framework. Ultimately, however, Greco’s account doesn’t straightforwardly account for CCK because of its strict focus on testimony. I point out two issues in the framework due to this focus. The resulting view advocates giving epistemic credit to agents when they act to promote their communities’ epistemic needs in the right way and highlights the various ways in which agents come to do this.

Daniel G. Swaim: Getting from Here to There: The Contingency of Historical Evidence and the Value of Speculation (pdf, 9443 words)

Here I look to some work in the historical sciences in order to draw out some of the epistemic benefits of “speculative narratives,” which bears on some more general epistemic benefits of speculative reasoning. Due to the contingent nature of much historical evidence, some degree of speculative reasoning is necessary to get the epistemological ball rolling in the historical sciences, and I argue that speculative narratives provide the necessary sort of frameworking apparatus for doing precisely this. I use contemporary work on the first peopling of the Americas (the “Clovis First Debate”) for illustration.

Eleanor March, James Owen Weatherall: A Puzzle About General Covariance and Gauge (pdf, 9616 words)

We consider two simple criteria for when a physical theory should be said to be “generally covariant”, and we argue that these criteria are not met by Yang-Mills theory, even on geometric formulations of that theory. The reason, we show, is that the bundles encountered in Yang-Mills theory are not natural bundles; instead, they are gauge-natural. We then show how these observations relate to previous arguments about the significance of solder forms in assessing disanalogies between general relativity and Yang-Mills theory. We conclude by suggesting that general covariance is really about functoriality.

Nicolas Gravel: Revealing preference discovery: A chronological choice framework (pdf, 16937 words)

We propose a framework for the analysis of choice behaviour when the latter is made explicitly in chronological order. We relate this framework to the traditional choice theoretic setting from which the chronological aspect is absent, and compare it to other frameworks that extend this traditional setting. Then, we use this framework to analyse various models of preference discovery. We characterise, via simple revealed preference tests, several models that differ in terms of (i) the priors that the decision-maker holds about alternatives and (ii) whether the decision-maker chooses period by period or uses her knowledge about future menus to inform her present choices. These results provide novel testable implications for the preference discovery process of myopic and forward-looking agents.

Stefania Minardi: Consumption of Values (pdf, 18752 words)

Consumption decisions are partly influenced by values and ideologies. Consumers care about global warming, child labor, fair trade, etc. We develop an axiomatic model of intrinsic values – those that are carriers of meaning in and of themselves – and argue that they often introduce discontinuities near zero. For example, a vegetarian’s preferences would be discontinuous near zero amount of animal meat. We distinguish intrinsic values from instrumental ones, which are means rather than ends and serve as proxies for intrinsic values. We illustrate the relevance of our value-based model in different contexts, including equity concerns and prosocial behavior.

Valia Allori: “Relativistic Pilot-Wave Theories as the Rational Completion of Quantum Mechanics and Relativity.” (pdf, 8693 words)

Einstein thought that quantum mechanics was incomplete because it was nonlocal. In this paper I argue instead that quantum theory is incomplete, even if it is nonlocal, and that relativity is incomplete because its minimal spatiotemporal structure cannot naturally accommodate such nonlocality. So, I show that relativistic pilot-wave theories are the rational completion of quantum mechanics as well as relativity: they provide a spatiotemporal ontology of particles, as well as a spatiotemporal structure able to explain quantum correlations.

Valia Allori: “Hidden Variables and Bell’s Theorem: Local or Not?” (pdf, 10361 words)

Bell’s inequality is an empirical constrain on theories with hidden variables, which EPR argued are needed to explain observed perfect correlations if keeping locality. One way to deal with the empirical violation of Bell’s inequality is by openly embracing nonlocality, in a theory like the pilot-wave theory. Nonetheless, recent proposals have revived the possibility that one can avoid nonlocality by resorting to superdeterministic theories. These are local hidden variables theories which violate statistical independence which is one assumption of Bell’s inequality. In this paper I compare and contrast these two hidden variable strategies: the pilot-wave theory and superdeterminism. I show that even if the former is nonlocal and the other is not, both are contextual. Nonetheless, in contrast with the pilot-wave theory, superdeterminist contextuality makes it impossible to test the theory (which therefore becomes unfalsifiable and unconfirmable) and renders the theory uninformative (measurement results tell us nothing about the system). It is questionable therefore whether a theory with these features is worth its costs.

Alexander Pruss's Blog: Mushrooms (html, 522 words)

Some people have the intuition that there is something fishy about doing standard Bayesian update on evidence E when one couldn’t have observed the absence of E. A standard case here is where the evidence E is being alive, as in firing squad or fine-tuning cases. …

Alexander Pruss's Blog: Socrates' harm thesis (html, 334 words)

Socrates famously held that a wrongdoer harms themselves more than they harm their victim. This is a correct rule of thumb, but I doubt that it is true in general. First, Socrates was probably thinking of the harm to self resulting from becoming a vicious person. …

Alexander Pruss's Blog: From the normative burden of wrongdoing to the existence of God (html, 367 words)

In recent posts I’ve been exploring the idea that wrongdoing imposes on us a debt of a normative burden. This yields this argument: Whenever one does wrong, one comes to have a debt of a normative burden to one who has been wronged. …

Alexander Pruss's Blog: A perhaps underemphasized aspect of Christ's atonement (html, 327 words)

Usually, Christ’s sacrifice of the Cross is thought of as atonement for our sins before God. This leads to old theological question: Why can’t God simply forgive our sins, without the need for any atoning sacrifice? …

The Archimedean Point: The Knowledge/Power Separation Problem (html, 1897 words)

Disclaimer: Despite the appearances, there is no Michel Foucault in the following essay (quite the contrary actually)! Let’s consider a fictional place called “Wisdom Town.” Wisdom Town is a small town, or maybe a village of a few dozen individuals at most. …

Articles and blog posts found on 06 May 2024

2024-05-06T23:59:00Z

Xerxes Arsiwalla: Qualia and the Formal Structure of Meaning (pdf, 12172 words)

This work explores the hypothesis that subjectively attributed meaning constitutes the phenomenal content of conscious experience. That is, phenomenal content is semantic. This form of subjective meaning manifests as an intrinsic and non-representational character of qualia. Empirically, subjective meaning is ubiquitous in conscious experiences. We point to phenomenological studies that lend evidence to support this. Furthermore, this notion of meaning closely relates to what Frege refers to as "sense", in metaphysics and philosophy of language. It also aligns with Peirce's "interpretant", in semiotics. We discuss how Frege's sense can also be extended to the raw feels of consciousness. Sense and reference both play a role in phenomenal experience. Moreover, within the context of the mind-matter relation, we provide a formalization of subjective meaning associated to one's mental representations. Identifying the precise maps between the physical and mental domains, we argue that syntactic and semantic structures transcend language, and are realized within each of these domains. Formally, meaning is a relational attribute, realized via a map that interprets syntactic structures of a formal system within an appropriate semantic space. The image of this map within the mental domain is what is relevant for experience, and thus comprises the phenomenal content of qualia. We conclude with possible implications this may have for experience-based theories of consciousness.

Alexander Pruss's Blog: Forgiveness (html, 706 words)

If I have done you a serious wrong, I bear a burden. I can be relieved of that burder by forgiveness. What is the burden and what is the relief? The burden need not consist of anything emotional or dispositional on your side, such as your harboring resentment or being disposed not to interact with me in as amicable a way as before or pursuing my punishment. …

Articles and blog posts found on 05 May 2024

2024-05-05T23:59:00Z

Austin Due: Sins and Risks in Underreporting Suspected Adverse Drug Reactions (pdf, 6704 words)

The underreporting of suspected adverse drug reactions remains a primary issue for contemporary post-market drug surveillance or ‘pharmacovigilance.’ Pharmacovigilance pioneer W.H.W. Inman argued that ‘deadly sins’ committed by clinicians are to blame for underreporting. Of these ‘sins,’ ignorance and lethargy are the most obvious and impactful in causing underreporting. However, recent analyses show that diffidence, insecurity, and indifference additionally play a major role. I aim to augment our understanding of diffidence, insecurity, and indifference by arguing these sins are underwritten by value judgments arising via epistemic risk. I contend that ‘evidence-based’ medicine codifies these sins.

Christoph Hueck: Empirical Access to Life’s Teleological Forces via an Active and Co-Constitutive Relation between Subject and Object (pdf, 8621 words)

This article proposes an approach to understanding life that overcomes reductionist and dualist approaches. Based on Immanuel Kant’s analysis of the cognitive prerequisites of knowing an organism, I refer to an idea of Gertrudis Van de Vijver and colleagues who described a co-constitutive relationship between the cognitive activities of the observer and the living features of the organism. Using the example of a developmental series, I show that within this active and relational process, the self-generating power and teleology of the organism manifest themselves on the mental level of the observer. I posit that the Kantian mode of objectification, which refers to the sensually perceptible appearance of an organism, can be supplemented by an active mode of relational or “communicative” objectification that encompasses the life of the organism and the mind of the observer. By considering the mental processes of the observer which occur during the observation of biological phenomena, this analysis introduces a phenomenological first-person perspective on the study of life “from within”, which enables an empirical investigation of the vital properties of an organism.

Elay Shech: The Mitonuclear Compatibility Species Concept, Intrinsic Essentialism, and Natural Kinds (pdf, 11401 words)

This essay introduces, develops, and appraises the mitonuclear compatibility species concept (MCSC), identifying advantages and limitations with respect to alternative species concepts. While the consensus amongst most philosophers of biology is that (kind) essentialism about species is mistaken, and that species at most have relational essences, we appeal to the MCSC to defend a thoroughgoing intrinsic essentialism. Namely, the doctrine that species have fully intrinsic essences and, thus, are natural kinds (of sorts), while allowing that species aren’t categorically distinct.

Krystyna Bielecka, Marcin Miłkowski: Representationalism and Rationality: Why Mental Representation is Real (pdf, 8015 words)

This paper presents an argument for the realism about mechanisms, contents, and vehicles of mental representation at both the personal and subpersonal levels, and showcases its role in instrumental rationality and proper cognitive functioning. By demonstrating how misrepresentation is necessary for learning from mistakes and explaining certain failures of action, we argue that fallible rational agents must have mental representations with causally relevant vehicles of content. Our argument contributes to ongoing discussions in philosophy of mind and cognitive science by challenging anti-realist views about the nature of mental representation, and by highlighting the importance of understanding how different agents can misrepresent in pursuit of their goals. While there are potential rebuttals to our claim, our opponents must explain how agents can be rational without having mental representations. This is because mental representation is grounded in rationality.

Laura Follesa: Time and Atemporality of Time in Hegel’s Naturphilosophie (pdf, 5172 words)

What is the meaning of atemporality in Hegel’s philosophy? What is the relationship between philosophy and physics, according to Hegel’s Naturphilosophie? And why should Hegel’s reading of Plato’s Timaeus be interesting for understanding both his idea of atemporality of time and the philosophical approach to the problem of the origins of the world? This Chapter addresses these questions by analysing some passages of Hegel’s writings, from the Dissertation on the orbits of the planets (1801) up to the Encyclopedia (1817/1827/1830). Hegel tackles the concept of atemporality (Zeitlosigkeit) when he refers to the idea or to the ideal dimension as considered in se and per se, the question about the eternity or the beginning of the world emerges as an integral part of the problem. The Chapter includes Hegel’s reconsideration of Plato’s Timaeus up to the arguments about the origins of the world and the notion of life in the second part of the Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse devoted to Naturphilosophie.

Laura Marongiu: Atemporality and the Origins of the Eternal Cosmos: Debates on Timeless Simultaneity within Platonic Cosmogonies (pdf, 8554 words)

This Chapter endeavors to explore the notion of atemporality within selected works belonging to the Platonic tradition. Beyond providing an overview of various facets of atemporality and highlighting their mutual relations, this chapter aims to investigate their role in a range of accounts of the world’s origins. By focusing on the cosmogonical views elaborated by Platonists who deny that the cosmos is generated in time, such as Plotinus, Porphyry, Calcidius, and Proclus, I will dwell on a specific kind of atemporality, namely ‘timeless simultaneity,’ and shed light on its theoretical advantages in explaining the demiurgic creation of the cosmos within a sempiternalist framework. Paradoxical as it may seem, within this perspective, the assertion that the Demiurge creates the cosmos at once does not conflict but, in fact, is fully compatible with the assumption that the cosmos has no temporal beginning, causally depends on a higher cause, and is always in a process of coming to be. As a result, a multi-layered taxonomy of atemporality, and especially the notion of ‘timeless simultaneity,’ enables Platonists adopting a sempiternalist stance to argue consistently that the cosmos is both ungenerated and created all at once, and to effectively explain in what sense it is so.

Quentin Ruyant: Indexicality, Bayesian Background and Self-Location in Fine-Tuning Arguments for the Multiverse (pdf, 13106 words)

Our universe seems to be miraculously fine-tuned for life. Multiverse theories have been proposed as an explanation for this on the basis of probabilistic arguments, but various authors have objected that we should consider our total evidence that this universe in particular has life in our inference, which would block the argument. The debate thus crucially hinges on how Bayesian background and evidence are distinguished and on how indexical or demonstrative terms are analysed. The aim of this article is to take a step back and examine these various aspects of Bayesian reasoning and how they affect the arguments. The upshot is that there are reasons to resist the fine-tuning argument for the multiverse, but the “this-universe-objection” is not one of them.

Quentin Ruyant, Alexandre Guay: Lagrangian possibilities (pdf, 11625 words)

Natural modalities are often analysed from an abstract point of view where they are associated with putative laws of nature. However, the way possibilities are represented in physics is more complex. Lagrangian mechanics, for instance, involves two different layers of modalities: kinematical and dynamical possibilities. This paper examines the status of these two layers, both in the classical and quantum case. The quantum case is particularly problematic: we identify four possible interpretive options. The upshot is that a close inspection of the way possibilities are represented in physics could lead to new ways of thinking about natural modalities.

Vincenzo Fano: A Meinongian solution ofMcTaggart's paradox (doc, 5998 words)

The present paper is divided in two parts . In the first part we will propose Meinong’s theory of time outlined in 1899 interpreted in such a way that the subtlety of his argumentation is emphasised. In the second, we will discuss different solutions for the celebrated McTaggart’s paradox, reaching the conclusion that a theory of time suggested by the reflections of the Austrian Philosopher seems to be the most adequate perspective for tackling this problem . Meinong is concerned with time above all in his essays of 1894 and 1899; thereafter he deals again with the topic only in a cursory manner. Certainly the best of his reflections on the subject is the Third Section of the 1899 essay, and thus we will concern ourselves almost exclusively with this . Let us emphasise that time is not a Meinong’s topic, but briefly in the central part of his thinking, i.e. during the passage from his first psychological-descriptive works – influenced by his teacher Brentano – to the theoretical-objective period, stimulated firstly by the reading of Twardowski and Bolzano . In spite of this we have the feeling that in this short writing the Austrian philosopher outlines a theory of time which ante litteram opens a possible solution of the paradoxes connected with the flux of time, like McTaggart’s. We have to admire the remarkable subtlety of his psychological analysis, accompanied by a clear awareness of the objectivity of time; the latter helps him to avoid the psychologistic drift of Bergson’s perspective, the former to stay away from the scientistic point of view more and more in fashion in connection with modern physics .

Vincenzo Fano: Application Of Relational Quantum Mechanics To Simple Physical Situations (pdf, 4571 words)

I would interpret the principal ontological postulates of relational quantum mechanics in terms of what medieval philosophers called “relational properties”. Relational properties are exactly like all other properties, but they can be ascribed to a substance only in reference to another substance. If this interpretation is correct, a quantum event is a very complex situation. To individuate a quantum event, two substances and two properties are necessary, each one pertaining to one of the substances. Moreover, also a form of ontological replacement is needed. After elaborating on a simple symbolism based on these postulates, we investigate quantum situations, such as Wigner’s friend paradox, the strange result of a sequence of Stern and Gerlach measurements, and the probability flux of wave function.

Zina B. Ward, Kathleen A. Creel: To Hedge or Not to Hedge: Scientific Claims and Public Justification (pdf, 9769 words)

Scientific hedges are communicative devices used to qualify and weaken scientific claims. Gregor Betz (2013) has argued – unconvincingly, we think – that hedging can rescue the value-free ideal for science. Nevertheless, Betz is onto something when he suggests there are political principles that recommend scientists hedge public-facing claims. In this paper, we recast this suggestion using the notion of public justification. We formulate and reject a Rawlsian argument that locates the justification for hedging in its ability to forge consensus.

Articles and blog posts found on 04 May 2024

2024-05-04T23:59:00Z

Christian Tarsney, Teruji Thomas: Non-Additive Axiologies in Large Worlds (pdf, 22413 words)

Is the overall value of a world just the sum of values contributed by each value-bearing entity in that world? Additively separable axiologies (like total utilitarianism, prioritarianism, and critical level views) say ‘yes’, but non-additive axiologies (like average utilitarianism, rank-discounted utilitarianism, and variable value views) say ‘no’. This distinction appears to be practically important: among other things, additive axiologies generally assign great importance to large changes in population size, and therefore tend to strongly prioritize the long-term survival of humanity over the interests of the present generation. Non-additive axiologies, on the other hand, need not assign great importance to large changes in population size. We show, however, that when there is a large enough ‘background population’ unaffected by our choices, a wide range of non-additive axiologies converge in their implications with additive axiologies—for instance, average utilitarianism converges with critical-level utilitarianism and various egalitarian theories converge with prioritarianism. We further argue that real-world background populations may be large enough to make these limit results practically significant. This means that arguments from the scale of potential future populations for the astronomical importance of avoiding existential catastrophe, and other arguments in practical ethics that seem to presuppose additive separability, may succeed in practice whether or not we accept additive separability as a basic axiological principle.

Daniel Whiting: Kenelm Digby (and Margaret Cavendish) on Motion (pdf, 11872 words)

Motion—and, in particular, local motion or change in location—plays a central role in Kenelm Digby’s natural philosophy and in his arguments for the immateriality of the soul. Despite this, Digby’s account of what motion consists in has yet to receive much scholarly attention. In this paper, I advance a novel interpretation of Digby on motion. According to it, Digby holds that for a body to move is for it to divide from and unify with other bodies. This is a view of motion—as change in relations of parthood—that Alison Peterman attributes to Digby’s contemporary and acquaintance, Margaret Cavendish. Having shown that Digby’s presentation of the view predates Cavendish’s by more than a decade, I make a case that Digby’s work influenced Cavendish’s on this topic. In developing and defending my reading, I consider to what extent the Digbean account of motion and the arguments for it accord with the ideals of the mechanical philosophy emerging in the early modern period.

Hasko von Kriegstein: Perfection and Success (pdf, 7291 words)

According to reductivist axiological perfectionism about well-being (RAP), well-being is constituted by the development and exercise of central human capacities. In defending this view, proponents have relied heavily on the claim that RAP provides a unifying explanation of the entries on the ‘objective list’ of well-being constituents. I argue that this argument fails to provide independent support for the theory. RAP does not render a plausible objective list unless such a list is used at every stage of theory development to shape the details of the view. Absent such motivated fine-tuning, RAP even fails to provide a satisfying account of two supposed paradigm cases of perfectionist value: achievement and knowledge. Thus, if RAP is to be defended, it must be defended directly by providing reasons for accepting the axiological principle at its heart. It cannot be defended, indirectly, by pointing to its attractive implications.

Joshua Habgood-Coote, Natalie Alana Ashton, Nadja El Kassar: Receptive Publics (pdf, 16188 words)

It is widely accepted that public discourse as we know it is less than ideal from an epistemological point of view. In this paper, we develop an underappreciated aspect of the trouble with public discourse: what we call the Listening Problem. The listening problem is the problem that public discourse has in giving appropriate uptake and reception to ideas and concepts from oppressed groups. Drawing on the work of Jürgen Habermas and Nancy Fraser, we develop an institutional response to the listening problem: the establishment of what we call Receptive Publics, discursive spaces designed to improve listening skills and to give space for counterhegemonic ideas.

Laura Martin, Laura Ariadne Martin: Toward an Expressivist View of Women's Autonomy (pdf, 11134 words)

Feminists have disagreed about whether women can choose gendered subordination autonomously. Less attention has been paid, however, to the socio-ontological questions that underlie this debate. This article introduces novel cases of ‘thwarted autonomy,’ in which women pursue autonomy but in ways that reinforce gendered subordination, in order to challenge dominant proceduralist and substantivist views, as well as motivate an expressivist view of the social self as a promising foundation for an account of autonomy. On this view, which draws on the Hegelian tradition, agents must embody their desires and values in the social world to achieve self-understanding. Social meanings and norms therefore mediate the form an agent’s expressive activity takes, and the sense of self she develops. An expressivist view, I argue, allows us to reinterpret women’s outward acquiescence to gendered subordination as an attempt to express autonomy in an oppressive social context. It also points towards a robustly social conception of autonomy to aid in the diagnosis and redress of patriarchal oppression.

Lukas Beck: The Specter of Revealed Preference Theory (pdf, 13453 words)

A specter is haunting economics—the specter of revealed preference theory. Many philosophers of old have entered into an alliance to exorcise this specter; Sen (1977) and Hausman (2012), Dietrich and List (2016), and Guala (2012; 2019). In the face of the trenchant critique it has faced, the longevity of revealed preference theory is quite surprising. While it still holds considerable power among economists, in recent years also philosophers have begun to offer novel arguments in its defense (e.g., Vredenburgh 2020; Clarke 2020; Thoma 2021a; 2021b). At its core, revealed preference theory can be stated as the view that preferences are just patterns in choice-behavior. My aim in this paper is to argue against the revival of revealed preference theory. Towards this end, I will first outline the different facets of revealed preference theory (Section 2). I will then briefly present the two most common arguments that philosophers of economics have offered against it. In particular, I will look at the argument from belief and the argument from causality (Section 3).

M. Randall Holmes: A cute and direct axiomatization of TST with finitely many templates (pdf, 1083 words)

This axiomatization parallels the structure of first order logic exactly. It can be read as a reduction of the axiom scheme of comprehension of TST(U) to finitely many axiom templates (up to type assignment) or as a reduction of the axiom scheme of stratified comprehension to finitely many axioms. Probably one should assume weak extensionality: nonempty sets with the same elements are equal.

Michael Dickson: Musical Notation (pdf, 14496 words)

The main goal of this essay is to propose and make plausible a framework for developing a philosophical account of musical notation. The proposed framework countenances four elements of notation: symbols (abstract objects that collectively constitute the backbone of a ‘system’ of notation), their characteristic ‘forms’ (for example, shapes, understood abstractly), the concrete instances, or ‘engravings’, of those forms, and the meanings of the symbols. It is argued that these elements are distinct. Along the way, several preliminary arguments are given for how one ought to understand them—for example, it is suggested that engravings represent symbols rather than instantiate forms, although they are characteristically seen to represent a symbol by being seen to instantiate an associated form. Having proposed this framework, the essay explores the nature of musical instructions, as the meanings of symbols, and offers an argument in favor of the commonly held (but recently challenged) view that those meanings are imperative. Specifically, composites of musical notation (paradigmatically, musical scores) primarily express instructional meaning, and denote something like ‘sonic structures’ only secondarily, in virtue of their primary, imperative, meaning.

Nathaniel Gan: What Kind of Non-Realism is Fictionalism? (pdf, 7020 words)

Fictionalists about a kind of disputed entity aim to give a face-value interpretation of our discourse about those entities without affirming their existence. The fictionalist’s commitment to non-realism leaves open three options regarding their ontological position: they may deny the existence of the disputed entities (anti-realism), remain agnostic regarding their existence (agnosticism), or deny that there are ontological facts of the matter (ontological anti-realism). This paper outlines a method of adjudicating between these options and argues that fictionalists may be expected to hold preferences between them. The typical arguments and motivations for fictionalism lead naturally to a practice-based metaontological framework under which our practices regarding a kind of disputed entity might inform our ontological beliefs about those entities. When that framework is applied to fictionalism, it is found that the usual motivations for fictionalism lead naturally, though not decisively, to ontological anti-realism. And, where there are reasons against ontological anti-realism, fictionalism leans more toward anti-realism than agnosticism.

Orlando Hawkins, Emmalon Davis: The Future of Double Consciousness: Epistemic Virtue, Identity, and Structural Anti-Blackness (pdf, 15178 words)

This paper considers two conceptual expansions of Du Boisian double consciousness—white double consciousness (Alcoff 2015) and kaleidoscopic consciousness (Medina 2013)—both of which aim to articulate the moral-epistemic potential of cultivating double consciousness from racially dominant or other socially privileged positions. We analyze these concepts and challenge them on the grounds that they lack continuity with their Du Boisian predecessor and face problems of practical feasibility. As we show, these expansions obscure structural barriers that make white double consciousness and kaleidoscopic consciousness unlikely antidotes to the kind of racial domination that double consciousness was introduced to illuminate. We conclude that while more intersectional and pluralistic accounts of double consciousness may be desirable, the project of expansion has moral limits. Identifying these limitations, we outline ways in which double consciousness—as a tool for conceptualizing the genealogy of structural anti-Blackness—remains valuable in the absence of ever-expanding revision.

Sara Aronowitz, Grace Helton: Subjectivity in Film: Mine, Yours, and No One’s (pdf, 13989 words)

A classic and fraught question in the philosophy of film is this: when you watch a film, do you experience yourself in the world of the film, observing the scenes? In this paper, we argue that this subject of film experience is sometimes a mere impersonal viewpoint, sometimes a first-personal but unindexed subject, and sometimes a particular, indexed subject such as the viewer herself or a character in the film. We first argue for subject pluralism: there is no single answer to the question of what kind of subjectivity, if any, is mandated across film sequences. Then, we defend unindexed subjectivity: at least sometimes, films mandate an experience that is first-personal but not tied to any particular person, not even to the viewer. Taken together, these two theses allow us to see film experience as more varied than previously appreciated and to bridge in a novel way the cognition of film with the exercise of other imaginative capacities, such as mindreading and episodic recollecting.

Thor Grünbaum, Søren Kyllingsbæk: Is Remembering to do a Special Kind of Memory? (pdf, 11973 words)

When a person decides to do something in the future, she forms an intention and her intention persists. Philosophers have thought about the rational requirement that an agent’s intention persists until its execution. But philosophers have neglected to think about the causal memory mechanisms that could enable this kind of persistence and its role in rational long-term agency. Our aim of this paper is to fill this gap by arguing that memory for intention is a specific kind of memory. We do this by evaluating and rejecting standard declarative accounts of memory for intention and arguing for the plausibility of an alternative model of memory for intention. We argue for the alternative by spelling out a number of computational principles that could enable retaining and retrieving intentions from long-term memory. These principles could explain a number of core features of intentions.

Azimuth: Hexagonal Tiling Honeycomb (html, 1132 words)

This picture by Roice Nelson shows a remarkable structure: the hexagonal tiling honeycomb. What is it? Roughly speaking, a honeycomb is a way of filling 3d space with polyhedra. The most symmetrical honeycombs are the ‘regular’ ones. …

More to Hate: Why Does Baby Reindeer's Martha have to be Fat? (html, 2263 words)

Content warning: This post discusses sexual assault, stalking, harassment, abuse, and also contains all the spoilers. Sigh. I started watching Baby Reindeer on Netflix with a great deal of trepidation. …

Under the Net: Learning How to Die (html, 909 words)

According to urban legend, people’s number one fear is public speaking. Death is number two.1 I don’t know if it’s true, but if it is, I’d bet that the most dreaded form of public speaking is to stand onstage, alone, attempting to make an audience of strangers laugh. …

Articles and blog posts found on 03 May 2024

2024-05-03T23:59:00Z

Peter van Inwagen: Falsity and untruth (pdf, 5415 words)

Jc Beall’s Divine Contradiction is a fascinating defence of the idea that contradictions are true of the tri-personal God. This project requires a logic that avoids the consequence that every proposition follows from a contradiction. Beall presents such a logic. This ‘gap/glut’ logic is the topic of this article. A gap/glut logic presupposes that falsity is not simply the absence of truth – for a proposition that is true may also be false. This article is essentially an examination of the idea that falsity is not simply untruth. The author rejects this position but does not claim to have an argument against it. In lieu of an argument, he presents three ‘considerations’. First, it is possible to give an intuitive semantics for the language of sentential logic that yields ‘classical’ sentential logic (including ‘p, ¬ p ⊢ q’) and which makes no mention of truth-values. Second, it is possible to imagine a race who manage their affairs very well without having the concept ‘falsity’. Third, it is possible to construct a semantics that yields a logic identical with the dialetheist logic and which makes no mention of truth-values – and which, far from being plausible, seems pointless.

Richard Hudson: Cantor's Illusion (pdf, 1364 words)

This analysis shows Cantor's diagonal definition in his 1891 paper was not compatible with his horizontal enumeration of the infinite set M. The diagonal sequence was a counterfeit which he used to produce an apparent exclusion of a single sequence to prove the cardinality of M is greater than the cardinality of the set of integers N.

Wolfgang Schwarz: Unspecific antecedents (pdf, 10773 words)

I want to comment on an old objection to the “similarity analysis” of counterfactuals, and on a more recent, but related, argument for counterfactual skepticism. According to the similarity analysis, a counterfactual ? > ? is true iff ? is true at all ? worlds that are most similar, in certain respects, to the actual world. The old objection that I have in mind is that the similarity analysis fails to validate Simplification of Disjunctive Antecedents (SDA), the inference from (? ∨ ?) > ? to ? > ? and ? > ?. Imagine someone utters (1a) on a hot summer day.