Philosophical Progress

Articles and blog posts found on 07 July 2025

2025-07-07T23:59:00Z

Balazs Gyenis: Empirical structure physicalism and realism, Hempel's dilemma, and an optimistic meta-induction (pdf, 15044 words)

Philosophers of mind call Hempel’s dilemma an argument by (Crane and Mellor, 1990; Melnyk, 1997) against metaphysical physicalism, the thesis that everything that exists is either ‘physical’ or ultimately depends on the ‘physical’. Their argument is understood as a challenge to the idea of fixing what is ‘physical’ by appealing to a theory of physics. The dilemma briefly goes as follows. On the one hand, if we choose a current theory of physics to fix what is ‘physical’, then, since our current theories of physics are very likely incomplete, the so-articulated metaphysical physicalism is very likely false. On the other hand, if we choose a future theory of physics to fix what is ‘physical’, then, since future theories of physics are currently unknown, the so-articulated metaphysical physicalism has indeterminate meaning. Thus, it seems we can rely neither on current nor on future theories of physics to satisfactorily articulate metaphysical physicalism. Recently (Firt et al., 2022) argued that the dilemma extends to any theory that gives a deep-structure and changeable account of experience (including dualistic theories, although cf. Buzaglo, 2024).

Bet On It: Ethics and Insecticide (html, 516 words)

Mike Huemer is the greatest philosopher. It is no hyperbole to say that he “taught me how to think.” He is also a confirmed ethical vegetarian who practices what he preaches. Nine years ago, I wrote this piece arguing that insects provide a strong reductio ad absurdum to Huemer’s view. …

The Philosopher's Beard: 'Indigenous Knowledge' Is Inferior To Science (html, 2050 words)

|Source| My point is simple: knowledge is knowledge. Where it comes from doesn’t matter to its epistemic status. What matters is whether it deserves to be believed. The scientific revolution has provided a general approach – systematic inquiry into the independent evidential basis of claims (e.g. …

Articles and blog posts found on 06 July 2025

2025-07-06T23:59:00Z

Azimuth: David Suzuki on Climate Change (html, 1039 words)

David Suzuki is an 89-year-old Canadian geneticist, science broadcaster and environmental activist. In this interview he says some things that I’ve come to agree with. • ‘It’s too late’: David Suzuki says the fight against climate change is lost, iPolitics, 2 July 2025. …

Articles and blog posts found on 05 July 2025

2025-07-05T23:59:00Z

Adam Tamas Tuboly: On the value of pseudoscience and its philosophical study (pdf, 14737 words)

In philosophy of science, the pseudosciences (like cryptozoology, homeopathy, Flat-Earth Theory, anti-vaccination activism, etc.) have been treated mainly negatively. They are viewed not simply as false, but even dangerous, since they try to mimic our best scientific theories, thus gaining respect and trust from the public, without the appropriate credentials. As a result, philosophers have traditionally put considerable effort into demarcating genuine sciences and scientific theories from pseudoscience. Since these general attempts at demarcation have repeatedly been shown to break down, the present paper takes a different and somewhat more positive approach to the study of pseudoscience. My main point is not that we should embrace and accept the pseudosciences as they are, but rather that there are indeed valuable and important lessons inherent in the study of pseudoscience and the different sections of the paper list at least six of them. By showing, through numerous examples, how (the study of) pseudoscience can teach us something about science, ourselves, and society, it makes the case that as philosophers, we should devote more time and energy to engaging with such beliefs and theories to help remedy their harmful effects.

Under the Net: Reader's Digest, July 5, 2025 (html, 856 words)

In the last NYRB, Kwame Anthony Appiah reviewed two recent books about translation. One is by Damion Searls, whose Tractatus I criticized in this space, provoked in part by his complaint about philosophers as translators of philosophy. …

Good Thoughts: The Costs of Permission (html, 924 words)

Apparently, Italy requires residents to secure a medical certificate before joining a gym, sports club, or other source of regular physical exercise. This is (very loosely) estimated to prevent a few deaths per year from sudden cardiac events but at a net cost of thousands of QALYs lost due to exercise deterrence. …

Articles and blog posts found on 04 July 2025

2025-07-04T23:59:00Z

Lyu FU: Beauty Leads to Truth: Aesthetic Induction on Consistency (pdf, 12168 words)

The belief that beauty leads to truth is prevalent among contemporary physicists. Far from being a private faith, it operates as a methodological guiding principle, essentially when physicists have to develop theories without new empirical data.

Petr Spelda, Vit Stritecky: Unpredictability of AI Alignment Is Not Always Bad for AI Safety (pdf, 9505 words)

Robustness of AI alignment is one of the safety issues of large language models. Can we predict how many mistakes will a model make when responding to a restricted request? We show that when access to the model is limited to in-context learning, the number of mistakes can be proved inapproximable, which can lead to unpredictability of alignment of the model. Against intuition, this is not entirely bad news for AI safety. Attackers might not be able to easily misuse in-context learning to break alignment of the model in a predictable manner because the mistake bounds of safe responses, which were used for alignment, can be proved inapproximable. This inapproximability can hide the safe responses from attackers and make alignment of the model unpredictable. If it were possible to keep the safe responses from attackers, responsible users would benefit from testing and repairing of the model’s alignment despite its possible unpredictability. We also discuss challenges involved in ensuring democratic AI alignment with limited access to safe responses, which helps us to make alignment of the model unpredictable for attackers.

el skaf rawad: Post-Growth and the Lack of Diversity in the Scenario Framework (pdf, 12035 words)

Scenarios and pathways, as defined and used in the “SSP-RCP scenario framework”, are key in last decade’s climate change research and in the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In this framework, Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP) consist of a limited set of alternative socioeconomic futures, that are both represented in short qualitative narratives and with quantitative projections of key drivers. One important use of the computationally derived SSP-scenarios is to do mitigation analysis and present a “manageable” set of options to decision-makers. However, all SSPs and derivatively SSP-scenarios in this framework assume a globally growing economy into 2100. This, in practice, amounts to a value-laden restriction of the space of solutions to be presented to decision-makers, falling short of IPCC’s general mandate of being “policy-relevant and yet policy-neutral, never policy-prescriptive”. Yet, the Global Economic Growth Assumption (GEGA) could be challenged and in practice is challenged by post-growth scholars.

Good Thoughts: Death by Metaphysics (html, 1144 words)

How badly would it suck to die because a person who could have saved your life (along with the lives of four others tied to the train tracks beside you) preferred “allowing” to “doing”? A second was just about to save you when they realized that the side track—where just one person awaited as collateral damage—later loops back, turning the purportedly-collateral damage into an instrumental killing. …

Articles and blog posts found on 03 July 2025

2025-07-03T23:59:00Z

Michael Caie: Names and Higher-Order Logic (pdf, 20787 words)

There is a longstanding puzzle about empty names. On the one hand, the principles of classical logic seem quite plausible. On the other hand, there would seem to be truths involving empty names that require rejecting certain classically valid principles.

Michael Caie: Being Hesperus and Being Phosphorus (pdf, 25634 words)

Consider the property of being something that is identical to Hesperus. For short, call this the property of being Hesperus. What is the nature of this property? How does it relate to the property of being Phosphorus? And how do these properties relate to the purely haecceitistic property of being v—the unique thing that has the property of being Hesperus and the property of being Phosphorus?

The Archimedean Point: On Progressive Taxation (html, 2921 words)

Very short summary: This essay provides an account in favor of a progressive consumption tax, in light of the efficiency and fairness issues that affect the more common progressive income tax. I argue that the progressive consumption tax not only avoids the standard incentive problem but also responds to Hayek’s critique of the unfairness of progressive taxation. …

Articles and blog posts found on 02 July 2025

2025-07-02T23:59:00Z

André Casajus: Related characterizations of the Shapley value and the weighted Shapley values via relaxations of differential marginality (pdf, 11295 words)

Casajus (J Econ Theory 178, 2018, 105–123) provides a characterization of the class of positively weighted Shapley value for …nite games from an in…nite universe of players via three properties: e¢ ciency, the null player out property, and superweak differential marginality. The latter requires two players’payoffs to change in the same direction whenever only their joint productivity changes, that is, their individual productivities stay the same. Strengthening this property into (weak) differential marginality yields a characterization of the Shapley value. We suggest a relaxation of superweak differential marginality into two subproperties: (i) hyperweak differential marginality and (ii) superweak differential marginality for in…nite subdomains. The former (i) only rules out changes in the opposite direction. The latter (ii) requires changes in the same direction for players within certain in…nite subuniverses. Together with e¢ ciency and the null player out property, these properties characterize the class of weighted Shapley values.

Austin Due: Symptom Bias: Definition, Identification and Avoidance (pdf, 1627 words)

A common criticism of medicine is that there is too much focus on treating symptoms instead of patients. This criticism and its sentiment – among other factors – have motivated many ‘humanistic,’ ‘holistic,’ and ‘non-reductionist’ approaches to medicine including the biopsychosocial model, patient-centered medicine, ‘gentle’ medicine, and others. Much has been said detailing and defending these approaches. My aim here is not to further defend one or any of these. Rather, my aim is to better understand what is at the heart of the ‘common criticism,’ i.e., that treating symptoms – not patients – is bad. What does this mean? Are symptoms not something patients have? By treating symptoms, do clinicians not necessarily treat the patients that have them?

Claus Beisbart: Digging deeper with deep learning? Explanatory understanding and deep neural networks (doc, 14734 words)

Despite their successes at prediction and classification, deep neural networks (DNNs) are often claimed to fail when it comes to providing any understanding of real-world phenomena. However, recently, some authors have argued that DNNs can provide such understanding. To resolve this controversy, I first examine under which conditions DNNs provide humans with explanatory understanding in a clearly defined sense that refers to a simple setting. I adopt a systematic approach that draws on theories of explanation and explanatory understanding, but avoid dependence on any specific account by developing broad conditions of explanatory understanding that leave space for filling in the details in several alternative ways. I argue that the conditions are difficult to satisfy however these details are filled in. The main problem is that, to provide explanatory understanding in the sense I have defined, a DNN has to contain an explanation, and scientists typically do not know whether it does. Accordingly, they cannot feel committed to the explanation or use it, which means that other conditions of explanatory understanding are not satisfied. Still, in some attenuated senses, the conditions can be fulfilled. To complete my conciliatory project, I further show that my results so far are compatible with using DNNs to infer explanatorily relevant information in a thorough investigation. This is what the more optimistic literature on DNNs has focused on. In sum, then, the significance of DNNs for understanding real-world systems depends on what it means to say that they provide understanding, and on how humans use them.

Grant Ramsey, Andra Meneganzin: Multilevel Innovativeness and Cross-Species Comparisons (pdf, 13316 words)

Behavioral innovativeness—the propensity of an individual organism or higher group to innovate—is frequently invoked as a measurable trait allowing for cross-species comparisons. Individuals or species are often regarded as more innovative or less innovative than others, implying that we can rank order the degree of innovativeness along a single dimension. This paper defends a novel multidimensional understanding of behavioral innovativeness in which innovativeness can be modulated with respect to the generation and capitalization of opportunities, as well as the effectiveness and depth of the innovative behaviors. Besides innovation being multidimensional, it is also multilevel. Here we show how innovativeness at one level (such as the species level) does not automatically translate to innovativeness at another (such as the organism level) and discuss why this matters for cross-species comparisons.

Luca Incurvati: Three Kinds of Logical Expressivism (pdf, 12129 words)

In this paper, I distinguish and compare three kinds of logical expressivism. The first, reminiscent of attitude expressivism in meta-ethics, holds that logic is expressive in that logical vocabulary serves to express attitudes. For instance, traditional attitude expressivism about negation, going back to the work of Frank Plumpton Ramsey, Huw Price and others, holds that not expresses disbelief. The second kind of logical expressivism, reminiscent of deflationism about truth and championed by Robert Brandom, holds that logic is expressive in that logical vocabulary serves to make explicit—typically, by expressing them as contents of assertions—the commitments that are implicit in our discursive practices. For instance, content expressivism about the conditional holds that if expresses as content commitment to the goodness of certain inferential moves. The third kind of logical expressivism, and the one I will be arguing for, holds that, in a sense, logic is expressive in both ways: logical vocabulary serves to make explicit commitments to expressions of attitudes.

Nuhu Osman Attah: The Work of Art in the Age of Automated Production (pdf, 10740 words)

Our fine arts were developed, their types and uses were established, in times very different from the present...But the amazing growth of our techniques, the adaptability and precision they have attained, the ideas and habits they are creating, make it a certainty that profound changes are impending in the ancient craft of the Beautiful. In all the arts there is a physical component which can no longer be considered or treated as it used to be, which cannot remain unaffected by our modern knowledge and power…We must expect great innovations to transform the entire technique of the arts, thereby affecting artistic invention itself and perhaps even bringing about an amazing change in our very notion of art. (Valéry 1964 [1928], 225) The passage describes a moment in the history of art in the West in the 20th century characterized by the introduction of new artistic technologies of production and reproduction such as photography. The passage serves as the epigraph to Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” in which he contends that the analyses necessitated by the condition described by Paul Valery compels us to “brush aside a number of outmoded concepts, such as creativity and genius, eternal value and mystery…” (Benjamin 1969[1936]).

Peter Baumann: Transcendental Arguments in Reid? A Reply to McCraw (pdf, 2853 words)

Baumann, Peter. 2025. “Transcendental Arguments in Reid? A Reply to McCraw.” Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 14 (7): 1–6. https://wp.me/p1Bfg0-9Ze. Benjamin W. McCraw’s article “A Reidian Transcendental Argument Against Skepticism” (2025) constitutes an original and thought-provoking contribution both to Reid scholarship and to the discussion of epistemic skepticism. In the following I will make a few remarks about it, focusing on the discussion of skepticism. I start with a brief historical remark on Reid and Kant (§ 1) before I explain the anti-skeptical argument in some detail (§ 2). A discussion of the premises of the argument follows (§ 3). I add some remarks about the social aspect of McCraw’s anti-skeptical stance (§ 4). I finish with another set of historical remarks (§ 5), this time about Reid and Wittgenstein, and a brief conclusion (§ 6).

T. Parent: A Failure of Conservativity in Classical Logic (pdf, 975 words)

In a system with identity, quotation, and an axiom predicate, a classical extension of the system yields a falsity. The result illustrates a novel form of instability in classical logic. Notably, the phenomenon arises without vocabulary such as ’true’ or ’provable’. Conservative extensions are safe expansions: They add expressive resources while proving the same theorems (or at most, terminological variants thereof). Conservative extensions are foundational for major developments, including the Lowenheim-Skolem theorems, precise comparisons of proof-theoretic strength (Simpson 2009), and the understanding of reflection principles in arithmetic and set theory (Feferman 1962). The purpose here is not to question these developments, but rather to advise caution for the future. Some extensions that appear quite conservative end up not being so. In a system with identity, quotation, and a metalinguistic singular term, a purely syntactic predicate for axioms can create instability under an innocent-looking extension.

T. Parent: An Anomaly in Diagonalization (pdf, 7511 words)

It is known that some diagonal arguments, when formalized, do not demonstrate the impossibility of the diagonal object, but instead reveal a breakdown in definability or encoding. For example, in a formal setting, Richard’s paradox does not yield a contradiction; it instead reflects that one of the relevant sets is ill-defined. (For elaboration and other examples, see Simmons 1993, Chapter 2.) This invites the possibility that other diagonal arguments may reflect similar anomalies. The diagonal argument against a universal p.r. function is considered in this light. The impetus is an algorithm which appears to satisfy all standard criteria for being p.r. while simulating the computation of fi(i, n) for any index i of a binary p.r. function. The paper does not attempt to explain why this construction apparently survives the usual diagonal objection, but presents it in a form precise enough to support that analysis.

Ted Parent: Ontology and Acceptance (pdf, 7734 words)

According to Beebee (2018), methodological problems and intractable disagreement in philosophy suggest that we should not believe any philosophical claims, but (in brief) accept them as working hypotheses. Beebee takes van Fraasseen (1980) as inspiration, whose scientific instrumentalism recommends such “acceptance” for claims about unobservables in microphysics. In this paper, I argue that Beebee-style acceptance faces problems which have no analogue for van Fraasssen-style acceptance. In short, philosophical beliefs for the equilibrist are not optional in a way that beliefs about microphysics are. Or rather, that is so unless a fairly radical deflationism about truth and meaning is joined with equilibrism. For what it’s worth, I am not entirely opposed to this under certain qualifications. Regardless, radical deflationism would be a significant liability for equilibrism, and so it is unlikely to be welcomed by Beebee.

Bet On It: Life is Too Short to Wash and Dry (html, 730 words)

I’m a non-conformist, but not a reflexive contrarian. My chief goal is to enjoy every day of my life, and my non-conformism is only a means to that end. But what a means it is! By the power of non-conformism, I weasel out of hours of daily drudgery. …

Articles and blog posts found on 01 July 2025

2025-07-01T23:59:00Z

Georg Brun: Logic and Formalization (pdf, 13142 words)

In logic and philosophy of logic, “formalization” covers a broad range of interrelated issues: some philosophers hold that logical systems are means to formalize theories and reasoning (Dutilh Novaes 2012), others seek to formalize semantical by syntactical systems (Carnap 1942/43), ask whether logical languages are formalizations of natural languages (Stokhof 2018), teach undergraduates to formalize arguments using elementary logic, debate how to formalize notions such as moral obligation (Hansson 2018), or develop formalizations of belief change processes (Rott 2001). This variety goes hand in hand with an equally broad range of general views about what logic and its role in philosophy is or should be – whether, for example, logic is first of all a tool for reasoning (Dutilh Novaes 2012), a mathematical theory of certain formal structures which can be used to model philosophically interesting phenomena (Hansson 2018; Sagi 2020a; Stokhof 2018), or a theory that studies inferential relations in natural language and enables us to show that certain ordinary-language arguments are valid (Peregrin/Svoboda 2017), to name just a few. More or less implicitly, these approaches contain views on what the target phenomena of formalizing are (languages, arguments, …), what kind of relation formalizations have to it (model, tool, …) and whether formalizing is an integral part of logic or an application of it.

Preston Greene: The Termination Risks of Simulation Science (pdf, 10371 words)

Historically, the hypothesis that our world is a computer simulation has struck many as just another improbable-but-possible “skeptical hypothesis” about the nature of reality. Recently, however, the simulation hypothesis has received significant attention from philosophers, physicists, and the popular press. This is due to the discovery of an epistemic dependency: If we believe that our civilization will one day run many simulations concerning its ancestry, then we should believe that we are probably in an ancestor simulation right now. This essay examines a troubling but underexplored feature of the ancestor-simulation hypothesis: the termination risk posed by both ancestor-simulation technology and experimental probes into whether our world is an ancestor simulation. This essay evaluates the termination risk by using extrapolations from current computing practices and simulation technology. The conclusions, while provisional, have great implications for debates concerning the fundamental nature of reality and the safety of contemporary physics.