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4110459.609208
Prominent phenomenological accounts of schizophrenia have long implicated disturbances in temporality as a central characteristic of the disorder (Minkowski, 1923; Stanghellini et al., 2016; Martin et al., 2019). Early clinical phenomenologists such as Minkowski posited that schizophrenia is defined by a fundamental alteration to the patient’s temporal experience, describing phenomena such as a “blocked future” and “fragmented time” that disrupts continuity between past, present, and future. Minkowski's notion of trouble générateur highlighted the incapacity to resonate with reality, marking a profound disconnect from shared temporal and existential structures. This view remains influential in contemporary research where scholars continue to explore temporal disintegration as a core feature of schizophrenia (Fuchs, 2010; Stanghellini et al., 2016). However, the more fundamental nature of this temporal disintegration has begun to be reinterpreted in clinical phenomenology.
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4110480.609309
Richard Dawkins is widely celebrated as a key figure in contemporary evolutionary biology, but his intellectual legacy resists simple classification. While he is often framed as a hardline defender of empirical science and naturalism, the structure of his contributions reveals a more ambivalent posture—one that is deeply philosophical, even as it disavows philosophy. This essay argues that Dawkins’ enduring influence derives not from experimental discoveries or novel data, but from his role as a conceptual architect: a theorist who reshapes how we think about genes, selection, and organismal design. Through close examination of his major works, public statements, and the epistemic frameworks he deploys, I suggest that Dawkins’ authority operates through what might be termed a “rhetorical empiricism”—a stance that foregrounds science while covertly engaging in metaphysical and conceptual argumentation. The central irony is that Dawkins embodies a form of philosophy he explicitly rejects: a speculative, systematizing, and normatively charged philosophy of biology.
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4110501.609332
We present a new ψ-ontology theorem demonstrating that the quantum wave function is ontic (real) rather than epistemic (representing knowledge) in single-world unitary quantum theories (SUQTs). By leveraging a protocol of repeated reversible measurements on a single quantum system, we show that any two distinct quantum states produce different statistical distributions of (erased) measurement outcomes. This theoretical distinguishability implies that different quantum states correspond to different physical realities, supporting the ontic nature of the quantum state. Unlike previous ψ-ontology theorems, such as the Pusey-Barrett-Rudolph theorem, our proof relies solely on the unitary evolution and Born rule of SUQTs, without additional assumptions like preparation independence. This strengthens its implications for quantum foundations, particularly in restricting non-ψ-ontic interpretations like QBism without assuming an underlying ontic state and its dynamics. The theorem applies to any pair of distinct states in a finite-dimensional Hilbert space, with extensions to infinite-dimensional systems, offering a robust and general argument for the reality of the quantum state.
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4110527.609348
In previous papers, we demonstrated that an ontology of quantum mechanics, described in terms of states and events with internal phenomenal aspects (a form of panprotopsychism), is well suited to explain consciousness. We showed that the combination problems of qualities, structures and subjects in panpsychism and panprotopsychism stem from implicit hypotheses based on classical physics regarding supervenience, which are not applicable at the quantum level. Within this view, consciousness arises in entangled quantum systems coupled to the neural network of the brain. In entangled systems, the properties of individual parts disappear, giving rise to an exponential number of emergent properties and states. Here, we analyze self-consciousness as the capacity to view oneself as a subject of experience. The causal openness of quantum systems provides self-conscious beings the ability to make independent choices and decisions, reflecting a sense of self-governance and autonomy. In this context, the issue of personal identity takes a new form free from the problems of the simple view or the reductive approaches.
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4128842.609362
Arithmetical truth-value realists hold that any proposition in the language of arithmetic has a fully determined truth value. Arithmetical truth-value necessists add that this truth value is necessary rather than merely contingent. …
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4225771.609378
This paper argues that the lack of a shared evidence base in the policy debate around alcohol control, and the failure to acknowledge this fact, creates a tendency to dismiss key bodies of evidence as irrelevant, to the detriment of public health approaches. Using examples from three policy processes, it shows that proponents of opposed positions deploy rival conceptualizations of “problem alcohol use” as the object of policy intervention. Using analytic tools from the philosophy of science, it argues that these conceptualizations correspond to distinct bodies of evidence, which are treated as incompatible. Finally, it points to institutional mechanisms through which the problem can be mitigated.
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4225794.609392
Alzheimer’s disease emerged around the 1900s as a rare disease that became synonymous with common dementia by the 1980s. In the 2010s, in vivo biomarkers of Alzheimer’s pathophysiology then led researchers to emphasize the presymptomatic biology of Alzheimer’s biomarkers, thus decentering dementia. Three consensus definitions were elaborated around biomarkers, and were rearticulated in 2024: biomarker-determined Alzheimer’s disease; biomarker-informed “clinical-biological” Alzheimer’s disease; and biomarker-independent, “all-cause” dementia. I consider their differences to hinge on the questionable legitimacy of the Alzheimer “biomarkerization” of aging. I encourage a focus on the actionable concept of brain health beyond Alzheimer’s to motivate equitable health promotion.
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4269280.609406
Summary: We humans are diverse. But how to understand human diversity in the case of cognitive diversity? This Element discusses how to properly investigate human behavioural and cognitive diversity, how to scientifically represent, and how to explain cognitive diversity. Since there are various methodological approaches and explanatory agendas across the cognitive and behavioural sciences, which can be more or less useful for understanding human diversity, a critical analysis is needed. And as the controversial study of sex and gender differences in cognition illustrates, the scientific representations and explanations put forward matter to society and impact public policy, including policies on mental health. But how to square the vision of human cognitive diversity with the assumption that we all share one human nature? Is cognitive diversity something to be positively valued? The author engages with these questions in connection with the issues of neurodiversity, cognitive disability, and essentialist construals of human nature.
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4283439.609422
The view that epistemic peers should conciliate in cases of disagreement—the Conciliatory View—had been an important view in the early days of the peer disagreement debate. Over the years, however, the view has been the target of severe criticism; an “obituary” was already written for the view, and, as a recent proclamation has it, there is “no hope” for it. In this paper, I will argue that we should keep the hope alive by defending the Conciliatory View of peer disagreement. The primary strategy of my defense will be to separate the claims made by the view specific to peer disagreement and claims that concern higher-order evidence more generally. This separation allows us to see which problems cannot be addressed in the context of peer disagreement alone. As I will argue, the upshot of making this distinction is that although the jury is still out on whether higher-order evidence should affect our first-order doxastic states, the Conciliatory View likely follows if it does.
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4283470.609437
This article examines the role of imagination and fiction in Otto Neurath’s work, particularly in his scientific utopianism. Using contemporary philosophical tools to understand different senses of the concept of imagination, this article argues that scientific utopianism proposes to employ scientific data and data analysis to construct imaginary social arrangements, and then to shift our attitude toward these constructions so that utopias can be compared as technological projects. This shift in attitude toward imaginary constructions is typical of utopia as a literary genre.
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4283505.609453
Probability is distinguished into two kinds: physical and epistemic, also, but less accurately, called objective and subjective. Simple postulates are given for physical probability, the only novel one being a locality condition. Translated into no-collapse quantum mechanics, without hidden variables, the postulates imply that the elements in any equiamplitude expansion of the quantum state are equiprobable. Such expansions therefore provide ensembles of microstates that can be used to deBine probabilities in the manner of frequentism, in von Mises’ sense (where the probability of ? is the frequency of occurrence of ? in a suitable ensemble). The result is the Born rule. Since satisfying our postulates, and in particular the locality condition (meaning no action-at-a-distance), these probabilities for no-collapse quantum mechanics are perfectly local, even though they violate Bell inequalities. The latter can be traced to a violation of outcome independence, used to derive the inequalities. But in no-collapse theory that is not a locality condition; it is a criterion for entanglement, not locality.
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4283566.609468
This paper explores zero and infinity as dual scalar operators that shape mathematical and physical structures across scales. From Cantorian set theory to black hole thermodynamics and fractal geometry, we argue that 0 and ∞ are not opposites but mirrors—reciprocally defining limits within a scalable universe.
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4342515.609483
Writing iambic pentameter is hard. Well maybe it’s easy for you, but we can at least agree that it’s not trivial: not just any ten-syllable line counts. There are rules! A theory of meter, whatever else it is, is an attempt to state those rules (for iambic and all other meters). …
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4402068.609497
Very short summary: In this essay, I discuss various recent controversial cases in Europe where political institutions have been criticized for making “undemocratic” decisions (Romania, Germany, France) to ask under which conditions the median voter’s views should rule. …
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4438654.609511
In Ontology Made Easy (2015), I defend the idea that there are ‘easy’ inferences that begin from uncontroversial premises and end with answers to disputed ontological questions. But what do easy inferences really get us? Bueno and Cumpa (this journal, 2020) argue that easy inferences don’t tell us about the natures of properties—they don’t tell us what properties are. Moreover, they argue, by accepting an ontologically neutral quantifier we can also resist the conclusion that properties or numbers exist. Here I address these two issues in turn—in ways that help clarify both the scope and results of easy ontology. First, it is important to see that easy inferences were never intended to address modal questions. Modal questions are addressed by a different part of the total deflationary view—modal normativism. So understood, metaphysical modal questions nonetheless do not provide a remaining area for serious metaphysical inquiry. Second, I argue that we have reason to resist adopting an ontologically neutral quantifier, if we aim to answer ontological questions (without begging the question). Addressing these issues helps to clarify both what does (and does not) follow from easy inferences, and how they form part of a larger deflationary metametaphysical view.
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4438674.609525
Modality has long presented a range of philosophical problems and puzzles. For example, Are there (really) modal properties, modal facts, or possible worlds? If there are modal properties, how could they be related to non-modal properties or relations? If there are modal facts, properties, or possible worlds, how could we come to know about them, given that modal features of the world seem not to be empirically detectable, and that possible worlds seem to be, in principle, causally disconnected from us?
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4438692.60954
The essays in this volume cover the gamut of my work, from its beginnings in work on fiction, through work on the ontology of art and artifacts, social ontology, and work on ordinary objects generally, through more recent work on metametaphysics, modality, and conceptual engineering. On the surface, these themes might seem to have little in common. In this essay, however, I aim to make clear how they have been interconnected, and form parts of a vision of, and for, metaphysics.
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4456575.609554
In his Cambridge Element, The Philosophy of Symmetry, Nicholas J. Teh introduces and systematises the conceptual aspects and significance of physical symmetries—and, in particular, those physical symmetries which only leave a subsystem invariant qua subsystem, but not relative to its environment (e.g., Galileo-ship-type symmetries).
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4456601.609568
This paper focuses on a type of underdetermination that has barely received any philosophical attention: underdetermination of data. I show how one particular type of data — RNA sequencing data, arguably one of the most important data types in contemporary biology and medicine — is underdetermined, because RNA sequencing experiments often do not determine a unique data set. Instead, different ways of generating usable data can result in vastly different, and even incompatible, data sets. But, since it is often impossible to adjudicate among these different ways of generating data, ‘the data’ coming out of such experiments is underdetermined.
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4456629.609582
Science is widely regarded as providing one of our best, most secure, dependable, and reliable kinds of empirical knowledge. Yet, much of this knowledge involves events, processes, mechanisms, and entities that go beyond the limits of what we can directly observe. Consequently, there is a lively debate about the epistemic status of such unobservables and when and under what circumstances (if any) we are justified in believing claims involving them. According to a rather bleak view about scientific knowledge, we aren’t — and never can be — justified in believing such claims. The argument from underdetermination is one of the main arguments that proponents of the bleak view appeal to. Its basic underlying idea is that empirical evidence alone can never single out a particular scientific claim, hypothesis, or theory, since — so the argument goes — there are always competing and incompatible claims that are empirically equivalent, i.e. that can also account for the very same observable evidence. As a result, the evidence alone can never point to one of these many competitors as superior to the others: they are underdetermined by the available empirical evidence.
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4473125.609597
Given a time t and a world w, possible or not, say that w is t-possible if and only if there is a possible world wt that matches w in all atemporal respects as well as with respect to all that happens up to and including time t. For instance, a world just like ours but where in 2027 a square circle appears is 2026-possible but not 2028-possible. …
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4501583.609612
Inner speech arguably plays a central role in human consciousness, and yet, compared to other key psychological phenomena it seems to be somewhat neglected. Two studies were conducted to test the hypothesis that inner speech may be under-cited in the literature and might not have received its share of attention as a research area. Study 1 investigated how frequently inner speech and related terms were mentioned in Introductory Psychology textbooks. Only 7 out of 32 textbooks (21.8%) cited either inner speech, self-talk, private speech, or self-statements in their subject indexes. Study 2 compared citation frequency in PsycINFO for inner speech and related terms to 103 key psychological concepts and phenomena in peer-reviewed journal articles. The average citation frequency for all psychological terms was 1719; by comparison, inner speech was cited 52 times. 84.5% of all terms were cited more often than inner speech. Taken together these observations suggest that inner speech does tend to be overlooked, not so much because it is unimportant but probably because it is taken for granted.
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4516389.609625
I gave a talk last week as part of the VT Department of Philosophy’s “brown bag” series. Here’s the blurb:
What is the Philosophy of Statistics? (and how I was drawn to it)
I give an introductory discussion of two key philosophical controversies in statistics in relation to today’s “replication crisis” in science: the role of probability, and the nature of evidence, in error-prone inference. …
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4544633.609643
I’ve now been blogging for nearly twenty years—through five presidential administrations, my own moves from Waterloo to MIT to UT Austin, my work on algebrization and BosonSampling and BQP vs. PH and quantum money and shadow tomography, the publication of Quantum Computing Since Democritus, my courtship and marriage and the birth of my two kids, a global pandemic, the rise of super-powerful AI and the terrifying downfall of the liberal world order. …
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4603042.609656
The puzzle of aphantasia concerns how individuals reporting no visual imagery perform more-or-less normally on tasks presumed to depend on it [1]. In his splendid review, Zeman [2] canvasses four “cognitive explanations”: (i) differences in description; (ii) “faulty introspection”; (iii) “unconscious or ‘sub-personal’ imagery”; and (iv) total lack of imagery. Difficulties beset all four. To make progress, we must recognize that imagery is a complex and multi-dimensional capacity and that aphantasia typically reflects partial imagery loss with selective sparing. Specifically, I propose that aphantasia commonly involves a lack of visual-object imagery (explaining subjective reports and objective correlates) but selectively spared spatial imagery (explaining preserved task performance) [3,4].
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4629544.609674
One challenge to relationism in general relativity is that the metric field is underdetermined by the stress-energy tensor. This is manifested in the existence of distinct vacuum solutions to Einstein’s field equations. In this paper, I reformulate the problem of underdetermination as a problem from vacuum solutions. I call this the vacuum challenge and identify the gravitational degrees of freedom (associated with the Weyl tensor) as the “source” of the challenge. The Weyl tensor allows for gravitational effects that something outside of a system exerts on the system. I provide a relationist response to the vacuum challenge.
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4629567.609704
This article offers a critical engagement with Jurgen Renn’s historio-graphical approach, with particular focus on The Evolution of Knowledge and The Einsteinian Revolution (co-authored with Hanoch Gutfreund). It explores how Renn reinterprets Albert Einstein’s contributions to modern physics, especially special and general relativity, not primarily as the product of individual insight, but as emergent from broader epistemic structures and long-term knowledge systems. The discussion centers on key concepts such as “challenging objects,” “epistemic matrices,” “mental models,” and “borderline problems,” and situates Renn’s framework within broader debates involving Thomas Kuhn, Ludwik Fleck, and Mara Beller. While recognizing the historiographical strengths of Renn’s structuralist approach, the article raises questions about its implications for understanding individual agency, conceptual creativity, and the philosophical dimensions of scientific change. The paper contends that a balanced account of scientific innovation must preserve both the historical embeddedness of knowledge and the originality of conceptual breakthroughs.
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4629588.609734
This paper examines the role of perspectivism in Relational Quantum Mechanics, situating it within the broader landscape of quantum interpretations and the scientific realism debate. We argue that, while interpretations such as QBism embrace strong forms of perspectivism, Relational Quantum Mechanics adopts a “soft” perspectivism, limiting the observer’s role to selecting experimental contexts without compromising its realist framework. We also explore the historical roots of Relational Quantum Mechanics, showing that relational ideas in the works of Bohr and other pioneers similarly avoided strong perspectivist commitments. By analyzing both contemporary and historical perspectives, we argue that Relational Quantum Mechanics offers a minimalist yet robust relational interpretation, distinct from more subjectivist approaches.
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4629609.609759
In a small book entitled Ondes et Mouvements [1], published in February 1926, Louis de Broglie described the wave, now known as the de Broglie wave, as a modulation or beating effect of undulatory form induced in the structure of the particle by the failure of simultaneity. Considered in this way, the de Broglie wave is neither ontologically distinct, nor in any way separate, from the particle, but like the Fitzgerald-Lorentz contraction is a distortion in the structure of the particle itself. So understood, the de Broglie wave is a physically real phenomenon, capable of describing for the particle, a well-de…ned and physically realistic trajectory. In comparison, and as I argue in this paper, the wave functions that emerge as solutions to the Schrödinger and Klein-Gordon equations are better regarded as mathematical constructs, albeit constructs of signi…cant utility, identifying the wave number and frequency that the particle would have at each point of space if it were in fact at that point of space. A particular concern of this paper will be to show that the de Broglie wave would emerge as such a distortion of structure in certain sonic quasiparticles proposed in the context of analogue gravity for the purpose of simulating the Lorentz transformation.
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4629632.609782
Philosophical discussion of the Two-Envelope Paradox has suffered from a lack of formal precision. I discuss various versions of the paradoxical argument using modern probability theory, which helps to make diagnoses that are simpler, more insightful, and provably correct. Paradoxical arguments are revealed to be fallacious for one of three reasons: (1) the argument makes a formal mistake such as an equivocation fallacy; (2) the argument disregards relevant uncertainty about or variability in a unit of measurement; (3) the argument uses an invalid decision rule. I improve upon various existing diagnoses and discuss what kind of philosophical and decision-theoretic import the paradox has.