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1018360.153156
The received view of scientific experimentation holds that science is characterized by experiment and experiment is characterized by active intervention on the system of interest. Although versions of this view are widely held, they have seldom been explicitly defended. The present essay reconstructs and defuses two arguments in defense of the received view: first, that intervention is necessary for uncovering causal structures, and second, that intervention conduces to better evidence. By examining a range of non-interventionist studies from across the sciences, I conclude that interventionist experiments are not, ceteris paribus, epistemically superior to non-interventionist studies and that the latter may thus be classified as experiment proper. My analysis explains why intervention remains valuable while at the same time elevating the status of some non-interventionist studies to that of experiment proper.
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1051184.153289
New content since our last update includes:
(1) A new study guide on Peter Singer’s ‘All Animals are Equal’ (the first chapter from Animal Liberation Now), which covers:
Singer’s argument against speciesism (based on his analysis of what makes unjust discrimination in general wrong). …
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1069170.153302
Researchers worried about catastrophic risks from advanced AI have argued that we should expect sufficiently capable AI agents to pursue power over humanity because power is a convergent instrumental goal, something that is useful for a wide range of final goals. Others have recently expressed skepticism of these claims. This paper aims to formalize the concepts of instrumental convergence and power-seeking in an abstract, decision-theoretic framework, and to assess the claim that power is a convergent instrumental goal. I conclude that this claim contains at least an element of truth, but might turn out to have limited predictive utility, since an agent’s options cannot always be ranked in terms of power in the absence of substantive information about the agent’s final goals. However, the fact of instrumental convergence is more predictive for agents who have a good shot at attaining absolute or near-absolute power.
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1108160.153315
I have access to two kinds of information about consciousness: I know the occasions on which I am conscious and the occasions on which I am not. Focusing on the second, we get this argument:
If panpsychism is true, everything is always conscious. …
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1108589.153323
Violent video games (VVGs) are a source of serious and continuing controversy. They are not unique in this respect, though. Other entertainment products have been criticized on moral grounds, from pornography to heavy metal, horror films, and Harry Potter books. Some of these controversies have fizzled out over time and have come to be viewed as cases of moral panic. Others, including moral objections to VVGs, have persisted. The aim of this paper is to determine which, if any, of the concerns raised about VVGs are legitimate. We argue that common moral objections to VVGs are unsuccessful, but that a plausible critique can be developed that captures the insights of these objections while avoiding their pitfalls. Our view suggests that the moral badness of a game depends on how well its internal logic expresses or encourages the play‑ ers’ objectionable attitudes. This allows us to recognize that some games are morally worse than others—and that it can be morally wrong to design and play some VVGs—but that the moral badness of these games is not necessarily dependent on how violent they are.
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1111993.153331
There is a near consensus among philosophers of science whose research focuses on science and values that the ideal of value-free science is untenable, and that science not only is, but normatively must be, value-laden in some respect. The consensus is far from complete; with some regularity, defenses of the value-free ideal (VFI) as well as critiques of major arguments against the VFI surface in the literature. I review and respond to many of the recent defenses of the VFI and show that they generally fail to meet the mark. In the process, I articulate what the current burden of argument for a defense of the VFI ought to be, given the state of the literature.
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1133661.153338
There is an "under-representation problem” in philosophy departments and journals. Empirical data suggest that while we have seen some improvements since the 1990s, the rate of change has slowed down. Some posit that philosophy has disciplinary norms making it uniquely resistant to change (Antony and Cudd 2012; Dotson 2012; Hassoun et al. 2022). In this paper, we present results from an empirical case study of a philosophy department that achieved and maintained male-female gender parity among its faculty as early as 2014. Our analysis extends beyond matters of gender parity because that is only one, albeit important, dimension of inclusion. We build from the case study to reflect on strategies that may catalyze change.
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1133706.153347
McKenna, T. [2024]: ‘Hicks, Jaag and Loew’s Humean Laws for Human Agents’, BJPS Review of Books, 2024 People are quite fond of the best systems account of laws of nature. From a certain vantage point, it’s not hard to see why: it o ers an intuitive picture of laws that avoids appeal to any spooky metaphysical gizmos like universals, and it dovetails neatly with Humean analyses of other related notions. Given these motivations, however, one might be troubled by the fact that the canonical formulation of the account (given by David Lewis [1973], [1983], [1986], [1994]) does not seem to marry up particularly well with what we see scientists doing with laws in the course of their inquiries. As just one example, it is far from clear that in evaluating candidate laws, scientists prize anything like the balance of strength and simplicity that the traditional best systems account uses to decide which system is the ‘best’.
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1133724.153356
McQueen, K. J. [2024]: ‘Steven French’s A Phenomenological Approach to Quantum Mechanics’, BJPS Review of Books, 2024 In A Phenomenological Approach to Quantum Mechanics, Steven French o ers what he says will be his nal words on two key issues that he has for decades been trying to get across to the philosophy of physics community, one historical and one theoretical.
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1133742.153366
The theoretical physicist Michio Kaku ([2014]) once stated that the brain is ‘the most complicated object in the known universe’. For decades, neuroscientists have been trying to disentangle the brain’s complexity in order to understand how it can support our behaviours and mental life. In his latest book, Luiz Pessoa wants us instead to embrace the entanglement of this intricate organ, not as a way to give up on our quest to understand its workings, but as a change in strategy to better comprehend its complexity.
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1133762.153374
Smeenk, C. [2024]: ‘Gordon Belot’s Accelerating Expansion’, BJPS Review of Books, 2024 What would be the consequences of taking de Sitter spacetime as more fundamental to understanding physical geometry than Minkowski spacetime? De Sitter discovered his eponymous spacetime shortly after Einstein formulated general relativity, and it is the simplest—maximally symmetric—solution of the eld equations with a positive cosmological constant (Λ). The standard model of cosmology attributes the majority of energy density in the universe to Λ. A cosmological constant remains (as the name suggests) constant as the universe evolves, and comes to dominate dynamically as other forms of matter and energy dilute with cosmic expansion—driving the large scale structure of spacetime towards de Sitter spacetime in the far future. Adding a non-zero Λ furthermore has a profound impact on the description of other domains, such as gravitational waves and black holes. As is familiar from the study of di erential equations, adding a term to a set of equations, even if it is ‘small’, can radically change the structure of the space of solutions. In this case, the Λ → 0 limit, to recover Minkowski spacetime, is not well behaved, undermining the use of mathematical techniques that exploit its structural features. There is now a substantial research literature devoted to the physics of de Sitter spacetime (and related spacetimes). It is hard to disagree with Belot’s assessment that this is a ‘ eld in which open problems extend as far as the eye can see’ (p. x), and the literature abounds with ideas sure to provoke philosophers. Accelerating Expansion makes a compelling case that philosophers should get to work on these open problems—not only because they concern central questions regarding the applicability of physics and our epistemic situation, but because the provocations often stem from bizarre assumptions—and provides an orientation and training programme for those eager to join the e ort.
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1133779.153383
Pence, C. H. [2024]: ‘Marshall Abrams’s Evolution and the Machinery of Chance’, BJPS Review of Books, 2024 For almost twenty years, Marshall Abrams has been, through a long series of papers, one of the primary contributors to a ourishing debate on explanation, causation, chance, and probability in natural selection. He has argued that a causal understanding of evolutionary explanations can be grounded in facts about populations and individual organisms, despite the statistical character of such explanations (which has pushed some to argue for a contrary, eliminativist position about the causal e cacy of evolutionary factors like natural selection and genetic drift). In this he is not alone; others (including myself) have o ered similar accounts. But what makes his stance both unique and compelling is that he has long claimed that it is the interpretation of probability that allows us to construct such an approach. In parallel work (o ering his own take on a perspective developed di erently by authors like Ismael [2011] or Strevens [2011]), he has laid out what he calls the ‘far- ung frequency mechanistic’ interpretation of probability (or ‘mechanistic probability’ for short), which—in addition to being applicable to classic cases like casino games—can also, he argues, ground the probabilities of evolutionary change that the theory of natural selection o ers us.
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1133795.153392
Hans-Jörg Rheinberger’s latest book, Split and Splice, brings together and builds upon themes that are familiar from his previous works, in particular his highly in uential Toward a History of Epistemic Things ([1997]) and his Epistemology of the Concrete ([2010]). Characteristic of all of these books is Rheinberger’s skilful combination of a profound knowledge of the history of biology with careful attention to the details of experimental practices in microbiology, and an ambitious, often dazzling, overarching vision of how to analyse what he deems most exciting about the scienti c process, namely, that it can create novelty. It is this latter point, in particular, that sets his unique approach apart from much of contemporary history and philosophy of science in the Anglo-American tradition. Instead, his theoretical framework is deeply informed by the French tradition of historical epistemology, of which Bachelard and Canguilhem are particularly well-known gures. In addition, the book draws on a wealth of research from various other traditions and disciplines, often taking the accounts and observations of scientists as points of departure, combining them with concepts from philosophy, history, cultural studies, and STS, to weave together an evocative set of interlacing analyses of the scienti c process.
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1133812.153401
According to the traditional understanding, ethical normativity is about what you should do and epistemic normativity is about what you should believe. Singer’s topic in Right Belief and True Belief is the latter. However, though he later rejects this traditional understanding of the distinction (pp. 205–7), he thinks we can learn a great deal from looking at the parallels between these two species of normativity, and his book provides a masterclass in how to do that: this is epistemology as practised by someone very much at home in ethics and well versed in its contemporary literature, its arguments, distinctions, and central positions. In the rst chapter, Singer distinguishes a number of di erent normative notions to which we appeal when we evaluate beliefs: Is the belief correct? Is it right? Should we believe it? Ought we to? Must we? These he calls ‘deontic notions’, and we use them to evaluate the belief with respect to the believer. But there are also these: Is it praiseworthy or blameworthy to have the belief? Is the believer at fault if they do? Are they rational? Is the belief justi ed for them? These he calls ‘responsibility notions’, and we use them to evaluate the believer with respect to the belief (pp. 73–74). This distinction he calls bipartite (p. 189).
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1133829.15341
Lewens, T. [2024]: ‘Matteo Mameli’s Why Human Nature Matters and Marco J Nathan’s The Quest for Human Nature’, BJPS Review of Books, 2024 When philosophers of biology write about human nature, their goal is typically to see what sense can be made of the very idea that there might be a human nature, prior to the provision of details about what the exact features of such a nature might be. The great majority of the work done in this area over the past forty years or so falls into one of two genres. First, there are positive proposals for naturalistic analyses. They all aim to identify human nature with some set of biologically or psychologically salient patterns, processes, or properties. Second, there are equally naturalistic expressions of scepticism about human nature; ‘naturalistic’, because this type of work proposes that an up-to-date understanding of evolution and development leaves no room for any notion of human nature.
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1133848.153434
At the meta-level, two positions emerge as through lines of the book. The rst is a view of the central concepts of epistemology (belief, knowledge, con dence) as emergent properties. As such they are non-fundamental, but feature in highly useful and tractable models. Epistemology is thus intrinsically idealized; in a basic way, attributing propositional attitudes to agents always involves abstraction and distortion. The second through line is that this undermines hope for a uni ed account of the epistemic domain. Instead, the best we can do is to build models that succeed at limited purposes within parts of that domain.
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1133867.153445
The book is structured into three parts. In the rst part (chapters 1–2), Chirimuuta gives a general philosophical framework with which to approach modelling perspectives in neuroscience. Part 2 (chapters 3–7) applies the framework to several detailed case studies from the history of neuroscience. Finally, part 3 (chapters 8–10) applies lessons from the rst parts to ongoing debates in both philosophy and neuroscience. In this review, I will begin by outlining the contributions in each of the three parts, with speci c focus on the strengths of the account. I will then give some criticisms of the meta-scienti c approach in the book. The goal here is not to criticize the book writ large, but instead to highlight potential debates within the generally productive stance that it lays out.
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1191546.153453
Explanatory Essentialism (EE) is the view that a property is the essence of a kind because it causally explains the many properties that instances of that kind exhibit. This paper examines an application of EE to biological species, which I call Biological Explanatory Essentialism (BEE). BEE states that a particular biological origin is the essence of a species on the grounds that it causes certain organisms to display the group of properties the species is associated with. Evaluating BEE is important, as it offers a novel argument for biological essentialism—the contentious claim that biological species have essences. This paper critically assesses the empirical foundations of BEE, focusing on the presupposition that a single biological origin causes the many properties associated with the species in question. By discussing a case of cryptic species among five-toed jerboas within the Scarturus elater species complex, I challenge that presupposition, thereby arguing that cryptic species present a serious obstacle to BEE. I conclude that BEE fails to support biological essentialism and suggest that essentialist philosophers reconsider the role of causal-explanatory factors in accounting for the purported essences of biological species. These philosophers may need to explore alternatives beyond such factors, one of which I briefly outline.
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1191571.153462
In Yang-Mills gauge theory on a Euclidean Cauchy surface the group of gauge symmetries carrying direct empirical significance is often believed to be GDES = GI/G , where GI is the group of boundary-preserving gauge symmetries and G is its subgroup of transformations that are generated by the constraints of the theory. These groups are identified respectively as the gauge transformations that become constant asymptotically and those that become the identity asymptotically. In the Abelian case G = U(1) the quotient is then identified as the group of global gauge symmetries, i.e. U( ) itself. However, known derivations of this claim are imprecise, both mathematically and conceptually. We derive the physical gauge group rigorously for both Abelian and non-Abelian gauge theory. Our main new point is that the requirement to restrict to GI does not follow from finiteness of energy only, but from the requirement that the Lagrangian of Yang-Mills theory be defined on a tangent bundle to configuration space. Moreover, we explain why the quotient consists precisely of a copy of the global gauge group for every homotopy class, even if the various gauge transformations apparently have different asymptotic rates of convergence. Lastly, we consider Yang-Mills- Higgs theory in our framework and show that asymptotic boundary conditions differ in the unbroken and broken phases.
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1199562.153471
The obvious analysis of “p is known” is:
- There is someone who knows p.
But this obvious analysis doesn’t seem correct, or at least there is an interesting use of “is known” that doesn’t fit (1). Imagine a mathematics paper that says: “The necessary and sufficient conditions for q are known (Smith, 1967).” But what if the conditions are long and complicated, so that no one can keep them all in mind? …
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1236146.153478
I’m back from a short trip to Oslo, Norway. Compared to other Scandinavian capitals like Stockholm and Helsinki (I’ve never been to Copenhagen, yet), I find Oslo more modern and “cold.” There is beauty in modernity of course, but it lacks the charm of Stockholm’s downtown. …
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1243258.153485
Critical-Level Utilitarianism entails one of the Repugnant Conclusion and the Sadistic Conclusion (both of which are counter-intuitive), depending on the critical level. Indeterminate Critical-Level Utilitarianism is a version of Critical- Level Utilitarianism where it is indeterminate which well-being level is the critical level. Undistinguished Critical-Range Utilitarianism is variant of Critical-Level Utilitarianism where additions of lives in a range of well-being between the good and the bad lives makes the resulting outcome incomparable to the original outcome. These views both avoid the Repugnant Conclusion and avoid the Sadistic Conclusion. And they agree about all comparisons of outcomes that do not involve indeterminacy or incomparability. So it is unclear whether we have any reason to favour one of these theories over the other. I argue that Indeterminate Critical-Level Utilitarianism still entails the disjunction of the Repugnant Conclusion and the Sadistic Conclusion, which is also repugnant. Whereas, Undistinguished Critical- Range Utilitarianism does not entail this conclusion.
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1290240.153492
Suppose Alice and Bob are students and co-religionists. Alice is struggling with a subject and asks Bob to pray that she might do fine on the exam. She gets 91%. Alice also knows that Bob’s credence in their religion is a bit lower than her own. …
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1293625.153499
Suppose that the right way to combine epistemic utilities across people is averaging: the overall epistemic utility of the human race is the average of the individual epistemic utilities. Suppose, further, that each individual epistemic utility is strictly proper, and you’re a “humanitarian” agent who wants to optimize overall epistemic utility. …
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1306513.153507
- Because of a recent breakthrough by Cook and Mertz on Tree Evaluation, Ryan now shows that every problem solvable in t time on a multitape Turing machine is also solvable in close to √t space
- As a consequence, he shows that there are problems solvable in O(n) space that require nearly quadratic time on multitape Turing machines
- If this could be applied recursively to boost the polynomial degree, then P≠PSPACE
- On Facebook, someone summarized this result as “there exists an elephant that can’t fit through a mouse hole.” I pointed out that for decades, we only knew how to show there was a blue whale that didn’t fit through the mouse hole
- I’ll be off the Internet for much of today (hopefully only today?) …
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1306831.153514
Quantum entanglement is widely regarded as a nonlocal phenomenon, but Deutsch and Hayden (2000) have recently received growing support for their claim that in the Heisenberg picture, entanglement can be characterised locally using objects they call descriptors. I argue that the notion of locality underlying this claim is a flawed version of the principle of separability that I call spatial separability. An improved version, spatiotemporal separability, reveals that their claim is false. The proposed analysis of separability also reveals the crucial feature of quantum theory that makes it “spooky” in any picture: quantum entanglement entails that there are non-qualitative properties, which are profoundly different from the qualitative properties we have come to expect from classical physics.
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1357079.153521
Moral arguments against the consumption of animal products from factory farms are traditionally categorical. The conclusions require people to eliminate from their diets all animal products (veganism), all animal flesh (vegetarianism), all animals except seafood (pescetarianism), etc. An alternative “reducetarian” approach prescribes progressive reduction in one's consumption of animal products, not categorical abstention. We articulate a much-needed moral defense of this more ecumenical approach. We start with a presumptive case in favor of reducetarianism before moving on to address three objections—that it falls short of our obligations to address such an egregious practice, is a rationalization of the status quo, and cannot fix systemic injustices in animal agriculture. We conclude that reducetarianism is a defensible approach for many people and is a promising route to moral progress on factory farming.
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1364522.153528
Mechanistic theories of explanation are widely held in the philosophy of science, especially in philosophy of biology, neuroscience and cognitive science. While such theories remain dominant in the field, there have been an increasing number of challenges raised against them over the past decade. These challenges claim that mechanistic explanations can lead to incoherence, triviality, or deviate too far from how scientists in the life sciences genuinely employ the term “mechanism”. In this paper, I argue that these disputes are fueled, in part, by the running together of distinct questions and concerns regarding mechanisms, representations of mechanisms, and mechanistic explanation. More care and attention to how these are distinct from one another, but also the various ways they might relate, can help to push these disputes in more positive directions.
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1364575.153535
—This study examines how large language models (LLMs) transform knowledge and literature from a technocentric perspective. While LLMs centralize human knowledge and reconstruct it in a relational memory framework, research indicates that when trained on their own data, they experience “model collapse.” Experiments reveal that as generations progress, language deteriorates, variance decreases, and confusion increases. While humans refine their language through reading, machines encounter epistemological ruptures due to statistical errors. Artificial literature diverges from human literature; machine-generated texts are a literary illusion. LLMs can be regarded as a technological phenomenon that instrumentalizes human knowledge, tilting the subject-object balance in favor of the machine and creating its own “culture.” They signal a shift from a human-centered paradigm to a knowledge-centered approach. This study questions the boundaries of artificial literature and whether machine language can be considered “knowledge,” while exploring the transformations in the human-machine relationship.
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1381864.153543
This post is free to read, so please share it widely. And, as always, please ‘like’ it via the heart below and restack it on notes if you get something out of it. It’s the best way to help others find my work. …