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1033584.130795
The View from Everywhere is now available for those with an Oxford Scholarship Online subscription; hardcopies ship next month (but you can preorder now). I’ll probably write more about it as the print publication date approaches. …
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1090524.130996
My earlier volume, The Material Theory of Induction, asserts that inductive inferences are warranted materially by facts and not by conformity with universally applicable schemas. A few examples illustrate the assertion. Marie Curie inferred that all samples of radium chloride will be crystallographically like the one sample she had prepared. The inference was warranted, not by the rule of enumerative induction, but by factual discoveries in the 19th century on the properties of crystalline substances. Galileo inferred to the heights of mountains on the moon through an analogy with mountain shadows formed on the earth. The inference was not warranted by a similarity in the reasoning in the two cases conforming with some general rule, but by the warranting fact that the same processes of linear light propagation formed the patterns of light and dark in both cases. Probabilistic inductive inferences are not warranted by the tendentious supposition that all uncertainties can be represented probabilistically. They are warranted on a case-by-case basis by facts specific to the case at hand. That we can infer probabilistically from samples to the population as a whole depends on the fact that the samples were taken randomly, that is, with each individual having an equal probability of selection. If no such warranting facts prevail, we are at serious risk of spurious inferences whose results are an artifact of misapplied logic.
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1132240.131017
Social institutions—such as the government of Canada, the National Football League in the United States, the Japanese monetary system, and the Catholic Church—often seem as real to us as mountains, oceans, and forests. And yet, social institutions seem to be real in an importantly different, more human-dependent way. This distinctive feature of institutional reality motivates the key question behind the metaphysics of social institutions: what, precisely, makes it the case that social institutions exist? Or in other words: what are the metaphysical determinants of institutional reality? Here we are asking not the empirical question of what historical events caused particular institutions to exist, but rather the metaphysical question of the kinds of states of affairs in virtue of which institutions exist.
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1132863.13103
An adequate theory of representation should distinguish between the structure of a representation and the structure of what it represents. I argue that the simplest sorts of transformers (the architecture that underlies most familiar Large Language Models) have only a very lightweight structure for their representations: insofar as they work with the structure of language, they represent it but do not use it. In addition to being interesting in its own right, this also shows how we may use high-level invariants at the computational level to place constraints on representational formats at the algorithmic level.
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1143387.131042
European painting had pursued “naturalistic illusionism” since the Renaissance. Japanese art had different ideals. Rather than using perspective, light, and shadow, to create the appearance of depth, Japanese prints and paintings tended toward “flatness.”
Japanese art also favored
The partial view, the view as from a very great height, the suspension of figures in space without a background,
all of which flouted the conventional European rules of composition. …
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1165306.131053
Gary Francione & Anna Charlton argue that, no matter how well we treat companion animals, domestication violates their rights. Further, they assume that these rights-violations are so morally important that we should prefer that these animals never exist at all (no matter how good their lives might be):
We would be obliged to care for those domesticated animals who presently exist, but we would bring no more into existence… We love our dogs, but recognise that, if the world were more just and fair, there would be no pets at all, no fields full of sheep, and no barns full of pigs, cows and egg-laying hens. …
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1243518.131064
As usual, Fred is alive at 10~am, and there is an infinite sequence of Grim Reapers, where the nth has an alarm set for 60/n minutes after 10~am, and if the alarm goes off, it checks if Fred is dead, and swings its scythe at Fred if and only if Fred is alive. …
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1272428.131076
The philosophy of chemistry began to develop in earnest in the mid 1990s following the efforts of a number of individuals who were initially working and publishing independently, before joining together to form the International Society for the Philosophy of Chemistry (ISPC). Of course, some isolated authors had already stressed the philosophical aspects of chemistry and the need for such a sub-discipline (van Brakel and Vermeeren 1981). However, the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science of logical empiricism had a volume of many disciplines but nothing on chemistry since it was considered to be reduced field.
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1272447.131099
I argue that the thoroughly algorithmic nature of current AI systems (such as LLMs) is no obstacle to their being conscious. To this end, I present a picture on which current AI systems comprise dispositional properties which realize categorical phenomenal properties where the laKer, in turn, provide the identity conditions for their dispositional realizers. This mutual ontological dependence, or, symmetrical grounding, at the heart of the proposal yields a novel picture of (AI) consciousness that avoids epiphenomenalism and is more permissive regarding the specific nature/functional organization of conscious systems than has been previously suggested. This, in turn, suggests an epistemology of AI consciousness focused on investigating the high-level behaviours of AI systems rather than their low-level functional organization.
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1330083.131114
Michael Redhead FBA was the most distinguished and influential British philosopher of physics of the second half of the 20th century. After a degree in physics (1950) and some fifteen years running his family’s business, he undertook a doctorate in physics (completed 1970) and thereafter became a philosopher of science, especially physics. He rose rapidly through the academic ranks at the University of London, and was Professor at University of Cambridge from 1987 to 1997, when he returned to the London School of Economics. Through his writings, his teaching and his academic leadership, he was the pre-eminent influence, from about 1980 onwards, in establishing the philosophy of physics as a discipline in the United Kingdom.
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1330136.131125
The frequency of major theory change in natural science is rapidly decreasing. Sprenger and Hartmann (2019) claim that this observation can improve the justificatory basis of scientific realism, by way of what can be called a stability argument. By enriching the conceptual basis of Sprenger and Hartmann’s argument, this paper shows that stability arguments pose a strong and novel challenge to scientific anti-realists. However, an anti-realist response to this challenge is also proposed. The resulting dialectic establishes a level of meaningful disagreement about the significance of stability arguments for scientific realism, and indicates how the disagreement can ultimately be resolved.
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1364548.131138
Bet On It reader Ian Fillmore recently sent me a very insightful email on natalism, which I encouraged him to expand upon. In fact, I’ll put it squarely in the obvious-once-you-think-about-it category. …
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1382903.13115
In a recent essay, I explained that the right to exit is often given great importance in liberal thought. In some cases, it is almost as if nothing else matters than the guarantee that individuals can —in principle or effectively— exit a group, a community, or a society. …
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1418337.131161
In his paper, Cian Dorr presents formal development of the view that higher-order entities such as properties, relations, and propositions act not just act as semantic values of predicates and sentences, but also as referents of referential noun phrases (NPs), generally considered singular terms. Dorr’s paper focuses on properties; thus, wise as in Socrates is wise is taken to stand for the very same entity, a property, as the NPs wisdom and the property of being wise. The view entails that lots of expressions now would apply to entities of different types: some, the, is interesting now apply to entities of the type of individuals as well as the type of properties. Moreover, quantifiers like everything will now be able to range over both individuals and properties, and in fact over both individuals and properties at once (Everything is interesting). These problems are dealt with by imposing type ambiguities on the relevant expressions and allowing quantifiers like everything to be specified for sum types, roughly, a disjunctive specification of types.
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1420098.131172
By a finite alphabet encoding of a set X, such as the real numbers, I mean a one-to-one function ψ from X to countably infinite sequences s0s1... taken from some finite alphabet. For instance, standard decimal encoding, with a decision whether to have infinite sequences of trailing nines or not, is a finite alphabet encoding of the reals, with the alphabet consisting of ten digits, a decimal point and a sign. …
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1427346.131184
Karl Marx rejected the ideal of equality as bourgeois. And yet, the most significant attempt in recent years to distinguish socialist theory from liberal egalitarian theory, G.A. Cohen's critique of John Rawls, relies almost entirely on an egalitarian principle. Although Cohen’s critique often seems to have a great deal of intuitive force, a number of Rawls’ defenders have argued, quite convincingly, that Cohen’s critique is unsuccessful. For those of us attracted to broadly socialist ideals, there does seem to be something importantly right about Cohen’s criticisms of Rawls, and more substantively, something deeply problematic in the kinds of market-based leveraging of productive abilities that would be permitted in a fully just Rawlsian society. My diagnosis is that Cohen has the right target, but the wrong fundamental value. I develop an alternative to these liberal egalitarian approaches in contemporary socialist ethics, building on the famous slogan: ‘from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs.’ This alternative ideal of Caring Solidarity draws on rich socialist, Christian, and feminist traditions, and emphasizes the importance of care, recognition, and solidarity in political and economic organisation. This alternative approach leaves a certain amount of inequality legitimately in place, whilst providing a moral framework for a radical reorganisation of production.
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1449046.131198
On my flight back from Spain, I watched Subservience, yet another a cautionary tale of artificial general intelligence. I kept laughing at its many absurdities. If Robin Hanson viewed it, I fear that his head might explode in social scientific outrage. …
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1503107.131209
Quantum mechanics and general relativity require unied theoretical treatment, particularly regarding the cosmological constant's observed value (≈ 10−123 in Planck units). This paper presents the Minimal Causal-Informational Model of Emergent Space-Time (MCIMES), which establishes quantum information as the fundamental entity underlying emergent space-time geometry. The model adopts quantum structural realism as its interpretive framework, implemented through rigorous category theory formalism. MCIMES is mathematically constructed on an abstract interaction graph, represented as a monoidal category CA with functorial mappings to physical observables. The system's dynamics are governed by a variational principle of minimal information loss, expressible through natural transformations between functors. The framework demonstrates how metric properties, Lorentzian signature, and causal structure emerge from quantum correlations without presupposing space-time. Topological invariants, particularly Betti numbers bp of the interaction graph, play a crucial role in quantifying universal properties of space-time uctuations and thermodynamic behavior. From this background-independent formulation, Einstein's equations emerge in the continuum limit as the optimal conguration that minimizes information loss.
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1503124.13122
Deng, Hani, and Ma [arXiv:2503.01800] claim to resolve Hilbert’s Sixth Problem by deriving the Navier-Stokes-Fourier equations from Newtonian mechanics via an iterated limit: a Boltzmann-Grad limit (ε → 0, N εd−1 = α fixed) yielding the Boltzmann equation, followed by a hydrodynamic limit (α → ∞) to obtain fluid dynamics. Though mathematically rigorous, their approach harbors two critical physical flaws. First, the vanishing volume fraction (N ε → 0) confines the system to a dilute gas, incapable of embodying dense fluid properties even as α scales, rendering the resulting equations a rescaled gas model rather than a true continuum. Second, the Boltzmann equation’s reliance on molecular chaos collapses in fluid-like regimes, where recollisions and correlations invalidate its derivation from Newtonian dynamics. These inconsistencies expose a disconnect between the formalism and the physical essence of fluids, failing to capture emergent, density-driven phenomena central to Hilbert’s vision. We contend that the Sixth Problem remains open, urging a rethink of classical kinetic theory’s limits and the exploration of alternative frameworks to unify microscale mechanics with macroscale fluid behavior.
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1503145.131231
Summary. In the first part of this contribution I will present aspects and attitudes towards ’axiomatic thinking’ in various branches of theoretical physics. In the second and more technical part, which is approximately of the same size, I will focus on mathematical results that are relevant for axiomatic schemes of space-time in connection with attempts to axiomatise Special and General Relativity.
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1536517.131242
I consider the sense in which teleparallel gravity and symmetric teleparallel gravity may be understood as gauge theories of gravity. I first argue that both theories have surplus structure. I then consider the relationship between Yang-Mills theory and Poincare Gauge Theory and argue that though these use similar formalisms, there are subtle disanalogies in their interpretation.
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1536536.131253
I revisit Roberto Torretti’s “Spacetime Models for the World” [SHPMP 31 (2):171-186 (2000)] in the light of more recent work in (philosophy of) cosmology. I discuss the motivations for FLRW spacetimes as a natural starting point for inquiry, and I suggest contemporary cosmologists can avoid the rationalism that Torretti attributes to Einstein’s early work in relativistic cosmology. I then discuss the senses in which FLRW models are idealized, and I show how those idealizations (and partial de-idealizations) have contributed to our understanding of the universe.
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1536554.131279
We consider the class of physical theories whose dynamics are given by natural equations, which are partial differential equations determined by a functor from the category of n- manifolds, for some n, to the category of fiber bundles, satisfying certain further conditions. We show how the theory of natural equations clarifies several important foundational issues, including the status and meaning of minimal coupling, symmetries of theories, and background structure. We also state and prove a fundamental result about the initial value problem for natural equations.
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1588246.131291
Suppose, as often happens, that you get some evidence that some belief of yours is irrational. For example, suppose you believe that you have above-average teaching ability. And suppose you then learn (as is true) that people are generally prone to irrationally overestimate their own teaching abilities. Here’s one thing that seems obvious: you should now at least somewhat increase your credence in the (higher-order) proposition that your belief that you have above-average teaching ability is irrational. So much is (mostly) uncontroversial in the contemporary epistemological literature on “higher-order evidence”— which includes, though is not exhausted by, evidence that your beliefs are irrational. More generally, evidence that some belief of yours is irrational should increase your credence in the (higher-order) proposition that your belief is irrational. This is just a special case of the general principle that evidence for some proposition p should raise your credence for p, with a higher-order proposition (that your belief is irrational) substituted for p in both instances.
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1589072.131304
Branching time (BT) is a multipurpose label, which is mainly
used to denote (i) a family of structures (BT representations or BT
frames), possibly along with the axiomatic theories defining them,
(ii) a family of semantics for temporal and modal logics (BT
semantics); and (iii) a metaphysical conception concerning our
universe and its temporal and modal features (branching conception of
time or BT conception). In very general terms, a BT representation is a complex of
histories (or chronicles, or possible
worlds) and moments (or nodes), which purports
to represent all possible temporal developments of a given system.
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1589085.131315
This entry takes as its focal point the philosophical contributions of
Anna Julia Cooper with an emphasis on her scholarship and some
attention to her commitments as an educator and activist. Authoring
one of the earliest book-length analyses of the unique situation of
Black women in the United States, Cooper offers clearly articulated
insights about racialized sexism and sexualized racism without
ignoring the significance of class and labor, education and
intellectual development, and conceptions of democracy and
citizenship.[ 1 ]
With an academic training deeply rooted in the history of Western
philosophy and the classics, Cooper’s philosophical significance
also lies in her foundational contributions to feminist philosophy,
standpoint theory, and epistemology, as well as critical philosophy of
race and African-American philosophy (including African American
political philosophy).
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1602838.131326
With the stock market crash and the big protests across the US, I’m finally feeling a trace of optimism that Trump’s stranglehold on the nation will weaken. Just a trace. I still need to self-medicate to keep from sinking into depression — where ‘self-medicate’, in my case, means studying fun math and physics I don’t need to know. …
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1604133.131336
We argue that logicism, the thesis that mathematics is reducible to logic and analytic truths, is true. We do so by (a) developing a formal framework with comprehension and abstraction principles, (b) giving reasons for thinking that this framework is part of logic, (c) showing how the denotations for predicates and individual terms of an arbitrary mathematical theory can be viewed as logical objects that exist in the framework, and (d) showing how each theorem of a mathematical theory can be given an analytically true reading in the logical framework.
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1605933.131363
In my previous post, I explored information processing finitism (IPF), the idea that nothing can essentially causally depend on an infinite amount of information about contingent things. Since a real-valued parameter, such as mass or coordinate position, contains an infinite amount of information, a dynamics that fits with IPF needs some non-trivial work. …
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1618467.131376
This paper revisits a largely overlooked line of thought originating with Reissner’s 1915 proposal: that gravity may be a necessary consequence of the relativity of inertia. We survey a range of historical models developed throughout the 20th Century that attempt to unify gravity and inertia by deriving the two in unison. While the unification of gravity and inertia is primarily recognized within the framework of Einstein’s general relativity, we show that several lesser-known and largely classical models go further by attempting to explain this equivalence, thereby aiming at a deeper unification. Our analysis distinguishes four classes of models and argues that those incorporating internal particle motion—especially Cook’s quantum-mechanical approach—offer the most comprehensive account of this unification. Cook’s model, which derives gravitational attraction from the quantum zitterbewegung of elementary particles, suggests a direct link between gravity, inertia, special relativity, and quantum mechanics. By systematically comparing these approaches, we revive a promising and under-explored avenue toward a dynamical explanation of gravity and inertia, combining the physics of the largest and smallest scales in nature: of cosmology and the quantum properties of elementary matter.