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1822620.191357
The Kuhnian view of theory choice (post Structure) leaves a lot of space for a diversity of theory choice preferences. It remains mysterious, however, how scientists could ever converge on a theory, given this diversity. This paper will argue that there is a solution to the problem of convergence, which can be had even on Kuhn’s own terms.
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1822655.191489
According to the ω-rule, it is valid to infer that all natural numbers possess some property, if possesses it, 1 possesses it, 2 possesses it, and so on. The ω-rule is important because its inclusion in certain arithmetical theories results in true arithmetic. It is controversial because it seems impossible for finite human beings to follow, given that it seems to require accepting infinitely many premises. Inspired by a remark of Wittgenstein’s, I argue that the mystery of how we follow the ω-rule subsides once we treat the rule as helping to give meaning to the symbol, “…”.
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1822689.191508
We give a new and elementary construction of primitive positive decomposition of higher arity relations into binary relations on finite domains. Such decompositions come up in applications to constraint satisfaction problems, clone theory and relational databases. The construction exploits functional completeness of 2-input functions in many-valued logic by interpreting relations as graphs of partially defined multivalued ‘functions’. The ‘functions’ are then composed from ordinary functions in the usual sense. The construction is computationally effective and relies on well-developed methods of functional decomposition, but reduces relations only to ternary relations. An additional construction then decomposes ternary into binary relations, also effectively, by converting certain disjunctions into existential quantifications. The result gives a uniform proof of Peirce’s reduction thesis on finite domains, and shows that the graph of any Sheffer function composes all relations there.
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1822725.191519
We study logical reduction (factorization) of relations into relations of lower arity by Boolean or relative products that come from applying conjunctions and existential quantifiers to predicates, i.e. by primitive positive formulas of predicate calculus. Our algebraic framework unifies natural joins and data dependencies of database theory and relational algebra of clone theory with the bond algebra of C.S. Peirce. We also offer new constructions of reductions, systematically study irreducible relations and reductions to them, and introduce a new characteristic of relations, ternarity, that measures their ‘complexity of relating’ and allows to refine reduction results. In particular, we refine Peirce’s controversial reduction thesis, and show that reducibility behavior is dramatically different on finite and infinite domains.
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1822758.19153
We argue that traditional formulations of the reduction thesis that tie it to privileged relational operations do not suffice for Peirce’s justification of the categories, and invite the charge of gerrymandering to make it come out as true. We then develop a more robust invariant formulation of the thesis by explicating the use of triads in any relational operations, which is immune to that charge. The explication also allows us to track how Thirdness enters the structure of higher order relations, and even propose a numerical measure of it. Our analysis reveals new conceptual phenomena when negation or disjunction are used to compound relations.
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1853075.19154
I’ve been thinking a bit about Integerated Information Theory (IIT) as a physicalist-friendly alternative to functionalism as an account of consciousness. The basic idea of IIT is that we measure the amount of consciousness in a system by subdividing the system into pairs of subsystems and calculating how well one can predict the next state of each of the two subsystems without knowing the state of the other. …
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1910434.191551
Under what conditions are material objects, such as particles, parts of a whole object? This is the composition question and is a longstanding open question in philosophy. Existing attempts to specify a non-trivial restriction on composition tend to be vague and face serious counterexamples. Consequently, two extreme answers have become mainstream: composition (the forming of a whole by its parts) happens under no or all conditions. In this paper, we provide a self-contained introduction to the integrated information theory (IIT) of consciousness. We show that IIT specifies a non-trivial restriction on composition: composition happens when integrated information is maximized. We compare the IIT restriction to existing proposals and argue that the IIT restriction has significant advantages, especially in response to the problems of vagueness and counterexamples. An appendix provides an introduction to calculating parts and wholes with a simple system.
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1922010.191562
I’ve been imagining a very slow embodiment of computation. You have some abstract computer program designed for a finite-time finite-space subset of a Turing machine. And now you have a big tank of black and white paint that is constantly being stirred in a deterministic way, but one that is some ways into the ergodic hierarchy: it’s weakly mixing. …
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1948308.191572
In the middle chapters of Morality by Degrees, Alastair Norcross argues that there is no principled way to determine the absolute value of an action (incl. whether it is ‘good’ or ‘bad’), only whether it is better or worse than specific alternatives.1
It’s natural to assume that we should judge an action good (bad) just to the extent that it makes things go better (worse) than if the act hadn’t been performed. …
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2005082.191582
If you could watch an individual water molecule, once in a while you’d see it do this. As it bounces around, every so often it hits another water molecule hard enough enough for one to steal a hydrogen nucleus—that is, a proton—from the other! …
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2114231.191593
Tversky & Kahneman famously showed that many people judge (incoherently) that Linda is “more likely” to be a feminist bank teller than to be a bank teller. I’m often struck by people making a moral analogue of this mistake: thinking that something is more important when it affects just a subgroup than when it affects all of those people and more. …
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2146691.191602
We study the anchoring effect in a computational model of group deliberation on preference rankings. Anchoring is a form of path-dependence through which the opinions of those who speak early have a stronger influence on the outcome of deliberation than the opinions of those who speak later. We show that anchoring can occur even among fully rational agents. We then compare the respective effects of anchoring and three other determinants of the deliberative outcome: the relative weight or social influence of the speakers, the popularity of a given speaker’s opinion, and the homogeneity of the group. We find that, on average, anchoring has the strongest effect among these. We finally show that anchoring is often correlated with increases in proximity to single-plateauedness. We conclude that anchoring can constitute a structural bias that might hinder some of the otherwise positive effects of group deliberation.
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2146783.191614
The collapse of a quantum state can be understood as a mathematical way to construct a joint probability density even for operators that do not commute. We can formalize that construction as a non-commutative, non-associative collapse product that is nonlinear in its left operand as a model for joint measurements at time-like separation, in part inspired by the sequential product for positive semi-definite operators. The familiar collapse picture, in which a quantum state collapses after each measurement as a way to construct a joint probability density for consecutive measurements, is equivalent to a no-collapse picture in which Luders transformers applied to subsequent measurements construct a Quantum-Mechanics–Free-Subsystem of Quantum Non-Demolition operators, not as a dynamical process but as an alternative mathematical model for the same consecutive measurements. The no-collapse picture is particularly simpler when we apply signal analysis to millions or billions of consecutive measurements.
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2148798.191624
My friend Leopold Aschenbrenner, who I got to know and respect on OpenAI’s now-disbanded Superalignment team before he left the company under disputed circumstances, just released “Situational Awareness,” one of the most extraordinary documents I’ve ever read. …
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2152402.191634
When the novelist Ali Smith was asked to give a series of lectures about European literature, well… it’s a rare work of criticism that cannot be summarized without spoilers. I encourage you to read it without so much as a glance at the back cover: imagine yourself in the original audience, unwitting, like the audience of A Room of One’ Own—Woolf is mentioned here more than once—but with another turn of the screw. …
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2168672.191644
In this paper, I stress the need to broaden the scope of diversity in value-laden ideals of science to include geographic diversity. I argue that egalitarian and normic value-laden ideals have conceptual limitations when considering this dimension. While egalitarian frameworks advocate for a placeless science, normic frameworks predominantly locate scientific knowledge within the “Global North,” highlighting the importance of including “non- Western” perspectives from the “Global South.” These limitations have negative and unjust epistemic consequences: they risk perpetuating cultural imperialism, reproducing a colonial epistemic norming of space, and epistemic exoticization towards scientific communities in subaltern regions.
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2168733.191656
Recent discourse in the philosophy of scientific explanation involves an account known as the Kairetic account[10]. I proposed implementing a complementarity view involving a mapping scheme to the Kairetic account and similar models[8]. There are two natural concerns related to this mapping. The first concern is the treatment of multiple mappings required for an explanation: phenomena may involve two complementarity features. The second concern is regarding the acquisition of understanding and whether context-dependence facilitates understanding. This article aims to address the first thought through an example involving interference and photon detectors in a telescope. I claim that context-dependent mapping is on a particle basis, accommodating the wave-particle duality for every single particle without generalization. I further introduce the implications of mathematical developments of a complementarity relation grounded in the uncertainty principle. In addition, I will offer the stance that context-dependence facilitates understanding because it ensures that explanations are logically consistent, precise, relevant, and comprehensive.
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2168827.191668
We provide a philosophical reconstruction and analysis of the debate on the scientific status of cosmic inflation that has played out in recent years. In a series of critical papers, Ijjas, Steinhardt, and Loeb have questioned the scientificality of current views on cosmic inflation. Proponents of cosmic inflation, such as Guth and Linde, have in turn defended the scientific credentials of their approach. We argue that, while this defense, narrowly construed, is successful against Ijjas, Steinhardt, and Loeb, the latters’ reasoning does point to a significant epistemic issue that arises with respect to inflationary theory. We claim that a broadening of the concept of theory assessment to include meta-empirical considerations is needed to address that issue in an adequate way.
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2168887.191679
The formalism of generalized quantum histories allows a symmetrical treatment of space and time correlations, by taking different traces of the same history density matrix. We recall how to characterize spatial and temporal entanglement in this framework. An operative protocol is presented, to map a history state into the ket of a static composite system. We show, by examples, how the Leggett-Garg and the temporal CHSH inequalities can be violated in our approach.
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2168915.191689
In 1935, Schrodinger introduced what he considered to be a reductio against the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. His argument was based on a “ridiculous case” that is widely used today to portray the counterintuitive nature of quantum superposition. Schrodinger imagined that a cat was placed out of sight in a box with a mechanism that would kill the cat within an hour with 50% probability. Since the deadly mechanism employed a quantum process for its trigger, he supposed the cat was in a quantum superposition of 50% Live Cat + 50% Dead Cat.
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2220882.1917
Negation is common to all human languages. What explains its universality? Our hypothesis is that the emergence of expressions for denial, such as the word ‘not’, is an adaptation to existing conditions in the social and informational environment: a specific linguistic form was co-opted to express denial, given a preference for information sharing, the limits of a finite lexicon, and localized social repercussions against synonymy. In support of our hypothesis, we present a costly signalling model of communication. The model formalizes ordinary aspects of Stalnakerian conversations, implements the conditions we isolated for the emergence of denial, and computes their long-term consequences through a widely employed evolutionary dynamics, whose results are calculated by computer simulations. The model shows that under a reasonable configuration of parameter values, functional pressure derived from conversational constraints favours the emergence of denial by means of a dedicated expression, such as the word ‘not’.
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2254386.191716
Wilhelm (Forthcom Synth 199:6357–6369, 2021) has recently defended a criterion for comparing structure of mathematical objects, which he calls Subgroup. He argues that Subgroup is better than SYM , another widely adopted criterion. We argue that this is mistaken; Subgroup is strictly worse than SYM . We then formulate a new criterion that improves on both SYM and Subgroup, answering Wilhelm’s criticisms of SYM along the way. We conclude by arguing that no criterion that looks only to the automorphisms of mathematical objects to compare their structure can be fully satisfactory.
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2254423.191727
Peter Galison, Juliusz Doboszewski, Jamee Elder, Niels C. M. Martens, Abhay Ashtekar, Jonas Enander, Marie Gueguen, Elizabeth A. Kessler, Roberto Lalli, Martin Lesourd, Alexandru Marcoci, Sebastián Murgueitio Ramírez, Priyamvada Natarajan, James Nguye...
Peter Galison 1,2,3,*, Juliusz Doboszewski 1,4,*, Jamee Elder 1,4,* , Niels C. M. Martens 5,4,6,7,* , Abhay Ashtekar , Jonas Enander , Marie Gueguen 10 , Elizabeth A. Kessler 11, Roberto Lalli 12,13, Martin Lesourd , Alexandru Marcoci 14 Luis Reyes-Galindo 19 , Sebastián Murgueitio Ramírez 15 , Priyamvada Natarajan 1,16,17, James Nguyen 18, , Sophie Ritson 20 , Mike D. Schneider 21, Emilie Skulberg 22,23, Helene Sorgner 7,24, , Mike D. Schneider 21, Emilie Skulberg 22,23, Helene Sorgner 7,24, Matthew Stanley 25, Ann C. Thresher 26, Jeroen Van Dongen 22,23, James Owen Weatherall 27 , Jingyi Wu 27
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2269538.19174
Why comply with epistemic norms? In this paper, I argue that complying with epistemic norms, engaging in epistemically responsible conduct, and being epistemically trustworthy are constitutive elements of maintaining good epistemic relations with oneself and others. Good epistemic relations are in turn both instrumentally and finally valuable: they enable the kind of coordination and knowledge acquisition underpinning much of what we tend to associate with a flourishing human life; and just as good interpersonal relations with others can be good for their own sake, standing in good epistemic relations is good for its own sake. On my account, we have reason to comply with epistemic norms because it is a way of respecting the final value of something that also tends to be an instrumentally valuable thing: good epistemic relations. Situating the account within the recent social turn in debates about epistemic instrumentalism, I argue that the dual-value aspect of good epistemic relations can explain important anti-instrumentalist intuitions, in a well-motivated way, within a broadly instrumentalist framework.
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2310778.19175
From today June 6 to Sunday, June 9, more than 400 million Europeans are invited to vote for European parliamentary elections. As those who have followed these elections even superficially know, far-right parties are predicted to be making significant progress across the continent compared to previous elections. …
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2341924.19176
Famously, Adrian Moore has argued that absolute representations of reality are possible: that it is possible to represent reality from no particular point of view. Moreover, Moore believes that absolute representations are a desideratum of physics. Recently, however, debates in the philosophy of physics have arisen regarding the apparent impossibility of absolute representations of certain aspects of nature in light of our current best theories of physics. Throughout this article, we take gravitational energy as a particular case study of an aspect of nature that seemingly does not admit of an absolute representation. There is, therefore, a prima facie tension between Moore’s a priori case on the one hand, and the state-of-play in modern physics on the other. This article overcomes this tension by demonstrating how, when formulated in the correct way, modern physics admits of an absolute representation of gravitational energy after all. In so doing, the article offers a detailed case study of Moore’s argument for absolute representations, clarifying its structure and bringing it into contact with the distinction drawn by philosophers of physics between coordinate-freedom and coordinate-independence, as well as the philosophy of spacetime physics.
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2341952.191771
Stegenga (forthcoming) formulates and defends a novel account of scientific progress, according to which science makes progress just in case there is a change in scientific justification. Here we present several problems for Stegenga’s account, concerning respectively (i) obtaining misleading evidence, (ii) losses or destruction of evidence, (iii) oscillations in scientific justification, and (iv) the possibility of scientific regress. We conclude by sketching a substantially different justification-based account of scientific progress that avoids these problems.
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2341981.191782
A number of philosophers working in values and science have recently called for more attention to the nature of value judgments. Following Douglas (2009) on the history of the value-free ideal, I think contemporary work in values and science can benefit from its history.
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2342011.191792
Title: A History of Metaethics and Values in Science Carl Hempel, and Ernest Nagel for the sciences’ value neutrality. I also consider whether these arguments can be disentangled from their controversial metaethical claims by looking at Robert Alexander’s (1974) account of value neutrality based on the view that a scientist’s aims are discharged by making empirical statements. Drawing upon Leach’s (1968a; 1969b) defense of the argument from inductive risk, I argue Alexander fails to offer a metaethically neutral version of the value neutrality of the sciences. Though I do not explicitly explore this, I think the history I sketch is relevant to recent calls for philosophers of science to more fully characterize the ‘values’ in ‘values and science.’ Acknowledgments: Versions of this paper were presented at the Philosophy of Science Association’s 2022 poster session, Cal State-Long Beach’s Philosophy Day!, and UW Philosophy’s works-in-progress series. Thanks to those audiences for discussion and encouragement. Thanks also to two anonymous reviewers for helpful suggestions, to the students in my Autumn 2023 seminar for working through some of the history of science and values with me, and to Matt Brown for his support over the years.
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2342042.191803
Discussions in the philosophy of explanation involving scientific explanations often include a form of logical entailment, causal history, unification, and more. Strevens([10],[11]) constructs the Kairetic account in an attempt to unify the entailment structure, causal relations, and the notion of difference-making in a manner that also offers high-level explanations. When dealing with quantum mechanics, Strevens then points toward the Deductive-Nomological account of probabilities, known as the DNP account. In this paper, I will introduce the preliminary accounts (D- N, causal, Unificationism) and the Kairetic and DNP accounts and offer an extension of the Kairetic/DNP account to accommodate the view of complementarities. This will be done through a scheme that I call context-dependent mapping. This will be illustrated in a couple of example cases.