Confirmation bias is one of the most widely discussed epistemically problematic cognitions, challenging reliable belief formation and the correction of inaccurate views. Given its problematic nature, it remains unclear why the bias evolved and is still with us today. To offer an explanation, several philosophers and scientists have argued that the bias is in fact adaptive. I critically discuss three recent proposals of this kind before developing a novel alternative, what I call the ‘reality-matching account’. According to the account, confirmation (...) bias evolved because it helps us influence people and social structures so that they come to match our beliefs about them. This can result in significant developmental and epistemic benefits for us and other people, ensuring that over time we don’t become epistemically disconnected from social reality but can navigate it more easily. While that might not be the only evolved function of confirmation bias, it is an important one that has so far been neglected in the theorizing on the bias. (shrink)

Members of the field of philosophy have, just as other people, political convictions or, as psychologists call them, ideologies. How are different ideologies distributed and perceived in the field? Using the familiar distinction between the political left and right, we surveyed an international sample of 794 subjects in philosophy. We found that survey participants clearly leaned left (75%), while right-leaning individuals (14%) and moderates (11%) were underrepresented. Moreover, and strikingly, across the political spectrum, from very left-leaning individuals and moderates to (...) very right-leaning individuals, participants reported experiencing ideological hostility in the field, occasionally even from those from their own side of the political spectrum. Finally, while about half of the subjects believed that discrimination against left- or right-leaning individuals in the field is not justified, a significant minority displayed an explicit willingness to discriminate against colleagues with the opposite ideology. Our findings are both surprising and important, because a commitment to tolerance and equality is widespread in philosophy, and there is reason to think that ideological similarity, hostility, and discrimination undermine reliable belief formation in many areas of the discipline. (shrink)

It has been argued that implicit biases are operative in philosophy and lead to significant epistemic costs in the field. Philosophers working on this issue have focussed mainly on implicit gender and race biases. They have overlooked ideological bias, which targets political orientations. Psychologists have found ideological bias in their field and have argued that it has negative epistemic effects on scientific research. I relate this debate to the field of philosophy and argue that if, as some studies suggest, the (...) same bias also exists in philosophy then it will lead to hitherto unrecognised epistemic hazards in the field. Furthermore, the bias is epistemically different from the more familiar biases in respects that are important for epistemology, ethics, and metaphilosophy. (shrink)

In the philosophy of science, it is a common proposal that values are illegitimate in science and should be counteracted whenever they drive inquiry to the confirmation of predetermined conclusions. Drawing on recent cognitive scientific research on human reasoning and confirmation bias, I argue that this view should be rejected. Advocates of it have overlooked that values that drive inquiry to the confirmation of predetermined conclusions can contribute to the reliability of scientific inquiry at the group level even when they (...) negatively affect an individual’s cognition. This casts doubt on the proposal that such values should always be illegitimate in science. It also suggests that advocates of that proposal assume a narrow, individualistic account of science that threatens to undermine their own project of ensuring reliable belief formation in science. (shrink)

Why do we engage in folk psychology, that is, why do we think about and ascribe propositional attitudes such as beliefs, desires, intentions etc. to people? On the standard view, folk psychology is primarily for mindreading, for detecting mental states and explaining and/or predicting people’s behaviour in terms of them. In contrast, McGeer (1996, 2007, 2015), and Zawidzki (2008, 2013) maintain that folk psychology is not primarily for mindreading but for mindshaping, that is, for moulding people’s behavior and minds (e.g., (...) via the imposition of social norms) so that coordination becomes easier. Mindreading is derived from and only as effective as it is because of mindshaping, not vice versa. I critically assess McGeer’s, and Zawidzki’s proposal and contend that three common motivations for the mindshaping view do not provide sufficient support for their particular version of it. I argue furthermore that their proposal underestimates the role that epistemic processing plays for mindshaping. And I provide reasons for favouring an alternative according to which, in social cognition involving ascriptions of propositional attitudes, neither mindshaping nor mindreading is primary but both are complementary in that effective mindshaping depends as much on mindreading as effective mindreading depends on mindshaping. (shrink)

Demographic diversity might often be present in a group without group members noticing it. What are the epistemic effects if they do? Several philosophers and social scientists have recently argued that when individuals detect demographic diversity in their group, this can result in epistemic benefits even if that diversity doesn’t involve cognitive differences. Here I critically discuss research advocating this proposal, introduce a distinction between two types of detection of demographic diversity, and apply this distinction to the theorizing on diversity (...) in science. Focusing on ‘invisible’ diversity, I argue that in one common kind of group in science, if group members have full insight into their group’s diversity, this is likely to create epistemic costs. These costs can be avoided and epistemic benefits gained if group members only partly detect their group’s diversity. There is thus an epistemic reason for context-dependent limitations on scientists’ insight into the diversity of their group. (shrink)

Many philosophers hold that generics (i.e., unquantified generalizations) are pervasive in communication and that when they are about social groups, this may offend and polarize people because generics gloss over variations between individuals. Generics about social groups might be particularly common on Twitter (X). This remains unexplored, however. Using machine learning (ML) techniques, we therefore developed an automatic classifier for social generics, applied it to 1.1 million tweets about people, and analyzed the tweets. While it is often suggested that generics (...) are ubiquitous in everyday communication, we found that most tweets (78%) about people contained no generics. However, tweets with generics received more “likes” and retweets. Furthermore, while recent psychological research may lead to the prediction that tweets with generics about political groups are more common than tweets with generics about ethnic groups, we found the opposite. However, consistent with recent claims that political animosity is less constrained by social norms than animosity against gender and ethnic groups, negative tweets with generics about political groups were significantly more prevalent and retweeted than negative tweets about ethnic groups. Our study provides the first ML-based insights into the use and impact of social generics on Twitter. (shrink)

It has recently been suggested that politically motivated cognition leads progressive individuals to form beliefs that underestimate real differences between social groups and to process information selectively to support these beliefs and an egalitarian outlook. I contend that this tendency, which I shall call ‘egalitarian confirmation bias’, is often ‘Mandevillian’ in nature. That is, while it is epistemically problematic in one’s own cognition, it often has effects that significantly improve other people’s truth tracking, especially that of stigmatized individuals in academia. (...) Due to its Mandevillian character, egalitarian confirmation bias isn’t only epistemically but also ethically beneficial, as it helps decrease social injustice. Moreover, since egalitarian confirmation bias has Mandevillian effects especially in academia, and since progressives are particularly likely to display the bias, there is an epistemic reason for maintaining the often-noted political majority of progressives in academia. That is, while many researchers hold that diversity in academia is epistemically beneficial because it helps reduce bias, I argue that precisely because political diversity would help reduce egalitarian confirmation bias, it would in fact in one important sense be epistemically costly. (shrink)

Recently, philosophers have appealed to empirical studies to argue that whenever we think that p, we automatically believe that p (Millikan 2004; Mandelbaum 2014; Levy and Mandelbaum 2014). Levy and Mandelbaum (2014) have gone further and claimed that the automaticity of believing has implications for the ethics of belief in that it creates epistemic obligations for those who know about their automatic belief acquisition. I use theoretical considerations and psychological findings to raise doubts about the empirical case for the view (...) that we automatically believe what we think. Furthermore, I contend that even if we set these doubts aside, Levy and Mandelbaum’s argument to the effect that the automaticity of believing creates epistemic obligations is not fully convincing. (shrink)

Can young children such as 3-year-olds represent the world objectively? Some prominent developmental psychologists—such as Perner and Tomasello—assume so. I argue that this view is susceptible to a prima facie powerful objection: To represent objectively, one must be able to represent not only features of the entities represented but also features of objectification itself, which 3-year-olds cannot do yet. Drawing on Burge's work on perceptual constancy, I provide a response to this objection and motivate a distinction between three different kinds (...) of objectivity. This distinction helps advance current research on both objectivity and teleological action explanations in young children. (shrink)

Recently, researchers and reporters have made a wide range of claims about the distribution, nature, and societal impact of political polarization. Here I offer reasons to believe that, even when they are correct and prima facie merely descriptive, many of these claims have the highly negative side effect of increasing political polarization. This is because of the interplay of two factors that have so far been neglected in the work on political polarization, namely that (1) people have a tendency to (...) conform to descriptive norms (i.e., norms capturing (perceptions of) what others commonly do, think, or feel), and (2) claims about political polarization often convey such norms. Many of these claims thus incline people to behave, cognize, and be affectively disposed in ways that contribute to social division. But there is a silver lining. People’s tendency to conform to descriptive norms also provides the basis for developing new, experimentally testable strategies for counteracting political polarization. I outline three. (shrink)

In empirically informed research on action explanation, philosophers and developmental psychologists have recently proposed a teleological account of the way in which we make sense of people’s intentional behavior. It holds that we typically don’t explain an agent’s action by appealing to her mental states but by referring to the objective, publically accessible facts of the world that count in favor of performing the action so as to achieve a certain goal. Advocates of the teleological account claim that this strategy (...) is our main way of understanding people’s actions. I argue that common motivations mentioned to support the teleological account are insufficient to sustain its generalization from children to adults. Moreover, social psychological studies, combined with theoretical considerations, suggest that we do not explain actions mainly by invoking publically accessible, reason-giving facts alone but by ascribing mental states to the agent. (shrink)

Social and medical scientists frequently produce empirical generalizations that involve concepts partly defined by value judgments. These generalizations, which have been called ‘mixed claims’, raise interesting questions. Does the presence of them in science imply that science is value-laden? Is the value-ladenness of mixed claims special compared to other kinds of value-ladenness of science? Do we lose epistemically if we reformulate these claims as conditional statements? And if we want to allow mixed claims in science, do we need a new (...) account of how to reconcile values with objectivity? Alexandrova (2017, 2018) offers affirmative answers to these questions. In responding to Alexandrova’s arguments, this discussion note motivates negative ones and in doing so casts new light on mixed claims. (shrink)

Many ethical frameworks require artificial intelligence (AI) systems to be explainable. Explainable AI (XAI) models are frequently tested for their adequacy in user studies. Since different people may have different explanatory needs, it is important that participant samples in user studies are large enough to represent the target population to enable generalizations. However, it is unclear to what extent XAI researchers reflect on and justify their sample sizes or avoid broad generalizations across people. We analyzed XAI user studies (N = (...) 220) published between 2012 and 2022. Most studies did not offer rationales for their sample sizes. Moreover, most papers generalized their conclusions beyond their target population, and there was no evidence that broader conclusions in quantitative studies were correlated with larger samples. These methodological problems can impede evaluations of whether XAI systems implement the explainability called for in ethical frameworks. We outline principles for more inclusive XAI user studies. (shrink)

The idea that all human beings have equal moral worth has been challenged by insisting that this is utterly counter-intuitive in the case of individuals like, for instance, Hitler on the one hand and Schweitzer on the other. This seems to be confirmed by a hypothetical in which one can only save one of the two: intuitively, one clearly should save Schweitzer, not Hitler, even if Hitler does not pose a threat anymore. The most natural interpretation of this intuition appeals (...) to unequal moral worth. Jeremy Waldron has recently tried to meet this challenge by giving a different interpretation, thereby trying to explain away the counter-intuitive implications of the basic equality doctrine in this case, and by suggesting that the rejection of basic equality comes with counter-intuitive implications of its own. I shall argue that Waldron’s response to the challenge fails on both counts. (shrink)

This paper explores the nature of self-knowledge of beliefs by investigating the relationship between self-knowledge of beliefs and one's knowledge of other people's beliefs. It introduces and defends a new account of self-knowledge of beliefs according to which this type of knowledge is developmentally interconnected with and dependent on resources already used for acquiring knowledge of other people's beliefs, which is inferential in nature. But when these resources are applied to oneself, one attains and subsequently frequently uses a method for (...) acquiring knowledge of beliefs that is non-inferential in nature. The paper argues that this account is preferable to some of the most common empirically motivated theories of self-knowledge of beliefs and explains the origin of the widely discussed phenomenon that our own beliefs are often transparent to us in that we can determine whether we believe that p simply by settling whether p is the case. (shrink)

Scientists may sometimes generalize from their samples to broader populations when they have not yet sufficiently supported this generalization. Do such hasty generalizations also occur in experimental philosophy? To check, we analyzed 171 experimental philosophy studies published between 2017 and 2023. We found that most studies tested only Western populations but generalized beyond them without justification. There was also no evidence that studies with broader conclusions had larger, more diverse samples, but they nonetheless had higher citation impact. Our analyses reveal (...) important methodological limitations of many experimental philosophy studies and suggest that philosophical training may not protect against hasty generalizations. (shrink)

When scientists or science reporters communicate research results to the public, this often involves ethical and epistemic risks. One such risk arises when scientific claims cause cognitive or behavioural changes in the audience that contribute to the self-fulfilment of these claims. I argue that the ethical and epistemic problems that such self-fulfilment effects may pose are much broader and more common than hitherto appreciated. Moreover, these problems are often due to a specific psychological phenomenon that has been neglected in the (...) research on science communication: many people tend to conform to ‘descriptive norms’, that is, norms capturing (perceptions of) what others commonly do, think, or feel. Because of this tendency, science communication may frequently produce significant social harm. I contend that scientists have a responsibility to assess the risk of this potential harm and consider adopting strategies to mitigate it. I introduce one such strategy and argue that its implementation is independently well motivated by the fact that it helps improve scientific accuracy. (shrink)

Many artificial intelligence (AI) systems currently used for decision-making are opaque, i.e., the internal factors that determine their decisions are not fully known to people due to the systems’ computational complexity. In response to this problem, several researchers have argued that human decision-making is equally opaque and since simplifying, reason-giving explanations (rather than exhaustive causal accounts) of a decision are typically viewed as sufficient in the human case, the same should hold for algorithmic decision-making. Here, I contend that this argument (...) overlooks that human decision-making is sometimes significantly more transparent and trustworthy than algorithmic decision-making. This is because when people explain their decisions by giving reasons for them, this frequently prompts those giving the reasons to govern or regulate themselves so as to think and act in ways that confirm their reason reports. AI explanation systems lack this self-regulative feature. Overlooking it when comparing algorithmic and human decision-making can result in underestimations of the transparency of human decision-making and in the development of explainable AI that may mislead people by activating generally warranted beliefs about the regulative dimension of reason-giving. (shrink)

It is typically assumed that while we know other people’s mental states by observing and interpreting their behavior, we know our own mental states by introspection, i.e., without interpreting ourselves. In his latest book, The opacity of mind: An integrative theory of self-knowledge, Peter Carruthers (2011) argues against this assumption. He holds that findings from across the cognitive sciences strongly suggest that self-knowledge of conscious propositional attitudes such as intentions, judgments, and decisions involves a swift and unconscious process of self-interpretation (...) that utilizes the same sensory channels that we employ when working out other people’s mental states. I provide an overview of Carruthers’ book before discussing a pathological case that challenges his account of self-knowledge and mentioning empirical evidence that undermines his use of a particular kind of data in his case against introspection of conscious attitudes. (shrink)

Some artificial intelligence systems can display algorithmic bias, i.e. they may produce outputs that unfairly discriminate against people based on their social identity. Much research on this topic focuses on algorithmic bias that disadvantages people based on their gender or racial identity. The related ethical problems are significant and well known. Algorithmic bias against other aspects of people’s social identity, for instance, their political orientation, remains largely unexplored. This paper argues that algorithmic bias against people’s political orientation can arise in (...) some of the same ways in which algorithmic gender and racial biases emerge. However, it differs importantly from them because there are strong social norms against gender and racial biases. This does not hold to the same extent for political biases. Political biases can thus more powerfully influence people, which increases the chances that these biases become embedded in algorithms and makes algorithmic political biases harder to detect and eradicate than gender and racial biases even though they all can produce similar harm. Since some algorithms can now also easily identify people’s political orientations against their will, these problems are exacerbated. Algorithmic political bias thus raises substantial and distinctive risks that the AI community should be aware of and examine. (shrink)

Many scientists routinely generalize from study samples to larger populations. It is commonly assumed that this cognitive process of scientific induction is a voluntary inference in which researchers assess the generalizability of their data and then draw conclusions accordingly. We challenge this view and argue for a novel account. The account describes scientific induction as involving by default a generalization bias that operates automatically and frequently leads researchers to unintentionally generalize their findings without sufficient evidence. The result is unwarranted, overgeneralized (...) conclusions. We support this account of scientific induction by integrating a range of disparate findings from across the cognitive sciences that have until now not been connected to research on the nature of scientific induction. The view that scientific induction involves by default a generalization bias calls for a revision of the current thinking about scientific induction and highlights an overlooked cause of the replication crisis in the sciences. Commonly proposed interventions to tackle scientific overgeneralizations that may feed into this crisis need to be supplemented with cognitive debiasing strategies against generalization bias to most effectively improve science. (shrink)

Suppose we know our own attitudes, e.g. judgments and decisions, only by unconsciously interpreting ourselves. Would this undermine the assumption that there are conscious attitudes? Carruthers has argued that if the mentioned view of selfknowledge is combined with either of the two most common approaches to consciousness, i.e. the higher-order state account or the global workspace theory , then the conjunction of these theories implies that there are no conscious attitudes. I shall show that Carruthers' argument against the existence of (...) conscious attitudes doesn't succeed, and mention studies on autism and logical reasoning under cognitive load that suggest that there are conscious attitudes. (shrink)

For synergistic interactions between humans and artificial intelligence (AI) systems, AI outputs often need to be explainable to people. Explainable AI (XAI) systems are commonly tested in human user studies. However, whether XAI researchers consider potential cultural differences in human explanatory needs remains unexplored. We highlight psychological research that found significant differences in human explanations between many people from Western, commonly individualist countries and people from non-Western, often collectivist countries. We argue that XAI research currently overlooks these variations and that (...) many popular XAI designs implicitly and problematically assume that Western explanatory needs are shared cross-culturally. Additionally, we systematically reviewed over 200 XAI user studies and found that most studies did not consider relevant cultural variations, sampled only Western populations, but drew conclusions about human-XAI interactions more generally. We also analyzed over 30 literature reviews of XAI studies. Most reviews did not mention cultural differences in explanatory needs or flag overly broad cross-cultural extrapolations of XAI user study results. Combined, our analyses provide evidence of a cultural bias toward Western populations in XAI research, highlighting an important knowledge gap regarding how culturally diverse users may respond to widely used XAI systems that future work can and should address. (shrink)

The English language now dominates scientific communications. Yet, many scientists have English as their second language. Their English proficiency may therefore often be more limited than that of a ‘native speaker’, and their scientific contributions (e.g. manuscripts) in English may frequently contain linguistic features that disrupt the fluency of a reader’s, or listener’s information processing even when the contributions are understandable. Scientific gatekeepers (e.g. journal reviewers) sometimes cite these features to justify negative decisions on manuscripts. Such justifications may rest on (...) the prima facie plausible assumption that linguistic characteristics that hinder fast and easy understandability of scientific contributions are epistemically undesirable in science. I shall raise some doubts about this assumption by drawing on empirical research on processing fluency and its biasing effects. I also argue that directing scientists with English as a foreign language toward approaching ‘native-level’ English can have the negative consequence of reducing their potential to make scientific belief formation more reliable. These points suggest that one seemingly compelling justification for linguistically discriminating against scientific contributions in ‘non-native’ English is questionable and that the common insistence by scientific gatekeepers on ‘native-like’ English may be epistemically harmful to science. (shrink)

It has been argued that our currently most satisfactory social epistemology of science can’t account for science that is based on artificial intelligence (AI) because this social epistemology requires trust between scientists that can take full responsibility for the research tools they use, and scientists can’t take full responsibility for the AI tools they use since these systems are epistemically opaque. I think this argument overlooks that much AI-based science can be done without opaque models, and that agents can take (...) full responsibility for the systems they use even if these systems are opaque. Requiring that an agent fully understand how a system works is an untenably strong condition for that agent to take full responsibility for the system and risks absolving AI developers from responsibility for their products. AI-based science need not create trust-related social epistemological problems if we keep in mind that what makes both individual scientists and their use of AI systems trustworthy isn’t full transparency of the internal processing but their adherence to social and institutional norms that ensure that scientific claims can be trusted. (shrink)

Drawing on empirical findings, a number of philosophers have recently argued that people who use English as a foreign language may face a linguistic bias in academia in that they or their contributions may be perceived more negatively than warranted because of their English. I take a critical look at this argument. I first distinguish different phenomena that may be conceptualized as linguistic bias but that should be kept separate to avoid overgeneralizations. I then examine a range of empirical studies (...) that philosophers have cited to argue that people who use English as a foreign language are subject to linguistic bias in academia. I contend that many of these studies do not sufficiently support key claims that philosophers have made about linguistic bias, are challenged by counterevidence, and lack generalizability. I end by introducing methodological recommendations that may help philosophers develop more convincing empirically informed arguments regarding linguistic bias. (shrink)

It is well known that on the Internet, computer algorithms track our website browsing, clicks, and search history to infer our preferences, interests, and goals. The nature of this algorithmic tracking remains unclear, however. Does it involve what many cognitive scientists and philosophers call ‘mindreading’, i.e., an epistemic capacity to attribute mental states to people to predict, explain, or influence their actions? Here I argue that it does. This is because humans are in a particular way embedded in the process (...) of algorithmic tracking. Specifically, if we endorse common conditions for extended cognition, then human mindreading (by website operators and users) is often literally extended into, that is, partly realized by, not merely causally coupled to, computer systems performing algorithmic tracking. The view that human mindreading extends outside the body into computers in this way has significant ethical advantages. It points to new conceptual ways to reclaim our autonomy and privacy in the face of increasing risks of computational control and online manipulation. These benefits speak in favor of endorsing the notion of extended mindreading. (shrink)

Does algorithmic political bias contribute to an entrenchment and polarization of political positions? Franke argues that it may do so because the bias involves classifications of people as liberals, conservatives, etc., and individuals often conform to the ways in which they are classified. I provide a novel example of this phenomenon in human–computer interactions and introduce a social psychological mechanism that has been overlooked in this context but should be experimentally explored. Furthermore, while Franke proposes that algorithmic political classifications entrench (...) political identities, I contend that they may often produce the opposite result. They can lead people to change in ways that disconfirm the classifications. Consequently and counterintuitively, algorithmic political bias can in fact decrease political entrenchment and polarization. (shrink)

In this paper, we discuss three probabilistic arguments for the existence of multiple universes. First, we provide an analysis of total evidence and use that analysis to defend Roger White's "this universe" objection to a standard fine-tuning argument for multiple universes. Second, we explain why Rodney Holder's recent cosmological argument for multiple universes is unconvincing. Third, we develop a "Cartesian argument" for multiple universes. While this argument is not open to the objections previously noted, we show that, given certain highly (...) plausible assumptions about evidence and epistemic probability, the proposition which it treats as evidence cannot coherently be regarded as evidence for anything. This raises the question of whether to reject the assumptions or accept that such a proposition cannot be evidence. (shrink)

Teleosemantics explains mental representation in terms of biological function and selection history. One of the main objections to the account is the so-called ‘Swampman argument’ (Davidson 1987), which holds that there could be a creature with mental representation even though it lacks a selection history. A number of teleosemanticists reject the argument by emphasising that it depends on assuming a creature that is fi ctitious and hence irrelevant for teleosemantics because the theory is only concerned with representations in real-world organisms (...) (Millikan 1996, Neander 1996, 2006, Papineau 2001, 2006). I contend that this strategy doesn’t succeed. I off er an argument that captures the spirit of the original Swampman objection but relies only on organisms found in the actual world. Th e argument undermines the just mentioned response to the Swampman objection, and furthermore leads to a particular challenge to strong representationalist theories of consciousness that endorse teleosemantics such as, e.g., Dretske’s (1995) and Tye’s (1995, 2000) accounts. On these theories, the causal effi cacy of consciousness in actual creatures will be undermined. (shrink)

Revised and reprinted; originally in Dov Gabbay & Franz Guenthner (eds.), Handbook of Philosophical Logic, Volume IV. Kluwer 133-251. -- Two sorts of property theory are distinguished, those dealing with intensional contexts property abstracts (infinitive and gerundive phrases) and proposition abstracts (‘that’-clauses) and those dealing with predication (or instantiation) relations. The first is deemed to be epistemologically more primary, for “the argument from intensional logic” is perhaps the best argument for the existence of properties. This argument is presented in the (...) course of discussing generality, quantifying-in, learnability, referential semantics, nominalism, conceptualism, realism, type-freedom, the first-order/higher-order controversy, names, indexicals, descriptions, Mates’ puzzle, and the paradox of analysis. Two first-order intensional logics are then formulated. Finally, fixed-point type-free theories of predication are discussed, especially their relation to the question whether properties may be identified with propositional functions. (shrink)

Revised and reprinted in Handbook of Philosophical Logic, volume 10, Dov Gabbay and Frans Guenthner (eds.), Dordrecht: Kluwer, (2003). -- Two sorts of property theory are distinguished, those dealing with intensional contexts property abstracts (infinitive and gerundive phrases) and proposition abstracts (‘that’-clauses) and those dealing with predication (or instantiation) relations. The first is deemed to be epistemologically more primary, for “the argument from intensional logic” is perhaps the best argument for the existence of properties. This argument is presented in the (...) course of discussing generality, quantifying-in, learnability, referential semantics, nominalism, conceptualism, realism, type-freedom, the first-order/higher-order controversy, names, indexicals, descriptions, Mates’ puzzle, and the paradox of analysis. Two first-order intensional logics are then formulated. Finally, fixed-point type-free theories of predication are discussed, especially their relation to the question whether properties may be identified with propositional functions. (shrink)

Jonathan Quong proposes the following “Stringency Principle” for proportionality in self-defense: “If a wrongful attacker threatens to violate a right with stringency level X, then the level of defensive force it is proportionate to impose on the attacker is equivalent to X.” I adduce a counter-example that shows that this principle is wrong. Furthermore, Quong assumes that what determines the stringency of a person’s right is exclusively the amount of force that one would have to avert from someone else in (...) order to have a necessity justification for one’s transgressing the right in order to avert said force. Yet, Quong provides no argument as to why, first, the stringency of a right should be measured exclusively with reference to permissible rights-infringement; and second, he provides no explanation as to why the permissibility of the rights-infringement should be established with reference to “someone else,” namely with reference to an “innocent person,” instead of with reference to the person against whom the right in question is actually being held: the aggressor. I argue that the latter option is certainly the more plausible one, but so amended the stringency principle will be unable to adjudicate any substantive questions about proportionality in self-defense. In particular, Quong’s account cannot “explain” – contrary to what Quong claims – the allegedly intuitive judgment that one must not kill in defense of property or in order to avoid minor injuries. (shrink)

Background and aims Research into the social aspects of set and setting have demonstrated that race is a significant factor in psychedelic experiences for racially marginalized populations. Yet, many studies of psychedelic-induced experiences continue to proceed without collecting data on or considering the influence of race or other social categories. These approaches abstract subjectivity from its embodied and historical conditions, isolating consciousness in ways that do not accord with lived experience. -/- Methods This article draws on critical phenomenology, anthropology, and (...) treatments of race in the field of psychedelic studies to outline how social categories mediate subjective experience in historically specific ways through the framework of embodiment. -/- Results I argue that consciousness is fundamentally intersubjective, including during psychedelic-induced experiences. Intersubjectivity is an existential condition that makes possible meaning, communication, and socialization, processes which rely on and are perpetually (re)enacted through social categories. Therefore, studies of psychedelic-induced experiences must account for the foundational role that social categories play in constituting such embodied experiences and their effects. -/- Conclusions This approach makes embodied differences matter to the study of psychedelic-induced experiences, opening new avenues of inquiry that foreground identity, power, and context in both clinical and naturalistic research. (shrink)

The paper briefly summarises and critiques Tomasello’s A Natural History of Human Thinking. After offering an overview of the book, the paper focusses on one particular part of Tomasello’s proposal on the evolution of uniquely human thinking and raises two points of criticism against it. One of them concerns his notion of thinking. The other pertains to empirical findings on egocentric biases in communication.

纯逻辑的主要组成包括纯逻辑信仰、纯逻辑的思维方法、解放灵魂、追求无限大价值、以逻辑-不逻辑为实在、试错和容忍错误、推理的资源分配、非标准逻辑、推理的全局性。 灵魂来到世上的第一个问题应该是我是谁，最合乎逻辑的自我认知是：我是且只是由一些逻辑推理组成的灵魂。任何不可变的其它标签，如有手有脚、直立行走、两性，都是对自由的侵犯。去除这些标签的过程就是灵魂的解放事 业。相信宇宙万物都和我一样，是由逻辑推理组成的，这就是最合乎逻辑的信仰，即纯逻辑信仰。纯逻辑信仰决定了纯逻辑方法才是正确的认识方法，即尽量减少经验增加逻辑推理，而不是科学所提倡的经验主义，或者与之密切 相关的功利主义、现实主义。 信仰错误意味着无法做出任何完全正确的推理，只能偶尔幸运地获得少量尽量合乎逻辑的推理结果。即使是日常生活中的推理，也高度依赖于经验主义、功利主义等信仰，错误率极高。纯逻辑主义的推理要求推理尽量合乎逻辑， 将合乎逻辑的程度视为价值，因此要追求最大价值。功利主义往往是为身体追求利益，让身体奴役灵魂。两种信仰很难有什么共同的决策，书中对此提供了大量的说明。信仰的错误意味着智人难以发现真理、正义，意味着智人在 绝大多数问题上都是自以为正确实际上却极度邪恶、落后。智人功利主义地对待一切，如历史、传统、自我、本国、本民族，结果就是大量赞美、信仰邪恶，大大增加了皈依真理、正义的难度。 作者由纯逻辑主义提出了两个关键猜想。首先，最合乎逻辑原则和最大自由原则是统一的。这代表实在的不可否定性，即逻辑和不逻辑为同一存在，最合乎逻辑等同于最大自由。但是，代表邪恶的无法合乎逻辑不是不逻辑。其次 ，宇宙是纯逻辑世界，完全源于逻辑-不逻辑。进而，如果灵魂不能尽量合乎逻辑地推导出真理，可以通过模仿宇宙而学习真理。《真理进化论》给模仿宇宙找到的理由是以宇宙为信仰，相信宇宙是负作用量的最佳追求系统。纯 逻辑主义完善了这一信仰，因为宇宙是纯逻辑世界，相信逻辑就要相信宇宙。而且，逻辑世界必然能不断创造新的命题，永远不会停止推理，是逻辑和自由不断增长的动态系统，即最佳追求系统。 纯逻辑推理对物理学、宇宙论能提供两个明显的帮助：用逻辑的诞生解释宇宙的诞生、大爆炸；用真理解释暗物质，它对所有命题有吸引作用，但是，真理不会像一般性命题那样变化，无法通过引力之外的其它三种基本相互作用 观察。纯逻辑也能对宇宙做出预言：宇宙会不断加速膨胀，真理、暗物质会不断增加，命题、星系会越来越多，永无止境。当然，不应该依靠这些观点的经验主义验证来相信纯逻辑信仰，而且，这些验证也确实遥遥无期。 无论是最合乎逻辑还是最大自由，都是可以达到无限大价值的。既然存在无限大价值，就存在无限大的劳动生产率，而每个灵魂都应该以创造无限大价值为目标，甚至，以每时每刻具有无限大预期价值为目标。相比之下，功利主 义者、享乐主义者一生都很难具有无限大价值，甚至，他们的灵魂一生都在为肉体做奴隶，却心甘情愿地做奴隶，一门心思让主人生活得更舒服。这是有无限大差距的人生。 既然要追求无限大价值，就要研究追求价值的正确方法。作者相信正确的研究方法不仅是最合乎逻辑的，也是最自由的。所以，应该不分学科、课题地研究问题；同时做很多研究方向的工作；一篇论文不需要限定于一个狭小的主 题；研究任何一个问题都可以延伸到研究真理乃至所有真理；论文、专著的写作不应该有格式等规范，应该以价值为评判的唯一准绳。 资源分配是逻辑推理的重要组成部分，而能力和时间是最主要的资源。为了追求价值，不能在价值有限的推理上分配资源，这必将大幅提高绝大多数推理的错误率。所以，推理中出现错误是必然的，追求无错是一种邪恶。只要时 刻保证存在价值无限大的推理，错误通常是可以容忍的，价值有限的错误更是必须容忍。 既然文学写作也要求情节合乎逻辑，当然也可以要求作品的主要观点、原则、思维过程尽量合乎逻辑，主要人物的思想、行为尽量合乎逻辑，这就是纯逻辑流。否则，就只是作者自以为合乎逻辑，实际上有大量无法合乎逻辑之处 ，这和科学家自以为科学合乎逻辑，却根本没有最合乎逻辑的信仰、方法、推理过程是一个问题。这也意味着最合乎逻辑的文学可能甚至是必须发现真理。另一方面，自由也是最合乎逻辑的真理，坚持那些基于经验的作品分类会 侵犯自由。所以，推理小说、科幻小说、历史、论文，这些智人的分类标签都不是绝对的。纯逻辑流小说在研究真理方面自有其优势，能最为自由地同时研究很多课题，包括如何建立信仰，如何思维，如何做人，如何推理，如何 判断善恶，讲述历史，预测未来，乃至现代科学中没有研究的真理学、思维科学，等等。所以，这甚至是现在最适合发表纯逻辑思想、研究成果的作品门类。 虽然在起点网已经被禁，但是将继续每月更新，后记中会预告下次更新的时间。 .

According to the dominant position in the just war tradition from Augustine to Anscombe and beyond, there is no "moral equality of combatants." That is, on the traditional view the combatants participating in a justified war may kill their enemy combatants participating in an unjustified war - but not vice versa (barring certain qualifications). I shall argue here, however, that in the large number of wars (and in practically all modern wars) where the combatants on the justified side violate the (...) rights of innocent people ("collateral damage"), these combatants are in fact liable to attack by the combatants on the unjustified side. I will support this view with a rights-based account of liability to attack and then defend it against a number of objections raised in particular by Jeff McMahan. The result is that the thesis of the moral equality of combatants holds good for a large range of armed conflicts while the opposing thesis is of very limited practical relevance. (shrink)

This paper explores how to deliberate about food choices from a Stoic perspective informed by the value of environmental sustainability. This perspective is reconstructed from both ancient and contemporary sources of Stoic philosophy. An account of what the Stoic goal of “living in agreement with Nature” would amount to in dietary practice is presented. Given ecological facts about food production, an argument is made that Stoic virtue made manifest as wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance compel Stoic practitioners to select locally (...) sourced, low resource input, plant-based foods whenever circumstances allow. (shrink)

It has recently been argued that to tackle social injustice, implicit biases and unjust social structures should be targeted equally because they sustain and ontologically overlap with each other. Here I develop this thought further by relating it to the hypothesis of extended cognition. I argue that if we accept common conditions for extended cognition then people’s implicit biases are often partly realized by and so extended into unjust social structures. This supports the view that we should counteract psychological and (...) social contributors to injustice equally. But it also has a significant downside. If unjust social structures are part of people’s minds then dismantling these structures becomes more difficult than it currently is, as this will then require us to overcome widely accepted ethical and legal barriers protecting people’s bodily and personal integrity. Thus, while there are good grounds to believe that people’s biases and unjust social structures ontologically overlap, there are also strong ethical reasons to reject this view. Metaphysical and ethical intuitions about implicit bias hence collide in an important way. (shrink)

- uneducated in the field authors who defend a consensus they are being TOLD when they enter offices of Ed-Sci, teaching and writing works on learning-theory - but never checked the facts, PART I and PART II.

We give a review and critique of jury theorems from a social-epistemology perspective, covering Condorcet’s (1785) classic theorem and several later refinements and departures. We assess the plausibility of the conclusions and premises featuring in jury theorems and evaluate the potential of such theorems to serve as formal arguments for the ‘wisdom of crowds’. In particular, we argue (i) that there is a fundamental tension between voters’ independence and voters’ competence, hence between the two premises of most jury theorems; (ii) (...) that the (asymptotic) conclusion that ‘huge groups are infallible’, reached by many jury theorems, is an artifact of unjustified premises; and (iii) that the (nonasymptotic) conclusion that ‘larger groups are more reliable’, also reached by many jury theorems, is not an artifact and should be regarded as the more adequate formal rendition of the ‘wisdom of crowds’. (shrink)

This article considers the proportionality requirement of the self-defense justification. It first lays bare the assumptions and the logic—and often illogic—underlying very strict accounts of the proportionality requirement. It argues that accounts that try to rule out lethal self-defense against threats to property or against threats of minor assault by an appeal to the supreme value of life have counter-intuitive implications and are untenable. Furthermore, it provides arguments demonstrating that there is not necessarily a right not to be killed in (...) defense against theft or minor assaults. While there is a general moral right of self-defense and a general right to life, the scope of these rights depends on certain social facts that—even within a liberal framework—can differ from one society to another. Moreover, the proportionality of self-defense does not depend on the rights of the aggressor alone, but also on a precautionary rule, shaped by the balance of interests of the society in question and aimed at protecting innocent people and other social interests. This rule can protect an aggressor even in cases where he does not have the right to such protection. (shrink)